While you are right the government can NOT infringe on one religion in a way it does not infringe on others - that would be giving preference to other religions which is flagrantly unconstitutional. As long as they allow religious headware for *any* religion they must allow it for *every* religion.
>It's why Walmart is so much cheaper than your corner convenience market. Part of. At least as big a part is a hidden cost you don't even know you're paying. Wallmart's wages is so low that the vast majority of their workers still get poverty-relief welfare (in welfare-to-work states Wallmart is one of the biggest employers of welfare recipients). That welfare comes from taxpayers.
Wallmart didn't reduce the price - they outsourced their wagebill to the taxpayers, you're paying the difference with your taxes - and all the people who never shop at Wallmart are forced to subsidize your savings. If you ever wondered why a 15 dollar inflation-bound minimum wage is a good idea - there it is right there, so companies cannot outsource their wagebills to the taxpayer like Wallmart does. Wallmart often threatens to close locations if anybody suggests doing it locally, but firstly there is no chance of that if it's done federally and secondly they have never actually made good on that threat. In the real world even wallmart would rather make a slightly smaller profit than no profit at all.
Not really an accurate analogy. It would be better to ask if he would complain if you Tesla allowed Nissan Leaf drivers to charge at their free stations alongside the Tessla drivers but charged for any other cars. There is a fundamental difference between offering your own service free and offering a free access to customers of one other company but not the rest. Now it's arguable how bad that really is, I'm not getting into that - just adjusting your analogy to reflect the situation better.
Arg... steam hardware STILL not available in my country, and of course on Wednesday they finally enabled local pricing... which means I cannot just pay in dollars and say "Ship me my fucking steam link now ! "
Well its a good thing the actual figure is more like 0.000001% then. If it was any higher we would be extinct. Oh and EU law requires all member countries to accept all refugees. No exceptions. Germany is actually following the law. German people also overwhelmingly support this. When Munich police asked for supplies to help get refugees setted in just three hours they had received so much they had to beg people to stop donating !
Budhism's reputation is better than its reality. In quite a few places, as I type this, budhists are engaged in genocude campaigns against other religions.
Wrong. There have been numerous long-term studies that did exactly that, gave everybody in a community a guaranteed income regardless of whether they were working. Such studies happened all around the world, generally over 5 and 10 year stretches. The most famous ones in North America was Nixon's 5 year study in Detroit and the MinCome experiment in Canada.
Quite a lot of things universally happened when they did this - a sudden inflation rise was not among them, in fact - no study anywhere has recorded one. It just doesn't happen, because guess what, raising prices would not be beneficial to businesses. You have all those people who now have money, that they didn't have before, you want them to spend it with you so you make more money - the best way to do that is to keep your prices THE SAME - and increase your customer base massively.
A few other things happened every time: 1) Entrepeneurship skyrocketted. People were starting new small businesses like never before. A lot of unemployed people suddenly found employment by working for themselves, and were soon employing others leading to 2) Unemployment rates dropped like a stone. 3) Productivity went UP - this may seem surprising but not only were more people working, everybody was achieving more on the job.
Did anybody JUST live on the money given by the state ? Actually yes, two groups could be found doing that at any given time: 1) Mothers of newborns who often chose not to go back to work for a year or more. This is a GOOD thing - no different to what countries like Denmark actually encourage with legislation 2) Students- lots and lots of people were suddenly enrolling in further education, since they had a way to support themselves they would leave the job market temporarily, gain some new qualifications and return to a higher salary bracket. This was especially prevalent in young adults in their 20s - and the largest increase was among those from the poorest backgrounds who frequently could not otherwise have afforded further education.
All the bad things you predict though ? Not a single one of those longterm experiments recorded even one of them happening. http://public.econ.duke.edu/~e...
Utrecht in the Netherlands is reportedly planning a similar experiment at the moment. I predict that the exact same thing will happen that always happens: the experiment runs, it's a resounding success but by the time it finishes the administration has changed and whoever is in power now would rather die than implement as national policy any idea his predecessor had championed so the results will be logged as academic knowledge but no further benefit would be gained.
You don't need an ant brain. Ant brains have to deal with a whole lot of stuff (moving six legs in coordinated fashions), maintaining breathing and circulation, digestion etc. etc. etc. that a computer AI has no need for. About 99% of what an ANT brain is spent on are things that an AI won't ever have to do.
