Hulleye Comes By!

thought experiments are interesting and deal with philosophy, ethics and morality. there is no right or wrong, yet philosophers find argumentative ways to find a way to argue fact vs. opinion using such experiments. the BBC is running a “what if” section this week. how would you respond to the scenarios presented. i’ll paste an example below.

An enormous rock falls and blocks the exit of a cave you and five other tourists have been exploring. Fortunately, you spot a hole elsewhere and decide to let “Big Jack” out first. But Big Jack, a man of generous proportions, gets stuck in the hole. He cannot be moved and there is no other way out.

The high tide is rising and, unless you get out soon, everyone but Big Jack (whose head is sticking out of the cave) will inevitably drown. Searching through your backpack, you find a stick of dynamite. It will not move the rock, but will certainly blast Big Jack out of the hole. Big Jack, anticipating your thoughts, pleads for his life. He does not want to die, but neither do you and your four companions. Should you blast Big Jack out?

If the roles were reversed, what would you advise your trapped companions to do?

go through the rest of them at the BBC’s website and give your responses here. i’d love to know how you think. notice the analogy of abortion vs. saving the violinists life.

beware the star lords of sith the evil wizards of tolkien’s mind.

“Stephen J. Dubner, half the authors of Freakonomics, is one happy economist as he reviews how Jane Siberry is leveraging the net and economics to make for a new way to make money selling her tunes online. Basically, she lets you pay what you want, when you want - but by letting you know what others are doing, she encourages you to not be left behind. Net result? It looks like given a choice, on average, people pay *more* than at iTunes!”

Siberry posts the average payment rate for each song as you pull your payment option from the drop-down menu–another reminder that, Hey, you’re more than welcome to steal this music but here’s how other people have acted in the recent past. Methinks Ms. Siberry grasps the power of incentives quite well. This allows for at least a couple of interesting things to happen: peosple can decide what to pay after they hear the music, and see how much it’s worth to them (it looks like people generally pay the most per song under this option); and it takes the variable-pricing scheme that economists love and puts it in the hands of the consumer, not the seller.

thanks BB

we recently came across malcolm gladwell’s blog too.

EDIT: Hmmm…seems like Siberry lost her cool about all the media attention.