• 1 Post
  • 42 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 15th, 2023

help-circle



  • You’re probably aware of this inherent contradiction by for the sake of any third parties reading:

    TotallynotJessica is advocating for virtue, contract, and rule based ethical paradigms based on the hypothesis that they will, in general, more effectively lead to outcomes preferred by utilitarianism.

    I think this contradiction is only important to people that are entrenched on one side or the other (or the other, or the other). For people that just want to understand how to make good decisions in their lives it’s a bit of a moot point.


  • It took a while to type this out so the commenter above may have already responded but:

    I think their point is for example: in the scenario with Sally’s father’s nuclear bomb

    It’s constructed to have people evaluate the extremities of their moral convictions. Some philosophers argue that it is never moral to lie or to break a promise. Some argue that it’s never moral to torture a person. I reckon the thought experiment is designed to get people to consider whether torture is actually absolutely morally wrong.

    What I think the commenter above you was saying is: In reality, how could we become convinced this scenario was unfolding before us. What experiences could a person actually have that would give them adequate confidence in the story to actually decide that it was justified to torture Sally.

    Like if a person walked up to you on the street IN REAL LIFE and said:

    My name is Sally, and I promised my father not to tell anyone where he had buried an atomic bomb that will kill 1 million people when it explodes in half an hour, but I concede I would be convinced to break my promise through torture.

    Would you feel justified in torturing her? What if you were the chief of police? I hope you don’t think so, because this is clearly a person having delusions related to some form of a psychotic episode.

    Even if she was telling the truth and you did succeed in torturing the information out of her, how quickly could you do it, and how quickly could you act on the information in a way that would save lives?

    Actual real world moral reasoning must account for people’s skepticism of the premises of the thought experiment.

    If we’re trying to construct some sort of useful ethical system, it has to accommodate the uncertainty humans have to navigate. This is probably why the classic trolley problem is so divisive. Some people are intuitively accounting for their uncertainty in the premise’s stated ‘known’ outcomes.


  • I live in Canada and there is a university professor that had police visit his house because he took some pictures of an oil project that was being protested while he was on a walking trail near the university.

    It was an interview on the cbc several years ago. He was a prof at SFU, I assume it was the trans mountain pipeline expansion.





  • Another way of thinking about it is betting your entire bankroll for 99.9…% certainty that you will win $1.

    Say you go into the casino with $1000.

    Bet:

    $1 lose.
    $3 lose.
    $9 lose.
    $27 lose.
    $81 lose.
    $243 lose.
    $729 oh wait you can't bet that much, you only have $457 left. Dang, do you bet $457 or find another $272? 
    
    Bet $457 and you win $914! Congrats you're now only down $86!
    Or maybe you lost and are down $1000.
    
    Or maybe you scrounged up $272 so you could keep playing
    Bet 729 and lose. Now you're down $1272.
    Or
    Bet 729 and you win 1458. Pay back the $272 you borrowed from your buddy, you're still up $186. 
    You just bet $729 dollars for a %50 chance of winning $186.
    

    But what are the chances of getting 6 or 7 losses in a row? 1 in 64, or 128 respectively, actually worse because roulette wheels aren’t 50/50, they’re 18/19 (18 wins and 19 losses in 37 plays on average) or worse. So losing 6 times in a row will happen 1 in 54 plays, 7 losses is 1 in 106.

    Google says roulette wheels spin 55 times per hour so with your strategy you will lose your bank roll in about one hour assuming your starting bet is 0.1% of your bank roll.



  • m0darn@lemmy.cato196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneI r(ul)efuse
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    7 months ago

    I’m fine with melting butter, but show me where in the prices I’m supposed to do it.

    The pancake recipe my wife likes me to make say something like:

    Milk

    Flour

    Sugar

    Egg

    Melted, slightly cooled butter

    add the lemon juice to the milk and let it thicken while preparing the dry ingredients.

    Beat the egg into the milk then whisk in the melted butter.

    If it was slightly cooled at the beginning it’s not whiskable by the time I get to the step. If it’s solid at the beginning it’s not slightly cooled when I go to whisk it in (it will be straight out of the microwave)

    As someone else said, it’s an extremely small hill but I don’t think you’re going to push me off of it.




  • I’m a feminist and not a Freemason. I wasn’t convinced that Freemasonry is misogynistic simply because it excludes women. Ie: I think there are valid reasons to have some gender separated spaces. My understanding is that Freemasonry is a practice intended to ‘improve’ men (whatever that means to them). I think that’s possibly a valid reason for maintaining a gendered space.

    However; in preparing to write this comment I learned that Masonry’s sister organization (The Order of the Eastern Star), which is open to both men and women, is subordinate to the Masonic lodge. This does strike me as misogynistic.

    I’m open to reading thoughtful comments by Masons or more knowledgeable feminists.