Can you stand up? I do believe it's working.
Why would we want to numb existential distress? This emotion is a social corrective mechanism that tells us when society is moving in the wrong direction. The reason it is becoming more of a problem in modern times is because our society is profoundly ill and we perceive that on some level. In the same way physical pain makes one pull one's hand out of the fire, existential stress makes one reevaluate one's life and look at ways it could be made more meaningful and more fulfilling. Why don't we just make a drug to cure ambition, sexual desire and distress of the conscience while while we are at it and wreck the human race for good?
I think he was referring to the camps outside of Israel, and incidents like this.
Having said that, you are of course right that a comparison to nazi Germany is a great exaggeration. This does not make the behaviour any less reprehensible however.
I don't entirely agree with this. I think the reason major development houses don't put resources into procedural content generation is lack of imagination, and fear of taking risks. Several independentsoftwareresearchers have solo developed demonstration projects recently that hint at what can be achieved and how much work it takes, and in terms of programmer hours vs. artist hours it actually looks very promising, as well as in terms of actual product quality. I think the big studios just have a winning formula that is making them millions and they are afraid to step out of their comfort zone and risk trying something new.
It's not just whether there are other civilizations out there. It's also whether either of us would develop technology that the other would be able to understand or recognize as signals AND broadcast them during the time when they could be received AND with sufficient power to be received.
Actually I don't see it as being about that at all. The debate here is about other species existing, us knowing about them specifically is merely a question of our own knowledge about reality and has no bearing on reality outside of our heads. It is very anthropocentric to base theoretical assumptions about extraterrestrial life on our own ability to perceive that life.
A resource being finite does not guarantee that we will ever run out. The current theory is based on the observation that the cost and difficulty of exploiting the resource rises as we use more. It seems in fact to be exponential. We can therefore run out of economically exploitable fossil fuels in the distant future, but there will always be some left somewhere.
On my PC I use Pidgin, this is an irc client as well as supporting all the major IM networks. It even supports steam chat. It doesn't support skype chat but that is skype's fault and I don't have a facebook account so I can't say whether support in that area has been fixed. It is open source, someone should just set up an android port project. The net says this would be complicated and difficult but worth it IMO.
Being dickish? This sounds like an excellent addition to enhancing realism and add to the challenge. I hope they also support creating free to play and open source games, as well as donation based monetisation models. I am totally getting the pirate version of this game.
Because, in my eyes, when people stop getting paid for what they do, they'll stop doing it.
This is false. Sure they might do it less because they have to work another job, and don't have as much time for their personal passions. But real artists don't do it for the money. The fact that we force people to do work to survive is a separate issue and part of our social system. It has nothing to do wit DRM. It applies equally to charity and volunteer work and anything worthwhile that people do because they think it is worthwhile and not because of money.
I was going to mention buddism too. Not as a recommendation, but as a counterexample. The article talks about God, with an upper case G, a monotheistic god. A middle eastern organised religion god. It seems like a fundamental assumption that was made in the study to such a degree that it was not even questioned. Patients either believed in 'God' or didn't or somewhere in between. There does not appear to have been any questioning of this basic assumption at all. The psychological well-being that comes from belief comes from the feeling that one is part of something big and important, and intrinsically good. It can also be derived from one or more gods or deities with lower case letters, such as in hinduism or paganism, and also from beliefs like buddism and confucianism which require no godhead at all. It can even be derived from being part of secular organisations and movements as long as the philosophical scale of importance is large. The inherent bias of cultures that have juchrislam as their primary belief system is as strong as ever and so deeply entrenched it is not even controlled for in psychologocal science. Can we please look at the bigger picture?
It seems we fundamentally disagree on certain points. I understand that this is unlikely to change but here is my response nevertheless.
I used the idea of government based on social fairness and strong government merely as it was the opposite of what was discussed. It was meant as an example of something that is not mentioned or discussed in the article, there are other examples in between and in other ideological directions. I was disputing the summary here that suggests the article was expressing an opinion about whether open and connectedness in government is a bad idea. I believe TFA was not expressing such an idea. You appear to agree with me on that so we can move on. You brought up some new points to the discussion I would like to address those.
You don't believe in social fairness? As an idea? Social fairness is a principle that many governments (including the USA) are based on. Many countries do it better than the US. Income equality for example is a very strong indicator for almost all the things that signify well-being in a society. Economists use GDP, unemployment and national debt but the reality is the strongest statistical indicator is income equality. Things that signify well-being in a society include levels of mental illness, criminality, depression, violence, job productivity, life expectancy, child mortality, obesity, addiction, literacy. Saying you don't believe in social fairness is like saying you don't believe in freedom. Sure the exact meaning can be debated and perfection is unobtainable, but as a governing principle in societies it is not only common but also fairly powerful. For a short, easy to digest explanation of the statistical significance of economic inequality I recommend watching this video.
