First point, if someone working for hire at Red Hat, Novell, or IBM knowingly (how's that defined?) ships buggy open source software, why shouldn't the company be held liable, if they would be held liable for shipping buggy closed source? Second point, who is going to sue some no-name contributor who doesn't have any money anyway, especially if you have to prove that that particular developer knew there were bugs? I love open source, but I feel that if we as a community want to be taken seriously, we should be held to the same standards as closed source software.
How would you test for inebriation? Would such a test also catch people who are sleep deprived, on OTC medication, or otherwise a danger to themselves and others on the road, or would it single out a certain class as 'dangerous' based on their drug usage, while giving equally dangerous but not 'inebriated' individuals a pass? Can you cite any studies that show that 'inebriation' is more dangerous than any other mental state? By how much? Would you still prohibit, say, epileptics from driving, like it is now? What about narcoleptics? What about those suffering from sleep apnea, who are twenty times more likely than normal to be in an accident?
It still sounds like you've drawn an arbitrary line based on behaviors and lifestyle rather than relative dangers as proven by science.
Yeast that live inside you don't ferment things into alcohol that goes into your bloodstream, at least not in anything more than microscopic amounts. There is no possible way you could blow anywhere near a.05 without being actually drunk. The limit where I live is.08, are you saying you are walking around more than half drunk all the time? I kinda doubt that, if you had that much yeast in your body, you'd be at death's door.
The testing for impairment seems arguably asinine without firm determined levels of impairment and a specific thing to test for.
Okay, you've got me there. I agree 100%. Maybe this particular test isn't the one, maybe we need one that (as another poster mentioned) tests attention (he called it a divided attention test, don't know the specifics but it sounds useful.) Maybe we need a suite of tests, and we definitely need some hard science and some lenient criteria based on that science, something along the lines of, if you're 50% more likely to get in an accident than the average guy, you shouldn't be driving. And if we mandated such tests, we should also have them readily available to the public so they can test themselves, after all, the point is to keep ourselves safe, not to make money for the police or punish certain lifestyles.
A cook you say? Okay, now that interests me more than our previous discussion, it is one of my true passions. Do you read 'Cook's Illustrated?' It is a magazine put out by the folks who do 'America's Test Kitchen' on PBS. Completely non-profit, with no ads, they can do reviews like consumer reports does, with no conflict of interest.
The best part is the recipes. They take a dish, cook up several different common recipes, and analyze how and why they fail. Then they set out to improve the dish, and along the way, show what works and what doesn't, and why. If they don't know why, they ask their staff food scientists for an explanation.
I've learned more from this magazine than from any other source and I highly recommend it to any cook, amateur or professional.
Oh, no problem. My MO is to come across as kind of a dick at first and then if people can hang, I can have a real honest discussion.
LOL at the "yes" spiral concept, all too familiar to any thoughtful married folks. My wife and I have been together since 2000 and we've seen both sides of this. It is so important not to take things your spouse says or does personally. If we take offense, it just leads into that downward spiral where offense builds on offense and we both end up hurt. I try to remember that nothing anyone does is actually about me, at most, it is because of their idea of me, the little me that lives in their head. That's not the real me, so why do I take it personally? I don't know, but it's damn hard not to.
Nothing wrong with that. Most people are genetically predisposed to support the status quo. After all, if everyone was continually trying new things, we wouldn't be doing the things that were proven to work. A small minority is predisposed to reject the status quo and try new things. Most of us fail to come up with anything better, but occasionally we get something right. If it weren't for the supporters of the status quo, we experimenters would not have the resources to experiment.
Okay, you got me. Everything is selfish in the end. Took me a while to accept that, but I've seen the science, it all fits. Altruism is selfish, cooperation is selfish, every good thing in the world happens only and entirely because it pleases the person doing it. Read Mark Twain's short essay, "What is Man" for a great take on this. Selfishness means doing what you want in the moment. Your future self may not like it, your past self may have made promises to the contrary, but they aren't there in the moment. Sure, you can train yourself to be a little more consistent, if you want to.
Altruism is an interesting case. The best theories I've seen describe three types of altruism: kinship altruism (selfishly protecting one's kin), reciprocal altruism (altruism done in the hopes of a future reward), and my favorite, altruism expressing the handicap principle. A peacock's tail is another example of this principle: it handicaps the peacock and acts like a brag to potential mates. "Look at me! I'm so fit I can drag this big, bright tail around and not get eaten!" A lot of altruism is like that, "Look at me! I'm so fit I can give away resources willy-nilly!"
But the important thing to remember is that genetics operates on a species wide level, not an individual level. It's really more about the survival of the fit enough species, not the fittest individual. Selfishness can thus operate on a species wide level as well, prompting individuals to act against their own interest for the good of the gene pool. Thus we have kinship altruism: if you, through your actions, help several close relatives breed, even if you don't breed, you have passed on your genes, statistically speaking.
LOL at your last sentence. From the first stanza of the Tao Te Ching: "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao." I'd have to agree.
As I mentioned, I am not advocating for the removal of sociopaths, and I actually gave reasons why this would be a bad idea.
