Kinda off topic

[mikech]

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p.s. nice t.v. time tonight. must been a pain sitting next to black teddy the whole day, but at least you got to bask in his media spotlight

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Whoa i was on tv!?!? sweet, hah. gotta find that out. i keep missing wsop on tv.

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thx for the hu, fwf. i missed the initial airings earlier too, but i just checked listings and apparently tonight's episodes are being rerun on espn2 at 2 and 3 am eastern time.

[FoxwoodsFiend]

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whoa, i never said people are unethical if they don't agree with me here: i think they just have a weak spot in their ethics game.

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i'm trying to plug leaks in my ethics game. in your opinion, is this a sound basis for making ethical decisions?: if i do not expect to be given a certain treatment, then i do not feel obligated to give that treatment to others. or is my spin on the golden rule ethically insufficient? (not being snarky or trying to tilt you; i dig these kinds of discussions too.)

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for one, the golden rule isn't "do unto others as you expect them to do to you" it's more like "do unto others as you WOULD HAVE THEM do unto you." so if you're following the GR, you still ship back because you would want them to ship to you.

but i don't really think the golden rule is really that substantive or useful.

i think a better way to go about doing ethics than sticking by general rules such as the one you're espousing is by going with examples that we are very confident about and seeing if they're analogous enough to our current situation to guide our actions (i.e. guy drops chips you see it, give it back? example)

i also think the expecting reciprocity rule is flawed even if you prefer that methodology because there are just too many counterexamples.

counterexample: should i jump into this burning building and save this guy's life? would he do so for me? turns out the answer's no so i shouldn't save his life.

seems in this case as though the imperative to save a life is important enough to overweigh this consideration. just because the other guy's a bit self-interested or a wuss or even a jackass doesn't mean you shouldn't try saving his life.

Also, take this case:
Should I donate money to save African children? Would they do so if they had money and I were starving.

Well it's not clear that if the answer's no even if they wouldn't. Most likely because they've never had money they've never developed philanthropic tendencies but this isn't due to any moral failure on their part, it's just a result of their immature sensibilities on the topic.

You can also make a case that if people were to follow your rule/maxim then this would justify a race to the bottom wherein a few people undermine the entire community. Let's say everybody but a couple guys send back after disconnections in sit and gos. Your first experience in a sit and go disconnections is with these guys so you don't think you can expect payback and next time it happens and you're on the receiving end of the money you don't send back, and this spirals out of control. Obviously not a perfect example because this happens rarely, but you can see the general idea.

[jfish]

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i really dont understand how you believe what you do with so much conviction. i guess im an unethical scumbag.

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you can believe something with conviction without really caring too much about it right? i think there's an obvious right answer to this question but it's not exactly in my top 50 list of things i judge a person's ethics by

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fair enough.