> That's like saying there's no real difference between an alcoholic and a person who occasionally goes out drinking on a Friday night.
This. There is a not so fine line between expecting a punch in the face in the spur of the moment, and going in heavily armed with automatic weapons, committing mass murder. So maybe a letter to the editor, with expletives, or running a counter-caricature would have been more balanced responses.
All in all, Charlie Hebdo is a stronger part of the immune system of the Western civilization than Francis Pope.
Therein lies the problem. What you say is correct - for those subscribing to Western values already (let's call it the Church of Humanism). But there are other religions that teach things that contradict these. E.g. Islam. If you haven't got the memo, Islam isn't only about peaceful coexistence, integration and whatever values the Church of Humanism has. Because it's some other religion. If you look up the definition of jihad, there's no way you can reconcile or integrate that with Western values. Other than maybe eventually making Westerners be as militant and vigorous about their values as jihadists are about their own values.
So your response has two kinds of audience: - those who already agree with you will continue to agree with you - those who don't already agree with you will continue to not respect your argument
The Western society can't defend itself if it pretends that its nemesis plays by the same rulebook. Had it played by the same rulebook, there would have been no such separating issues to begin with, and there would only be the _regular_ issues like skin color, lack of immigrant assimilation, socioeconomic status etc. which is also experienced by Far Easterns, blacks etc. But it's not the case.
> it may be good for his P.R. with the muslem community
Speaking of the extremist end (mind you - the extremist end probably regard themselves as the 'true' muslims) if you appease them, will they become tame? No - social tensions like this, left on their own accord in a demokracy, will be dealt with by pure demographics and the continuing expansion of Islam influence. In other words, Paris and London becoming predominantly Muslim cities, and in theory, nothing prevents an eventual Islamic revolution and Sharla law introduced in the UK, France or the whole of Western Europe. Which actually fits quite nicely into the flow of history despite temporary victories like expelling the Moors from Spain and the Turks from the Balkans.
So tactically he may score a point before his muslim 'talking partners', but strategically and morally he may still have done the suboptimal and wrong thing.
> what impression would Francis give by saying "oh well, no problem for me because I am far more forgiving than the Muslems"
> Look, the guy's hardly going to say it's OK to blaspheme, is he? It's just not in his job description. Whatever his personal opinion may be, he's is not at liberty to promote the same viewpoints as Charlie Hebdo.
You're claiming that if he speaks about this subject, his job description may severely constrain him in what he can say. Let's forget about the fact that probably his job description isn't that detailed. He may have simply elected not to share his opinion, or not say as many things as he said. He could have stopped well before the 'punch in the face' argument if he had wanted to, still rejecting violence and promoting tolerance and even sensibility and respect.
Pretty good argument for stopping the pretense and political correctness and say out loud that some religions like Islam represent danger to mankind, which can only be mitigated by active tools such as mass surveillance and criminalization of certain aspects, rather than pretending that it's simply a poverty problem or ghetto problem or that they will grow out of it under their accord before one of them somehow manage to trigger WW3 (tho the Russians and North Koreans are candidates, too).
I'm NOT claiming that Islam is worse, or more militant than all other religions throughout the entire history (I'm not claiming the opposite either, as I'm no expert in this). But it is a coincidental fact that by the present time, when technology became advanced enough to render the World unstable, it happens to be Islam which demonstrates the most consistent pattern of self-destructing behavior, in the name of their respective god. So the Crusaders in medieval time had no chance to destroy civilization or kill all humans, but rouge states and even terrorist organizations may have the means to bring about a nuclear war. But believe me, simply infecting Paris' water system with some pest and causing the death of thousands will be enough to cause barricades, unbelievable separation and splitting France to two separate countries.
While MAD (mutually assured destruction) can lead to a status quo or equilibrium of sorts on a human's timescale, it assumes rational agents, however fundamentalist believers would be happy to blow up a city or the Earth for the promise of some number of virgins in the afterlife. And Westerners seem tame and patient until they feel threatened, in which case they flock to vote for the most fascist (against Islam, not Jews) party as we can already witness it in Europe.
