I'm prone to agree with this, along with some other reasons. What if someone spends their money poorly, and is left homeless or without food or medical care? Do we just let them die, or do we have to step in with an additional safety net anyway?
I have some friends with relatives who are either (not to put too fine a point on it) bums or addicts. My friends have learned to help their relatives out sometimes by bringing them a bag of groceries, or a rent payment to the landlord, or sending them a bus ticket. But never handing them cash. In some cases people just cannot help themselves with it.
I hear some ludicrous predictions for the future all the time. This pretty much takes the cake. There is no concern whatsoever that all or a majority of people could possibly be proficient enough programmers to interface usefully with arbitrary API's from day to day.
Recall that the majority of people cannot pass a basic algebra class. Just the idea of a variable is beyond about half of people. I'd be happy if most people just got educated enough about programming to realize how friggin' ludicrous this prediction is.
"To the extent that young people are deluded, tricked, or forced into a commitment of implied eternal monogamy, it's not entirely their fault, and they should be given some sympathy and charity as they try to naturally relieve or find their way out of the situation."
"Oops, my penis just accidentally fell into the lady parts of another woman. It isn't entirely my fault!"
I'm just going to focus on this one part, because your reading comprehension failed so spectacularly here. I'm talking about it not being someone's fault to be tricked or forced into a commitment that they don't understand. Forced into sex: not my claim. Forced into marriage: actually my claim.
If you go to the Brooklyn City Clerk (for example) on any given day, then you will see in the line couples who appear to be anxious teenagers from certain religious sects, literally fenced in on both sides by parents, escorting/herding them to the clerk for marriage licenses. It's painful to watch. And of course the next thing you know is that they'll have kids -- and surely you know the tens of millions of people who feel stuck in marriages for the kids' sake.
I consider this to be just one more extreme example. Contracts are not valid when consent is not freely given -- and consent is not free when obtained through duress, menace, fraud, undue influence, or mistake. This happens routinely in the case of marriage, and it seems ludicrous to hold people to commitments they didn't really have the capacity to consent to under those terms.
I agree that being fully informed, one should avoid marriage. But the majority of people are not fully informed. Hopefully the expectation for marriage, and the minority of states with adultery laws on the books (even vestigial as they currently are), will continue to be reduced, because the whole institution is so farcically unbelievable on its face.
"... MARRIAGE, which is an agreement between you and your wife. And usually pretty high on the list of terms of that agreement for most spouses is no adultery. Some may be okay with it, but that's generally something you negotiate with the spouse's consent. This is not the 'fine print' of what marriage means -- it's pretty fundamental to the agreement... You don't want that agreement? Fine. Don't take a vow to it. Or negotiate out of it."
In the past, I have argued as you do here. But:
Monogamy is not actually in the standard Catholic marriage vows or its derivatives. Even if it were implied, marriage is a civil contract, many non-religious people get married, and there is no legal requirement for monogamy. The expectation is culturally-specific, and lots of cultures have completely divergent expectations (including polygamy, as among some Mormons, Muslims, etc.)
Furthermore: Is it even feasible to promise a "forever" thing like that at a young age? I would argue "no"; people don't really have a capacity or right to make such an oath, time and variations are deeper than the young person can digest, and the demographic statistics bear that out. To the extent that young people are deluded, tricked, or forced into a commitment of implied eternal monogamy, it's not entirely their fault, and they should be given some sympathy and charity as they try to naturally relieve or find their way out of the situation. Hopefully the long arc of history will continue to degrade this unrealistic expectation and allow people to be happy and connected without being condemned on by uptight, moralizing craphats.
"I know that if I go to war... I am going to want the best weapons my society can make for me along with the best defenses the best training and ideally leaders that are not complete fuckwits."
The problem is that this kind of total-war thinking logically leads to a condition of spending *all* of a country's resources on nothing but war. And frankly we're pretty close to that already, the amount that the U.S. outspends the rest of the world on the military is something out of a Kubrick satire. Likewise we've got more people in prison than any country in the history of the world via the same nothing-can-be-risked thinking.
