The assumption is that fresh hires are more up-to-date with the latest technologies & trends, and thus are more valuable in a fast-moving market.
I don't think that's quite accurate anymore, as university CS programs really don't deal with the latest expensive enterprisey software products, nor teach the latest fad portable, social media, and web library technologies. While a kid playing around with computers can learn programming languages and OSes, that's really not the skill requirement of your typical programmer employee nowadays (though it is an important subset); knowing specific programs and their APIs is.
Workers of any age (even the young ones) can easily drift behind as well, if they settle in to just 1 programming language/model/tool/etc that they like.
It all comes down to personal drive to continually learn. A fresh CS grad who hasn't kept himself up in his own time is already behind. An older worker who hasn't kept himself up is already behind. But the idiots among the managers like making destructive generalizations, like correlating age to cutting-edge, instead of self-learning to cutting-edge.
I fully agree. I was really hoping to see an article where hardware students are doing things like assembling ARM SoCs together into custom clusters, deciding tradeoffs between component count/speed and power consumption.
It's like they did their best to strip out any sort of true innovation from this contest, and company visions like SiCortex (RIP) are blotted from "the right way" to do things.
I've got a piddly 2Mbit/sec cheap connection here in urban USA, and top out at around 200KB/sec download speed. However, some sites can't push data to fill even that little pipe. If they are measuring sustained speed of a single download, your 20Mbit/sec connection can theoretically go 2MB/sec but are the server connections you're downloading from capable of sustaining those upload speeds for common uses? What about traffic congestion further behind the point of speed throttle you're paying for?
My N800 only draws 5W max at the plug. IIRC my "ancient" Jornada 720 does as well. I've been planning to repurpose my N800 as an always-on wireless server once I get a replacement handheld. You can get last-gen handhelds in a similar price range as these plug computers.
It's a cynical attempt to try to do something to try to stop the spiraling poll numbers for him and the Democrats.
The saddest thing about a political party shooting itself in the foot is that voters flock right back to the other party that just got done bending them over a few scant years ago.
Some pundits are predicting the biggest GOP majority since 1946.
See what I mean? I live in a country of absolutely, objectively insane people, by the Einstein/Franklin/whoever definition. The Dem/Rep "balance" is just a unified festering toilet that needs to be flushed.
1) Do you need to back up absolutely everything? Are many of your giant files just ripped from your DVD collection, or re-downloadable? I've got a 1TB data drive and use my "old" 500GB for backup, and it's got plenty of room for the portion that actually needs backing up.
2) They're cheap. A 1TB drive is like $60 nowadays. Getting a drive smaller than that will probably be higher bytes-per-dollar, so might as well get two of the same if you don't have an older one handy. And like the others have said, mirroring is NOT a backup solution. Many classes of problems and user errors will simply reflect to both drives and leave you screwed.
Not to mention the public school system's increasing destruction of any sort of creativity or outside-the-box thinking/behavior of students, strict punishment of students who are smarter than their teachers (who are treated increasingly poorly, and losing the better ones), and extra rewards to sub-par performers.
They actually expected "sufficiently bright people" to continue to rise from that system?
Another side of a similar coin is getting an MBA. That could be very useful for somebody who has been doing anything professionally for 10 years, and is interacting with management/investors, leading teams, doing product/project direction, or becoming an entrepreneur.
If different cultures differ greatly on this matter, why do you believe it is not a cultural feature? Occam's razor vs a innate trait that is repressed depending on whatever.
You CANNOT be rich unless you exploited people to become so.
You do not understand how wealth works. I perform a great service that people are happy to pay me for. I invent something, pay good money for its manufacture & sale, people love it, and it sells millions. Who have I exploited? Business is the creation of wealth, not the reluctant sequestration of somebody else's money. It's turning skills, time, and raw materials into more valuable goods and services, ie a delta-positive change in the total sum of wealth in society. Good trades have both parties benefiting from the transaction; the customer got their money's worth for something they wanted/needed, and the business has another successful sale.
I also don't believe we should give them any say whatsoever in how the world is run (making lobbying and campaign donations the most undemocratic idea in history) because they are ipso-facto the worst possible people to give that say to.
They are the ones who know how to create wealth from nothing but their own skills and sweat, bring motive force to society at large, and have true leadership capabilities, or else they wouldn't be able to get where they are. They are the SOLE reason EVERYBODY else can have jobs, PERIOD. Of course, there are some bad apples that get all the press, but most millionaire+ level people out there are hard-working folksy blue-collar types who have grown their own business. I'm sure that number is far less where people are not free to be entrepreneurs, or are artificially restricted in growth, but that majority is the western norm.
