I sometimes double-check on Fanatics; this one just got his Karma back. Believe me there are far more anti-nicotine and tobacco shills and Trolls out there than anybody with an objective sense of Logic or honesty.
Stupid people will continue, like history has shown us, continue to rule the world.
Don't waste your time. You can't have a rational conversation with a fanatic, whether he is anti-tobacco, pro-automobile, or whatever his obsession may be.
If you want something to hate, then I will refer you to my journal about how sugar should be outlawed. I do suspect most people to be hypocrites on the subject however; the people who want tobacco banned or heavily taxed probably don't want the same for sugar because they are sugar abusers.
Not only are you 100% correct (too bad you're modded troll for the truth, we have tobacco industry shills now? or is there just a paid slashdot modshilling enterprise?
He is a Flamer and an anti-tobacco nut. You and the Troll you allude to should look up some neuro-science text books instead of polishing the brass on the anti-tobacco bandwagon (if nicotine was not in tobacco then I can guarantee you that there wouldn't be so much bullshit commentary on the subject).
While it's nice to assume that in a place like America where we all pay our taxes and respect each-others rights, don't forget that relativizing right and wrong like that means that human rights are no longer 'right,' pedophilia is no longer 'wrong,' etc etc...
Pedophilia is never wrong. It's the people who hate children that are evil and that should be imprisoned. It is the Right Wing Neoconservatives who have ruined America. As long as the neoconservatives don't continue to put activist judges and police officers in power, then the U.S. will be a much less evil place to live.
have you thought about the posibility that when robots do all the jobs that no one wants to do, productivity might increase by enough to allow all the people to live comfortably
And I suppose I should add, that's what we have migrant labour for. Of course there will always be jobs that people don't want to do, and the productivity gains will be pocketed by the owners of the means of production. I'll be laughing when the prison population of the United States starts to saturate at 50% of the population. Labour is most affordable to corporations in U.S. penitentiaries, so I suspect the trends to continue.
Well there are philosophers who would argue that "irrationality" is part of "intelligence"
"irrationality" may be a part of "intelligence", but it isn't intelligent. For example, drinking Clorox to relieve thirst is not intelligent nor is it evolutionarily helpful except to eliminate the unintelligent.
Whatever the situation, I'm generally in favor of keeping a man in the loop.
You probably came to a rational decision based on the experiences that machines so far have been far from smart. I would probably make the same decision as yourself unless it could be proven that having a human in the loop was much more dangerous than having a machine in the loop.
why do we assume machine AI will be highly rational?
I assume nothing; rationality is the premise of the article however, so I am basing my arguments on that premise.
You seem to be implying that AI (smart machines) will be modeled on the human brain. I'm more idealistic then that. By "smart" machines, I will presume no inherent human fallibility will be programmed into their instincts. If these machines were fallible, they wouldn't be very smart.
That depends on their viewpoint on life, doesn't it? What are the goals and ambitions of a machine? Humans require resources and this waste of resources may not fit in their long term plans. The rational decision would be to terminate humans.
I could presume, that since these machines are created by humans, then these machines would be human-friendly and their goals would be to help humans.
have you thought about the posibility that when robots do all the jobs that no one wants to do, productivity might increase by enough to allow all the people to live comfortably.
That's only in places where the equitable distribution of wealth is valued and regulated by legislation. In a place like America this would be considered "communism". Everywhere else it is just Utopian thinking because technology has rarely if ever made work easier on people, it just enabled people to work harder. So, people may get their smart phones in the Utopia of the Future, but they will also be required to be on call 24/7.
Also, in politics, pure rationality leads to fascism.
Citation needed. I've always found fascists to behave in irrational ways. They tend to loose wars and get overthrown (eventually).
Lets face it, and I realize before I even posted, that most people have a romantic notion of what it is to be Human. Most people think that they are too special to be replaced by anything like a (hypothetical) "smart" machine.
The real difference is not in deciding (necessarily) what is logical, but in consistency of behavior between humans and (smart) machines. For example, if both humans and machines think that killing an intruder is rational, then both would carry out that action. The difference is that a smart machine would not shoot a foreign exchange student in a John Travolta costume on Halloween, but a human would.
