Sometimes, we don't know, and don't know we don't know. However, we might know, because it is our area of expertise, or because simply we looked into it.
Simply, if I don't know something, and become aware of that fact, I try to correct that. Also, if someone is wrong, I don't shrug and say "not my problem". Because it is my problem (or will end up being my problem). And I expect people who know better also to correct me.
Stupid example: computer screens have become crappy, with stupid aspect ratios and less pixels than they used to have. Because some enemy of humankind realised that "fullHD" sounds better than 1920x1200, despite it being significantly smaller. And because of the attitude of "oh, I am not going to correct people, for fear of sounding like a smartass", we get technology to regress.
Education, the love of knowledge, and of spreading knowledge is the problem of everyone. It is more effective than voting with your dollars. It is more powerful than any amount of lobbying. It is tragically underrated.
Yes, yes, language is context-sensitive, I know that. However, what people think their words mean does not mean they do. Just that if the listener is nice he'll go along, and if not, well...
Your argument is that words mean what people think they mean. I believe this is wrong: a conversation/sentence means what is agreed between the writer/speaker and the recipient. And this is completely orthogonal to the actual meaning of the words.
Saying the words mean what to the majority they mean is just wrong. It means you have given up on educating your fellow Humans.
On the other hand, California is the "we want more money for teachers and less taxes" state. So it's not like they have a long history of being extra-consistent...
What do you think would happen if suddenly texts of laws meant what the general public thought they meant (mostly nothing at all) ?
The opinion of an expert is always more valid than the opinion of the public. Obviously. Otherwise, instead of funding science labs, we should just organise polls on which theory is more likely.
The origin of a word, its etymology, tells you what it means, even if you never heard the word before -- particularly if you know some Greek and Latin. And yes, meanings evolve. Being aware of that allows you to read and understand texts of centuries past. But clearly, you think knowing this is a bad thing, and that one should never encourage people to educate themselves. Because only the current meaning is relevant.
Never mind that the current meaning is a marketing ploy.
Never mind that terrible knowledge of their own language is probably the one thing that most keeps people from being effective citizens.
Well, sorry, but it is useful and important to keep telling people what they said does not actually means what they think it does.
It is in fact entirely good and reasonable that production and transport of electricity be from two separate entity. It is not good to allow monopolies on production and transport...
And if they are required for technical reasons, they ought to be state monopolies.
It is not wrong as such: just terrible style. This has nothing to do with words changing their meanings because some arsehole from marketing though it would be a good idea, and swaths of ignoramuses gobbling it up. Which is a very real problem in today's world: ignorance is a condition easily cured, it is not something in which one should glory.
So your argument is that automatically when a technical term becomes common, it should stop meaning what it means?
You probably also complain that people in technical fields abuse jargon. GP is right: words mean what they mean, and meaning attributed through ignorance is irrelevant. Except of course for politicians, who get to never make nor break promises, because the people have been told that words mean what they want by people like you.
Ignorance has never been and will never be a valid opinion.
You are not actually undermining my point: it even worse of you idle large amounts of useful ores to "store value". It is a pure loss for the economy.
Money serves as a token representing value. Which in turn is the result of work. The availability of the tokens should reflect the creation of value/work in the economy. Not the availability of completely unrelated ores.
"has so much market share that the market is distorted" is the only definition that makes sense. Government have a monopoly on nuclear weapons. This is good -- at least, better than the alternative free market for medium yield devices...
My fiat dollars are worth exactly as much as what they can buy. Currently, with deflation looming, their value is going to get up, even with me not working. That is, unless Bernanke gets its act together. (NOTA: how can you be against welfare entitlement, and think that growing the value of idle money is good?)
But inflation is good! Deflation means that if a century ago, some guy got money from producing an oil lamp, this money not only stays in the system, but grows in value!
Debt is only bad if you live in a world were lending should be risk-free, but in fact, lending should incur a risk: you made the choice to lend you money instead of working yourself. You added value only if you recognised correctly the potential of the work of the borrower and yours. In general, it either worked or not. A way to make the system smoother is to impose a modicum of inflation, which is the automatic loss of value from doing nothing.
So you have an incentive to take risks/work.
Also, the concept of fiat money is that the amount of money in the system corresponds to the value produced by the system. NOT the availability of some random ore. Which makes no sense.
About the being worse than right now: last time we had the gold standard, it ended in WWII, so yes. It can get worse. Much, much worse.
