This is not just a bad analogy; it's a horrible, morally bankrupt analogy.
There are two important things to consider about nuclear weapons: 1) They inevitably result in enormous collateral damage to noncombatants, including children; 2) they cause environmental damage that affects everyone on the planet, including the ones who used the nuclear weapons.
I think there is a strong case to be made that nuclear weapons violate basic laws of war, in the same manner that biological weapons do. (Go ahead, fight me. You're unlikely to change my viewpoint on this).
GOT's dragons do none of the above. They're big flying flamethrowers, and the show has established that they can be used in a relatively surgical manner.
I understand your point, but I really donâ(TM)t think I am misreading the DAâ(TM)s statement. Lacey refers to âoepeople erasing the mistakes of THEIR pastââ" the implication is that the mistake was committed by them, and not the state. If Lacey meant the latter, itâ(TM)s a damn peculiar way to phrase things.
"This collaboration will improve people's lives by erasing the mistakes of their past and hopefully lead them on a path to a better future."
What a condescending, arrogant statement from DA Jackie Lacey.
The process currently underway, in which old convictions are expunged, is not about the convicted individuals "turning over a new leaf" and deciding to straighten up and fly right. Nor is it about the state suddenly adopting an attitude of forgiveness. It's about the state acknowledging that it made a mistake, and punished people that it should not have.
And the "path to a better future" includes legal weed, for those who want it.
Yeah, I was thinking about Black Panther when I wrote the comment. But the conversations around Black Panther weren't even remotely as stupid-- despite the fact that the movie was more overtly political than Captain Marvel.
Since I wrote this comment, I've actually seen some footage of Brie Larson talking-- it's part of this (highly recommended) review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And, Christ, is she ever annoying. I can't pinpoint a single thing that she says that I actually *disagree* with. But she's so unlikeable and condescending that I almost want to disagree with her based on her personality alone.
The study presents a forced choice between two incorrect belief systems-- "Merit is the sole determinant of success" and "Merit has nothing to do with success"-- and then tries to determine which belief system is "worse" from a psychological standpoint. Of course, both belief systems are irrational and stupid, and no one with an ounce of common sense would subscribe to either one of them. It's a classic example of how *not* to do psychological research.
Disclaimer: I haven't RTFA. Maybe the actual research is very good, and it's just the summary that is stupid.
it's now officially impossible to have an opinion or discussion about this film, because it's become nothing more than a political litmus test. It's funny-- I don't think there has ever been a movie in the history of film where the conversation around the film has so thoroughly degenerated into a politically-motivated pissing contest. Even films with an overt and hard-edged political or social message, like "Do The Right Thing", were still viewed as works of art, which you could discuss as *films* first and as political statements second.
I think that trolls on both sides of the political spectrum share precisely equal amounts of blame for this situation.
...Yes, I agree with you that "persuasion and reasoned arguments" will not work, because we're talking about a group of people who can't think rationally. My point is it is *equally* useless to try to prevent this group of people from hearing of the idea in the first place. Even if you were able to somehow succeed in that goal, these folks would just run across another, equally destructive idea and start believing in that instead. The idea itself is not what is dangerous. The thought process of the people who believe in the idea is what is dangerous.
You know, I've been commenting on Slashdot for about 17 years. Usually if someone takes the time to respond to one of my comments, it's worth my time to read it. Of course every now and then, I've received responses to my comments that I thought were disagreeable, or logically flawed, or just wrong for some reason.
But I think this is the first time I've encountered a response that is just flat-out dumb. Hats off to you, sir.
It's interesting that you seem to regard a theory as a sort of infectious agent-- something which floats around in the ether and cause previously healthy brains to become afflicted.
You can try to restrict "wrong" ideas all you want. Alternately (a better idea) you can try to combat "wrong" ideas through persuasion and reasoned argument. At the end of the day, no matter what you do, there are going to be some individuals who are going to believe in things that are simply wrong or crazy. 1% (more or less) of every human population has schizophrenia. 2-3% (more or less) of every human population has mental retardation (or developmental delay, to use the kinder and more modern term). An additional, indeterminate percentage will simply be allergic to logical argument for some other reason. All of these sub-groups are always going to be with us, ain't nothing you can do. Get used to it. Accept it. Find reasonable ways of dealing with it.
I've said this before (and promptly got yelled at in the comments), but I'll say it again:
The problem with Western fencing is that it just isn't much fun to watch. This is true even if you've done some fencing yourself, and can sort-of follow what is going on. In recent years, the Olympic bouts haven't even been televised.
The main issue is that the action is over in about two seconds. The other issue is that you usually can't follow what happened in those two seconds. Quite often it appears that both fencers have scored a hit, and the question of who gets a point comes down to the judge's interpretation of arcane "right-of-way" rules.
