Should he be persuaded immediately to withdraw all U.S. troops, not only would the Taliban instantly re-take control of Afghanistan, they would wreak horrific retribution against the most westernized sectors of Afghani society (i.e. - the most civilized and tolerant sectors), and plunge the country back into the 14th century hellhole it was before we invaded it in 2001.
Which will happen whether we leave today, or whether we leave in 2112. The longer we stay, the more hated we become by Afghanis. That plays right into the Taliban's hands.
It's a lousy, no-win situation to find ourselves stuck in
We're not stuck in it. Obama is choosing to prolong it. There's no reason to believe any occupying force can ever civilize Afghanistan. Why do you think Obama can succeed where the Soviets, the British, even Alexander the Great failed?
Why do you imagine voting in the primaries would help? Who would you have voted for in 2008 who was a more credible agent for reform than Obama? He was the most credible agent for change, not just in 2008, but in my lifetime. He not only didn't deliver on the change, he accelerated the abuses he was elected to reform. Working with the parties is a hopeless endeavor.
Your statement sounds nice but it's also a complete misinterpretation of the purpose. Copyright exists to protect the creators and promote creation of works. This much is true.
No, that's half true. Copyright doesn't exist to "protect" anything. It exists solely to promote the creation of works.
What it does not exist to do is to give those who would blatantly use the works of others for their own purposes simply because they call it "art".
You're right, that's not why copyright exists. Do you think I claimed it was? In the absence of copyright people would be able to make whatever derivative works they wanted. So the implementation of copyright cannot possibly be intended to enable people to do something they were already able to do.
I see it as creating a video based on someone elses creative work, their script,
That's exactly what it is, and it should be encouraged.
There's nothing to explain, the details of the process are irrelevant. Your scheme is still thermodynamically impossible. I don't know how to explain it any simpler, so I'll just repeat myself.
Any energy you are drawing from the heat and converting to light (by any process at all) can be used for useful work. If you direct that energy away from Earth, you are going to have to make up for that energy with some other source. Generating more energy for useful work will produce more heat than you extracted in the first place.
This follows trivially from the laws of thermodynamics. There is no free lunch.
couple this with the research from a few weeks ago that allowed "heat extraction" with tiny LEDs, and we may just solve the big problem: nuclear fusion/fission to generate electricity which is then used for a carbon neutral industry/transport, and eliminate extra heat by pointing LEDs at the sky; basically we could have a society that uses a lot of energy, but we don't produce any extra heat or CO2 on average.
Uh, no. If you can extract energy from heat and convert it into light with an LED, you can do work with that energy. Directing it into space would simply waste it. You'd have to generate more energy to offset the wasted energy you sent into space, which would generate more heat than you extracted in the first place. Simple thermodynamics.
The power vacuum will be atrocious whether we leave now or if we leave in 10 years. This isn't a "you broke it, you bought it" situation. Afghanistan was broken when we got there, and it will be broken when we leave. The only question is how many lives we throw away before we realize that fact.
It increasingly seems that no one is winning from this war.
Increasingly? It was obvious from the start that this was a fool's errand. Afghanistan isn't called the graveyard of empires for no reason.
Just to put some perspective on this, Bales allegedly killed 17 civilians. NATO killed 410 civilians last year. If it took 10 such massacres to get us out of Afghanistan, we'd still be ahead by a factor of 2.
Bales is no worse than the war mongers keeping us in Afghanistan. At least he potentially has TBI and/or PTSD to blame. Obama has no one to blame but himself for civilian deaths in Afghanistan.
Start with local and state elections. Get a few people in and show that they're competent. Then stand for congress.
All the while that you're working on the political machine, the political machine is working on you. By the time you actually achieve any power, you're beholden to the same special interests you set out to oppose.
The only time I know of political parties becoming established and successful more quickly than this have been in new democracies
Exactly. The only chance we have is to call America done and start over.
conservatives can pass a "Turing test" and pretend to be a believable liberal; Liberals cannot pass the same test pretending to be conservatives.
