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| 2005/10/19-21 [Academia/Berkeley/CSUA/Motd] UID:40173 Activity:high |
10/18 The following people attended politburo: bonnie, awall, scarr,
myungk, mconst, amckee, mrauser, mbh, geordan, jon, ajani, njh,
mikeh, vadim, linxu. Who is a student and who is an alum?
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ObDoNotTauntTheAMcKeePolitburo
\_ Students: bonnie, awall, scarr, mkim (aka myungk), amckee,
mrauser, mbh, linxu, rfm (not mentioned above).
\_ Students: bonnie, awall, scarr, myungk, amckee, mrauser, mbh, linxu.
\_ Students: bonnie, awall, scarr, mkim (aka myungk), amckee, mrauser,
mbh, linxu, rfm (not mentioned above).
Staff: jon, mikeh, vadim.
Neither: mconst, geordan, ajani, njh. --mconst
\_ bonnie, awall, amckee, mrauser, mbh, linxu are students.
the rest are alumns. - linxu
\_ Another newer member rfm was there also, he just wasn't in
the minutes. -mrauser
\_ So does the Politburo have a "vision thing" for the CSUA?
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ObDoNotTauntTheAMcKeePolitburo
\_ Say it with me: I will respect the politburo's authoritay!
\_ Was there a politburo meeting? Any news to report?
\_ Yes. Ruling Soda With An Iron Fist!
\_ The official minutes are at http://csua.org/u/drj Quick summary:
the meeting was long and well-attended. amckee resigned, but by
the end of the meeting pretty much everyone agreed to reinstate
him (without root). Politburo decided not to log the motd, at
least for the time being, and will actually try to make it more
anonymous. There's now an explicit policy that root should ask
politburo before sorrying someone, except for account breakins
and similar emergency stuff. --mconst
\_ The minutes are particularly weak on explaining the discussion
about the motd. Basically it was decided that logging it or
moving it to somewhere else would decrease the possible use-
fulness to new students. We proposed instead to try and
do something which would improve the overall quality of the
motd and return it more to its original purpose, an anonymous
discussion. It was proposed we would create a program, much
like /csua/bin/motdedit that would allow a user near total
anonimity (or in the words of Vadim "we can make it really
hard to figure out who posted") when editing motd. In theory,
this will reduce the amount of personal attacks and trolling
in general. I hope this clears up the current course we are
taking in regards to the motd. -mrauser
\_ The minutes are weak on the exact course of discussion
because if I write too much, then people will think
things that are just hypothetical or randomly proposed
are under serious consideration. -linxu
\_ I don't think it's accurate to say that the motd's original
purpose was to be anonymous. In the early days, pretty
much everyone signed their names. It turned out to be
anonymous simply because it was a world-writable file,
so it attracted people who didn't want to be
identifiable. -tom
\_ How long was it before, say, half the posts were
no longer signed? (honestly, just curious) -mice
\_ I don't really recall, but trolling didn't take
over until the mid to late 90s. -tom
\_ Interesting. What happened in the mid to late
90s that made people want to troll? And who
do you think is the best troller of all time?
\_ I think the main thing was one or two dipwads
(reiffin and ecchang) realized they could
get away with saying just about anything,
and get more response to their trolls than
they would in any forum which attached a
name to their comments (because they would
quickly be identified as cranks otherwise).
[Funny that this keeps being deleted] -tom
\_ no, it is ridiculous that you'd feel the
need to post such trash based on your broken
de-anon scripts, especially in the context
of the ongoing "let's make the motd not
suck" discussions ongoing. there is no need
for this.
\_ Oh, come on; it's established fact that
both of those guys are trollers, and
also dipwads. Sorry to have to call
you out, anonymous coward. -tom
\_ Seriously, get over it. We just got
through a whole thing about bad
logging and bad blood in the csua.
Why do you insist on doing this? Let
it go.
\_ I'm just explaining how the MOTD
turned from a useful resource
where pretty much everyone signed
their name, into a cesspool filled
with anonymous cowards like you.
-tom
\_ No, you're making into that very
cesspool you claim to not like.
Signing or not signing made no
difference. In some ways it
made it worse. Case in point:
you're signing your vicious
petty little attack right now.
\- holube is an endangered
species and removing his
cesspool habitat violates
the endangered species act
\_ The motd has always been a den
of iniquity. Perhaps in your
deluded memories it was all
sweetness and light, but as with
many free and open forums, it
lost that innocence long, long
ago. (unlike most sodans)
\_ I think the MOTD has always
beeen sardonic and sarcastic,
but I don't think it
was actively hostile. -tom
\_ tjb is the best troller of all time
\_ Honestly? The Clinton presidency. It got ugly.
