Altruism

On my walk back to the hotel this afternoon, I stopped outside the hotel for a smoke.  While I was there, I was approached by a woman.  She told me that her and her alcoholic boyfriend (husband?) had gotten into a fight and he had left her stranded in the city.  She needed to get home to her two kids in Chesterton or some such suburb.  She already had $15 and the bus ticket would be about $30.  I gave her the money.  Am I a sucker?

As synchronicity would have it, I ran across an article from Freakonomics when I returned to the hotel entitled How Pure Is Your Altruism?

Mostly it talks about donating to disaster victims, but also:

We’ve had a lot of conversations on this blog about charitable contributions. For instance: where people like to give, and why; how a young philanthropist should disburse $70 million; whether to give to a street beggar, a hot dog vendor, or neither.

And from the Economics of Street Charity, I relate to this part:

Although I’m atheist, I defer to Jesus on beggar-related matters. He said, if a man asks for your coat, give him your cloak too. (Actually, he said if a man “sue thee at the law” for the coat, but most beggars skip the legal process.) Jesus did not say: First, administer a breathalyzer test to the supplicant, or, first, sit him down for a pep talk on “focus” and “goal-setting.” He said: Give him the damn coat.

What would you do, confronted by the hot dog vendor and the beggar situation?  What would you do in the situation I just found myself in?

Continuing with the ethical theme of this post, here’s a cute video about doing the right thing.  It’s a little long (10 minutes), but worth it.

3 Reasons Why I’m Not Going To Vote

I’m not going to vote.  You heard me right.  I’m not going to vote.  Not for Clinton, not for Obama, not for McCain.  Call me unamerican, but I’m not going to vote.

I’m not big on politics, nor do I claim to know a great deal about it, or history for that matter.  My views are probably considerably biased in that respect.  However, based on what I know and believe right now, I have no reason to vote.

1. THE GAME IS RIGGED

Throughout American and world history, there has been controversy over the possibility of elections being rigged.  Some elections may have passed by without suspicion, but this may just be because the methods of those responsible were more careful.  I don’t want to seem like a conspiracy theorist, but it seems likely that powerful organizations would be behind the control of elections (whether they be corporations, political parties, or dare I say secret societies).

Robert Heinlein said “Of course the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you–if you don’t play, you can’t win,” but I disagree.  What am I going to win, anyway?

Even if elections were not rigged, the system itself is flawed.  Among other flaws, the electoral college makes it so that the electoral vote is the one that counts, not the vote of the people.

2.  MY VOTE DOESN’T COUNT

If I were to vote, I would probably vote for Barack O’Bama, who I perceive to be the lesser evil.  But my vote doesn’t count, and neither does yours.  Besides the fact that the electoral college pretty much cancels out the people’s vote, it’s doubtful that my vote will actually sway the election.

“The odds that your vote will actually affect the outcome of a given election are very, very, very slim,” according to economists who have studied the subject in depth.  My vote doesn’t make a difference.

3.  THE PRESIDENT IS A FIGURE-HEAD

Being that the elections are probably rigged, there’s a reason why the powers-that-be have chosen whomever gets elected - he will do what he is told.  So even if you think your candidate has what it takes to change the world, he’s not necessarily going to be true to his promises.  As comedian Bill Hicks said:

““You know only a handful of people actually run the country, it’s provable… After you’re elected you are ushered into this smoke-filled room with the twelve industrialist capitalist scum-fucks that got you elected, a screen comes down and you are shown a film of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you’ve never seen before, looking suspiciously off the grassy knoll. The lights come up and they [say] to the new President, ‘Any questions?’””

So, there you have it, my opinion on voting.  Feel free to attempt to persuade me otherwise if you’ve got good reason, but until that time, I guess I just don’t see the point.  Thoughts?

