Ok this is kind of ridiculous. Really? Really? No I'm quite sure in this case it's definitely selfish, independent of what his wife thinks. And not passing judgement on the dead? Cmon man you have to be trolling.
Tasteless? I don't think you're getting it. He risked his life completely unnecessarily while he needed to be a father. What he has done is categorically selfish. Your defense of his actions is that "It was his lifelong ambition." If you believe that then you already acknowledge that his action is selfish; <i>his</i> ambition caused him to abandon his responsibilities as a father and husband.
I don't see it as much as criticism as it is a simple fact. I posted not because I wanted to make a change so much as because I was utterly surprised by someone defending this person. Furthermore, my comments are in reply to your post and not directed at any members of the family, but I would hope that at least the wife realizes the moral implications of her husband's decision at this point.
How about that we remain silent.on matters of which we are ignorant? We are not party to this man's innermost thoughts and family conversations indeed such is none of our business and it is more than a touch offensive to offer up judgments. Let's leave the family to mourn their loss, shall we?
Are not all the facts of this case known? Father of N, does something dangerous and unnecessary, leaves N children fatherless. Are there other relevant issues of fact that we do not know?
True, it may be tasteless to call it out . . . but the internet is tasteless. :-/
I think this is where we differ. You believe that because he took a risk for the goal of something other than his wife or kids, which you believe are his primary priority, and because that risk did not pay off, he is selfish.
I just want to point out that this is a very slippery slope. Does this mean that fathers in the army are being selfish for going to war rather than staying at home with their kids?
What about businessmen who work long hours and neglect their families?
There are many ways to live your life. This man chose a risky path, and sadly was killed before he could watch his children grow up. In his mind, perhaps, the risk was outweighed by the benefits of being able to tell his kids that he had fulfilled his dreams.
> I would hope that at least the wife realizes the moral
> implications of her husband's decision at this point.
That to me sums up why I disagree with your comment. I hope his wife all the best in recovering from her loss, and raising her kids. The moralizing of some uninformed person on the internet are completely irrelevant to her at this point.
> I happen to believe that criticizing people that cannot defend themselves is tasteless, and judging situations that I know nothing about is misguided.
That's not how the intertubes, or people for that matter, work.
Consider - there's another thread on HN right now about the utility of battleships. It's full of strongly held opinions by folks who confuse being smart with knowing what they're talking about. Oh, and the critics are savaging the long dead folks who built battleships.
I'm sure most people wouldn't expect doctors to be replaceable. But look at the process to become an MD and think about the amount of pure memorization involved. Then it all makes sense.
Once a robot doctor is ready, imagine how easy would it be to create another one. Replicate the hardware, software and copy all the data. Compare this with the amount of time it would take to make a human doctor.
Ha ha. Seriously, clinical data entry is not quick or easy (outside a few limited special cases) regardless of how well you design that mythical app. Even perfect speech recognition would only get you part of the way there, and we aren't likely to get that any time soon.
I know, we use your service. :-) It works well for increasing the productivity of our human transcriptionists but it doesn't really solve the automated diagnosis data entry problem that others were asking about.
I really don't think perfect speech recognition is that far away. 10 years and we're gonna have something that can work. 10 years and we'll have an advanced Google Goggles that can help with diagnosis. Ask the question "What are the limits of human input?" Nothing besides touch, taste, hear, see and smell, and we're getting closer and closer to being able to input that data and process it as humans would.
Can't we make distinctions between the guy's philosophy and his writing? I for one do not feel the book (or any book) is diminished by my perception of the author as a person.
Personally, I can't: The book may not be diminished by itself, but my enjoyment of it certainly is, because I keep searching for evidence of the author's personal beliefs and/or agenda in the text, disrupting immersion.
We're talking about someone who writes stuff like this:
"The argument by the hypocrites of homosexuality that homosexual tendencies are genetically ingrained in some individuals is almost laughably irrelevant. We are all genetically predisposed toward some sin or another; we are all expected to control those genetic predispositions when it is possible.
[...]
Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those whoflagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society."
And there's a lot of similar-level, oddly familiar sounding looneyness in his writings on various other political topics as well. It's perhaps most disturbing - or fascinating - that a writer as articulate would be content to be such a cliché. At times I wonder if it's all an act.
I find it interesting that the first passage offends you so much. I support gay rights and would really like to see gender taken out of the law altogether, but Card's philosophy there seems unarguably true. People have lots of natural impulses that society expects them to control, so whether homosexuality is natural or not doesn't matter. Homosexuality would be no less acceptable in my eyes if it were a choice.
The difference between my outlook and Card's is in how we define "acceptable." I say, homosexuality is not harmful, so it should be allowed. Card uses a different measuring stick for his morality. That's all.
I actually don't find it offensive (though I obviously disagree with it) as much as I find it oddly recognizable: What he's trying to do throughout the entire linked text is proliferate the notion that homosexuality is in fact a choice, in that homosexuals can supposedly chose to control their sinful desires at no greater personal cost (but possibly even personal gain), whether those desires be genetically predisposed or not.
He does not cite any scientific knowledge to support this position, but he does take the time to point out that science can't prove him wrong yet (via a, quote, "science has barely scratched the surface" statement).
Of course he's also not giving any explanation for exactly why homosexuality is supposed to be sinful in the first place.
