That was the motto of the communist system. Just in case you weren't making your comment tongue-in-cheek.
But there is an important point hidden there. In politics, you will hear "free markets are GOOD", "central planning is BAD". Or sometimes the reverse (in Europe). People forget that the point is to maximise the goods and services produced, as well as their access from everyone.
If you have no idea what to produce, a market is a good idea. If you know exactly what to produce, a market is an idiotic idea: central planning is the way to go. If you know that this good or service will produce a natural monopoly, you should go for either a tightly regulated market (but due to regulatory capture, this is dangerous) or central planning.
In real life, there are also externalities. Tax accordingly so that your market works better. Yes, taxes are a vital component of making markets work: you want the real price to be reflected, e.g. pollution must be paid for by the polluter.
TL;DR : regulation and taxes on externalities are important. Monopolies should be public. Leave the rest to the market if you don't know what is optimal. If you do, get rid of the market. In the future, robotic overlords will and should plan the economy for us.
Because phones are appliances and it takes extra hard work to make a general computing device (which modern phones are, plus radio equipment) into something which is not.
If one phone maker decided to sell just the hardware and let independent shops install the various possible OS (from vanilla Linux to W8) maybe they would become the IBM of "IBM compatibles". A medium fish in a gigantic pond. But executives hate the idea that sometimes, you should let the market work, instead of centrally planning everything.
Freedom has always been a doubled edged sword... I actually think humans can and do learn, if you let them. After the first virus outbreak, they become more cautious. Their bullshit detectors get honed. In the end, it's better for everyone.
Arguably, even for society: in a highly technological civilisation, it is not desirable to let people stay ignorant.
Actually, you wouldn't: so many more people would be aware of what is possible -- but can't do because it is either too long or too hard -- and hire developers for their specific needs.
As it stands, developer need to spend a lot of time guessing what people would like, because they don't know what is possible, and never gave it a though.
Fundamentally, a computer is a Turing-complete machine. Meaning it can execute any programme you can possibly conceive of. And infinitely many more you cannot even imagine.
This is why computers are so different than any other machine ever invented. And the desktop is just a small and useful trick to help you tap the power of your computer. If you try to make your computer into an appliance, you fundamentally did not need a computer in the first place anyway.
Also, you will either fail or make your device pretty useless. It is vaguely annoying to see how many countless hours of human work and ingenuity and how many dollars are spent trying to hide to power of their machines to the users.
Whenever a politician/economist/pundit talks about "confidence", he is either deluded or lying. This "confidence" word is really useful like that. It means anything from "suckers are more willing to part with their money" to "magical thinking will save the day".
As a side note, a debate is possible only if there is an agreed-upon framework to figure out the truth. Certain ideas are explicitly outside any such framework. They cannot be exposed as empty or fraudulent through logic.
I sincerely wish you were right. Because I think that if what you say is true, the world is a nicer place than I think it is.
Personally, I think that people get convinced through social pressure. Now of course, ideas evolve and are invented, and some stay, and others die. I believe that if an idea is true, in the sense that it explains the world and therefore is advantageous to people who hold it, it will survive and eventually become dominant.
Of course, it means that for a long period, these ideas exist and are held by the minority. But all the ideas of the enlightenment where born that way, and discussed violently, and ridiculed, and these ideas that were right survived and became dominant in western civilisation. And even at the time (actually, pretty much for as far back as we have significant bodies of literature), atheists were mocking theists. Dom Juan, the Dangerous Liaisons mock bigoted idiots. They have morals tacked onto them at the end, but are in many ways scathing criticisms of bigoted and small-minded people. Candide, by Voltaire is a criticism of the idea that there is a benevolent god.
I actually think we were shamed into doing the right thing for all the good examples you gave, because not doing the right thing became shameful. Being a sexist jerk is frowned upon. So is being homophobic/racist/xenophobic. Many people still believe those things/want to act upon their belies, yet they are shamed into not expressing them. In general, the good and bad is enforced by society.
And so the next generation is not exposed to people defending these ideas, and they disappear.