It is less of a coincidence, that by the time the technology is advanced enough for one mad person to cause massive damage, technology is also cheap and prevalent enough to be deployed for mass surveillance purposes.
So pick your poison: 1. Acknowledge that mass surveillance is kind of OK in the hand of mildly democratic Western governments of today 2. Wait some more, and learn that mass surveillance is even more inevitable in the hands of next wave, xenophobic, fascist governments
I think the argument is that 1. Pope Francis said something stupid, wrong or despicable 2.... however, high priests of the Catholic church can't be trusted, as they repeatedly support and cover up sick, abnormal behavior 3.... therefore the fact that this is the Pope's opinion (or communication) can be dismissed without even evaluating the statement
This of course does not imply whether his expressed opinion is right or wrong, but who cares about what he says, if the GP (and me) consider his institution discredited and bankrupt.
Well of course, society cares about it, because what he says can have an impact on society despite the above reasoning, even if it is only to give the justification for Jihadists. I.e. he's doubly an irresponsible asshole unable to foresee the negative consequences of what he says, in effect helping Islam take over and end Western civilisation, as we know it.
The problem is that molesting children by priest rapists is a systemic problem in the Catholic Church. It's not some outliers, or it's not just some crime that is somewhat prevalent in society and is also prevalent in the Church. There is a pattern, and a very strong case of causation. If a problem is systemic, then it has to be addressed by systemic means, be it the legalisation of priest marriage, female priests and mass surveillance of Catholic priests. For it is horrible that those who in theory serve most selflessly and ask for people's trust and support toward their values, and let their children close, stick to a social arrangement is known to result in child rapes by straight, gay and bi priests.
> If you poke a bear cub with a stick long enough, its mom might come and maul the shit out of you.
And what if you draw a crude picture, illustrating that someone is poking the bear's imaginary cub, and you _don't_ even distribute your drawing among those who aren't interested in it, will it still kill you?
Are you implyng that a Jihadist is worse than animals, because he has way less tolerance for way more abstract things than a dangerous animal? We may have found common ground. Here's my projection: one of them will eventually blow up the Earth and end civilisation.
What should the human civilisation do, if it has to eventually choose between risking the planet and curing or criminalizing a religion?
Except that, for example, - video skype and desktop sharing is not available on Linux with more than two participants - the Linux GUI is a confused mess
Transparent LCD does that. Another question is, with what resolution? LCDs can be of fine resolution, but you'd need the equivalent of the viewfinder of a high quality SLR camera to ensure it's in the proper focal plane. I think such an optical pathway would be, by necessity, heavy and of limited FOV and light intensity. So inventing a full VR and projecting the external view seems more appropriate, and the quality (resolution, color scale, lag etc.) of the environmental view and the augmentation would make it blend better, with all the positives and negatives.
Technically you can eventually solve all the technical problems and have human-matching color fidelity, FOV, resolution... but the limitation would be that people wouldn't see one another's eyes.
But of course you can project virtual real eyes to conceal the real virtual eyes. With high enough fidelity, you'll even see the reflection of your own virtual real eyes in the other person's virtual real eyes:-) But kissing will be weird...
Hmm you and a couple of anons 'don't get it', Macfox is trying to ask a question that is reasonable and not that hard to parse, yet he gets the 'you don't seem to understand the concept' from you. His point is that if the visor is fairly transparent, then light from the environment (e.g. looking at a white table) will interfere with the augmentation. I.e. you can't simulate the covering of white table with black tablecloth, even though you can (more convincingly) cover a black table with white virtual tablecloth.
However wouldn't it be possible to use an LCD screen in the visor, which could selectively block out areas if needed? I understand the visor is not in the correct focal plane for the purpose, but brightly lit, large, contiguous objects with low apparent speed (e.g. a window, the sky, a light source or a white wall) could be blocked out, similar to how smudges on sunglasses have a blurred but very noticeable effect. All it would take is a transparent LCD screen which is old tech and uses very little power.
1. Any sufficiently advanced civilisation can create a simulation (or more) on a grand scale. 2. In a simulated world, intelligence and construction may arise, eventually leading to sufficiently advanced simulated civilisations 3. (... after some thousands of recursions, also recognising that there is plenty of 'time' for that because time is an internal variable of the universe in question...)
