It really isn't that big a deal though. I went to see "Avenue Q" a while back having no idea what it was. I did recognise one of the songs "the internet is for porn" though which had become a bit of a meme.
when I got home I looked it up and found a whole pile of shaky phone camera videos of the show which were years old. yet they in no way detracted from my enjoyment of the show when I first saw it.
Wow. So the idea that children really are raped is "made up stories" in your world? And your justification for it being ok to leave people suffer torture, rape, death etc is "none of this matters" and "I don't get what the boo-hoo is about".
great philosophy you've got there.
I'll go with the secular humanists who actually seem to care about ethics and human well-being.
So god is omnipotent but is powerless to change a rule without killing himself?
In other news since the latest release of unbuntu whenever the superuser wants to change a system setting he's previously changed he has to stab himself in the face.
If I take a knife to the mall with me, grab some random passerby and start cutting bits off the police will intervene pretty soon. That doesn't mean I lose my free will. The person I'm stabbing though loses though.
merely stepping in to prevent/stop the worst events would change nothing about free will any more than the existence of unusually efficient and well informed police.
it's a desperate argument to defend a god which if it does exist is at best horrifically negligent and at worst deeply evil.
lots of things could be done by a computer, vast quantities of secritarial work, train driving etc etc yet isn't. Some things are kept human either because of expense, liability or just because people prefer to interact with humans.
Nothing you wrote is even close to coherent. letting a child be raped or tortured to death isn't letting that child do evil things. Torturing that child yourself for eternity to punish them for commiting suicide to escape from the aforementioned raped and torture only makes it worse.
"can harm you except the evil you do yourself" Lots of things can harm you other than the evil you do yourself. someone with a red hot poker, lots of free time and the desire to make you feel as much pain as possible can harm you quite a lot without you doing any harm to yourself a lot.
He talked about things fairly specific to the chirstian image of god. which is exactly as I described. but they convince themselves that despite that he's somehow not utterly evil. (Lets not even get into how he supposedly killed every puppy in the world except 2)
Where did I say anything about not being vengeful enough? In christian dogma suicide is self murder and a mortal sin. which is utterly absurd but hey.
So tell me, point out which great things about the universe are worth countless children being raped and/or tortured? Fluffy bunnies? Butterflies? Rainbows? What exactly would be worth that?
lets try a thought experiment.... lets say we have a person. Upon seeing a child bleeding to death in the street he walks off to have a coffee leaving the child to die over the course of long painful hours despite having an entire backpack full of bandages, lots of medical training and copious free time. Is this man a good person? No.
Lets say he was walking down that same street and saw a child being raped to death by someone else and despite and entire backpack full of guns, training in martial arts and a team of bodyguards with him he walks past and lets it happen. Is this man a good person? No.
This god we're talking about. He know's everything that's happening and can do absolutely anything. He he literally knows about children being raped to death and does nothing, nothing to stop it despite supposedly having both the knowledge and the means. That's one damned evil god you've got there.
supposedly he will punish the people who did it....later.... as long as they don't say that they're really really sorry in the mean time and really mean it.... and if he does punish them they go to the same place as any of their victims who committed suicide to escape the torture and rapes..... ok the more I dig into this the more horrible the concept of such a god existing is.
On the scale of evil of most normal people violating monopoly legislation in the software market falls somewhere in the region of having once kicked a puppy.
compared to how most "old money" rich got rich he's positively shining.
Tens of thousands of tonnes of passenger train goes past my house every day, on a line that carries 200 million passengers/year, taking up about the width of a road, but I don't smell a thing
that's because the people near any local gas or coal plants are smelling it.
My first conclusion is that we would get more efficient by pushing small, fuel efficient vehicles instead of pushing transit, and at a lower cost.
A full bus or trainload of people is more efficient than private cars, sometimes quite a bit more so. But transit systems never consist of nothing but full vehicles. They run most of their day with light loads. The above calculations came from figures citing the average city bus holding 9 passengers, and the average train (light or heavy) holds 22. If that seems low, remember that every packed train at rush hour tends to mean a near empty train returning down the track.
Transit vehicles also tend to stop and start a lot, which eats a lot of energy, even with regenerative braking. And most transit vehicles are just plain heavy, and not very aerodynamic. Indeed, you'll see tables in the DoE reports that show that over the past 30 years, private cars have gotten 30% more efficient, while buses have gotten 60% less efficient and trains about 25% worse. The market and government regulations have driven efforts to make cars more efficient, while transit vehicles have actually worsened.
