Prometheus was almost great, but there were too many "that's fucking stupid" elements. The entire crew was shit, not a single one was likable. At least with the space truckers in Alien, they were all sorts of assholes, but they were likable assholes. In Prom, they were just unpleasant people, doing unpleasant things, while generally being bad people - I hate them all still.

One thing Prometheus had going for it was visuals - Ridley Scott knows how to film a good looking film, I don't really think anyone can argue that. I really hope the story won't get fucked over this time, and I hope it won't just be a retread either. The reason Aliens was so great, is that it did something new with the franchise; prometheus tried and failed to do that well.

Alien 3 was not actually so shit, I think. It made some damn near unforgivable choices in killing off Newt and Hicks off screen, but aside from that I actually liked it. Close to a retread of Alien, but still a twist on it.

A4 was just shit with some good bits in - the many twisted clones of ripley, the Auton, and the aliens in water was all fun things. The rest is garbage.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Covenant, more classic horror, I wager, but with Scott's signature visuals.. we'll see!

Coming at this from the perspective of academic philosophy I think the truth of the matter is ultimately very simple (however the details can be almost infinitely complex and diverse in how we apply them).

Simply put it appears impossible to demonstrate any kind of ultimate ethical authority or perfect ethical principles objectively.

One can certainly assert them, but they would always be subject to the problem of underdetermination (no facts, only interpretations) and as such subjective.

Even strictly humanist systems of ethics like concequentialism and deontology are at their core based on some arbitrary assumption or rule e.g. minimising harm, maximising pleasure, setting a universal principle, putting the concequences before the intention etc. etc.

As such I think the only honest and objective absolute moral principle is "Nothing is true and everything is permitted" (the law of the strong). All else can only truly be supported by preference and necessity. We do not "Know" moral truth, we only appear to interpret and create it.

This being the case it is the opinion of myself and a great many post modern philosophers that ethics is essentially a specialised branch of aesthetics. An important one still, but none the less it is still a study of preference and beauty rather than one of epistemological truth.

By this logic one could certainly argue that the organic "Humanist" approach to ethics and morality as outlined in this video seems infinitely preferable to any sort of static absolute moral authority.

If morality is at its core just a measure of the degree of thought and extrapolation one applies to maximising preferable outcomes then the "humanist" seems like they would have an inherent advantage in their potential capacity to discover and refine ever more preferable principles and outcomes. A static system by its very nature seems less able to maximise it's own moral preferences when presented by ever changing circumstances.


However I'm about to kind of undermine that very point by suggesting that ultimately what we are calling "humanism" here is universal. i.e. that even the most static and dictatorial ethical system (e.g. Wahhabism or Christian fundamentalism) is still ultimately an expression of aesthetic preference and choice.

It is aesthetically preferable to a fundamentalist to assert the absolute moral authority and command of God and while arguably less developed and adaptable (and thus less preferable by most Humanist standards), it is still at it's core the exercise of a preference and as such covered by humanism in general.

i.e. if you want to be a "humanist" then you should probably be wary of placing ultimate blame for atrocities on specific doctrines, as the core of your own position is that morality is a human condition not a divine one. i.e. religion did not make people condone slavery or start wars, human behaviour did.

We can certainly argue for the empirical superiority of "humanism" vs natural authority by looking at history and the different behaviours of various groups & societies. But really what we are arguing there is simply that a more considered and tolerant approach appears to make most people seem happier and results in less unpleasant things happing.

i.e. a preference supported by consensus & unfortunately that doesn't give us any more moral authority than a fanatic or predator beyond our ability to enforce it and persuade others to conform.

"Nothing is true and everything is permitted", "right" and "wrong" can only be derived from subjective principles ergo "right" and "wrong" should probably instead be replaced with "desirable" and "undesirable" as this seems closer to what one is actually expressing with a moral preference.

I completely agree with the sentiment in the video, more freedom of thought seems to mean more capacity to extrapolate and empathise. The wider your understanding and experience of people and the world the more one appears to recognise and appreciate the shared condition of being human.

But I must never forget that this apparent superiority is ultimately based on an interpretation and preference of my own and not some absolute principle. The only absolute principle I can observe in nature seems to be that chaos & conflict tend towards increasing order and complexity, but by this standard it is only really the conflict itself which is moral or "good/right" and not the various beliefs of the combatants specifically.

You're right. It is about context. But this video distorts the context.

Manhattan has a population of almost 1.8 million people. If you don't live in a major metropolitan area, please try to wrap your head around that number first. That's not all of NYC, that's just Manhattan.

When the director of this video said "The biggest ingredients for this to happen is tons of people, passing by and mixing with tons of other people. Its a numbers game. Eventually you run into an asshole..." he wasn't joking.

Higher density population increases the chance of seeing or experiencing things that are unpleasant. If you sat on your porch in bumfuck whogivesashitville long enough, you will eventually see some unpleasant things. It just happens faster where there are more people. And the culture IS different in cities then it is in rural areas. People are more used to being constantly near each other and interacting.