They are the kind of people who don't feel compassion and believe it's okay to enrich yourself at the expense of others.
Okay, now you're just being blindly and ignorantly prejudiced against the wealthy. I don't believe you've ever interacted with anybody in that situation; you're just going from bad stereotypes you've heard on TV. Educate yourself; you sound like a little kid when you say things like that. I'm sure these numbers only come from the true sharing poor people, not anybody rich who would ever dare parting with their precious blood money.
I have a question for you. How do you define "society" ? I define it as: a construct of individuals sharing resources for collective benefit.
Well, "society" with no qualifiers can also suck, go on for generations being self-destructive, crumble into chaos, etc etc. "Society" is just a unit of people who consistently interact with each other in life. But I'd center a *well-functioning* human society's definition around mutually beneficial acts. It has little to do with resources, but more with trade of time, allowances, trust, and also goods & services. When those things are protected by the powers that be (either strong cultural norms, or legal systems), people feel free to explore and pioneer options in life freely and safely. If and when things go bad, people should be free to leave/change/not participate, instead of being forced to share in a corrupt or broken system, or even a system they disagree with.
So if sharing resources is by definition a crucial aspect of WHY individuals form a society in the first place - then how can you justify rules within that society that prevents this from happening ?
I've said that sharing is a cultural side-effect of balancing more basic drives in particular situations. All the societal behaviors you describe can be (and have been) more easily explained from basic primal "selfish" traits that yield societal benefit.
Again: How do you reconcile the Stanford prison experiment with your conclusion?
But we can at least identify an evolutionary trend that favors sharing of resources and declare it a basic human trait as it is among ALL social animals
That in particular was the point I was debating against. I don't think it's a scientifically valid conclusion to state that humans have an innate drive to share, and all your presented support for it can already be explained by more established behavioral observations.
Now, the one facet of primary drivers that might be closest to what you're looking for is that people have varying degrees of feeling a nurturing/parental/leadership responsibility for their peer group. Most of the time this manifests in a successful leader convincing/forcing _others_ to "play well" to the best advantage of the group from the leader's perspective. This also has some similarities to much of the anti-rich mentalities, where a person is detached from those called to make a sacrifice, but will still reap the reward.
But to say that the average individual is primally and innately driven to share "in general" with the world at large goes against all of human history and present, from my vantage point. Leadership constantly has to battle and pull hen's teeth in order to get people to "play by the rules" and "do their part", whether it be a family or a country. The concept of "fair" doesn't exist anywhere in nature or in our hardwiring.
I'm not a behavioral scientist, but I am confident from my reading that people seek advantage for themselves and, secondarily, for the tight circle of those they feel intimate with.
Important question: How does your conclusion mesh with the Stanford prison experiment? The subjects underwent psychological evaluation and they selected average, mentally/socially healthy modern people.
but we sure as hell don't want to let the cheaters be in charge or resource allocation ! NO social animal is THAT stupid.
Whoever can and will take charge, does so. This is especially true in the context of pure Darwinian processes, but also in legal/government structures.
So your entire basis for determining the best direction humanity should take is what "has the best chance of succeeding"? Regardless of the state of the outcome, collectively take the path of least resistance?
Everything you say makes sense but you're still missing out on the fact that there IS some science.
Yes, science can determine what has happened in the past, what current mechanisms are like, and what the future is tending towards. However, there is no science behind a _purpose_ that we _should be_ pursuing, because that requires setting up some measure by which we evaluate how "good" a certain direction is, which is the realm of belief.
That there is a degree of philosophy in my thinking is true (but I beg to differ - it's not religious in the least, on the contrary - it's decidedly humanist) but that the things I stated here are based on verifiable scientific fact is not even worth arguing about.
Stating the mechanisms of survival is fine. Stating that there are duties and expectations that are demanded of all of humanity is not. It's not scientific, it's not practical, and it is religious in the sense of subscribing to and upholding a pedestalized philosophy based on arbitrary axioms above all else. You've taken the step from seeing what humanity is (science, fact), to declaring the purpose it is "created" to achieve (application of arbitrary, subjective belief), and that it is "wrong" to deny that purpose.
There will be resistance from belief systems that are built on seperatism, but to declare that the volcano god's desire for a sacrifice is an equal belief to the one that says "there is a basic drive to survive in all living things -and therefore it's only to be expected that we as humans should try to survive as a species" is just plain stupid.
