the sole purpose of a gun is to maim and or kill people.
Just like swords. Or bows-and-arrows. Or any of a variety of weapons that civilians are allowed to own.
And why would a civilian want to own something which is designed to maim and/or kill people? Simple...some people are criminals, they intend harm, and the police are not around at the moment.
Survival is a real need. Some humans pose a real risk. Our protectors can't be everywhere at once. So, we must protect ourselves.
And before you start talking about being more likely to hurt yourself with a gun than protect yourself with it....consider that those statistics came from a source with an agenda. Consider further that a gun, sitting on a table, is just a rock. It isn't going to jump up and bite you. Since it has no will of its own, the risks of ownership can be mitigated by responsible care.
On the other hand, a criminal sitting on the table is not just a rick. The criminal has will of his own, and very well could jump up and bite you (or cause some kind of harm). Further, you can't tell a criminal by appearance alone, and you can't prevent one from happening by your property. So the risks of encountering a criminal cannot be mitigated. The best we can do is provide ourselves with a means of stopping a criminal, should one attack.
So what I am saying is...it does not make sense to be afraid of a gun. It does make sense to be afraid of a person. Therefore, provided you can be responsible, it makes perfect sense to own guns for purposes of self defense.
The primary purpose of patents is to *STOP* the competition from doing whatever it is you are patenting (yes, I know this isn't the stated purpose, but it is the purpose-in-effect). The secondary purpose is to collect money from people who do what you patented, so you can make money without doing it yourself.
In both cases, once you patent something, there is a net loss in the number of people doing it. We have observed this time and time again in the industry.
So why in the world would you REJECT a spam patent? By all means, GRANT THE PATENT! Let the spammers sue each other into oblivion and reduce the total amount of spam generated.
Those things which we use mathematics to describe (relationships of every variety) are discovered (by observation and experience)
The language with which we describe them (symbols, axioms, and rules of transformation) is invented (and refined over time, as a quick review of the history of mathematics will promptly reveal)
Additional products of this language (logical consequences of the axioms we have invented) are subsequently discovered.
We equivocate the term "Mathematics" to mean all three of these things (that described, the language of description, and logical consequences of the axioms of that language). When the word means all three of these things at once, it seems that we have both discovered and invented it, and lively (though misguided) debate ensues.
When we establish clarity about our topic of discussion (through disambiguation of our terms), then whether it was invented or discovered becomes clear, as I have just demonstrated.
When you model the universe in terms of will-less mechanisms, you will (amazing!) discover that free will is a logical impossibility.
Trying to model free will in terms of physics is like trying to describe the combustion engine using only the words found in a book on home gardening.
The only reason some people find this personally problematic is because they have decided that our current model of physics is also the concrete, accurately-represented holy truth. In fact, our current model is just an abstract representation of something we can't see, and it is just the best we've come up with so far (in fact, any scientist worth his salt will predict that our models will change in the future).
So the quantum-mechanical model of the universe is incompatible with any free-will-is-real model of the universe. So what? This incompatibility doesn't make either theory right or wrong. The evidence for each theory is all that matters.
As Epicurus (one of the fathers of the modern scientific method) advised, "if several theories are consistent with the observed data, retain them all."
Though this is secondary to your main point (which I will not presently challenge), your selection of Nietzsche as an example is a poor one.
Nietzsche questioned the absolute nature of truth, and repeatedly returned to a resultant affirmation of life. He found value not in abstract notions of virtue which he felt were erroneously held to be universal absolutes, nor in unsubstantial promises about an afterlife (about which he ranted often). He saw these attitudes (most popular among the religious, but also among idealists in general) to be rejections of life and, in his own words, the true nihilism.
To put it simply, why do you value something abstract? Because you hate the real. Why do you look forward to a better afterlife? Because you hate this life.
To someone who thinks the meaning of life lies somewhere in an abstract concept or afterlife, Nietzsche will seem gloomy. This is not because he sees no value to life, but because he sees value precisely where others do not: in existence itself. In many of his works, he celebrates this quite jubilantly.
Nietzsche is hard to read, no doubt. His writing style is anything but simple, and his target audience is not the common man. Further, there are issues with his editor having been a racist (and having poisoned some of his writings with racism), and also with translators that didn't really understand him. If you want to understand Nietzsche, read Walter Kaufmann's essays and translations.
Lastly, and as an aside, Nietzsche could not have raised a family...his health problems were quite extreme and made him unattractive. He in fact proposed to more than a few women and was always rejected. This did not prevent him from affirming the value of life itself, and finding encouragement in his place in the evolutionary process (seeing man as a bridge to an even greater man).
I have read more than a few stories about police taking action against people who are filming them, and complaints about how the police don't want to be recorded so they can get away with abusing the public, etc.
So....do all these cameras keep the police in line, too?
And if so, does that, in any way, change their desirability in the minds of the privacy advocates?
Are kinder police be worth the price of electronic eyes on every public street corner?
He was, at best, as right as any human could have been given the evidence available at the time. If he was as true a scientist as the world portrays him, then he expected to have his model refined over time as new evidence comes to light, eventually being completely replaced by something much more accurate.
Whatever new theory we build based on this new evidence will also be wrong, for the exact same reasons.
But it will be right enough to be useful as a stepping-stone to an even righter theory. That is how science works, and that is also why find science zealots to be even more annoying than religious zealots...science zealots have accepted as absolute truth a model that is just a stepping-stone, in direct contradiction of the very methods that they proclaim to be the ultimate determiners of truth.
Some people try to live a long time by eating right, exercising regularly, keeping a close eye on their medical needs, and basically taking good care of themselves.
And, for the most part, those who stick with it probably will live a lot longer than their peers.
Which means....provided they don't suffer some unexpected injury...that they will live long enough to watch everyone they love die.
They will wind up old and utterly alone...and that is the best case scenario.
So why not experience it to the fullest? Live your life knowing that none of it matters and that it's OK that none of it matters, because the only thing important is that you enjoy the experience, which you may never have again.
People like to feel like they have options. They dislike feeling like they are stuck with one option, no matter how unpleasant it becomes.
So, employers like feeling like there is a large talent pool available to them. That way they know that when some worker isn't working out, they can just cut him lose and replace him. Having options gives them the ability to optimize their company's productivity and ultimately achieve good success.
When employers feel like they don't have options, they feel like they are being forced to accept expensive, lazy, and talentless workers. Having a team built out of such people will result in the employer's business failing, or a manager's own productivity metrics being shamefully low.
So, it is every bit as natural for employers to prefer a high-unemployment market as it is for workers to prefer a low-unemployment market.