Psychopaths can pass for neurotypicals easily. It's not so easy for a neurotypical to pass for a psychopath.
Wealth is not stuff. It is the intelligent arrangement and usage of stuff. Infinite wealth is possible from even tiny amounts of raw materials - it is just harder.
You didn't answer the GP's question. Even if we allow that wealth is not a zero sum game (which it isn't, and I don't know anyone who seriously claims it is), it's still finite.
If wealth is the intelligent arrangement of stuff, n amount of stuff yields at most n! amount of wealth. For finite n, n! is finite.
But of course you realize that. This is a silly little semantic digression. Everyone knows that the economy can be either a positive sum game or negative sum game, depending on policy. Conservatives and liberals just disagree on which policies lead to which outcomes.
Wouldn't the environmental movement be subverting science if it only funds, pushes, talks about environmentally damaging industrial practices?
What exactly are you saying here? Environmentalists should picket both wind farms and coal plants or they're being unscientific?
Or, while it's a minority, there is a portion of people out there that try to use evolution as proof against religion.
Nobody, not even Dawkins, uses evolution as "proof" against religion. Every skeptic knows that you can't prove the non-existence of something.
What people actually claim is that since we have a secular, mechanisitc explanation for the production of complexity that complexity cannot be used as an argument for theism.
That is not a hard distinction to make. Yet conservatives screw it up regularly. Why do you think that is? I have an idea...
1) Climate change of this magnitude and speed has never occurred at any point in history. Also, the fact that you are skeptical is not evidence against the assertion. That's just antiscientific argument from incredulity.
2) Nobody has provided any evidence or any arguments that we are on the right side of the laffer curve. The mere existence of the curve is enough to get conservatives to shut off their brains apparently. As for inequality, systemic inequality destroys empires. If you want America to continue to exist, you have to include the lower 99%. Otherwise it's over.
3) We've tried private health care for the past century. When are these savings going to start? If it was going to happen, it would have happened already. Your hypothesis has been tested and found to be incorrect. Clinging to this model is unscientific.
4) When the Journal of the American Medical Association says that the American health system is not the best in the world, just fucking listen OK?
5) Apparently sex ed is too hard for conservatives to do correctly. The conservative view on sex ed is based on the unscientific idea that a lump of cells is equivalent to a child. It's also based on the unscientific idea that if you don't teach kids about sex they won't have it.
That's pretty much exactly what IQ measures, by design, and often weighted to account for cultural differences.
That's exactly what some IQ researchers wish to claim that IQ measures, but that's not the same as IQ actually measuring that. What IQ actually measures is a long standing topic of debate in the field. Less than a year ago this study was published showing that motivation plays a big role in the outcome of IQ tests. Or look at the work or Richard Nisbett, whose research shows the exact opposite of your claim that IQ differences persist after controlling for societal factors.
This is an excellent example of how conservatives misunderstand science. They take a statement like "IQ measures intelligence" as fact, and don't question the evidence behind it.
It's not that the points are unpersuasive. It's that the people who make the decisions are serving their own self interest rather than their customers.
I study the anti-science movement in both conservatives and liberals, and the although they are both equally anti-science in their own way
This thread is full of examples of anti-scientific positions by conservatives. I've been asking conservatives to come up with anti-scientific positions by liberals. I haven't gotten any responses that weren't themselves based on anti-scientific reasoning by the poster.
Since you apparently study the field, I'd be interested in hearing what liberal positions are anti-scientific and how those positions rival conservative anti-scientism in extent.
Just because someone claims to be a conservative doesn't automatically mean he or she is going out shooting up minorities or raping the landscape.
No, but it means they vote for people who do far, far worse. George Zimmerman has the blood of one young man on his hands. Bush voters have the blood of a hundred thousand Iraqis.