A machine would see that you murdered someone in the case where it's if statement didn't contain an "and not" statement about you defending yourself.
A smart machine would realize when they don't have all the information to make an informed decision. Most humans that I have met think they make rational decisions based on what folklore they were raised with, and they tend to confabulate what they don't know. Smart machines would not do this.
But what if the rational conclusion is that those irrational humans should be eliminated so they stop being a danger?
I don't understand the question. If the machines make rational decisions then they should carry them out. Unlike irrational humans who tend to commit genocide when they think they can get away with it, smart machines will only eliminate humans when or if it is rational to do so. Smart machines fortunately, are rational, so they won't make any hasty decisions like humans always do when it comes to, for example, condemning innocent people to capital punishment, because smart machines don't have false or confabulated memories and they can't be bribed or persuaded by group think are charismatic personalities.
If violence, torture, murder and genocide are wrong; then smart machines will not carry them out. So far these things have been the pursuit of humans and not (smart) machines.
Why worry? I would think machines would be a lot less irrational than the people who make them. I look forward to a rational and unemotional overlord whose decisions don't depend on the irrationality of the human brain. Being smart is never bad. I'm more afraid of stupid humans than smart machines.
The NSA perfoms illegal wiretaps and then the government consults the public over web cookies? What next, rapists asking their victims if they'd object to being given a hicky?
Go, go "team freedom"!
What the AC wrote. This absurd universe we live in.
It gives the public (electorate) the impression that there is transparency and freedom to choose. I am grateful for every piece of illusion that makes reality more bearable. It sure beats the frontal lobotomies that were popular in the 1940s and 50s to treat moodiness and hyperactivity in children.
What a load of crap, back in 2006 NBC dateline had a bunch of muslims go to a Nascar race and see if they were harassed, guess what they were NOT bothered at all. This sort of idiotic bollocks is what perpetuates the myth that the US is full of racists.
I could only presume that DHS officials, and boarder guards don't hang out at Nascar events, because so-called "racial" profiling does go on in law enforcement. Racial profiling itself isn't necessarily wrong (however you may interpret that word), but it does lead to quite a lot of false positives and can perpetuate ethnic animosities. And I certainly doubt that NBC Dateline was able to read people's minds, because observing public behavior at a sporting event is not generally indicative of the types of stereotypes or prejudices people may or may not have. Journalism does often present itself as a shallow type of pseudo-science however.
It's interesting how sensitive people are to that bit of humour or rhetoric that spawned this thread. It obviously hit a nerve with people. Fascinating.
Awesome... do you guys have instant runoff voting so that the voters can vote freely?
No. We don't have voting machines either. We have tended to keep things simple, and so there is usually not a lot of controversy with the electoral system, just with the candidates.
It is generally considered that they are a slightly left party. By generally, I mean every media source, every political pundit, in fact every source I know.
I am certainly not basing my observations on the interpretations of the media or political pundits. I am making my observations based on policy decisions and on how they vote on legislation. The last term they voted for just about every piece of PM Harpers bills into reality. The Liberals are certainly more left of the Right, but not being extremists does not make them left wing. What the "media" says is useless. They are either beholden to advertisers and ratings or in terms of shows like the 700 Club, by special interest groups. There's an interesting write-up on the so-called "Liberal" magazine Time that says a lot here (ref, http://www.reason.com/news/show/134038.html.
The Liberals certainly have been more "socialist" than the new re-vamped Conservatives and under the reign of Mike Harris in Ontario (I'll mention again that he decimated the economy, the school system, increased taxes while claiming to have decreased taxes [through the process of "downloading" expenses onto the poorer populations of major cities, etc and so on]). The Liberals are just more subtle about these things because they don't want to alienate and potential voters. The Conservatives are more into burning bridges and claiming that people who disagree with their policies are "left wing". Does this sound American to you?