Workers, after all, don't want to feel like they have no choice but to accept a terrible job where they work long hours doing work they hate for a barely-livable (or sub-livable) wage. They would prefer to feel like they can just quit their job if it starts to suck, and move on to a better one.
Each side sees the other one as the evil side. Employees see the employers as the over demanding cruel slave masters who don't care about the employee's livelihoods, and just want to exploit them. Employers see employees as lazy, unskilled, expensive freeloaders who have no devotion to the company (and hence the employer's livelihood) and are just there to make a buck. So, each side feels the need to protect itself from the other side, and prefers economic conditions that are favorable to that protection.
Where I work, both are simultaneously true. The account reps are looking at a very dry employment market, and are desperate to keep their jobs. So, management is leaning on them. They typically work 50 to 60 hour weeks.
However, the tech side is seeing a still relatively open employment market. Each member of our tech team has talent and certifications, and we all know we could find a better job if we need to. So we get an easy 40 hour work week. When management tries to lean on us, we get to choose whether or not we want to give extra. When we chose not to, management just accepts it, because it would be too hard for them to replace us.
Most people on slashdot are laborers, rather than managers, so most of the posts will maintain that it is objectively obvious that low unemployment is good, and that employers are evil exploitive bastards. I don't know if it is true or not, but I DO know that there are two very clear-and-distinct sides to this issue.
"Intellectual Property" (sic) has just become the most valuable thing on the planet. So, naturally enough, the wealthier portion of humanity wants to own and control most of it.
It is also "abundant," (can be replicated infinitely, by anyone, at zero cost).
So, as we have seen before, the wealthy destroy this abundance by passing laws to create artificial scarcity. They have every incentive to do this.
The flippant public attitude that TPB is showing will not protect them from the wrath of the rich.
I will add....America has very few exports now. IP is basically it. So, it is in the interest of America's wealthy to impose strict IP laws (and hence artificial scarcity) all over the planet.
It isn't that they refuse to listen to reason....it is that they are following their obvious incentives to their logical conclusions. Expect more. Much more.
Greed is a problem, for sure. But it isn't exactly a light switch that you can just turn off.
Greed is generally not a problem in, say, a cell colony. The cells basically stand and fall together. Whatever benefits the group benefits all the individuals. So the cells do not need to display individual survival strategies. They gain no survival advantage from putting their own private good above the good of their neighbor cells.
However, as a species, we are not one giant cell colony. We are loosely-bound herd of individuals. In order for our species to survive, individuals must survive. In order for individuals to survive, they must accumulate and maintain control over resources that keep them alive. So long as we remain individuals, with individual identities and individual motivations that may-or-may-not perfectly coincide with a group motivation or group identity, we will need to continue to exercise behaviors that are appropriate for individual survival.
So, we display greedy behaviors not just because it is an instinct, but because it is a logical consequence of our having individual identities, and functioning autonomously.
The only way to completely eliminate greed would be to eliminate the psychological structures that give us a sense of separateness from our fellow man. Once we see all other humans as extensions of our own body (or fellow members of a greater body), we will then be able to see any benefit to a neighbor as being identical to a benefit to the self. Then, and only then, can we have perfect cooperation, perfect reciprocal altruism, and the perfect greed-free utopia that you would like to see.
So, I put to you this question: are you willing to give up your sense of self, all of your individuality, and all of your personal freedom, in order to live in this greed-free society?
If so, you would make a very good communist, and I wish you the best of luck. Unfortunately, I fear you won't see much progress in your lifetime, as most of humanity is not willing to sacrifice their "selves" in the name of a greater good.
I don't get it. It is actually quite simple, and it is not a matter of taking a middle ground.
The key point you seem to be missing is this: "failing to believe" something is not the same thing as "postulating its falseness."
1) An agnostic does not state that God exists. 2) An agnostic also does not state that God does not exist. Therefore: An agnostic does not "believe" either position.
The reason for this disbelief is so simple that it is sometimes hard to understand: there is no evidence either way. Neither position can be demonstrated by rational means, and therefore neither position will be held.
That is all there is to it. There is no need to add more to it with arbitrary rules like "you can't not believe in the non-existence of God if you already don't believe in the existence of God."
It is also true that many agnostics behave as atheists. They would justify this on the principle of Ockham's razor. Since God's existence cannot be verified or falsified by rational means, then the agnostic will not assume God's existence, as that would be a needless multiplication of entities. The agnostic also does not dis-assume God's existence, however. The agnostic simply doesn't consider God to be a relevant input into any of his decisions (whether he exists or not).
So this is the simplest of all positions to take. It involves no commitment to an unsupportable stance, and it adds no complexity to any important decisions.
It is only when you try to present the rejection of both statements as mutually-exclusive (which they are not) that you introduce needless complexity, and confuse yourself.
Under what bizarro universe does the public have more right to an author's work than the author (or their estate)?
Please understand that when the government enforces a private monopoly, the taxpayers incur direct costs. The "private monopoly" in this case is the author's sole distribution right over his work. The enforcement of that right means that real tax dollars get spent on investigations into copyright infringement violations, as well as the imposition of legal consequences.
So, that means that if you are an author, the rest of us (even those who do not buy copies of your work) are paying out-of-pocket to enforce your monopoly on your behalf.
What do we get in return for this? The privilege of being able to pay even more money if we want to experience your work? Do you really think this is balanced?
The reason why copyright law has a term limit is to try and strike this (otherwise missing) balance. In return for spending our money to protect your private monopoly for a period of years, we eventually get your work for free, in the public domain. Thus, you have your incentive to create secured (in the form of a protected period of sole distribution rights), and we get a ROI on all the tax money we spent to give you that (specifically, the work for free, eventually).
The problem that frustrates many posters on Slashdot is that the term of copyright is now so long that it is no longer balanced. In response to this perceived injustice, many people feel justified in dishonoring the private monopoly, and obtaining the work for free.
Whether or not they actually are justified is a debate in which I am presently remaining silent (though I won't deny an obvious bias). However, I will state that the current copyright law is not at all balanced, and the public good is getting the losing end of the deal. There is clearly an injustice being perpetuated by copyright holders and lobbies at the present time.
As an aside, copyright infringement is illegal and (arguably) immoral. However, it is not theft. Theft is generally defined in terms of the harm done to the victim, rather than the benefit to the perpetrator. Finding an un-owned object and claiming it for one's self is not theft, even though one got something without paying for it. However, depriving the rightful owner of access to his property is theft, and that wording is often used in legal proceedings involving theft.
In the case of copyright infringement, the rightful owner still has full access and full control over his own work. You have a duplicate of the work, but since you haven't deprived the owner of the work, you have not "stolen" it. You have merely copied it.
