It was 1976 or '77, and I was six years old. My friend's dad was a comp-sci professor at UNLV. He had a teletype and a dial in account to the university PDP 10. He would dial in and set up a restricted shell for us, basically a menu of games. Colossal Cave Adventures was the best, but we also played Lunar Lander, Hunt the Wumpus, and other simple games, wasting reams of paper. That was what got me into computers. Been hooked ever since.
This isn't about what we are paying and what we are getting. We already have many varied types of plans available. This is about what, say, Slashdot is paying and getting. Slashdot pays quite a bit more for bandwidth than you do, won't you agree? What will happen is that every single one of the large backbone providers will hit up Slashdot for additional cash, to ensure that Slashdot's packets get to you. Some of them won't even offer Slashdot the option, because they would rather that you go to their parent companies news sites. They will throttle all sites they don't own, and there is nothing you can do about it. There would be no amount of money you could pay to ensure that you even get to see Slashdot.
Perhaps you would be lucky, perhaps the path between you and Slashdot would not traverse any complete bastard's backbones. Perhaps not. But Net Neutrality isn't about people like you and the service you are getting. As I said, you can already buy a variety of plans, some more expensive, some cheaper. I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is censorship, extortion, and fraud. As an example, Hilary Clinton could pay the major backbone providers to ensure that packets that mentioned, say, Ron Paul, got dropped. You would then be browsing an Internet that suddenly and mysteriously made no mention of Ron Paul anywhere, ever, and you would have no idea as to why. And all ISPs have to purchase their Internet access from one of the backbone providers, so there would be NO ISP you could purchase service from that would let you view anything about Ron Paul. Would you like that?
Do you understand what this issue is really about yet? It's not about tiered service at all. People aren't getting a free lunch. It's not like the Internet is a commons that anyone can take from without paying. There is no free lunch. Companies offer unlimited plans because they find that business model profitable, that is the free market at work, not a free lunch/ We already have tiered service and a robust and healthy market in Internet Service. No one is talking about getting rid of that. We are talking about limiting the ability of the backbone providers to engage in censorship, extortion, and fraud.
Your ideology is blinding you to the danger, and I am done trying to explain it to you. As much as I would like for everyone to see how we're all going to get screwed if we don't have net neutrality, I can't work miracles.
4) design a mall which can compel customers to shop to the point of bankruptcy, to walk obliviously for miles and miles and miles, endlessly to the point of physical exhaustion and even death; Now that's what I call science! Now, if only we could design a website that compelled people to browse, even to the point of losing their jobs, reading obliviously to their need to shower, posting endlessly to the point of mental confusion and even complete retardation... Oh, wait...
As with most free market proselytizers, you simply restate your position when presented with counter arguments, and make no attempt to address the issues I've raised. I posit that this is because you do not understand the arguments you are presenting, and are simply parroting back things you've heard others say. You don't understand the arguments you present, you simply take them on faith because you want to believe them, therefore you are incapable of refuting any counter arguments.
Pray tell where you have seen local monopolies. I can buy Internet service from my local cable company or several different phone companies, or dedicated ISPs like Speakeasy. I can do that in any of the places I've lived, worked, or visited. That's not the issue. The issue is natural monopolies, not government created ones. Once one backbone provider has laid cable in a particular area, what incentives do other backbone providers have to lay more cable in that area? It's the same reason you don't have multiple electric companies, or seven privately owned roads all connecting to your driveway. Because of that natural monopoly, backbone providers have no incentive not to extort money from content providers. They can say, "Yahoo, pay us money or your packets will be slower than Google's. Heck, they might not even reach your customer at all." And you could do nothing about it, because ISPs have to buy service from backbone providers, too. And those packets may traverse the networks of several backbone providers along the way, and all of them will want their protection money.
The answer is either regulation as we have for every other natural monopoly out there, or expensive class action lawsuits later on.
So why isn't the free market providing something like that? And what about the high level backbones, which is what net neutrality is about? Hosting providers don't usually control Internet backbones. Neither do ISPs.
