You do know the whole purpose of law school is to kill that idealism of yours, right? I heard a lawyer friend of mine say that 85% of first year law school students say they want to get into some kind of advocacy law. That goes down to less than 15% of graduating law school students. I have no idea if this is true or not, but my gut tells me it is, and as Stephen Colbert says, that's the organ we should all be using to think with.;-)
I'm sure you can do it, but you have to stick to your guns. Don't let them brainwash you!
From the wikipedia article on continental drift: "South America and Africa are moving apart at an average of 5.7 cm per year, due to the seafloor spreading along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This is comparable to the growth speed of a fingernail. The fastest recorded seafloor spreading takes place along the East Pacific Rise at 17.2 cm per year"
Using the lower number gives us a distance of 2850 kilometers in 50 million years. Not quite far enough for major climate change just based on distance. However, this amount of drift could severely alter the Atlantic Conveyor, a heat pump that moves tremendous amounts of heat from the equator to the poles. It is also enough distance to affect the amount of light available to trees.
It should also be noted that using the higher figure would result in a movement of 8600 kilometers, nearly the distance from the equator to the poles.
While I agree with you that we shouldn't let our fears of government oppressino ruin our lives, I don't think there's anything particularly macho in just sucking it up and saying, "Yup, I could be on some list, but what'cha gonna do?"
I'm all for making a stink about this while also getting on with my life rather than just ignoring it.
The OP was just pointing out that people seemed to care more about the company than the workers, as if the damn company could feel pain. No one's asking you to do anything more than excercise your obviously underutilized empathy a little and throw an "aw, that sucks dude" towards the workers while you're crying over the poor little corporation.
Such is life? Such is life now, not in my grandfather's day when CEOs actually felt a little loyalty to the workers who had made them rich. Some of us don't like the attitude that CEOs can walk away from failing companies with multi million dollar bonuses while the average Joe get's shafted out of a job and a pension.
Maybe you said something bad about the government. Maybe you also have chemicals that could be used to make bombs in your house. All of a sudden, things are not looking so good. Essentially what you are saying, whether you know it or not, is that to be an amateur chemist you have to give up your right to piss off the government. Is this still and extreme case? Probably. More than likely, most amateur chemists who criticize the government won't have their lives ruined. Is that good enough? No. Will this have a chilling effect both on amateur chemsitry and free speach? Yes, and that is why it is bad.
If you want to be true to the original (which most slashdotters are probably too young to remember) you have to do more than just reverse words, you actually have to make a comment on Soviet Russia using some kind of pun or play on words. We'll use "system" here, like so:
In America, users patch system. In Soviet Russia, system patches YOU!
See how that works? We are making a comment on the system in Soviet Russia, using the dual meaning of the word system (a social or political system, as opposed to a computer operating system) not just reversing the order of some words that have no relation to Soviet Russia.
I swear, in Soviet Russia, grave is turning over in Yakov Smirnoff. What a country!
Okay, shouldn't have stated that as a fact, but I was really just trying to affirm what I heard you saying, which is that we have in our genes the possibility of selfish and competative behavior. I think you are correct that cooperation is easier within clan boundaries, but follow that link I included above about economic research, then look at the section on economic games and the results of those experiments. In them, people cooperate readily with perfect strangers, even when the naive interpretation of the selfish actor theory says they shouldn't have. I say naive, because obviously we act in our own self interest all the time. But self interest is more complex than many people think. For a very good essay on this, read Mark Twain's "What is Man?" which I'm sure can be found online. Basically, cooperation is in our self interest because it is the most effective strategy.
As for the other poster, I hope I din't insult you with my response to him, I was pretty much trying to deflect his attack on you by saying we all have a hard time letting go of deeply held beliefs. I'd wager a guess that one of his is that his philosophy somehow makes him a better person than you.;-)
In any case, this discussion proves my point. Initially, to be honest, my emotional response to your post was, "Great. Another apologist for violence in human nature, red in tooth and claw and all that." But I kept an open mind and as I have found out, not only can you engage in an interesting dialectic, our positions on this matter are not that different.
As a matter of fact, I wouldn't even soften it as much as you have. We always act in our own self interest, it's just that our (enlightened) self interest most often aligns with what is commonly refered to as "good." And that, my friend, is exactly one of those hard truths that I didn't initially want to accept: there is no altruism or good or justice or anything that is not also pure self interest. But self interest encompasses all those things.
And that is a much firmer foundation to base a philosophy on than some touchy feely notion of good, IMHO.