Why is separatism worse? You're making another axiomatic claim based on your personal beliefs about what "should be". And yes, you've made no case besides defaulting to your own humanism belief subscription as to why the "we should survive" is better than some "only the worthy/chosen/whatever survive" notion or any other view. Heck, a purely Darwinistic view of allowing the weak or unproductive to die in order to keep the gene pool clean has a lot of science behind it, too (as in, pretty much all of nature).
The second one is based on observable, testable, verifiable science.
No, it takes observable, testable, verifiable science, which makes no claim of what purpose humanity _should_ pursue. Then it's only when you start mixing in your arbitrarily selected beliefs that you have axioms by which to measure a notion of right/wrong and gauge how the science "should" be applied to yield results in line with your beliefs.
Sharing rituals are core to every child-raising pattern everywhere in the world.
Yes, it's what worked in small clans, and the fact that children still must be taught these notions (and how often the teaching is ignored by the children even through adulthood) is telling about nature vs nurture for that particular trait.
The belief in sharing is a fundamental drive - we demand and expect to see the wealthy (selfish and greedy as they are) do charity because we expect of them to share. We never stop thinking they are selfish and greedy when they do, but that illusion of sharing still somehow satisfies us even as they amass billions while so many of our kinsmen starve. It plays to our evolutionary drive to share resources (it's bad theater but it works).
Based on scientific history of how economies work, applied with arbitrary beliefs, what you've said above is nothing but pure, seething, destructive evil. How dare you seek to limit the greatness and potential of capable people by your own measure of failure! You wish to break the backs of those who bring motive force, in order to reward those who deny and waste their own abilities. Live your own life to its fullest, and take the success of others as encouragement, not as an artificial zero-sum game.
And your above claim about "sharing" is 100% doublethink rationali
Sorry for needing clarification, but the first line was intended to be "or any _universal_ "SHOULD!" mandate", in contrast to the personal "We should do this" opinions that individuals might hold.
Well by your logic how do you justify a right to live ? Let alone more esoteric rights like property ?
A right to live (and any other right) is upheld by agreement among members of societies. There is no logical justification, or any "SHOULD!", upheld rights are simply everybody being on the same page with "We should do this; we perceive this as beneficial" and establishing those beliefs as law or convention.
Some societies do not uphold the right to live, with expendable classes of people and death sentences that can be exacted at the whim of leadership, and still survive. The fact that individuals within a society that does uphold certain rights personally defy them, and cause a criminal element, is a constant throughout all of human history.
The right not to be murdered, the right not to have your share of the food stolen from you (e.g. the foundation of property rights), the right to share and cooperate -these can all be traced back to basic survival and evolutionary urges, codified into law later on when we developed the idea of making laws.
Now, there's a real funny dichotomy being glossed over here: The desire not to be stolen from, and the desire to steal from others. Both are purely naturalistic traits of human behavior, and both exist in the vast majority of people. Some societies allow that which others abhor; each side claims they're just following "the natural order of things" to justify their choice.
Also, there is another major point I want to address, trying not to get too lengthy. Perceiving what you see as beneficial to humans always falls back to the question "Why is man here?"; it requires some scale to measure actions against and is absolutely, undeniably arbitrary.
Many times, this question is simply not asked and people live by their naturalistic impulses, tending towards tight-knit clans as default, natural human survivalist behavior; where benevolence is shown to those in the fold, antagonism is held towards those outside, and clans split after reaching certain sizes. Religions and cultures form around answering that question, and allow humanity to scale beyond clans (now, whether or not this is beneficial or should be pursued is still supported by beliefs only).
By you dictating that man should pursue survival, you're a peer in the same pool; how is presenting survival as the ultimate goal of humanity different from any other belief that presents other ultimate goals for humanity? The inalienable rights that naturally stem from the belief-based axiom "Every human must be allowed to live", are different from the inalienable rights that naturally stem from the belief-based axiom "Humanity exists only to please the volcano god", and are different from the inalienable rights that naturally stem from the belief-based axiom "The earth is our mother and must be protected at all cost, even if humanity is destroyed". Direct survival is simply one of many paths that humans pursue, and many societies certainly did not die out even without survival as its #1 established priority.
I guess my elevator pitch is this: There will never be consensus on the purpose of humanity (which dictates what humans perceive as beneficial), nor will there ever be consensus on how to pursue the plurality of humanity's perceived beneficial goals. Taking any slice of humanity's activity and calling it "natural" and defensible, while calling the remaining portion the opposite, is nonsensical in a logical sense, and is purely based on some underlying belief set and is a peer among many views. You cannot call it universal.
