Yeah, the whole idea of atoms and electrons and such probably would have been a better example, now that you bring it up. I was originally going to go with gravity as an example, but it seemed too open to counter-arguments of the form "Students should drop items in front of a slow motion camera and observe their acceleration themselves!" and then I'd have to come back and point out that such an experiment would do nothing to show that gravity is more than just a constant acceleration downwards and then they'd come back and argue that students should work out the orbits of planets as an exercise and on and on. I may have gone too far towards abstract fields in an attempt to avoid such lines of argument.
My post was merely demonstrating that people must accept the word of experts because they can't know everything. I chose the example I did because it's kindergarten level stuff. If we all rely on the word of experts for even the most fundamental on concepts, how can anyone claim that trusting experts is a logical fallacy?
"Appeal to authority" is one of, if not the, most misapplied fallacy there is. Kids learn about it in Logic 101 in their freshman year, and then start throwing around the term all over the place, but they have no clue what it means. In actuality, appeals to authority can be entirely justified. Such appeals are only fallacious if the authority cited isn't an actual expert, or disagrees with the consensus, or has a motivation to lie. No one on this planet can live even a single day without trusting in authorities. From the commutative property, to the health effects of drinking bleach, to the stability of the bridge you drive over. Inductive, deductive, doesn't matter. Unless you've done all the work yourself, you're trusting in others.
Prove to me that a+b=b+a, for all values of a and b.
Don't just say it's obvious. Don't just give a few examples and assume it will always work. Don't just subtract b from each side, unless you're prepared to prove that b-b=0 and a+0=0+a. Provide a rigorous proof.
Back from Wikipedia? Good. Now tell me again how we shouldn't have our students trust in scientific consensus, and how they should have to review the evidence and decide for themselves. Because right now, the commutative property is taught by appeal to authority. Teacher says it always works, so it always works. In your world, we would have to give each kid a copy of Principia Mathematica and wish them luck. Except PM has its own critical flaws, so I suppose we'll also need to introduce them to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. Oh, but we can't trust in the translations of experts, so better teach them German first.
The fact is that people (children in particular) are not equipped to evaluate the truthfulness of every statement. We must trust in the consensus of the experts. The alternative is for society to regress to a point where it was possible for a single person to know all of human knowledge. I'm sure the creationists would love that.
This is a pretty cool idea, and I'd love to see themed housing developments in other places. It has nothing to do with piracy though -- it's not as though anyone is going to consider living in Austria, but then decide to live in some Chinese town instead because it's cheaper. The author probably just threw that in as a bit of flamebait to get more comments.
A famous aviator, that everyone in the US knows of (if only for the fact that she disappeared). The phrase "needs no introduction" comes to mind. Explaining who she is would have been like starting an article with "Abraham Lincoln, the president of the United States during the Civil War". If you don't recognize the name, then you're either a small child or from some other country. If it's the latter, you should accept that American websites will sometimes refer to American celebrities, and in such situations Wikipedia is your friend.
Photons are popping in and out of the quantum soup all the time.
Unfortunately, neither the quantum soup nor time existed prior to the Big Bang, so....
Not trying to claim a divine creator here, just saying that this logic seems pretty circular. The best we can do with current knowledge is say we don't know what caused the Big Bang, but we wouldn't be around to wonder had it not happened, so we shouldn't read much into that lack of knowledge.
You have format shift. Buy a DVD and rip it. It's really easy. Yeah, the studios don't like it, but at least you're putting some money in the pockets of the people who are entertaining you.
We also have preview for music (e.g. Pandora, FM radio), and books (chapter previews, libraries), and games (demos, open betas). Unfortunately, the preview system doesn't work for most movies, since a lot of them are the sort that you only really want to see once. "Aha!", you yell, "That means it sucks and is worthless and I'm justified in stealing it!" Well, no. Movies can be valuable and enjoyable even if you only watch them once. We do, however, have plentiful reviews. They won't screen out all the crap, since it's subjective, but they work in most cases.
Also, on the Bridge to Terabithia example, how did you get through childhood without reading the book and discovering how heart-rending it was? Seriously, that's like the shared childhood trauma of everyone born in the past forty years.
Actors and athletes take a risk. The odds of a payoff are low, and the payoff is high to make up for that. By comparison, your mainframe know-how had a very good chance of paying off, so the payoff was lower. The expected value of the two positions is likely pretty similar.