To use the ever-popular car analogy...if I see your car on your driveway, and I build myself a separate car just like it....you still have your car. I have not stolen it. Though my copy of it might still be illegal.
But don't take my word for it. The supreme court already ruled that copyright infringement is not theft. Read all about it.
I must admit this is one of the more cool headed yet vigorous defenses of piracy I have yet seen.
Actually, I didn't make a defense of piracy (sic), nor of copyright infringement. While I am obviously biased in that direction, my post focused on discrediting your prior post. If you read it again this will become obvious.
Also, there was no name calling.
You said, "This, by the way, firmly places you in a clinically pre-adolescent stage of cognitive development." Granted, this isn't directly name calling, I read it as "you are a big baby," which is clearly (and needlessly) insulting.
The moral and economic landscape are not changed in the least. Obviously, I disagree. Though the difference between us is that I gave specific examples of difference to support my case, and I shall enumerate them in greater detail presently.
By your reasoning, anything that is abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost can be taken from its producer without compensation I was using the word "abundant", in this context, to mean "anything that can be reproduced at zero cost." However, I never directly postulated that this attribute made it morally acceptable to take it from the producer without compensation. That wasn't a thesis that I was trying to support. All I was claiming is that this attribute of abundance cast the moral status of this taking in a different light, and that there was now room for debate.
That the good required a expenditures of labor and resources somehow vanishes from the equation Nope, I do not believe this, nor did I claim this. Nice straw man fallacy.
This negates the viability of business models that depend on the sales of digital goods. Yes, such a belief would negate such a business model. I will add that if a business model does not function well in a given economic and social environment, then it should not be practiced. Producers should find a different business model. There is no god-given right to one's business model of preference. The laws of supply and demand are a harsh mistress. (Though, to qualify, I am not at this point stating that this particular business model should, in fact, be rejected at this particular time. I may or may not believe this, but I am not postulating or defending that at this point. I am merely pointing out that it is "just" a business model, and as such doesn't enjoy some kind of privileged, protect status over any other failed business model. That is all I am claiming).
You don't explain why this is, you merely assert it. I do not, and did not, assert it. Maybe I failed to make myself clear in my original post. In that case you have my apologies. But the fact remains that you misread me, so what you are now discrediting is not something I claimed, and hence not me.
What insult? This one: "This, by the way, firmly places you in a clinically pre-adolescent stage of cognitive development." Telling an adult that his level of reasoning is sub-adult, and only at the maturity level of a child, is insulting. You were not merely stating an objective fact, though you tried to dress your insult up as such. I will add that you have included the following additional insults in your new post: "You are behind the times. This is the 21st century." If you wish to "win the hearts and minds" of downloaders (which I am not, but that is irrelevant) you should really lose the bad attitude.
You are mistaken, of course. You are merely trying to pretend that your misrepresentation of the situation is somehow more enlightened. You know this. Your rebuttal is childish and disingenuous because you are calling names and deliberately misrepresenting the key elements of the situation.
The poster is quite capable of understanding events in a purely abstract form. Better than you (if we are to take your comments at face-value...though in giving you the benefit of the doubt we shall not do so).
The poster is not ignoring the labor that went into producing digital content. But what you are ignoring, and what the poster is not ignoring, is that once the good exists it is abundant (can be reproduced infinitely at zero cost to both the producer and the recipient). While it is still true that labor was involved, this abundance changes the moral and economic landscape, and your attempt at arguing otherwise is completely empty.
Honestly, where you lack solid arguments you resort to insult. That is a technique appropriate to pre-adolescents.
Theft has a precise legal definition. It is a crime. Copyright infringement also has a precise legal definition, and it is also illegal. But the two are not the same thing. If you don't believe me, ask the American supreme court, who ruled that they are not the same thing.
When you say "something was indeed stolen" you are clearly speaking allegorically. If something was "indeed stolen" in a concrete sense, then the rightful owner would be lacking something he previously had, which (in this case) he clearly does not. This is not a matter of abstract vs concrete understanding, but of simple semantics. The word "theft" has a definition, the act of copyright infringement does not fit that definition, and that's it. The act of copyright infringement, while illegal and (in your opinion) morally wrong, is merely analogous to stealing, at best.
So why are you so insistent that it is identical to theft, when it clearly is not theft? My best guess is because people, in general, already agree that theft is morally wrong (and economically harmful), whereas there is much heated debate over whether copyright infringement is morally wrong (or economically harmful). If you cannot directly demonstrate the moral wrongness and economical harm of copyright infringement, you will find it much easier to insist that it is identical to something else which is clearly and obviously morally wrong and economically harmful. And, in your specific case, your inability to demonstrate this (false) identity in a clear and unambiguous way drives you to just accuse the person of being dim-witted and immature for not already agreeing with you. Don't be surprised with intelligent people find your arguments unconvincing.
To quote you: "piracy of easily copyable items like digital media only involves not paying for the labor that went into producing the good"
Yes. Agreed. Copyright infringement involves failing to pay for the labor that went into producing the good. However, this failing to pay for labor is not what makes theft theft. It may be what makes copyright infringement illegal, and it may even be what makes it morally wrong (provided you can produce a convincing case), but it does not make copyright infringement theft. Theft is still precicely defined as requiring the deprivation of the rightful owner of access to something that is his, which in this case is not happening.
Are you honestly unable to understand this simple and obvious difference between the two cases? Your vocabulary usage suggests that you are intelligent enough to understand that words have definitions, and that when something doesn't match that definition then the word doesn't apply. I know it is unfitting for me to presume to know for sure what you do and do not understand, but this concept is so simple, and you seem reasonably intelligent, so my inference is that y
Less genetic diversity might be worth the practical elimination of genetic diseases.
Yes there is a cost. But the gain clearly outweighs it.
Incidentally....don't forget that the inclination to conformity is countered by a desire for uniqueness. In a world full of blue-eyed people, brown-eyes will be quite an attention-getter. The same goes for any such cosmetic trait.
Yes, in a world full of thin people fatness still probably won't be a popular designer-baby choice...but given the wide array of health problems associated with being overweight, I would say this lack of diversity is acceptable.
In closing, I would like to say that I don't think the Catholic church's claims to be an exemplar of moral uprightness to be anything but bunk. It can be argued that they condemn things that are not evil (such as homosexuality, or the use of birth-control), that they permit things that are clearly evil (such as allowing women to show their faces in public (disclaimer: I do not think this is evil, I am just pointing out that the second largest religion in the world does think this is evil)), and even that they encourage things that are barbaric (circumcision, or rather "genital mutilation" as it should properly be called). Only in the mind of a religious bigot is there such a thing as an objective moral standard, and I for one do not want that church regulating my reproductive options.