This is just wrong. Swordfighting is supposed to be fun to watch! How on earth do you take a swordfight and turn it into something duller than a golf tournament? Western fencing rules, that's how.
It's time they developed some variant forms of fencing. To begin with, get rid of the idea that the action should grind to a halt whenever anyone scores a valid touch-- and get rid of the idea that anything which happens a half-second after the touch "doesn't count". Boxing doesn't work that way. MMA doesn't work that way. Neither does real swordfighting, I would imagine.
While you're at it, why does everything have to take place on a fencing strip, where your only options for movement are "forward" and "back"? What is this, a side-scroller video game?
(Of course, on a serious note, I recognize that traditional Western fencing has its devoted followers, and I'm not suggesting that it should be abandoned. But variant forms can, and should, exist along the traditional forms.)
Indeed. As a casual observer this sort of thing makes me absolutely uninterested in participating in any unregulated Bitcoin exchange, not that I had any significant level of interest to begin with. I was curious so I looked at a bitcoin price chart-- doesn't seem to have dropped in response to this news, which is surprising.
The active infection is fairly easy to treat, but there is no known way yet to eradicate the latent, encysted infection.
Psychiatric researchers have known about this problem for a while, and they've even done a few controlled trials to see if schizophrenics etc. improve when given anti-toxoplasma agents. The trials were all failures. As more than one reviewer has pointed out, the failures were not surprising, because the anti-toxo agents are known to be ineffective against latent infection.
I don't give a fuck about Twitter and its stupid fucking abuse policy. The real story of interest here is that multiple digital news outlets are laying off journalists left and right. They're nontraditional news outlets, but they are major news outlets nonetheless, and most of them are owned by companies who could easily afford to keep the journalists employed. For instance, I would guess that the journalists working for Verizon-- the parent company of several of these news outlets-- represent less than 0.1% of their labor costs.
They could keep them around if they wanted to, but they don't want to.
...wouldn't you design it so that it stuck around the target system, maybe doing flybys of the planets, instead of sailing straight through?
Also, Oumuamua was going about 1/10,000 of c. Not much faster than Voyager, and Voyager wasn't built for speed. Wouldn't you design an interstellar probe to be faster?
Do you REALLY want to live in a world where food becomes genuinely seasonal and regional again, and you have to plan "what do I feel like eating tonight" around "what does the store actually have available to PURCHASE this week?"
You were going to a crap supermarket then. There are plenty of world-class cheeses made in the US. They might represent a small share of the overall market, so I understand the frustration of your cheese-importing friend, but they exist.
Yes, but if I'm not mistaken, all of the hard-science papers you cite were published in "predatory journals"-- journals that claim to be peer reviewed but actually have no peer-review process whatsoever, and will publish any random string of characters as long as you pay the hefty publication fee.
What was significant about the Lindsay/Boghossian hoax is that they deliberately sent their "fake papers" to high-impact-factor journals with a strong reputation. The hoaxsters themselves said that there wouldn't be any point in sending their papers to predatory journals, since we already know those journals publish anything.
So in other words, it's not a universal basic income. It's a form of assistance for the very poor, which you stop receiving as soon as you start to make a decent wage. In other words, exactly like every other form of welfare that exists currently. Only the details might be different (and currently there aren't any details).
Multiply a UBI which is just barely over the poverty level ($12,000) by the adult population of the US (300 million), and you get a price tag of $3.6 trillion per year. How much "data" do you need to collect before you figure out that this is a non-starter?
Indeed. The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
Lord of the Flies is about a bunch of schoolkids who start out trying to cooperate and end up turning on each other, so I don't know what it has to do with a game where the explicit goal is for everyone to kill each other. Because they both take place on an island?
I'm sure they're not on Grubhub, and I don't even know if you can sign up for Grubhub if you're a food vendor. The point though is that Grubhub has reduced the number of traditional restaurant visits so it's probably reducing sales for vendors as well.
Perhaps you would follow my meaning better if instead of using the phrase "virtue signalling", I used a much older term: "sanctimoniousness". Or "holier-than-thou", if you prefer.
All of these terms refer to the same behavior: You express outrage and anger at someone else's speech or behavior, with the primary (but unstated) goal of letting the reader know that *you*, personally, are much too virtuous to ever engage in that kind of speech or behavior.
(Not really a fan of the term "virtue signalling", to be honest, simply because it's overused at this point. There is a great piece of advice George Orwell gives in his essay "Politics and the English Language": "If you notice that you have used a phrase in your writing that you think you may have read somewhere else, cut it out". (I'm paraphrasing).)
Slashdot Mirror
This is not just a bad analogy; it's a horrible, morally bankrupt analogy.