Think long and hard about paying athletes and actors and the like less. Those professions are one of the precious few remaining paths by which a person born into a poor family can become wealthy. And they gain that wealth by making a whole lot of people happy, which strikes me as a pretty deserving path. If we go back to the bad-old-days of businessmen colluding to pay athletes peanuts, that'll just be one more wall keeping the poor poor.
Blister packs are plastic on one side and cardboard or foil on the other, e.g. what batteries or pills tend to come in. They're much easier to open. Clamshells are plastic on both sides, and feed on human suffering. A minor, but important difference.
Google helpfully telling the Chinese people, "Hey, this search term won't work, maybe you should try another *wink wink*". That should make it easier to to bypass China's filters.
Typical arrogance. Pretend the person who disagrees with you is frothing with rage, because clearly that means that they're wrong. Sorry to disappoint, but I've got a huge smile on my face after watching (on DVR) the Red Sox get humiliated by the Tigers in the 9th.
On this issue, you should be aware that the countries listed in the summary are chosen because they are among the ones pushing hardest for this. Why? Because they have the greatest incentive. Maybe you don't give a shit about the billions of people who live in places with abusive governments. But I do, and anything that helps those governments be more abusive is a bad thing.
"which government was it that started seizing.com domains without warning?" -- an insinuation that the US is abusing its power, while we have nothing to fear from other nations. Don't deny the second half. That's what the "Which was it?" rhetorical question means.
"The US is scared that it's own control will be eroded by others." -- an insinuation that the US is opposing this for selfish reasons, with absolutely no supporting evidence. Meanwhile there is supporting evidence that countries like China and Iran would abuse the power that they are requesting.
"Given the way they've abused that control, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to see what other people make of it." -- How has America really abused its control? I mean, really? There are a few edge cases, but all in all the internet seems to be doing pretty damn good.
You make a bunch of baseless, cowardly insinuations without ever coming out and saying your true meaning. "Fuck America, give the power to someone else, that'll show 'em!" And then you have the gall to come back and pretend like you were being eminently reasonable. Honestly, can you find a single sentence in your post that is a factual reason why we should allow this, instead of just some tired old "never trust the US" tripe?
How about US censorship of porn and gambling? Or do you think the.xxx domain will not be used by republicans to make a push in the future to force all porn on to that new domain and then block it everywhere?
I distrust moral crusaders as much as anyone, but are you seriously using a hypothetical future event as an example? What the hell sort of logic is that?
The US has a very strict standard of what constitutes incitement to violence. It comes from the Supreme Court decision in Brandenburg v Ohio. To count as incitement, the speech has to meet three criteria:
1) It has to be intended to incite violence (the website meets this one) 2) The violence being incited must be "imminent" (this is the real killer, as written word is unlikely to be an incitement to any "imminent" action) 3) It has to be "likely" that violence will result (this could go either way... given the sort of crap you read on forums, the judge might rule that internet postings are often extreme and unlikely to be taken seriously)
As I said, the only way to pass the "Brandenburg test" is to basically be at the scene of the crime, pointing and yelling "Get 'em!"
We've already seen what China and Iran do with the internet. The only reason you're arguing in favor of giving them more power is because you think knee-jerk anti-Americanism makes you cool and edgy. You're a damn fool. Leaked memos have shown for years that China is drafting proposals to allow them to track any internet posting back to its source. Here's an excerpt from their use case:
1.5 Proxy "Safe harbor" A political opponent to a government publishes articles putting the government in an unfavorable light. The government, having a law against any opposition, tries to identify the source of the negative articles but the articles having been published via a proxy server, is unable to do so protecting the anonymity of the author.
That's not an example of how great anonymity is. That is literally a problem statement. Something they want to solve. Grow the hell up and stop reflexively hating on the US, or else you'll end up supporting the very sort of Orwellian control you hope to avoid.
Your quotes don't support your claim. Some Europeans invented a few of the underlying technologies. So what? The first car was made by Karl Benz (yes, as in Mercedes-Benz) in Germany. Would you claim that Germany didn't invent the car because the internal combustion engine was invented elsewhere?
It would be legal. The US does have some limitations on incitements to violence, but a webpage expressing the things you described wouldn't fit the bill. You pretty much have to be pointing at a person, yelling "Hey everyone, kick that n*****/f*****/etc.'s ass!" in order for the first amendment not to protect you.
Very true. Does anyone know how the judge got this case? Is it just by random lottery, or do they look for a judge who understands the issues? I assume the former, based on past cases (the Blizzard case in which someone ruled copying a program to RAM constitutes infringement comes to mind), in which case we got very, very lucky here.
