News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work by shkkmo on Thursday December 03, 2015 @09:21PM (#10674172)
> Your hypothetical situation depends on the dimension of time

So do you include the future and the past? If you include the future it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine the universality of a principle. If you don't include the future, that means that it is possible for the universality of a principle to change. Then As soon as one person is born who doesn't share a principle, the moral character of that principle vanishes?

I'm not what point you are trying to make by bringing in the concept of the perfect circle. I don't see at all how this relates to morality. The concept of a perfect circle is not universally shared currently, and certainly isn't historically shared universally. Even if that concept were universal, it would not make imperfect circles immoral.

Re:The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work by woodman on Thursday December 03, 2015 @09:52PM (#10674296)
> So do you include the future and the past?

Yes. I think the point of confusion is around "universality". I'm not talking about a unanimous agreement on preference between people born and unborn, I'm talking about attributes that define kindness (the set theory kind, not the Disney princess kind). I was hoping to make that clear with the perfect circle bit, but I wasn't aware of contention on the issue... pretend I said square, I'm pretty sure that is a safe universal definition. I have no opinion on the morality of geometry, but all squares share universal attributes. All humans share universal attributes as well, by way of biological imperatives - life is preferable to death, all things being equal and outside of coercion.

Re:The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work by dragonwriter on Thursday December 03, 2015 @10:01PM (#10674329)
If "life is preferable to death" were a universal attribute of all humans resulting from a biological imperative, no one would ever choose to end their life. I suspect any other proposed "universal attribute" -- at least one that take the form of a universal preference -- will fail to correspond with reality in the same way.
Re:The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work by woodman on Thursday December 03, 2015 @10:06PM (#10674346)
> all things being equal and outside of coercion.

I think that covers mental illness, war, dying in a fire while rescuing kittens, emo cutting, etc.

Re:The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work by dragonwriter on Thursday December 03, 2015 @10:10PM (#10674357)
I don't think it covers any cases of voluntary suicide not motivated by percieved impacts on others, irrespective of mental illness. Unless you define coercion so broadly that the whole statement becomes meaningless.
Re:The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work by woodman on Thursday December 03, 2015 @10:19PM (#10674384)
>> all things being equal

If you could stop the pain without dying, would you still kill yourself?

If you could escape depression without dying, would you still kill yourself?

If you could find meaning in your existence without dying, would you still kill yourself?

If you could go to heaven (or whatever magic place you believe is better than your present situation) without dying, would you still kill yourself?

If you could kill yourself without dying, would you still kill yourself? (Weird I know, but for the sake of completeness)

Did I miss any good reasons to kill yourself?

Re:The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work by shkkmo on Thursday December 03, 2015 @10:34PM (#10674425)
Please provide a single example of when "all things being equal and outside of coercion" (using your extremely broad definition of 'coercion') a human made a choice to live rather than die.

Or is your 'universal attribute' some sort of 'ideal' that doesn't actually ever happen and thus is completely useless for defining the set of 'human' and 'not human', let alone 'moral' and 'immoral'.

Re:The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work by woodman on Thursday December 03, 2015 @10:52PM (#10674487)
Sure, you woke up and didn't kill yourself. As did most every human being that has ever existed, because humans don't do that outside of very strange circumstances that are out of their control.