Bandwidth is not externalized. You and I and hosting providers all pay for bandwidth. But the high level backbones want to extort more money from the content providers, basically saying, "Pay us more, or your competitors' packets will get there faster." The thing is, even if you want a neutral net, you can't buy it. Your ISP can not guarantee that a higher level backbone provider is not messing with the packets of content providers that you want to visit.
Please, don't try to simplify everything down to free market solutions. The issue here is fraud and extortion, which are legal issues and require legal solutions.
Absolute number one thing, first day on the job: get a blowjob from a cuter intern than Monica, then post pics of it on MySpace. You know, just to get that out of the way.
Probably not, but there are reasons why we have these sayings about black kettles and glass houses... People in glass houses shouldn't throw black kettles?
Seriously? Al Gore, a center right democrat, is out to destroy capitalism? Now I know you're high. That man's whole life has been spent supporting and profiting off of capitalism.
There's a big difference between launching a biological attack, which kills biological things, which the person doing the launching is; and spreading some debris around in orbit, which kills satellites. If a country uses satellites as a weapon, another country can easily wipe out all satellites. The consequences are less dire than being wiped out from space.
Well, I'm sorry I've been a jerk, and I'm not having much fun insulting you anymore. But you still don't get what I'm saying.
Let me try to explain. Design does not necessitate that the designer was designed. Rather, an undesigned designer raises the question, if a designer itself needs no designer, why does the universe? That is the major flaw in your argument. You say that the universe needs a designer in order for all the constants to be set right. I say there are many other possible explanations that do not need a designer, and I gave a few examples. In addition, positing a designer as the answer to the question, "how did the constants get set" leaves one with an answer that is arbitrary and provides no real explanation. You have to posit an eternal designer who does not exist within a universal framework in order for it to make sense. But that designer's place could easily be taken by an impersonal meta-universal framework which is itself eternal. Positing a personal designer who created our universe and set the constants provides no greater explanatory or predictive power than positing an impersonal eternal framework that creates our universe through chance alone. No matter how small the chance, given enough time and space it will come about, without the added complexity of a personal creator. Occam's razor suggests the simpler explanation is the more likely to be true.
Nice strawman. I never said that it is invalid to say that anything is designed without saying that everything is designed. I said that if a complex thing, like the designer of a universe, can exist without being designed itself, then other complex things, like a universe, can also exist without being designed.
You may as well give up on this, you only continue to make yourself look foolish.
Why use the neologism 'libertarian' when the perfectly good and pedigreed term 'anarchism' covers all possible kinds of libertarianism, and more? Libertarianism is best characterized under the blanket term, 'individualist anarchism' and does not include any of the kinds of anarchism characterized as 'social anarchism.' Please read a little history of anarchism before spouting off about things that you know nothing about.
I can call dog poo a fudge sundae, but that won't convince most people to eat it. Words have defined meanings, and you can't just go redefining them to suit your whims. At least you can't and still expect other people to understand you.
Take it as a fudge sundae, it doesn't change the fact that it does not apply to the original argument. It's a very poor analogy, because showing that a car was designed is a trivial observation.
Wrong. Modern economic and games theory experiments show that people are in fact cooperative, value equitable solutions over purely selfish ones, and are willing to sacrifice personal gain to enforce justice. Honest and open communication is an evolved trait. Cooperation is an evolved trait. All imposed rules either follow natural inclinations, or they fail. Admittedly, this does not apply to sociopaths, and it is the existence of sociopaths, not any inherent selfishness of the majority, that demands the construction of a rule based society. The sad thing is, this kind of imposition of external rules causes people to lose touch with their own inherent morality. The rules protect against sociopaths, but far from increasing order for the majority, they make the majority more like the sociopaths they protect against.
Google 'economic research fairness reciprocity' for a good start.
It is very sad that so many people believe that humans are inherently selfish, and that society must be imposed through external rules. Do you know that in isolated societies where there is no prohibition against adultery or homosexuality, there are less of those behaviors? Lao Tzu had it right when he said,
If you want to be a great leader, you must learn to follow the Tao. Stop trying to control. Let go of fixed plans and concepts, and the world will govern itself.