You are still choosing to believe that your own personal view (no matter how many people share it) is superior, because it best reflects how you perceive society to benefit, and that reflects your core belief that humanity's goal is to survive, which I cannot stop preventing myself from calling a religious belief. Your view on "natural rights" is based on your beliefs, and your only test for the validity of those rights are how well they match with your beliefs, and you end up with the same circular righteous justification as anybody you disagree with.
Where does your entitlement to survival come from, regarding an evolutionary basis? It doesn't exist, survival is just something that happened to have happened. The universe doesn't care if you live or die, or if humanity lives or dies. These rights only exist in the minds of people who do care, and have their own wildly differing beliefs, opinions, and traditions on how mankind can/should best survive, which they regard as so fundamental that they risk life and limb defending them.
Plus there are people who don't give a rip about human survival (as individuals or the species), and those numbers might be growing as humanity distances itself more and more from its traditional survival based lifestyle we're wired for.
There is clearly no universal concrete "natural" direction for these claims of rights at all, ESPECIALLY when viewed in an evolutionary perspective. Humanity continues to go along in all sorts of directions at the same time.
What you're basically saying is that because there is a status quo (human survival up to this point), it MUST be maintained just... because! (Now, I'm not advocating the destruction of humanity, just calling you out to justify the rights you claim.)
Rights are not "how it should be" etc. They are not opinions or beliefs. They are facts. They are universal, for every one, every where, every time.
Defend this statement. You're expressing something you believe to be axiomatic, but simply has not stood the test of time. People never have and will never agree on a universal set of "right" and "wrong".
Words have meaning. Words like right, grant, etc, all have very specific and well defined meaning when talking about rights in general and copyright specifically.
Within certain legal jurisdictions, yes. As universal claims of truth and a definition of a single appropriate order of mankind? No.
My statements have neither been arguing in favor of copyright or against it. Only about the appropriate use of the language surrounding the issue. I do this because corruption of the language surrounding the issue is an intentional ploy to subvert the laws as written with fear, uncertainty and doubt. You have fallen for that ploy and continue to apply the wrong meaning to the language you are using.
And of course, I view your statements in the same light, as a corruption of meaning of concepts and misapplication of terms, taking one country's chosen perspective and claiming it to be a revelation of universal justice that all humanity must bow to.
It is also a natural right to be able to throw pointy sticks. It is also a natural right to not be stabbed by flying pointy sticks.
Says who? One person says they have a natural right, another person says that natural right does not exist. How do you determine which is correct?
This is all 100% subjective opinion and belief stated as fact. Yes, you might fervently and religiously believe in the right not to be stabbed as a universal right that all humans have, but that belief does not make it a universal truth. A country may acknowledge certain rights and enforce them, but that does not make it a universal truth.
Survival has nothing to do with moral rights & wrongs. There is always a conflict between short-term beneficial behavior which stems from survivalist wiring, and moral/ethical claims about what's more "fair" and "right". Evolution is not some benevolent, personified, moral system; it's simply what happened to survive in an environment.
Human survival instincts are based around behavior beneficial to a family clan. This yields a lot of xenophobic traits, and the willingness to share among your own but not others. Many moralities claim that this is an immoral restriction, and is just one example of how moral codes are in conflict with evolutionary survival behavior.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Nope, that's not a universal value that all of mankind shares, due to the existence of caste systems and other elitist structures.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Nope, that's not a universal value that all of mankind shares, due to the prevalence of xenophobia and cultural inertia.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Yeah, right. Tell that to a murderer or slave owner.
etc.
While these are pithy statements that most "reasonable" people will have some measure of agreement with (though there are a ton of entitlement rights in there that are serious slippery slopes), these are not universally held beliefs.
Stop breaking my sentence structure to say something that I did not say. This is the 2nd time it happened. There is an "or" in the sentence, and I did not use "establish" as "create".
"Rights are established by 1) governments as acknowledged and enforced (legal rights), or 2) held and enforced as social/religious/cultural norms within subgroups of people."
Sure, you can believe in any of your own non-established rights that you personally believe in, but cannot act on them without risking in conflict with the legal system or societal resistance. Social, familial, religious, and other groups do this all the time, claiming their own set of natural rights.
Freedom of speech is a right held by every human being on the planet.
WRONG. The US government is defined as believing that freedom of speech is a right held by every human being on the planet. How did this become universal truth just because one country decided to live that way? I assure you, there are tons of "natural" decisions other countries live by that you do not take as universal.
Slashdot Mirror
The assumption is that fresh hires are more up-to-date with the latest technologies & trends, and thus are more valuable in a fast-moving market.