With humans that scale goes up because the systems that need to be managed are far, far more complex. Bipedalism makes ballance a key process - that's almost entirely automated, processing all those sensory inputs into useful categories, managing all those complex life systems. Only a tiny fraction of the brain is used for actually thinking things - the rest is busy maintaining the container. An AI has no need for any of that, even processing the inputs happen before they get to it. That's why we can match human image and speech recognition with AI systems far simpler than a human brain. AIs are specialised to learn a given set of tasks, they only NEED enough complexity to achieve that specific task.
> Socialism means that the government owns the means of production No it bloody well does not. It means the WORKERS own the means of production. Bolshevism is the system where the state is used a proxy for the workers to attempt to achieve that goal. Bolshevism has been a disaster where-ever it was tried.
>Without hard work, humans become listless and unhappy.
Actually - most people will find something to occupy their time, generally something they find personally fullfilling.
If you were right, hobbies would not be a multi-billion dollar industry. Even people who HAVE hard work spend time and money on other interests for which there is usually zero economic gain to themselves (just a big cost).
I don't know about American crocodiles but Nile crocs can be pretty damn aggressive even when fed (your best bet is to wait till the hottest part of the day and sneak past while they take their daily sandbank naps in the sun actually).
False. The Medieval warming period did exist - but it doesn't mean what you think it means. That warming was extremely localized over a tiny area and coupled by significant cooling in other areas - the average global temperatures were not altered by it, and were the same as they had been for ten thousand years - up to the end of the pre-industrial area.
Europe was warmer in the 1400's, the earth was not.
>Well, I'm glad that you accept that the critters loved it, because that removes the major scare scenario of global warming.
Different critters for the most part, major climate change = mass extinction.
We evolved for a world with THESE critters in them, we have absolutely basis to assume we could survive one without them and instead populated by others.
>But science to me is usually about the hard, provable facts Then you known nothing about it.
If there is one thing that science sure as fuck do not promise it's hard facts. On the contrary - science is what you get when you keep questioning and retesting everything for ever. No proof is final.
>How do we know for sure that the increased CO2 levels are entirely caused by humans or that the CO2 levels are the entire cause of the entire 1C increase?
For one thing - the vast majority of human CO2 is from fossil fuels and their isotopes are pretty unique. No other natural source of CO2 has the same unique isotope. It excludes everything else we burn, everything nature burns, everything volcanoes do - the works. We can count them. It's a conservative result since not all burning is fossil fuels (though nearly all other burning is actually carbon neutral so that cancels out nicely).
>Some global warming might be good for people. Our mean latitude seems to be around 30 degrees but it looks like to me there is a lot more land at higher latitudes which would then become more comfortable.: http://www.themarysue.com/worl... [themarysue.com]. Will populations need to move away from the current coasts and maybe further away from the tropics, maybe. But people migrate, always have always will.
You make it sound so easy... only trouble is, we got all these borders and things now. Look at the political difficulties right now in Europe over a fairly small number of refugees. You make it sound like a mass migration will be a simple process... dream on, the route for such a migration has always run over a lot of dead bodies, and this one - if it happens, will have more than any other. Most of them killed by other people.
You comfortable industrialized society sure as hell wouldn't survive it either - nothing like massive resource wars everywhere to disrupt industry.
Well SETI didn't say they weren't there, they just said they haven't found any evidence of somebody being there. Since SETI only checks radio spectrum signals - that lack of proof is limited to that domain.
Unfortunately we really don't have much technology for doing any other kind of looking right now, nor the funding to develop any, nor the political will to supply the funding.
Who knows what we may have missed (not just with this case but in the 20-odd years since SETI lost it's original budget), because we weren't willing to listen a little harder ?
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While you are right the government can NOT infringe on one religion in a way it does not infringe on others - that would be giving preference to other religions which is flagrantly unconstitutional.
As long as they allow religious headware for *any* religion they must allow it for *every* religion.
>It's why Walmart is so much cheaper than your corner convenience market.
Part of. At least as big a part is a hidden cost you don't even know you're paying. Wallmart's wages is so low that the vast majority of their workers still get poverty-relief welfare (in welfare-to-work states Wallmart is one of the biggest employers of welfare recipients).
