DescentBB

Spidey wrote:Ok Jeff, lets make sure we understand each other…

The point you are referencing is what I think “you” want by setting the bar so high concerning charity, not the way “I” think it should be.

I take issue with two arguments that you gave arguing why it can't be the case that we are obligated to give to charity:

Your Argument 1: If we are obligated to give to charity, then we will always have to keep giving, since someone will always be in need.

Response: But this is not the case, e.g. even Singer, who has the most extreme position, says that you should only give until helping others does less good than helping yourself. So there is a point at which we should stop giving, even with Singer's extreme position.

Your argument 2: If we are obligated to give to charity, then most people would be immoral.

Response: No one would be perfect, but this would be the case anyways. But judging whether someone is moral or not requires a lot more consideration than whether they give to charity. So this would have little effect on whether most people are moral or not.

flip wrote:Since he is the owner, he therefore has that right.

Even those people who still think that a person X can own another person Y still believe that there are limitations on what X can do to Y...

Eh? I don't understand what your trying to say Jeff.

Back on the original topic:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=11666

Jeff,

I see, so the point is to put yourself in as much poverty as the people you are helping, then you can stop giving.

This is ironic…flip who is very religious, says it’s a personal choice to give or not, then it’s a matter to settle with their conscience…which I agree with…But the non religious person says “It’s a duty“, go figure.

Well I am going to leave this discussion with the following undisputable fact and then be done with it, since a few people want the topic back on subject.

Making charity a duty, makes it no longer charity.

char·i·ty

char·i·ty [chárrətee]
(plural char·i·ties)
n
1. organization providing charity: an organization that collects money and other voluntary contributions of help for people in need
2. provision of help: the voluntary provision of money, materials, or help to people in need
3. material help: money, materials, or help voluntarily given to people in need

Note the word “voluntary” which is mutually exclusive with “duty”

Wiktionary says:

1. (uncountable) The providing of goods or money to those in need.
2. (countable) The goods or money given to those in need.
3. (countable) An organization the objects of which are to carry on a charitable purpose.
4. An attitude of kindness and understanding towards others.

Note the lack of the word \"voluntary\".

Well, so much for \"undisputable\"!

Wiktionary.....LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Stop please, I cant laugh that hard, it hurts too much.

Note the lack of the word “duty”

Spidey wrote:I see, so the point is to put yourself in as much poverty as the people you are helping, then you can stop giving.

This is why I call Singer's position extreme. But the real truth is somewhere in between. Note that the utilitarians have an additional way out of this too. They might be able to show that if I did the above, then so many people would be displeased by this behavior (e.g. like you would be) such that giving until I'm as poor as everyone else in fact is not giving until less good is accomplished by giving than keeping. But this is a subtlety, which just hints at the other criticism of utilitarianism, that it is limitlessly complicated. But back to my main point--the real truth is somewhere in between.

Spidey wrote:Note the word “voluntary” which is mutually exclusive with “duty”

You already know that you cannot appeal to dictionaries to learn about how things are in truth. They are just exercises in statistics and linguistics. We had a conversation about this earlier. But in any case, if you are still intent on using your proof-by-dictionary, then let's not call what I'm talking about "charity." Let's call it "charity-prime." Then replace "charity" in all of my arguments with "charity-prime." We ought to practice charity-prime, as I've defined it in my arguments, for all of the same reasons as I have previously tried to convince you to practice vanilla charity.

Works for me.

And JFTR I don’t use dictionaries for the truth, I use them for what words mean. (I’m old school, I live in a world where words mean things)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics
A child's first language is learned from increasing Relativity, and requires no Absolutes.
TL;DR: Words have no inherent meaning of their own - they only mean what we want them to mean.

Do you see the colour BLUE the same as i see the colour BLUE?
Maybe your BLUE is actually GREEN, but how would anyone know?
There are no Absolutes. There is no one-true-subjective-experience. Truth is relative.
There is actually no way to prove that we arn't living as constructs in a simulation.

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?!