I still don't understand why cleaning up our own crap is a bad idea. Do you shit in your kitchen? Do you let other people shit in your kitchen? If you found shit in your kitchen, would you clean it up or let it fester there, because, hey, it's there and that's the status quo? If you argue that it was not there before, and thus is not the status quo, how is an Alaska sized heap of human created trash the status quo? It wasn't there before, either, right? You seem to have a definition of 'status quo' that is awfully convenient for you, in that it gets you out of doing anything you don't want to do without having to come up with an actual reason not to do it.
I don't know, why should people be penalized for poor reaction times? Why should ANYONE, no matter what drugs they are on, how little sleep they've gotten, or any other reason be forbidden to drive, when that is a necesity of modern American life?
Okay, you think the ability to anticipate something is what it takes to be a good driver. So, you'd be okay with a test for that? The test I described also tests for ability to anticipate thing, after all, if you can anticipate where the dot will go, you can act quickly enough to keep it centered even with slow reaction times. You've got just as good of a chance of anticipating other drivers actions as you do of guessing which way the dot will move.
I'm presenting this as an either or option. Either test for impairment or don't test at all. I'm sure you can agree with that, even if we don't agree over what constitutes impairment. Personally, I think defensive driving skills will help you avoid 99.9% of potential accidents. So if one is drunk or stoned or sleepy, but still practicing defensive driving skills, then you'll be okay 99.9% of the time, even with slow reaction times.
If it's good enough for the slow and the sleepy, then it's good enough for the stoned or drunk, right? But if you argue that being stoned or drunk will cause you NOT to drive defensively, you'll also need to show why being sleepy, on OTC meds, or just plain slow won't also cause you not to drive defensively.
Just out of curiosity, do you know how many feet of stopping distance a 1/10 of a second difference in reaction time will make for a car traveling at 65 MPH? All the anticipation skills in the world won't help you when a car pulls out of a blind intersection, or a deer jumps into the road. If you've actually taken a defensive driving course as I have, you should know.
Point being, everyone thinks they are a good driver because they all use criteria for 'good driver' that they personally meet. Someone who drives fast thinks that makes them a good driver, same as someone who drives slowly and carefully. Someone with fast reaction times thinks that's what matters, while careful drivers think that does the trick.
Fact is, when your number is up, your number is up. Driving is dangerous and regulations as to who can drive and who can't make sense. Which is why we need better public transit: some people should simply not be on the road because they endanger themselves and others. Either you agree with that hypothesis or you don't. If you do, then the argument is over who is a sufficient danger to be forbidden to drive. Fortunately, science can help us there, and there are methods of finding concrete answers. Those methods should be applied equitably to all drivers, and no one group should be singled out unless the science can show they are a danger. The science shows that sleep deprivation is as likely to get you in an accident as being drunk. Over the counter medication can cause the same sorts of slow reaction times and inattentiveness that any other drugs do. If we are going to test drivers to determine their fitness to be on the road, let's not test for drugs, let's test for actual impairment.
Selfishness is not a virtue and Ayn Rand was neither a philosopher nor a writer, she was a sexually frustrated, power worshiping hack. Look at her biography, she idolized those who exercised power over others, and she loved being dominated by powerful men. She was a sick puppy, not that BDSM is wrong or bad, but she couldn't own up to her own fetishes, so they played out in very twisted ways.
Selfishness is a self creating idea, when people believe others are primarily selfish, they will act selfishly to prevent being taken advantage of. Then, others will see them acting selfishly, and do the same, so that original person will tend to see more selfishness around them, which reinforces their idea that all people are selfish, and they need to be selfish too. This results in a net loss for all of us, because cooperation is more efficient than selfishness, and the ideals of reciprocity and cooperation are more powerful motivations for most people.
Many people enjoy working for societal good. Their only gain is that good feeling. People who do not see the selfless, cooperative side of human nature are usually simply refusing to see it because that would invalidate their own selfishness. What you think of 'people' in general reflects more on your own self image than it does on the vast majority of humanity. People project the bad qualities they see in themselves, but can't admit to, onto others.
Not trying to be incredibly insulting or anything, just saying...
Who said anything about a powerful intelligence? I merely speculated that we have the potential. Obviously, we aren't realizing it now. I don't know where you are getting 'smug' from, honestly, nor am I seeing any actual argument for why 'my world' is impossible. Just a lot of hot air, is that what you meant to convey?
You've said good day before, yet you can't help replying. Almost a compulsion, isn't it?
Look, it is plain as day that I support real freedom, while you are a wannabe dictator. You are engaging in classical psychological projection, and it's just sad how little introspection you have. Since you can't seem to keep your word and bugger off, I'll close out this conversation as I began it, with a sincere sense of superiority. You've convinced no one of anything nor brought forth any sort of argument.
Ah, no, I do not assume my ideals are correct, or that there is one way to handle anything. I learn as I go and handle each case individually, drawing from experience with similar situations, of course.
Buddhism did not derive from Judaism, Buddha knew nothing of the Jews when he was born around 400BC.
I've heard the theories of Christ's possible inspiration from eastern sources, also from Egyptian sources, as an explanation for where he went and what he did from, what was it? About 14 years through the beginning of his ministry in his early thirties?
