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A conversation with a gaming journalist

denizsi

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Naked Ninja said:

You keep talking/writing but you're succeeding at not saying anything relevant at all, while dismissing the point. A feat in itself.

Actually, Deniszi has come with that kind of argument before. Why do you think he loathes me so? I had some good fun with him. Oh man, fun times. Psuedo intellectuals are amusing, if nothing else

I only find you annoying and that you rightly deserve a ban. I don't loath you. That said, a look at our past conversations can only support the view that you're a weasel sob.
 

xedoc gpr

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Okay, well looks like my comment about the absolute idiocy and pointlessness of this conversation was ignored. I guess I'll just sit back and read this "battle to win" in the past few pages as it seems like good entertainment.
 

Joe Krow

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Some people seem to be confusing individual ethics with ethical standards. The individual's ethics determine whether he will follow ethical standards but they do not determine what those standards will be. As I understand them, ethical standards are created by a group to determine what is considered acceptable conduct among its members. On the contrary, individual ethics are whatever the individual claims them to be... ie, they are arbitrary and offer no real "standard" at all.

Unless i'm misunderstanding, NN is argueing that a breach of ethical standards occured while VD is argueing that his actions did not violate his individual ethics. It's possible you're both right...
 

galsiah

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Gambler said:
NN, while I respect your effort, I recommend you not to argue with morons, especially when they hold on to their relativism. They simply don't get it, because they don't want to. They will say that all analogies are invalid, that any proof needs to be proven itself, and when cornered they will switch the topic. They don't understand that anyone can use such "logic" to justify anything.
Have you ever tried to think relativism through properly? Without all the knee-jerk reactions?
Your objection seems to amount to: relativism is annoying - so it can't be true. That's not a valid argument. [logic isn't relative, by the way, the real world is]

Wanting everything to work in absolute terms is just a childlike view of the world. Accepting the relative nature of things doesn't mean abandoning certainty/conviction - it simply means internalizing it as your own.
A while ago galsiah said:
Relativism isn't about abandoning clear ideas/categories/morals/decisions... - it's about taking responsibility for them. Acknowledging that there are no absolutely right/true actions does not mean taking no action. It simply means that the buck stops with you: you don't get to blame things on truth/God/morality/justice....

All it means is that the final justification for "Why do you think X?" (after many iterations, each backing up the last) is always "I just do - it's my decision, and I stand by it.", rather than "It's right/true/just/moral/God's will...".

That is the only practical consequence of a relativistic view. If you think otherwise you're misunderstanding things; if "relativists" think otherwise, then they are. I, on the other hand, am absolutely right :). (seriously though - I am)
Relativism is about taking responsibility. Ultimately, you don't get to hide behind mummy/daddy/God/morality/truth/justice/ethics... for a defence of your actions/thoughts. You're left alone with your own fundamental beliefs and convictions - to be judged on that basis.

The question isn't whether it'd be more convenient if there were some eternal rulebook of morality (I'm sure it would) - the question is whether one actually exists: it doesn't.
[[Of course you're free to believe that one does: that can be one of your fundamental convictions (like God). However let's call that what it is in this context - a shield to avoid judgement of your many other convictions.
You're perfectly entitled to believe in "The Eternal Rule Book Of Truth And Justice."
You're perfectly entitled to use "TERBOTAJ says that..." as an argument.
Other people are perfectly entitled to think you're an imbecile for that.

In the end, it's all criticism of logic, and assertion + comparison of fundamental convictions. If your fundamental convictions are alien to other people's standards, expect to be judged harshly. Either man up and take it, or look again at those convictions.
At the least, acknowledge that you can't appeal to your convictions as support for an argument if your goal is to convince someone who doesn't share them. That doesn't make either of you wrong - it simply means there can be no agreement until someone reassesses their convictions. (realize also that it's impossible to change someone's fundamental convictions through argument - unless they're incoherent, in which case the best you can do is to point this out)]]
 

galsiah

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Joe Krow said:
Unless i'm misunderstanding, NN is argueing that a breach of ethical standards occured while VD is argueing that his actions did not violate his individual ethics. It's possible you're both right...
Unless I misunderstand, NN is arguing that there are universal (non-arbitrary) ethical standards. He is talking bollocks.
VD is talking about individual ethics because that is all there is.

[Of course, there might happen to be some kind of opinion-poll consensus "ethics" in a group/society, but so what?]
 

Joe Krow

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galsiah said:
Joe Krow said:
Unless i'm misunderstanding, NN is argueing that a breach of ethical standards occured while VD is argueing that his actions did not violate his individual ethics. It's possible you're both right...
Unless I misunderstand, NN is arguing that there are universal (non-arbitrary) ethical standards. He is talking bollocks.
VD is talking about individual ethics because that is all there is.

[Of course, there might happen to be some kind of opinion-poll consensus "ethics" in a group/society, but so what?]

I see. Are you saying, then, that an individual is only constrained by his own whims? Why even talk about ethical standards then when, for you, there are none? By extension your argument is that the ethics of the most vile repugnant human being are just as socially accepted as any one elses. Incorrect. To have any meaning the standard must be set by the group not the individual. The group sets the standards, the individual decides whether to honor them. Society frowns on certain behavior because ethical standards are created collectively not individually. Might these social standards have a baseline? A minimum? They must. Is that what NN was talking about? Does he think VD breached the minimum standard of journalistic ethics? I think so. The line is fuzzy so feel free to disagree with him. However, the standards are there and have nothing to do with how you feel about them.
 

Twinfalls

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I read this thread and all it gave me was a Cagney and Lacey reference. A second-hand one at that.
 

galsiah

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Joe Krow said:
I see. Are you saying, then, that an individual is only constrained by his own whims?
Yes.
Why even talk about ethical standards then when, for you, there are none?
There are my own - I just don't claim any external justification for them. I have my convictions, and (by and large) I stand by them. I just realize that I can't make anyone else share them.

By extension your argument is that the ethics of the most vile repugnant human being are just as socially accepted as any one elses.
No. I've said nothing about "social acceptability". Being socially acceptable or otherwise is not the same as being moral/ethical. Picking my nose isn't immoral (by almost anyone's standards) it is nonetheless not socially acceptable (in most contexts).

The original argument wasn't about politeness / social acceptability. VD never argued he was being polite - just not immoral/unethical.

To have any meaning the standard must be set by the group not the individual.
Not true. My ethics/morals/convictions have meaning to me, my thoughts and my actions. They just don't have any meaning beyond that. A universal/group ethical code would have meaning/be useful if it existed - but it doesn't. [if you want to call the collection of convictions which happen to be held by all members of a given group "group ethics" or "group morals", feel free, but that's hardly a particularly useful construct - it can be destroyed/created/expanded at a stroke when someone enters/leaves the room]

The group sets the standards, the individual decides whether to honor them.
Sure - and there can be rules, laws, conventions... in any group. These things are not morals/ethics. If they happen to agree with and encompass every member's morals, that's nothing more than a very unlikely coincidence - which will evaporate as soon as someone else walks into the room.

Society frowns on certain behavior because ethical standards are created collectively not individually.
These are conventions, not ethics/morals in the sense of this thread. Society frowns on all sorts of daft stuff - and frowns on different things over time. Not too long ago society would frown on a black person not sitting/standing in the "black" section of [area X]. That's only a convention - it doesn't make it immoral/unethical for a black person to have stood/sat in the "wrong" place. [if you think it does, you are using the word "ethics" in a different sense from that used in this thread]

Might these social standard have a baseline? A minimum?
For a start, that's meaningless: what does a "minimum" / "baseline" mean here? One set of people can have one "baseline" which contradicts another set's "baseline" (e.g. pro-choice vs pro-life; pro-truth-telling vs pro-confidence-keeping...). There are a load of fairly common conventions - many of which are contradictory.
Again, politeness/sociability is not the same as morality/ethics (as used in this thread).

Is that what NN was talking about?
If "that" was utter-bollocks-at-some-length, then yes.

Does he think VD breached the minimum standard of journalistic ethics?
He can think nonsense all he likes. The most absurd part of this has already been raised - if VD broke any codes of politeness/convention, it had nothing to do with journalism. A journalist is, if anything, expected and required to reveal uncomfortable truths. In this case, deadairis is - if anything - the story, not the source/whistle-blower....

The lines may is fuzzy so feel free to disagree with him.
In this case the fuzziness isn't the issue - it's that he's looking at the wrong line.

However, the standards are there and have nothing to do with how you feel about them.
Fuzzy standards of convention and social acceptability are there. Standards of ethics are not. Some horribly vague, blatantly contradictory collection of politically correct rubbish exists. Again, so what? Everyone is almost constantly acting in conflict with a part of this collection - since it's so full of nonsense and contradiction. [it's unethical to: be pro-life, be pro-choice, lie, break confidences, discriminate against group X by doing ???, discriminate against group Y by not doing ???, discriminate against stupid people, promote stupid people into jobs requiring intelligence...]
 

AnalogKid

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Naked Ninja said:
That wasn't the best example to use to illustrate your point friend. Your dilemma there is based on the fact that your ethics are at war with your feelings of loyalty and friendship. You know its the right thing to do, ethically, to tell the woman, but likewise feel like you would be betraying a friend. Few people would describe the choice to cover for your philandering friend as the "ethical choice".
Actually, it was a very good choice because it perfectly highlights his point that you don't get it. MANY people believe it IS morally correct to not tell your buddy's wife, because loyalty is one of the highly regarded virtues. Chief among them are most military personnel. The reasoning is as follows:
  • - Honesty is a virtue (therefore he shouldn't have cheated)
    - Loyalty is a virtue (therefore I shouldn't tattle)

    So we have a conflict of Virtues (could be related back to the underlying values, but who cares right now), and there's no solution that satisfies them both. From here, there's two possible ways to arrive at a result different from your own:

    1) I simply value Loyalty more than Honesty. Therefore it's morally correct for me to shut the fuck up.

    2) I have a relationship with my buddy, not his wife. So for ME, there's no actual conflict here because someone I've never met has no claims over me.

    In both cases, it's simultaneously true that he acted immorally, AND that I'm ethically bound not to say anything.

    Path #2 has some difficulty if his wife asks you point-blank "did he cheat"? Because then you would be being dishonest if you said "no". So in that possible scenario, you have to go back to #1 and simply decide if Loyalty or Honesty have more importance to you.
Another way of putting all this,in your black&white terms, is that there is NO moral solution here. Telling or not telling both violate virtues, and no matter what you do, you're being immoral. Don't you just love a way of thinking that leads to automatic condemnation just because YOUR BUDDY did something? Still, that's got nothing on original sin. :roll:

Your moronic one-sided "solution" is just saying that loyalty has ZERO VALUE to you (not little value, but none whatsoever, or else again you're being black-and-white immoral by tattling). Glad I'm not your friend.

The point here is not to prove one side or the other, only to illustrate that people DO THINK DIFFERENTLY. You can talk about whether they SHOULD think differently, and that's really where moral relativity and other buzz-words you don't understand comes in to play. But there's just no avoiding that, practically, in this real world, PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT VALUES, MORALS, and ETHICS.
 

Naked Ninja

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@Analog : Wrong kid. Loyalty in the face of any kind of immoral action is not only immoral but blindly stupid. That's the kind of thing that leads soldiers to commit atrocities because they are told to be their commander. Follow your own arguments to their natural conclusion to realise how lame they are. And no soldier accused of atrocities during war will be able to use the excuse "I value loyalty more than mercy!" to get them off in a military tribunal. Their opinions don't matter. Neither would lying to another officer because their own commander told them to. It is unethical.