I work and you work. We both agree on some token to represent work. Now say you hunt, and I am a hairdresser. You need a haircut and come to me with a piece of meat. It happens that I don't need it right now, so you don't get a haircut. Now the solution is that you agree to give me meat later, and to symbolise that, we agree that these pretty shiny stones will serve as a token of how much meat you should feed me, and, conversely, how much hair I should cut.
Darn it, this is debt! Fact, you cannot get away from it. Not if you want to be able to store value. If you cannot store value, you cannot have services. You are stuck in the stone age.
With an extra problem: now there are many hunter/hair dressers, and not nearly enough stones to represent the exchanges. The system breaks down.
*Fiat money*
A third player, the central bank is responsible for producing tokens. It's his job, and he can make sure there always are enough tokens. Problem: some guy (a banker) figures out a way to make money from money through accumulation. Solution: a small amount of inflation, which prevents accumulation which does not correspond to the current production of goods and services, because the value from the production of an oil lamp a century ago should not be kept in the system.
Money represents amounts of work. Why would the availability of precious metals be relevant to that? Indeed, the obsession with the gold standard pretty much caused WWII. Why repeat History's most egregious mistakes? Oh, right, because facts and reality, don't matter any more.
Thank you. The concept of letting people die because you think you have the moral high ground is abhorrent. Fantasise about your pink-pony society where foetus are people and abortion is a lifestyle issue, but by Hell, don't go making actual humans miserable because you can't handle reality.
Foetus. Not "baby". Collection of cells. Saying the foetus should have rights from the moment of conception based on some notion of potential means women should not be allowed contraception, and their eggs harvested. For every egg is a potential human.
What of spontaneous abortion? Is that not equivalent to assisting at a murder and doing nothing? There is nothing reasonable or consistent in being a Libertarian and against abortion. Because it is saying a potential being has _more_ rights than an actual being. Forbidding abortion in the case of genetic defects is murder: medical resources will be devoted to save a potential being and later actual being that could have been used to save actual beings. Forbidding abortion in the case of rape is saying that the rapist has more right to be evolutionary successful that the raped. Forbidding abortion in the case of an unwanted pregnancy is again saying that you don't care what will happen to the unwanted child, nor to the mother, as long as you get to force her to reproduce. This unbelievably violent.
As for the genetic test, does that mean that tumours have a right to live? They are as conscious as the foetus, and indeed, genetically different from you.
Social security is a concept, and encompasses unemployment benefits. Did you know? The world goes beyond the US, and, say, Ireland has a different social security structure as the US?
Also the doctor is not in fact contractually obligates to "provide health care". Not in the sense that he will actually make an attempt at improving your condition. He may or may not provide a correct diagnostic, and may or may not refer you to a specialist. Who, in turn may or may not be of help. This is not like grocery shopping where you actually know what you are getting for your money.
Basically, a system which allows people to survive longer without a job, and therefore ups their odds of getting a job optimises worker's allocation in the economy. Never mind what you think it is for: this is what it does to the economy. Also, the only intelligent debate is about how long/how comfortable this ought to be to maximise global productivity, compared to the cost to the collectivity. This is a complicated and highly technical subject.
As for socialised health insurance, if you cannot see the difference between a collective (the Nation) agreeing (through its representatives) to spend x amount on health, and x being used to optimise outcomes globally versus a _doctor_ (WTF happened to the Hippocratic oath) asking for your credit card before he will talk to you, you have a twisted, sad vision of the universe.
This is demonstrably wrong: social security is what allows people to take risks and not fall in indentured servitude.
It allows people to look for the best job -- and therefore also serves economy as a whole. The moralistic aspects are only incidental.
Health insurance has to be socialised, because a free market where one party is literally allowed to say "pay up, or else..." is bound to be highly dysfunctional.
Yes, and that is actually relevant. Of course, getting out of that situation without growing the economy is still impossible, but hey, at least you can have a meaningful discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
No, because in practise, you do not want to have five cable to your home, just so you can switch providers.
And even if you did, the redundancy clearly represents some loss for society.
Sometimes, we don't know, and don't know we don't know. However, we might know, because it is our area of expertise, or because simply we looked into it.
Simply, if I don't know something, and become aware of that fact, I try to correct that. Also, if someone is wrong, I don't shrug and say "not my problem". Because it is my problem (or will end up being my problem). And I expect people who know better also to correct me.