That welfare comes from taxpayers.
Wallmart didn't reduce the price - they outsourced their wagebill to the taxpayers, you're paying the difference with your taxes - and all the people who never shop at Wallmart are forced to subsidize your savings.
If you ever wondered why a 15 dollar inflation-bound minimum wage is a good idea - there it is right there, so companies cannot outsource their wagebills to the taxpayer like Wallmart does.
Wallmart often threatens to close locations if anybody suggests doing it locally, but firstly there is no chance of that if it's done federally and secondly they have never actually made good on that threat.
In the real world even wallmart would rather make a slightly smaller profit than no profit at all.
Not really an accurate analogy.
It would be better to ask if he would complain if you Tesla allowed Nissan Leaf drivers to charge at their free stations alongside the Tessla drivers but charged for any other cars. There is a fundamental difference between offering your own service free and offering a free access to customers of one other company but not the rest.
Now it's arguable how bad that really is, I'm not getting into that - just adjusting your analogy to reflect the situation better.
It means attempting to eradicate a local culture which has a different religion. It's really not that complicated.
Arg... steam hardware STILL not available in my country, and of course on Wednesday they finally enabled local pricing... which means I cannot just pay in dollars and say "Ship me my fucking steam link now ! "
Well its a good thing the actual figure is more like 0.000001% then. If it was any higher we would be extinct.
Oh and EU law requires all member countries to accept all refugees. No exceptions. Germany is actually following the law. German people also overwhelmingly support this. When Munich police asked for supplies to help get refugees setted in just three hours they had received so much they had to beg people to stop donating !
Budhism's reputation is better than its reality. In quite a few places, as I type this, budhists are engaged in genocude campaigns against other religions.
Unless your home language us cherokee or apache or navajo or something you are not a "native" American.
I agree. So everybody of European descent in North America... if you would kindly board the boats in an orderly line...
Wrong.
There have been numerous long-term studies that did exactly that, gave everybody in a community a guaranteed income regardless of whether they were working.
Such studies happened all around the world, generally over 5 and 10 year stretches. The most famous ones in North America was Nixon's 5 year study in Detroit and the MinCome experiment in Canada.
Quite a lot of things universally happened when they did this - a sudden inflation rise was not among them, in fact - no study anywhere has recorded one. It just doesn't happen, because guess what, raising prices would not be beneficial to businesses. You have all those people who now have money, that they didn't have before, you want them to spend it with you so you make more money - the best way to do that is to keep your prices THE SAME - and increase your customer base massively.
A few other things happened every time:
1) Entrepeneurship skyrocketted. People were starting new small businesses like never before. A lot of unemployed people suddenly found employment by working for themselves, and were soon employing others leading to
2) Unemployment rates dropped like a stone.
3) Productivity went UP - this may seem surprising but not only were more people working, everybody was achieving more on the job.
Did anybody JUST live on the money given by the state ? Actually yes, two groups could be found doing that at any given time:
1) Mothers of newborns who often chose not to go back to work for a year or more. This is a GOOD thing - no different to what countries like Denmark actually encourage with legislation
2) Students- lots and lots of people were suddenly enrolling in further education, since they had a way to support themselves they would leave the job market temporarily, gain some new qualifications and return to a higher salary bracket. This was especially prevalent in young adults in their 20s - and the largest increase was among those from the poorest backgrounds who frequently could not otherwise have afforded further education.
All the bad things you predict though ? Not a single one of those longterm experiments recorded even one of them happening.
http://public.econ.duke.edu/~e...
Utrecht in the Netherlands is reportedly planning a similar experiment at the moment. I predict that the exact same thing will happen that always happens: the experiment runs, it's a resounding success but by the time it finishes the administration has changed and whoever is in power now would rather die than implement as national policy any idea his predecessor had championed so the results will be logged as academic knowledge but no further benefit would be gained.
You don't need an ant brain.
Ant brains have to deal with a whole lot of stuff (moving six legs in coordinated fashions), maintaining breathing and circulation, digestion etc. etc. etc. that a computer AI has no need for.
About 99% of what an ANT brain is spent on are things that an AI won't ever have to do.