Frankly I do think that the logic of the institution is powerful enough that we will annihilate civilization in fairly short order. I guess we've managed to survive nukes for about 70 years, but whether that or something else, I'm hard-pressed to see how many more multiples of that we can go.
That's an absurd argument. The Dutch East India Company was a Royal Charter and a monopoly granted by the monarch Queen Elizabeth. The whole problem with the East India company was that it was totally free from any government oversight and was allowed to run roughshod in India with its own private armies, etc. Putting corporate charters back under oversight and review from democratically elected legislatures is a totally different prospect.
But you said "It is never clear 'who is the best performer'" which contradicts this line of reasoning. Do you now stand by that assertion, or refute it?
"When the first U.S. public corporations were created in the early 1800s, corporate charters were granted by the state legislatures for very specific purposes. The charters specified that the corporations met what was considered to be a worthy public purpose and contained strict restrictions, such as the length of time the charter lasted and what, specifically, the corporation could manufacture. In the mid-nineteenth century, it wasn't unheard of for states like Ohio, Michigan, New York and Nebraska to revoke corporate charters when corporations no longer fulfilled their purpose."
We should return to enforcing and revoking corporate charters when they fail to serve the public interest.
"It is never clear 'who is the best performer'. That is precisely why unions don't make sense because they negotiate as if labor was a commodity like iron or wheat."
That's self-contradictory. If it's not clear who is a better performer, then exactly how is labor unlike a commodity?
Thanks for that; I was trying to find more recent stories but the NY Times seemed pretty on-topic. Sorry to hear about your experiences (but sadly, not surprised). Here's hoping that someday it will be better.
Instead, people with mental problems wind up in the criminal justice system and wind up in our massive prisons, locked up with violent offenders. At least this bill would give some kind of check-and-balance on the proceedings, with doctors involved (not just cops) for at least a few hours.
More generally, if you don't have a US-mindset, here in the states there is little to no public assistance or support for anything like being down on your luck or sick: no public health care, no mental health care, no maternity or family leave, no federal minimum vacation or sick days, etc., etc.
"This year’s legislation arms the intelligence community with the resources they need"
Translation: There's nothing here that really needs to be illegal; and we do not expect this to be enforced regularly or equitably. We just want to be able to declare as criminal anyone we take a disliking to, or who doesn't bend over for us on demand.
"...officials believe that human error was to blame for the incident, rather than a problem with the robot."
Of course officials at the factory are going to suggest that first... because they're liable for mistakes of the robot, but not for mistakes of the worker. This is standard boilerplate and counts for nothing. Only a proper investigation can determine the truth. More 1%-vs-the-rest, really.
Are the words of Bernie Madoff credible? Is the whole point not that he's a liar proven demonstrably to all rational people? Who cares if he's got some rationalization for hurting people. The rules of our society shouldn't be written by and for sociopathic personalities.
"The prior shows a logical certainty, the latter [absence of evidence] is rationalization."
No, the latter is not mere rationalization; it is a logical use of limited resources (like time and money).
People can come up with a billion crazy theories or stories. We don't have time to test all of them or start using all of them by default. Hence, the responsibility falls upon the story-teller or seller to do the test and present evidence before anyone else gives them attention, time, or money in return. That's not rationalization -- it's simply rational.
As I say in my statistics classes: "The null hypothesis gets the benefit of the doubt; the alternative hypothesis has the burden of proof". (Or as Wikipedia puts it: "Rejecting or disproving the null hypothesis... is a central task in the modern practice of science, and gives a precise sense in which a claim is capable of being proven false. The null hypothesis is generally assumed to be true until evidence indicates otherwise.").
Slashdot Mirror
I'm prone to agree with this, along with some other reasons. What if someone spends their money poorly, and is left homeless or without food or medical care? Do we just let them die, or do we have to step in with an additional safety net anyway?
I have some friends with relatives who are either (not to put too fine a point on it) bums or addicts. My friends have learned to help their relatives out sometimes by bringing them a bag of groceries, or a rent payment to the landlord, or sending them a bus ticket. But never handing them cash. In some cases people just cannot help themselves with it.
I hear some ludicrous predictions for the future all the time. This pretty much takes the cake. There is no concern whatsoever that all or a majority of people could possibly be proficient enough programmers to interface usefully with arbitrary API's from day to day.