Stupid example: computer screens have become crappy, with stupid aspect ratios and less pixels than they used to have. Because some enemy of humankind realised that "fullHD" sounds better than 1920x1200, despite it being significantly smaller. And because of the attitude of "oh, I am not going to correct people, for fear of sounding like a smartass", we get technology to regress.
Education, the love of knowledge, and of spreading knowledge is the problem of everyone. It is more effective than voting with your dollars. It is more powerful than any amount of lobbying. It is tragically underrated.
Oh, and this is slashdot. Home of the technically inclined.
Yes, yes, language is context-sensitive, I know that. However, what people think their words mean does not mean they do. Just that if the listener is nice he'll go along, and if not, well...
Your argument is that words mean what people think they mean. I believe this is wrong: a conversation/sentence means what is agreed between the writer/speaker and the recipient. And this is completely orthogonal to the actual meaning of the words.
Saying the words mean what to the majority they mean is just wrong. It means you have given up on educating your fellow Humans.
On the other hand, California is the "we want more money for teachers and less taxes" state. So it's not like they have a long history of being extra-consistent...
What do you think would happen if suddenly texts of laws meant what the general public thought they meant (mostly nothing at all) ?
The opinion of an expert is always more valid than the opinion of the public. Obviously. Otherwise, instead of funding science labs, we should just organise polls on which theory is more likely.
The origin of a word, its etymology, tells you what it means, even if you never heard the word before -- particularly if you know some Greek and Latin. And yes, meanings evolve. Being aware of that allows you to read and understand texts of centuries past. But clearly, you think knowing this is a bad thing, and that one should never encourage people to educate themselves. Because only the current meaning is relevant.
Never mind that the current meaning is a marketing ploy.
Never mind that terrible knowledge of their own language is probably the one thing that most keeps people from being effective citizens.
Well, sorry, but it is useful and important to keep telling people what they said does not actually means what they think it does.
It is in fact entirely good and reasonable that production and transport of electricity be from two separate entity. It is not good to allow monopolies on production and transport...
And if they are required for technical reasons, they ought to be state monopolies.
It is not wrong as such: just terrible style. This has nothing to do with words changing their meanings because some arsehole from marketing though it would be a good idea, and swaths of ignoramuses gobbling it up. Which is a very real problem in today's world: ignorance is a condition easily cured, it is not something in which one should glory.
So your argument is that automatically when a technical term becomes common, it should stop meaning what it means?
You probably also complain that people in technical fields abuse jargon. GP is right: words mean what they mean, and meaning attributed through ignorance is irrelevant. Except of course for politicians, who get to never make nor break promises, because the people have been told that words mean what they want by people like you.
Ignorance has never been and will never be a valid opinion.
You are not actually undermining my point: it even worse of you idle large amounts of useful ores to "store value". It is a pure loss for the economy.
Money serves as a token representing value. Which in turn is the result of work. The availability of the tokens should reflect the creation of value/work in the economy. Not the availability of completely unrelated ores.
"has so much market share that the market is distorted" is the only definition that makes sense. Government have a monopoly on nuclear weapons. This is good -- at least, better than the alternative free market for medium yield devices...
My fiat dollars are worth exactly as much as what they can buy. Currently, with deflation looming, their value is going to get up, even with me not working. That is, unless Bernanke gets its act together. (NOTA: how can you be against welfare entitlement, and think that growing the value of idle money is good?)
But inflation is good! Deflation means that if a century ago, some guy got money from producing an oil lamp, this money not only stays in the system, but grows in value!
Debt is only bad if you live in a world were lending should be risk-free, but in fact, lending should incur a risk: you made the choice to lend you money instead of working yourself. You added value only if you recognised correctly the potential of the work of the borrower and yours. In general, it either worked or not. A way to make the system smoother is to impose a modicum of inflation, which is the automatic loss of value from doing nothing.
So you have an incentive to take risks/work.
Also, the concept of fiat money is that the amount of money in the system corresponds to the value produced by the system. NOT the availability of some random ore. Which makes no sense.
About the being worse than right now: last time we had the gold standard, it ended in WWII, so yes. It can get worse. Much, much worse.
That is so wrong. Compare and contrast.
