HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dcrosgr@uoft02.utoledo.edu
Newsgroups: talk.rape
Subject: Re: Self-Defense in the Home
Date: 26 Aug 92 11:33:21 EST
Organization: University of Toledo, Computer Services

In article <1992Aug26.044848.15372@midway.uchicago.edu>, thf2@quads.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank) writes:
> In article <1992Aug18.005905.9535@uoft02.utoledo.edu> dcrosgr@uoft02.utoledo.edu writes:
>>But, let's change it. You are in your home when you hear someone knock on the
>>door. He asks to use your phone. You show him you are armed and let him in, his
>>friend comes up and tells him to hurry up. The first person pulls out a bag and
>>starts stuffing valuables into. You ask him what he is doing, and he says "Do
>>not be alarmed, we will not harm you or interfere with you at all. We are
>>merely robbing your house. We are unarmed, nd will not hurt you. You are free
>>to move about and even leave if you wish." Whereupon the second man comes in
>>and says, "Oh, I just cut the phone line. By the way, nice VCR. I am sure I
>>will get good money for it. Hope you are insured."
>>
>>The start to collect the things they want from your house. You pull out the gun
>>and try to prevent them from leaving. They call your bluff and walk past you.
>>
>>Do you:
>>
>>1. Have to let them go, as they are not threatening you or any other human
>>being?
>>
>>2. Have to right to protect your castle, and have the right to blow them away?
>>
>>Surprise! Trick question! BOTH are valid, depending upon the rule of law of the
>>state you live in.
> 
> Can you tell us which state it is that does not permit the use of
> deadly force to prevent the commission of a felony in your own home?

The rule of thumb is that the farther west you go, the more they permit deadly
force at the drop of a hat--except for CA.

However, check you local statutes.

And, do not be too quick to use blanket phrases like "do not permit" and
"comission of a felony" (meaning any). Use of deadly force is SOME states is
not permitted unless it is being used against threat of serious bodily harm.

ALL states permit deadly force depending upon the totality of circumstances.

DC



> -- 
>              ......................................................
>              ted frank | thf2@midway.uchicago.edu | std disclaimers
>              the university of chicago law skool, chicago, illinois
>              it's log!  log!  log!  it's big, it's heavy, it's wood
From: DURFLING@AC.GRIN.EDU (Finagle, etc. Durflinger,Edward M)
Newsgroups: talk.rape
Subject: HELP FIND TAMMY ZYWICKI'S KILLER
Date: 4 Sep 1992 16:09:37 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

        This is an update to the information about Tammy Zywicki that I
recently posted to this network.  The body in Missouri was indeed
identified as being that of Grinnell senior Tammy Zywicki. I post this
information in the hopes that concerned people will continue the effort in
the hopes of bringing Tammy's killer to justice and making our roads a
safer place for both women and men.

        The letter makes references to a poster containing a police drawing
of the truck that Tammy was last seen getting into.  If you would volunteer
to post these drawings in your area, send your address or fax # to me and I
will get you copies of the material.

Thank you;
Ed Durflinger
durfling@ac.grin.edu
_____________________________________________________________________________
						4 September 1992
						Grinnell College


	YOU CAN STILL HELP IN THE SEARCH FOR TAMMY'S KILLER!!!


	Tammy Zywicki, a 21 year old Grinnell College senior, was abducted 
on Interstate 80 in Illinois, near LaSalle, on Sunday afternoon, 23 August.  
Her body was recently found along the side of a road in southwest Missouri, 
stabbed seven times in the chest and once in the right arm.  While the Search 
for Tammy is over, the Grinnell College community is continuing its efforts to 
find the person that is responsible for this horrific crime.