I don't think that's quite accurate anymore, as university CS programs really don't deal with the latest expensive enterprisey software products, nor teach the latest fad portable, social media, and web library technologies. While a kid playing around with computers can learn programming languages and OSes, that's really not the skill requirement of your typical programmer employee nowadays (though it is an important subset); knowing specific programs and their APIs is.
Workers of any age (even the young ones) can easily drift behind as well, if they settle in to just 1 programming language/model/tool/etc that they like.
It all comes down to personal drive to continually learn. A fresh CS grad who hasn't kept himself up in his own time is already behind. An older worker who hasn't kept himself up is already behind. But the idiots among the managers like making destructive generalizations, like correlating age to cutting-edge, instead of self-learning to cutting-edge.
I fully agree. I was really hoping to see an article where hardware students are doing things like assembling ARM SoCs together into custom clusters, deciding tradeoffs between component count/speed and power consumption.
It's like they did their best to strip out any sort of true innovation from this contest, and company visions like SiCortex (RIP) are blotted from "the right way" to do things.
I'm trying to think of how to sensibly respond to such a way-out-in-left-field response, but the only thing I can think of is:
*whooosh*
I've got a piddly 2Mbit/sec cheap connection here in urban USA, and top out at around 200KB/sec download speed. However, some sites can't push data to fill even that little pipe. If they are measuring sustained speed of a single download, your 20Mbit/sec connection can theoretically go 2MB/sec but are the server connections you're downloading from capable of sustaining those upload speeds for common uses? What about traffic congestion further behind the point of speed throttle you're paying for?
My N800 only draws 5W max at the plug. IIRC my "ancient" Jornada 720 does as well. I've been planning to repurpose my N800 as an always-on wireless server once I get a replacement handheld. You can get last-gen handhelds in a similar price range as these plug computers.
Doug Walker quitting his job
Which IRC network?
</getoffmylawn>
It's a cynical attempt to try to do something to try to stop the spiraling poll numbers for him and the Democrats.
The saddest thing about a political party shooting itself in the foot is that voters flock right back to the other party that just got done bending them over a few scant years ago.
Some pundits are predicting the biggest GOP majority since 1946.
See what I mean? I live in a country of absolutely, objectively insane people, by the Einstein/Franklin/whoever definition. The Dem/Rep "balance" is just a unified festering toilet that needs to be flushed.
1) Do you need to back up absolutely everything? Are many of your giant files just ripped from your DVD collection, or re-downloadable? I've got a 1TB data drive and use my "old" 500GB for backup, and it's got plenty of room for the portion that actually needs backing up.
2) They're cheap. A 1TB drive is like $60 nowadays. Getting a drive smaller than that will probably be higher bytes-per-dollar, so might as well get two of the same if you don't have an older one handy. And like the others have said, mirroring is NOT a backup solution. Many classes of problems and user errors will simply reflect to both drives and leave you screwed.
But hard drives aren't, even with necessary migration to mitigate drive failure.
Not to mention the public school system's increasing destruction of any sort of creativity or outside-the-box thinking/behavior of students, strict punishment of students who are smarter than their teachers (who are treated increasingly poorly, and losing the better ones), and extra rewards to sub-par performers.
They actually expected "sufficiently bright people" to continue to rise from that system?
Another side of a similar coin is getting an MBA. That could be very useful for somebody who has been doing anything professionally for 10 years, and is interacting with management/investors, leading teams, doing product/project direction, or becoming an entrepreneur.
when the contractions are 5 minutes apart
If different cultures differ greatly on this matter, why do you believe it is not a cultural feature? Occam's razor vs a innate trait that is repressed depending on whatever.
You CANNOT be rich unless you exploited people to become so.
You do not understand how wealth works. I perform a great service that people are happy to pay me for. I invent something, pay good money for its manufacture & sale, people love it, and it sells millions. Who have I exploited? Business is the creation of wealth, not the reluctant sequestration of somebody else's money. It's turning skills, time, and raw materials into more valuable goods and services, ie a delta-positive change in the total sum of wealth in society. Good trades have both parties benefiting from the transaction; the customer got their money's worth for something they wanted/needed, and the business has another successful sale.
I also don't believe we should give them any say whatsoever in how the world is run (making lobbying and campaign donations the most undemocratic idea in history) because they are ipso-facto the worst possible people to give that say to.
They are the ones who know how to create wealth from nothing but their own skills and sweat, bring motive force to society at large, and have true leadership capabilities, or else they wouldn't be able to get where they are. They are the SOLE reason EVERYBODY else can have jobs, PERIOD. Of course, there are some bad apples that get all the press, but most millionaire+ level people out there are hard-working folksy blue-collar types who have grown their own business. I'm sure that number is far less where people are not free to be entrepreneurs, or are artificially restricted in growth, but that majority is the western norm.