\_ How far back was 'original', anyway? -gm
\_ I believe /etc/motd was first made world-writable
on the original Apollo, which would mean 1988 or
so. -tom
\- I dont think there was an explicit view
of anonymity when it was decided to create
the motd.public either, but I think if you
would ask people to pick what is more important:
A: a forum where people are free to discuss
whatever they want ... we'll call this the
"liberty position"
or
B: fostering a certain atmosphere/culture/
environment ... let's call that "a vision
of the good"
\_ I think the main thing was one or two dipwads
(reiffin and ecchang) realized they could
get away with saying just about anything,
and get more response to their trolls than
they would in any forum which attached a
name to their comments (because they would
quickly be identified as cranks otherwise).
-tom
I think many people would advocate implementing A
and **hoping*for*B**. However, I am not defending
I think many people would advocate implementing
A and hoping for B. However, I am not defending
this on "orginalist" grounds, but I think that
is a superior position for other reasons
[like I think political speech should get higher
protection than commercial speech, for reasons
other than "what would the founders do"].
I do recognize certain issues like threats and
harassment, "structural attacks" [writing a
cronjob to munge or destroy the motd], mis-
cronjob to munge or destroy the MOTD], mis-
attributing links to the danhimal or others
etc complicate the question. But I still think
at this point A > B. ok tnx. --ANONYMOUS
etc complicate the question, but I still think
at this point A > B. ok tnx. --THE DANHIMAL
at this point A > B. ok tnx. --ANONYMOUS
\_ "vision of the good?" who *are* you??
\- i am not sure what your point/implication
is but this is sort of in the spirit
of how some terms are used in philosophy.
i cannot go into detail about this in
the MOTD but you can search the WEEB
for expressions like ("priority of
right over [the] good" rawls kant
philosophy liberty). there is some
discussion of this at:
http://www.civsoc.com/cltphil/cltphil6.html
or look for "right over the good" at
"http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,848488,00.html
if you have access to JSTOR you may be
able to find: Rawls J: "The Priority of
Right and Ideas of the Good." which is an
important paper. At least that is what I
learned in the rhetoric class I took on
amckee's advice. --ANON
\_ did psb ever take a class other than
freshman rhetoric? You can log a forum
and still have people free to say
what they want. -tom
\_ I don't agree. Some of the truly
lame/offensive arguments would
likely not be made in a non-anon
forum b/c the speaker may self
censor to avoid public ridicule.
If the primary concern is the
free discussion of all ideas
regardless of how lame or offen-
sive, then the potential that
some ideas will not be presented
dictates that the forum be anon.
If no value is attached to lame
or offensive ideas, then there
is no reason not to log.
\_ There are plenty of lame ideas
posted in non-anonymous forums.
\_ There are plenty of lame
ideas posted in non-anonymous
forums.
-tom
\_ Could tom be getting
dumber?
\_ Now if you were to
give the example of
usenet I'd be tempted
to agree w/ you.
\_ Did amckee admit to wrongdoing and issue an apology as part
of his resignation? Put another way, did amckee explain why
he resigned as president? The minutes are skimpy on this.