	The enclosed poster was the last one released, before Tammy's body 
was identified.  The truck is a white semi, with diagonal stripes of rustish 
color. 
        This truck has been identified as a vehicle that was parked in front of 
Tammy's car on I-80.  While the driver is NOT a suspect, the police are 
attempting to contact the driver in an attempt to discover what transpired 
on that Sunday afternoon of her disappearance.  If you have any information 
pertaining to the Tammy Zywicki case, or know anything at all concerning the 
truck, please call the Illinois State Police at either of the following numbers:

	1-815-224-1150   or 	1-800-U-HELP-ME 
 

	Please post this poster and keep your eyes and ears open for any 
information pertaining to this case.

			Thank you very much,

			The Grinnell College Community
From: dcrosgr@uoft02.utoledo.edu
Newsgroups: talk.rape
Subject: Re: English AND Logic lesson for ataylor.
Date: 29 Aug 92 01:10:09 EST
Distribution: talk
Organization: University of Toledo, Computer Services

In article <ATAYLOR.92Aug28141928@gauss.nmsu.edu>, ataylor@nmsu.edu (Nosy) writes:
> 
> 	Please examine the following sentences.
> 
> 	"Mr. X did a stupid thing; his wallet was stolen".

You ommitted something very important--the word "and".

The sentence, if you are trying to paraphrase it what I have previously posted,
should read:

"Mr X. did a stupid thing, and his wallet was stolen." 

You could also paraphrase it as:

"Mr X. did a stupid thing, and as a result, his wallet was stolen."

In both of these, the 'thing' that is stupid is Mr. X's action. That does NOT
equal:

"Mr. X is stupid."

Any more than saying:

"Mr. X drove on a blue road."

Equals:

"Mr. X is blue."


> 	
> 			-----D. M. Cosgrove, providing an
> 			example of how NOT to post to talk.rape

You mean when stupid, pig-headed people like you have access to keyboards but
not an understanding of English and logical equality?

DC

> ======================================================================
From: andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: free will
Date: 23 Aug 92 21:29:50 GMT
Organization: Renaissance Technologies Corp., Setauket, NY.

In article <1992Aug21.175809.1481@ccu.umanitoba.ca> feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld) writes:
>Given chaos theory, even a deterministic U, since unguessable, would
>count as "free";

I don't think that this is the loophole for free will in a chaotic U. You would
be able to make successively better observations from which a consistent
deterministic law might emerge. Even if you couldn't do these predictions in
time to know the outcome before the actual result, (i.e. you can only simulate
the universe at a slower than real rate) then would you still consider that
anything had free will?

On the other hand, the way that the predictive law might not emerge is if the
law fails to be structually stable in a useful enough way. In which case the
successive refinements of experiments wander off among (possibly very large)
host of possibilities. Here there is no hope of knowing the equations well
enough to know that they are deterministic. But in this latter situation,
the upshot is that only perfect measurement would reveal the determinism.

The problem is that anyone who needs to do measurement may not be able to
do it perfectly. In which case you might very well guess the 'right answer'
to _everything_ but where you would be stuck is for the scientific 'proof'.

>Given QM, electrons have f.w.

But it isn't clear that QM free will is meaningful for humans - Cf. Schrodinger
_What is Life?_

Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,sci.logic,cs.logic
From: oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit)
Subject: Re: a quote from "Alice"
Organization: York U. Student Information Systems Project
	<1992Aug27.215202.14615@galois.mit.edu>
	<1992Aug29.001339.26788@galois.mit.edu>
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 04:28:27 GMT

Timothy Y. Chow writes [a step-by-step reduction of my amateurish
breakdown below]:

   >| Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise
   >| than ...
   >| 
   >|         what it might appear to others
   >|         that ...
   >| 
   >|                 what [you were or might have been] was not otherwise
   >|                 than ...
   >| 
   >|                         what [you had been] would have appeared
   >|                         to them [to be otherwise]

   a. "What you were or might have been" is a noun clause. Replace with
      "the queen"; this will not change the structure of the sentence.