Recall that the majority of people cannot pass a basic algebra class. Just the idea of a variable is beyond about half of people. I'd be happy if most people just got educated enough about programming to realize how friggin' ludicrous this prediction is.
Bingo, good post. It's the new flying cars.
Still no resolution to the waste issue.
Now start the "things we could do in theory" discussion.
Great comment.
"To the extent that young people are deluded, tricked, or forced into a commitment of implied eternal monogamy, it's not entirely their fault, and they should be given some sympathy and charity as they try to naturally relieve or find their way out of the situation."
"Oops, my penis just accidentally fell into the lady parts of another woman. It isn't entirely my fault!"
I'm just going to focus on this one part, because your reading comprehension failed so spectacularly here. I'm talking about it not being someone's fault to be tricked or forced into a commitment that they don't understand. Forced into sex: not my claim. Forced into marriage: actually my claim.
If you go to the Brooklyn City Clerk (for example) on any given day, then you will see in the line couples who appear to be anxious teenagers from certain religious sects, literally fenced in on both sides by parents, escorting/herding them to the clerk for marriage licenses. It's painful to watch. And of course the next thing you know is that they'll have kids -- and surely you know the tens of millions of people who feel stuck in marriages for the kids' sake.
I consider this to be just one more extreme example. Contracts are not valid when consent is not freely given -- and consent is not free when obtained through duress, menace, fraud, undue influence, or mistake. This happens routinely in the case of marriage, and it seems ludicrous to hold people to commitments they didn't really have the capacity to consent to under those terms.
I agree that being fully informed, one should avoid marriage. But the majority of people are not fully informed. Hopefully the expectation for marriage, and the minority of states with adultery laws on the books (even vestigial as they currently are), will continue to be reduced, because the whole institution is so farcically unbelievable on its face.
"... MARRIAGE, which is an agreement between you and your wife. And usually pretty high on the list of terms of that agreement for most spouses is no adultery. Some may be okay with it, but that's generally something you negotiate with the spouse's consent. This is not the 'fine print' of what marriage means -- it's pretty fundamental to the agreement... You don't want that agreement? Fine. Don't take a vow to it. Or negotiate out of it."
In the past, I have argued as you do here. But:
Monogamy is not actually in the standard Catholic marriage vows or its derivatives. Even if it were implied, marriage is a civil contract, many non-religious people get married, and there is no legal requirement for monogamy. The expectation is culturally-specific, and lots of cultures have completely divergent expectations (including polygamy, as among some Mormons, Muslims, etc.)
Furthermore: Is it even feasible to promise a "forever" thing like that at a young age? I would argue "no"; people don't really have a capacity or right to make such an oath, time and variations are deeper than the young person can digest, and the demographic statistics bear that out. To the extent that young people are deluded, tricked, or forced into a commitment of implied eternal monogamy, it's not entirely their fault, and they should be given some sympathy and charity as they try to naturally relieve or find their way out of the situation. Hopefully the long arc of history will continue to degrade this unrealistic expectation and allow people to be happy and connected without being condemned on by uptight, moralizing craphats.
"I know that if I go to war... I am going to want the best weapons my society can make for me along with the best defenses the best training and ideally leaders that are not complete fuckwits."
The problem is that this kind of total-war thinking logically leads to a condition of spending *all* of a country's resources on nothing but war. And frankly we're pretty close to that already, the amount that the U.S. outspends the rest of the world on the military is something out of a Kubrick satire. Likewise we've got more people in prison than any country in the history of the world via the same nothing-can-be-risked thinking.
Frankly I do think that the logic of the institution is powerful enough that we will annihilate civilization in fairly short order. I guess we've managed to survive nukes for about 70 years, but whether that or something else, I'm hard-pressed to see how many more multiples of that we can go.
"I would say that I own them much more so than the product I got from Cable TV."
No one ever makes the spurious claim that people "own" shows via cable TV. That's not the right word to use here, either, so you should stop doing so.
And who will enforce that demand? The idiot CEO who's falling for the scam in the first place?