@ Gambler : Agreed. They don't seem to realise you can take their arguments, substitute anything from cannibalism to child molestation in there and argue the same view point. And it would be equally as stupid. And the minute it is their child who has been raped they'd drop this "you can't judge others by your own standards!" nonsense and howl for his blood. Hypocrites ftl.

But yeah, I give up now. You can't argue with people who believe this kind of nonsense, they can argue out of being accountable for anything.
 

kris

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Naked Ninja said:
@Analog : Wrong kid. Loyalty in the face of any kind of immoral action is not only immoral but blindly stupid. That's the kind of thing that leads soldiers to commit atrocities because they are told to be their commander.

Or the loyal guy wouldn't shoot his friend who deserted despite being ordered too.
again, context.
 

galsiah

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Naked Ninja said:
They don't seem to realise you can take their arguments, substitute anything from cannibalism to child molestation in there and argue the same view point.
I do, and that's fine. Cannibalism to child molestation aren't immoral in an absolute sense, because, saying that something is "immoral in an absolute sense" is meaningless. There are no absolute morals/ethics, so saying that something isn't part of them is to say nothing at all.
The important thing to realize is that there is usually general agreement that Cannibalism and child molestation are wrong (according to each individual in the agreeing group), so it's possible and reasonable to act almost as if it they were absolutely wrong most of the time. When it comes to locking up cannibals and child molesters, the only difference is the acknowledgement of a kind of mob-rule: we lock them up because almost all of us personally think it's wrong - not because it is absolutely wrong. [there is, of course, little practical difference - which is why your "arguments" along the lines of "OMG relativism will destroy society and sense!!1!" are stupid]

And it would be equally as stupid. And the minute it is their child who has been raped they'd drop this "you can't judge others by your own standards!" nonsense and howl for his blood.
No - you simply howl for his blood according to your own standards, expect (probably rightly) that most people are in line with your standards on this issue, and be prepared to be judged for your cries for revenge (don't blame God/truth/justice for your desire for punishment).

Again, the only practical difference is the need to stand by your convictions without some safety-net.

You only feel the need to argue against relativism because you completely fail to grasp its implications - which are very few in any practical sense.

...they can argue out of being accountable for anything.
Don't you see that invoking some idea of absolute "right" is to avoid accountability?
You can easily hold a relativist accountable - you just can't expect to get the smug satisfaction of knowing that you were right and he was wrong. I.e. YOU have to be accountable for your judgement of him - God didn't judge him, neither did morality/justice/truth etc - YOU did. Have the guts to stand by that alone.
 