The point about openness and connectedness being at odds with strong government is also a major oversimplification. Most of the services and duties that a big government performs are things that need to be done. You maintain that many if not all of these would be better off being controlled by private citizens or corporations, but all these things need to be done by someone. Say we want openness and connectedness between things like sanitation, the power grid, telecommunications, justice, police, emergency services, medical care, education etc. etc. etc. are you really willing to claim that this would be easier if each of these areas were administrated by an independent private entity answerable only to it's shareholders? A single central authority by definition is already more connected than a group of private entities. Yes openness is difficult but I maintain that it would be even more difficult if all these services were split into the feudalistic private market.
There seems to be a fantasy among small government proponents that if you take a certain responsibility away from the government it will simply not need to be dealt with anymore, as though problems like crime, illness and household waste are somehow created by the government departments that deal with them. I believe in the US the waste disposal and sanitation are already run by private companies, probably this works ok although I am sure they must be heavily subsidised and the landfill and recycling infrastructure is still government administered (correct me if any of these assumptions are wrong). Can you imagine trying to get each of the many sanitation companies to commit to an open and connected system of public oversight?
Private owners tend to care more about capital and try to use it better than an indifferent government which doesn't have the incentives to care. So as a society, we have better use of capital to our benefit.
This is kind of a myth. Yes private owners care more about capital, but that doesn't mean that they use it for the improvement of society. These ideas have been tested and they don't measure up. Look historically at any instance of a government service being privatised. F
Forgive me if I am being over skeptical but the article claims
This results in an energy efficiency of more than 100 percent — a net energy gain.
So I think it is all a load of bull shoveled by 'we want to make people feel good about owning cars' lobby. This is true for most of the hydrogen as 'alternative energy' articles that show up here every other week. Hydrogen is an energy storage medium not an energy source.
For the "scared of guns" crowd out there: "What percentage of gun related crimes involve rifles?"
"What makes something an "assault" rifle?"
"If it is correct to ban something that is used more then 99% of the time for legal purposes then why are you allowed to use and own a car?"
This is not a very good analogy. The main legal purposes for assault rifles are hunting and target shooting. Both of these can be achieved with a bolt action rifle. If we wish to make an accurate firearm vs motor vehicle analogy it would be fairer to equate a bolt action rifle with a small efficient hatchback, and a high powered assault rifle with something like a HMMVW or an armored truck. Banning assault weapons is not like banning cars, it is like banning hummers and armoured trucks. While it might be a bit 'nanny state' to do so it is not actually taking anything away from people that they actually need.
In answer to your other questions:
Almost 0%
An assault rifle is a selective fire (selective between automatic, semi-automatic, or burst fire) rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. (suprised as a gun advocate you didn't know that one).
Yes, I am scared of guns. I am also scared of cars.
I would like to clarify briefly what the original article in the Baffler was talking about. I think the slashdot article and the summary on this thread which was copied directly from it miss a few important points. The article is not about how openness, transparency and mass participation in the government are in any way undesirable or impossible, nor is it about how that cannot or should not be achieved through technology. The article does not suggest that making government more open and connected is a bad idea as the headline here suggests. The article is disputing the specific ideas of a specific individual. This is referred to in the article as 'government 2.0', and as a meme created by Tim O'Reilly. The author specifically notes that O'Reilly did not come up with the ideas of openness and connectedness of government through technology, and accuses him of hijacking these ideas for his own purposes. It is these purposes that the article attempts to argue against.
So what is the article specifically saying is a bad thing?
The fundamental problem with O’Reilly’s vision is that, on the one hand, it’s all about having the private sector build new services that were unavailable when the government ran the show. Thus, it’s all about citizen-consumers, guided by the Invisible Hand, creating new value out of thin air.
The article frequently accuses O'Reilly of 'Randian' ideology. It speaks of O'Reilly wanting to strip down and privatise government. This is the government 2.0 that is being argued against. Ideas of open government based on social fairness and strong government are not discussed or even mentioned in the article. The only thing that is mentioned is the specific idea of open government based on hardcore capitalism and tea partyish libertarianism.
I think I can claim that I agree with almost everything Evgeny Morozov wrote, and still answer that yes, I think making government more open and connected is a good idea.
Why are you so sure you weren't fooled or simply mistaken? That's far far more likely than magic actually existing. But if it were genuine magic, the consequences are so enormous that relegating it to a mere anecdote is almost criminal.
If it's something you merely can't explain, making the leap to "magic" is no better than invoking a god to explain it.