If you look at history, you can see there are only about 8 reasons why civilizations fail. Resource depletion and conquest being the major ones. Failure to cooperate springs from other root causes, and while it is a contributing factor, it is not necessary nor sufficient to ensure the downfall of a culture.
Many athiestic societies have existed for far longer than theistic ones. Buddhism is atheistic. Well, agnostic, in that Buddha did not consider the existence of a soul, an afterlife, or a creator God to be important or interesting questions
The idea that 'the strong survive' is a very simplistic view of evolution. What is strong today may be a hindrance tomorrow. Big muscles give way to lithe bodies, and then back to muscles and size again. Big brains atrophy when they do not help the species anymore, only to pop up again when conditions change. Speed gives way to stealth, or poison, or size, or some other random thing that happens to be advantageous at the time.
Adaptability, not strength or fitness matters most in the long run. But by adapting, species change their environment, which changes the fitness criteria for themselves and others. We fall apart as civilizations because we hold on to the supposed 'strengths' that helped us in the past and do not adapt to changing circumstances.
I believe that humans have only two basic societies. The egalitarian, non hierarchical, cooperative, peaceful society of the feast, and the hierarchical, violent, competetive society of famine. It is adaptive to have both innate tendencies, which are brought out as conditions change. Unfortunately, when we developed agriculture, we set ourselves up for failure on a colossal level never seen before. We had given up moving with the climate and seasons, gained a surplus and intricate interdependent society, but then climate change in the Sahara (which was fertile up to around 4-5 thousand years BC) threw societies into chaos, and they became violent. A generation of post traumatic stress parents raised a generation of brain damaged children (no myelin sheaths due to malnutrition) and the culture of famine became locked in, culturally speaking. The cultures of feast were either destroyed or assimilated, for if they tried to defend themselves, they became like their attackers.
Anyway, that's my theory as to the origins and perpetuation of ubiquitous human violence.
You know there's a line of human cancer cells that can live outside the human body? They've been around for nearly fifty years, taken from one woman, and they are so successful that labs need to take precautions that their experiments are not infested with these cells, skewing the results. (searches diligently on wiki for the half-remembered article: aha! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa)
Freaky stuff. There are single celled humans out there, living in the wild.
You may be right about that, especially in regards to social animals. I think they may have some sort of rudimentary conceptualization. It seems like it would be genetically advantageous to be able to conceptualize your place in your pack, herd, or what have you. But the horse may just have been picking up on subtle cues from her owners, as the 'mathematical' horses have been proven to do.
You can't mate with a starfish, only with other humans. If all other humans died out, your genes would perish. Look at eusocial creatures like ants and bees. Yes, I know we aren't ants or bees, but I'm illustrating a genetic point: many ants and bees never breed. Their genes only give them the power to support the breeders, and those breeders also create the next generation of non-breeders. If genes were totally selfish to the individual, and not to the species, how could species that include non-breeders ever evolve?
If someone has reaction times as poor as a drunk, they shouldn't be driving in the first place. If they are taking OTC medications whose warning labels say, 'do not drive while using this,' THEY SHOULD NOT BE DRIVING.
I am only suggesting this as an alternative to the far more draconian anti drug laws, and illustrating the inherent hypocrisy in said laws. They purport to protect people, but similar devices that would actually protect people are not used, because the real intent is to criminalize lifestyles and exert control. Get it?
Selfishness presupposes the existence of a self, and the primacy of said self in controlling the organism. This is a flawed assumption. Your genes do not care what you like or dislike. They care about the survival of the human genome. You value love and cooperation not because you have arrived at the conclusion they are valuable through any logical means, but because it enhances the chance of the human race surviving.
The idea of death springs entirely from the misapprehension of a separate existence. What is not separate from the whole can not die. Death is an idea, not a reality, it is a concept that springs into existence because of the concept of life. All ideas are formed in duality, which is not reality but imagination. Everyone has equal access to reality, but most choose to live in their heads, chasing and fleeing from phantoms.
You missed my caveat and responded to my last statement as if I had not negated it, congratulations, you fail reading comprehension 101, but never fear, there is always the remedial class.
You can't be chaotic lawful. That's just neutral! Chaotic good maybe? I'm going to assume that's what you meant.
Yes, of course you should be punished for murdering a person who raped your child. That is not how we do things in a civilized society. However, if you murdered said rapist while he was caught in the act, you would either get off or suffer a very light sentence. If you thought you knew who it was, planned the murder, and carried it out in cold blood after the fact, you would likely face far harsher punishment.
I'm probably older and more experienced in the ways of the world than you are (You like that? You see what I did there?) but give it a few years and you will understand what I'm talking about.
Face it, we live in an interdependent society. We have to get along with our neighbors or they will make our life hell, that's the way of the world. We have laws in order to codify this behavior and control its excesses.
Please, read about the ultimatum game and other recent experiments in game theory, played for many months worth of salary in developing countries. People DO like to cooperate, naturally and without being told to. They value cooperation and reciprocity over self interest, because that is what is best for the survival of our human gene-set. Most people will incur great personal costs in order to punish unfairness and lack of reciprocity. If society has degraded to the point that such punishment is impossible (or the games forbid it), people will act selfishly, but for the vast majority of the non-sociopathic population, this is an uncomfortable fall back position.
