I view the Romans as PETA members would view me. I have justifications for my actions, as I'm sure Romans had for their actions. That's just the nature of the human condition.

What would it mean for the PETA member to be right? Does it just mean that the PETA member has sympathy for chickens, whereas you and I do not? Or is there something testable going on here?

It doesn't seem to me that the differences between the PETA members, us, and the Romans, are at all unclear. They are differences in the parties' moral universe, so to speak: the PETA member sees a chicken as morally significant; you and I see a Scythian, Judean, or Gaul as morally significant; and the Roman sees only another Roman as morally significant. (I exaggerate slightly.)

A great deal of moral progress has been made through the expansion of the morally significant; through recognition of other tribes (and kinds of beings) as relevant objects of moral concern. Richard Rorty has argued that it is this sympathy or moral sentiment — and not the knowledge of moral facts — which makes the practical difference in causing a person to act morally; and that this in turn depends on living in a world where you can expect the same from others.

This is an empirical prediction: Rorty claims that expanding people's moral sympathies to include more others, and giving them a world in which they can expect others to do the same in turn, is a more effective way of producing good moral consequences, than moral philosophizing is. I wonder what sort of experiment would provide evidence one way or the other.

This isn't so much a critique against consequentialism as the attempt at creating objective moral systems in general. I would love for the world to follow a particular moral order (namely mine). But there are people who, for what I would see as being completely sane reasons, disagree with me. On the edges, I have no problem writing mass murderers off as being insane. Beyond that, though, in the murky middle, there are a number of moral issues (and how is that dividing line drawn? Is it moral to have anything above a sustenance level meal if others are starving i the world, for instance?) that I see as leading only to endless argument. This doesn't indicate one of the sides is being disingenuous, just that they have different values that cannot be simultaneously optimized. The Roman gladiator post by another commenter is an example. I view the Romans as PETA members would view me. I have justifications for my actions, as I'm sure Romans had for their actions. That's just the nature of the human condition. Academic moral philosophizing always comes across to me as trying to unearth a cosmic grading scale, even if there isn't a cosmic grader.

I request an explanation of why my comment telling Luke he did a good job is more highly upvoted than the post Luke did a good job on. If you agree with me that Luke did a good job strongly enough to upvote the statement, why not upvote Luke?

I won't be attending*, but just out of curiosity, what did you have in mind for the social effectiveness curriculum? Any particular authors that you recommend for things like body language, communication, etc.?

*Due to life constraints, but it sounds very interesting!

Fixed your link markup for you. Toplevel posts do not use Markdown (I know, it's annoying), they use WYSIWYG or HTML.

I would think that after years of doing routine checkups like these, even if the doctor is hungry it's unlikely that it would affect the doctor so much that a mistake would be made because of it.

Though if there's any doubts of the doctor's competency, or if it becomes a more difficult procedure, that would definitely be something to watch out for.

As would I.

• Strict, dependable schedule.
• Everybody has a role, and invests planning and effort into it.
• Stage, lights, music, camera.
• Excellent speeches, excellent feedback.
• The members take improvement very seriously, but have a lot of fun.
• A wealth of mature, active, long-term members with deep knowledge and experience.
• Constant participation in all the regional and sometimes higher-level Toastmasters competitions.

I guess the only quibble I would have, and I don't know that it really changes your critique much, is that I wrote that neurons would be some sort of gate equivalent. I wouldn't say that neurons have a simple gate model (that they're simply an AND or an XOR, for instance). But I do see them as being in some sense Boolean. Anyway, I would just try to clarify my fairly short answer to say that I believe that computation can always be broken down into smaller Boolean steps, and these steps could be rendered in many different media.

Computationality in any fashion needs to be reified by physics doesn't it? Otherwise it wouldn't exist. Now, I would say it's an emergent feature; physics doesn't need to provide anything beyond what is provided for anything else to explain it. Maybe that's the point of contention?

I think that the more confrontational style of the original est training brought people's resistance up, and created a more emotional rather than just a cognitive or didactic interaction with the trainer. I'm sure each style worked better for some people than others. I have the impression that as the format evolved, it got less confrontational, more "est-light". Some of that was no doubt in response to some of the media attention. I heard Werner Erhard speak a few times in person, and I read a number of articles and books about him and the training. The early television reports about the est training focused a lot on the "restrictions" on participants leaving the training room to go to the restrooms, equating that to a technique used in cult indoctrination. Werner Erhard said he was amused by that, because as he said, "I didn't call a break because I didn't have to pee."

I liked the training a great deal, but I might have been more prepared for the "in-your-face" style because I had read several books before doing the training. I also took several of the follow-up courses, I "assisted" at a couple or so trainings including the one my sister took, and I enjoyed being included in the group for a few years after my initial training. I got turned off to the organization and the courses around 1987. I felt that they shot themselves in the foot by making SO much of every session of the post-training seminar programs on bringing in more people. I believe that if they had just focused more on the content, which was powerful and valuable, the people would have brought guests in all on their own. I think there must have been pressure coming from the upper management, and I felt that it was really a shame, because I would definitely have kept going if not for that.