I respect your idealism, and I do believe in rational discussion. I just don't think it actually makes sense with a lot of people. And there is a single attitude that makes me really angry: "I don't know, you can't make me know, and it's my right not to know". To that, mockery is the only valid response, as discussion has been explicitly refused.
But Limbaugh would never have changed his opinion! The point is that he is becoming a liability for his network. Hopefully, he might be let go. And then there is one less strident voice adding only madness to the public discourse.
To use religious imagery, he cannot be saved, but his listeners may be saved from him. The ideas, the memes he carries become less potent, and have now a larger chance of disappearing. No one cares about Limbaugh, or no one should care. What is important is that his ideas die.
And, it is sad but true, ideas die when no one say them aloud. At least those not grounded in reality.
But the point is this: the guy cannot be made not a racist. In some sense, his beliefs don't really matter. What matters is that they do not propagate. Wouldst thou that we be kind to racists for fear that they might feel oppressed?
People don't take for their own beliefs that other people hold but are ashamed of...
I think that you are working on the assumption that people can in fact change their beliefs. I don't actually think that. Or rather, I think that any such change is gradual and influenced by the Zeitgeist of civilisation: your beliefs converge towards those of the mainstream., and beliefs in the mainstream tend to converge with what can be verified/makes sense.
Thus, my position is that ideas should be attacked, those that survive, because they evolve good defences, or because they are very solid will survive, and the rest will join phlogiston and the divine right of Kings in the dustbins of history. Again, I am not advocating people, but ideas. If people take personally criticism of their ideas, well, too bad.
It would be too much of a loss in the value of public discourse if feeling offended was enough to silence those that would disagree with you.
Sorry, if you publish on a public forum, you are going to be read. If I say something stupid or offensive, I get called on it.
This is good. There is no reason for certain kinds of opinions to get a free pass. There is this attitude that everyone is entitled his opinion, and that somehow they are all worthwhile.
This is not useful. Some opinions are informed and some are not. Some are out-there bat shit insane. I am not saying, and I said nowhere, that you should attack people. Their opinions, however, are fair game.
Being ignorant is wholly different than being mentally ill. It is a completely minor character flaw which is readily cured by reading the appropriate parts of wikipedia. Being ignorant with the attitude that it's OK and doesn't preclude me from spouting opinions is a larger character flaw, and can be cured by being mocked and reading the appropriate parts of wikipedia. Being ignorant, proud of it and having that define who you are is a major character flaw which I am not sure can be cured. But you then make a wonderful target for mockery, and you deserve every bit of it. You might not get cured, but it might prevent contagion.
So truth is immaterial? Everything is just opinion? knowledge has no value?
BTW, US debt is immaterial, it is largely money you owe to yourselves. Also even if it mattered, certainly the absolute numbers would be utterly irrelevant. Thank you for providing such amazing example of untruth.
Actually, if you want to convince people, you need to make the emotionally prone to supporting your ideas. This comes from negative reinforcement (people will laugh at me if I expound certain tenets of my faith) as well as positive reinforcements (there is beauty in knowing that the elements which form your body were synthesised by fusion in the heart of stars for the lighter ones, and in the relativistic jets spouting from supernovae for the heavier ones).
Sadly, you need both, and they are both unsatisfactory because emotional rather than rational. But faith is a fundamentally emotional issue.
Oh, and they are ridiculous because their stance is: "ooh, this looks complicated, therefore god did it". If they said "this is complicated, and we tried to explain it in ways a, b, c and d and it didn't work", they might have a claim to being scientists.
It doesn't work like that: imagine evolution were "guided". This means that there exists a progressive path from the past to now. If this path exists, it only requires that each step on this path is ever so slightly advantageous to dispense with the guiding.
ID surmises that the path does not exist, and that therefore external intervention is required for the implementation of some biological features which cannot be decomposed into simpler systems which would be individually advantageous. You could prove ID if you could identify such system. The reasons IDers are not scientists is that whenever they find out some candidate, they refuse to search for the evolutionary path.
Which, every single time, has been identified. If they spend their time looking for irreducible complexity and disproving false candidates as they came and finding new ones, they'd be welcomed amongst the community of scientists as doing useful and valuable work!