Joe Krow

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galsiah said:
Joe Krow said:
I see. Are you saying, then, that an individual is only constrained by his own whims?
Yes.
Wrong. The ethical standards of the group (journalists for instance) go beyond the individual.
Why even talk about ethical standards then when, for you, there are none?
There are my own - I just don't claim any external justification for them. I have my convictions, and (by and large) I stand by them. I just realize that I can't make anyone else share them.
Yes, an individual can have ethical "standards" but they are meaningless to anyone but his/herself. It is not the indivual who imposes his ethics on the group, it is the group imposing on its members.
By extension your argument is that the ethics of the most vile repugnant human being are just as socially accepted as any one elses.
No. I've said nothing about "social acceptability". Being socially acceptable or otherwise is not the same as being moral/ethical. Picking my nose isn't immoral (by almost anyone's standards) it is nonetheless not socially acceptable (in most contexts). The original argument wasn't about politeness / social acceptability. VD never argued he was being polite - just not immoral/unethical.
Wrong. Ethical standards are almost exclusively about gauging acceptable behavior within a group. Politeness has nothing to do with it (unless that happens to be a standard).
To have any meaning the standard must be set by the group not the individual.
Not true. My ethics/morals/convictions have meaning to me, my thoughts and my actions. They just don't have any meaning beyond that. A universal/group ethical code would have meaning/be useful if it existed - but it doesn't. [if you want to call the collection of convictions which happen to be held by all members of a given group "group ethics" or "group morals", feel free, but that's hardly a particularly useful construct - it can be destroyed/created/expanded at a stroke when someone enters/leaves the room]
Group ethics, yes. Journalistic ethics to be specific. Different groups have different standards. They are arrived at collectively. No single cop, lawyer, or journalist decides what the ethical standards are for his profession. How are you not getting this?
The group sets the standards, the individual decides whether to honor them.
Sure - and there can be rules, laws, conventions... in any group. These things are not morals/ethics. If they happen to agree with and encompass every member's morals, that's nothing more than a very unlikely coincidence - which will evaporate as soon as someone else walks into the room.
Wrong. Dumb and wrong. Conventions of behavior are an essential part of ethics. Morals are something else entirely. If the two coincide, that's good but merely a coincidence.
Society frowns on certain behavior because ethical standards are created collectively not individually.
These are conventions, not ethics/morals in the sense of this thread. Society frowns on all sorts of daft stuff - and frowns on different things over time. Not too long ago society would frown on a black person not sitting/standing in the "black" section of [area X]. That's only a convention - it doesn't make it immoral/unethical for a black person to have stood/sat in the "wrong" place. [if you think it does, you are using the word "ethics" in a different sense from that used in this thread]
See above. A better example would be the cop that comes by and clubs said person. At the time it was ethicly acceptable but morally wrong. We are applying the standards of ethical behavior enforced by police at that time. Whether they were also moral is, again, another question.
Might these social standard have a baseline? A minimum?
For a start, that's meaningless: what does a "minimum" / "baseline" mean here? One set of people can have one "baseline" which contradicts another set's "baseline" (e.g. pro-choice vs pro-life; pro-truth-telling vs pro-confidence-keeping...). There are a load of fairly common conventions - many of which are contradictory.
Again, politeness/sociability is not the same as morality/ethics (as used in this thread).
Yes. Groups can have contradictory ethical standards. If I were in advertising I wouldn't claim objectivity as an ethical requirment, if I were a journalist I would. The standards vary by group so of course they can contradict each other. That's not the issue.
However, the standards are there and have nothing to do with how you feel about them.
Fuzzy standards of convention and social acceptability are there. Standards of ethics are not. Some horribly vague, blatantly contradictory collection of politically correct rubbish exists. Again, so what? Everyone is almost constantly acting in conflict with a part of this collection - since it's so full of nonsense and contradiction. [it's unethical to: be pro-life, be pro-choice, lie, break confidences, discriminate against group X by doing ???, discriminate against group Y by not doing ???, discriminate against stupid people, promote stupid people into jobs requiring intelligence...
Go to a library. There you will find books on the ethic's of various professions. In these books individuals gauge the currently accepted standards of ethical behavior. Are they writing about thier own ethical stance or the groups? How can this be?
 

galsiah

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You are not talking about the same kind of "ethics" as VD / NN. They are talking about morality. You are talking about conventions of acceptable behaviour (pretty much the definition of politeness btw, so I don't follow you there).

VD never stated or implied that he was following anyone's arbitrary conventions/rules - just that he wasn't being unethical (as in immoral). It's fairly clear that NN thinks there are objective, universal notions of what is ethical/moral - he's not simply talking about one group's conventions either.
You points are reasonable, but - as I hoped to make clear above - they don't speak to the issue.

As far as journalistic conventions go - i.e. your version of journalistic "ethics" -, I'd again point out that it's expected that journalists expose the truth, not hide it. They're expected to protect sources where those sources are not the story, but here deadairis is the story. If VD had been given similar correspondence between deadairis and [person X], by [person X], it'd be expected that VD protect the identity of [person X] (if that were important), not of deadaris.
 