*Barter system*
I work and you work. We both agree on some token to represent work. Now say you hunt, and I am a hairdresser. You need a haircut and come to me with a piece of meat. It happens that I don't need it right now, so you don't get a haircut. Now the solution is that you agree to give me meat later, and to symbolise that, we agree that these pretty shiny stones will serve as a token of how much meat you should feed me, and, conversely, how much hair I should cut.
Darn it, this is debt! Fact, you cannot get away from it. Not if you want to be able to store value. If you cannot store value, you cannot have services. You are stuck in the stone age.
With an extra problem: now there are many hunter/hair dressers, and not nearly enough stones to represent the exchanges. The system breaks down.
*Fiat money*
A third player, the central bank is responsible for producing tokens. It's his job, and he can make sure there always are enough tokens. Problem: some guy (a banker) figures out a way to make money from money through accumulation. Solution: a small amount of inflation, which prevents accumulation which does not correspond to the current production of goods and services, because the value from the production of an oil lamp a century ago should not be kept in the system.
Money represents amounts of work. Why would the availability of precious metals be relevant to that? Indeed, the obsession with the gold standard pretty much caused WWII. Why repeat History's most egregious mistakes? Oh, right, because facts and reality, don't matter any more.
Thank you. The concept of letting people die because you think you have the moral high ground is abhorrent. Fantasise about your pink-pony society where foetus are people and abortion is a lifestyle issue, but by Hell, don't go making actual humans miserable because you can't handle reality.
Foetus. Not "baby". Collection of cells. Saying the foetus should have rights from the moment of conception based on some notion of potential means women should not be allowed contraception, and their eggs harvested. For every egg is a potential human.
What of spontaneous abortion? Is that not equivalent to assisting at a murder and doing nothing? There is nothing reasonable or consistent in being a Libertarian and against abortion. Because it is saying a potential being has _more_ rights than an actual being. Forbidding abortion in the case of genetic defects is murder: medical resources will be devoted to save a potential being and later actual being that could have been used to save actual beings. Forbidding abortion in the case of rape is saying that the rapist has more right to be evolutionary successful that the raped. Forbidding abortion in the case of an unwanted pregnancy is again saying that you don't care what will happen to the unwanted child, nor to the mother, as long as you get to force her to reproduce. This unbelievably violent.
As for the genetic test, does that mean that tumours have a right to live? They are as conscious as the foetus, and indeed, genetically different from you.
Remember the topic? Ireland? the other side of the Atlantic?
Social security is a concept, and encompasses unemployment benefits. Did you know? The world goes beyond the US, and, say, Ireland has a different social security structure as the US?
Also the doctor is not in fact contractually obligates to "provide health care". Not in the sense that he will actually make an attempt at improving your condition. He may or may not provide a correct diagnostic, and may or may not refer you to a specialist. Who, in turn may or may not be of help. This is not like grocery shopping where you actually know what you are getting for your money.
Basically, a system which allows people to survive longer without a job, and therefore ups their odds of getting a job optimises worker's allocation in the economy. Never mind what you think it is for: this is what it does to the economy. Also, the only intelligent debate is about how long/how comfortable this ought to be to maximise global productivity, compared to the cost to the collectivity. This is a complicated and highly technical subject.
As for socialised health insurance, if you cannot see the difference between a collective (the Nation) agreeing (through its representatives) to spend x amount on health, and x being used to optimise outcomes globally versus a _doctor_ (WTF happened to the Hippocratic oath) asking for your credit card before he will talk to you, you have a twisted, sad vision of the universe.
See, _legally_ a country is allowed to default. By definition. Never an individual, lest he be the supreme dictator of his track of land.
France in 1941 could have been sovereign: after the fall of France, it still had a huge empire. It was treason from the high command that did it.
This is demonstrably wrong: social security is what allows people to take risks and not fall in indentured servitude.
It allows people to look for the best job -- and therefore also serves economy as a whole. The moralistic aspects are only incidental.
Health insurance has to be socialised, because a free market where one party is literally allowed to say "pay up, or else..." is bound to be highly dysfunctional.
Yes, and that is actually relevant. Of course, getting out of that situation without growing the economy is still impossible, but hey, at least you can have a meaningful discussion.
Free market exists. Some guy get monopoly on force. Free market cease to exist. See? easy. Free markets can't exist on their own.
Government are there to prevent that from happening. Democratic ones also add a modicum of public oversight.
Yes. This is becoming urgent, as a public service...