Except one side has faith, and the other accepts logic and evidence. If tomorrow through a series of discoveries the scientific consensus became that we were indeed designed (who knows, maybe by aliens) I would accept that we were designed.
The essential difference is this: personal experience is worth nothing to a rational mind. Even if you trust your senses, building a theory which is founded purely on personal belief is impossible. How would you express it? Can you make predictions from it? Can you disprove it?
If you say something preposterous, expect people to mock you. If you say Obama is a secret Muslim, or not a US citizen, your ideas should be mocked!
If you think the Earth is flat, or 6000 years old, your ideas should be mocked!
In general, if you do/say something ridiculous, it should be mocked. Because this is how you'll know how absurd that thing is. And of, course, it depends on the circumstances. Mocking a child for making a mistake at school is cruel. Mocking an adult who should know better is a public service. It is somehow deemed acceptable to be ignorant, and have opinions. Because all opinions should be respected.
Fuck that.
Ignorance is not a valid point of view, and never was. Your wrong and silly ideas (as opposed to you) should be mocked.
You cannot convince someone who has faith that they are wrong. This is because the nature of the expected proof is problematic: faith is a personal experience, whereas scientific proof is build on repeated experiments illuminated by predictive models.
The only reason the proponents of ID are mocked and belittled is to edify the onlookers. Because, although you cannot show faith is wrong, the risk of ridicule is a potent counterpoison.
Also, it is in fact only possible to believe that both ID and evolution are simultaneously true is you do not understand evolution. Or presumably ID.
Slashdot Mirror
That was the motto of the communist system. Just in case you weren't making your comment tongue-in-cheek.
But there is an important point hidden there. In politics, you will hear "free markets are GOOD", "central planning is BAD". Or sometimes the reverse (in Europe). People forget that the point is to maximise the goods and services produced, as well as their access from everyone.
If you have no idea what to produce, a market is a good idea. If you know exactly what to produce, a market is an idiotic idea: central planning is the way to go. If you know that this good or service will produce a natural monopoly, you should go for either a tightly regulated market (but due to regulatory capture, this is dangerous) or central planning.
In real life, there are also externalities. Tax accordingly so that your market works better. Yes, taxes are a vital component of making markets work: you want the real price to be reflected, e.g. pollution must be paid for by the polluter.
TL;DR : regulation and taxes on externalities are important. Monopolies should be public. Leave the rest to the market if you don't know what is optimal. If you do, get rid of the market. In the future, robotic overlords will and should plan the economy for us.
Because phones are appliances and it takes extra hard work to make a general computing device (which modern phones are, plus radio equipment) into something which is not.
If one phone maker decided to sell just the hardware and let independent shops install the various possible OS (from vanilla Linux to W8) maybe they would become the IBM of "IBM compatibles". A medium fish in a gigantic pond. But executives hate the idea that sometimes, you should let the market work, instead of centrally planning everything.
Freedom has always been a doubled edged sword... I actually think humans can and do learn, if you let them. After the first virus outbreak, they become more cautious. Their bullshit detectors get honed. In the end, it's better for everyone.
Arguably, even for society: in a highly technological civilisation, it is not desirable to let people stay ignorant.
Yes, and there is evil in making something infinitely more limited than it ought to be, don't you think?
And don't give me "the muggles would not have it otherwise" crap. People have somehow been trained in learned ignorance.
Actually, you wouldn't: so many more people would be aware of what is possible -- but can't do because it is either too long or too hard -- and hire developers for their specific needs.
As it stands, developer need to spend a lot of time guessing what people would like, because they don't know what is possible, and never gave it a though.
Fundamentally, a computer is a Turing-complete machine. Meaning it can execute any programme you can possibly conceive of. And infinitely many more you cannot even imagine.
This is why computers are so different than any other machine ever invented. And the desktop is just a small and useful trick to help you tap the power of your computer. If you try to make your computer into an appliance, you fundamentally did not need a computer in the first place anyway.
Also, you will either fail or make your device pretty useless. It is vaguely annoying to see how many countless hours of human work and ingenuity and how many dollars are spent trying to hide to power of their machines to the users.
Whenever a politician/economist/pundit talks about "confidence", he is either deluded or lying. This "confidence" word is really useful like that. It means anything from "suckers are more willing to part with their money" to "magical thinking will save the day".
