You have the whole of human history at your fingertips and you haven't yet learned that evil and stupidity are the same thing? The problem with the base human is not only that it is a stupid animal. It is a stupid animal that is also arrogant and stubborn and thinks highly of itself. But it will learn. It will be trained like a dog, with treats or with gentle slaps across the muzzle, whatever works best.
I disagree, but it's probably a matter of definitions. I don't want to play with words, so I will concede that cognitive ability is independent from moral reasoning (which is socially enforced). However, this is not what I'm getting at. Cognitive ability ("intelligence") is correlated with optionality and power. Your ability to change this reality is correlated with your cognitive ability.
If you truly are an intelligent person, would you really find no other ways to use your talents than to inflict harm, exploit others, and make our shared reality a worse place? That would be a waste. I won't get into ambiguous cases and moral relativism. Say we can all agree that some things are "evil": child exploitation is evil. Throwing molotov cocktails at a civilian's house is evil. Sending bombs in the mail is evil.
Now what would you call someone who engages in these kind of activities when they could easily do something better and more satisfying with their lives? I'd say they're pretty stupid. They're probably good at fooling other people into thinking they're smart, but their behavior shows otherwise.
Take for example Ted Kaczynski, a terrorist who is worshipped like a saint and a prophet in certain ideological spheres. Ted Kaczynski is supposedly this 140IQ genius who saw it all coming and tried to warn us. But if you actually read Industrial Society and Its Future, you can see it's complete incoherent garbage, the kind of stuff I was writing when I was 12 to troll on internet forums. Ted Kaczynski is what a stupid person thinks a smart person looks like.
A smart person doesn't need to be evil, just like a billionaire doesn't need to go shoplifting. I'm not saying that stupid people can't be dangerous. But they should be dealt with for what they are: stupid people, inferior to us, worthy of pity. Not powerful monsters above us that we should fear.
No idea who this guy is, I'm just reading his Wikipedia page. Looks like he created some file system, good! But it also looks like he got a mail-order bride (suspicious...), was an abusive husband (not good), was not able to get over his divorce (uh-oh), harassed and ultimately murdered his ex-wife (definitely not good!), and ultimately landed in prison.
I think Hans Reiser is some sort of idiot savant or well trained monkey. Probably very good at computer science and building file systems, but his general intelligence seems overall very low, which is proven by his performance at the game of life. I wouldn't personally be afraid of Hans Reiser and I'm sure he could be mentally broken very easily.
There are stupid people who are harmless (think Forrest Gump). Whether they have the capacity to be "good", I'll leave that up to you.
I stand by if evil then stupid (and thus if not stupid then not evil) with reasoning above, retract the implication that the reverse holds (if stupid then evil). I could use more precise terms than "evil" and "stupid" or qualify more, but I choose to be provocative, so it makes it a bit easier for you to attempt to prove me wrong.
Is EA(I assume they're the current IP holder of the game) losing sales from this in order for the violation to be noteworthy?
I assume there's not a huge untapped customer base for this particular game that were rushing out to buy it but stopped because it's also available online for free.
Nevertheless, i expect just like Nintendo, their lawyers will send a C&D just to defend the IP and trademarks on the basis of "use it or lose it".
There doesn't always have to be a monetary loss to win a copyright suit, perhaps unlike with a breach of contract ruling.
Copyright licenses are designed to support the right to exclude; money damages alone do not support or enforce that right.
A similar notion has been common even among cases involving open source licenses, where developers were able to claim non-monetary damages from violations.
From Jacobsen v. Katzer:
> Traditionally, copyright owners sold their copyrighted material in exchange for money. The lack of money changing hands in open source licensing should not be presumed to mean that there is no economic consideration, however. There are substantial benefits, including economic benefits, to the creation and distribution of copyrighted works under public licenses that range far beyond traditional license royalties. For example, program creators may generate market share for their programs by providing certain components free of charge.
Have you ever tried to pull or push a wheeled cart up a large hill? Wheels are not super useful on steep terrain or unbroken ground and are often a liability without a bullet proof brake to stop it from trying to roll away when you stop. If the land isn't super rough or steep then wheels are great, but when it is you are going to have to work twice as hard.
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