Sorry Moderators, but with the notion of a Meta discussion board, I no longer consider this Origins Board part of scienceagogo. Therefore I am using it to post any philisophical thoughts that I may have.

Woddy Allen says (something along the lines of);
"the man that said he would rather be lucky than good saw deeply into life."

I disagree, this is true to some extent, but the amount by which you depend upon luck is proportional to how 'good' you are. In that case, I would rather be good.
I wander if there is a mathematical formula that can prove this...

Great film by the way, except for the silly bit...

Before you get too carried away, Rob, you should remember that the Origins discussion forum, like the main board, should still be limited to posts of a scientific nature. This simple rule, along with a few others, is clearly available for your reading pleasure at the top of each discussion board.

Oh yeah, sorry. You can delete this if you wish. I won't mind.

I'd rather be lucky. Being good would lead to pride when really, being good is just lucky in disguise.

No, no no it isn't! Luck is beyond all control. The whole point in being good at something means that you have control over it.

You'd rather be lucky?! -Because you are afraid of being arrogant?! Practice some self-dicipline, please!

We are only good at things because we were "lucky" enough to have an apptitude for the skill to begin with or "lucky" enough to live in an environment conducive to recognizing the apptitude.
I'm really good at what I do...but that's because I have a natural knack for it and then I took classes to develop the knack. I was just lucky.

Or because our parents were good at survival and raising children.

In some cases, being lucky and good are mutually exclusive.

Lucky enough to be good at something because you are lucky enough to have good parents who were lucky enough to be good because they were lucky enough to have good parents themselves.....

ok, you win the debate.

"being good is just lucky in disguise"

- So is being bad, (or evil) just unlucky in disguise?

Blacknad.

Who defines good and bad?

And who appoints that person. This is all nonsense.

If someone shot either you or someone close to you, I think pretty quickly you would define that as bad.

But in essence I agree, without an authority there is no good or bad.

Blacknad.

Absolutely. But what if I was the shooter?

What if it was war? What the other person had a gun too. Good and bad are defined by the victor. If WWII had turned out differently do you think the Nazi's would have abolished themselves for the concentration camps?

So we are agreed that there must be an authority to define good and bad and I suspect you will also agree that the authority is, by definition, the victor. So it is all subjective nonsense.

If I sleep with your daughter I say it is good. You might have quite another opinion of the affair. Who is right? Well if she is under 16 the law. Otherwise neither of our opinions is worth a thing beyond massaging our egos.

Good in the context of the question I asked to begin with was good at a job. Not righteous.

Ahhhh! So it was.

Blacknad.

Right, we were speaking of good as in skilled.

but....
Socrates has a long argument about what is good. If I remember correctly, he used the law somewhat in order to measure it. And, I think in the end, that is why he accepted his own execution by gracefully swallowing the given poison instead of escaping his own sentence. Because he believed it was the right and good thing to do.

How does that connect in any way with this discussion??

It steps off on the tangent DA introduced. It ackowledges the tangent, and then makes room to discuss other things than the original topic that has become moot. That's how it relates to the discussion.

If you don't want to go off on a new tangent then we can just let the string lapse into the past.

ok, who CARES if socrates had a long argument about what is good? If he was stupid enough to take his own life, as you say, because of the law then he deserves to die! He took his own life for a set of rules that some government invented to keep people in line?! He calles that good?! I would love to see a political leader take their life because they broke the law. Now that would be good...

Actually that would be Japan.

And given the behaviour of quite a few extant politicians one might be easily persuaded to bring back the practice. With a vengence.