This has been in place in airports for quite a while.
And people have been forced to go through it.
Some people really don't appreciate being forced to pose nude (effectively) for a camera. They do not believe the promises that the data (despite its obvious biometric identification value) will not be stored in any databases, and they do not trust the TSA employees (who are total strangers) to handle their photographs in a secure manner, and they do not want to be seen nude by strangers anyway.
Given that these things don't actually make us safer, I would say a bill that makes it illegal to force a person through one of these things has been needed for quite some time.
But stealing a copy of something because you don't like the DRM is theft. Plain and simple.
Legally speaking, it is not theft. Copyright infringement is an entirely different legal concept than theft. So you are wrong.
Morally speaking, you are wrong too. Theft deprives the owner of use, whereas copyright infringement does not. So it is not morally similar to theft (it might still be wrong of course, just as murder is wrong even though it is not theft, but this does not make it the same thing as theft).
I know you think I am splitting semantic hairs. Of course, I disagree. I think your sloppy use of language obscures the truth and frustrates our efforts at thinking clearly about this issue. It is not "plain and simple," and your misguided attempts at making it so are not helpful.
The issue is not one of entitlement, production, or theft...but one of boundaries. One person's interest in securing the profitability of a work is directly conflicting with someone else's interest in being able to make full use of the (hardware AND software) resources available to them. Perhaps my natural desire to play a game for free should not supersede your "right" (sic) to ensure that every copy of your work is paid for. But, conversely, neither does your desire to get paid justify forcefully taking control of my computer (and the computers of every person in the world) away.
So, we need to work out these boundaries. In order to work them out fairly, we need to understand them in exacting detail. Thus, we must avoid oversimplifications like yours.
"Particles" are just a modeling tool. They are a means of conceptualizing mechanical causes for the behavior of the world as we experience it.
So far, they have proven to be a very useful means of said modeling. The predictions that particle/force-based models make are quite accurate these days, and have been successfully applied to do a huge variety of useful work (playing world of warcraft being my particular favorite). Accurate predictive power is the final judgment of the scientific process, so from that perspective particles are sure winners.
But the fact remains that particles are abstract representations of phenomena which we cannot directly perceive (we infer the behavior of subatomic particles through detection devices which were themselves built upon these inferences, for example). The popular visualization of tiny little solid spheres bouncing around was rejected based on evidence gathered way back in the 20's, and rival visualizations that also have predictive power had been proposed since the dawn of recorded history. However, these are technical details which need not confuse non-scientists, so simply saying "particles are where it's at" makes life a lot simpler.
The issue of free will is not properly within the domain of science. Science doesn't study that sort of thing. Free will is the proper subject matter of philosophers, theologians, and so on. Trying to determine its scientific validity is trying to talk about aviation technology using only the vocabulary of gardening techniques.
"Do particles have free will" is an absurd question. You may as well ask about the nutritive properties of thrust and lift. That visualization just doesn't fit the subject matter.
The inclination to think of things in these terms comes from the popular notion that science has the market cornered in "truth," and that the word "truth" has a single and unambiguous meaning within all conceptual domains (which it clearly does not). We think, "science proves or disproves things, right? So lets get the final proof or disproof of free will." But I maintain that we are confusing ourselves by asking the questing incorrectly, and of the wrong people.
I have read the various responses to my post, and it appears that I did not make myself at all clear.
So, for those that care, I am not a theologian. I regard the religious teachings in question as pure myth (made-up stories that may have some sociological or metaphorical significance, but do not recount historical events). I further think that the scientific method is the single best method we have for the production of facts, and that the banking on said facts is the most rational decision a person can make.
I believe in the theory of evolution because it was produced by the scientific method. When I said "that doesn't make it true" I was not trying to espouse the worn-out "but it is JUST a theory" tripe, but rather demonstrating that being the product of an investigative method doesn't automatically make something true or false...one must evaluate the method itself to determine its aptitude for truth-production (and, in my opinion, the scientific method wins).
I do not think that religious beliefs deserve equal consideration in a scientific discourse. As I was trying to make clear, they deserve attention when (and only when) one is discussing the products of theological investigation. In a science class, one typically does not discuss theology. Instead, one discusses (and should discuss) science. When receiving a lecture from a famous scientist, one would expect a scientific, rather than theological discussion. For that reason it makes *no sense* to be upset at the speaker for only talking about the products of the scientific method (as in, evolution).
If he wanted to come in to a church and preach evolution, there could be reason for upset. Similarly, if a theologian wanted to come to a science class and talk about theology, there is equal reason for upset.
If you still think that attitude is wishy-washy, then I accuse you of being a bigot.
Where does one attempt to convince someone that their metaphysical assumptions are wrong? In a philosophy class maybe. Or at lunch. But in a science class the time is better spent just teaching, learning, and doing science than in trying to justify that it is worth doing. Just as in a theology class (or church or whatever) the time is better spent doing theology than in arguing the need to do theology. That is why I think it is silly that people get so upset at what people from the other camp are saying...if you disagree then just don't go to their class.
The theory of evolution is the natural product of the application of the scientific method. That doesn't make it true. It just makes it the product of the scientific method. When you want to talk about products of the scientific method, evolution is on the menu.
The theory of creation is the natural product of theological studies of specific scriptures. That doesn't make it true. It just makes it the product of theological studies of specific scriptures. When you want to talk about products of theological studies of specific scriptures, the theory of creation is on the menu.
So what's the big deal? Someone holds that the products of the scientific method are facts whereas the products of theological studies of specific scriptures are myths? Well that opinion precedes any discussion of the products of these methods. We can intelligently discuss both of them while reserving any statements about our more foundational metaphysical assumptions.
But, sadly, most people just aren't broad-minded enough to recognize the relationship between metaphysical assumptions, belief systems, and truth. So they get all intimidated whenever they talk to anyone who has a different metaphysical assumption, and to stupid stuff like this.
Maybe someday the majority will grow out of this habit. But I doubt it will be any day soon.
also means it is protecting the income of application *developers* who sell through the iPhone store.
Forcefully creating and enforcing artificial scarcity for altruistic reasons remains forcefully creating and enforcing artificial scarcity, which is economically unsound and civilly corrupt.
Slashdot Mirror
the sole purpose of a gun is to maim and or kill people.
Just like swords. Or bows-and-arrows. Or any of a variety of weapons that civilians are allowed to own.
And why would a civilian want to own something which is designed to maim and/or kill people? Simple...some people are criminals, they intend harm, and the police are not around at the moment.