Right, sorry that my brackets were somewhat misleading. anyhow, I
would replace that with X, so that we may get a clearer sentence. ;-)

   b. "What you had been" is also a noun clause. Replace with "the king."

lets replace that with Y...

   c. "Not otherwise than" can be deleted without harm.

No. This is why your analysis is failing to generate a meaningful
reduction. See below.

   d. "It might appear to others" can be replaced with "it seems."

Maybe later. We can replace "otherwise than" with "not as". After
removing double negatives, and doing an obvious fix at the end of
the sentence, we actually get

	Never imagine yourself as
	what it might appear to others
	that
		X was as

		Y would have appeared
		to them not to be [as]

if we were to ignore the tense difference in X and Y [and I'm not
suggesting this is what is necessarily correct], and replace both
with "you" we get

	Never imagine yourself as
	what it might appear to others
	that
		you were as
		you would have appeared to them not to be
or

	Never imagine yourself as
	what it might appear to others
	that 
		you were not what you appeared to be

I think this does reduce to "be what you appear to be", but it is
getting late, and, ah, I see a little rabbit looking at his watch ...

oz
---
Information is in the mind of  |  internet: oz@nexus.yorku.ca
the beholder. - R. Jackendoff  |  phone:[416] 736 2100 x33976
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: free will
Date: 2 Sep 92 17:26:58 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <1992Aug31.124036.27932@newstand.syr.edu> wpborden@rodan.acs.syr.edu (William P Borden) writes:
>
>I would like to attempt a certain refinement of the concept of free will
>here.  With regards to Mr. Peregrino, two qualities are essential:
>
>	1.  That the action being willed cannot be predicted by
>            any observer.
>	2.  That the action can be predicted by that which wills the
>            action.
>
>Where point 1. is false, a choice has not been made, but rather forced
>by circumstance; in essence, the constraints of history and natural law.
>Where point 2. is false, a choice has not been made, but merely happens;
>a random event where free will has played no part.

Most people in this discussion seem to be assuming that predictability
implies a lack of free will.  This is even being taken as part of the
_definition_ of free will.  I think this is wrong.  If we're going to
accept that predictability is incompatible wiht free will, we should
need an argument with that as the conclusion.  It's certainly not
obviously true.  The free will literature is full of arguments that
free will is compatible with determinism.  Many of those arguments
could also be applied to the question of whether free will is
compatible with determinism.  (This is not to say those arguments are
right, in either case, of course.)

>Free will is an experiential fact, and arguments that it is illusory
>are not satisfactory.

Even this is not so clear.  Does it really feel like we have free
will?  Well, yes, in a sense.  It certainly feels to me that I could
get up right now and go out in the rain instead of typing the rest of
this sentence.  On the other hand, where did that example (go out in
the rain) come from?  I thought of it, but I didn't decide to think of
it.  Instead, it just appeared as the result of unconscious processes
(presumably in my brain), perhaps influenced by the noise of rain
that I can hear while typing.  Or consider the words I'm typing.
This sentence occured to me -- I didn't decide to have that thought
instead of some other one.  Of course, once a sentence occurs to me
I might think I should write something different.  But I didn't
decide to think that -- I just did.  And then another possibility
comes to me.  I decide to write that.  But really that "decision"
was just that my next thought was "that's better" and then I typed
it.  And so on.

For all I know, some non-free process is producing these thoughts.

-- jd
From: tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow)
Subject: Re: a quote from "Alice"
Organization: None.  This saves me from writing a disclaimer.
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 92 00:13:39 GMT

In article <1992Aug27.215202.14615@galois.mit.edu> tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow) writes:
>1. Your last two "what" clauses are independent clauses.
>2. The structure of the sentences requires the "what" clauses to be noun
>clauses.

Number 2 is incorrect, and in fact contradicts everything else I've
said.  Sorry for this error.  However, everything else in my analysis
still seems correct.  I summarize below.