With humans that scale goes up because the systems that need to be managed are far, far more complex. Bipedalism makes ballance a key process - that's almost entirely automated, processing all those sensory inputs into useful categories, managing all those complex life systems.
Only a tiny fraction of the brain is used for actually thinking things - the rest is busy maintaining the container. An AI has no need for any of that, even processing the inputs happen before they get to it. That's why we can match human image and speech recognition with AI systems far simpler than a human brain.
AIs are specialised to learn a given set of tasks, they only NEED enough complexity to achieve that specific task.
> Socialism means that the government owns the means of production
No it bloody well does not. It means the WORKERS own the means of production.
Bolshevism is the system where the state is used a proxy for the workers to attempt to achieve that goal. Bolshevism has been a disaster where-ever it was tried.
THIS is socialism: http://www.energid.com/about-u...
Nothing in socialism requires a state and the best versions of socialism on the beyond-one-company level are actually anarchist.
>Without hard work, humans become listless and unhappy.
Actually - most people will find something to occupy their time, generally something they find personally fullfilling.
If you were right, hobbies would not be a multi-billion dollar industry. Even people who HAVE hard work spend time and money on other interests for which there is usually zero economic gain to themselves (just a big cost).
I don't know about American crocodiles but Nile crocs can be pretty damn aggressive even when fed (your best bet is to wait till the hottest part of the day and sneak past while they take their daily sandbank naps in the sun actually).
>which were colder than the early-to-mid 1400s?
False. The Medieval warming period did exist - but it doesn't mean what you think it means. That warming was extremely localized over a tiny area and coupled by significant cooling in other areas - the average global temperatures were not altered by it, and were the same as they had been for ten thousand years - up to the end of the pre-industrial area.
Europe was warmer in the 1400's, the earth was not.
>Well, I'm glad that you accept that the critters loved it, because that removes the major scare scenario of global warming.
Different critters for the most part, major climate change = mass extinction.
We evolved for a world with THESE critters in them, we have absolutely basis to assume we could survive one without them and instead populated by others.
Oil that stays in the ground contributes to zero oil spills.
>But science to me is usually about the hard, provable facts
Then you known nothing about it.
If there is one thing that science sure as fuck do not promise it's hard facts. On the contrary - science is what you get when you keep questioning and retesting everything for ever. No proof is final.
>How do we know for sure that the increased CO2 levels are entirely caused by humans or that the CO2 levels are the entire cause of the entire 1C increase?
For one thing - the vast majority of human CO2 is from fossil fuels and their isotopes are pretty unique. No other natural source of CO2 has the same unique isotope. It excludes everything else we burn, everything nature burns, everything volcanoes do - the works.
We can count them. It's a conservative result since not all burning is fossil fuels (though nearly all other burning is actually carbon neutral so that cancels out nicely).
>Some global warming might be good for people. Our mean latitude seems to be around 30 degrees but it looks like to me there is a lot more land at higher latitudes which would then become more comfortable.: http://www.themarysue.com/worl... [themarysue.com]. Will populations need to move away from the current coasts and maybe further away from the tropics, maybe. But people migrate, always have always will.
You make it sound so easy... only trouble is, we got all these borders and things now. Look at the political difficulties right now in Europe over a fairly small number of refugees.
You make it sound like a mass migration will be a simple process... dream on, the route for such a migration has always run over a lot of dead bodies, and this one - if it happens, will have more than any other. Most of them killed by other people.
You comfortable industrialized society sure as hell wouldn't survive it either - nothing like massive resource wars everywhere to disrupt industry.
>who determined that it was not one of many long term cyclical changes that have occurred for millions of years.
Well since every other one of those led to a mass extinction, we can probably rule that out.
She sneaks out to come visit me.
> Or pheromones?
Fry, ready the smelloscope !
Well SETI didn't say they weren't there, they just said they haven't found any evidence of somebody being there. Since SETI only checks radio spectrum signals - that lack of proof is limited to that domain.
Unfortunately we really don't have much technology for doing any other kind of looking right now, nor the funding to develop any, nor the political will to supply the funding.
Who knows what we may have missed (not just with this case but in the 20-odd years since SETI lost it's original budget), because we weren't willing to listen a little harder ?
If you don't wrap your junk, especially for a random hookup, you're a moron and you can't blame anybody else for it.