-I had unprotected sex, I should go get a clothes hanger stuck in me in some back alley, and die of an infection if it doesn't work -I had kids I can't support, they should be forced to live a life of squalor and misery for my mistake -I'm an addict, I should continue to spiral downwards until I die in the streets -I made shitty choices and now I'm poor, I should be forced to turn to crime to avoid starvation -I have a $25,000/year job but can't afford my mortgage, the government should watch the entire economy go down in flames rather than help me out -I'm a bank and I've made a catastrophic series of worthless investment, the government should stand aside while others suffer horribly for my actions. Meanwhile I'll retire in luxury, since I've already collected millions in bonuses.
The government's job is to promote the common good. That sometimes means helping people who've made mistakes. You seem to be more interested in making people suffer for them. I wonder if your tune would change if you or someone you cared about ever slipped up. But no, that would never happen. You don't make mistakes. You're a god.
Hey, where are all the Republican trolls who like to claim that party affiliation only gets omitted when a Democrat does something bad? This guy's not just a Republican, but as right-leaning as they come. I guess all those GOPers will have to admit that they were full of it? Hahaha, as if.
And for the record, I couldn't care less which party he's from, and I happen to agree with him on this issue. I've got no problem with the government using unmanned drones to handle tasks previously performed by men in helicopters. I just enjoy pointing out how jaw-droppingly dishonest GOP cheerleaders are.
If the current Republican-controlled SCOTUS is willing to rule that corporations can take away your right to a jury trial in a contract, and that they count as people for purposes of unlimited political bribes, and that they don't count as people for purposes of being exposed to lawsuits for overseas human rights abuses, what makes you think that they wouldn't also rule EULA's to be enforceable should a case every present itself?
This is the most corporate-friendly court in history. Whenever any case comes before them, you can bet your ass it'll be decided on what will most benefit their corporate buddies. I just hope no EULA-related cases reach the court prior to at least a couple of them kicking the bucket.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, the whole idea of atoms and electrons and such probably would have been a better example, now that you bring it up. I was originally going to go with gravity as an example, but it seemed too open to counter-arguments of the form "Students should drop items in front of a slow motion camera and observe their acceleration themselves!" and then I'd have to come back and point out that such an experiment would do nothing to show that gravity is more than just a constant acceleration downwards and then they'd come back and argue that students should work out the orbits of planets as an exercise and on and on. I may have gone too far towards abstract fields in an attempt to avoid such lines of argument.
My post was merely demonstrating that people must accept the word of experts because they can't know everything. I chose the example I did because it's kindergarten level stuff. If we all rely on the word of experts for even the most fundamental on concepts, how can anyone claim that trusting experts is a logical fallacy?
"Appeal to authority" is one of, if not the, most misapplied fallacy there is. Kids learn about it in Logic 101 in their freshman year, and then start throwing around the term all over the place, but they have no clue what it means. In actuality, appeals to authority can be entirely justified. Such appeals are only fallacious if the authority cited isn't an actual expert, or disagrees with the consensus, or has a motivation to lie. No one on this planet can live even a single day without trusting in authorities. From the commutative property, to the health effects of drinking bleach, to the stability of the bridge you drive over. Inductive, deductive, doesn't matter. Unless you've done all the work yourself, you're trusting in others.
Prove to me that a+b=b+a, for all values of a and b.
Don't just say it's obvious. Don't just give a few examples and assume it will always work. Don't just subtract b from each side, unless you're prepared to prove that b-b=0 and a+0=0+a. Provide a rigorous proof.
Back from Wikipedia? Good. Now tell me again how we shouldn't have our students trust in scientific consensus, and how they should have to review the evidence and decide for themselves. Because right now, the commutative property is taught by appeal to authority. Teacher says it always works, so it always works. In your world, we would have to give each kid a copy of Principia Mathematica and wish them luck. Except PM has its own critical flaws, so I suppose we'll also need to introduce them to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. Oh, but we can't trust in the translations of experts, so better teach them German first.
The fact is that people (children in particular) are not equipped to evaluate the truthfulness of every statement. We must trust in the consensus of the experts. The alternative is for society to regress to a point where it was possible for a single person to know all of human knowledge. I'm sure the creationists would love that.