In my own province of Ontario the contemporary "Liberal" government has raised taxes on the poor (largely by increasing cigarette taxes substantially), but in their own words it is for the poor's own good (to suffer); "think of the children...". They have also banned Face Book from being used on government computers. These are just examples of Right Wing behavior, individually they don't add up to much, but all of their practices together add up to patterns of behavior that set them apart from more neutral or truly "Liberal" practices as is known by History and Political Science.
One must also realize that Right and Left are not just distinguished by economic issues, but by social issues as well. I did a journal on this not to long ago (it never ended up getting "published", but it remains as a link that I can reference; http://slashdot.org/~unlametheweak/journal/229887).
It has been disputed by at least one person here, but Political Compass is an excellent and rather neutral Web site that goes more deeply into the Left and Right interpretations. Many people of the Right, Left, and etc that I have talked to here on Slashdot seem to value that Web site as a good resource. You may want to take some time and read the details of it instead of just listing it as biased because I happened to use it as an example (http://www.politicalcompass.org/index). The original like that I gave out pertaining to the Liberals; http://www.politicalcompass.org/canada2008.
I'm sure the SIIA (along with their equivalents in the movie and music industry) are lobbying governments around the world to make sure that these scare tactics become reality. These organizations do want governments and prisons to support the business community. Labor is even cheaper in prison, and prisoners can't unionize and are not allowed to cast a vote.
Both the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party are centrist parties
You obviously don't know ANY of their policy decisions.
So to review the Liberal party is a centrist slightly leftist party.
It is obvious that everybody who is replying to me either has no education in politics or has an extreme right-wing perspective and agenda.
You and the other people who claim that the Liberals and the Conservatives are not right wing reminds me of the Religious Fundamentalists in the USA who claim that people who dismiss Intelligent Design are merely too biased to accept science that doesn't match their atheistic beliefs.
On the other hand, I do agree on your last statement (although so far most people here have claim that the NDP is extremist left wing, which means they are lying or are completely ignorant to the actual policy changes and non-changes that went into effect when they were elected into positions of power in provincial and municipal elections).
The Bloc Quebecois Party is a slightly right of center
They are in a class of themselves with a very regional agenda, so I didn't say too much about them.
Your next statement comes closer to reality (about the Conservatives):
The Conservatives had this problem, but they amalgamated the Progressive Conservatives (slightly right of center) and the Alliance/Reform Parties (Far right of center).
Unfortunately many of the moderates left after the amalgamation. I don't think the average Canadian realizes that the Conservatives haven't been as extremist as they could have been because they only had a small majority the last election, and are in a minority at present. Unlike in my own province of Ontario where they didn't give a shit about anything or anybody but their own agenda and basically paralleled the arrogance and incompetence of the Bush administration in the US.
To put things in overall context I will comment on the line from your other posted comment,
Him being gay and the Alliance being pretty much anti-gay I am sure had something to do with that. (Yes that is how Centric that PC party was in that they almost had a gay leader).
A lot of things like sexual preference don't make a big deal; if people are good at getting votes, etc then the party will use them. A lot of leaders of Hitler's SA were homosexual, and so too many Republicans in the US are gay, black, woman, etc. (I will explicitly note that Hitler purged the SA mainly because of outside pressure; i.e. the military who was his biggest threat at the time).
Eh? So, on your scale, in order to be counted anywhere left of center, a party must support price controls and large-scale nationalization of private businesses?
I don't have a personal scale. As I stated before and as I'll state again, my evidence is empirical and I left you (the audience) with at least one good quality, objective reference.
GP is absolutely right, your scale is very much skewed from a left extremist POV (and I say that as a leftie myself).
I will tell you outright that I am not left wing, in fact I dislike extremist attitudes on either side. The evidence speaks for itself; you or the other commentator can't change politics because it doesn't exactly suite your own political mantra of how you would like labels to be defined.
Your assymmetric criteria reinforce my prior assertion.
That sentence has does not make sense.
You argue that to be a left-winger you need to espouse something close to communism, but to be a right-winger someone only need to espouse policies that you don't particularly like.
I'm not making arguments on what it is to be a left-winger. I am merely making observations and I substantiated them with examples and evidence.
but to be a right-winger someone only need to espouse policies that you don't particularly like.