Survival is a real need. Some humans pose a real risk. Our protectors can't be everywhere at once. So, we must protect ourselves.
And before you start talking about being more likely to hurt yourself with a gun than protect yourself with it....consider that those statistics came from a source with an agenda. Consider further that a gun, sitting on a table, is just a rock. It isn't going to jump up and bite you. Since it has no will of its own, the risks of ownership can be mitigated by responsible care.
On the other hand, a criminal sitting on the table is not just a rick. The criminal has will of his own, and very well could jump up and bite you (or cause some kind of harm). Further, you can't tell a criminal by appearance alone, and you can't prevent one from happening by your property. So the risks of encountering a criminal cannot be mitigated. The best we can do is provide ourselves with a means of stopping a criminal, should one attack.
So what I am saying is...it does not make sense to be afraid of a gun. It does make sense to be afraid of a person. Therefore, provided you can be responsible, it makes perfect sense to own guns for purposes of self defense.
The primary purpose of patents is to *STOP* the competition from doing whatever it is you are patenting (yes, I know this isn't the stated purpose, but it is the purpose-in-effect). The secondary purpose is to collect money from people who do what you patented, so you can make money without doing it yourself.
In both cases, once you patent something, there is a net loss in the number of people doing it. We have observed this time and time again in the industry.
So why in the world would you REJECT a spam patent? By all means, GRANT THE PATENT! Let the spammers sue each other into oblivion and reduce the total amount of spam generated.
Sheesh.
Those things which we use mathematics to describe (relationships of every variety) are discovered (by observation and experience)
The language with which we describe them (symbols, axioms, and rules of transformation) is invented (and refined over time, as a quick review of the history of mathematics will promptly reveal)
Additional products of this language (logical consequences of the axioms we have invented) are subsequently discovered.
We equivocate the term "Mathematics" to mean all three of these things (that described, the language of description, and logical consequences of the axioms of that language). When the word means all three of these things at once, it seems that we have both discovered and invented it, and lively (though misguided) debate ensues.
When we establish clarity about our topic of discussion (through disambiguation of our terms), then whether it was invented or discovered becomes clear, as I have just demonstrated.
When you model the universe in terms of will-less mechanisms, you will (amazing!) discover that free will is a logical impossibility.
Trying to model free will in terms of physics is like trying to describe the combustion engine using only the words found in a book on home gardening.
The only reason some people find this personally problematic is because they have decided that our current model of physics is also the concrete, accurately-represented holy truth. In fact, our current model is just an abstract representation of something we can't see, and it is just the best we've come up with so far (in fact, any scientist worth his salt will predict that our models will change in the future).
So the quantum-mechanical model of the universe is incompatible with any free-will-is-real model of the universe. So what? This incompatibility doesn't make either theory right or wrong. The evidence for each theory is all that matters.
As Epicurus (one of the fathers of the modern scientific method) advised, "if several theories are consistent with the observed data, retain them all."
Though this is secondary to your main point (which I will not presently challenge), your selection of Nietzsche as an example is a poor one.
Nietzsche questioned the absolute nature of truth, and repeatedly returned to a resultant affirmation of life. He found value not in abstract notions of virtue which he felt were erroneously held to be universal absolutes, nor in unsubstantial promises about an afterlife (about which he ranted often). He saw these attitudes (most popular among the religious, but also among idealists in general) to be rejections of life and, in his own words, the true nihilism.
To put it simply, why do you value something abstract? Because you hate the real. Why do you look forward to a better afterlife? Because you hate this life.
To someone who thinks the meaning of life lies somewhere in an abstract concept or afterlife, Nietzsche will seem gloomy. This is not because he sees no value to life, but because he sees value precisely where others do not: in existence itself. In many of his works, he celebrates this quite jubilantly.
Nietzsche is hard to read, no doubt. His writing style is anything but simple, and his target audience is not the common man. Further, there are issues with his editor having been a racist (and having poisoned some of his writings with racism), and also with translators that didn't really understand him. If you want to understand Nietzsche, read Walter Kaufmann's essays and translations.
Lastly, and as an aside, Nietzsche could not have raised a family...his health problems were quite extreme and made him unattractive. He in fact proposed to more than a few women and was always rejected. This did not prevent him from affirming the value of life itself, and finding encouragement in his place in the evolutionary process (seeing man as a bridge to an even greater man).
I have read more than a few stories about police taking action against people who are filming them, and complaints about how the police don't want to be recorded so they can get away with abusing the public, etc.
So....do all these cameras keep the police in line, too?
And if so, does that, in any way, change their desirability in the minds of the privacy advocates?
Are kinder police be worth the price of electronic eyes on every public street corner?
Of course Einstein was wrong.
He was, at best, as right as any human could have been given the evidence available at the time. If he was as true a scientist as the world portrays him, then he expected to have his model refined over time as new evidence comes to light, eventually being completely replaced by something much more accurate.
Whatever new theory we build based on this new evidence will also be wrong, for the exact same reasons.
But it will be right enough to be useful as a stepping-stone to an even righter theory. That is how science works, and that is also why find science zealots to be even more annoying than religious zealots...science zealots have accepted as absolute truth a model that is just a stepping-stone, in direct contradiction of the very methods that they proclaim to be the ultimate determiners of truth.
Some people try to live a long time by eating right, exercising regularly, keeping a close eye on their medical needs, and basically taking good care of themselves.
And, for the most part, those who stick with it probably will live a lot longer than their peers.
Which means....provided they don't suffer some unexpected injury...that they will live long enough to watch everyone they love die.
They will wind up old and utterly alone...and that is the best case scenario.
So why not experience it to the fullest? Live your life knowing that none of it matters and that it's OK that none of it matters, because the only thing important is that you enjoy the experience, which you may never have again.
That sounds a lot more like hedonism than existentialism.
That doesn't imply that your point is lost, though.
People like to feel like they have options. They dislike feeling like they are stuck with one option, no matter how unpleasant it becomes.
So, employers like feeling like there is a large talent pool available to them. That way they know that when some worker isn't working out, they can just cut him lose and replace him. Having options gives them the ability to optimize their company's productivity and ultimately achieve good success.
When employers feel like they don't have options, they feel like they are being forced to accept expensive, lazy, and talentless workers. Having a team built out of such people will result in the employer's business failing, or a manager's own productivity metrics being shamefully low.
So, it is every bit as natural for employers to prefer a high-unemployment market as it is for workers to prefer a low-unemployment market.