This is a pretty cool idea, and I'd love to see themed housing developments in other places. It has nothing to do with piracy though -- it's not as though anyone is going to consider living in Austria, but then decide to live in some Chinese town instead because it's cheaper. The author probably just threw that in as a bit of flamebait to get more comments.
Thirst, possibly? Depending on the size of the atoll, it might have been very difficult to find fresh water.
Obviously not you, and yet you took the time to post. Tell me, exactly how boring is your life?
A famous aviator, that everyone in the US knows of (if only for the fact that she disappeared). The phrase "needs no introduction" comes to mind. Explaining who she is would have been like starting an article with "Abraham Lincoln, the president of the United States during the Civil War". If you don't recognize the name, then you're either a small child or from some other country. If it's the latter, you should accept that American websites will sometimes refer to American celebrities, and in such situations Wikipedia is your friend.
Photons are popping in and out of the quantum soup all the time.
Unfortunately, neither the quantum soup nor time existed prior to the Big Bang, so....
Not trying to claim a divine creator here, just saying that this logic seems pretty circular. The best we can do with current knowledge is say we don't know what caused the Big Bang, but we wouldn't be around to wonder had it not happened, so we shouldn't read much into that lack of knowledge.
You have format shift. Buy a DVD and rip it. It's really easy. Yeah, the studios don't like it, but at least you're putting some money in the pockets of the people who are entertaining you.
We also have preview for music (e.g. Pandora, FM radio), and books (chapter previews, libraries), and games (demos, open betas). Unfortunately, the preview system doesn't work for most movies, since a lot of them are the sort that you only really want to see once. "Aha!", you yell, "That means it sucks and is worthless and I'm justified in stealing it!" Well, no. Movies can be valuable and enjoyable even if you only watch them once. We do, however, have plentiful reviews. They won't screen out all the crap, since it's subjective, but they work in most cases.
Also, on the Bridge to Terabithia example, how did you get through childhood without reading the book and discovering how heart-rending it was? Seriously, that's like the shared childhood trauma of everyone born in the past forty years.
Actors and athletes take a risk. The odds of a payoff are low, and the payoff is high to make up for that. By comparison, your mainframe know-how had a very good chance of paying off, so the payoff was lower. The expected value of the two positions is likely pretty similar.
Think long and hard about paying athletes and actors and the like less. Those professions are one of the precious few remaining paths by which a person born into a poor family can become wealthy. And they gain that wealth by making a whole lot of people happy, which strikes me as a pretty deserving path. If we go back to the bad-old-days of businessmen colluding to pay athletes peanuts, that'll just be one more wall keeping the poor poor.
Blister packs are plastic on one side and cardboard or foil on the other, e.g. what batteries or pills tend to come in. They're much easier to open. Clamshells are plastic on both sides, and feed on human suffering. A minor, but important difference.
Google helpfully telling the Chinese people, "Hey, this search term won't work, maybe you should try another *wink wink*". That should make it easier to to bypass China's filters.
Typical arrogance. Pretend the person who disagrees with you is frothing with rage, because clearly that means that they're wrong. Sorry to disappoint, but I've got a huge smile on my face after watching (on DVR) the Red Sox get humiliated by the Tigers in the 9th.
On this issue, you should be aware that the countries listed in the summary are chosen because they are among the ones pushing hardest for this. Why? Because they have the greatest incentive. Maybe you don't give a shit about the billions of people who live in places with abusive governments. But I do, and anything that helps those governments be more abusive is a bad thing.
What you wrote was:
"which government was it that started seizing .com domains without warning?" -- an insinuation that the US is abusing its power, while we have nothing to fear from other nations. Don't deny the second half. That's what the "Which was it?" rhetorical question means.
"The US is scared that it's own control will be eroded by others." -- an insinuation that the US is opposing this for selfish reasons, with absolutely no supporting evidence. Meanwhile there is supporting evidence that countries like China and Iran would abuse the power that they are requesting.
"Given the way they've abused that control, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to see what other people make of it." -- How has America really abused its control? I mean, really? There are a few edge cases, but all in all the internet seems to be doing pretty damn good.
You make a bunch of baseless, cowardly insinuations without ever coming out and saying your true meaning. "Fuck America, give the power to someone else, that'll show 'em!" And then you have the gall to come back and pretend like you were being eminently reasonable. Honestly, can you find a single sentence in your post that is a factual reason why we should allow this, instead of just some tired old "never trust the US" tripe?
How about US censorship of porn and gambling? Or do you think the .xxx domain will not be used by republicans to make a push in the future to force all porn on to that new domain and then block it everywhere?
