Announcing new document

[prof]

If anyone cares to learn about Ethical Theory here is a new brief paper to study::



http://myqol.com/wadeharvey/PDFs/The%20 ... ncepts.pdf

Its title is "The Beautiful Simplicity of Ethical Concepts."

It is safe to open.

Please tell me what were your impressions of the effort. Several scholars told me that they liked it very much.

Dd you enjoy reading it?

[FlashDangerpants]

Ahem...
From our last discussion where you showed as usual no sign of willingness to read and address any of my actual objections to your theory...

I can't offer you any more specific examples from your own stuff because you offer no specificity about anything really. So I will direct you to other examples of people doing something similar to what you propose. One example would be economists who are very interested in the idea of how trusting societies are. In short, lack of trust is very expensive, it makes us as a society invest in a lot of extra courts and lawyers, which raises transaction costs. So they have ways of assessing which societies trust each other a lot (Scandinavia of course) and which ones trust each other relatively less (your country and mine), versus ones where nobody trusts anyone at all (Russia). But of course they cannot actually measure trust itself, that is absurd, so they collect indexes of other things and from those they extrapolate some representative of trust up to a certain point.

Chapter Four: FURTHER IMPLICATIONS OF
THE NEW APPROACH
One example of people doing some important work today is
that of economists who are very interested in the idea of how
trusting societies are. They point out that the lack of trust is
very expensive since it makes us as a society invest in a lot
of extra courts and lawyers, thus raising costs. This enables
them to assess which societies trust each other a lot.
(Scandinavian societies come out on top in this regard), and
which ones trust each other relatively less. (Listed further
down are the USA and Great Britain.) Near the bottom of
the list of ranking are those nations where perhaps nobody
trusts anyone at all. (Russia has been said to be such a
nation.) These economists cannot actually yet measure trust
itself, so they collect indices of other things that correlate
with trust; and from those they extrapolate a concept of trust.
Such rankings of, for example, “best places in a nation to
work,” “the best locales in which to live,” or comparative
international “happiness” scales, or “degrees of corruption,”
scales are very useful and helpful in the study of Applied
Ethics.

I don't know whether the thing I need tomock you for today is the blatant theft without attribution, or the bit where you wrote "These economists cannot actually yet measure trust itself", which is clearly stupid. Economists are fully aware that they are not measuring actual trust, and they are not inclined to fool themselves in the way that you and Hartman do. Nobody is ever going to measure trust any more than they will ever measure ethics.

But yeah... plagiarism, that's not a problem in your little ethical science?

[Sir-Sister-of-Suck]

I felt kind of bad for you when Flash was ragging on you for using this site to promote your book. But I have to say, this pretty clear example of plagiarism makes you look quite bad. It makes me wonder if the words of some of the other users on here have been used for your work. I'm not sure if this is like an open draft for your upcoming book, or for something that has already been published, so maybe there's still time to revise some things or give credit where its due?

I would honestly be fine if you parroted his talking points, if you at least supplied external data to back up what's being said. I mean pundits parrot each other's points all the time, but the particular way you've done it is specific enough to his exact words that it just comes across as very disingenuous.

Your best route would have been to PM flashdangerpants, asking his permission to do this, and then asking him for his references.

[prof]

Hi, Flash

I did not know to whom to give attribution, for I only have a nickname for you.



To Sir-Sister-of-Suck:

What some speak of as "plagiarism" I call "research." Yes, I do borrow from everywhere and admitted that in an earlier thread I wrote! If you read my previous threads you will find it along with the context surrounding it. It was stated plainly and openly. This is all part of the synthesis project to build a truly Unified Theory of Ethics. I believe in, and practice, a free trade in ideas.

I felt I was paying Flash a high honor in using his contribution to the advancement of ethical theory in my paper. Once I know his real name I can modify the manuscript and give him full credit.

If anyone felt bad about fragging it would have been helpful if they would write a post to that effect at the time it was occurring. It was so relentless and severe that I mistakenly inferred a troll was at work. Yes, I am disingenuous and fallible in so many ways. I know that I don't know, that I only see partial truth. I make a number of errors every day.

I am very sorry that you feel upset now, and I apologize if you feel hurt.