I haven't told you what policies I either like or dislike. You are projecting your political biases onto me.
You just list off pet issues and accuse the supporters of being neo-cons.
Once again, I just listed a very, very, very few examples to support my position.
The Canadian-DMCA is dead in the water.
Through historical accident it has been dormant for years. The Conservatives will role with the punches to stay in power. As soon as they started regaining substantial political support, their rhetoric started to become toned down because they didn't want to scare off the more moderate voter, but their underlying agendas are clear.
How does drug enforcement make one a neocon?
You sound like a Troll here. This is one of their major pinnacles.
Has the Canadian government deployed troops to Central America like the Americans have?
I don't know. Irrelevant anyways since they can't afford to be everywhere. As a former military person I do know that Canadians are and have been deployed to many places that the public has never heard about on prime time news.
Do you think trying to keep heroin off the streets is just some fascist plot?
Again you sound like a Troll. The conservatives have certainly been in favour of putting heroine users in jail and even in shutting down needle exchange clinics.
Do you think the Bikers in the east and the asian gangs in the west are just benign groups tragically driven to violence by government intervention?
Again something is amiss here. I never mentioned "bikers".
I'm not going to defend the Harper government, but to call them neo-conservative is going too far.
It is an unbiased assessment. I do not believe for one minute that you are being honest in anything you say. You claim to dislike the Tories and yet your arguments demonstrate a pro-Tory bias. Denying that the Harper government is not neoconservative is like stating that the pope is not Catholic. There is something obvious here that can't be missed; and that is the obviousness of reality.
The mission in Afghanistan
Trying to change the subject here. I never mentioned Afghanistan.
Is NATO some fascist conspiracy too?
Again I never mentioned any conspiracies. To observe the obvious is not to proclaim a conspiracy.
Slashdot Mirror
I sometimes double-check on Fanatics; this one just got his Karma back. Believe me there are far more anti-nicotine and tobacco shills and Trolls out there than anybody with an objective sense of Logic or honesty.
Stupid people will continue, like history has shown us, continue to rule the world.
Don't waste your time. You can't have a rational conversation with a fanatic, whether he is anti-tobacco, pro-automobile, or whatever his obsession may be.
If you want something to hate, then I will refer you to my journal about how sugar should be outlawed. I do suspect most people to be hypocrites on the subject however; the people who want tobacco banned or heavily taxed probably don't want the same for sugar because they are sugar abusers.
Not only are you 100% correct (too bad you're modded troll for the truth, we have tobacco industry shills now? or is there just a paid slashdot modshilling enterprise?
He is a Flamer and an anti-tobacco nut. You and the Troll you allude to should look up some neuro-science text books instead of polishing the brass on the anti-tobacco bandwagon (if nicotine was not in tobacco then I can guarantee you that there wouldn't be so much bullshit commentary on the subject).
While it's nice to assume that in a place like America where we all pay our taxes and respect each-others rights, don't forget that relativizing right and wrong like that means that human rights are no longer 'right,' pedophilia is no longer 'wrong,' etc etc...
Pedophilia is never wrong. It's the people who hate children that are evil and that should be imprisoned. It is the Right Wing Neoconservatives who have ruined America. As long as the neoconservatives don't continue to put activist judges and police officers in power, then the U.S. will be a much less evil place to live.
have you thought about the posibility that when robots do all the jobs that no one wants to do, productivity might increase by enough to allow all the people to live comfortably
And I suppose I should add, that's what we have migrant labour for. Of course there will always be jobs that people don't want to do, and the productivity gains will be pocketed by the owners of the means of production. I'll be laughing when the prison population of the United States starts to saturate at 50% of the population. Labour is most affordable to corporations in U.S. penitentiaries, so I suspect the trends to continue.
Well there are philosophers who would argue that "irrationality" is part of "intelligence"
"irrationality" may be a part of "intelligence", but it isn't intelligent. For example, drinking Clorox to relieve thirst is not intelligent nor is it evolutionarily helpful except to eliminate the unintelligent.
Whatever the situation, I'm generally in favor of keeping a man in the loop.
