Posted in Politics, ethics, tagged ethics, Hillary on April 1, 2008 | No Comments »
Dan Calabrese tells of Hillary’s history on the Watergate investigation, where her supervisor fired her and refused to write her a letter of recommendation—because of a pattern of lying and unethical behavior. (HT: Powerline and Ed Morrissey)
Posted in ethics, tagged dilemmas, ethics on March 7, 2008 | 1 Comment »
A tragic, real-world dilemma (HT: Eugene Volokh):
Alton Logan doesn’t understand why two lawyers with proof he didn’t commit murder were legally prevented from helping him. They had their reasons: To save Logan, they would have had to break the cardinal rule of attorney-client privilege to reveal their own client had committed the crime. But Logan [...]
Posted in ethics, national security, terrorism, tagged ethics, interrogation, terrorism, trolley problems on February 14, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Today the Democrats of the House and Senate approved restricting CIA interrogation techniques to those outlined in the Army Field Manual. Power Line correctly notes that this means that the Democratic Party simply is not serious about the national security of the United States.
Over the last 36 hours, Congressional Democrats have again demonstrated a [...]
Posted in Distributive Justice, Equality, Politics, ethics, liberty, tagged diversity, Equality, freedom, happiness, Politics, responsibility on February 10, 2008 | 59 Comments »
The Washington Post reports:
Most studies show that wealthy people are marginally happier than poor ones. People with pets or children are no happier than those without. People with active sex lives are — surprise! — happier than those without. No single morsel of happiness data, though, is more intriguing than this: Republicans are happier than [...]
Posted in Distributive Justice, Equality, economics, ethics, tagged Equality, gender, taxation on February 9, 2008 | No Comments »
Spain’s Popular Party has proposed that women receive tax breaks for… being women! Since parties to its left are likely to pile on board, Spain will soon have a tax system that discriminates on the basis of gender. There’s a radical feminist argument for this, but there’s also a utilitarian argument based on [...]
Posted in ethics, tagged good, Groundhog Day, holidays on February 3, 2008 | No Comments »
Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow yesterday, predicting six more weeks of winter. (It’s about 80° today where I am. But I don’t hold that against Phil; it’s currently 31° in Punxsutawney.)
When I was young, Groundhog Day was my favorite holiday. (It’s also the subject of one of my favorite movies.) Why? [...]
Posted in ethics on February 2, 2008 | No Comments »
Two teenage girls in Florida rob a Girl Scout selling cookies, taking $167. They were caught, but see nothing wrong with what they did. “We went through all that effort to get it, we got all these charges and we had to give the money back. I’m kind of pissed,” one said. [...]
Posted in ethics, philosophy, tagged Aristotle, Augustine, ethics, human nature, philosophy, Rousseau on December 26, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Roger Kimball has intriguing reflections on the utopian impulse and the underlying thought, stemming from Rousseau, that one can reshape human nature—all from thinking about Will Smith’s remark,
“Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, ‘let me do the most evil thing I can do today’,” said Will. “I think he woke up in the morning and [...]
Posted in Politics, Rationality, ethics, philosophy, tagged ethics, philosophy, Politics, prisoners' dilemmas, Rationality on December 21, 2007 | No Comments »
A few days ago I talked about flaccid strategies for iterated prisoners’ dilemmas, noting that strategies without retaliation cannot win. I remarked:
Many Western leaders seem committed not only to avoiding retaliation but to responding to defection on an opponent’s part with forgiveness and even more extensive cooperation. [Emphasis added.]
That inspires a further thought. [...]
Posted in ethics, foreign policy, war, tagged ethics, game theory, Islam, strategy, war on December 18, 2007 | No Comments »
An interesting attempt to apply game theory to the conflict between Islam and the West. Many Western leaders seem committed not only to avoiding retaliation but to responding to defection on an opponent’s part with forgiveness and even more extensive cooperation. Let’s call such a strategy flaccid. Christians with the attitude I [...]