As I see it, the ethical thing to do is to be a virtue--finder rather than a fault-finder. Just a personal note: In my own life rather than tell people their shortcomings I look to see on what I can sincerely compliment them, or what I can constructively make out of what they said or wrote to enhance [and/or upgrade] the project of making this world a better place. In order to plagiarize one needs to have an ego, and I am striving to get rid of mine. ...and to gain in humility. ...work on it constantly.

p.s. You also might find useful the suggestions on how to achieve serenity and peace--of-mind on p. 16 of the unpublished booklet, LIVING WELL: How ethics helps us flourish. For your convenience a link to it is offered here:
http://www.myqol.com/wadeharvey/PDFs/LI ... ourish.pdf

Let me know what you thought of it. Okay?

[prof]

Your best route would have been to PM flashdangerpants, asking his permission to do this, and then asking him for his references.

Yes, I agree. I didn't think of that at the time. That was dumb of me. Directly after he wrote those words I think I thanked him for his contribution to Ethics. If I didn't, I meant to. My memory fails at times. I will do better in the future. And THANK YOU for a good recommendation!!!

[FlashDangerpants]

This is horrifying. Let's get some facts straight here.

1. You are free to source your own information and use or misuse it however you see fit, but you are absolutley not to attribute that mess to me.
2. You didn't just steal a bunch of my words, you took an argument against your method and partially reworded it to make it look like a support.
3. It's extremely easy to find literature on the economics of trust for yourself. Here's something for you.
4. If you do that, with proper references, but take the same attitude as you did to the content you stole from me, ie suggesting that economists actually hope to directly measure trust itself, you should expect a very severe retraction demand from them. They aren't idiots, and likely don't want to be represented as such.
5. If you are having difficulty spotting the difference between plagiarism and research, you should never have been a teacher at all.
6. I wasn't trolling you. You got grief because you solicited fake reviews from friends/family and then came here bragging about the good reviews you were receiving. That's your own fault, you clearly have problems with honesty in general, they are your own.
7. But if you actually thought I was a troll, you still just copied my work for your book without doing any actual research. I wouldn't do that, who would? Your standards must be lower than I can possibly describe.
8. Your paper is not worthy of my input. It is no sort of honour to be surreptitiously drafted into your specious nonsense. I'll tolerate it this time because nobody reads your work, otherwise you would have more critics like me who find your methodology deeply flawed and your responses to all questions evasive and dishonest.

[prof]

This is horrifying.
you are absolutley not to attribute that mess to me.
2. You didn't just steal...you stole from me, ie suggesting that economists actually hope to directly measure trust itself,... They aren't idiots, and likely don't want to be represented as such.

... you solicited fake reviews from friends/family ... That's your own fault, you clearly have problems with honesty...you still just copied my work for your book ....

8. Your paper is not worthy of my input.... your specious nonsense....your responses to all questions evasive and dishonest.

Yes, the fragging goes on. The troll tells us that he is not a troll, though.

Here are the facts:

I will not attribute that short unpublished essay to dangerpants, nor any part of it. I intend to delete that paragraph with regard to economists that he quoted in his earlier post above in this thread, and will do it as soon as I can arrange it with my web-host. Yes, those were dpants' words I reproduced since, as you now know, I assumed mistakenly that he was cooperating with me on building a better ethics theory and that this was his contribution to the enterprise. From the way he put it in the other thread I got that impression - that he was being helpful in offering those words. How wrong I was about that! Mea culpa.

I did not suggest what dpants says I did, namely, that "that economists actually hope to directly measure trust itself."

I did not represent economists as idiots!

I did not solicit "fake reviews from friends/family." The reviews were not fake. None of them came from my family. I did not solicit those that friends wrote. One review is from a Professor at The University of Texas who I did not know before he wrote it. Now I consider him a friend.

I did not copy his work for my book. Or any book. I just wrote a few pages for an essay. ...Never claimed it was a formal academic paper. Whether the thoughts in it are original I will leave that up to the readers. I hold that there are no new ideas in moral philosophy, just new ways of rephrasing old concepts. I offered evidence for this in the first thread I posted here with the same title as this latest paper. You can check that out.

The ad hominems and insults are not going to get a response from me, although I do agree with dpants that "This is horrifying." In saying that, I refer to his negative emotions and need to put others down, and pick holes in others efforts. {I confess I did that too - used to do that myself. I regret that I did. That was many, many years ago. Since then maybe I have improved a little.} But this is not about me: it is about what is an excellent Ethical Theory.

Do any of you have ideas on that subject? What factors would be the mark of a superior theory or system of Ethics?

And what did YOU think of the latest version of "The Beautiful Simplicity..."?
Dangerpants has already told us what he thinks, but don't let him think for you.

[FlashDangerpants]

ad hominems

Please learn what this means before deploying it again.

[Judaka]

What a funny thread.