The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. The more weapons you have, the less secure people will be. The more subsidies you have, the less self-reliant people will be.
Therefore the Master says: I let go of the law, and people become honest. I let go of economics, and people become prosperous. I let go of religion, and people become serene. I let go of all desire for the common good, and the good becomes common as grass.
You are trying to say that because of the tuning of certain parameters, the universe must be designed, but that the designer himself is eternal and not in turn designed. I'm sorry, but I don't see the logic in that. Either something complex must be designed, or it can exist without being designed. If something complex can exist (eternal or not, doesn't matter for this argument) without being designed, then a complex universe can exist without a designer. If complex things can not exist without a designer, then a complex designer can not exist without some meta designer, and you have not answered any question about the origins of complexity at all.
Perhaps I misinterpreted what you are saying, because originally, it sounded as if you were arguing for the existence of a designer, and now you say that you admit an undesigned universe could exist eternally. What exactly are you stating here?
Eh, what? You don't know much about copyright history, do you? The US routinely ignored other country's copyright in it's early history. Americans were actually encouraged to steal from other countries. Other countries acted similarly, especially newly formed countries without much home-grown content.
Consider that it is also quite natural for a person to lie and blame somebody else for one's mistakes if they believe or realize that nobody would find out the truth otherwise. Really? I've found that applies only to a minority of people. Perhaps human nature is better than you give it credit? Also, sharing information is utilitarian, hoarding it is not. I can share information without having any less of it myself, unlike physical things. The prohibition against sharing information, as useful as it may be for society, is much less natural than, say, the prohibition against murder.
Ahhh, no. Because an infinite number minus an infinite number is still an infinite number. And I was postulating a mutiverse where multiple universes might exist simultaneously.
Okay, if a complex designer can be said to have existed eternally, then why can't a metaverse without a designer eternally exist? If our universe is but a pocket in an eternally existing larger structure, the question of parameter tuning is answered without recourse to designers. Eternity is a long time, within eternity, our universe would eventually come to exist if it possible for it to exist at all.
You just aren't thinking clearly. It's sad to see how religion destroys some people's logical faculties.
There are so many other explanations besides "Someone set it up that way." If anything were different, we wouldn't be here to notice. One explanation: all possible universes exist, this just happens to be the one that we are in. And the 'design' theory raises the question: what made the designer's universe perfect for It to exist in? Either the designer and Its universe are somehow special, in which case the theory loses any explanatory power it might have had, or an even bigger designer designed our designer's universe, in which case we have an infinite regress, or universes perfect for intelligent life can come into existence on their own. Basically, the hypothesis that our universe must have been designed because some constants are perfect for our kind of life, is rubbish.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you read that headline wrong.
It was 1976 or '77, and I was six years old. My friend's dad was a comp-sci professor at UNLV. He had a teletype and a dial in account to the university PDP 10. He would dial in and set up a restricted shell for us, basically a menu of games. Colossal Cave Adventures was the best, but we also played Lunar Lander, Hunt the Wumpus, and other simple games, wasting reams of paper. That was what got me into computers. Been hooked ever since.
This isn't about what we are paying and what we are getting. We already have many varied types of plans available. This is about what, say, Slashdot is paying and getting. Slashdot pays quite a bit more for bandwidth than you do, won't you agree? What will happen is that every single one of the large backbone providers will hit up Slashdot for additional cash, to ensure that Slashdot's packets get to you. Some of them won't even offer Slashdot the option, because they would rather that you go to their parent companies news sites. They will throttle all sites they don't own, and there is nothing you can do about it. There would be no amount of money you could pay to ensure that you even get to see Slashdot.