You probably came to a rational decision based on the experiences that machines so far have been far from smart. I would probably make the same decision as yourself unless it could be proven that having a human in the loop was much more dangerous than having a machine in the loop.
why do we assume machine AI will be highly rational?
I assume nothing; rationality is the premise of the article however, so I am basing my arguments on that premise.
You seem to be implying that AI (smart machines) will be modeled on the human brain. I'm more idealistic then that. By "smart" machines, I will presume no inherent human fallibility will be programmed into their instincts. If these machines were fallible, they wouldn't be very smart.
That depends on their viewpoint on life, doesn't it? What are the goals and ambitions of a machine?
Humans require resources and this waste of resources may not fit in their long term plans.
The rational decision would be to terminate humans.
I could presume, that since these machines are created by humans, then these machines would be human-friendly and their goals would be to help humans.
have you thought about the posibility that when robots do all the jobs that no one wants to do, productivity might increase by enough to allow all the people to live comfortably.
That's only in places where the equitable distribution of wealth is valued and regulated by legislation. In a place like America this would be considered "communism". Everywhere else it is just Utopian thinking because technology has rarely if ever made work easier on people, it just enabled people to work harder. So, people may get their smart phones in the Utopia of the Future, but they will also be required to be on call 24/7.
Also, in politics, pure rationality leads to fascism.
Citation needed. I've always found fascists to behave in irrational ways. They tend to loose wars and get overthrown (eventually).
Lets face it, and I realize before I even posted, that most people have a romantic notion of what it is to be Human. Most people think that they are too special to be replaced by anything like a (hypothetical) "smart" machine.
Humans are full of themselves.
The real difference is not in deciding (necessarily) what is logical, but in consistency of behavior between humans and (smart) machines. For example, if both humans and machines think that killing an intruder is rational, then both would carry out that action. The difference is that a smart machine would not shoot a foreign exchange student in a John Travolta costume on Halloween, but a human would.
A machine would see that you murdered someone in the case where it's if statement didn't contain an "and not" statement about you defending yourself.
A smart machine would realize when they don't have all the information to make an informed decision. Most humans that I have met think they make rational decisions based on what folklore they were raised with, and they tend to confabulate what they don't know. Smart machines would not do this.
But what if the rational conclusion is that those irrational humans should be eliminated so they stop being a danger?
I don't understand the question. If the machines make rational decisions then they should carry them out. Unlike irrational humans who tend to commit genocide when they think they can get away with it, smart machines will only eliminate humans when or if it is rational to do so. Smart machines fortunately, are rational, so they won't make any hasty decisions like humans always do when it comes to, for example, condemning innocent people to capital punishment, because smart machines don't have false or confabulated memories and they can't be bribed or persuaded by group think are charismatic personalities.
If violence, torture, murder and genocide are wrong; then smart machines will not carry them out. So far these things have been the pursuit of humans and not (smart) machines.
Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man
Why worry? I would think machines would be a lot less irrational than the people who make them. I look forward to a rational and unemotional overlord whose decisions don't depend on the irrationality of the human brain. Being smart is never bad. I'm more afraid of stupid humans than smart machines.
It gives the public (electorate) the impression that there is transparency and freedom to choose. I am grateful for every piece of illusion that makes reality more bearable. It sure beats the frontal lobotomies that were popular in the 1940s and 50s to treat moodiness and hyperactivity in children.
What a load of crap, back in 2006 NBC dateline had a bunch of muslims go to a Nascar race and see if they were harassed, guess what they were NOT bothered at all. This sort of idiotic bollocks is what perpetuates the myth that the US is full of racists.
I could only presume that DHS officials, and boarder guards don't hang out at Nascar events, because so-called "racial" profiling does go on in law enforcement. Racial profiling itself isn't necessarily wrong (however you may interpret that word), but it does lead to quite a lot of false positives and can perpetuate ethnic animosities. And I certainly doubt that NBC Dateline was able to read people's minds, because observing public behavior at a sporting event is not generally indicative of the types of stereotypes or prejudices people may or may not have. Journalism does often present itself as a shallow type of pseudo-science however.