They are the kind of people who don't feel compassion and believe it's okay to enrich yourself at the expense of others.
Okay, now you're just being blindly and ignorantly prejudiced against the wealthy. I don't believe you've ever interacted with anybody in that situation; you're just going from bad stereotypes you've heard on TV. Educate yourself; you sound like a little kid when you say things like that. I'm sure these numbers only come from the true sharing poor people, not anybody rich who would ever dare parting with their precious blood money.
I have a question for you. How do you define "society" ?
I define it as: a construct of individuals sharing resources for collective benefit.
Well, "society" with no qualifiers can also suck, go on for generations being self-destructive, crumble into chaos, etc etc. "Society" is just a unit of people who consistently interact with each other in life. But I'd center a *well-functioning* human society's definition around mutually beneficial acts. It has little to do with resources, but more with trade of time, allowances, trust, and also goods & services. When those things are protected by the powers that be (either strong cultural norms, or legal systems), people feel free to explore and pioneer options in life freely and safely. If and when things go bad, people should be free to leave/change/not participate, instead of being forced to share in a corrupt or broken system, or even a system they disagree with.
So if sharing resources is by definition a crucial aspect of WHY individuals form a society in the first place - then how can you justify rules within that society that prevents this from happening ?
I've said that sharing is a cultural side-effect of balancing more basic drives in particular situations. All the societal behaviors you describe can be (and have been) more easily explained from basic primal "selfish" traits that yield societal benefit.
Again: How do you reconcile the Stanford prison experiment with your conclusion?
But we can at least identify an evolutionary trend that favors sharing of resources and declare it a basic human trait as it is among ALL social animals
That in particular was the point I was debating against. I don't think it's a scientifically valid conclusion to state that humans have an innate drive to share, and all your presented support for it can already be explained by more established behavioral observations.
Now, the one facet of primary drivers that might be closest to what you're looking for is that people have varying degrees of feeling a nurturing/parental/leadership responsibility for their peer group. Most of the time this manifests in a successful leader convincing/forcing _others_ to "play well" to the best advantage of the group from the leader's perspective. This also has some similarities to much of the anti-rich mentalities, where a person is detached from those called to make a sacrifice, but will still reap the reward.
But to say that the average individual is primally and innately driven to share "in general" with the world at large goes against all of human history and present, from my vantage point. Leadership constantly has to battle and pull hen's teeth in order to get people to "play by the rules" and "do their part", whether it be a family or a country. The concept of "fair" doesn't exist anywhere in nature or in our hardwiring.
I'm not a behavioral scientist, but I am confident from my reading that people seek advantage for themselves and, secondarily, for the tight circle of those they feel intimate with.
Important question: How does your conclusion mesh with the Stanford prison experiment? The subjects underwent psychological evaluation and they selected average, mentally/socially healthy modern people.
but we sure as hell don't want to let the cheaters be in charge or resource allocation ! NO social animal is THAT stupid.
Whoever can and will take charge, does so. This is especially true in the context of pure Darwinian processes, but also in legal/government structures.
You can buy some cheap analog microscopes for under $20, and some digital ones in the $50 range too.
This cell phone attachment is no more enabling of self-diagnosis than any prior available equipment, but it's easier to deploy to people in the field.
So your entire basis for determining the best direction humanity should take is what "has the best chance of succeeding"? Regardless of the state of the outcome, collectively take the path of least resistance?
Everything you say makes sense but you're still missing out on the fact that there IS some science.
Yes, science can determine what has happened in the past, what current mechanisms are like, and what the future is tending towards. However, there is no science behind a _purpose_ that we _should be_ pursuing, because that requires setting up some measure by which we evaluate how "good" a certain direction is, which is the realm of belief.
That there is a degree of philosophy in my thinking is true (but I beg to differ - it's not religious in the least, on the contrary - it's decidedly humanist) but that the things I stated here are based on verifiable scientific fact is not even worth arguing about.
Stating the mechanisms of survival is fine. Stating that there are duties and expectations that are demanded of all of humanity is not. It's not scientific, it's not practical, and it is religious in the sense of subscribing to and upholding a pedestalized philosophy based on arbitrary axioms above all else. You've taken the step from seeing what humanity is (science, fact), to declaring the purpose it is "created" to achieve (application of arbitrary, subjective belief), and that it is "wrong" to deny that purpose.
There will be resistance from belief systems that are built on seperatism, but to declare that the volcano god's desire for a sacrifice is an equal belief to the one that says "there is a basic drive to survive in all living things -and therefore it's only to be expected that we as humans should try to survive as a species" is just plain stupid.