\- Perhaps, but the vocal disapproval of the alumni has changed
some of the poltiburo's beliefs on what the vision should
be and how it should be achieved. -linxu |
| 4/4 |
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| www.civsoc.com/cltphil/cltphil6.html Theme: How the modernist civic moral ideals of authenticity and autonomy called themselves into question while devaluating communitarian moral id eals ESSAY 6: Motivating Citizenship by Undermining Morality in General Communitarian moral ideals, identities, and conceptions of the good life are ordinarily not first perceived as objects of choice. In modernist civic culture, the liberal priority of the right over the go od was interpreted as an anthropological and metaphysical priority. In a monocultural political community, there is usually no distinction be tween the legal order and the moral order grounded in particularistic cu ltural values and rules. The modernist civic moral ideals of authenticity and autonomy amounted to two different universalist and essentialist readings of the liberal doc trine of the priority of the right over the good. To be authentic or autonomous was to pursue a way of life essentially uns tained by all cultural particularism or ethnocentricity, a way of life a ccessible in principle to all human beings and expressing most purely hu man nature as such. Both the civic ethics of authenticity and autonomy were subject to self-d estructive dialectics or paradoxes rooted in their essentialist and univ ersalist claims. The continuing influence of authenticity and autonomy as moral ideals pus hes us in the direction of a generalized cultural nihilism. Viewing communitarian identities and moral ideals as objects of choice Modernist liberal civic moral ideals, assigned the task proper to any civic moral ideal, naturally possessed a character very different from communitarian moral ideals. Civic moral ideals serve in the cultur al production of free and equal individuality. Accordingly, both the civ ic ethics of authenticity and the civic ethics of autonomy were silent o n the question of what sort of happiness to pursue or what the nature of the good life ultimately is. Both mandated only that happiness be pursu ed in a certain way -- namely, as a pursuit whose object was freely chos en by the individual. However, communitarian moral ideals, identities, and conception s of the good life are ordinarily not first perceived as objects of choi ce. Ordinarily, they are understood as ways of being rather than as matt ers of choice. The communitarian identity of a person is simply who he o r she is. A communitarian world view is understood to describe simply th e world as such. The moral language associated with a particular communi tarian moral ideal is identified simply with the language as such that i s spoken by the community. Full cultural citizenship, on the other hand, requires the intr oduction of difference in all these spheres. It requires persons to deve lop the capacity to make a distinction between communitarian and civic i dentities, between their particularistic cultural world view and the wor ld as such, between the primary moral language that they speak and the l anguage that they share with citizens who speak different primary moral languages. But the capacity to perceive and apply these distinctions doe s not amount to the adoption of a new conception of the good or of a new comprehensive world view. Accordingly, neither the civic ethics of authenticity nor the c ivic ethics of autonomy mandated acceptance of a specific conception of the good. What they did mandate was the development of a capacity to spe ak a primary moral language from a standpoint external to every primary moral language -- the standpoint of the free individual, the standpoint of a speaker capable of viewing every primary moral language as if it we re a freely chosen second language. Authenticity, autonomy and the priority of the right over the good This general feature of all civic moral ideals accounts in part for the peculiarly abstract and reflective character of the civic ethic s of authenticity and autonomy. The civic ethics of authenticity required of its followers not the choice of a specific conception of the good, but rather a choice of a conception of the good that conformed to their own intrinsic individua l natures or selves. This promoted, of course, a belief in the existence of such a thing as an intrinsic individual nature or self and encourage d the pursuit of its discovery. In the same way, the civic ethics of autonomy required of its f ollowers not the choice of a specific conception of the good, but rather a choice of a conception of the good whose pursuit could be rendered co nsistent with the principles or rules inherent in pure theoretical and p ractical reason. This promoted, of course, a belief in the existence of such universal human faculties and encouraged attempts to discover their principles. At this point, we begin to bring into view what made the civic ethics of authenticity and autonomy distinctive and distinctively modern ist as civic moral ideals. What made these moral ideals distinctively mo dernist was the interpretation of the normative standpoint of citizenshi p that they drew from modernist liberal political theory. Modernist libe ral political theory attributed to the normative standpoint of citizensh ip an anthropological and a metaphysical priority. Lockean (or social contractarian) versions of modernist liberal ism viewed the standpoint of free and equal individuality as the standpo int proper to the natural condition -- ie, the condition of all human beings prior to political association and, in some versions, prior to an y form of association at all. Kantian versions of modernist liberalism v iewed the standpoint of free and equal individuality as the standpoint p roper to the autonomous faculty of human reason -- ie, the standpoint governed only by the universally binding laws of pure theoretical and pr actical reason. In both cases, the relationship between civic identity a nd communitarian identity was defined as a relationship between the huma nly essential and the accidental. This way of attributing anthropological and metaphysical priori ty to the normative standpoint of citizenship governed formulations of m odernist liberal