I didn’t understand anything you said , because words have no true meaning, so could you please repeat that in some kind of absolute communication medium.

nope you'll have to make do

That's \"color\", Roid.

you are just as wrong as me

Back to the topic, I see that the U.S. media is finally starting to report the downside to ethanol production by citing food price increases and the riots in many Asian countries over rice shortages. Now some are starting to question the wisdom of using ethanol as a fuel stopgap measure.

But that's only part of the global food problem. With the high price of fuel and the sinking value of the U.S. dollar, a lot of third world countries that use the dollar for international trade are really feeling the pinch with food prices. They can't afford to import much their food now.

I don’t want to be the one to break it to the car makers who were gearing up to produce the hybrid cars.

Yea, why not just hand a big advantage to the Japanese.

i don't get your meaning Spidey. What has that to do with Ethanol? Hybrid cars are normal fuel cars that use internally charged and discharged batteries to increase fuel mileage.

Oops, I meant flex-Fuel not hybrid.

The biggest difference between a flex-fuel car and a regular car is corrosion resistance through the fuel system IIRC.

There are a few other differences, such as ignition timing and fuel flow control, but that wasn’t my point.

I was thinking it might be hard to sell these cars if you can’t get fuel, or using these fuels starves poor little children…

http://www.ford.com/innovation/environm ... -vehicles/

Well that's the thing about flex fuel - you can just use normal gasoline if ethanol sux.


If cellulosic ethanol pans out we'll be ok anyway.
Also, algae. You can make ethanol from Algae iirc.
Also, algae vegoil (and thus biodiesel).

They need to stop this food crop stuff and go with proper stuff like Algae.
Ironicly, algae is actually a great food, a \"superfood\" they call it - just... few ppl eat much of it.
But even if ppl did eat it, you could produce enough food AND fuel, coz Algae produces like a few thousand times (no ★■◆●) as much as other crops like corn and soy.

Algae's where it's at.

As far as ethanol goes, I think diesel is better. It's so much more simple (in my subtropical climate anyway) to run a diesel on straight vegetable oil - don't even have to convert it into biodiesel. Vegetable oil is so incredibly easy to make.
But for colder climates, yeah, you need to convert it into biodiesel, and/or use a heater in your fueltank (which itself is not too hard to do anyway).

If i lived in a cold climate, i'd probabaly opt to run my car on straight vegoil, and i'd use a fuel system heater. It just seems so much cleaner/simpler. Even moreso than biodeisel.

Well…

We build the cars, we build the distilleries, set up the transport and distributing systems, get people all excited about it…then say the idea is lousey because of a food shortage.
If it’s a bad idea, somebody better tell the Brazilian’s, and all the other countries using it. Sounds like politics to me. (bad politics)

There are a gazillion things to eat, 1/3rd of the corn produced in the US is a very very small amount of the total food available. Let them eat soy.

Or use something else, damn near anything with sugar or starch can be made into ethanol

Henry Ford thought ethanol was a good idea, and he was a pretty smart man.

Or…..

Maybe the government is really owned by the oil industry, or maybe they are afraid people might figure out that ethanol is just grain alcohol, and start brewing it themselves, thus avoiding the taxes.

But hey, if you don’t want a clean burning fuel, then we can all burn gasoline.

With the amount of french fries people tend to eat here, why not get cars to run on veggie oil?

coz it's a sideproduct of obesity .

yeah, it's a food crop used as fuel AFTER it's food potential has been used up, so that's great. But the only foods created with bulk vegetable oil are fried junk that's feeding the obesity influx.


However - you can poo-poo Algae in the same way, as they use concentrated CO2 emissions to grow it as fast as they do.
So Algae industry will be kindof a sideproduct of fossil fuel burning (ie: coal), or mining/refining (also releases a lot of concentrated CO2) - so it's kinda a sideproduct of global warming itself!

I'm not sure how well Algae grows if it isn't fed concentrated CO2. I ASSUME it will still grow faster than trees (ie: carbon offset forrests).
I've been looking around for \"concentrated CO2 vs normal Air\" growth figures to compare it, but i didn't have any luck so i gave up. I'm putting the word out: If anyone knows, please help me out.

It could be a way to replace the planting of carbon offset forrests, freeing up all that land!