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Universal Ethics
I argued earlier that we can base a universal ethics on human nature, or biology. Is there anything we could use? Many universal ethical systems are based on some form of the golden rule or the categorical imperative. That itself tends to be taken as an axiom. Utilitarianism is based on a utility function, which…
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Privating Societal Value
A couple of times I’ve alluded to an idea I first saw from Peter Singer, that the structure of society creates a great deal of the value which flows to the wealthy. Our legal system and our stable system of property ownership is crucial for building successful companies. Yet the value gained from companies flows…
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Beowulf the Movie
I found the movie Polar Express to be a very creepy experience due to the motion capture animation. It was like watching zombies riding a train to visit Santa (not to mention Santa’s entrance was straight from The Triumph of the Will). I think taking any child to see that movie would most likely scare…
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Political Dislocation
In an article in the New York Review of Books about the transcript of the conversation between President Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Aznar before the Iraq war, Mark Danner writes a comment that I found interesting: Surely one of the agonizing attributes of our post–September 11 age is the unending need to reaffirm realities…
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Link Time Optimization
Various gcc developers are working on Link Time Optimization, also known as Whole Program Optimization. When using LTO, gcc will write the intermediate representation into the object file. At link time, gcc will read it in and use it to implement cross-module optimizations. The canonical optimization which requires LTO is inlining functions across object file…