Maybe you should rethink your PhD thesis, as your initial assumptions are completely wrong, according to all recent science. Christianity makes so many assumptions that run counter to reality and human nature, it is a wonder that anyone finds any value in it whatsoever, but people find value in the strangest things. As a Buddhist (a philosophy far older than your religion) I do not need to take anything on faith. Everything my philosophy tells me can be verified in my life. Heck, Buddha even said, "Trust nothing anyone tells you, even me, unless it agrees with your ideas and common sense." A much better way to live, IMHO, than in constant fear of punishment from a capricious and unstable daddy figure.
Sure, different groups have different ideas about laws and customs, but we can keep looking at larger and larger groups, finding the things that nearly everyone can agree on. I posit that there is no ultimate right and wrong, but there is what is right or wrong for all living things, all life on planet Earth, all humans, all American, and so forth. We can discover what those right and wrong actions are.
It sounds as if you would rather everyone have the ability to screw over their neighbor, and only afterwords could they be caught, tried, and convicted. So, people should have the 'freedom' to do whatever they like, and the rest of us should not be allowed to preemptively stop them.
By this logic, anyone should be allowed to own any kind of weapon up to and including nuclear bombs. They should be able to bring said weapons anywhere, threaten anyone with them, and only be punished if someone has the ability to bring them to justice, try them, and convict them.
Anyone should be allowed to drive drunk, and only if they hit someone should they be punished. Anyone should be allowed to come into the country, no borders would be allowed by your philosophy. Everyone should be allowed to restrict the choices and freedoms of others, and only if those others have the resources to bring their oppressors to court could those oppressors be stopped. By your logic, private property is forbidden. You can not exclude me from your property by law or by force. That would be preemptive, wouldn't it?
You don't even see the logical contradictions in your arguments.
You should read up on recent scientific experiments in game theory. People do NOT act in their own self interest over all others. In fact, most people value fairness and reciprocity more than their own self interest. They will take significant personal damage in order to punish unfairness. They will NOT make the logical, self interested choice unless they have no options for maintaining fairness. This is what I mean when I say people aren't like you. You advocate pure selfishness, and most people do not.
Fortunately for me, many people in America do think like I do. The myth of the 'rugged individual' is dying. We are not separate from one another, we are each other's keepers, we are not islands unto ourselves and we never have been, we are social creatures, now more than ever. Very few humans are entirely self sufficient these days, we are part of an interconnected, interdependent whole. Those that are self sufficient usually live at a very low standard of living, so I wouldn't have it any other way.
I love the disingenuous way you feel free to insult others, then take offense when they reciprocate. Typical of the "I'm a superior creature so the rules don't apply to me!" type of thinking I see from sad little libertarians everywhere. What we're doing is not 'debate' by any stretch of the imagination, starting from your sarcastic, insulting and logic free first post.
But it sounds like you might like places like, oh, say, Somalia, where there is no big bad government to tell you what to do. Why don't you and your fellow libertarians pack up and move there?
Anyone should be able to punish non-cooperation by reciprocating that non-cooperation and making that non-cooperation known to others. If you employ child laborers, I will not do business with you, and I will tell everyone I know about your actions.
As well, in a democracy or republic, the majority or their representatives get to say what is punishable non-cooperation, like murder, pollution, and fraud. Seriously, have you never taken a civics class or explored the way your society is supposed to work?
Your knee jerk reaction makes you seem like a hardened non-cooperator who wishes that other people did not have the power to hold him to account for his actions: in other words, an overlord wannabe. Thankfully, we do have the ability to hold you to account and protect ourselves from your selfishness.
Not all car manufacturers have this restriction. In fact, only a minority do. Usually it is the brands like Porsche that are know for high performance. They don't want to ruin their image by showing the real consequences of driving like the stuntmen do in their commercials. Therefore, it would be less realistic to have the majority of branded cars show damage while a few didn't, and if the developers just left out the manufacturers who demanded 'no damage,' then they would be leaving out some of the best cars.
Law? How is law defined? By the people or their representatives, in a democracy. What is this cell phone argument about? Laws. Currently, it is against the law to block cell phone reception. Schools wish to enforce their legitimate cell phone bans by blocking reception. This is legitimate enforcement of a legitimate rule. So, they are attempting to have the laws changed so that they can enforce their rules without requiring teachers to act constantly as police, looking for surreptitious cell phone use.
I don't know about you, but I would rather have teachers focus on teaching than on policing your selfish brats. Your kids have no right to disrupt my kids learning.
Your argument against all this boils down to, "you can't tell me and my kids what to do!" Which is both childish and untrue. We can tell you what to do, period, end of story. And we can enforce our rules through any reasonable and necessary actions, including blocking cell phone reception.
I'm glad you find my 'rants' (is that what you call anything that disagrees with your selfish desires? Rants?) amusing. I find you to be a sad reminder of what base selfishness can create. Fortunately, most people aren't like you.