Galactic Questions

I just ran across this blog called The Galactic Question Center, which posts hypothetical / ethical dilemmas / questions. Some I find interesting:

• You can have the ability to speak and understand a hundred languages, on the condition that a person chosen at random dies one day earlier than he would ordinarily have died. Do you accept this “gift”?
• God says, “I will eliminate the emotion of your choice so that you will never experience this emotion again.” What emotion do you choose?
• Would you rather see a rabbit pulled out of a hat or a hat pulled out a rabbit?
• You are assigned to spend a year in service to others. To what region of the world would you go? Why? What is the most worthy humanitarian pursuit you can imagine?
• You have ten years left to live. You can finish out your days consecutively, if you choose, or be frozen in time and resurrected at will, for a year each time. How lengthy a gap would you choose between resurrections? If complete annihilation of the species and/or planet occurs during one of your hibernation periods, you’re done. How far in the future are you willing to plan your final year?
• What kinds of things do you want to learn before you die?
• You are about to write the greatest novel the world has ever read. What is the first sentence?

evening links

• Netsuke - tiny Japanese sculptures (attached to traditional robes. They acted as fasteners for Inro, cases that held small objects because the clothing had no pockets.) … flickr set here!   I love them!
• The Moral Instinct - NYTimes - chocked full of ethical philosophy and dilemmas

Tests of my ethics

Two tests of my ethics were presented to me today.

1.  The case of the unsecured wireless network

While at the dentist’s office, I pulled out my laptop and found a nearby wireless network, named simply “linksys,” which was not configured for security.  Technically, even connecting to such a network would be considered illegal, whether or not you actually do anything mischievous.  But as a white hat information security professional, I was curious so penetrated further.

I connected easily.  I checked my IP address that had been assigned to me by the wireless router via DHCP - it was the standard 192.168.1.102.  I browsed to http:\\192.168.1.1 and confirmed that this was the address for the router.  It prompted me for credentials, first displaying the model number of the router.  A quick internet search would reveal the default password for this model, but I already knew this one from working on it in the past:  admin / admin.

It let me right into the router’s configuration page.  Immediately I saw that the connection was DSL, and there was a username and password already entered.  The username was an email address.  I googled the email address and found a link to the workplace of the owner of this router - an attorney’s office, which told me the names of the lawyers who work at the firm.  Another google search with the person’s name and the city name and state brings up the person’s address.   I check directions to the person’s house from the dentist’s office and bingo… it’s the next block over.

Further searching on pipl.com tells me, among other things, the date of birth of this guy - he’s almost 70.   I could have delved deeper and hacked into his personal computer as well, but I didn’t.

There are two ethical dilemmas here:

• Should someone connect to a wireless network that is unsecured, without permission?
• Should a person who discovers such a breach report it to the individual?

I’m pretty lax on the first one.  But I think I may anonymously let the old guy know he needs to secure his network.

2.  The case of the Best Buy gift card

Silly mailman (or woman).  Today as I was going through the mail, I felt something credit card sized and shaped in an envelope.  I opened it and discovered a $50.00 Best Buy gift card!  Woohoo!  Why was I getting one of these?  Ahhh… it was addressed to my neighbor.  Not too difficult of an ethical question here… I put it in my neighbor’s door.

That’s all the ethical dilemmas for today, folks…

Hypothetical Scenario: Love and Death

I love hypothetical questions and thus, philosophy.  Since I was a kid, I’ve been asking people questions like

You are hiking through a rain forest with your significant other and your mom/dad.  Both of them are suddenly bitten by a lethally poison snake and will die in minutes.  You possess the antidote, but only enough for one person.  Who do you give it to?

You can debate about the merits of choosing your parent over your spouse, because of age, utility, replace-ability,  etc… but generally my half-joking, half-serious, selfish reply is that I’m going to keep some for myself because there are bound to be more snakes around here.

Anyway, I just ran across a nice hypothetical question:

Say you were offered the chance to be introduced to the great love of your life, your absolute perfect soul mate. The two of you will be perfect together– compatible personalities, the same taste in movies and books, sex so good you’ll temporarily lose the power of speech– but you’ll only be together for five years. At the end of five years, your partner will die, absolutely and inevitably– you’ll be told the time, place, and manner of their death, and nothing you do can stop it.

This person is perfect for you, but there is absolutely no way you will ever meet by chance. The only chance you have of meeting is to be introduced by the person who will also tell you the time, place, and manner of your soul mate’s death. Or, you can go on with your life as it is now, and just make the best you can of what you have.

Do you take the offer?

My answer:  an unhesitating yes.  Reasoning?  A combination of carpe diem and “It is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.”

What do you think?

via Uncertain Principles