In article <OZ.92Aug24122942@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:
>| Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise
>| than ...
>| 
>|         what it might appear to others
>|         that ...
>| 
>|                 what [you were or might have been] was not otherwise
>|                 than ...
>| 
>|                         what [you had been] would have appeared
>|                         to them [to be otherwise]

a. "What you were or might have been" is a noun clause.  Replace with "the
   queen"; this will not change the structure of the sentence.
b. "What you had been" is also a noun clause.  Replace with "the king."
c. "Not otherwise than" can be deleted without harm.
d. "It might appear to others" can be replaced with "it seems."

We get:

Never imagine yourself to be what it seems that the queen was the king would
have appeared to them to be otherwise.

I cannot make sense of this unless I insert a semicolon after the "was" or
do some other similar tampering.  What am I missing?
-- 
Tim Chow     tycchow@math.mit.edu
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs
30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh
only 1 1/2 tons.                               ---Popular Mechanics, March 1949
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: cash@convex.com (Peter Cash)
Subject: Re: Assasination
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 14:58:58 GMT
Organization: The Instrumentality
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In article <1992Aug26.005617.10595@panix.com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
...
>>Say I'm standing in front of an attacker who has just poured a gallon of
>>gasoline on me, and is about to light it with a torch.  It seems to me that
>>it would be morally justified of me to shoot him, even though in falling
>>down he is certain to set off the fire.

>I don't follow.  You aren't killing the attacker because his *continued
>survival* poses a threat to your life -- his death poses an equal
>threat.  Perhaps your point is that if you plugged him the threat he
>posed would no longer be intentional.  But suppose he really hated you,
>and said while he we was standing there, "OK, Zeleny, I know you have a
>gun and you'll probably shoot me before this is over but I don't care
>because even if you kill me you'll still die."  (I'm assuming you're
>not killing him because he might kill again.)  Would that deprive you of
>your justification for killing him?

Sinke Mikhail (did he change the spelling of his first name?) has no doubt
by now taken himself off to the fleshpots of France (and we do hope he's
not arrested on weapons charges while riding a stolen motorcycle from one
bordello to another), I'll endeavor to answer for him. I _think_ Mikhail's
point is that there is something ineluctably just about killing an SOB like
this, no matter whether it accomplishes any practical ends or not. Assuming
that Mikhail has not given any justification for the pyromanic's treatment
of him, I must say I agree. If you're going to the land of the dead, at
least take an honor guard.






-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
             |      Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist.     |
Peter Cash   |       (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein)      |cash@convex.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: ric@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM (Ric Peregrino)
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 18:17:41 GMT
Subject: Re: free will
Organization: HP Stanford Park - Palo Alto, CA
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc


Ralph Gardner-Chavis writes:

>I will not live long enough to search all of the dictionaries for every
>definition of `freewill'

I didn't intend that, only that the discussion of free will have a solid
definition that makes sense, regardless of whence it comes.

Willam Borden writes in this regard:

> 1.  That the action being willed cannot be predicted by
>            any observer.
> 2.  That the action can be predicted by that which wills the
>            action.

Chaos theory shows that a system whose initial state is known only
to within certain error limits, evolves with the error limits 
growing too fast to be usefull after a short time. If the initial
conditions are known exactly, then the outcomes will be known exactly.

Quantum uncertainties will behave similarly. Consider a gaussian
wave solution for a free electron. The position uncertainty in the
direction of travel grows linearly. Thus as the electron moves toward
a target, the time of arrival gets fuzzier as the distance to the
target increases. Certainly the time of arrival (or any other measure,
say the place of arrival off axis for a pinhole diffraction) for
any single electron can't be predicted, but the statistics for a
large number of electrons, or even the one electron with many trials
will be predictable.