It's interesting how sensitive people are to that bit of humour or rhetoric that spawned this thread. It obviously hit a nerve with people. Fascinating.
Awesome... do you guys have instant runoff voting so that the voters can vote freely?
No. We don't have voting machines either. We have tended to keep things simple, and so there is usually not a lot of controversy with the electoral system, just with the candidates.
It is generally considered that they are a slightly left party. By generally, I mean every media source, every political pundit, in fact every source I know.
I am certainly not basing my observations on the interpretations of the media or political pundits. I am making my observations based on policy decisions and on how they vote on legislation. The last term they voted for just about every piece of PM Harpers bills into reality. The Liberals are certainly more left of the Right, but not being extremists does not make them left wing. What the "media" says is useless. They are either beholden to advertisers and ratings or in terms of shows like the 700 Club, by special interest groups. There's an interesting write-up on the so-called "Liberal" magazine Time that says a lot here (ref, http://www.reason.com/news/show/134038.html.
The Liberals certainly have been more "socialist" than the new re-vamped Conservatives and under the reign of Mike Harris in Ontario (I'll mention again that he decimated the economy, the school system, increased taxes while claiming to have decreased taxes [through the process of "downloading" expenses onto the poorer populations of major cities, etc and so on]). The Liberals are just more subtle about these things because they don't want to alienate and potential voters. The Conservatives are more into burning bridges and claiming that people who disagree with their policies are "left wing". Does this sound American to you?
In my own province of Ontario the contemporary "Liberal" government has raised taxes on the poor (largely by increasing cigarette taxes substantially), but in their own words it is for the poor's own good (to suffer); "think of the children...". They have also banned Face Book from being used on government computers. These are just examples of Right Wing behavior, individually they don't add up to much, but all of their practices together add up to patterns of behavior that set them apart from more neutral or truly "Liberal" practices as is known by History and Political Science.
One must also realize that Right and Left are not just distinguished by economic issues, but by social issues as well. I did a journal on this not to long ago (it never ended up getting "published", but it remains as a link that I can reference; http://slashdot.org/~unlametheweak/journal/229887).
It has been disputed by at least one person here, but Political Compass is an excellent and rather neutral Web site that goes more deeply into the Left and Right interpretations. Many people of the Right, Left, and etc that I have talked to here on Slashdot seem to value that Web site as a good resource. You may want to take some time and read the details of it instead of just listing it as biased because I happened to use it as an example (http://www.politicalcompass.org/index). The original like that I gave out pertaining to the Liberals; http://www.politicalcompass.org/canada2008.
I'm sure the SIIA (along with their equivalents in the movie and music industry) are lobbying governments around the world to make sure that these scare tactics become reality. These organizations do want governments and prisons to support the business community. Labor is even cheaper in prison, and prisoners can't unionize and are not allowed to cast a vote.
Both the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party are centrist parties
You obviously don't know ANY of their policy decisions.
So to review the Liberal party is a centrist slightly leftist party.
It is obvious that everybody who is replying to me either has no education in politics or has an extreme right-wing perspective and agenda.
You and the other people who claim that the Liberals and the Conservatives are not right wing reminds me of the Religious Fundamentalists in the USA who claim that people who dismiss Intelligent Design are merely too biased to accept science that doesn't match their atheistic beliefs.
On the other hand, I do agree on your last statement (although so far most people here have claim that the NDP is extremist left wing, which means they are lying or are completely ignorant to the actual policy changes and non-changes that went into effect when they were elected into positions of power in provincial and municipal elections).
The Bloc Quebecois Party is a slightly right of center
They are in a class of themselves with a very regional agenda, so I didn't say too much about them.
Your next statement comes closer to reality (about the Conservatives):
The Conservatives had this problem, but they amalgamated the Progressive Conservatives (slightly right of center) and the Alliance/Reform Parties (Far right of center).
Unfortunately many of the moderates left after the amalgamation. I don't think the average Canadian realizes that the Conservatives haven't been as extremist as they could have been because they only had a small majority the last election, and are in a minority at present. Unlike in my own province of Ontario where they didn't give a shit about anything or anybody but their own agenda and basically paralleled the arrogance and incompetence of the Bush administration in the US.