In order to get people to ride transit, you must offer frequent service, all day long. They want to know they have the freedom to leave at different times. But that means emptier vehicles outside of rush hour. You've all seen those huge empty vehicles go by, you just haven't thought of how anti-green they were. It would be better if off-hours transit was done by much smaller vehicles, but that implies too much capital cost -- no transit agency will buy enough equipment for peak times and then buy a second set of equipment for light demand periods.
I am in europe. Europe is not a magical place where all the public transport problems have been worked out.
And simply being close to a train station isn't the end of the problem. I was living 20 minutes walk from a train station but the trains from that station only went into the nearest large city from which you could catch a train or bus to the other big cities from which you could catch another to the destination. And I was lucky. A friend got stuck on a similar commute for a few months where there wasn't even a direct bus between the cities in question and he had to go a far more convoluted route through a third city.
Your 50 mile diameter circle is utterly meaningless unless you look at the routes people actually have to travel.
Public transport tends to get centralized in such a way that you have to pass through central terminals to get anywhere non local and god help you if you're on the edge of a catchment area and want to get to the closest edge of an adjacent catchment area.A 5 mile journey can turn into a 50 mile adventure.
So because he pointed out that a lot of his peers would be lazy and just give in to the pushy guy who has been convinced by the ad campaign that this magic pill will fix his problems he's bad. And because he's not going to automatically hand it over and migh *GASP* consider the risks and the benefits as an expert and *GASP* might disagree with the moron who WANTS HIS MAGIC PILLS RIGHT NOW DAMNIT then he's a bad doctor?
"In the face of their ignorance, they'll give their best advice"
But of course if he disagrees with you poorly educated ideas about what magic pill will fix your problems then he's just "asserting one of his own intellectual whims" of course.
Right... so you saw some lovely ads which told you that some med was the best thing since sliced bread and decided you simply MUST have it because the TV told you so.
Meanwhile the trained professional who was more familiar with the side effects, risks and effectiveness of the medication was a bit iffy about giving it to you since your cholesterol wasn't really high enough to make it worth it.... so you shouted at him until he gave it to you to make you go away.
The pharmacist thing isn't pointless. They have to learn a great deal about drug interactions: in some cases more than the doctors so while you're doctor might prescribe 2 pills your pharmacist is supposed to be able to realise that the 2 of them sometimes interact badly.
Doctors can't be experts in everything in the universe.
The problems with trains and other public transport is that they get you from where you aren't to where you don't actually want to go. A couple of years ago I got stuck doing a weekly commute which by car took two and a half hours. that same trip took 9 hours by train.... if I was lucky. Unfortunatly I didn't have a car so most of the time I was stuck with the bus/train option which was beyond terrible.
It boiled down to the problem that while I essentially wanted to go about 100 miles south in order to go via public transport I had to first go 50 miles north and then it overshot my destinitaion in a similar manner at the other end.Nothing even close to a direct option.
If you're lucky enough to live near a station and your destination is near a station at the other end then it's the best thing ever. if on the other hand you're like most of humanity and don't have such a nice arrangement remember to include the hours sitting at a station waiting for the next train, the slogs across town in the pissing rain and the times when the bus or train just sails on by because it's already full and since it's the last bus you're going to have to turn around and travel for another few hours to get back for the night or call an extremely expensive taxi.
Public transport is the absolute pits unless you have a car handy and ready to be used for all those trips for which public transport is awful.
hey, sometimes an escape can be good for you. When I was a teen I got into MMO's in a big way for a little while when I was really down. and it helped. I'd get up in the morning and while I'd be tired I'd feel pretty good and was able to face the day. After a while I started to feel better and didn't need to get away any more.
getting a break, getting away from your life and just being someone else, chatting, joking and cooperating with other people as a character for a few hours a night can help you feel better about real life.
Give it another 20 of 30 years till the current old folk die off. Then we'll be the old folk and it will be obvious to us that gaming is perfectly fine just like classical music,books,radio,silent movies,talkies, colour movies, black and white television and colour television.
but those new fangled brain implant vivispecs are certainly going to destroy the next generations morals!
Slashdot Mirror
might want to throw some termite into the mix to be sure.
I like the street party idea though.
It really isn't that big a deal though.
I went to see "Avenue Q" a while back having no idea what it was.
I did recognise one of the songs "the internet is for porn" though which had become a bit of a meme.
when I got home I looked it up and found a whole pile of shaky phone camera videos of the show which were years old.
yet they in no way detracted from my enjoyment of the show when I first saw it.