There are two important things to consider about nuclear weapons: 1) They inevitably result in enormous collateral damage to noncombatants, including children; 2) they cause environmental damage that affects everyone on the planet, including the ones who used the nuclear weapons.
I think there is a strong case to be made that nuclear weapons violate basic laws of war, in the same manner that biological weapons do. (Go ahead, fight me. You're unlikely to change my viewpoint on this).
GOT's dragons do none of the above. They're big flying flamethrowers, and the show has established that they can be used in a relatively surgical manner.
I understand your point, but I really donâ(TM)t think I am misreading the DAâ(TM)s statement. Lacey refers to âoepeople erasing the mistakes of THEIR pastââ" the implication is that the mistake was committed by them, and not the state. If Lacey meant the latter, itâ(TM)s a damn peculiar way to phrase things.
"This collaboration will improve people's lives by erasing the mistakes of their past and hopefully lead them on a path to a better future."
What a condescending, arrogant statement from DA Jackie Lacey.
The process currently underway, in which old convictions are expunged, is not about the convicted individuals "turning over a new leaf" and deciding to straighten up and fly right. Nor is it about the state suddenly adopting an attitude of forgiveness. It's about the state acknowledging that it made a mistake, and punished people that it should not have.
And the "path to a better future" includes legal weed, for those who want it.
Yeah, I was thinking about Black Panther when I wrote the comment. But the conversations around Black Panther weren't even remotely as stupid-- despite the fact that the movie was more overtly political than Captain Marvel.
Since I wrote this comment, I've actually seen some footage of Brie Larson talking-- it's part of this (highly recommended) review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And, Christ, is she ever annoying. I can't pinpoint a single thing that she says that I actually *disagree* with. But she's so unlikeable and condescending that I almost want to disagree with her based on her personality alone.
The study presents a forced choice between two incorrect belief systems-- "Merit is the sole determinant of success" and "Merit has nothing to do with success"-- and then tries to determine which belief system is "worse" from a psychological standpoint. Of course, both belief systems are irrational and stupid, and no one with an ounce of common sense would subscribe to either one of them. It's a classic example of how *not* to do psychological research.
Disclaimer: I haven't RTFA. Maybe the actual research is very good, and it's just the summary that is stupid.
it's now officially impossible to have an opinion or discussion about this film, because it's become nothing more than a political litmus test. It's funny-- I don't think there has ever been a movie in the history of film where the conversation around the film has so thoroughly degenerated into a politically-motivated pissing contest. Even films with an overt and hard-edged political or social message, like "Do The Right Thing", were still viewed as works of art, which you could discuss as *films* first and as political statements second.
I think that trolls on both sides of the political spectrum share precisely equal amounts of blame for this situation.
...Yes, I agree with you that "persuasion and reasoned arguments" will not work, because we're talking about a group of people who can't think rationally. My point is it is *equally* useless to try to prevent this group of people from hearing of the idea in the first place. Even if you were able to somehow succeed in that goal, these folks would just run across another, equally destructive idea and start believing in that instead. The idea itself is not what is dangerous. The thought process of the people who believe in the idea is what is dangerous.
You know, I've been commenting on Slashdot for about 17 years. Usually if someone takes the time to respond to one of my comments, it's worth my time to read it. Of course every now and then, I've received responses to my comments that I thought were disagreeable, or logically flawed, or just wrong for some reason.
But I think this is the first time I've encountered a response that is just flat-out dumb. Hats off to you, sir.
It's interesting that you seem to regard a theory as a sort of infectious agent-- something which floats around in the ether and cause previously healthy brains to become afflicted.
You can try to restrict "wrong" ideas all you want. Alternately (a better idea) you can try to combat "wrong" ideas through persuasion and reasoned argument. At the end of the day, no matter what you do, there are going to be some individuals who are going to believe in things that are simply wrong or crazy. 1% (more or less) of every human population has schizophrenia. 2-3% (more or less) of every human population has mental retardation (or developmental delay, to use the kinder and more modern term). An additional, indeterminate percentage will simply be allergic to logical argument for some other reason. All of these sub-groups are always going to be with us, ain't nothing you can do. Get used to it. Accept it. Find reasonable ways of dealing with it.
Or John Cale. Or Dylan Thomas. Or... John Cale singing Dylan Thomas.
I've said this before (and promptly got yelled at in the comments), but I'll say it again:
The problem with Western fencing is that it just isn't much fun to watch. This is true even if you've done some fencing yourself, and can sort-of follow what is going on. In recent years, the Olympic bouts haven't even been televised.
The main issue is that the action is over in about two seconds. The other issue is that you usually can't follow what happened in those two seconds. Quite often it appears that both fencers have scored a hit, and the question of who gets a point comes down to the judge's interpretation of arcane "right-of-way" rules.
