David Schneider-Joseph Archives

Archives: June 2004

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Mon Jun 28, 2004

What should we want?

In Den Beste's latest post, he responds to this question:

I'd be thrilled if you had thoughts on what constitutes honorable sports play in a game which is officiated by referees. In that situation, should one "play by the spirit of the rules", or should one manipulate the presence of the referees to one's own competitive advantage? If you're the parent of a high school athlete, it is a perplexing question.

Den Beste's answer (condensed for the sake of sanity):

His blog post discusses the problem in more detail. It strikes me that the reason Greg is confused about this is that he's confused about his goal. ...

Why do you want your kid to participate in high school sports? It looks to me like Greg either has not really thought that question through fully, or else doesn't realize that his objectives will provide guidance regarding tactics. (He begins to grapple with that at the end of his post, it should be noted.) ...

And once you know what your objectives are, it will be much easier to decide whether a given tactic actually helps achieve those objectives.

Well duh.

I think Greg knows what he's asking. He knows all he has to do is figure out what he wants for his child, and that would pretty much answer the question of what tactics he should recommend to his child. Greg's question wasn't, as Den Beste interpreted it, "How should I get I want?" His question was: "What should I want?"

Steven Den Beste doesn't understand this, because he doesn't believe it's meaningful to ask that question. He believes people "start" with objectives, essentially as un-changeable axioms, and figure out their tactics from there. He doesn't believe there's such a thing as an "objectively right objective", or that there's any way to answer the question of "What should we want?"

But this view fails to explain the fact that people change what they want, many times, throughout their lives. Nor does it explain how people decide what they want, to begin with. Are people born with inherent desires? Don't those desires require an understanding of the factual concepts underlying them — an understanding that simply doesn't exist when someone is first born? Is a die thrown to determine what people want? Is it just a matter of chance? Or is it just as deep and conscious a process as that of how we determine all our other beliefs? I think it is.

6/28/2004 3:17 am | Comments (9) | #

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Fri Jun 25, 2004

109 Minutes Revisited

This article (via InstaPundit) was written on September 16, 2001, but I hadn't read it till today. It's pretty good. I'd give you a quote but it's not that long and it's better read all the way through.

6/25/2004 6:31 pm | Comments (0) | #

Fri Jun 18, 2004

Something doesn't add up

In this LA Times article, Russia, despite its strong opposition to the invasion of Iraq, admits:

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said today that Russian intelligence received several reports before the war with Iraq that Saddam Hussein's regime was planning terrorist attacks against U.S. targets.

[A Russian intelligence source] said Russian intelligence received a report early in 2002 that Iraqi secret services were organizing terrorist attacks on U.S. territory and against U.S. diplomatic and military facilities outside the United States.

"This information was more than once passed on to our American partners in oral and written form in the fall of 2002," said the source, about whose identity Interfax gave no details. He said there existed a "direct threat to the U.S. from the Saddam Hussein regime."

I'm not sure which is a more shocking admission, that the U.S. was under direct threat from Iraq, or that Russia actively assisted the Iraqi government on the eve of war:

The Russian military had a long history of cooperation with the Iraqi regime, and senior retired military officers in interviews with The Times said they were in Baghdad on the eve of the war, attempting to provide advice and guidance to the former Iraqi leader.

Either way, how can Putin then say this?

"Despite that information about terrorist attacks being prepared by Saddam's regime, Russia's position on Iraq remains unchanged," Putin said.

6/18/2004 3:47 pm | Comments (8) | #

Wed Jun 16, 2004

The Age of Uncertainty

Awareness of history is vital, as is awareness of current events. Yet, difficult enough to achieve in their own right, they are only the beginning to a necessary understanding of proper decisionmaking. The ever-present problem in analyzing events is that you rarely can go back and try different courses of action, so you can't know with certainty which of our society's choices caused which events, and which events would have happened had we made different choices. Nick Gillespie's latest article in Reason on this topic is pretty interesting.

While he and I disagree about the wisdom of this war, we both agree that it is not self-evident which course of action is the correct one. This does not mean that there isn't a correct course of action, or that we cannot discover it (I strongly believe this war was correct). Just that it will always require thought to do so.

6/16/2004 4:36 am | Comments (13) | #

Fri Jun 11, 2004

Sentient Dictionaries

German dog found to be smart as a child
Leipzig, Germany, Jun. 11 (UPI) -- A German border collie has stunned scientists by displaying the same cognizant vocabulary as a 3-year-old child.

In other news, my dictionary was found to possess superhuman intelligence...

6/11/2004 4:36 pm | Comments (4) | #

Wed Jun 09, 2004

Iraqi Sovereignty Clock

I have unveiled at right an Iraqi sovereignty clock, available for use by any blogs that wish! It will count down second by second, until Iraq receives national sovereignty at midnight on June 30, Baghdad time. There will be a surprise celebration at the moment of handover.

To use it, paste the following HTML code into your blog at the appropriate place:

<script type="text/javascript"
  src="http://www.davidsj.com/iraqiclock.js">
</script>

To customize the text colors or alignment, you can use a variation of the following, replacing the highlighted parts with your own settings:

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
  iraqiclock_title_color = "red";
  iraqiclock_clock_color = "green";
  iraqiclock_bg_color = "lightgray";
  iraqiclock_alignment = "center";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
  src="http://www.davidsj.com/iraqiclock.js">
</script>

UPDATE 6/28/2004 3:39 am: Well, leave it to Bush to ruin my plans and get things done early. I guess if I didn't have a conflict of interest I'd say this was good news. Oh well. The clock will countdown to the original time, and there will still be a surprise celebration, though it will admittedly be less exciting.

6/9/2004 8:53 pm | Comments (29) | #

Archives: June 2004

Mon Jun 28, 2004

What should we want?

Fri Jun 25, 2004

109 Minutes Revisited

Fri Jun 18, 2004

Something doesn't add up

Wed Jun 16, 2004

The Age of Uncertainty

Fri Jun 11, 2004

Sentient Dictionaries

Wed Jun 09, 2004

Iraqi Sovereignty Clock

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