Some days I do better than others. For instance, Tuesday is traditionally troll day here on/. so take anything I say on Tuesdays with a grain of salt. And sometimes I can't help myself. But I have been surprised so many times by people who I thought were lost causes coming around, and if not changing their ideas then at least engaging in a real dialectic, for which I am always grateful. Nothing helps sharpen one's arguments better than a good back and forth debate with another honest truth-seeker.
As far as people not changing deeply held beliefs, well, it is hard. But when presented with compelling evidence, I have done so in the past and will undoubtedly do so again. As I stated above, if I were faced with compelling evidence that people were basically evil, I would change my beliefs and my philosophy. But not my goals. What is is not necessarily what should be, nor is it inevitable and unchangeable.
When the Tao is forgotten, there is righteousness. When righteousness is forgotten, there is morality. When morality is forgotten, there is the law. The law is the husk of faith, and trust is the beginning of chaos.
I looked that up for a comment in another story, but it's so appropriate here I had to cut-n-paste.
Anyone remember Planetfall? Or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Hilarous through-and-through, but many other of Infocom's interactive fiction games had particularly funny moments. Of course, interactive fiction lends itself to humor more than most types of games.
Well, the fact is we do have the genes for selfishness and competition too, so there must have been some of that even in prehistory. My point is that the levels of violence, heirarchy and competition seen in the modern world are not natural but the result of a very stressful event.
Looking at modern economic research seems to show that people are more motivated by notions of reciprocity and fairness than by pure self interest. We are born cooperators, and competition is something that is (mostly) a learned behavior.
So what I am saying is that people are basically alright, if society doesn't fuck them up and actually gives them a chance to be decent, by rewarding cooperative behavior and discouraging selfishness. In a system where trust, fairness, and cooperation are not encouraged people have to resort to being selfish pricks.
It seems to me that you were stating basically the opposite, that people are basically pricks and only society makes them behave otherwise. Let's just remember that (assuming I'm egtting what you were trying to say) both our ideas are really still just hypothesis, not even theory, let alone fact. More research needs to be done, as the question of whether humans are naturally "good" or not is still up in the air.
I'm certainly biased towards believing people are basically good, but I would rather recognize a hard truth, such as "people are basically evil" and work from there than hold fast to a comfortable illusion. That being said, in my mind the balance of evidence points towards the "people are basically good" hypothesis.
Nothing in archeology backs up what you say here. Please find me any evidence prior to 4500BC of walled encampments, non-hunting weapons, or mass graves (ok, there is ONE guy who claims to have found one from 10,000BC, but his evidence is very questionable.) Humans are instinctually cooperative, it is in our genes, and it is what makes us as successful as we are. We also have the genes for selfishness, because sometimes that works, but it appears you have a misunderstanding of the way evolution works, and what fitness means in terms of species.
How could non-reproducing eusocial creatures such as drone bees develop if evolution only promoted competition? Evolution works on the level of the species and selects for traits that help the entire species survive. Cooperation is the most effective strategy whenever there is both local abundance and local scarcity, which is most of the time in this world. Competition is only most effective in cases of absolute abundance or absolute scarcity.
Look at anthropological studies of tribes that have had little contact with western culture. You will find they are cooperative in nature, non-violent and non-competative. This is the largest part of our original nature, and our competative side is very small.
Where did violence and competition come from, then? Here's one theory. Yes, James DeMeo was a student of notable weird dude Wilhelm Reich, but his scholarship is impeccable. His theory is that violence originated when we developed agriculture, settled down, built up a surplus and a more complex society, then got hit with massive climate change and famine. Before that, when famine hit, we just moved on. When the Sahara, the middle east, and central asian regions dried up, people had the surplus and organization to move on their more fortunate neighbors en-mass. At first said neighbors took them in, but as the climate change accelerated, they became unable to help. For the first time in history, masses of humans fought other humans.
You had a generation of post traumatic parents raising a geenration of brain damaged children (starvation does that to a kid.) This locked that small violent, competative part of our nature permanently into our culture. It is as if we are in permanent famine mode. But it is not the entirety of our nature.
DeMeo's proof is complex and thorough. He researched nearly 3,000 cultures worldwide, and found a clear pattern. The further a culture originates from the epicenter of violence, the less heirarchal, violent, and competative traits it has. Unless you are completely attached to your worldview about the origins of human violence, I suggest at least reading the summary with an open mind. Perhaps what he says is true, perhaps not, but it at least gives a different theory than "Nature, red in tooth and claw," which is unsatisfactory to me as it does not account for all the evidence.
As Lao Tzu said,
When the Tao is forgotten, there is righteousness. When righteousness is forgotten, there is morality. When morality is forgotten, there is the law. The law is the husk of faith, and trust is the beginning of chaos.