political theorys most general and distinctively moder nist moral doctrine -- the doctrine of the priority of the right over th e good. In different ways, both the civic ethics of authenticity and aut onomy embodied this doctrine. The depreciation of the good as moral standard The doctrine of the priority of the right over the good states that the free pursuit of happiness must be subject to limits as defined by law that is applicable equally to all individuals as individuals. Thi s doctrine is designed to rule out morally any political and legal order in which moral rightness -- ie, an actions conformity to law -- is d efined by the conformity of action with some particularistic conception of the good. Every particularistic cultural community is governed by a set o f rules to which all members are subject. These rules, usually informal and unspoken, coordinate and direct the action of community members in t heir common pursuit of a particularistic conception of the good. These r ules derive from and express the totalizing world view and life ideal th at all community members share. In a monocultural political community, ie, in a community tha t is culturally homogeneous, there is usually no distinction between the legal order and the moral order grounded in particularistic cultural va lues and rules. In such a monocultural political and legal order, moral rightness, as the conformity of action to law, is determined by the conf ormity of action to a particularistic conception of the good and a parti cularistic cultural world view. Think, for example, of traditional Islam ic law or of any other regime in which the legal order rests upon a foun dation of particularistic religious belief. The doctrine of the priority of the right over the good establi shes and requires a distinction between moral rightness and the conformi ty of action to a particularistic conception of the good. A civic community is generally a mul ticultural rather than a monocultural community. For this reason, a libe ral democratic political and legal order must apply a criterion of moral rig... |
| www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,848488,00.html The Guardian With the death of John Rawls, from heart failure at the age of 81, the En glish-speaking world lost its leading political philosopher. An exceptio nally modest and retiring man, with a bat-like horror of the limelight, he consistently refused the honours he was offered, and declined to purs ue the career as public commentator or media guru opened to him by his a chievements. Nevertheless, after its appearance in 1971, his most important book, A Th eory Of Justice - written during the Vietnam war - became required readi ng for students of philosophy, politics and law, and, in that way, Rawls has influenced several generations. Indeed, the book, which sold more t han 300,000 copies in the US alone, more or less singlehandedly rejuvena ted and transformed the study of political philosophy. Advertisement Rawls never wrote about himself, and virtually never gave interviews. But when, in the mid-1990s, I set out to write a profile of him, many of hi s friends and colleagues agreed to speak to me. Friends described him as a complex and, in some sense, a troubled man, who, although not a believer, had retained an essentiall y religious outlook - he had a profound sense of "there but for the grac e of God go I". They also stressed his genuine modesty and remarkable manners. "I find it very hard to express what I feel about Jack," said one of his colleague s "He had a much more developed moral and social instinct than most peo ple - much more tact." It is notable that in a field dominated by men, m any of Rawls's most eminent students were women - among them Christine K orsgaard at Harvard, and Onora O'Neill, principal of Newnham College, Ca mbridge, and this year's Reith lecturer. At heart, A Theory Of Justice is concerned with what its author called th e classical problems of modern political theory - problems about the gro unds of basic civil liberties, the limits of political obligation, and t he justice of economic and other inequalities. But where the dominant tr adition of liberal thought in the first three quarters of the last centu ry was utilitarian, taking his cue from Hume, Mill and Sidgwick, Rawls s ought to rehabilitate the social contract tradition - the tradition of L ocke, Rousseau and, above all, Kant. If there is a single principle at the centre of his system, it is that ba sic civil and political rights are inviolable. Rawls believed, following Kant, that from the moral point of view, the most distinctive feature o f human nature is our ability freely to choose our own ends. It follows, on his account, that the state's first duty with its citizens is to res pect this capacity for autonomy - to let them live life according to the ir own lights, and to treat them, in Kant's phrase, "never merely as a m eans, but always at the same time as an end". A leading feature of Rawls's theory, then, is the the priority it gives t o the right over the good - to claims based on the rights of individuals , over claims based on the good that would result to them, or to others, from violating those rights. Put another way, he argued, in opposition to utilitarian, perfectionist and communitarian principles, that the fir st duty of the liberal state was to safeguard the individual's basic civ il liberties, and that "the loss of freedom for some" can never be "made right by a greater good shared by others". As Rawls understood, however, it was not enough simply to affirm the prio rity of the right over the good; he had to come up with an adequate acco unt of how basic freedoms were to be reconciled with one another, and ho w wealth and opportunity were to be distributed. In order to clarify our thinking on these issues, he introduced the concept of the "original po sition". He asked us to imagine a situation in which a group of individuals are br ought together to agree the basic constitution of a society they are abo ut to enter, but in which, to ensure their impartiality, they are placed behind a veil of ignorance. The veil denies them any knowledge of their race, gender, social class, talents and abilities, religious beliefs or conception of the good life. Rawls contended that with the banishment