MF

The Boar Studio
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Naked Ninja said:
But yeah, I give up now. You can't argue with people who believe this kind of nonsense, they can argue out of being accountable for anything.

So now you're sidestepping the law-discussion just because you think you 'won' that? You can be held accountable for your actions if you broke the law. That's what it's for. You can't substitute what we're mentioning with child molesting and raping, because those are illegal pretty much everywhere. A Law system is in place because most people under that system agree that the particular set of rules benefits them, or at least protects them from harm. Now, unless VD signed an NDA, he did nothing wrong. The truth can also never be considered slander. Law is pretty much the only 'universal' set of rules societies agree upon, to prevent people from committing wanton murder for example. But murder can still be 'morally correct' fro someone, say for some muslim's 'honor vengeance' where a brother can murder his brother-in-law if he divorces his wife. It's still illegal though, so he'll be jailed. That's the universal accountability you're looking for to keep you safe. In the context of this discussion, it is not an issue. You keep hammering, but you're not driving a nail. I'm done with you now.
 

elander_

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Naked Ninja said:
They don't seem to realise you can take their arguments, substitute anything from cannibalism to child molestation in there and argue the same view point. And it would be equally as stupid. And the minute it is their child who has been raped they'd drop this "you can't judge others by your own standards!" nonsense and howl for his blood. Hypocrites ftl.

Why just because you think that your moral or ethics is always better than others and you can't bother to discuss them? Arrogant people always think that their moral standing always have to be accepted by others without having to defend it. So what happens when two people morals collide and they are absolutely certain each one is right? Which one will they choose?

Naked Ninja said:
But yeah, I give up now. You can't argue with people who believe this kind of nonsense, they can argue out of being accountable for anything.

Another example of your retarded math mind, thinking in absolute and idealistic terms. If someone is willing to discuss his moral codes then that person will accept everything. Don't politics discuss the laws before they create the law and sometimes revise it? Don't journalist discuss the impact of their professional ethics before they choose to defend it and don't journalist are constantly discussing and revise certain aspects of their ethics? This is how adult people resolve their differences boy. The world works with relatives.
 

DarkSign

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Holy mother@$$@2$#%#$. I cant believe I read the whole thing.

I have an opinion about the whole thing (now that it's blown over), but the main thing that strikes me is how unordered the back and forth during this argument was. The one-line style is a start at zooming in on issues and the quoting Dictionary.com is an interesting attempt at defining terms, but it's still very hit and miss. Welcome to the internet I suppose.

In law school they teach you to use a simple, yet elegant formula called IRAC: Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion. VD called NN out for merely stating facts that didnt amount to an argument. I have to agree that this was one of the main problems I noticed throughout the post.

If you dont focus in on what you're arguing about, then cite some sort of authority for what defines the standard by which you analyze the facts you have then you can never come to a conclusion.

With things like ethics and mores, often people argue from their own beliefs and dont cite some other authority (which can work well if enough detail is given - read Jerry Spence's "How to Argue and Win Every Time"), but more often than not you're going to leave so much wiggle room that the other person will keep posting for 11 pages.

Sure, this is a legal tool and not necessarily a 100% fit for tha Ntrwebz and ffs, half the fun of forums are the post battles, but its all mental masturbation if you dont arrive somewhere at the end.

Just a suggestion.

BTW, VD was right. Nanny nanny boo boo.
 

Joe Krow

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Stop talking nonsense. It's obvious you have no idea what ethics are. I'll give you four examples where morals and ethics are at odds. I hope these will clarify the difference between the two. If you are still confused i'm afraid your on your own:

1) During the course of a trial a lawyer discovers his client is guilty of a previous crime, molesting a child. The attorney is morally inclined to divulge the information but compelled by his professional ethics not to.

2) The first black cop in Alabama is called on to break up a planned civil rights march. He agrees with the marcher's position and can clearly see that they are not causing any trouble. He believes it is immoral to disrupt the protest but his ethics as a police officer prevail.