Sorry, but Justice is a right. Anyone who asks for it should get free counsel.
You would forfeit your right to complain that you got the junior guy in the cabinet appointed to you, but you would not pay a dime.
If you are rich, of course, hire whoever you want!
As a side note, a debate is possible only if there is an agreed-upon framework to figure out the truth. Certain ideas are explicitly outside any such framework. They cannot be exposed as empty or fraudulent through logic.
I sincerely wish you were right. Because I think that if what you say is true, the world is a nicer place than I think it is.
Personally, I think that people get convinced through social pressure. Now of course, ideas evolve and are invented, and some stay, and others die. I believe that if an idea is true, in the sense that it explains the world and therefore is advantageous to people who hold it, it will survive and eventually become dominant.
Of course, it means that for a long period, these ideas exist and are held by the minority. But all the ideas of the enlightenment where born that way, and discussed violently, and ridiculed, and these ideas that were right survived and became dominant in western civilisation. And even at the time (actually, pretty much for as far back as we have significant bodies of literature), atheists were mocking theists. Dom Juan, the Dangerous Liaisons mock bigoted idiots. They have morals tacked onto them at the end, but are in many ways scathing criticisms of bigoted and small-minded people. Candide, by Voltaire is a criticism of the idea that there is a benevolent god.
I actually think we were shamed into doing the right thing for all the good examples you gave, because not doing the right thing became shameful. Being a sexist jerk is frowned upon. So is being homophobic/racist/xenophobic. Many people still believe those things/want to act upon their belies, yet they are shamed into not expressing them. In general, the good and bad is enforced by society.
And so the next generation is not exposed to people defending these ideas, and they disappear.
I respect your idealism, and I do believe in rational discussion. I just don't think it actually makes sense with a lot of people. And there is a single attitude that makes me really angry: "I don't know, you can't make me know, and it's my right not to know". To that, mockery is the only valid response, as discussion has been explicitly refused.
Were it that more people were like you.
But Limbaugh would never have changed his opinion! The point is that he is becoming a liability for his network. Hopefully, he might be let go. And then there is one less strident voice adding only madness to the public discourse.
To use religious imagery, he cannot be saved, but his listeners may be saved from him. The ideas, the memes he carries become less potent, and have now a larger chance of disappearing. No one cares about Limbaugh, or no one should care. What is important is that his ideas die.
And, it is sad but true, ideas die when no one say them aloud. At least those not grounded in reality.
But the point is this: the guy cannot be made not a racist. In some sense, his beliefs don't really matter. What matters is that they do not propagate. Wouldst thou that we be kind to racists for fear that they might feel oppressed?
People don't take for their own beliefs that other people hold but are ashamed of...
I think that you are working on the assumption that people can in fact change their beliefs. I don't actually think that. Or rather, I think that any such change is gradual and influenced by the Zeitgeist of civilisation: your beliefs converge towards those of the mainstream., and beliefs in the mainstream tend to converge with what can be verified/makes sense.
Thus, my position is that ideas should be attacked, those that survive, because they evolve good defences, or because they are very solid will survive, and the rest will join phlogiston and the divine right of Kings in the dustbins of history. Again, I am not advocating people, but ideas. If people take personally criticism of their ideas, well, too bad.
It would be too much of a loss in the value of public discourse if feeling offended was enough to silence those that would disagree with you.
Sorry, if you publish on a public forum, you are going to be read. If I say something stupid or offensive, I get called on it.
This is good. There is no reason for certain kinds of opinions to get a free pass. There is this attitude that everyone is entitled his opinion, and that somehow they are all worthwhile.
This is not useful. Some opinions are informed and some are not. Some are out-there bat shit insane. I am not saying, and I said nowhere, that you should attack people. Their opinions, however, are fair game.
Being ignorant is wholly different than being mentally ill. It is a completely minor character flaw which is readily cured by reading the appropriate parts of wikipedia. Being ignorant with the attitude that it's OK and doesn't preclude me from spouting opinions is a larger character flaw, and can be cured by being mocked and reading the appropriate parts of wikipedia. Being ignorant, proud of it and having that define who you are is a major character flaw which I am not sure can be cured. But you then make a wonderful target for mockery, and you deserve every bit of it. You might not get cured, but it might prevent contagion.