That entire angle is tired, old, trite, familiar. It's also stopping short of thinking things through fully, in the service of his personal agenda: If science has only scratched the surface so far, then it follows that what he takes for granted in his own text has to be called into question as well. Yet there is no uncertainty about his position in his text; he is very sure of himself.
And that's the part that really makes me wonder. This guy seems too intelligent to buy into half-assed argumentation of this kind - so what makes him write it?
Admittedly this does run the danger of opening up the pandora's box of the entire religion topic. I just can't for the life of me understand how someone rationally thinking could be satisfied with non-explanations like "To act otherwise is to give more respect to the opinions of men than to the judgments of God." (also from the text).
Beyond that I agree with your post, i.e. the genetic question not actually being relevant to me when it comes to whether homosexuality is acceptable.
proliferate the notion that homosexuality is in fact a choice, in that homosexuals can supposedly chose to control their sinful desires
There are certainly a lot of behaviors that we're (as a species if not as an individual) predisposed to, that are viewed as socially unacceptable. For example, the benefits in a Darwinian framework of extramarital affairs are quite well established. It's to a males genetic advantage to have as many sexual partners as possible, and generally men do have such latent desires. Yet society condemns those who act on those desires, even though they're perfectly natural. Why can't we say that homosexuality is similar: something that an individual may be predisposed to for whatever reason, but if he wants to avoid society's scarlet letter, he must repress those desires? [1]
Of course he's also not giving any explanation for exactly why homosexuality is supposed to be sinful in the first place.
I'm not going to dig up citations for this because I'm not interested in proving it. Suffice it to say that there is sufficient text in the Christian Bible that someone who builds his moral codes from what he, personally, reads in its pages can reasonably come to the conclusion that homosexuality is a sin. [2]
[1] Not that I believe that a homosexual should have to repress those desires; I'm merely arguing that this is an internally consistent moral system.
[2] I also acknowledge that there are places in the Bible that might contradict that, or at least temper its severity. My point is that a reasonable person, weighing many passages in the Bible, might come to that conclusion.
Besides the Biblical argument (which is indeed iffy), Card is a Mormon. The Mormon prophets have been very clear in their condemnation of homosexuality.
"This guy seems too intelligent to buy into half-assed argumentation of this kind - so what makes him write it?"
He's a Mormon! Two of the core dogmas of that religion are that (1) procreation is a duty, and (2) raising children well in a family is a duty. What you have to understand is that Mormons have remarkably low hypocrisy and cynicism. They give a lot of public lip service to procreation and family values, and then they go home, when nobody is looking, and make lots of babies and raise big families.
So they take it rather personally when a fringe political group (the tiny but loud homosexual lobby) tries to indoctrinate kindergartners that "it's my body and I can do whatever feels good", or hands out fisting kits in high schools. Mormons don't object to this because they are so fearful that their minds are diseased (phobic), but rather out of the belief that those activities do not make a strong basis for a society. (And they have a point. San Francisco's inverted population pyramid has even the secular authorities alarmed. If SF wasn't fascinating enough to attract enough a flood of immigrants, it would be Detroit with queers.)
Mormons are also very big on conscious self control of all appetites and lusts in the service of long-term goals. They don't just say "smoking is bad, mmmkay", they don't smoke. (The tobacco lobby does not diagnose this as the disease of tobaccophobia and hold My Lungs, My Choice rallies.) I suspect that this is the actual reason the Mormons and queers are so allergic to each other: the Mormons tend toward a very low time preference (long planning horizon) and the queers a high time preference (live in the moment). It is almost a law of nature that someone with high time preference will throw a hissy fit when lectured on moral choice by someone with low time preference.
When an author's writing consistently expresses their personal philosophy as "The Right Thing", it is hard to draw a line between the two. I don't find it to be true of Card as much as say Heinlein but his politics are clearly visible in his work.
Maybe, maybe not. I do believe that fiction is not just a story, but also a peak into the author's mind. If her writing is trying to paint a picture that is obviously conflicting to what I know the author's beliefs on a topic actually are, it feels like I'm being lied to.
That doesn't mean an author can't experiment with their beliefs, though, and that is where it gets very subjective: do I feel like I'm being lied to or not?
I don't generally spend a lot of time learning about authors I read, though. They tend to exist in a similar space as their characters do in my mind: a place stitched together and colored by the words they have written.
There's actually quite a lot of little details that get speculated on in SEM. The fact is, until you test it yourself, you won't know for sure. One interesting thing about QS for phrase and broad is that the QS you see is not the real QS; it is only the QS for queries that match exactly to your keyword. The real QS is weighted appropriately, based on impression distribution.
I also doubt that quality score takes only integral values.
QS as reported in the interface is a bit like tool bar page rank; it can tell you if you're doing really well or really badly but at the end of the day your competitors probably have a load of 7's too
Hey something on HN I can actually help with haha. Now I won't build entire campaigns for you, but if you have specific questions, send me a pm or email and i'll try to help. I've been working in SEM for almost two years now since college, so I feel like I have a pretty good handle on it.
Yeah, Zite is my favorite app on the ipad. I wish they made it for the desktop and iphone. The one thing they can improve upon in their rec. engine is removing dupe articles. It'll definitely be interesting to see if Zite can find a good way around this.
