Oct. 31st, 2012
Skype video
Oct. 31st, 2012 02:49 pmI've had a skype account for ages but I put off using it for video calls for ages because last time I tried it was a faff.
But Rachel was right that on my current laptop It Just Works. In fact, I'm scared that I had a webcam and microphone there all along without noticing.
It's a bit of a cliche to talk to distant loved ones over video chat, but it's really lovely seeing a beautiful smiling cuddly Rachel when you talk to her[1].
It's funny, people have been predicting videophones for decades and now it looks like no-one is ever going to want to use them by default. But for times when you actually want it (long chats to close friends and videoconferences) we basically have it, without ever noticing "the future has finally arrived", because "having video calling technology" turned out to not be that impossible, but "using video calls every time you phone up a stranger" turned out not to be anything anyone wanted...
[1] I'm aware in principle you can phone people other than Rachel, but that wasn't really a priority :)
But Rachel was right that on my current laptop It Just Works. In fact, I'm scared that I had a webcam and microphone there all along without noticing.
It's a bit of a cliche to talk to distant loved ones over video chat, but it's really lovely seeing a beautiful smiling cuddly Rachel when you talk to her[1].
It's funny, people have been predicting videophones for decades and now it looks like no-one is ever going to want to use them by default. But for times when you actually want it (long chats to close friends and videoconferences) we basically have it, without ever noticing "the future has finally arrived", because "having video calling technology" turned out to not be that impossible, but "using video calls every time you phone up a stranger" turned out not to be anything anyone wanted...
[1] I'm aware in principle you can phone people other than Rachel, but that wasn't really a priority :)
There is a copy of the complaint made to the IPCC with more details about what actually happened:
At approximately 11.40pm on Friday night, 26th October, shortly after I had succeeded in falling asleep for the night, the doorbell rang very loudly and repeatedly, half a dozen times. Shocked and disorientated I stumbled to the front door, pulling on some trousers. To my immense shock there were two police officers at the door, a male and a female officer in high-vis jackets and bristling with equipment as if here to deal with a riot.
They told me they had come to investigate criminal activity that I was involved in on Facebook. I was profoundly shocked and disorientated. I asked what criminal activity. They said complaints had been made about posts I’d made on Facebook about the Jobcentre.
http://tompride.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/police-question-disability-activist-about-criminal-posts-on-facebook-update/
I recently read a parable about a physicist who had just discovered Newton's laws of motions, and excitedly ran to the tower of Pisa to drop a hammer and a feather off it and proclaim that they would both hit the ground in however long he calculated. And all the locals scoffed, and said they were sure that hammers fall faster than feathers.
That didn't literally happen, but things like it happen all the time. Who was right? Well, both. In most circumstances, the locals had experience the physicist had forgotten or not noticed, and predicted the right answer. But if you tried it on the moon[1], or anywhere else in the universe, the non-physicists wouldn't know or would get it wrong.
You need both experience and theory to make predictions. If you're trying to deal with something new, you need theory to tell you what to most expect. But when you have the luxury of trying it multiple times, experience can often tell you something about the specific conditions you wouldn't have thought of.
My question is, does the same apply to moral questions? Is the right answer that usually you need virtue-based ethics ("practice being compassionate") or rule-based ethics ("don't kill") because they work. But you need to periodically re-evaluate your virtues or rules with a consequentialist metric to see if there's anything big you're missing ("I know we're all used to not thinking about it, but has anyone else noticed that slavery is evil?")
Is there a standard name for that?
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C5_dOEyAfk
That didn't literally happen, but things like it happen all the time. Who was right? Well, both. In most circumstances, the locals had experience the physicist had forgotten or not noticed, and predicted the right answer. But if you tried it on the moon[1], or anywhere else in the universe, the non-physicists wouldn't know or would get it wrong.
You need both experience and theory to make predictions. If you're trying to deal with something new, you need theory to tell you what to most expect. But when you have the luxury of trying it multiple times, experience can often tell you something about the specific conditions you wouldn't have thought of.
My question is, does the same apply to moral questions? Is the right answer that usually you need virtue-based ethics ("practice being compassionate") or rule-based ethics ("don't kill") because they work. But you need to periodically re-evaluate your virtues or rules with a consequentialist metric to see if there's anything big you're missing ("I know we're all used to not thinking about it, but has anyone else noticed that slavery is evil?")
Is there a standard name for that?
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C5_dOEyAfk
Darth vader and poppy appeal
Oct. 31st, 2012 08:32 pmSome people fear the poppy appeal is too pro-military. Having Darth Vader collecting for the poppy appeal is sending very very mixed messages.