Why is separatism worse? You're making another axiomatic claim based on your personal beliefs about what "should be". And yes, you've made no case besides defaulting to your own humanism belief subscription as to why the "we should survive" is better than some "only the worthy/chosen/whatever survive" notion or any other view. Heck, a purely Darwinistic view of allowing the weak or unproductive to die in order to keep the gene pool clean has a lot of science behind it, too (as in, pretty much all of nature).
The second one is based on observable, testable, verifiable science.
No, it takes observable, testable, verifiable science, which makes no claim of what purpose humanity _should_ pursue. Then it's only when you start mixing in your arbitrarily selected beliefs that you have axioms by which to measure a notion of right/wrong and gauge how the science "should" be applied to yield results in line with your beliefs.
Sharing rituals are core to every child-raising pattern everywhere in the world.
Yes, it's what worked in small clans, and the fact that children still must be taught these notions (and how often the teaching is ignored by the children even through adulthood) is telling about nature vs nurture for that particular trait.
The belief in sharing is a fundamental drive - we demand and expect to see the wealthy (selfish and greedy as they are) do charity because we expect of them to share. We never stop thinking they are selfish and greedy when they do, but that illusion of sharing still somehow satisfies us even as they amass billions while so many of our kinsmen starve. It plays to our evolutionary drive to share resources (it's bad theater but it works).
Based on scientific history of how economies work, applied with arbitrary beliefs, what you've said above is nothing but pure, seething, destructive evil. How dare you seek to limit the greatness and potential of capable people by your own measure of failure! You wish to break the backs of those who bring motive force, in order to reward those who deny and waste their own abilities. Live your own life to its fullest, and take the success of others as encouragement, not as an artificial zero-sum game.
And your above claim about "sharing" is 100% doublethink rationali
Sorry for needing clarification, but the first line was intended to be "or any _universal_ "SHOULD!" mandate", in contrast to the personal "We should do this" opinions that individuals might hold.
Well by your logic how do you justify a right to live ? Let alone more esoteric rights like property ?
A right to live (and any other right) is upheld by agreement among members of societies. There is no logical justification, or any "SHOULD!", upheld rights are simply everybody being on the same page with "We should do this; we perceive this as beneficial" and establishing those beliefs as law or convention.
Some societies do not uphold the right to live, with expendable classes of people and death sentences that can be exacted at the whim of leadership, and still survive. The fact that individuals within a society that does uphold certain rights personally defy them, and cause a criminal element, is a constant throughout all of human history.
The right not to be murdered, the right not to have your share of the food stolen from you (e.g. the foundation of property rights), the right to share and cooperate -these can all be traced back to basic survival and evolutionary urges, codified into law later on when we developed the idea of making laws.
Now, there's a real funny dichotomy being glossed over here: The desire not to be stolen from, and the desire to steal from others. Both are purely naturalistic traits of human behavior, and both exist in the vast majority of people. Some societies allow that which others abhor; each side claims they're just following "the natural order of things" to justify their choice.
Also, there is another major point I want to address, trying not to get too lengthy. Perceiving what you see as beneficial to humans always falls back to the question "Why is man here?"; it requires some scale to measure actions against and is absolutely, undeniably arbitrary.
Many times, this question is simply not asked and people live by their naturalistic impulses, tending towards tight-knit clans as default, natural human survivalist behavior; where benevolence is shown to those in the fold, antagonism is held towards those outside, and clans split after reaching certain sizes. Religions and cultures form around answering that question, and allow humanity to scale beyond clans (now, whether or not this is beneficial or should be pursued is still supported by beliefs only).
By you dictating that man should pursue survival, you're a peer in the same pool; how is presenting survival as the ultimate goal of humanity different from any other belief that presents other ultimate goals for humanity? The inalienable rights that naturally stem from the belief-based axiom "Every human must be allowed to live", are different from the inalienable rights that naturally stem from the belief-based axiom "Humanity exists only to please the volcano god", and are different from the inalienable rights that naturally stem from the belief-based axiom "The earth is our mother and must be protected at all cost, even if humanity is destroyed". Direct survival is simply one of many paths that humans pursue, and many societies certainly did not die out even without survival as its #1 established priority.
I guess my elevator pitch is this: There will never be consensus on the purpose of humanity (which dictates what humans perceive as beneficial), nor will there ever be consensus on how to pursue the plurality of humanity's perceived beneficial goals. Taking any slice of humanity's activity and calling it "natural" and defensible, while calling the remaining portion the opposite, is nonsensical in a logical sense, and is purely based on some underlying belief set and is a peer among many views. You cannot call it universal.