The big Q:
What is the likelihood that in the vast tree of simulated universes, we are sitting at the root?
Could it be that as a simulated civilisation advances, and invents the microscope and the telescope, and intelligent species proliferate, the simulatING civilisation has to throw more and more hardware at the problem? Or has to invent physics on the go? E.g. pre-Newton and pre-radiotelescopes, a Newtonian world would have perfectly worked, from the viewpoint of the humans, with 'rendered' stars; pre-microscope, maybe bacteria etc. didn't need to exist. The simulator just simulated some sickness or reaction. When the loop tightened, they had to invent something.
Maybe science stops when there is enough evidence that some things just can't reconcile with one another, or when more and more investment is needed for less and less impactful findings (bosons, very remote galaxies etc.). Maybe a team of scientists one level up are playing pranks or feeling creative. And some other scientists tie their hands and just start some cellular automaton to see where it leads to.
Isn't thinking this the equivalent of the geocentric or heliocentric world view?
Nah, it's much simpler. The universe is floating in a sea of vacuum, which seeps through the pores of the universe, i.e. it's statistically unlikely but the energy balance is zero. You can immediately grasp the concept if you think of a squashed sponge ball, which as it expands, it soaks up air from its neighborhood. And of course if physicists are happy to buy into the idea that the Universe just sprang out of nothing, why not think that it sprang out like a sponge ball compressed (or nanoprinted) into a tiny space?
> When you're angry, the media is spreading fear, and citizens are demanding action from their government, its all to easy to swing wildly too far in giving up freedom and privacy. We've had more than a decade of that in the US and it isn't pretty.
A lot of us here are in STEM or work with data in some way. How on Earth are you going to prevent shit like this from happening if not by close surveillance? For it is not an individual action but a pattern of individually innocent-looking actions that is predictive of a plot suspicion. With all the liberal whining, let's get real: in the age where even just one (moderately armed) asshole can cause serious damage (e.g. indirectly to freedom of speech), you won't have a real super-duper search warrant until after it's too late. So you are forced to monitor whatever you can to establish patterns among activities that individually aren't suspicious. Just because anger can lead to close surveillance, it does not mean that carefully measured analysis would have lead you somewhere else. Network data analysis 101 welcome to the class of 2015.
Wishy-washy thing you're saying. Who cares about the 'definition'. These terrorists killed a dozen or two, for political reasons, in Europe, sounds un-vague enough for me and probably another few hundred million EU citizens.
That is a pretty damning statistic, I admit. But it would be weird for Western Europeans to limit migration from Eastern Europe, because Western Europe in general, made the mistake of accepting millions of culturally very different immigrants en masse who's values are radically different, and migration from Eastern Europe is the only route to improve demographic balance. So if I were a Western European far right wing politician (which I'm not, not even a sympathizer) then I'd _definitely_ insist on strengthening the immigration flow from Eastern Europe to revitalise the local mainstream population (as the aging Danish society itself can't over-procreate the migrants of multicultural origin).
It may still be the smaller bad, in comparison to not doing anything on the excuse that it incurs the risk (or even the likelihood) of what you talk about. Life is action -> reaction, get used to it. Noone believes that the states won't misuse their powers, but it's naive and insulting of YOU to assume that people don't consider that self-defense and self-preservation has costs. If you think about it, the modern state is way more knowledgeable about you than it was in the medieval or industrial times, credit cards, non-anonymous travel etc., yet I don't think you'd want to go backwards in time...
> True in the US, but in Europe, we are already past tipping point: the majority of people now see organised religion as a force for harm.
Haha, good one:-) There are countries like the UK where there is strong economic sense to be (pretend to be) religious, if not for something else, to benefit from superior schools while not having to pay for "public" (=private) schools.
Even if what you said were true, it would be a snapshot. Want to guess that families of which religion procreates more? That tipping point is not one-way and may come back purely as a result of clear demographic trends.
> they are decent to the extent that they discard their holy books, not to the extent that they follow them
There is some very humane and peaceful stuff in the New Testament. So you're simplifying to the extent of being wrong.