Maybe Zonk is very weak, and the book is very heavy. Perhaps someone hit Zonk over the head with the book. It could be that the information contained in the book is so shocking that reading it causes loss of equilibrium. You never know...
Compuserve was started in 1969, spun off it's time sharing service in 1975, started email services in 1979, was acquired by H&R Block and started real time chat in 1980, and didn't sell to AOL (through WorldCom, which bought them and sold them a day later!) in 1997. You kinda come across as a newb when you talk about things you know little about.
I was online with pictures, multiuser chat, news, message boards, and email in 1981, on both CompuServe and GEnie. AOL invented nothing. You have no idea what you are talking about.
It's not a FAQ, it is the official Libertarian Party Platform! When in econ 101, these people covered their ears and went 'LALALALA I'm not listening LALALA.' This is the reason I have a hard time respecting 'Real Libertarians,' and why I try to point out to people who claim to be Libertarians that not only are Real Libertarians nutcases who don't understand basic economic realities, there are much better and more accurate labels to use as a shorthand for what you believe in.
Why not call yourselves Anarcho-Capitalists? Libertarian, to me anyway, means a supporter of the Libertarian Party. If I say Libertarian, how does one know what I'm refering to? It could mean almost anything, and that fuzziness lets Libertarians get away with a lot. Anytime you complain about some silly part of Libertarian philosophy, your average Libertarian just says, "Oh, I'm not that kind of Libertarian." The word as you propose to use it is meaningless.
Personally, I think every type you mention, including Libertarian, falls under the Anarcho-Capitalist banner, but people really don't want to call themselves that because it invokes the bomb throwing, mob rule sterotype of Anarchism and the hard-assed, "I have mine, screw the poor" image of capitalism. But it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck. Libertarian, on the other hand, sounds like Liberty, and who doesn't like that?
It's called hyperbole. Often encountered in such phrases as "I nearly died laughing" or "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse."
From the wikipedia article:
Largely synonymous with exaggeration and overconsulting, is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated or extravagant. It may be used due to strong feelings or is used to create a strong impression and is not meant to be taken literally. It gives greater emphasis. It is often used in poetry and is a literary device.
Here on slashdot, it is the most usefull technique ever invented in the entire history of humanity, because some people are so dense that an atomic explosion would barely register with them.
Slashdot Mirror
No sarcasm intended, I really mean that.
;-)
You do know the whole purpose of law school is to kill that idealism of yours, right? I heard a lawyer friend of mine say that 85% of first year law school students say they want to get into some kind of advocacy law. That goes down to less than 15% of graduating law school students. I have no idea if this is true or not, but my gut tells me it is, and as Stephen Colbert says, that's the organ we should all be using to think with.
I'm sure you can do it, but you have to stick to your guns. Don't let them brainwash you!
From the wikipedia article on continental drift: "South America and Africa are moving apart at an average of 5.7 cm per year, due to the seafloor spreading along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This is comparable to the growth speed of a fingernail. The fastest recorded seafloor spreading takes place along the East Pacific Rise at 17.2 cm per year"
Using the lower number gives us a distance of 2850 kilometers in 50 million years. Not quite far enough for major climate change just based on distance. However, this amount of drift could severely alter the Atlantic Conveyor, a heat pump that moves tremendous amounts of heat from the equator to the poles. It is also enough distance to affect the amount of light available to trees.
It should also be noted that using the higher figure would result in a movement of 8600 kilometers, nearly the distance from the equator to the poles.
While I agree with you that we shouldn't let our fears of government oppressino ruin our lives, I don't think there's anything particularly macho in just sucking it up and saying, "Yup, I could be on some list, but what'cha gonna do?"
I'm all for making a stink about this while also getting on with my life rather than just ignoring it.
Cue the "Debbie Downer" music: WHA WHa Wha waaaa.
:( That whole tattoo you and throw you in an oven thing is a real bummer, no doubt.
Did you know that feline AIDS is the leading cause of death for cats in America?
Sorry, sorry, I don't know what came over me.
Can we at least tattoo "That Asshole" on their forehead?
The OP was just pointing out that people seemed to care more about the company than the workers, as if the damn company could feel pain. No one's asking you to do anything more than excercise your obviously underutilized empathy a little and throw an "aw, that sucks dude" towards the workers while you're crying over the poor little corporation.
Such is life? Such is life now, not in my grandfather's day when CEOs actually felt a little loyalty to the workers who had made them rich. Some of us don't like the attitude that CEOs can walk away from failing companies with multi million dollar bonuses while the average Joe get's shafted out of a job and a pension.