That's an absurd argument. The Dutch East India Company was a Royal Charter and a monopoly granted by the monarch Queen Elizabeth. The whole problem with the East India company was that it was totally free from any government oversight and was allowed to run roughshod in India with its own private armies, etc. Putting corporate charters back under oversight and review from democratically elected legislatures is a totally different prospect.
"if he's licensed to carry a gun and regularly does so then it's Uber boycotting him."
I'm sure that when the Earps went to enforce the no-gun rule in Tombstone, the McLaurys cried out, "We're being boycotted!".
But you said "It is never clear 'who is the best performer'" which contradicts this line of reasoning. Do you now stand by that assertion, or refute it?
"When the first U.S. public corporations were created in the early 1800s, corporate charters were granted by the state legislatures for very specific purposes. The charters specified that the corporations met what was considered to be a worthy public purpose and contained strict restrictions, such as the length of time the charter lasted and what, specifically, the corporation could manufacture. In the mid-nineteenth century, it wasn't unheard of for states like Ohio, Michigan, New York and Nebraska to revoke corporate charters when corporations no longer fulfilled their purpose."
We should return to enforcing and revoking corporate charters when they fail to serve the public interest.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/corporate-charters_b_2759596.html
Guy in the video looks pretty white to me. Maybe you mean the bullshit that white dudes who are sick in the head go on about while they do evil:
http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/heres-video-of-the-jerk-who-killed-hitchbot-1721797093
Fantastic analysis.
"It is never clear 'who is the best performer'. That is precisely why unions don't make sense because they negotiate as if labor was a commodity like iron or wheat."
That's self-contradictory. If it's not clear who is a better performer, then exactly how is labor unlike a commodity?
Thanks for that; I was trying to find more recent stories but the NY Times seemed pretty on-topic. Sorry to hear about your experiences (but sadly, not surprised). Here's hoping that someday it will be better.
"We have had very ugly case in Poland recently..."
Just so you know: the problem in the USA is pretty much the exact opposite. There are practically no mental health care institutions anymore.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html
Instead, people with mental problems wind up in the criminal justice system and wind up in our massive prisons, locked up with violent offenders. At least this bill would give some kind of check-and-balance on the proceedings, with doctors involved (not just cops) for at least a few hours.
More generally, if you don't have a US-mindset, here in the states there is little to no public assistance or support for anything like being down on your luck or sick: no public health care, no mental health care, no maternity or family leave, no federal minimum vacation or sick days, etc., etc.
Do you have a citation for that Google finding? Interested to know more...
Isn't this discussion in regards to *technical* certifications? Bringing up an accounting certification seems like it's beside the point.
"This year’s legislation arms the intelligence community with the resources they need"
Translation: There's nothing here that really needs to be illegal; and we do not expect this to be enforced regularly or equitably. We just want to be able to declare as criminal anyone we take a disliking to, or who doesn't bend over for us on demand.
"...officials believe that human error was to blame for the incident, rather than a problem with the robot."
Of course officials at the factory are going to suggest that first... because they're liable for mistakes of the robot, but not for mistakes of the worker. This is standard boilerplate and counts for nothing. Only a proper investigation can determine the truth. More 1%-vs-the-rest, really.
Are the words of Bernie Madoff credible? Is the whole point not that he's a liar proven demonstrably to all rational people? Who cares if he's got some rationalization for hurting people. The rules of our society shouldn't be written by and for sociopathic personalities.
"The prior shows a logical certainty, the latter [absence of evidence] is rationalization."
No, the latter is not mere rationalization; it is a logical use of limited resources (like time and money).
People can come up with a billion crazy theories or stories. We don't have time to test all of them or start using all of them by default. Hence, the responsibility falls upon the story-teller or seller to do the test and present evidence before anyone else gives them attention, time, or money in return. That's not rationalization -- it's simply rational.
As I say in my statistics classes: "The null hypothesis gets the benefit of the doubt; the alternative hypothesis has the burden of proof". (Or as Wikipedia puts it: "Rejecting or disproving the null hypothesis... is a central task in the modern practice of science, and gives a precise sense in which a claim is capable of being proven false. The null hypothesis is generally assumed to be true until evidence indicates otherwise.").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis