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What kind of girl do you think I am?

manylogue.com

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Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#51

Post by Tycho »

Confusion wrote: post #44
davidu wrote: post #12

In business you are rarely forced to murder or whore yourself out. You are, however, constantly faced with changing your direction, compromising your vision or similar, all for some potential upside and downside. That's the nature of business, and trying to tie it to moral questions doesn't do justice to the line of reasoning one should employ. Of course you should be moral, but most business questions aren't a quest…

I'm sure the managers at BP that choose to forego certain safety measures completely recognize themselves in this line of reasoning. Which immediately illustrates how dangerously false it is. Companies are amoral (not to be confused with immoral) entities that will not necessarily act in the people's best behavior. If companies act in a morally acceptable way, it is because of the individual employees that together m…

On the other hand: Chernobyl

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#52

Post by liedra »

Confusion wrote: post #44
davidu wrote: post #12

In business you are rarely forced to murder or whore yourself out. You are, however, constantly faced with changing your direction, compromising your vision or similar, all for some potential upside and downside. That's the nature of business, and trying to tie it to moral questions doesn't do justice to the line of reasoning one should employ. Of course you should be moral, but most business questions aren't a quest…

I'm sure the managers at BP that choose to forego certain safety measures completely recognize themselves in this line of reasoning. Which immediately illustrates how dangerously false it is. Companies are amoral (not to be confused with immoral) entities that will not necessarily act in the people's best behavior. If companies act in a morally acceptable way, it is because of the individual employees that together m…

This is one of the reasons why you have to start talking about governance in these situations. Businesses should have governance strategies. They probably mostly do for finance, or safety, or similar, but they should also have governance strategies in place for ethical/social/cultural impact as well. Things like risk assessment or technology assessment can help here, but they're just part of a wider strategy needed to really nut out all the potential problems and benefits associated with the decision being made.

Of course this is quite tricky, but I think in Europe they're starting to move towards the right idea: they have the precautionary principle, EU commission-funded technical research projects need to follow strict ethical and social governance programs, and the commission is directly funding more research into how to more effectively govern these sorts of endeavours (rather than simply relying on "ethical codes" or "ethics checklists"). It's only a few steps up from that to regulating more widely across Europe (but obviously they need a playground to test in first! and the billion+ euro research Framework Programmes are a pretty good one for that).

I can't really see the US going for this sort of thing though, to be honest, even though it'd most likely prevent things like the BP catastrophe :(

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#53

Post by Herring »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #21

Is it just me or is there someone going on a downvoting spree here? I've seen at least 8 comments at 0, and I only checked the thread twice. It's kind of weird, since there's quite a high karma threshold for downvoting.

You guys really don't see how misogynistic these articles are, do you?

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#54

Post by Tycho »

It is the characterisation of moral systems as either 'deontological' or 'teleological' which I find invalid, thus undermining the usefulness of this here debate.

In the articles terms, you could be moral according to the category of your actions, or according to the consequences of your actions. The first one ignores reality ('whatever happens, don't lie'), and the second one negates judgement ('the right action depends on the consequences, and the consequences of the consequences, and the consequences of... ad infinitum' an endless, useless subjectivism). They can be sidestepped by applying judgement according to reality and a measurable standard of value, eg. self-interest. You could call this contextual or objective morality.

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#55

Post by ahoyhere »

davidu wrote: post #12

In business you are rarely forced to murder or whore yourself out. You are, however, constantly faced with changing your direction, compromising your vision or similar, all for some potential upside and downside. That's the nature of business, and trying to tie it to moral questions doesn't do justice to the line of reasoning one should employ. Of course you should be moral, but most business questions aren't a quest…

Actually, whoring in terms of violating your "core values" is extremely common in business. Not talking making canned dolphin meat here, but if you have a core value about providing excellent customer service, but your biz partners don't like the expense... death by a thousand cuts you go.

Consulting is especially like this, if you want to build the best damn thing you can, consulting is usually at odds with that core value. Consulting is as much about placating the client's ego as anything else.