Workers, after all, don't want to feel like they have no choice but to accept a terrible job where they work long hours doing work they hate for a barely-livable (or sub-livable) wage. They would prefer to feel like they can just quit their job if it starts to suck, and move on to a better one.
Each side sees the other one as the evil side. Employees see the employers as the over demanding cruel slave masters who don't care about the employee's livelihoods, and just want to exploit them. Employers see employees as lazy, unskilled, expensive freeloaders who have no devotion to the company (and hence the employer's livelihood) and are just there to make a buck. So, each side feels the need to protect itself from the other side, and prefers economic conditions that are favorable to that protection.
Where I work, both are simultaneously true. The account reps are looking at a very dry employment market, and are desperate to keep their jobs. So, management is leaning on them. They typically work 50 to 60 hour weeks.
However, the tech side is seeing a still relatively open employment market. Each member of our tech team has talent and certifications, and we all know we could find a better job if we need to. So we get an easy 40 hour work week. When management tries to lean on us, we get to choose whether or not we want to give extra. When we chose not to, management just accepts it, because it would be too hard for them to replace us.
Most people on slashdot are laborers, rather than managers, so most of the posts will maintain that it is objectively obvious that low unemployment is good, and that employers are evil exploitive bastards. I don't know if it is true or not, but I DO know that there are two very clear-and-distinct sides to this issue.
"Intellectual Property" (sic) has just become the most valuable thing on the planet. So, naturally enough, the wealthier portion of humanity wants to own and control most of it.
It is also "abundant," (can be replicated infinitely, by anyone, at zero cost).
So, as we have seen before, the wealthy destroy this abundance by passing laws to create artificial scarcity. They have every incentive to do this.
The flippant public attitude that TPB is showing will not protect them from the wrath of the rich.
I will add....America has very few exports now. IP is basically it. So, it is in the interest of America's wealthy to impose strict IP laws (and hence artificial scarcity) all over the planet.
It isn't that they refuse to listen to reason....it is that they are following their obvious incentives to their logical conclusions. Expect more. Much more.
Greed is a problem, for sure. But it isn't exactly a light switch that you can just turn off.
Greed is generally not a problem in, say, a cell colony. The cells basically stand and fall together. Whatever benefits the group benefits all the individuals. So the cells do not need to display individual survival strategies. They gain no survival advantage from putting their own private good above the good of their neighbor cells.
However, as a species, we are not one giant cell colony. We are loosely-bound herd of individuals. In order for our species to survive, individuals must survive. In order for individuals to survive, they must accumulate and maintain control over resources that keep them alive. So long as we remain individuals, with individual identities and individual motivations that may-or-may-not perfectly coincide with a group motivation or group identity, we will need to continue to exercise behaviors that are appropriate for individual survival.
So, we display greedy behaviors not just because it is an instinct, but because it is a logical consequence of our having individual identities, and functioning autonomously.
The only way to completely eliminate greed would be to eliminate the psychological structures that give us a sense of separateness from our fellow man. Once we see all other humans as extensions of our own body (or fellow members of a greater body), we will then be able to see any benefit to a neighbor as being identical to a benefit to the self. Then, and only then, can we have perfect cooperation, perfect reciprocal altruism, and the perfect greed-free utopia that you would like to see.
So, I put to you this question: are you willing to give up your sense of self, all of your individuality, and all of your personal freedom, in order to live in this greed-free society?
If so, you would make a very good communist, and I wish you the best of luck. Unfortunately, I fear you won't see much progress in your lifetime, as most of humanity is not willing to sacrifice their "selves" in the name of a greater good.
I don't get it. It is actually quite simple, and it is not a matter of taking a middle ground.
The key point you seem to be missing is this: "failing to believe" something is not the same thing as "postulating its falseness."
1) An agnostic does not state that God exists.
2) An agnostic also does not state that God does not exist.
Therefore: An agnostic does not "believe" either position.
The reason for this disbelief is so simple that it is sometimes hard to understand: there is no evidence either way. Neither position can be demonstrated by rational means, and therefore neither position will be held.
That is all there is to it. There is no need to add more to it with arbitrary rules like "you can't not believe in the non-existence of God if you already don't believe in the existence of God."
It is also true that many agnostics behave as atheists. They would justify this on the principle of Ockham's razor. Since God's existence cannot be verified or falsified by rational means, then the agnostic will not assume God's existence, as that would be a needless multiplication of entities. The agnostic also does not dis-assume God's existence, however. The agnostic simply doesn't consider God to be a relevant input into any of his decisions (whether he exists or not).
So this is the simplest of all positions to take. It involves no commitment to an unsupportable stance, and it adds no complexity to any important decisions.
It is only when you try to present the rejection of both statements as mutually-exclusive (which they are not) that you introduce needless complexity, and confuse yourself.
Under what bizarro universe does the public have more right to an author's work than the author (or their estate)?
Please understand that when the government enforces a private monopoly, the taxpayers incur direct costs. The "private monopoly" in this case is the author's sole distribution right over his work. The enforcement of that right means that real tax dollars get spent on investigations into copyright infringement violations, as well as the imposition of legal consequences.
So, that means that if you are an author, the rest of us (even those who do not buy copies of your work) are paying out-of-pocket to enforce your monopoly on your behalf.
What do we get in return for this? The privilege of being able to pay even more money if we want to experience your work? Do you really think this is balanced?
The reason why copyright law has a term limit is to try and strike this (otherwise missing) balance. In return for spending our money to protect your private monopoly for a period of years, we eventually get your work for free, in the public domain. Thus, you have your incentive to create secured (in the form of a protected period of sole distribution rights), and we get a ROI on all the tax money we spent to give you that (specifically, the work for free, eventually).
The problem that frustrates many posters on Slashdot is that the term of copyright is now so long that it is no longer balanced. In response to this perceived injustice, many people feel justified in dishonoring the private monopoly, and obtaining the work for free.
Whether or not they actually are justified is a debate in which I am presently remaining silent (though I won't deny an obvious bias). However, I will state that the current copyright law is not at all balanced, and the public good is getting the losing end of the deal. There is clearly an injustice being perpetuated by copyright holders and lobbies at the present time.
As an aside, copyright infringement is illegal and (arguably) immoral. However, it is not theft. Theft is generally defined in terms of the harm done to the victim, rather than the benefit to the perpetrator. Finding an un-owned object and claiming it for one's self is not theft, even though one got something without paying for it. However, depriving the rightful owner of access to his property is theft, and that wording is often used in legal proceedings involving theft.
In the case of copyright infringement, the rightful owner still has full access and full control over his own work. You have a duplicate of the work, but since you haven't deprived the owner of the work, you have not "stolen" it. You have merely copied it.