Maybe you said something bad about the government. Maybe you also have chemicals that could be used to make bombs in your house. All of a sudden, things are not looking so good. Essentially what you are saying, whether you know it or not, is that to be an amateur chemist you have to give up your right to piss off the government. Is this still and extreme case? Probably. More than likely, most amateur chemists who criticize the government won't have their lives ruined. Is that good enough? No. Will this have a chilling effect both on amateur chemsitry and free speach? Yes, and that is why it is bad.
If you want to be true to the original (which most slashdotters are probably too young to remember) you have to do more than just reverse words, you actually have to make a comment on Soviet Russia using some kind of pun or play on words. We'll use "system" here, like so:
In America, users patch system. In Soviet Russia, system patches YOU!
See how that works? We are making a comment on the system in Soviet Russia, using the dual meaning of the word system (a social or political system, as opposed to a computer operating system) not just reversing the order of some words that have no relation to Soviet Russia.
I swear, in Soviet Russia, grave is turning over in Yakov Smirnoff. What a country!
Okay, shouldn't have stated that as a fact, but I was really just trying to affirm what I heard you saying, which is that we have in our genes the possibility of selfish and competative behavior. I think you are correct that cooperation is easier within clan boundaries, but follow that link I included above about economic research, then look at the section on economic games and the results of those experiments. In them, people cooperate readily with perfect strangers, even when the naive interpretation of the selfish actor theory says they shouldn't have. I say naive, because obviously we act in our own self interest all the time. But self interest is more complex than many people think. For a very good essay on this, read Mark Twain's "What is Man?" which I'm sure can be found online. Basically, cooperation is in our self interest because it is the most effective strategy.
;-)
As for the other poster, I hope I din't insult you with my response to him, I was pretty much trying to deflect his attack on you by saying we all have a hard time letting go of deeply held beliefs. I'd wager a guess that one of his is that his philosophy somehow makes him a better person than you.
In any case, this discussion proves my point. Initially, to be honest, my emotional response to your post was, "Great. Another apologist for violence in human nature, red in tooth and claw and all that." But I kept an open mind and as I have found out, not only can you engage in an interesting dialectic, our positions on this matter are not that different.
As a matter of fact, I wouldn't even soften it as much as you have. We always act in our own self interest, it's just that our (enlightened) self interest most often aligns with what is commonly refered to as "good." And that, my friend, is exactly one of those hard truths that I didn't initially want to accept: there is no altruism or good or justice or anything that is not also pure self interest. But self interest encompasses all those things.
And that is a much firmer foundation to base a philosophy on than some touchy feely notion of good, IMHO.
Some days I do better than others. For instance, Tuesday is traditionally troll day here on /. so take anything I say on Tuesdays with a grain of salt. And sometimes I can't help myself. But I have been surprised so many times by people who I thought were lost causes coming around, and if not changing their ideas then at least engaging in a real dialectic, for which I am always grateful. Nothing helps sharpen one's arguments better than a good back and forth debate with another honest truth-seeker.
As far as people not changing deeply held beliefs, well, it is hard. But when presented with compelling evidence, I have done so in the past and will undoubtedly do so again. As I stated above, if I were faced with compelling evidence that people were basically evil, I would change my beliefs and my philosophy. But not my goals. What is is not necessarily what should be, nor is it inevitable and unchangeable.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback!
When the Tao is forgotten, there is righteousness.
When righteousness is forgotten, there is morality.
When morality is forgotten, there is the law.
The law is the husk of faith,
and trust is the beginning of chaos.
I looked that up for a comment in another story, but it's so appropriate here I had to cut-n-paste.
Anyone remember Planetfall? Or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Hilarous through-and-through, but many other of Infocom's interactive fiction games had particularly funny moments. Of course, interactive fiction lends itself to humor more than most types of games.
If they're anything like these newly discovered critters, then yes, they are delicious!
Well, the fact is we do have the genes for selfishness and competition too, so there must have been some of that even in prehistory. My point is that the levels of violence, heirarchy and competition seen in the modern world are not natural but the result of a very stressful event.
Looking at modern economic research seems to show that people are more motivated by notions of reciprocity and fairness than by pure self interest. We are born cooperators, and competition is something that is (mostly) a learned behavior.
So what I am saying is that people are basically alright, if society doesn't fuck them up and actually gives them a chance to be decent, by rewarding cooperative behavior and discouraging selfishness. In a system where trust, fairness, and cooperation are not encouraged people have to resort to being selfish pricks.
