How dare you malign the Holy Free Market and its divine prophets, the Corporations. If we just get government off their backs, these angelic entities will provide us with lucrative jobs and cheap products instead of doing what they do now, which is rape us, rob us, and invest all the money they stole from us in jobs overseas. I know this is true because they paid people to tell me so.
But this isn't treating people differently because of race, it is (in the case of language) treating people the same, i.e. not insulting them, and, in the case of affirmative action, treating them differently based on the fact that they are an oppressed minority, it has nothing to do with color of their skin.
You do realize this is a story from days ago, right? I mean, I understand someone who was already in this thread responding later, but it just looks suspicious when an anonymous coward pops up in a days old story to mirror the racist comments of another poster.
So far, I'd disagree with that. The malware detection is built into the system, invisible, automatic, and self updating. So the user doesn't have to do X, Y, or even Z at all. We're still at "It just works."
Not saying that couldn't change in the future, but we're not there yet.
Okay, maccodemonkey, here's the thing: if the malware detection which is built into the system, invisible, automatic, and self updating is defeated within hours of it being release, we are no longer at "It just works." What part of "It doesn't work anymore" sounds like "It just works" to you?!?
And what constitutes being a dick depends on the consent of the parties involved. If you say it is an insult, it is, to you, and I, not being a dick, won't insult you any further unless I have good reason to want to make you mad. If someone said "broccoli" was an insult to them I would not say "brocoli" around them because I don't want to insult them.
What you want is the privilege to say whatever you like, without others being able to say how they feel about the things you say. You want white privilege. You may not realize it, but you are a racist of the worst kind, the kind that believes HE is the oppressed one, and therefore absolutely justified in his racism.
As for affirmative action, correcting a racism is not racism. Reducing white privilege is not racism. It is the opposite, it is a reduction of racism. It only looks like racism to you because your unfair advantages are being reduced. A poor white man has far more opportunities than most minorities, and that is born out by economic data.
No, there is ONE standard of behavior: don't be a dick. When I slap my wife's ass, pull her hair and call her a dirty slut, I'm not being a dick, because she likes that. If I did the same exact thing to a different woman, without her consent, that would be a dick move, wouldn't it?
Affirmative action is not racism, it is an attempt to reduce the inherent,unfair, and unearned advantages whites have in the workplace.
"... the more you risk a serious chafing and subsequent desensitization of the glans, leading to increased frictional requirements, leading to a tighter grip in a terrible downward spiral that ends up with something that resembles a hot dog stricken with leprosy. "
That's not right. It isn't that the word is "racist" when used by one group, and not racist when used by another. It is that it is insulting when used as an insult and not when it is not, and white people don't have the cultural background to use it as anything but an insult. I have friends that I sometimes insult in a joking fashion. They do it to me as well, and we find it amusing and endearing. But if we used the same language with a stranger, it would be insulting. Is that a double standard? Is that unequal? No. Grow up. White people aren't oppressed. White people do not suffer from ANY reverse racism. There is no such thing. White people are the dominant culture in America.
The first amendment does not apply to state law, as the first amendment guarantees no privileges or immunities, it only limits what one branch of the federal government does.
State law does not limit speech. Enforcement of contract is not a law limiting speech. The federal government is also prohibited from seizing property, yet when someone breaches a contract, they can seize property specified in a breach of contract clause.
You are simply wrong. No matter how eloquently you argue the point, you are wrong. I don't know how I can make that any more clear. You can not win this argument. The truth is what it is, and your argument only serves to demonstrate that your own understanding of our government is incorrect, nothing more. It does not matter what you or I say, the law is the law, the constitution is what it is, hundreds of years of case law can not simply be wished away.
I hate sophists such as you, who believe truth doesn't matter, only what they can make people believe. I have no respect for you, and if you continue to attempt to debate me, I will make my lack of respect for you more and more clear, so fuck off you sophist asshole.