Slashdot Mirror
First point, if someone working for hire at Red Hat, Novell, or IBM knowingly (how's that defined?) ships buggy open source software, why shouldn't the company be held liable, if they would be held liable for shipping buggy closed source? Second point, who is going to sue some no-name contributor who doesn't have any money anyway, especially if you have to prove that that particular developer knew there were bugs? I love open source, but I feel that if we as a community want to be taken seriously, we should be held to the same standards as closed source software.
How would you test for inebriation? Would such a test also catch people who are sleep deprived, on OTC medication, or otherwise a danger to themselves and others on the road, or would it single out a certain class as 'dangerous' based on their drug usage, while giving equally dangerous but not 'inebriated' individuals a pass? Can you cite any studies that show that 'inebriation' is more dangerous than any other mental state? By how much? Would you still prohibit, say, epileptics from driving, like it is now? What about narcoleptics? What about those suffering from sleep apnea, who are twenty times more likely than normal to be in an accident?
It still sounds like you've drawn an arbitrary line based on behaviors and lifestyle rather than relative dangers as proven by science.
Yeast that live inside you don't ferment things into alcohol that goes into your bloodstream, at least not in anything more than microscopic amounts. There is no possible way you could blow anywhere near a .05 without being actually drunk. The limit where I live is .08, are you saying you are walking around more than half drunk all the time? I kinda doubt that, if you had that much yeast in your body, you'd be at death's door.
We may not agree on some things, but I can tell your views are only superficially similar to Ayn Rand's. Rand was not a big fan of nihilism.
The testing for impairment seems arguably asinine without firm determined levels of impairment and a specific thing to test for.
Okay, you've got me there. I agree 100%. Maybe this particular test isn't the one, maybe we need one that (as another poster mentioned) tests attention (he called it a divided attention test, don't know the specifics but it sounds useful.) Maybe we need a suite of tests, and we definitely need some hard science and some lenient criteria based on that science, something along the lines of, if you're 50% more likely to get in an accident than the average guy, you shouldn't be driving. And if we mandated such tests, we should also have them readily available to the public so they can test themselves, after all, the point is to keep ourselves safe, not to make money for the police or punish certain lifestyles.
Okay, that made me laugh. I'm going to go find some posts of yours in another thread and mod them up. Cheers!
A cook you say? Okay, now that interests me more than our previous discussion, it is one of my true passions. Do you read 'Cook's Illustrated?' It is a magazine put out by the folks who do 'America's Test Kitchen' on PBS. Completely non-profit, with no ads, they can do reviews like consumer reports does, with no conflict of interest.
The best part is the recipes. They take a dish, cook up several different common recipes, and analyze how and why they fail. Then they set out to improve the dish, and along the way, show what works and what doesn't, and why. If they don't know why, they ask their staff food scientists for an explanation.
I've learned more from this magazine than from any other source and I highly recommend it to any cook, amateur or professional.
Oh, no problem. My MO is to come across as kind of a dick at first and then if people can hang, I can have a real honest discussion.
LOL at the "yes" spiral concept, all too familiar to any thoughtful married folks. My wife and I have been together since 2000 and we've seen both sides of this. It is so important not to take things your spouse says or does personally. If we take offense, it just leads into that downward spiral where offense builds on offense and we both end up hurt. I try to remember that nothing anyone does is actually about me, at most, it is because of their idea of me, the little me that lives in their head. That's not the real me, so why do I take it personally? I don't know, but it's damn hard not to.
Nothing wrong with that. Most people are genetically predisposed to support the status quo. After all, if everyone was continually trying new things, we wouldn't be doing the things that were proven to work. A small minority is predisposed to reject the status quo and try new things. Most of us fail to come up with anything better, but occasionally we get something right. If it weren't for the supporters of the status quo, we experimenters would not have the resources to experiment.
Okay, you got me. Everything is selfish in the end. Took me a while to accept that, but I've seen the science, it all fits. Altruism is selfish, cooperation is selfish, every good thing in the world happens only and entirely because it pleases the person doing it. Read Mark Twain's short essay, "What is Man" for a great take on this. Selfishness means doing what you want in the moment. Your future self may not like it, your past self may have made promises to the contrary, but they aren't there in the moment. Sure, you can train yourself to be a little more consistent, if you want to.
Altruism is an interesting case. The best theories I've seen describe three types of altruism: kinship altruism (selfishly protecting one's kin), reciprocal altruism (altruism done in the hopes of a future reward), and my favorite, altruism expressing the handicap principle. A peacock's tail is another example of this principle: it handicaps the peacock and acts like a brag to potential mates. "Look at me! I'm so fit I can drag this big, bright tail around and not get eaten!" A lot of altruism is like that, "Look at me! I'm so fit I can give away resources willy-nilly!"
But the important thing to remember is that genetics operates on a species wide level, not an individual level. It's really more about the survival of the fit enough species, not the fittest individual. Selfishness can thus operate on a species wide level as well, prompting individuals to act against their own interest for the good of the gene pool. Thus we have kinship altruism: if you, through your actions, help several close relatives breed, even if you don't breed, you have passed on your genes, statistically speaking.
LOL at your last sentence. From the first stanza of the Tao Te Ching: "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao." I'd have to agree.