But I agree with your larger point that hazards to society should be treated as such, because we have one life, one planet etc. so let's do a good amount of risk prevention to protect what's important to us, and good risk prevention starts with earnest analysis of causes and effects - let the statistics talk, and let's apply Bayesian inference - , not some politically correct bullshit. For example, let's not harrass disabled Caucasian people, young Chinese girls etc. on an airport who, based on these superficial data alone, are much less likely to commit terrorist acts than for example males who look like a facebook of terrorists and their support network. Too much PC-ness just causes an unnatural lack of balance to effort spent vs. realised returns. Another way of saying is, if you don't act on Bayesian statistics (e.g. picking search targets on airports) then you just harrass the criminally underrepresented group so that you can righteously claim that your search efforts are uncorrelated to skin color, gender etc. I as a man don't mind if I'm picked out of the line more often than women because I respect society's interest and recognize the utility of using prior probabilities.
If on one occasion, A preceded B, then A must have caused B and must cause it almost a century later. If the alternative to your hypothetical B is a definite C, and a definite C is worse than a hypothetical B, while a realised B would be as bad as C, then we should still remain on course for C.
Maybe still more free than the mean / median / top decile of Muslim religion-states? So whether or not you're right on this point is kind of irrelevant.
Blah-blah-blah. Why is it that e.g. the Poilsh can integrate more nicely into the UK society? Maybe because they try, and there are more shared values? Religions teach people things and values that may or may not be compatible with Western values. There is an undeniable pattern between Islam and disrespect for Western values, e.g. secularity (separation of church and state), religious freedom, women's rights, child (girl) education, types of punishments, I could go on and on.Once the demographic processes tip the balance in favor of a Muslim majority, see if it's indeed a 'run-of-the-mill socioeconomic problem' or just the end of the place as you know it, with Sharia law for your grandchildren.
You are the second guy who thinks the gp wrote tape is dead. He wrote hdd will be AS dead AS tape is today. No more, no less. I.e. as a backup media if that (ssd follows moore's law but hdd?).
Slashdot Mirror
> That's like saying there's no real difference between an alcoholic and a person who occasionally goes out drinking on a Friday night.
This. There is a not so fine line between expecting a punch in the face in the spur of the moment, and going in heavily armed with automatic weapons, committing mass murder. So maybe a letter to the editor, with expletives, or running a counter-caricature would have been more balanced responses.
All in all, Charlie Hebdo is a stronger part of the immune system of the Western civilization than Francis Pope.
Therein lies the problem. What you say is correct - for those subscribing to Western values already (let's call it the Church of Humanism). But there are other religions that teach things that contradict these. E.g. Islam. If you haven't got the memo, Islam isn't only about peaceful coexistence, integration and whatever values the Church of Humanism has. Because it's some other religion. If you look up the definition of jihad, there's no way you can reconcile or integrate that with Western values. Other than maybe eventually making Westerners be as militant and vigorous about their values as jihadists are about their own values.
So your response has two kinds of audience:
- those who already agree with you will continue to agree with you
- those who don't already agree with you will continue to not respect your argument
The Western society can't defend itself if it pretends that its nemesis plays by the same rulebook. Had it played by the same rulebook, there would have been no such separating issues to begin with, and there would only be the _regular_ issues like skin color, lack of immigrant assimilation, socioeconomic status etc. which is also experienced by Far Easterns, blacks etc. But it's not the case.
> it may be good for his P.R. with the muslem community
Speaking of the extremist end (mind you - the extremist end probably regard themselves as the 'true' muslims) if you appease them, will they become tame? No - social tensions like this, left on their own accord in a demokracy, will be dealt with by pure demographics and the continuing expansion of Islam influence. In other words, Paris and London becoming predominantly Muslim cities, and in theory, nothing prevents an eventual Islamic revolution and Sharla law introduced in the UK, France or the whole of Western Europe. Which actually fits quite nicely into the flow of history despite temporary victories like expelling the Moors from Spain and the Turks from the Balkans.
So tactically he may score a point before his muslim 'talking partners', but strategically and morally he may still have done the suboptimal and wrong thing.
> what impression would Francis give by saying "oh well, no problem for me because I am far more forgiving than the Muslems"
He would set an example.