Science shows that abstinence only programs have worse outcomes than holistic sex education(by which I mean sex ed that includes condoms). Yet conservatives continue to push abstinance only programs. That's anti-scientific.
I will stop insulting conservatives when they stop making insulting arguments.
You're right though, it is a sign of brainwashing. Conservatives are so brainwashed they can't tell how stupid their arguments actually are. The only hope I have is that if I repeat the truth often enough, it will sink in.
I'm still waiting for someone in this thread, just one person, to make just one argument for a typically conservative position that is not pants on head retarded. Your move conservatives.
I don't think anyone argues that IQ differentials exist between different races. The point in question is to what extent does IQ measure anything resembling generalized intelligence. The science that exists suggests that intelligence is not a scalar quantity at all. So claiming that a value like IQ is directly related to generalized intelligence is not a scientific claim at all.
Yet another example of how conservatives misunderstand science. Can anyone come up with a single typically conservative position that has a sound basis in science?
It's a bare board. They figured they'd get lumped in with arduino, etc, as "components" and not have to get certified. They're probably legally right, but the supplier doesn't want to take the risk. So they wait.
I dunno why they're waiting though. They could easily take their product to another supplier and sell out just as fast.
Nobody is arguing for blind faith in science. The important thing is to challenge scientific claims with evidence. No conservative bothers with evidence.
Belive me, I work in science. I know how petty and ego driven it can be. And I know how much pressure there is to get funding, and how that directs research. But these flaws are found in every human system.
What sets science apart is that we are constantly challenging each other, and checking each others work. Conservatives should like the dog-eat-dog nature of science. If you make a false claim, that's an opportunity for someone else to make their name by proving you wrong.
This makes science more trustworthy than any other field of human endeavor. But yes, we must always remain eternally vigilant.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it wasn't obvious at all.
I called it in 2001.
Should he be persuaded immediately to withdraw all U.S. troops, not only would the Taliban instantly re-take control of Afghanistan, they would wreak horrific retribution against the most westernized sectors of Afghani society (i.e. - the most civilized and tolerant sectors), and plunge the country back into the 14th century hellhole it was before we invaded it in 2001.
Which will happen whether we leave today, or whether we leave in 2112. The longer we stay, the more hated we become by Afghanis. That plays right into the Taliban's hands.
It's a lousy, no-win situation to find ourselves stuck in
We're not stuck in it. Obama is choosing to prolong it. There's no reason to believe any occupying force can ever civilize Afghanistan. Why do you think Obama can succeed where the Soviets, the British, even Alexander the Great failed?
Why do you imagine voting in the primaries would help? Who would you have voted for in 2008 who was a more credible agent for reform than Obama? He was the most credible agent for change, not just in 2008, but in my lifetime. He not only didn't deliver on the change, he accelerated the abuses he was elected to reform. Working with the parties is a hopeless endeavor.
I'm happy to let WB copy freely from my work. I copy freely from theirs.
Your statement sounds nice but it's also a complete misinterpretation of the purpose. Copyright exists to protect the creators and promote creation of works. This much is true.
No, that's half true. Copyright doesn't exist to "protect" anything. It exists solely to promote the creation of works.
What it does not exist to do is to give those who would blatantly use the works of others for their own purposes simply because they call it "art".
You're right, that's not why copyright exists. Do you think I claimed it was? In the absence of copyright people would be able to make whatever derivative works they wanted. So the implementation of copyright cannot possibly be intended to enable people to do something they were already able to do.
I see it as creating a video based on someone elses creative work, their script,
That's exactly what it is, and it should be encouraged.
No, that's just one means of achieving the end, which is producing more cultural output.
There's nothing to explain, the details of the process are irrelevant. Your scheme is still thermodynamically impossible. I don't know how to explain it any simpler, so I'll just repeat myself.
Any energy you are drawing from the heat and converting to light (by any process at all) can be used for useful work. If you direct that energy away from Earth, you are going to have to make up for that energy with some other source. Generating more energy for useful work will produce more heat than you extracted in the first place.