So truth is immaterial? Everything is just opinion? knowledge has no value?
BTW, US debt is immaterial, it is largely money you owe to yourselves. Also even if it mattered, certainly the absolute numbers would be utterly irrelevant. Thank you for providing such amazing example of untruth.
Actually, if you want to convince people, you need to make the emotionally prone to supporting your ideas. This comes from negative reinforcement (people will laugh at me if I expound certain tenets of my faith) as well as positive reinforcements (there is beauty in knowing that the elements which form your body were synthesised by fusion in the heart of stars for the lighter ones, and in the relativistic jets spouting from supernovae for the heavier ones).
Sadly, you need both, and they are both unsatisfactory because emotional rather than rational. But faith is a fundamentally emotional issue.
Exactly so. And it is unfortunate, too, because it would be a nicer world where people could be convinced through reason and facts.
That some segments of the population have taken to making up their own facts gives me hope, though. There is a feel of desperation to that.
Are you calling religious people mentally ill?
There is an underlying faith in science: that the universe is coherent and that there exists a set of rules which explain it.
It may be that this is not the case. Just not very likely.
But where did I use an argument from authority? Or could you not resist the urge of making an (admittedly funny) joke. I can't tell.
If I say something ridiculous, yes. If I say something and I am backed by logic and overwhelming consensus amongst scientists, you are taking a risk.
But this is the point of public fora. We put out our ideas, and if they are found to be silly, next time, we come up with better ones!
Oh, and they are ridiculous because their stance is: "ooh, this looks complicated, therefore god did it". If they said "this is complicated, and we tried to explain it in ways a, b, c and d and it didn't work", they might have a claim to being scientists.
As is, it is a pure ignorance-as-proof argument.
OK, you do not understand ID ;)
It doesn't work like that: imagine evolution were "guided". This means that there exists a progressive path from the past to now. If this path exists, it only requires that each step on this path is ever so slightly advantageous to dispense with the guiding.
ID surmises that the path does not exist, and that therefore external intervention is required for the implementation of some biological features which cannot be decomposed into simpler systems which would be individually advantageous. You could prove ID if you could identify such system. The reasons IDers are not scientists is that whenever they find out some candidate, they refuse to search for the evolutionary path.
Which, every single time, has been identified. If they spend their time looking for irreducible complexity and disproving false candidates as they came and finding new ones, they'd be welcomed amongst the community of scientists as doing useful and valuable work!
Except one side has faith, and the other accepts logic and evidence. If tomorrow through a series of discoveries the scientific consensus became that we were indeed designed (who knows, maybe by aliens) I would accept that we were designed.
The essential difference is this: personal experience is worth nothing to a rational mind. Even if you trust your senses, building a theory which is founded purely on personal belief is impossible. How would you express it? Can you make predictions from it? Can you disprove it?
To be fair, calling bible stories "honourable" might indicate he never read it....
If you say something preposterous, expect people to mock you. If you say Obama is a secret Muslim, or not a US citizen, your ideas should be mocked!
If you think the Earth is flat, or 6000 years old, your ideas should be mocked!
In general, if you do/say something ridiculous, it should be mocked. Because this is how you'll know how absurd that thing is. And of, course, it depends on the circumstances. Mocking a child for making a mistake at school is cruel. Mocking an adult who should know better is a public service. It is somehow deemed acceptable to be ignorant, and have opinions. Because all opinions should be respected.
Fuck that.
Ignorance is not a valid point of view, and never was. Your wrong and silly ideas (as opposed to you) should be mocked.
You cannot convince someone who has faith that they are wrong. This is because the nature of the expected proof is problematic: faith is a personal experience, whereas scientific proof is build on repeated experiments illuminated by predictive models.
The only reason the proponents of ID are mocked and belittled is to edify the onlookers. Because, although you cannot show faith is wrong, the risk of ridicule is a potent counterpoison.
Also, it is in fact only possible to believe that both ID and evolution are simultaneously true is you do not understand evolution. Or presumably ID.