> Look, the guy's hardly going to say it's OK to blaspheme, is he? It's just not in his job description. Whatever his personal opinion may be, he's is not at liberty to promote the same viewpoints as Charlie Hebdo.
You're claiming that if he speaks about this subject, his job description may severely constrain him in what he can say. Let's forget about the fact that probably his job description isn't that detailed. He may have simply elected not to share his opinion, or not say as many things as he said. He could have stopped well before the 'punch in the face' argument if he had wanted to, still rejecting violence and promoting tolerance and even sensibility and respect.
Pretty good argument for stopping the pretense and political correctness and say out loud that some religions like Islam represent danger to mankind, which can only be mitigated by active tools such as mass surveillance and criminalization of certain aspects, rather than pretending that it's simply a poverty problem or ghetto problem or that they will grow out of it under their accord before one of them somehow manage to trigger WW3 (tho the Russians and North Koreans are candidates, too).
I'm NOT claiming that Islam is worse, or more militant than all other religions throughout the entire history (I'm not claiming the opposite either, as I'm no expert in this). But it is a coincidental fact that by the present time, when technology became advanced enough to render the World unstable, it happens to be Islam which demonstrates the most consistent pattern of self-destructing behavior, in the name of their respective god. So the Crusaders in medieval time had no chance to destroy civilization or kill all humans, but rouge states and even terrorist organizations may have the means to bring about a nuclear war. But believe me, simply infecting Paris' water system with some pest and causing the death of thousands will be enough to cause barricades, unbelievable separation and splitting France to two separate countries.
While MAD (mutually assured destruction) can lead to a status quo or equilibrium of sorts on a human's timescale, it assumes rational agents, however fundamentalist believers would be happy to blow up a city or the Earth for the promise of some number of virgins in the afterlife. And Westerners seem tame and patient until they feel threatened, in which case they flock to vote for the most fascist (against Islam, not Jews) party as we can already witness it in Europe.
It is less of a coincidence, that by the time the technology is advanced enough for one mad person to cause massive damage, technology is also cheap and prevalent enough to be deployed for mass surveillance purposes.
So pick your poison:
1. Acknowledge that mass surveillance is kind of OK in the hand of mildly democratic Western governments of today
2. Wait some more, and learn that mass surveillance is even more inevitable in the hands of next wave, xenophobic, fascist governments
I think the argument is that ... however, high priests of the Catholic church can't be trusted, as they repeatedly support and cover up sick, abnormal behavior ... therefore the fact that this is the Pope's opinion (or communication) can be dismissed without even evaluating the statement
1. Pope Francis said something stupid, wrong or despicable
2.
3.
This of course does not imply whether his expressed opinion is right or wrong, but who cares about what he says, if the GP (and me) consider his institution discredited and bankrupt.
Well of course, society cares about it, because what he says can have an impact on society despite the above reasoning, even if it is only to give the justification for Jihadists. I.e. he's doubly an irresponsible asshole unable to foresee the negative consequences of what he says, in effect helping Islam take over and end Western civilisation, as we know it.
The problem is that molesting children by priest rapists is a systemic problem in the Catholic Church. It's not some outliers, or it's not just some crime that is somewhat prevalent in society and is also prevalent in the Church. There is a pattern, and a very strong case of causation. If a problem is systemic, then it has to be addressed by systemic means, be it the legalisation of priest marriage, female priests and mass surveillance of Catholic priests. For it is horrible that those who in theory serve most selflessly and ask for people's trust and support toward their values, and let their children close, stick to a social arrangement is known to result in child rapes by straight, gay and bi priests.
> If you poke a bear cub with a stick long enough, its mom might come and maul the shit out of you.
And what if you draw a crude picture, illustrating that someone is poking the bear's imaginary cub, and you _don't_ even distribute your drawing among those who aren't interested in it, will it still kill you?
Are you implyng that a Jihadist is worse than animals, because he has way less tolerance for way more abstract things than a dangerous animal? We may have found common ground. Here's my projection: one of them will eventually blow up the Earth and end civilisation.
What should the human civilisation do, if it has to eventually choose between risking the planet and curing or criminalizing a religion?
It's a slippery slope to Sharia law, coming to your neighborhood.
Except that, for example,
- video skype and desktop sharing is not available on Linux with more than two participants
- the Linux GUI is a confused mess
... and neither can reality... it would be as if you wore sunglasses inside
Transparent LCD does that. Another question is, with what resolution? LCDs can be of fine resolution, but you'd need the equivalent of the viewfinder of a high quality SLR camera to ensure it's in the proper focal plane. I think such an optical pathway would be, by necessity, heavy and of limited FOV and light intensity. So inventing a full VR and projecting the external view seems more appropriate, and the quality (resolution, color scale, lag etc.) of the environmental view and the augmentation would make it blend better, with all the positives and negatives.
Technically you can eventually solve all the technical problems and have human-matching color fidelity, FOV, resolution... but the limitation would be that people wouldn't see one another's eyes.
But of course you can project virtual real eyes to conceal the real virtual eyes. With high enough fidelity, you'll even see the reflection of your own virtual real eyes in the other person's virtual real eyes :-) But kissing will be weird...
Hmm you and a couple of anons 'don't get it', Macfox is trying to ask a question that is reasonable and not that hard to parse, yet he gets the 'you don't seem to understand the concept' from you. His point is that if the visor is fairly transparent, then light from the environment (e.g. looking at a white table) will interfere with the augmentation. I.e. you can't simulate the covering of white table with black tablecloth, even though you can (more convincingly) cover a black table with white virtual tablecloth.
However wouldn't it be possible to use an LCD screen in the visor, which could selectively block out areas if needed? I understand the visor is not in the correct focal plane for the purpose, but brightly lit, large, contiguous objects with low apparent speed (e.g. a window, the sky, a light source or a white wall) could be blocked out, similar to how smudges on sunglasses have a blurred but very noticeable effect. All it would take is a transparent LCD screen which is old tech and uses very little power.
What's science's answer to this one?
1. Any sufficiently advanced civilisation can create a simulation (or more) on a grand scale.
2. In a simulated world, intelligence and construction may arise, eventually leading to sufficiently advanced simulated civilisations
3. (... after some thousands of recursions, also recognising that there is plenty of 'time' for that because time is an internal variable of the universe in question...)
The big Q:
What is the likelihood that in the vast tree of simulated universes, we are sitting at the root?
Could it be that as a simulated civilisation advances, and invents the microscope and the telescope, and intelligent species proliferate, the simulatING civilisation has to throw more and more hardware at the problem? Or has to invent physics on the go? E.g. pre-Newton and pre-radiotelescopes, a Newtonian world would have perfectly worked, from the viewpoint of the humans, with 'rendered' stars; pre-microscope, maybe bacteria etc. didn't need to exist. The simulator just simulated some sickness or reaction. When the loop tightened, they had to invent something.
Maybe science stops when there is enough evidence that some things just can't reconcile with one another, or when more and more investment is needed for less and less impactful findings (bosons, very remote galaxies etc.). Maybe a team of scientists one level up are playing pranks or feeling creative. And some other scientists tie their hands and just start some cellular automaton to see where it leads to.
Isn't thinking this the equivalent of the geocentric or heliocentric world view?
Nah, it's much simpler. The universe is floating in a sea of vacuum, which seeps through the pores of the universe, i.e. it's statistically unlikely but the energy balance is zero. You can immediately grasp the concept if you think of a squashed sponge ball, which as it expands, it soaks up air from its neighborhood. And of course if physicists are happy to buy into the idea that the Universe just sprang out of nothing, why not think that it sprang out like a sponge ball compressed (or nanoprinted) into a tiny space?
**ducks**
> When you're angry, the media is spreading fear, and citizens are demanding action from their government, its all to easy to swing wildly too far in giving up freedom and privacy. We've had more than a decade of that in the US and it isn't pretty.
A lot of us here are in STEM or work with data in some way. How on Earth are you going to prevent shit like this from happening if not by close surveillance? For it is not an individual action but a pattern of individually innocent-looking actions that is predictive of a plot suspicion. With all the liberal whining, let's get real: in the age where even just one (moderately armed) asshole can cause serious damage (e.g. indirectly to freedom of speech), you won't have a real super-duper search warrant until after it's too late. So you are forced to monitor whatever you can to establish patterns among activities that individually aren't suspicious. Just because anger can lead to close surveillance, it does not mean that carefully measured analysis would have lead you somewhere else. Network data analysis 101 welcome to the class of 2015.