I'm not excusing the behavior of some of the assholes in this video. What I am really saying is that, at worst this video is a bullshit grab for money. At best it's a failed attempt to help women or educate/change the culture to be less misogynistic.

"Did you actually watch the video?" Yes. Did you notice this was two minutes out of 10 hours?

Misogyny exists. Harassment exists. Abuse exists. Domestic violence exists. Rape exists. We should all work to end it. This video just muddies the water on all those issues in what I think is a clear money grab.

/cynical

@VoodooV
It may (or may not) surprise you that I agree with almost everything you said.

Killing is a necessary part of our society, yes.
The hypocrisy of killing (as you said, distinguished from "murder") in our modern culture is glaring.
I also agree that lots of very unpleasant things happen in a sufficiently-free society. People will kill people. People will take advantage of people. Terrorist acts will be perpetrated. People will make terrible movies and terrible art that is offensive to my sensibilities. Nothing bad will happen only when no one is allowed to choose anything for themselves.

But we do set boundaries, laws, for the precise reason you stated: "Your rights end where mine begin and vice versa."

That's what makes us a civilization, right? We give up certain freedoms with the knowledge that others will be compelled to give up those freedoms as well, and we will all be able to pursue happiness more comfortably as a result. For instance, we agree not to kill our neighbors on a whim and take their stuff, knowing that others will be compelled to avoid doing the same to us. We agree not to drive while intoxicated (even if we're really good at it) knowing that others (many of whom aren't as good at it as we totally are) will be compelled not to do so, and we'll all be less likely to get flattened.

Many of these laws imply some intrinsic value to a human life. Murder is illegal because that seriously infringes on the rights of another human. Sure, we stratify killing - murder, negligent homicide, manslaughter, but the band across which individual (as opposed to institutional) killing is NOT murder is pretty narrow, especially if it's intentional. Self defense, mental illness...
This is where the abortion debate diverges from analogy and requires that we define when a fetus can be considered a human, because after that point, we're killing a human.

I also disagree with the "especially with their own body" argument. Sure, a fetus could not survive without the mother (up to a point), but if you cut that fetus, the mother will bear no scar. The child will bear that scar. Once we say there is a human there, that is no longer her body. Parents are held responsible for care of their children, and consequences are dictated for negligence. Because of my understanding of fetal development, I believe this responsibility extends into the womb.

I think the deferral of the question of "when" to "those far more educated" may nullify the entire argument. If you can accept that there's a point beyond which abortion should no longer be an option, but we don't know when it is, then we have to accept that it might be "before pregnancy can even be recognized".
The process of fetal development is fairly well-understood and documented, and you're obviously intelligent enough to appreciate the process. Maybe trying to pinpoint the "OK-NOT OK" boundry for yourself might change the way you think about the issue, or maybe not, but I believe it would make you better able to argue your point effectively. Arguing for killing a human in order to increase the quality of life of someone else strikes me as being a very difficult position to defend. Arguing for removing a mass of tissue with the potential for becoming a human seems much more defensible. But again, we obviously see this issue with differing perspectives.

You know if any significant number of people are getting up in arms about this they are way too thin-skinned and should have far better things to do than bashing a comedy motoring programme.

Yes these are lazy stereotypes but they happily take the piss out of themselves and anyone else. It's a silly programme, not always as funny as it thinks it is and always much better when they do serious motoring items.

And what about the millions of websites saying unpleasant things about Mexico? Is someone going to spend time and money getting those censored? No of course not, free speech is always going to bring you into contact with things you don't like to hear. Suck it up.

As an Englishman if I spent my days explaining we don't all have crap teeth, live in Castles, are rubbish in bed and dress like tramps I'd never leave the house.

This has reminded me of a program in Jeremy Clarkson's CV that might be interesting. Called Jeremy Clarkson meets the Neighbours he travelled around Europe seeing if people matched their stereotypes. And then at the end a representive from that country would be interviewed and happily mock their nation.

EDD. It is natural for you to think that I am an attention-whore because you don't agree with me. When I make a comment that goes against the popular opinion here, I tend to get a lot of attention for it. This is not my fault. I don't express my opinions more vehemently than the rest of you. I'm not trying to be whiney. Don't you think that the rest of you sound whiney to me (about religion and conservatism, etc.)? I DO stir the pot, but this is not because I am trolling. This is because I disagree. In the past I have been very free with my opinions and prone to losing my temper. I have apologized and attempted to turn over a new leaf. Recently I feel like I have been doing much better because I took the negative feedback and tried to change. You might imagine how discouraging for me it is when people still insist that I am a troll.

My comment to rougy ON HIS PROFILE was, for one, none of your business. Secondly, some of the comments are private and some are not so you aren't getting the whole picture. Thirdly, I didn't say anything offensive. I didn't call him names. I expressed displeasure at an extremely rude and profanity-filled comment that he posted and he responded by calling me names and being generally nasty. I admit I got a little bit annoyed with that and lost my temper (still didn't call him names). Fourthly, rougy is a decent guy and we resolved the issue between ourselves. I apologized and he accepted. You seem to be assuming that I just go onto people's profiles and say rude things without provocation and for attention. This is simply not true.