To use the ever-popular car analogy...if I see your car on your driveway, and I build myself a separate car just like it....you still have your car. I have not stolen it. Though my copy of it might still be illegal.
But don't take my word for it. The supreme court already ruled that copyright infringement is not theft. Read all about it.
I must admit this is one of the more cool headed yet vigorous defenses of piracy I have yet seen.
Actually, I didn't make a defense of piracy (sic), nor of copyright infringement. While I am obviously biased in that direction, my post focused on discrediting your prior post. If you read it again this will become obvious.
Also, there was no name calling.
You said, "This, by the way, firmly places you in a clinically pre-adolescent stage of cognitive development." Granted, this isn't directly name calling, I read it as "you are a big baby," which is clearly (and needlessly) insulting.
The moral and economic landscape are not changed in the least.
Obviously, I disagree. Though the difference between us is that I gave specific examples of difference to support my case, and I shall enumerate them in greater detail presently.
By your reasoning, anything that is abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost can be taken from its producer without compensation
I was using the word "abundant", in this context, to mean "anything that can be reproduced at zero cost." However, I never directly postulated that this attribute made it morally acceptable to take it from the producer without compensation. That wasn't a thesis that I was trying to support. All I was claiming is that this attribute of abundance cast the moral status of this taking in a different light, and that there was now room for debate.
That the good required a expenditures of labor and resources somehow vanishes from the equation
Nope, I do not believe this, nor did I claim this. Nice straw man fallacy.
This negates the viability of business models that depend on the sales of digital goods.
Yes, such a belief would negate such a business model. I will add that if a business model does not function well in a given economic and social environment, then it should not be practiced. Producers should find a different business model. There is no god-given right to one's business model of preference. The laws of supply and demand are a harsh mistress. (Though, to qualify, I am not at this point stating that this particular business model should, in fact, be rejected at this particular time. I may or may not believe this, but I am not postulating or defending that at this point. I am merely pointing out that it is "just" a business model, and as such doesn't enjoy some kind of privileged, protect status over any other failed business model. That is all I am claiming).
You don't explain why this is, you merely assert it.
I do not, and did not, assert it. Maybe I failed to make myself clear in my original post. In that case you have my apologies. But the fact remains that you misread me, so what you are now discrediting is not something I claimed, and hence not me.
What insult?
This one: "This, by the way, firmly places you in a clinically pre-adolescent stage of cognitive development." Telling an adult that his level of reasoning is sub-adult, and only at the maturity level of a child, is insulting. You were not merely stating an objective fact, though you tried to dress your insult up as such. I will add that you have included the following additional insults in your new post: "You are behind the times. This is the 21st century." If you wish to "win the hearts and minds" of downloaders (which I am not, but that is irrelevant) you should really lose the bad attitude.
A link here would be useful.
Copyright Law, and definition of copyright infringement, from the us code: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html
Also, the referenced court case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(1985)
distinguishing between a crime that is theft and a crime that is not theft seems tangential
Hardly! This was the primary thesis of my entire post!
You are mistaken, of course. You are merely trying to pretend that your misrepresentation of the situation is somehow more enlightened. You know this. Your rebuttal is childish and disingenuous because you are calling names and deliberately misrepresenting the key elements of the situation.
The poster is quite capable of understanding events in a purely abstract form. Better than you (if we are to take your comments at face-value...though in giving you the benefit of the doubt we shall not do so).
The poster is not ignoring the labor that went into producing digital content. But what you are ignoring, and what the poster is not ignoring, is that once the good exists it is abundant (can be reproduced infinitely at zero cost to both the producer and the recipient). While it is still true that labor was involved, this abundance changes the moral and economic landscape, and your attempt at arguing otherwise is completely empty.
Honestly, where you lack solid arguments you resort to insult. That is a technique appropriate to pre-adolescents.
Theft has a precise legal definition. It is a crime. Copyright infringement also has a precise legal definition, and it is also illegal. But the two are not the same thing. If you don't believe me, ask the American supreme court, who ruled that they are not the same thing.
When you say "something was indeed stolen" you are clearly speaking allegorically. If something was "indeed stolen" in a concrete sense, then the rightful owner would be lacking something he previously had, which (in this case) he clearly does not. This is not a matter of abstract vs concrete understanding, but of simple semantics. The word "theft" has a definition, the act of copyright infringement does not fit that definition, and that's it. The act of copyright infringement, while illegal and (in your opinion) morally wrong, is merely analogous to stealing, at best.
So why are you so insistent that it is identical to theft, when it clearly is not theft? My best guess is because people, in general, already agree that theft is morally wrong (and economically harmful), whereas there is much heated debate over whether copyright infringement is morally wrong (or economically harmful). If you cannot directly demonstrate the moral wrongness and economical harm of copyright infringement, you will find it much easier to insist that it is identical to something else which is clearly and obviously morally wrong and economically harmful. And, in your specific case, your inability to demonstrate this (false) identity in a clear and unambiguous way drives you to just accuse the person of being dim-witted and immature for not already agreeing with you. Don't be surprised with intelligent people find your arguments unconvincing.
To quote you: "piracy of easily copyable items like digital media only involves not paying for the labor that went into producing the good"
Yes. Agreed. Copyright infringement involves failing to pay for the labor that went into producing the good. However, this failing to pay for labor is not what makes theft theft. It may be what makes copyright infringement illegal, and it may even be what makes it morally wrong (provided you can produce a convincing case), but it does not make copyright infringement theft. Theft is still precicely defined as requiring the deprivation of the rightful owner of access to something that is his, which in this case is not happening.
Are you honestly unable to understand this simple and obvious difference between the two cases? Your vocabulary usage suggests that you are intelligent enough to understand that words have definitions, and that when something doesn't match that definition then the word doesn't apply. I know it is unfitting for me to presume to know for sure what you do and do not understand, but this concept is so simple, and you seem reasonably intelligent, so my inference is that y
Less genetic diversity might be worth the practical elimination of genetic diseases.
Yes there is a cost. But the gain clearly outweighs it.
Incidentally....don't forget that the inclination to conformity is countered by a desire for uniqueness. In a world full of blue-eyed people, brown-eyes will be quite an attention-getter. The same goes for any such cosmetic trait.
Yes, in a world full of thin people fatness still probably won't be a popular designer-baby choice...but given the wide array of health problems associated with being overweight, I would say this lack of diversity is acceptable.