It seems to me that you were stating basically the opposite, that people are basically pricks and only society makes them behave otherwise. Let's just remember that (assuming I'm egtting what you were trying to say) both our ideas are really still just hypothesis, not even theory, let alone fact. More research needs to be done, as the question of whether humans are naturally "good" or not is still up in the air.
I'm certainly biased towards believing people are basically good, but I would rather recognize a hard truth, such as "people are basically evil" and work from there than hold fast to a comfortable illusion. That being said, in my mind the balance of evidence points towards the "people are basically good" hypothesis.
How could non-reproducing eusocial creatures such as drone bees develop if evolution only promoted competition? Evolution works on the level of the species and selects for traits that help the entire species survive. Cooperation is the most effective strategy whenever there is both local abundance and local scarcity, which is most of the time in this world. Competition is only most effective in cases of absolute abundance or absolute scarcity.
Look at anthropological studies of tribes that have had little contact with western culture. You will find they are cooperative in nature, non-violent and non-competative. This is the largest part of our original nature, and our competative side is very small.
Where did violence and competition come from, then? Here's one theory. Yes, James DeMeo was a student of notable weird dude Wilhelm Reich, but his scholarship is impeccable. His theory is that violence originated when we developed agriculture, settled down, built up a surplus and a more complex society, then got hit with massive climate change and famine. Before that, when famine hit, we just moved on. When the Sahara, the middle east, and central asian regions dried up, people had the surplus and organization to move on their more fortunate neighbors en-mass. At first said neighbors took them in, but as the climate change accelerated, they became unable to help. For the first time in history, masses of humans fought other humans.
You had a generation of post traumatic parents raising a geenration of brain damaged children (starvation does that to a kid.) This locked that small violent, competative part of our nature permanently into our culture. It is as if we are in permanent famine mode. But it is not the entirety of our nature.
DeMeo's proof is complex and thorough. He researched nearly 3,000 cultures worldwide, and found a clear pattern. The further a culture originates from the epicenter of violence, the less heirarchal, violent, and competative traits it has. Unless you are completely attached to your worldview about the origins of human violence, I suggest at least reading the summary with an open mind. Perhaps what he says is true, perhaps not, but it at least gives a different theory than "Nature, red in tooth and claw," which is unsatisfactory to me as it does not account for all the evidence.
As Lao Tzu said,
Well there we have it. He read it in PDF form because someone stole the book from him and hit him over the head with it, causing the staggering.
Maybe Zonk is very weak, and the book is very heavy. Perhaps someone hit Zonk over the head with the book. It could be that the information contained in the book is so shocking that reading it causes loss of equilibrium. You never know...
Compuserve was started in 1969, spun off it's time sharing service in 1975, started email services in 1979, was acquired by H&R Block and started real time chat in 1980, and didn't sell to AOL (through WorldCom, which bought them and sold them a day later!) in 1997. You kinda come across as a newb when you talk about things you know little about.
Oh sure, they talk tough now, but I'm guessing that when Apple fights back, the French will surrender, and possibly eat some cheese.
I was online with pictures, multiuser chat, news, message boards, and email in 1981, on both CompuServe and GEnie. AOL invented nothing. You have no idea what you are talking about.
No, you are thinking of Buffalos.
It's not a FAQ, it is the official Libertarian Party Platform! When in econ 101, these people covered their ears and went 'LALALALA I'm not listening LALALA.' This is the reason I have a hard time respecting 'Real Libertarians,' and why I try to point out to people who claim to be Libertarians that not only are Real Libertarians nutcases who don't understand basic economic realities, there are much better and more accurate labels to use as a shorthand for what you believe in.
Why not call yourselves Anarcho-Capitalists? Libertarian, to me anyway, means a supporter of the Libertarian Party. If I say Libertarian, how does one know what I'm refering to? It could mean almost anything, and that fuzziness lets Libertarians get away with a lot. Anytime you complain about some silly part of Libertarian philosophy, your average Libertarian just says, "Oh, I'm not that kind of Libertarian." The word as you propose to use it is meaningless.
Personally, I think every type you mention, including Libertarian, falls under the Anarcho-Capitalist banner, but people really don't want to call themselves that because it invokes the bomb throwing, mob rule sterotype of Anarchism and the hard-assed, "I have mine, screw the poor" image of capitalism. But it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck. Libertarian, on the other hand, sounds like Liberty, and who doesn't like that?
If it has both nuggets and fingers and has either crispy or extra crispy skin, it's a chicken.
Little known fact: pigeons absolutely love KFC.
From the wikipedia article:
Here on slashdot, it is the most usefull technique ever invented in the entire history of humanity, because some people are so dense that an atomic explosion would barely register with them.