Wishy-washy thing you're saying. Who cares about the 'definition'. These terrorists killed a dozen or two, for political reasons, in Europe, sounds un-vague enough for me and probably another few hundred million EU citizens.
That is a pretty damning statistic, I admit. But it would be weird for Western Europeans to limit migration from Eastern Europe, because Western Europe in general, made the mistake of accepting millions of culturally very different immigrants en masse who's values are radically different, and migration from Eastern Europe is the only route to improve demographic balance. So if I were a Western European far right wing politician (which I'm not, not even a sympathizer) then I'd _definitely_ insist on strengthening the immigration flow from Eastern Europe to revitalise the local mainstream population (as the aging Danish society itself can't over-procreate the migrants of multicultural origin).
It may still be the smaller bad, in comparison to not doing anything on the excuse that it incurs the risk (or even the likelihood) of what you talk about. Life is action -> reaction, get used to it. Noone believes that the states won't misuse their powers, but it's naive and insulting of YOU to assume that people don't consider that self-defense and self-preservation has costs. If you think about it, the modern state is way more knowledgeable about you than it was in the medieval or industrial times, credit cards, non-anonymous travel etc., yet I don't think you'd want to go backwards in time...
> True in the US, but in Europe, we are already past tipping point: the majority of people now see organised religion as a force for harm.
Haha, good one :-) There are countries like the UK where there is strong economic sense to be (pretend to be) religious, if not for something else, to benefit from superior schools while not having to pay for "public" (=private) schools.
Even if what you said were true, it would be a snapshot. Want to guess that families of which religion procreates more? That tipping point is not one-way and may come back purely as a result of clear demographic trends.
> they are decent to the extent that they discard their holy books, not to the extent that they follow them
There is some very humane and peaceful stuff in the New Testament. So you're simplifying to the extent of being wrong.
But I agree with your larger point that hazards to society should be treated as such, because we have one life, one planet etc. so let's do a good amount of risk prevention to protect what's important to us, and good risk prevention starts with earnest analysis of causes and effects - let the statistics talk, and let's apply Bayesian inference - , not some politically correct bullshit. For example, let's not harrass disabled Caucasian people, young Chinese girls etc. on an airport who, based on these superficial data alone, are much less likely to commit terrorist acts than for example males who look like a facebook of terrorists and their support network. Too much PC-ness just causes an unnatural lack of balance to effort spent vs. realised returns. Another way of saying is, if you don't act on Bayesian statistics (e.g. picking search targets on airports) then you just harrass the criminally underrepresented group so that you can righteously claim that your search efforts are uncorrelated to skin color, gender etc. I as a man don't mind if I'm picked out of the line more often than women because I respect society's interest and recognize the utility of using prior probabilities.
If on one occasion, A preceded B, then A must have caused B and must cause it almost a century later.
If the alternative to your hypothetical B is a definite C, and a definite C is worse than a hypothetical B, while a realised B would be as bad as C, then we should still remain on course for C.
Maybe still more free than the mean / median / top decile of Muslim religion-states? So whether or not you're right on this point is kind of irrelevant.
Blah-blah-blah. Why is it that e.g. the Poilsh can integrate more nicely into the UK society? Maybe because they try, and there are more shared values? Religions teach people things and values that may or may not be compatible with Western values. There is an undeniable pattern between Islam and disrespect for Western values, e.g. secularity (separation of church and state), religious freedom, women's rights, child (girl) education, types of punishments, I could go on and on.Once the demographic processes tip the balance in favor of a Muslim majority, see if it's indeed a 'run-of-the-mill socioeconomic problem' or just the end of the place as you know it, with Sharia law for your grandchildren.
You are the second guy who thinks the gp wrote tape is dead. He wrote hdd will be AS dead AS tape is today. No more, no less. I.e. as a backup media if that (ssd follows moore's law but hdd?).