You are still choosing to believe that your own personal view (no matter how many people share it) is superior, because it best reflects how you perceive society to benefit, and that reflects your core belief that humanity's goal is to survive, which I cannot stop preventing myself from calling a religious belief. Your view on "natural rights" is based on your beliefs, and your only test for the validity of those rights are how well they match with your beliefs, and you end up with the same circular righteous justification as anybody you disagree with.
Where does your entitlement to survival come from, regarding an evolutionary basis? It doesn't exist, survival is just something that happened to have happened. The universe doesn't care if you live or die, or if humanity lives or dies. These rights only exist in the minds of people who do care, and have their own wildly differing beliefs, opinions, and traditions on how mankind can/should best survive, which they regard as so fundamental that they risk life and limb defending them.
Plus there are people who don't give a rip about human survival (as individuals or the species), and those numbers might be growing as humanity distances itself more and more from its traditional survival based lifestyle we're wired for.
There is clearly no universal concrete "natural" direction for these claims of rights at all, ESPECIALLY when viewed in an evolutionary perspective. Humanity continues to go along in all sorts of directions at the same time.
What you're basically saying is that because there is a status quo (human survival up to this point), it MUST be maintained just ... because! (Now, I'm not advocating the destruction of humanity, just calling you out to justify the rights you claim.)
Rights are not "how it should be" etc. They are not opinions or beliefs. They are facts. They are universal, for every one, every where, every time.
Defend this statement. You're expressing something you believe to be axiomatic, but simply has not stood the test of time. People never have and will never agree on a universal set of "right" and "wrong".
Words have meaning. Words like right, grant, etc, all have very specific and well defined meaning when talking about rights in general and copyright specifically.
Within certain legal jurisdictions, yes. As universal claims of truth and a definition of a single appropriate order of mankind? No.
My statements have neither been arguing in favor of copyright or against it. Only about the appropriate use of the language surrounding the issue. I do this because corruption of the language surrounding the issue is an intentional ploy to subvert the laws as written with fear, uncertainty and doubt. You have fallen for that ploy and continue to apply the wrong meaning to the language you are using.
And of course, I view your statements in the same light, as a corruption of meaning of concepts and misapplication of terms, taking one country's chosen perspective and claiming it to be a revelation of universal justice that all humanity must bow to.
It is also a natural right to be able to throw pointy sticks. It is also a natural right to not be stabbed by flying pointy sticks.
Says who? One person says they have a natural right, another person says that natural right does not exist. How do you determine which is correct?
This is all 100% subjective opinion and belief stated as fact. Yes, you might fervently and religiously believe in the right not to be stabbed as a universal right that all humans have, but that belief does not make it a universal truth. A country may acknowledge certain rights and enforce them, but that does not make it a universal truth.
Survival has nothing to do with moral rights & wrongs. There is always a conflict between short-term beneficial behavior which stems from survivalist wiring, and moral/ethical claims about what's more "fair" and "right". Evolution is not some benevolent, personified, moral system; it's simply what happened to survive in an environment.
Human survival instincts are based around behavior beneficial to a family clan. This yields a lot of xenophobic traits, and the willingness to share among your own but not others. Many moralities claim that this is an immoral restriction, and is just one example of how moral codes are in conflict with evolutionary survival behavior.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Nope, that's not a universal value that all of mankind shares, due to the existence of caste systems and other elitist structures.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Nope, that's not a universal value that all of mankind shares, due to the prevalence of xenophobia and cultural inertia.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Yeah, right. Tell that to a murderer or slave owner.
etc.
While these are pithy statements that most "reasonable" people will have some measure of agreement with (though there are a ton of entitlement rights in there that are serious slippery slopes), these are not universally held beliefs.
Stop breaking my sentence structure to say something that I did not say. This is the 2nd time it happened. There is an "or" in the sentence, and I did not use "establish" as "create".
"Rights are established by
1) governments as acknowledged and enforced (legal rights), or
2) held and enforced as social/religious/cultural norms within subgroups of people."
Sure, you can believe in any of your own non-established rights that you personally believe in, but cannot act on them without risking in conflict with the legal system or societal resistance. Social, familial, religious, and other groups do this all the time, claiming their own set of natural rights.
Freedom of speech is a right held by every human being on the planet.
WRONG. The US government is defined as believing that freedom of speech is a right held by every human being on the planet. How did this become universal truth just because one country decided to live that way? I assure you, there are tons of "natural" decisions other countries live by that you do not take as universal.