As I mentioned, I am not advocating for the removal of sociopaths, and I actually gave reasons why this would be a bad idea.
I still don't understand why cleaning up our own crap is a bad idea. Do you shit in your kitchen? Do you let other people shit in your kitchen? If you found shit in your kitchen, would you clean it up or let it fester there, because, hey, it's there and that's the status quo? If you argue that it was not there before, and thus is not the status quo, how is an Alaska sized heap of human created trash the status quo? It wasn't there before, either, right? You seem to have a definition of 'status quo' that is awfully convenient for you, in that it gets you out of doing anything you don't want to do without having to come up with an actual reason not to do it.
I don't know, why should people be penalized for poor reaction times? Why should ANYONE, no matter what drugs they are on, how little sleep they've gotten, or any other reason be forbidden to drive, when that is a necesity of modern American life?
Okay, you think the ability to anticipate something is what it takes to be a good driver. So, you'd be okay with a test for that? The test I described also tests for ability to anticipate thing, after all, if you can anticipate where the dot will go, you can act quickly enough to keep it centered even with slow reaction times. You've got just as good of a chance of anticipating other drivers actions as you do of guessing which way the dot will move.
I'm presenting this as an either or option. Either test for impairment or don't test at all. I'm sure you can agree with that, even if we don't agree over what constitutes impairment. Personally, I think defensive driving skills will help you avoid 99.9% of potential accidents. So if one is drunk or stoned or sleepy, but still practicing defensive driving skills, then you'll be okay 99.9% of the time, even with slow reaction times.
If it's good enough for the slow and the sleepy, then it's good enough for the stoned or drunk, right? But if you argue that being stoned or drunk will cause you NOT to drive defensively, you'll also need to show why being sleepy, on OTC meds, or just plain slow won't also cause you not to drive defensively.
Just out of curiosity, do you know how many feet of stopping distance a 1/10 of a second difference in reaction time will make for a car traveling at 65 MPH? All the anticipation skills in the world won't help you when a car pulls out of a blind intersection, or a deer jumps into the road. If you've actually taken a defensive driving course as I have, you should know.
Point being, everyone thinks they are a good driver because they all use criteria for 'good driver' that they personally meet. Someone who drives fast thinks that makes them a good driver, same as someone who drives slowly and carefully. Someone with fast reaction times thinks that's what matters, while careful drivers think that does the trick.
Fact is, when your number is up, your number is up. Driving is dangerous and regulations as to who can drive and who can't make sense. Which is why we need better public transit: some people should simply not be on the road because they endanger themselves and others. Either you agree with that hypothesis or you don't. If you do, then the argument is over who is a sufficient danger to be forbidden to drive. Fortunately, science can help us there, and there are methods of finding concrete answers. Those methods should be applied equitably to all drivers, and no one group should be singled out unless the science can show they are a danger. The science shows that sleep deprivation is as likely to get you in an accident as being drunk. Over the counter medication can cause the same sorts of slow reaction times and inattentiveness that any other drugs do. If we are going to test drivers to determine their fitness to be on the road, let's not test for drugs, let's test for actual impairment.
Selfishness is not a virtue and Ayn Rand was neither a philosopher nor a writer, she was a sexually frustrated, power worshiping hack. Look at her biography, she idolized those who exercised power over others, and she loved being dominated by powerful men. She was a sick puppy, not that BDSM is wrong or bad, but she couldn't own up to her own fetishes, so they played out in very twisted ways.
Selfishness is a self creating idea, when people believe others are primarily selfish, they will act selfishly to prevent being taken advantage of. Then, others will see them acting selfishly, and do the same, so that original person will tend to see more selfishness around them, which reinforces their idea that all people are selfish, and they need to be selfish too. This results in a net loss for all of us, because cooperation is more efficient than selfishness, and the ideals of reciprocity and cooperation are more powerful motivations for most people.
Many people enjoy working for societal good. Their only gain is that good feeling. People who do not see the selfless, cooperative side of human nature are usually simply refusing to see it because that would invalidate their own selfishness. What you think of 'people' in general reflects more on your own self image than it does on the vast majority of humanity. People project the bad qualities they see in themselves, but can't admit to, onto others.
Not trying to be incredibly insulting or anything, just saying...
Who said anything about a powerful intelligence? I merely speculated that we have the potential. Obviously, we aren't realizing it now. I don't know where you are getting 'smug' from, honestly, nor am I seeing any actual argument for why 'my world' is impossible. Just a lot of hot air, is that what you meant to convey?
You've said good day before, yet you can't help replying. Almost a compulsion, isn't it?
Look, it is plain as day that I support real freedom, while you are a wannabe dictator. You are engaging in classical psychological projection, and it's just sad how little introspection you have. Since you can't seem to keep your word and bugger off, I'll close out this conversation as I began it, with a sincere sense of superiority. You've convinced no one of anything nor brought forth any sort of argument.
Ah, no, I do not assume my ideals are correct, or that there is one way to handle anything. I learn as I go and handle each case individually, drawing from experience with similar situations, of course.
Buddhism did not derive from Judaism, Buddha knew nothing of the Jews when he was born around 400BC.