I distrust moral crusaders as much as anyone, but are you seriously using a hypothetical future event as an example? What the hell sort of logic is that?
The US has a very strict standard of what constitutes incitement to violence. It comes from the Supreme Court decision in Brandenburg v Ohio. To count as incitement, the speech has to meet three criteria:
1) It has to be intended to incite violence (the website meets this one)
2) The violence being incited must be "imminent" (this is the real killer, as written word is unlikely to be an incitement to any "imminent" action)
3) It has to be "likely" that violence will result (this could go either way... given the sort of crap you read on forums, the judge might rule that internet postings are often extreme and unlikely to be taken seriously)
As I said, the only way to pass the "Brandenburg test" is to basically be at the scene of the crime, pointing and yelling "Get 'em!"
We've already seen what China and Iran do with the internet. The only reason you're arguing in favor of giving them more power is because you think knee-jerk anti-Americanism makes you cool and edgy. You're a damn fool. Leaked memos have shown for years that China is drafting proposals to allow them to track any internet posting back to its source. Here's an excerpt from their use case:
1.5 Proxy "Safe harbor" A political opponent to a government publishes articles putting the government in an unfavorable light. The government, having a law against any opposition, tries to identify the source of the negative articles but the articles having been published via a proxy server, is unable to do so protecting the anonymity of the author.
That's not an example of how great anonymity is. That is literally a problem statement. Something they want to solve. Grow the hell up and stop reflexively hating on the US, or else you'll end up supporting the very sort of Orwellian control you hope to avoid.
Sadly, it learned to generate summaries by reading Slashdot :-(
Your quotes don't support your claim. Some Europeans invented a few of the underlying technologies. So what? The first car was made by Karl Benz (yes, as in Mercedes-Benz) in Germany. Would you claim that Germany didn't invent the car because the internal combustion engine was invented elsewhere?
It would be legal. The US does have some limitations on incitements to violence, but a webpage expressing the things you described wouldn't fit the bill. You pretty much have to be pointing at a person, yelling "Hey everyone, kick that n*****/f*****/etc.'s ass!" in order for the first amendment not to protect you.
Very true. Does anyone know how the judge got this case? Is it just by random lottery, or do they look for a judge who understands the issues? I assume the former, based on past cases (the Blizzard case in which someone ruled copying a program to RAM constitutes infringement comes to mind), in which case we got very, very lucky here.
So let's hear your solutions...
-I had unprotected sex, I should go get a clothes hanger stuck in me in some back alley, and die of an infection if it doesn't work
-I had kids I can't support, they should be forced to live a life of squalor and misery for my mistake
-I'm an addict, I should continue to spiral downwards until I die in the streets
-I made shitty choices and now I'm poor, I should be forced to turn to crime to avoid starvation
-I have a $25,000/year job but can't afford my mortgage, the government should watch the entire economy go down in flames rather than help me out
-I'm a bank and I've made a catastrophic series of worthless investment, the government should stand aside while others suffer horribly for my actions. Meanwhile I'll retire in luxury, since I've already collected millions in bonuses.
The government's job is to promote the common good. That sometimes means helping people who've made mistakes. You seem to be more interested in making people suffer for them. I wonder if your tune would change if you or someone you cared about ever slipped up. But no, that would never happen. You don't make mistakes. You're a god.
Hey, where are all the Republican trolls who like to claim that party affiliation only gets omitted when a Democrat does something bad? This guy's not just a Republican, but as right-leaning as they come. I guess all those GOPers will have to admit that they were full of it? Hahaha, as if.
And for the record, I couldn't care less which party he's from, and I happen to agree with him on this issue. I've got no problem with the government using unmanned drones to handle tasks previously performed by men in helicopters. I just enjoy pointing out how jaw-droppingly dishonest GOP cheerleaders are.
Dogs will be allowed to spend 20% of their time sniffing whatever they like!
If the current Republican-controlled SCOTUS is willing to rule that corporations can take away your right to a jury trial in a contract, and that they count as people for purposes of unlimited political bribes, and that they don't count as people for purposes of being exposed to lawsuits for overseas human rights abuses, what makes you think that they wouldn't also rule EULA's to be enforceable should a case every present itself?
This is the most corporate-friendly court in history. Whenever any case comes before them, you can bet your ass it'll be decided on what will most benefit their corporate buddies. I just hope no EULA-related cases reach the court prior to at least a couple of them kicking the bucket.