of this sort of bias-inducing kn owledge, the participants in the original position are forced, even if s elf-centred, into the moral point of view - or, as he called it in the l ast rousing chapters of A Theory Of Justice, "the perspective of eternit y". It follows that any principles issuing from it are bound to be fair. If we think of the first part of Rawls's theory as being taken up with th e construction of the original position, then the second part is devoted to establishing the principles that would be agreed upon in it. He argu ed that the participants in an original position would pursue a low-risk strategy, and agree to principles that are fundamentally egalitarian - principles that would guarantee them the highest possible minimum levels of freedom, wealth and opportunity, even at the cost of lowering averag e levels. In particular, Rawls suggests that they would elect to be governed by two principles - his own famous "two principles of justice". The first of t hese dictates that each person should have the right to the most extensi ve basic liberty compatible with a like liberty for others; the second, that social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they ar e to the advantage of the worst off, and should be attached to careers o pen to all. In other words, he defended a state which remained absolutel y neutral between different ways of life, while promoting, in its econom ic policies, the well-being of the least advantaged. Rawls was not an especially gifted stylist, and A Theory Of Justice is a long and ungainly book. He was, though, a phrasemaker - as well as an id ea-forger - of brilliance, and many of his terms, such as "the original position" and "veil of ignorance", have become part of the language. Mor eover, while his writings can seem forbiddingly abstract and technical, the man himself had a firm grasp of the real world. He was exceptionally knowledgeable in a wide range of subjects, from art history to economic s, and knew as much as any scholar about his two greatest heroes, Kant a nd Abraham Lincoln. Rawls, moreover, always insisted that the abstract principles in which po litical philosophers dealt had to be tested against pre-theoretical conv ictions of "common sense" - he suggested that political philosophers had to learn to adjust first principles and moral intuitions until they coh ered in what he termed, in another famous phrase, "reflective equilibriu m". He understood as well as any conservative that political principles could not simply be conjured out of the air. Rawls was born, the second of five brothers, to an old and wealthy Baltim ore family, and acquired, early on, almost Puritan good manners and mora l earnestness. His father, William Lee Rawls, did not attend law school, but built up sufficient expertise through a clerkship to become a highl y successful tax lawyer and constitutional expert. He was also a close f riend of the Maryland Democratic governor, Albert Ritchie. Rawls's mother, too, was active in local Democrat politics; her advocacy of voting rights for women, among other things, greatly influenced her s econd son. As a child, he was traumatised by the deaths of two brothers from infections they had contracted from him; Rawls later admitted that this tragedy had contributed to the development of a severe stutter, whi ch afflicted him for the rest of his life. He was educated at Kent school, Connecticut, and entered Princeton Univer sity, New Jersey, at the outbreak of the second world war - the conflict , he said later, over shadowed everything he did as a student, stimulati ng his interest in politics in general, and the principles of internatio nal justice in particular. After completing his first degree a semester early, Rawls joined the US a rmy and, as an infantryman, saw action in New Guinea and the Philippines . He was in the Pacific in August 1945, when the US dropped its atomic l oad on Hiroshima and, 50 years later, wrote a piece condemning the act. This ... |
| csua.org/u/drj -> csua.berkeley.edu/Minutes/F2005/20051017.politburo bonnie, awall, scarr, myungk, mconst, amckee, mrauser, mbh, geordan, jon, ajani, njh, mikeh, vadim, linxu record turnout. cs steven chan of UPE did the website and we're hosting it. FreeBSD 60RC1 tried but it had a different set of problems. In 60Beta5, they fixed the PCI resource problem that we had with 5x, but the other problem is now the IO APIC problem in the single processor kernel. If we don't go to 6 right now, it'll be nice to know that 60 is a upgrade path. Sorrying: "The only time you can sorry someone immediately is when there is a security incident, or that the machine is unusable by anyone and there is no other way to deal with that, or the campus requires it." the big issue is the unilateral feature of the sorrying. don't listen to what people say so long politburo has voted on it. You can vote out politburo next general meeting, if you want. Politburo wanted to keep technical details to minimum to allow biggest latitude from alumni implementing it. Alumni felt like this was bad - lack of details was scary and/or stupid. Much discussion of legal liability incurred due to having logs. Another idea is MOTD and having another file in another folder that also happens to be world writable and that would solve all problems. This may be because of the minutes and misunderstanding. No true, some talk of "getting rid of MOTD" was just hypothecial. Much discussion revolves around what services does Soda provide? The other question is how do we change what changes that the politburo appear to want? Some discussion of moving the motd and the effects this would have. MOTD: "a superanonymous program would be written to anonymous the MOTD. passed 4,0 Much belief that logging has made the MOTD the flame fest it is now. Hopefully the superanon program will make things better. You still can write to the MOTD like now, the program is to frustrate those who want to log (and thus be able to attach name to flame) MOTD posts. Mailing list: "make a new, non-opt out, force opt-in, mailing list annouce@csua, csua@csua is opt-in, can opt-out. passed 4,0 Suprisingly little discussion of the actions of treasurer. I guess the "filibuster" of sorrying policy made every really tired. Current students feel that he was and will be good president. |