No, the right to free speech was never meant to trump all laws, as our government placed limits on free speech from the very beginning, such as libel and slander laws, anti sedition laws, laws against inciting riots and violence, and so forth. You see, certain types of expression are simply not 'free speech' and are not protected.
I'm glad you walked back your original position and are arguing the new, less ridiculous position of "This is how it should be" instead of "this is how it is," but our founding fathers were smarter than you, and they knew what most people have been trying to tell you: there should be limits to what you can say, you should be able to voluntarily limit your own speech, and the government should enforce all legal contracts.
You do not understand the constitution. Debating with you has been an absolute pain in the ass, because you won't listen to reason and fact. You are now on my ignore list, buh bye.
Very insightful. As I posted in this thread already, I am rewarding your insight by modding up a different insightful comment you made in the 'parallel programming is hard' thread.
I believe the important point of free will is the idea that our choices can be less than free, that we CAN be constrained by experience and environment. We know when someone has taken some of our freedom of choice from us, and we do not, in general, like it very much. Free will can then be understood as an intuitive sense that tells us whether our choices are limited or expansive.
How does randomness equal choice? If it's random, you may as well flip a coin, it is not a choice. If it is random, it doesn't come from inside of you. You aren't making a choice, the choice is made randomly. I don't know how else to put that. Do we have different definitions of "random?" If a person were to make all their decisions through the flip of a coin, we wouldn't say they are choosing the outcomes, would we?
No, they are not wrong by a strict reading, and I am not missing the point. His point was, "the entire history of interpreting the constitution is wrong because I misread the constitution." Here's the entire text of the first amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Where in that do you see anything prohibiting the executive branch from doing it's job enforcing the law by punishing those who break contracts they voluntarily signed? Now, people here have been making a mistaken correlation between the first and thirteenth amendments, saying that you can not legally contract yourself into slavery. But the wording of the thirteenth is very different:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Slavery is illegal. Limiting your own speech is not. You can argue that the current state of affairs is not how you would like them, and that you would like to change the constitution to protect free speech, but that is not how the constitution is currently written. It does not protect free speech, it only limits one branch of government from passing laws that limit it.
I would argue that that is as it should be. I should be able to, for instance, demand your silence in return for some consideration from me, such as would be the case with NDAs and trade secrets. I can also prohibit you from copying my copyrighted works, infringing my trade marks, or using my patents, all of which are technically limits on free speech. I should also have the ability to recoup damages from you if you slander or libel me, and prevent further slander or libel through court actions against you, all of which require the government to back up my rights by limiting your speech. And of course, there is the well known prohibition against shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater.
Your right to free speech does not trump all other rights in existence.
Read the constitution, please, this has been explained in this thread before: the first amendment prohibits congress from passing laws that prohibit free speech. That is all. It does not prevent the other two branches from limiting speech, so the executive, in charge of criminal prosecution, can enforce a person's own voluntary limit to their own speech in cases such as this. End of story. Next time, either stay awake in civics class or listen to the people who did.
But we know quantum mechanics is TRULY random. There is no pattern to it. In order to fit the definition, will would have to have some sort of recognizable pattern to it. When we think of free will, we think of making choices, not randomly flipping a coin.
If the constraints are the learning, then will isn't free, it is CONSTRAINED. You do realize that that word is pretty much the opposite of "free," right? If part is constrained and part is not, what determines whether a choice comes from the constrained or the free part?
In fact, there is no way to determine whether free will exists or not, but we must live our lives as if it exists, whether it does or not. Personally, I love your definition. I do not see it lacking in anything, but then, I'm not concerned about the problem of evil.
The concept of free will exists because people build mental models of the world. In order for these models to make sense, the consciousness must model itself. Models are by nature reductionist, the quantify things in terms of parts, but can only consider a finite number of parts and things. In our models, things are simply what they are, things unto themselves and not caused by other things. A finite model can not contain an infinite regress, and so, at some level we must stop breaking things down into pieces and say, "this is what it is, and not made of smaller pieces or other influences outside the scope of my model."