Perhaps you would be lucky, perhaps the path between you and Slashdot would not traverse any complete bastard's backbones. Perhaps not. But Net Neutrality isn't about people like you and the service you are getting. As I said, you can already buy a variety of plans, some more expensive, some cheaper. I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is censorship, extortion, and fraud. As an example, Hilary Clinton could pay the major backbone providers to ensure that packets that mentioned, say, Ron Paul, got dropped. You would then be browsing an Internet that suddenly and mysteriously made no mention of Ron Paul anywhere, ever, and you would have no idea as to why. And all ISPs have to purchase their Internet access from one of the backbone providers, so there would be NO ISP you could purchase service from that would let you view anything about Ron Paul. Would you like that?
Do you understand what this issue is really about yet? It's not about tiered service at all. People aren't getting a free lunch. It's not like the Internet is a commons that anyone can take from without paying. There is no free lunch. Companies offer unlimited plans because they find that business model profitable, that is the free market at work, not a free lunch/ We already have tiered service and a robust and healthy market in Internet Service. No one is talking about getting rid of that. We are talking about limiting the ability of the backbone providers to engage in censorship, extortion, and fraud.
Your ideology is blinding you to the danger, and I am done trying to explain it to you. As much as I would like for everyone to see how we're all going to get screwed if we don't have net neutrality, I can't work miracles.
As with most free market proselytizers, you simply restate your position when presented with counter arguments, and make no attempt to address the issues I've raised. I posit that this is because you do not understand the arguments you are presenting, and are simply parroting back things you've heard others say. You don't understand the arguments you present, you simply take them on faith because you want to believe them, therefore you are incapable of refuting any counter arguments.
Pray tell where you have seen local monopolies. I can buy Internet service from my local cable company or several different phone companies, or dedicated ISPs like Speakeasy. I can do that in any of the places I've lived, worked, or visited. That's not the issue. The issue is natural monopolies, not government created ones. Once one backbone provider has laid cable in a particular area, what incentives do other backbone providers have to lay more cable in that area? It's the same reason you don't have multiple electric companies, or seven privately owned roads all connecting to your driveway. Because of that natural monopoly, backbone providers have no incentive not to extort money from content providers. They can say, "Yahoo, pay us money or your packets will be slower than Google's. Heck, they might not even reach your customer at all." And you could do nothing about it, because ISPs have to buy service from backbone providers, too. And those packets may traverse the networks of several backbone providers along the way, and all of them will want their protection money.
The answer is either regulation as we have for every other natural monopoly out there, or expensive class action lawsuits later on.
So why isn't the free market providing something like that? And what about the high level backbones, which is what net neutrality is about? Hosting providers don't usually control Internet backbones. Neither do ISPs.
Bandwidth is not externalized. You and I and hosting providers all pay for bandwidth. But the high level backbones want to extort more money from the content providers, basically saying, "Pay us more, or your competitors' packets will get there faster." The thing is, even if you want a neutral net, you can't buy it. Your ISP can not guarantee that a higher level backbone provider is not messing with the packets of content providers that you want to visit.
Please, don't try to simplify everything down to free market solutions. The issue here is fraud and extortion, which are legal issues and require legal solutions.
Absolute number one thing, first day on the job: get a blowjob from a cuter intern than Monica, then post pics of it on MySpace. You know, just to get that out of the way.
Ahaha, good one. Kucinich is the only left wing candidate. Gore is definitely centrist, if not center right.
Seriously? Al Gore, a center right democrat, is out to destroy capitalism? Now I know you're high. That man's whole life has been spent supporting and profiting off of capitalism.
There's a big difference between launching a biological attack, which kills biological things, which the person doing the launching is; and spreading some debris around in orbit, which kills satellites. If a country uses satellites as a weapon, another country can easily wipe out all satellites. The consequences are less dire than being wiped out from space.
Well, I'm sorry I've been a jerk, and I'm not having much fun insulting you anymore. But you still don't get what I'm saying.