I've heard the theories of Christ's possible inspiration from eastern sources, also from Egyptian sources, as an explanation for where he went and what he did from, what was it? About 14 years through the beginning of his ministry in his early thirties?
If you look at history, you can see there are only about 8 reasons why civilizations fail. Resource depletion and conquest being the major ones. Failure to cooperate springs from other root causes, and while it is a contributing factor, it is not necessary nor sufficient to ensure the downfall of a culture.
Many athiestic societies have existed for far longer than theistic ones. Buddhism is atheistic. Well, agnostic, in that Buddha did not consider the existence of a soul, an afterlife, or a creator God to be important or interesting questions
The idea that 'the strong survive' is a very simplistic view of evolution. What is strong today may be a hindrance tomorrow. Big muscles give way to lithe bodies, and then back to muscles and size again. Big brains atrophy when they do not help the species anymore, only to pop up again when conditions change. Speed gives way to stealth, or poison, or size, or some other random thing that happens to be advantageous at the time.
Adaptability, not strength or fitness matters most in the long run. But by adapting, species change their environment, which changes the fitness criteria for themselves and others. We fall apart as civilizations because we hold on to the supposed 'strengths' that helped us in the past and do not adapt to changing circumstances.
I believe that humans have only two basic societies. The egalitarian, non hierarchical, cooperative, peaceful society of the feast, and the hierarchical, violent, competetive society of famine. It is adaptive to have both innate tendencies, which are brought out as conditions change. Unfortunately, when we developed agriculture, we set ourselves up for failure on a colossal level never seen before. We had given up moving with the climate and seasons, gained a surplus and intricate interdependent society, but then climate change in the Sahara (which was fertile up to around 4-5 thousand years BC) threw societies into chaos, and they became violent. A generation of post traumatic stress parents raised a generation of brain damaged children (no myelin sheaths due to malnutrition) and the culture of famine became locked in, culturally speaking. The cultures of feast were either destroyed or assimilated, for if they tried to defend themselves, they became like their attackers.
Anyway, that's my theory as to the origins and perpetuation of ubiquitous human violence.
You know there's a line of human cancer cells that can live outside the human body? They've been around for nearly fifty years, taken from one woman, and they are so successful that labs need to take precautions that their experiments are not infested with these cells, skewing the results. (searches diligently on wiki for the half-remembered article: aha! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa)
Freaky stuff. There are single celled humans out there, living in the wild.
You may be right about that, especially in regards to social animals. I think they may have some sort of rudimentary conceptualization. It seems like it would be genetically advantageous to be able to conceptualize your place in your pack, herd, or what have you. But the horse may just have been picking up on subtle cues from her owners, as the 'mathematical' horses have been proven to do.
You can't mate with a starfish, only with other humans. If all other humans died out, your genes would perish. Look at eusocial creatures like ants and bees. Yes, I know we aren't ants or bees, but I'm illustrating a genetic point: many ants and bees never breed. Their genes only give them the power to support the breeders, and those breeders also create the next generation of non-breeders. If genes were totally selfish to the individual, and not to the species, how could species that include non-breeders ever evolve?
If someone has reaction times as poor as a drunk, they shouldn't be driving in the first place. If they are taking OTC medications whose warning labels say, 'do not drive while using this,' THEY SHOULD NOT BE DRIVING.
I am only suggesting this as an alternative to the far more draconian anti drug laws, and illustrating the inherent hypocrisy in said laws. They purport to protect people, but similar devices that would actually protect people are not used, because the real intent is to criminalize lifestyles and exert control. Get it?
Selfishness presupposes the existence of a self, and the primacy of said self in controlling the organism. This is a flawed assumption. Your genes do not care what you like or dislike. They care about the survival of the human genome. You value love and cooperation not because you have arrived at the conclusion they are valuable through any logical means, but because it enhances the chance of the human race surviving.
The idea of death springs entirely from the misapprehension of a separate existence. What is not separate from the whole can not die. Death is an idea, not a reality, it is a concept that springs into existence because of the concept of life. All ideas are formed in duality, which is not reality but imagination. Everyone has equal access to reality, but most choose to live in their heads, chasing and fleeing from phantoms.
You missed my caveat and responded to my last statement as if I had not negated it, congratulations, you fail reading comprehension 101, but never fear, there is always the remedial class.
You can't be chaotic lawful. That's just neutral! Chaotic good maybe? I'm going to assume that's what you meant.
Yes, of course you should be punished for murdering a person who raped your child. That is not how we do things in a civilized society. However, if you murdered said rapist while he was caught in the act, you would either get off or suffer a very light sentence. If you thought you knew who it was, planned the murder, and carried it out in cold blood after the fact, you would likely face far harsher punishment.
I'm probably older and more experienced in the ways of the world than you are (You like that? You see what I did there?) but give it a few years and you will understand what I'm talking about.
Face it, we live in an interdependent society. We have to get along with our neighbors or they will make our life hell, that's the way of the world. We have laws in order to codify this behavior and control its excesses.