We do this with our own consciousness. We model it as something separate from the universe. Seeing the consciousness as separate, we say choice comes only from within consciousness. Bad choices or choices that harm others then do not come from the universe of cause and effect, but from the individual. We need will to be free so that we can assign blame to those things we see as separate from the universe: we blame a person for harming us because they are separate from the universe, we do not blame the avalanche that harms us because it is not separate. We recognize that the avalanche happened for reasons that are entirely within the universe, but the person's choices came from outside the universe.
Free will as a concept exists to restore balance to this unbalanced situation where some things are entirely within the universe, and caused causes, while other things are partially outside the universe and are uncaused causes. If something happens for reasons external to itself, it is necessarily in balance with the rest of the universe but if the cause comes from outside the universe and there is no reciprocal causation going the other way, there is necessarily imbalance. Free will then becomes a repository for good and bad "karma," and an explanation for evil.
Sorry, call me dense but I REALLY do not see how the halting problem proves free will necessary. If the pre existing state of the universe does not guide your actions, you can not learn. Either the pre existing state of the universe influences the will, in which case learning is possible but will is not free, or the will derives NO information from the universe, and can not learn about it. Either way, one can not assign blame to others based on their choices. One can certainly punish to deter, knowing that the will can learn, but one can not right an imbalance by punishing evil. In fact, if free will does not exist, the universe can not be out of balance, and evil can not exist.
You made a rational argument based on faulty premises. All the logic in the world won't lead you to the correct conclusion when you start from untruth. The constitution is not a debate club. You can't change the agreed upon meaning with a logical argument.
No, it is NOT an illusion caused by our tendency to think things have a single cause, it is a recognition that all things are both cause and effect, and everything is caused by many, many things. We simplify, in our mental models, the things we consider, but we should always know that our simplifications are a shortcut, and in reality, everything has many unobserved causes.
Quantum mechanics is no mechanism for will. It is random. If something is random, it is not free will. You can't say "Oh, he did a bad thing, he could have chosen another course," rather, you would have to admit, "A bad thing happened randomly through him." If something is a coin flip, it isn't a choice.
If something is not wholly constrained by prior states, then again, learning is impossible. The part of the will that is not constrained can not learn, prior states have no impact on it. The will can not choose what it learns, and therefore, is blameless for its choices, making the entire concept of free will useless, because the real purpose of the concept is to assign blame for bad choices.
Ah, but then free will is not doing its job mitigating the problem of evil. If a person's choices are influenced by events, then how can we say whether their choices are their own, and thus deserving of punishment or reward, or they are caused by the influences of the world? When a desperate man steals or kills, how can we know whether he was capable of making another choice? If we say he was always capable of making another choice, we have discounted all influences as being immaterial to the outcome, they aren't influences at all, and the will can not learn or grow from experience. The will is, again, an uncaused cause, not a part of the chain of causality. Dividing the will into a changeable and unchangeable part is only obfuscating the real issue.
People want to be an uncaused cause. That's what the concept of free will boils down to. The will can cause things, but itself is not caused by anything. If it were caused, it wouldn't be free. Of course, this would make any learning impossible. Either the will is a part of the chain of cause and effect, and therefore not free, or the soul (or whatever you believe to be the seat of consciousness) can never learn.
I believe the Discworld character Samuel Vimes had something to say regarding this "scheme." Being poor, he had to buy cheap shoes that wore out quickly and ended up costing him more over the long run, but he simply could not afford the more economical option because of the higher up-front costs. So yes, people are still being 'taken in' by this scheme because, being poor, they don't have any other real options. Luckily, every poor person is to blame for their own poverty and so we can continue to look down are noses at those inferior folks whose lack of options are their own damn faults.
Slashdot Mirror
How dare you malign the Holy Free Market and its divine prophets, the Corporations. If we just get government off their backs, these angelic entities will provide us with lucrative jobs and cheap products instead of doing what they do now, which is rape us, rob us, and invest all the money they stole from us in jobs overseas. I know this is true because they paid people to tell me so.