This follows trivially from the laws of thermodynamics. There is no free lunch.
Copyright exists to promote the creation of art. If CBS is using it to suppress the creation of art, that's not valid at all.
couple this with the research from a few weeks ago that allowed "heat extraction" with tiny LEDs, and we may just solve the big problem: nuclear fusion/fission to generate electricity which is then used for a carbon neutral industry/transport, and eliminate extra heat by pointing LEDs at the sky; basically we could have a society that uses a lot of energy, but we don't produce any extra heat or CO2 on average.
Uh, no. If you can extract energy from heat and convert it into light with an LED, you can do work with that energy. Directing it into space would simply waste it. You'd have to generate more energy to offset the wasted energy you sent into space, which would generate more heat than you extracted in the first place. Simple thermodynamics.
The power vacuum will be atrocious whether we leave now or if we leave in 10 years. This isn't a "you broke it, you bought it" situation. Afghanistan was broken when we got there, and it will be broken when we leave. The only question is how many lives we throw away before we realize that fact.
It increasingly seems that no one is winning from this war.
Increasingly? It was obvious from the start that this was a fool's errand. Afghanistan isn't called the graveyard of empires for no reason.
Just to put some perspective on this, Bales allegedly killed 17 civilians. NATO killed 410 civilians last year. If it took 10 such massacres to get us out of Afghanistan, we'd still be ahead by a factor of 2.
Bales is no worse than the war mongers keeping us in Afghanistan. At least he potentially has TBI and/or PTSD to blame. Obama has no one to blame but himself for civilian deaths in Afghanistan.
Start with local and state elections. Get a few people in and show that they're competent. Then stand for congress.
All the while that you're working on the political machine, the political machine is working on you. By the time you actually achieve any power, you're beholden to the same special interests you set out to oppose.
The only time I know of political parties becoming established and successful more quickly than this have been in new democracies
Exactly. The only chance we have is to call America done and start over.
Oh, so it's an abomination. Gotcha.
conservatives can pass a "Turing test" and pretend to be a believable liberal; Liberals cannot pass the same test pretending to be conservatives.
Psychopaths can pass for neurotypicals easily. It's not so easy for a neurotypical to pass for a psychopath.
Wealth is not stuff. It is the intelligent arrangement and usage of stuff. Infinite wealth is possible from even tiny amounts of raw materials - it is just harder.
You didn't answer the GP's question. Even if we allow that wealth is not a zero sum game (which it isn't, and I don't know anyone who seriously claims it is), it's still finite.
If wealth is the intelligent arrangement of stuff, n amount of stuff yields at most n! amount of wealth. For finite n, n! is finite.
But of course you realize that. This is a silly little semantic digression. Everyone knows that the economy can be either a positive sum game or negative sum game, depending on policy. Conservatives and liberals just disagree on which policies lead to which outcomes.
Wouldn't the environmental movement be subverting science if it only funds, pushes, talks about environmentally damaging industrial practices?
What exactly are you saying here? Environmentalists should picket both wind farms and coal plants or they're being unscientific?
Or, while it's a minority, there is a portion of people out there that try to use evolution as proof against religion.
Nobody, not even Dawkins, uses evolution as "proof" against religion. Every skeptic knows that you can't prove the non-existence of something.
What people actually claim is that since we have a secular, mechanisitc explanation for the production of complexity that complexity cannot be used as an argument for theism.
That is not a hard distinction to make. Yet conservatives screw it up regularly. Why do you think that is? I have an idea...
There's nothing lazy about not trying hard when you have no reason to try hard. That's sheer efficiency.
1) Climate change of this magnitude and speed has never occurred at any point in history. Also, the fact that you are skeptical is not evidence against the assertion. That's just antiscientific argument from incredulity.