In closing, I would like to say that I don't think the Catholic church's claims to be an exemplar of moral uprightness to be anything but bunk. It can be argued that they condemn things that are not evil (such as homosexuality, or the use of birth-control), that they permit things that are clearly evil (such as allowing women to show their faces in public (disclaimer: I do not think this is evil, I am just pointing out that the second largest religion in the world does think this is evil)), and even that they encourage things that are barbaric (circumcision, or rather "genital mutilation" as it should properly be called). Only in the mind of a religious bigot is there such a thing as an objective moral standard, and I for one do not want that church regulating my reproductive options.
This has been in place in airports for quite a while.
And people have been forced to go through it.
Some people really don't appreciate being forced to pose nude (effectively) for a camera. They do not believe the promises that the data (despite its obvious biometric identification value) will not be stored in any databases, and they do not trust the TSA employees (who are total strangers) to handle their photographs in a secure manner, and they do not want to be seen nude by strangers anyway.
Given that these things don't actually make us safer, I would say a bill that makes it illegal to force a person through one of these things has been needed for quite some time.
Music Genome
But stealing a copy of something because you don't like the DRM is theft. Plain and simple.
Legally speaking, it is not theft. Copyright infringement is an entirely different legal concept than theft. So you are wrong.
Morally speaking, you are wrong too. Theft deprives the owner of use, whereas copyright infringement does not. So it is not morally similar to theft (it might still be wrong of course, just as murder is wrong even though it is not theft, but this does not make it the same thing as theft).
I know you think I am splitting semantic hairs. Of course, I disagree. I think your sloppy use of language obscures the truth and frustrates our efforts at thinking clearly about this issue. It is not "plain and simple," and your misguided attempts at making it so are not helpful.
The issue is not one of entitlement, production, or theft...but one of boundaries. One person's interest in securing the profitability of a work is directly conflicting with someone else's interest in being able to make full use of the (hardware AND software) resources available to them. Perhaps my natural desire to play a game for free should not supersede your "right" (sic) to ensure that every copy of your work is paid for. But, conversely, neither does your desire to get paid justify forcefully taking control of my computer (and the computers of every person in the world) away.
So, we need to work out these boundaries. In order to work them out fairly, we need to understand them in exacting detail. Thus, we must avoid oversimplifications like yours.
The French are supposed to be speaking English too. It was forced upon them by a presidential mandate.
"Particles" are just a modeling tool. They are a means of conceptualizing mechanical causes for the behavior of the world as we experience it.
So far, they have proven to be a very useful means of said modeling. The predictions that particle/force-based models make are quite accurate these days, and have been successfully applied to do a huge variety of useful work (playing world of warcraft being my particular favorite). Accurate predictive power is the final judgment of the scientific process, so from that perspective particles are sure winners.
But the fact remains that particles are abstract representations of phenomena which we cannot directly perceive (we infer the behavior of subatomic particles through detection devices which were themselves built upon these inferences, for example). The popular visualization of tiny little solid spheres bouncing around was rejected based on evidence gathered way back in the 20's, and rival visualizations that also have predictive power had been proposed since the dawn of recorded history. However, these are technical details which need not confuse non-scientists, so simply saying "particles are where it's at" makes life a lot simpler.
The issue of free will is not properly within the domain of science. Science doesn't study that sort of thing. Free will is the proper subject matter of philosophers, theologians, and so on. Trying to determine its scientific validity is trying to talk about aviation technology using only the vocabulary of gardening techniques.
"Do particles have free will" is an absurd question. You may as well ask about the nutritive properties of thrust and lift. That visualization just doesn't fit the subject matter.
The inclination to think of things in these terms comes from the popular notion that science has the market cornered in "truth," and that the word "truth" has a single and unambiguous meaning within all conceptual domains (which it clearly does not). We think, "science proves or disproves things, right? So lets get the final proof or disproof of free will." But I maintain that we are confusing ourselves by asking the questing incorrectly, and of the wrong people.
I have read the various responses to my post, and it appears that I did not make myself at all clear.
So, for those that care, I am not a theologian. I regard the religious teachings in question as pure myth (made-up stories that may have some sociological or metaphorical significance, but do not recount historical events). I further think that the scientific method is the single best method we have for the production of facts, and that the banking on said facts is the most rational decision a person can make.
I believe in the theory of evolution because it was produced by the scientific method. When I said "that doesn't make it true" I was not trying to espouse the worn-out "but it is JUST a theory" tripe, but rather demonstrating that being the product of an investigative method doesn't automatically make something true or false...one must evaluate the method itself to determine its aptitude for truth-production (and, in my opinion, the scientific method wins).
I do not think that religious beliefs deserve equal consideration in a scientific discourse. As I was trying to make clear, they deserve attention when (and only when) one is discussing the products of theological investigation. In a science class, one typically does not discuss theology. Instead, one discusses (and should discuss) science. When receiving a lecture from a famous scientist, one would expect a scientific, rather than theological discussion. For that reason it makes *no sense* to be upset at the speaker for only talking about the products of the scientific method (as in, evolution).
If he wanted to come in to a church and preach evolution, there could be reason for upset. Similarly, if a theologian wanted to come to a science class and talk about theology, there is equal reason for upset.
If you still think that attitude is wishy-washy, then I accuse you of being a bigot.
Where does one attempt to convince someone that their metaphysical assumptions are wrong? In a philosophy class maybe. Or at lunch. But in a science class the time is better spent just teaching, learning, and doing science than in trying to justify that it is worth doing. Just as in a theology class (or church or whatever) the time is better spent doing theology than in arguing the need to do theology. That is why I think it is silly that people get so upset at what people from the other camp are saying...if you disagree then just don't go to their class.
The theory of evolution is the natural product of the application of the scientific method. That doesn't make it true. It just makes it the product of the scientific method. When you want to talk about products of the scientific method, evolution is on the menu.
The theory of creation is the natural product of theological studies of specific scriptures. That doesn't make it true. It just makes it the product of theological studies of specific scriptures. When you want to talk about products of theological studies of specific scriptures, the theory of creation is on the menu.
So what's the big deal? Someone holds that the products of the scientific method are facts whereas the products of theological studies of specific scriptures are myths? Well that opinion precedes any discussion of the products of these methods. We can intelligently discuss both of them while reserving any statements about our more foundational metaphysical assumptions.
But, sadly, most people just aren't broad-minded enough to recognize the relationship between metaphysical assumptions, belief systems, and truth. So they get all intimidated whenever they talk to anyone who has a different metaphysical assumption, and to stupid stuff like this.
Maybe someday the majority will grow out of this habit. But I doubt it will be any day soon.
also means it is protecting the income of application *developers* who sell through the iPhone store.
Forcefully creating and enforcing artificial scarcity for altruistic reasons remains forcefully creating and enforcing artificial scarcity, which is economically unsound and civilly corrupt.