As for the editing, I never thought it would cause such a fuss! It really is just a bad habit of mine. I'll tell you what I do. I write a comment and then I submit it. Then I have a bad habit of reading over it again and thinking, "Ooh, that was too rude," or "I could have said that better," or "I was too long-winded," and then I edit the comment. I should edit it before I submit. I'll try harder not to do it. Now, the posts that you are referring to on Prozac's profile are a different matter. All of the comments that you can see are unedited except for the one that I mentioned that I edited. (I edited this one RIGHT after I posted it because of that bad habit I have of editing after submission. There were no devious intentions behind that, and I did not change anything significant.) She deleted the other edited ones. I didn't think it would do any harm to edit the ones that she had already read and quoted because
1. She had already read and quoted them.
2. I didn't think that this would become a public matter.

As for the ones that Prozac deleted: I edited them because I said to myself that I would try to be nice to Prozac, so I deleted all of the unpleasant things I said (which did not include calling her a cunt and a twat) and replaced them with nice things. It only gave me a little bit of pleasure to think of her annoyance at seeing the comments edited. The comment on her blog, again, I edited DIRECTLY after submitting because I thought better of it. There was so little time involved that I didn't realize that she had already read it. Bad habit. Bad, bad habit. I'm sort of embarrassed about it now. I didn't know it would make everyone so angry!

Have to agreed with Spoco2, that's a deeply unpleasant thing to do. When you're that young you don't really see things from the parents point of view so it's hard to blame them but a little talk might be in order.

He said unpleasant things? They should have dragged him back up and tossed him again. Sloppy police work.



(sarcasm btw)

wow, overreact much people?

Its cruel to do it for entertainment, it's necessary evil to do it for a bona-fide reason. Like it or not, sometimes you have to do unpleasant things to someone for their own good.

And BTW maybe you don't have kids but kids who hate being bathed generally don't understand WHY its necessary - like my 4 month old - sometimes she is okay with it, sometimes she protests mightily. Whether its "traumatic" or not, she needs to be bathed occasionally and all the screaming in the world isn't going to make me feel so guilty I'll forego it. By the time they get old enough to understand about hygeine they are usually past the shrieking screaming phase and can wash themselves just fine. I've had two kids who FREAKED about getting bathed until they were about 10 years old. I still made them bathe, as traumatic as it seemed. They appear to be unscathed from those torturous baths and showers I inflicted upon them and seem to enjoy their showers now.


I had to bathe my kitten once on a regular basis because he had some kind of skin infestation (from the shelter I got him from most likely since he's a total indoors cat) and I had to bathe him with a special shampoo - wash it in, leave it on for ten minutes anmake sure he didn't try to lick it off. So there you go: a very important reason for washing my cat that needed to be addressed. YES sometimes a cat needs to be washed.

Frankly I think that spa thing specifically isn't much substitute for hand-washing but if I ran a shelter or kennel or animal hospital I can see how it might come in handy.

For what it's worth, I'm not defending this guy's actions. I am curious if anyone's gotten a response from the neighbor whose front yard turned into a crime scene.

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again sometime: unpleasant things happen in a society with sufficient freedoms, because there will always be people who cannot behave themselves when given sufficient freedom. However, just because there are a minority population of morons who decide to use guns, alcohol, vehicles, and other freedoms inappropriately does not mean we should all be penalized for their lack of sense, or even their malicious intent. Things like Columbine, 9/11, Oklahoma City - these things happen in a free society. They are more than simply unfortunate, and there are things we can do within our current bounds to minimize their chance of occurring, but they will happen and we should not allow ourselves to act irrationally in response.

This is only shocking to people who are unfamiliar with gaming conversation to begin with. And for that matter people who forget what it was like to be between the ages of 15-25 (give or take).

Males in that age group tend to be vulgar and abusive to each other. If they lived together theyd punch, kick, prank, humiliate each other as well. The fact that these actions are predominantly aimed at the maker of this video is obvious, the name. If someone was named aznsniper, beaner, spictastic, curryking, frenchfry, or any other name indicating personal information about them then they'll likely have insults hurled at them as well. Some maybe more than others but it'll happen eventually.

That coupled with the fact that the maker likely did kill other people and its a gauranteed reaction. If i own some guy its not unlikely he may say something like "lucky shot" or "noob class/weapon" or "RANDOM". But if my names something like the above listed instead I'll hear "go back to mexico" "why dont you go eat some rice" "bomb anything lately?" "surrender to the germans lately?" etc.

I'm not condoning this behavior, but one must accept that certain environments will harbor certain behaviors. If I go into a femanist chat room I should expect to hear unpleasant things about men. If I go into a biker bar I should expect to hear vulger language and unpleasant things about yuppies and import cars. If I go into a gay bar id hear bad things about conservative people.

If I prefer not to be in the presence of such things, i either find a well managed/monitored server or i find a different game. I know a TF2 server i play on will boot people for cussing or lude comments after one warning, and in general i have a great time there.