But this isn't treating people differently because of race, it is (in the case of language) treating people the same, i.e. not insulting them, and, in the case of affirmative action, treating them differently based on the fact that they are an oppressed minority, it has nothing to do with color of their skin.
You do realize this is a story from days ago, right? I mean, I understand someone who was already in this thread responding later, but it just looks suspicious when an anonymous coward pops up in a days old story to mirror the racist comments of another poster.
Fuck Windows too. This is Slashdot. I have a four digit user ID. What operating system do you think I use, dipshit?
Yeah, malware that steals a user's credit card number and then gets found the next day when the patch comes out sounds pretty useless all right...
maccodemonkey writes:
So far, I'd disagree with that. The malware detection is built into the system, invisible, automatic, and self updating. So the user doesn't have to do X, Y, or even Z at all. We're still at "It just works."
Not saying that couldn't change in the future, but we're not there yet.
Okay, maccodemonkey, here's the thing: if the malware detection which is built into the system, invisible, automatic, and self updating is defeated within hours of it being release, we are no longer at "It just works." What part of "It doesn't work anymore" sounds like "It just works" to you?!?
And what constitutes being a dick depends on the consent of the parties involved. If you say it is an insult, it is, to you, and I, not being a dick, won't insult you any further unless I have good reason to want to make you mad. If someone said "broccoli" was an insult to them I would not say "brocoli" around them because I don't want to insult them.
What you want is the privilege to say whatever you like, without others being able to say how they feel about the things you say. You want white privilege. You may not realize it, but you are a racist of the worst kind, the kind that believes HE is the oppressed one, and therefore absolutely justified in his racism.
As for affirmative action, correcting a racism is not racism. Reducing white privilege is not racism. It is the opposite, it is a reduction of racism. It only looks like racism to you because your unfair advantages are being reduced. A poor white man has far more opportunities than most minorities, and that is born out by economic data.
No, there is ONE standard of behavior: don't be a dick. When I slap my wife's ass, pull her hair and call her a dirty slut, I'm not being a dick, because she likes that. If I did the same exact thing to a different woman, without her consent, that would be a dick move, wouldn't it?
Affirmative action is not racism, it is an attempt to reduce the inherent,unfair, and unearned advantages whites have in the workplace.
"... the more you risk a serious chafing and subsequent desensitization of the glans, leading to increased frictional requirements, leading to a tighter grip in a terrible downward spiral that ends up with something that resembles a hot dog stricken with leprosy. "
That's not right. It isn't that the word is "racist" when used by one group, and not racist when used by another. It is that it is insulting when used as an insult and not when it is not, and white people don't have the cultural background to use it as anything but an insult. I have friends that I sometimes insult in a joking fashion. They do it to me as well, and we find it amusing and endearing. But if we used the same language with a stranger, it would be insulting. Is that a double standard? Is that unequal? No. Grow up. White people aren't oppressed. White people do not suffer from ANY reverse racism. There is no such thing. White people are the dominant culture in America.
The first amendment does not apply to state law, as the first amendment guarantees no privileges or immunities, it only limits what one branch of the federal government does.
State law does not limit speech. Enforcement of contract is not a law limiting speech. The federal government is also prohibited from seizing property, yet when someone breaches a contract, they can seize property specified in a breach of contract clause.
You are simply wrong. No matter how eloquently you argue the point, you are wrong. I don't know how I can make that any more clear. You can not win this argument. The truth is what it is, and your argument only serves to demonstrate that your own understanding of our government is incorrect, nothing more. It does not matter what you or I say, the law is the law, the constitution is what it is, hundreds of years of case law can not simply be wished away.
I hate sophists such as you, who believe truth doesn't matter, only what they can make people believe. I have no respect for you, and if you continue to attempt to debate me, I will make my lack of respect for you more and more clear, so fuck off you sophist asshole.