Wow.
So the idea that children really are raped is "made up stories" in your world?
And your justification for it being ok to leave people suffer torture, rape, death etc is "none of this matters" and "I don't get what the boo-hoo is about".
great philosophy you've got there.
I'll go with the secular humanists who actually seem to care about ethics and human well-being.
So god is omnipotent but is powerless to change a rule without killing himself?
In other news since the latest release of unbuntu whenever the superuser wants to change a system setting he's previously changed he has to stab himself in the face.
If I take a knife to the mall with me, grab some random passerby and start cutting bits off the police will intervene pretty soon.
That doesn't mean I lose my free will.
The person I'm stabbing though loses though.
merely stepping in to prevent/stop the worst events would change nothing about free will any more than the existence of unusually efficient and well informed police.
it's a desperate argument to defend a god which if it does exist is at best horrifically negligent and at worst deeply evil.
"yes little johny, we've gotta let that guy rape you, otherwise you won't learn"
Is... is that a quote from the timecube page?
lots of things could be done by a computer, vast quantities of secritarial work, train driving etc etc yet isn't.
Some things are kept human either because of expense, liability or just because people prefer to interact with humans.
Nothing you wrote is even close to coherent.
letting a child be raped or tortured to death isn't letting that child do evil things.
Torturing that child yourself for eternity to punish them for commiting suicide to escape from the aforementioned raped and torture only makes it worse.
"can harm you except the evil you do yourself"
Lots of things can harm you other than the evil you do yourself. someone with a red hot poker, lots of free time and the desire to make you feel as much pain as possible can harm you quite a lot without you doing any harm to yourself a lot.
He talked about things fairly specific to the chirstian image of god.
which is exactly as I described.
but they convince themselves that despite that he's somehow not utterly evil.
(Lets not even get into how he supposedly killed every puppy in the world except 2)
Where did I say anything about not being vengeful enough?
In christian dogma suicide is self murder and a mortal sin. which is utterly absurd but hey.
So tell me, point out which great things about the universe are worth countless children being raped and/or tortured?
Fluffy bunnies? Butterflies? Rainbows?
What exactly would be worth that?
lets try a thought experiment.... lets say we have a person.
Upon seeing a child bleeding to death in the street he walks off to have a coffee leaving the child to die over the course of long painful hours despite having an entire backpack full of bandages, lots of medical training and copious free time.
Is this man a good person?
No.
Lets say he was walking down that same street and saw a child being raped to death by someone else and despite and entire backpack full of guns, training in martial arts and a team of bodyguards with him he walks past and lets it happen.
Is this man a good person?
No.
This god we're talking about.
He know's everything that's happening and can do absolutely anything.
He he literally knows about children being raped to death and does nothing, nothing to stop it despite supposedly having both the knowledge and the means.
That's one damned evil god you've got there.
supposedly he will punish the people who did it....later.... as long as they don't say that they're really really sorry in the mean time and really mean it.... and if he does punish them they go to the same place as any of their victims who committed suicide to escape the torture and rapes. .... ok the more I dig into this the more horrible the concept of such a god existing is.
On the scale of evil of most normal people violating monopoly legislation in the software market falls somewhere in the region of having once kicked a puppy.
compared to how most "old money" rich got rich he's positively shining.
Tens of thousands of tonnes of passenger train goes past my house every day, on a line that carries 200 million passengers/year, taking up about the width of a road, but I don't smell a thing
that's because the people near any local gas or coal plants are smelling it.
Re: energy/pollution.
not all that much better.
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/images/2008/08/04/transenergy.png
an electric scooter is the ultimate for that with electric cars coming in far ahead of any rail and even regular cars coming in ahead of city busses.
Not all that energy efficient
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/images/2008/08/04/transenergy.png
My first conclusion is that we would get more efficient by pushing
small, fuel efficient vehicles instead of pushing transit, and at
a lower cost.
A full bus or trainload of people is more efficient than private cars,
sometimes quite a bit more so. But transit systems never consist
of nothing but full vehicles. They run most of their day with light
loads. The above calculations came from figures citing the
average city bus holding 9 passengers, and the average train (light
or heavy) holds 22. If that seems low, remember that every packed
train at rush hour tends to mean a near empty train returning down
the track.
Transit vehicles also tend to stop and start a lot, which eats
a lot of energy, even with regenerative braking. And most
transit vehicles are just plain heavy, and not very aerodynamic.