2) Nobody has provided any evidence or any arguments that we are on the right side of the laffer curve. The mere existence of the curve is enough to get conservatives to shut off their brains apparently. As for inequality, systemic inequality destroys empires. If you want America to continue to exist, you have to include the lower 99%. Otherwise it's over.
3) We've tried private health care for the past century. When are these savings going to start? If it was going to happen, it would have happened already. Your hypothesis has been tested and found to be incorrect. Clinging to this model is unscientific.
4) When the Journal of the American Medical Association says that the American health system is not the best in the world, just fucking listen OK?
5) Apparently sex ed is too hard for conservatives to do correctly. The conservative view on sex ed is based on the unscientific idea that a lump of cells is equivalent to a child. It's also based on the unscientific idea that if you don't teach kids about sex they won't have it.
That's pretty much exactly what IQ measures, by design, and often weighted to account for cultural differences.
That's exactly what some IQ researchers wish to claim that IQ measures, but that's not the same as IQ actually measuring that. What IQ actually measures is a long standing topic of debate in the field. Less than a year ago this study was published showing that motivation plays a big role in the outcome of IQ tests. Or look at the work or Richard Nisbett, whose research shows the exact opposite of your claim that IQ differences persist after controlling for societal factors.
This is an excellent example of how conservatives misunderstand science. They take a statement like "IQ measures intelligence" as fact, and don't question the evidence behind it.
Stupid fucking conservative.
It's not that the points are unpersuasive. It's that the people who make the decisions are serving their own self interest rather than their customers.
I study the anti-science movement in both conservatives and liberals, and the although they are both equally anti-science in their own way
This thread is full of examples of anti-scientific positions by conservatives. I've been asking conservatives to come up with anti-scientific positions by liberals. I haven't gotten any responses that weren't themselves based on anti-scientific reasoning by the poster.
Since you apparently study the field, I'd be interested in hearing what liberal positions are anti-scientific and how those positions rival conservative anti-scientism in extent.
Just because someone claims to be a conservative doesn't automatically mean he or she is going out shooting up minorities or raping the landscape.
No, but it means they vote for people who do far, far worse. George Zimmerman has the blood of one young man on his hands. Bush voters have the blood of a hundred thousand Iraqis.
Science shows that abstinence only programs have worse outcomes than holistic sex education(by which I mean sex ed that includes condoms). Yet conservatives continue to push abstinance only programs. That's anti-scientific.
I will stop insulting conservatives when they stop making insulting arguments.
You're right though, it is a sign of brainwashing. Conservatives are so brainwashed they can't tell how stupid their arguments actually are. The only hope I have is that if I repeat the truth often enough, it will sink in.
I'm still waiting for someone in this thread, just one person, to make just one argument for a typically conservative position that is not pants on head retarded. Your move conservatives.
I don't think anyone argues that IQ differentials exist between different races. The point in question is to what extent does IQ measure anything resembling generalized intelligence. The science that exists suggests that intelligence is not a scalar quantity at all. So claiming that a value like IQ is directly related to generalized intelligence is not a scientific claim at all.
Yet another example of how conservatives misunderstand science. Can anyone come up with a single typically conservative position that has a sound basis in science?
It's a bare board. They figured they'd get lumped in with arduino, etc, as "components" and not have to get certified. They're probably legally right, but the supplier doesn't want to take the risk. So they wait.
I dunno why they're waiting though. They could easily take their product to another supplier and sell out just as fast.
Nobody is arguing for blind faith in science. The important thing is to challenge scientific claims with evidence. No conservative bothers with evidence.
Belive me, I work in science. I know how petty and ego driven it can be. And I know how much pressure there is to get funding, and how that directs research. But these flaws are found in every human system.
What sets science apart is that we are constantly challenging each other, and checking each others work. Conservatives should like the dog-eat-dog nature of science. If you make a false claim, that's an opportunity for someone else to make their name by proving you wrong.
This makes science more trustworthy than any other field of human endeavor. But yes, we must always remain eternally vigilant.