No, the right to free speech was never meant to trump all laws, as our government placed limits on free speech from the very beginning, such as libel and slander laws, anti sedition laws, laws against inciting riots and violence, and so forth. You see, certain types of expression are simply not 'free speech' and are not protected.
I'm glad you walked back your original position and are arguing the new, less ridiculous position of "This is how it should be" instead of "this is how it is," but our founding fathers were smarter than you, and they knew what most people have been trying to tell you: there should be limits to what you can say, you should be able to voluntarily limit your own speech, and the government should enforce all legal contracts.
You do not understand the constitution. Debating with you has been an absolute pain in the ass, because you won't listen to reason and fact. You are now on my ignore list, buh bye.
Very insightful. As I posted in this thread already, I am rewarding your insight by modding up a different insightful comment you made in the 'parallel programming is hard' thread.
I believe the important point of free will is the idea that our choices can be less than free, that we CAN be constrained by experience and environment. We know when someone has taken some of our freedom of choice from us, and we do not, in general, like it very much. Free will can then be understood as an intuitive sense that tells us whether our choices are limited or expansive.
How does randomness equal choice? If it's random, you may as well flip a coin, it is not a choice. If it is random, it doesn't come from inside of you. You aren't making a choice, the choice is made randomly. I don't know how else to put that. Do we have different definitions of "random?" If a person were to make all their decisions through the flip of a coin, we wouldn't say they are choosing the outcomes, would we?
No, they are not wrong by a strict reading, and I am not missing the point. His point was, "the entire history of interpreting the constitution is wrong because I misread the constitution." Here's the entire text of the first amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Where in that do you see anything prohibiting the executive branch from doing it's job enforcing the law by punishing those who break contracts they voluntarily signed? Now, people here have been making a mistaken correlation between the first and thirteenth amendments, saying that you can not legally contract yourself into slavery. But the wording of the thirteenth is very different:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Slavery is illegal. Limiting your own speech is not. You can argue that the current state of affairs is not how you would like them, and that you would like to change the constitution to protect free speech, but that is not how the constitution is currently written. It does not protect free speech, it only limits one branch of government from passing laws that limit it.
I would argue that that is as it should be. I should be able to, for instance, demand your silence in return for some consideration from me, such as would be the case with NDAs and trade secrets. I can also prohibit you from copying my copyrighted works, infringing my trade marks, or using my patents, all of which are technically limits on free speech. I should also have the ability to recoup damages from you if you slander or libel me, and prevent further slander or libel through court actions against you, all of which require the government to back up my rights by limiting your speech. And of course, there is the well known prohibition against shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater.
Your right to free speech does not trump all other rights in existence.
Read the constitution, please, this has been explained in this thread before: the first amendment prohibits congress from passing laws that prohibit free speech. That is all. It does not prevent the other two branches from limiting speech, so the executive, in charge of criminal prosecution, can enforce a person's own voluntary limit to their own speech in cases such as this. End of story. Next time, either stay awake in civics class or listen to the people who did.
But we know quantum mechanics is TRULY random. There is no pattern to it. In order to fit the definition, will would have to have some sort of recognizable pattern to it. When we think of free will, we think of making choices, not randomly flipping a coin.
If the constraints are the learning, then will isn't free, it is CONSTRAINED. You do realize that that word is pretty much the opposite of "free," right? If part is constrained and part is not, what determines whether a choice comes from the constrained or the free part?
In fact, there is no way to determine whether free will exists or not, but we must live our lives as if it exists, whether it does or not. Personally, I love your definition. I do not see it lacking in anything, but then, I'm not concerned about the problem of evil.
The concept of free will exists because people build mental models of the world. In order for these models to make sense, the consciousness must model itself. Models are by nature reductionist, the quantify things in terms of parts, but can only consider a finite number of parts and things. In our models, things are simply what they are, things unto themselves and not caused by other things. A finite model can not contain an infinite regress, and so, at some level we must stop breaking things down into pieces and say, "this is what it is, and not made of smaller pieces or other influences outside the scope of my model."
We do this with our own consciousness. We model it as something separate from the universe. Seeing the consciousness as separate, we say choice comes only from within consciousness. Bad choices or choices that harm others then do not come from the universe of cause and effect, but from the individual. We need will to be free so that we can assign blame to those things we see as separate from the universe: we blame a person for harming us because they are separate from the universe, we do not blame the avalanche that harms us because it is not separate. We recognize that the avalanche happened for reasons that are entirely within the universe, but the person's choices came from outside the universe.
Free will as a concept exists to restore balance to this unbalanced situation where some things are entirely within the universe, and caused causes, while other things are partially outside the universe and are uncaused causes. If something happens for reasons external to itself, it is necessarily in balance with the rest of the universe but if the cause comes from outside the universe and there is no reciprocal causation going the other way, there is necessarily imbalance. Free will then becomes a repository for good and bad "karma," and an explanation for evil.
Randomness is not free will. A coin flip is not a choice.
Sorry, call me dense but I REALLY do not see how the halting problem proves free will necessary. If the pre existing state of the universe does not guide your actions, you can not learn. Either the pre existing state of the universe influences the will, in which case learning is possible but will is not free, or the will derives NO information from the universe, and can not learn about it. Either way, one can not assign blame to others based on their choices. One can certainly punish to deter, knowing that the will can learn, but one can not right an imbalance by punishing evil. In fact, if free will does not exist, the universe can not be out of balance, and evil can not exist.
You made a rational argument based on faulty premises. All the logic in the world won't lead you to the correct conclusion when you start from untruth. The constitution is not a debate club. You can't change the agreed upon meaning with a logical argument.
No, it is NOT an illusion caused by our tendency to think things have a single cause, it is a recognition that all things are both cause and effect, and everything is caused by many, many things. We simplify, in our mental models, the things we consider, but we should always know that our simplifications are a shortcut, and in reality, everything has many unobserved causes.
Quantum mechanics is no mechanism for will. It is random. If something is random, it is not free will. You can't say "Oh, he did a bad thing, he could have chosen another course," rather, you would have to admit, "A bad thing happened randomly through him." If something is a coin flip, it isn't a choice.
If something is not wholly constrained by prior states, then again, learning is impossible. The part of the will that is not constrained can not learn, prior states have no impact on it. The will can not choose what it learns, and therefore, is blameless for its choices, making the entire concept of free will useless, because the real purpose of the concept is to assign blame for bad choices.
Ah, but then free will is not doing its job mitigating the problem of evil. If a person's choices are influenced by events, then how can we say whether their choices are their own, and thus deserving of punishment or reward, or they are caused by the influences of the world? When a desperate man steals or kills, how can we know whether he was capable of making another choice? If we say he was always capable of making another choice, we have discounted all influences as being immaterial to the outcome, they aren't influences at all, and the will can not learn or grow from experience. The will is, again, an uncaused cause, not a part of the chain of causality. Dividing the will into a changeable and unchangeable part is only obfuscating the real issue.
People want to be an uncaused cause. That's what the concept of free will boils down to. The will can cause things, but itself is not caused by anything. If it were caused, it wouldn't be free. Of course, this would make any learning impossible. Either the will is a part of the chain of cause and effect, and therefore not free, or the soul (or whatever you believe to be the seat of consciousness) can never learn.
People are still taken in by this scheme?
I believe the Discworld character Samuel Vimes had something to say regarding this "scheme." Being poor, he had to buy cheap shoes that wore out quickly and ended up costing him more over the long run, but he simply could not afford the more economical option because of the higher up-front costs. So yes, people are still being 'taken in' by this scheme because, being poor, they don't have any other real options. Luckily, every poor person is to blame for their own poverty and so we can continue to look down are noses at those inferior folks whose lack of options are their own damn faults.
Cry moar. Me likey.