This is just wrong. Swordfighting is supposed to be fun to watch! How on earth do you take a swordfight and turn it into something duller than a golf tournament? Western fencing rules, that's how.
It's time they developed some variant forms of fencing. To begin with, get rid of the idea that the action should grind to a halt whenever anyone scores a valid touch-- and get rid of the idea that anything which happens a half-second after the touch "doesn't count". Boxing doesn't work that way. MMA doesn't work that way. Neither does real swordfighting, I would imagine.
While you're at it, why does everything have to take place on a fencing strip, where your only options for movement are "forward" and "back"? What is this, a side-scroller video game?
(Of course, on a serious note, I recognize that traditional Western fencing has its devoted followers, and I'm not suggesting that it should be abandoned. But variant forms can, and should, exist along the traditional forms.)
Indeed. As a casual observer this sort of thing makes me absolutely uninterested in participating in any unregulated Bitcoin exchange, not that I had any significant level of interest to begin with. I was curious so I looked at a bitcoin price chart-- doesn't seem to have dropped in response to this news, which is surprising.
The active infection is fairly easy to treat, but there is no known way yet to eradicate the latent, encysted infection.
Psychiatric researchers have known about this problem for a while, and they've even done a few controlled trials to see if schizophrenics etc. improve when given anti-toxoplasma agents. The trials were all failures. As more than one reviewer has pointed out, the failures were not surprising, because the anti-toxo agents are known to be ineffective against latent infection.
I don't give a fuck about Twitter and its stupid fucking abuse policy. The real story of interest here is that multiple digital news outlets are laying off journalists left and right. They're nontraditional news outlets, but they are major news outlets nonetheless, and most of them are owned by companies who could easily afford to keep the journalists employed. For instance, I would guess that the journalists working for Verizon-- the parent company of several of these news outlets-- represent less than 0.1% of their labor costs.
They could keep them around if they wanted to, but they don't want to.
if you're listening over Bluetooth, or using one of those $15 iPhone dongles as a DAC.
...wouldn't you design it so that it stuck around the target system, maybe doing flybys of the planets, instead of sailing straight through?
Also, Oumuamua was going about 1/10,000 of c. Not much faster than Voyager, and Voyager wasn't built for speed. Wouldn't you design an interstellar probe to be faster?
Do you REALLY want to live in a world where food becomes genuinely seasonal and regional again, and you have to plan "what do I feel like eating tonight" around "what does the store actually have available to PURCHASE this week?"
Yes.
You were going to a crap supermarket then. There are plenty of world-class cheeses made in the US. They might represent a small share of the overall market, so I understand the frustration of your cheese-importing friend, but they exist.
Yes, but if I'm not mistaken, all of the hard-science papers you cite were published in "predatory journals"-- journals that claim to be peer reviewed but actually have no peer-review process whatsoever, and will publish any random string of characters as long as you pay the hefty publication fee.
What was significant about the Lindsay/Boghossian hoax is that they deliberately sent their "fake papers" to high-impact-factor journals with a strong reputation. The hoaxsters themselves said that there wouldn't be any point in sending their papers to predatory journals, since we already know those journals publish anything.
So in other words, it's not a universal basic income. It's a form of assistance for the very poor, which you stop receiving as soon as you start to make a decent wage. In other words, exactly like every other form of welfare that exists currently. Only the details might be different (and currently there aren't any details).
Multiply a UBI which is just barely over the poverty level ($12,000) by the adult population of the US (300 million), and you get a price tag of $3.6 trillion per year. How much "data" do you need to collect before you figure out that this is a non-starter?
Indeed. The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
Lord of the Flies is about a bunch of schoolkids who start out trying to cooperate and end up turning on each other, so I don't know what it has to do with a game where the explicit goal is for everyone to kill each other. Because they both take place on an island?
I'm sure they're not on Grubhub, and I don't even know if you can sign up for Grubhub if you're a food vendor. The point though is that Grubhub has reduced the number of traditional restaurant visits so it's probably reducing sales for vendors as well.
Perhaps you would follow my meaning better if instead of using the phrase "virtue signalling", I used a much older term: "sanctimoniousness". Or "holier-than-thou", if you prefer.
All of these terms refer to the same behavior: You express outrage and anger at someone else's speech or behavior, with the primary (but unstated) goal of letting the reader know that *you*, personally, are much too virtuous to ever engage in that kind of speech or behavior.
(Not really a fan of the term "virtue signalling", to be honest, simply because it's overused at this point. There is a great piece of advice George Orwell gives in his essay "Politics and the English Language": "If you notice that you have used a phrase in your writing that you think you may have read somewhere else, cut it out". (I'm paraphrasing).)