Please, read about the ultimatum game and other recent experiments in game theory, played for many months worth of salary in developing countries. People DO like to cooperate, naturally and without being told to. They value cooperation and reciprocity over self interest, because that is what is best for the survival of our human gene-set. Most people will incur great personal costs in order to punish unfairness and lack of reciprocity. If society has degraded to the point that such punishment is impossible (or the games forbid it), people will act selfishly, but for the vast majority of the non-sociopathic population, this is an uncomfortable fall back position.
Maybe you should rethink your PhD thesis, as your initial assumptions are completely wrong, according to all recent science. Christianity makes so many assumptions that run counter to reality and human nature, it is a wonder that anyone finds any value in it whatsoever, but people find value in the strangest things. As a Buddhist (a philosophy far older than your religion) I do not need to take anything on faith. Everything my philosophy tells me can be verified in my life. Heck, Buddha even said, "Trust nothing anyone tells you, even me, unless it agrees with your ideas and common sense." A much better way to live, IMHO, than in constant fear of punishment from a capricious and unstable daddy figure.
Sure, different groups have different ideas about laws and customs, but we can keep looking at larger and larger groups, finding the things that nearly everyone can agree on. I posit that there is no ultimate right and wrong, but there is what is right or wrong for all living things, all life on planet Earth, all humans, all American, and so forth. We can discover what those right and wrong actions are.
It sounds as if you would rather everyone have the ability to screw over their neighbor, and only afterwords could they be caught, tried, and convicted. So, people should have the 'freedom' to do whatever they like, and the rest of us should not be allowed to preemptively stop them.
By this logic, anyone should be allowed to own any kind of weapon up to and including nuclear bombs. They should be able to bring said weapons anywhere, threaten anyone with them, and only be punished if someone has the ability to bring them to justice, try them, and convict them.
Anyone should be allowed to drive drunk, and only if they hit someone should they be punished. Anyone should be allowed to come into the country, no borders would be allowed by your philosophy. Everyone should be allowed to restrict the choices and freedoms of others, and only if those others have the resources to bring their oppressors to court could those oppressors be stopped. By your logic, private property is forbidden. You can not exclude me from your property by law or by force. That would be preemptive, wouldn't it?
You don't even see the logical contradictions in your arguments.
You should read up on recent scientific experiments in game theory. People do NOT act in their own self interest over all others. In fact, most people value fairness and reciprocity more than their own self interest. They will take significant personal damage in order to punish unfairness. They will NOT make the logical, self interested choice unless they have no options for maintaining fairness. This is what I mean when I say people aren't like you. You advocate pure selfishness, and most people do not.
Fortunately for me, many people in America do think like I do. The myth of the 'rugged individual' is dying. We are not separate from one another, we are each other's keepers, we are not islands unto ourselves and we never have been, we are social creatures, now more than ever. Very few humans are entirely self sufficient these days, we are part of an interconnected, interdependent whole. Those that are self sufficient usually live at a very low standard of living, so I wouldn't have it any other way.
I love the disingenuous way you feel free to insult others, then take offense when they reciprocate. Typical of the "I'm a superior creature so the rules don't apply to me!" type of thinking I see from sad little libertarians everywhere. What we're doing is not 'debate' by any stretch of the imagination, starting from your sarcastic, insulting and logic free first post.
But it sounds like you might like places like, oh, say, Somalia, where there is no big bad government to tell you what to do. Why don't you and your fellow libertarians pack up and move there?
Anyone should be able to punish non-cooperation by reciprocating that non-cooperation and making that non-cooperation known to others. If you employ child laborers, I will not do business with you, and I will tell everyone I know about your actions.
As well, in a democracy or republic, the majority or their representatives get to say what is punishable non-cooperation, like murder, pollution, and fraud. Seriously, have you never taken a civics class or explored the way your society is supposed to work?
Your knee jerk reaction makes you seem like a hardened non-cooperator who wishes that other people did not have the power to hold him to account for his actions: in other words, an overlord wannabe. Thankfully, we do have the ability to hold you to account and protect ourselves from your selfishness.
Not all car manufacturers have this restriction. In fact, only a minority do. Usually it is the brands like Porsche that are know for high performance. They don't want to ruin their image by showing the real consequences of driving like the stuntmen do in their commercials. Therefore, it would be less realistic to have the majority of branded cars show damage while a few didn't, and if the developers just left out the manufacturers who demanded 'no damage,' then they would be leaving out some of the best cars.
Law? How is law defined? By the people or their representatives, in a democracy. What is this cell phone argument about? Laws. Currently, it is against the law to block cell phone reception. Schools wish to enforce their legitimate cell phone bans by blocking reception. This is legitimate enforcement of a legitimate rule. So, they are attempting to have the laws changed so that they can enforce their rules without requiring teachers to act constantly as police, looking for surreptitious cell phone use.
I don't know about you, but I would rather have teachers focus on teaching than on policing your selfish brats. Your kids have no right to disrupt my kids learning.
Your argument against all this boils down to, "you can't tell me and my kids what to do!" Which is both childish and untrue. We can tell you what to do, period, end of story. And we can enforce our rules through any reasonable and necessary actions, including blocking cell phone reception.
I'm glad you find my 'rants' (is that what you call anything that disagrees with your selfish desires? Rants?) amusing. I find you to be a sad reminder of what base selfishness can create. Fortunately, most people aren't like you.