Let me try to explain. Design does not necessitate that the designer was designed. Rather, an undesigned designer raises the question, if a designer itself needs no designer, why does the universe? That is the major flaw in your argument. You say that the universe needs a designer in order for all the constants to be set right. I say there are many other possible explanations that do not need a designer, and I gave a few examples. In addition, positing a designer as the answer to the question, "how did the constants get set" leaves one with an answer that is arbitrary and provides no real explanation. You have to posit an eternal designer who does not exist within a universal framework in order for it to make sense. But that designer's place could easily be taken by an impersonal meta-universal framework which is itself eternal. Positing a personal designer who created our universe and set the constants provides no greater explanatory or predictive power than positing an impersonal eternal framework that creates our universe through chance alone. No matter how small the chance, given enough time and space it will come about, without the added complexity of a personal creator. Occam's razor suggests the simpler explanation is the more likely to be true.
Nice strawman. I never said that it is invalid to say that anything is designed without saying that everything is designed. I said that if a complex thing, like the designer of a universe, can exist without being designed itself, then other complex things, like a universe, can also exist without being designed.
You may as well give up on this, you only continue to make yourself look foolish.
But, I have to admit, I sort of wanted some cake to go with it. The cake is a lie.
We gave the Native Americans smallpox and booze, they gave us tobacco and corn. It only looks like we came out ahead in that deal...
Why use the neologism 'libertarian' when the perfectly good and pedigreed term 'anarchism' covers all possible kinds of libertarianism, and more? Libertarianism is best characterized under the blanket term, 'individualist anarchism' and does not include any of the kinds of anarchism characterized as 'social anarchism.' Please read a little history of anarchism before spouting off about things that you know nothing about.
I can call dog poo a fudge sundae, but that won't convince most people to eat it. Words have defined meanings, and you can't just go redefining them to suit your whims. At least you can't and still expect other people to understand you.
Take it as a fudge sundae, it doesn't change the fact that it does not apply to the original argument. It's a very poor analogy, because showing that a car was designed is a trivial observation.
Google 'economic research fairness reciprocity' for a good start.
It is very sad that so many people believe that humans are inherently selfish, and that society must be imposed through external rules. Do you know that in isolated societies where there is no prohibition against adultery or homosexuality, there are less of those behaviors? Lao Tzu had it right when he said, If you want to be a great leader,
you must learn to follow the Tao.
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.
The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have,
the less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have,
the less self-reliant people will be.
Therefore the Master says:
I let go of the law,
and people become honest.
I let go of economics,
and people become prosperous.
I let go of religion,
and people become serene.
I let go of all desire for the common good,
and the good becomes common as grass.
A car is not a universe. You can actually show how, why, where, and when a car was designed. As with all car analogies, this one sucks.
You are trying to say that because of the tuning of certain parameters, the universe must be designed, but that the designer himself is eternal and not in turn designed. I'm sorry, but I don't see the logic in that. Either something complex must be designed, or it can exist without being designed. If something complex can exist (eternal or not, doesn't matter for this argument) without being designed, then a complex universe can exist without a designer. If complex things can not exist without a designer, then a complex designer can not exist without some meta designer, and you have not answered any question about the origins of complexity at all.
Perhaps I misinterpreted what you are saying, because originally, it sounded as if you were arguing for the existence of a designer, and now you say that you admit an undesigned universe could exist eternally. What exactly are you stating here?
Ahhh, no. Because an infinite number minus an infinite number is still an infinite number. And I was postulating a mutiverse where multiple universes might exist simultaneously.
Okay, if a complex designer can be said to have existed eternally, then why can't a metaverse without a designer eternally exist? If our universe is but a pocket in an eternally existing larger structure, the question of parameter tuning is answered without recourse to designers. Eternity is a long time, within eternity, our universe would eventually come to exist if it possible for it to exist at all.
You just aren't thinking clearly. It's sad to see how religion destroys some people's logical faculties.
There are so many other explanations besides "Someone set it up that way." If anything were different, we wouldn't be here to notice. One explanation: all possible universes exist, this just happens to be the one that we are in. And the 'design' theory raises the question: what made the designer's universe perfect for It to exist in? Either the designer and Its universe are somehow special, in which case the theory loses any explanatory power it might have had, or an even bigger designer designed our designer's universe, in which case we have an infinite regress, or universes perfect for intelligent life can come into existence on their own. Basically, the hypothesis that our universe must have been designed because some constants are perfect for our kind of life, is rubbish.