If the outcome of a single human's actions in one regard (say
vanilla vs. chocolate) after many trials is predictable in it's
statistics, then is this a violation of 1 above? Or must the
prediction be made on one particular event?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ric Peregrino     c/o Hewlett Packard Co.        I represent only myself
ric@spd.hp.com    1501 Page Mill Rd. Bldg. 5M    I may be wrong, maybe not
415-857-7526      Palo Alto, CA 94304            Do DC photons exist?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: free will
Date: 3 Sep 92 18:31:57 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <laaicbINNbc2@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM> danoc@earlybird.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan O'Connell [CONTRACTOR]) writes:
>(William P Borden) writes:
> 
> I would like to attempt a certain refinement of the concept of free will
> here.  With regards to Mr. Peregrino, two qualities are essential:
> 
> 	1.  That the action being willed cannot be predicted by
>             any observer.
> 	2.  That the action can be predicted by that which wills the
>             action.
>
>Re: (1) above: you have free will to choose pepperoni or green pepper
>or some item within the menu; if I know of your general choices, I
>can predict with some accuracy what that choice would be, even though
>you still have "free will".

Indeed, there are some people who will always choose pepperoni over
green pepper.  So this particular action is very predictable, I would
say.  Nonetheless, most people who think humans have free will would
feel that such a person _could_ choose green peppers (if s/he wanted
to).

>Re: (2) above: I may be unable (for a variety of reasons) to
>predict an action, until it actually happens even though I 
>am the actor (instances are left as excercises for the 
>student :)

For example, I couldn't predict that I would reply to this article
until it happened.  Now someone might say "ah!  you made a decision
and _then_ you could predict that you would type the "F" key, at
least in principle."  Well, I don't know.  I might have made this
prediction and then decided not to reply.  But in any case, I
couldn't predict the initial decision itself.  I really didn't
know what I'd do until I'd decided.

-- jd
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,sci.logic,cs.logic
From: tanaka@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (TANAKA Tomoyuki)
Subject: Re: a quote from "Alice"
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 05:38:07 GMT

Would someone please check and report back here if the Duchess's
remark in question is indeed as in Lewis Carroll's original?

What I presented to the net comes from the UNIX command
"/usr/games/fortune", which uses the data file
"/usr/games/lib/fortunes.dat".

I got worried after I realized that Carroll's name is
misspelled as "Carrol".

;;; (Mr.) TANAKA Tomoyuki (Tanaka is my family name.)
;;;
;;; E-mail address: <tanaka@silver.ucs.indiana.edu>

Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,sci.logic,cs.logic
From: tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow)
Subject: Re: a quote from "Alice"
Organization: None.  This saves me from writing a disclaimer.
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 92 05:32:52 GMT

In article <1992Sep1.052836.26283@galois.mit.edu> I wrote:
>But in your case, X is "you were not what you appeared to be," which is an
>independent clause, and hence "it might appear to others that X a queen" is
>not a well-formed sentence.  (It would be fine if "a queen" were omitted.)

Of course, sometimes "X a queen" is an independent clause when X itself is
an independent clause (e.g., X = "you are"), but clearly in this case "you
were not what you appeared to be a queen" is not an independent clause.
-- 
Tim Chow     tycchow@math.mit.edu
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs
30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh
only 1 1/2 tons.                               ---Popular Mechanics, March 1949
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,sci.logic,cs.logic
From: morado@phil.indiana.edu (Raymundo Morado)
Subject: Re: a quote from "Alice"
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 23:29:41 GMT

In article <Bt3GL8.800@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>, TANAKA Tomoyuki <tanaka@copper.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:
|>      [...] `Be what you would seem to be' --
|> 	       or, if you'd like it put more simply --
|> 		`Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than
|> 		what it might appear to others that what you
|> 		were or might have been was not otherwise than
|> 		what you had been would have appeared to them to
|> 		be otherwise.'" [...]

 I apologize for my lack of knowledge of the English language, but can someone explain
to me how can this imperative sentence of the form "Be ..." equal the other imperative
sentence of the form "Never imagine ..."?
 I can think of some cases, but nothing that applies to this example. Thanks for your
help, -raymundo
 
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,sci.logic,cs.logic