Indeed, you'll see tables in the DoE reports that show that over the past 30 years,
private cars have gotten 30% more efficient, while buses have
gotten 60% less efficient and trains about 25% worse. The
market and government regulations have driven efforts to make cars
more efficient, while transit vehicles have actually worsened.
In order to get people to ride transit, you must offer frequent
service, all day long. They want to know they have the freedom to leave at
different times. But that means emptier vehicles outside of
rush hour. You've all seen those huge empty vehicles go by, you just
haven't thought of how anti-green they were. It would be better
if off-hours transit was done by much smaller vehicles, but that
implies too much capital cost -- no transit agency will buy enough
equipment for peak times and then buy a second set of equipment for
light demand periods.
I am in europe.
Europe is not a magical place where all the public transport problems have been worked out.
And simply being close to a train station isn't the end of the problem.
I was living 20 minutes walk from a train station but the trains from that station only went into the nearest large city from which you could catch a train or bus to the other big cities from which you could catch another to the destination.
And I was lucky. A friend got stuck on a similar commute for a few months where there wasn't even a direct bus between the cities in question and he had to go a far more convoluted route through a third city.
Your 50 mile diameter circle is utterly meaningless unless you look at the routes people actually have to travel.
Public transport tends to get centralized in such a way that you have to pass through central terminals to get anywhere non local and god help you if you're on the edge of a catchment area and want to get to the closest edge of an adjacent catchment area.A 5 mile journey can turn into a 50 mile adventure.
So because he pointed out that a lot of his peers would be lazy and just give in to the pushy guy who has been convinced by the ad campaign that this magic pill will fix his problems he's bad.
And because he's not going to automatically hand it over and migh *GASP* consider the risks and the benefits as an expert and *GASP* might disagree with the moron who WANTS HIS MAGIC PILLS RIGHT NOW DAMNIT then he's a bad doctor?
"In the face of their ignorance, they'll give their best advice"
But of course if he disagrees with you poorly educated ideas about what magic pill will fix your problems then he's just "asserting one of his own intellectual whims" of course.
Right... so you saw some lovely ads which told you that some med was the best thing since sliced bread and decided you simply MUST have it because the TV told you so.
Meanwhile the trained professional who was more familiar with the side effects, risks and effectiveness of the medication was a bit iffy about giving it to you since your cholesterol wasn't really high enough to make it worth it.... so you shouted at him until he gave it to you to make you go away.
great example there.
The pharmacist thing isn't pointless.
They have to learn a great deal about drug interactions: in some cases more than the doctors so while you're doctor might prescribe 2 pills your pharmacist is supposed to be able to realise that the 2 of them sometimes interact badly.
Doctors can't be experts in everything in the universe.
The problems with trains and other public transport is that they get you from where you aren't to where you don't actually want to go.
A couple of years ago I got stuck doing a weekly commute which by car took two and a half hours.
that same trip took 9 hours by train.... if I was lucky.
Unfortunatly I didn't have a car so most of the time I was stuck with the bus/train option which was beyond terrible.
It boiled down to the problem that while I essentially wanted to go about 100 miles south in order to go via public transport I had to first go 50 miles north and then it overshot my destinitaion in a similar manner at the other end.Nothing even close to a direct option.
If you're lucky enough to live near a station and your destination is near a station at the other end then it's the best thing ever.
if on the other hand you're like most of humanity and don't have such a nice arrangement remember to include the hours sitting at a station waiting for the next train, the slogs across town in the pissing rain and the times when the bus or train just sails on by because it's already full and since it's the last bus you're going to have to turn around and travel for another few hours to get back for the night or call an extremely expensive taxi.
Public transport is the absolute pits unless you have a car handy and ready to be used for all those trips for which public transport is awful.
What would the use of releasing information nobody reads?
as do you apparently.
hey, sometimes an escape can be good for you.
When I was a teen I got into MMO's in a big way for a little while when I was really down.
and it helped. I'd get up in the morning and while I'd be tired I'd feel pretty good and was able to face the day.
After a while I started to feel better and didn't need to get away any more.
getting a break, getting away from your life and just being someone else, chatting, joking and cooperating with other people as a character for a few hours a night can help you feel better about real life.
Give it another 20 of 30 years till the current old folk die off.
Then we'll be the old folk and it will be obvious to us that gaming is perfectly fine just like classical music,books,radio,silent movies,talkies, colour movies, black and white television and colour television.
but those new fangled brain implant vivispecs are certainly going to destroy the next generations morals!