Violating your core values for money will lead to a death-spin of post hoc justification and misery, so it's rarely worth it.

That said, I don't think sleeping with someone for money is a moral question, and the example is indeed misogynistic.

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#56

Post by roundsquare »

Herring wrote: post #53
reitzensteinm wrote: post #21

Is it just me or is there someone going on a downvoting spree here? I've seen at least 8 comments at 0, and I only checked the thread twice. It's kind of weird, since there's quite a high karma threshold for downvoting.

You guys really don't see how misogynistic these articles are, do you?

I suspect everyone noticed it, but decided to focus on the what the author was trying to get across instead.

Not saying thats the right thing to do, but thats my guess.

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#57

Post by nicolas_t »

btmorex wrote: post #37
nicolas_t wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook and Twitter are internationally recognized brand that are blocked in China... Explaining that away is no problem for the Chinese government. I think the difference between your point of view and my point of view is that I don't see things as completely black... China is a repressive government and freedom of speech is not allowed there but it's certainly better than it was during the cultural revolution and…

Google has ~24 billion in revenue. Twitter is harder to pinpoint but from the sources I've seen it's far less than 50 million. Facebook is somewhere around 400-550 million. I guess my point is that they aren't even in the same stratosphere. Twitter and Facebook may be international recognized (and clearly I should have differentiated here), but they aren't in any way equivalent to a behemoth like Google.

Well they aren't the equivalent in term of revenues but Twitter, Facebook and Youtube (also banned in China after having been allowed at the beginning) are all as well known as Google to the average user...

Apart from that, Google's revenue doesn't give them any leverage on the Chinese government, mostly because they wouldn't ever back down on censoring as it would mean losing face...

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#58

Post by reitzensteinm »

Herring wrote: post #53
reitzensteinm wrote: post #21

Is it just me or is there someone going on a downvoting spree here? I've seen at least 8 comments at 0, and I only checked the thread twice. It's kind of weird, since there's quite a high karma threshold for downvoting.

You guys really don't see how misogynistic these articles are, do you?

When I first saw the comment threads, basically everything was voted down to 0. It now feels much more like a typical contraversial thread - lots of disagreement, and a few people who've gotten strongly downvoted. I have no problem with that, it's what I expect to see.

It just kind of pissed me off to see the vandalism of presumably one person downvoting everything on the page, because only people with quite a lot of karma can downvote.

I suspect that's also why I got voted up to 7 and then back down to 1 - because people are looking at the votes now see no issue.

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#59

Post by jedbrown »

derefr wrote: post #2

A thought: if someone offered me a trillion dollars to kill a person, I would get trillion-dollar loan, invent brain-uploading and emulation technology with it, copy the person into the machine, and then kill them. To put that more simply: past a certain point, the idea of marginal value in a cost/benefit analysis breaks down, because the benefit "changes the game." (That is, creates a discontinuity in the valuation…

Terrible example, but the point that cost-benefit analysis is nonlinear is indeed valid. Suppose that instead of being offered money, you were threatened with losing it. This change is immaterial for small amounts, but highly relevant for large amounts (e.g. as the amount approaches your net worth/lifetime earning potential).

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#60

Post by jules »

Herring wrote: post #53
reitzensteinm wrote: post #21

Is it just me or is there someone going on a downvoting spree here? I've seen at least 8 comments at 0, and I only checked the thread twice. It's kind of weird, since there's quite a high karma threshold for downvoting.

You guys really don't see how misogynistic these articles are, do you?

Is that a good reason for downvoting all comments?

The example may be misogynistic, but the idea that the example is an example of is not.

Also, suppose that the genders were removed:

    X: “If I gave you a million dollars, would you sleep with me?”
    Y: “A million dollars is a lot of money, and you don’t look that bad, so I guess I would consider it”
    X: “Ok, since I don’t have a million dollars, would you sleep with me for $100?”
    Y: (outraged) “What kind of person do you think I am?”
    X: “We’ve already established the answer to that question. Now we’re just negotiating the price”
Now who is shown in a less negative light, X or Y? I'd say Y. Of course Y is also shown in a negative light.
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