To put things in overall context I will comment on the line from your other posted comment,
Him being gay and the Alliance being pretty much anti-gay I am sure had something to do with that. (Yes that is how Centric that PC party was in that they almost had a gay leader).
A lot of things like sexual preference don't make a big deal; if people are good at getting votes, etc then the party will use them. A lot of leaders of Hitler's SA were homosexual, and so too many Republicans in the US are gay, black, woman, etc. (I will explicitly note that Hitler purged the SA mainly because of outside pressure; i.e. the military who was his biggest threat at the time).
Why? The Veyron is an incredible piece of engineering. Bugatti sell them at a LOSS if I recall. The workmanship is astounding.
Not only that, but according to the Wired article,
they had to sacrifice 100 virgins and have the production facility in Molsheim, France, blessed by druids.
I completely disagree with sacrificing virgins, so anybody who buys this car is implicitly supporting the destruction of virgins.
Hell, in this economy, $2.1 million is probably enough to make you a one-man special-interest group with some serious Washington clout."
It's a car well suited to bankers who profited from the financial scandals and government bailouts.
For all we know, your reference may have the same political (or other) agenda as you do,
That statement says a lot about your own agenda. The only agenda I have is truth and honesty.
Eh? So, on your scale, in order to be counted anywhere left of center, a party must support price controls and large-scale nationalization of private businesses?
I don't have a personal scale. As I stated before and as I'll state again, my evidence is empirical and I left you (the audience) with at least one good quality, objective reference.
GP is absolutely right, your scale is very much skewed from a left extremist POV (and I say that as a leftie myself).
I will tell you outright that I am not left wing, in fact I dislike extremist attitudes on either side. The evidence speaks for itself; you or the other commentator can't change politics because it doesn't exactly suite your own political mantra of how you would like labels to be defined.
Your assymmetric criteria reinforce my prior assertion.
That sentence has does not make sense.
You argue that to be a left-winger you need to espouse something close to communism, but to be a right-winger someone only need to espouse policies that you don't particularly like.
I'm not making arguments on what it is to be a left-winger. I am merely making observations and I substantiated them with examples and evidence.
but to be a right-winger someone only need to espouse policies that you don't particularly like.
I haven't told you what policies I either like or dislike. You are projecting your political biases onto me.
You just list off pet issues and accuse the supporters of being neo-cons.
Once again, I just listed a very, very, very few examples to support my position.
The Canadian-DMCA is dead in the water.
Through historical accident it has been dormant for years. The Conservatives will role with the punches to stay in power. As soon as they started regaining substantial political support, their rhetoric started to become toned down because they didn't want to scare off the more moderate voter, but their underlying agendas are clear.
How does drug enforcement make one a neocon?
You sound like a Troll here. This is one of their major pinnacles.
Has the Canadian government deployed troops to Central America like the Americans have?
I don't know. Irrelevant anyways since they can't afford to be everywhere. As a former military person I do know that Canadians are and have been deployed to many places that the public has never heard about on prime time news.
Do you think trying to keep heroin off the streets is just some fascist plot?
Again you sound like a Troll. The conservatives have certainly been in favour of putting heroine users in jail and even in shutting down needle exchange clinics.
Do you think the Bikers in the east and the asian gangs in the west are just benign groups tragically driven to violence by government intervention?
Again something is amiss here. I never mentioned "bikers".
I'm not going to defend the Harper government, but to call them neo-conservative is going too far.
It is an unbiased assessment. I do not believe for one minute that you are being honest in anything you say. You claim to dislike the Tories and yet your arguments demonstrate a pro-Tory bias. Denying that the Harper government is not neoconservative is like stating that the pope is not Catholic. There is something obvious here that can't be missed; and that is the obviousness of reality.
The mission in Afghanistan
Trying to change the subject here. I never mentioned Afghanistan.
Is NATO some fascist conspiracy too?
Again I never mentioned any conspiracies. To observe the obvious is not to proclaim a conspiracy.