3) A women, four months pregnant, is wheeled into the operating room of a Catholic doctor. He discovers that she is bleeding internally and will die unless the pregnancy is terminated. He believes abortion is a sin but his medical ethics dictate that he save the woman's life.

4) A journalist recieves a private message he believes his readers would find interesting. Since the message was sent to him in good faith, his journalistic ethics dictate that he clear the use of the private message with the source or print it anonomously. However, he doubts the source would give this approval so he disregards his ethics and prints it anyway. The source later makes it crystal clear that these private messages were indeed intended to be just that. The journalist's ethics at this point dicatate a retraction or at least an apology. Instead, the journalist prints the remaining priivate messages.
 

JoKa

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@joe krow: lol, nice try...but even if your argument wasn't attackable in itself ( the 4th example sticks out very much), your parallel to VD's behaviour doesn't hold water as deadairis didn't make it 'crystal clear' that he didn't want the message to be published...but whatever, don't want to take this one to the 42th page..
 

galsiah

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Joe Krow said:
Stop talking nonsense. It's obvious you have no idea what ethics are.
My point has been that the discussion was about morality - whether or not people used the word "ethics" (perhaps incorrectly). Again, NN seems to hold that there are universal "ethics" - not just arbitrary rules of a few clubs.

4) A journalist recieves a private message he believes his readers would find interesting. Since the message was sent to him in good faith, his journalistic ethics dictate that he clear the use of the private message with the source...
Again, if anything, deadairis is the STORY, not simply a source. Journalistic ethics say nothing about protecting the identity of the subject of a story. Also, the initial PM essentially contained nothing, and for subsequent PMs deadairis was aware of the potential for publication - and still didn't ask for them not to be.

Anyway, this particular issue could hardly matter less. What bothers me is the continued anti-relativism nonsense maintained by some here. I don't particularly care about ethics (as you define them), and I really don't care about VD's PMs. I do care about morality and logic, and find arguments against the morality/logic of relativism particularly absurd/annoying.
 

AnalogKid

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Naked Ninja said:
Loyalty in the face of any kind of immoral action is not only immoral but blindly stupid.
But that's just it, Loyalty is PART of morality (for some people), you choose to think of loyalty as somehow outside of morality. Good for you. You also like to weasel and only see black and white. Bad for you. I never said or implied that if someone values Loyalty, that they would choose it over ANY other value. Your "logical" conclusions are utterly devoid of logic, as are almost all your "arguments".

EDIT:
Let's try a different group of people that you might grasp a bit better. Let's say YOU are a priest and your buddy told you about his philandering during confessional. Now is your black-and-white "you must tell his wife" still the moral imperative? Or does that CONTEXT change the outcome of which action is morally correct?
/EDIT

Naked Ninja said:
But yeah, I give up now. You can't argue with people who believe this kind of nonsense
PRECISELY!!!!! That's what I've been trying to say the whole time. Because people DO believe what you call "nonsense". I'll turn it around and repeat it back to you:

I can't fathom that you're such a dumbfuck you think everyone believes exactly what you believe. You can't argue with people who believe this kind of nonsense.

Naked Ninja said:
they can argue out of being accountable for anything.
Factually untrue. Why do you lie? As galsiah has REPEATEDLY pointed out, and as you REPEATEDLY weasel around and ignore, other people can be held accountable for a great many things, just not exactly the same things that you choose. Also, what do you mean by "held accountable"? If you mean "I'll get mad", go right ahead, just don't pretend your disagreement means anything more than that. If you mean "other people will get mad", again you're right, and you can just go ahead and list the people that don't agree with the original action, but don't pretend it means more than that. If you mean "everyone knows they're wrong", you're just completely fucked in the head, and the only reason I've been going on about this is to try and help you and those like you to see the world the way it is. Note that I've never once argued about how it should be.
 

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