This argument shows the exact complaint I have about skepticism and Randi in particular. What is magic if not simply something that we can't currently explain? You and most other skeptics define magic in such a way that it logically cannot exist. Clearly anyone using the word to refer to something they experienced isn't using that definition. If we are not using a uniform definition for magic we are not even having a scientific debate, merely a word fight. Let me go into more detail about the nuances of the two definitions. In each of these examples the skeptics are using the definition that is included in most dictionaries, which is understandable. But I am disagreeing with the dictionaries on the basis of logical inconsistency. The skeptics definition of magic is generally one that simply substitutes the word magic for the word supernatural. Supernatural is in turn defined as that which is outside nature or cannot be explained by natural laws. Nature and natural laws are defined as the matter and energy of the universe, and the way in which they interact in reality, ie. all that exists and is possible. So magic is therefore defined as that which does not exist and is not possible. This is fine if you want a word for that but I don't encounter things that don't exist and aren't possible in my daily life so I don't see a pressing need for a word so defined. If someone is talking about something they experienced in the real world and refer to it as magic, clearly they aren't using this definition, as it would be a logical contradiction and they would be saying something happened which didn't and can't happen. The real definition, ie. what people mean when they say magic, is that which is outside our current understanding of the natural laws. This is something that all scientists believe in, otherwise they wouldn't bother doing science. This is a definition of the word that actually has a use and isn't a complete waste of breath, and also that which is meant by the majority of people that use it. If it is something you merely can't explain, then it is magic. Even if it were found that something resembling Tolkein fantasy magic exists, and wizards were throwing fireballs at trolls, scientists would still be able and willing to test it, and develop theories as to how it works. Eventually a fuller understanding of the phenomena would be reached. It would therefore not be outside the laws of nature, and not supernatural. I would still prefer to call it magic however.
The basic problem is the false equivalence of 'all that we understand' and 'all that is'. The former is an infinitesimal subset of the latter, and many skeptics forget or ignore that.
Less than 5% of the power in the US is lost in transmission. This is significant, but hydrogen has many special problems which will probably make your idea a non-starter for the foreseeable future.
Problems such as the fact that hydrogen electrolysis loses way more than 5% of the energy. It was around 50% last time I checked and most of the new research that gets mentioned on slashdot completely fails to mention efficiency at all leading me to believe they have not improved it.
This. I remember in the original questions thread there were a number of questions which raised logical arguments expressing skepticism about the methods of the foundation itself especially the million dollar challenge. He responded to the drooling fanboy calling him 'mr. amazing' but not to his skeptics. Is skepticism discouraged from self reflection? Are there some things we shouldn't be skeptical about? I am skeptical about JR and his million dollar challenge. I believe it is pseudoscientific and also logically inconsistent in it's goals and methods. Want to encourage skepticism in all it's forms, or only use it to make a point? I am kind of skeptical about the methods and positions of the entire skepticism movement. Skepticism is about questioning everything, not just those things that make you psychologically uncomfortable.
"psychosomatic healing"
There is no such thing. That has been put to rest.
Citation please. In Germany where I live most hospitals have a psychosomatic medicine department. If it has been properly put to rest please refer me to the relevant evidence so I can put hundreds of trained doctors in their place.
Don't forget education. The solution to any skill shortage is usually education. You are of course right though the hiring practices and working conditions play a big part in this particular one. Well that didn't take 12 hours.
Theory is not a dirty word. An idea can be both theory and fact, it just means it is unproven. A conspiracy theory is a theory about a conspiracy. There is nothing wrong with theories about conspiracy. Nixon was also partly responsible for the massive stigma that is currently attached to the word. I am a conspiracy theorist, although only as a hobbyist. All good police detectives are also conspiracy theorists, they do this professionally. Most politicians are required to do some theorising about conspiracies from time to time. Conspiracy theorist is not an insult, and by avoiding the term you are merely playing into the hands of those who work hard to keep the term stigmatised, by re-framing the debate as though thinking about conspiracies makes you insane.
The reality is, if you don't believe in conspiracies you are insane.
This argument can be made for any form of mind altering substance. Beer was traditionally used as cheap fuel for slave labour so it is probably a stronger argument if you use psilocybin or marijuana.
Thank you for pointing that out. International is a major lie here. The US is the only country I know of that uses the absurd mm/dd/yy date format. I am so sick of people from the US tagging 'international' onto things that are entirely national. It is almost as bad as the miss universe pageant. For me it is international 'I am only wearing one sock while posting this' day. You better damn well celebrate with me it is international because I am the world.
Actually I hate the new pope because I love the bible and believe every word of it. You see the same part of the bible that says homosexuality is an abomination (Leviticus) also says:
Leviticus 21:20-23 "or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles...because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary"
Leviticus 19:27 "Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard."
This new pope wears glasses and is clean shaven, therefore according to the word of god he is just as much an abomination as any gay and he is desecrating the sanctuary of the lord. Stone him to death plz.
I could bring a few, mainly specific governments. I will list a few you can look up the details on wikipedia.
Socialist systems that didn't work (not always due to their socialist policies but nevertheless): USSR, North VIetnam, DDR, Greece
Governments with many socialist policies that seem to work well for them: Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, China.
Bear in mind this is a complex issue, the difference between the way things are done in these different countries is massive. It is not possible to compare for example the policies of China and Finland in any meaningful way as their situations are too different. The countries that have had failures with socialist systems usually had their problems as a result of things that had nothing to do with socialism, also the countries that had success with socialist policies often had other advantages from the start and can't point purely at socialism for their success. Cuba is a nice example of both. Socialism has given them a fairly good national system in terms of wealth equality, education, medicine. On the other hand they are still a very poor country, they have a lot of enemies (well at least one major one). One nice way to compare different systems is through statistics. A nice tool for this is google public data explorer. Things like literacy. life expectancy, child mortality, teachers per capita, doctors per capita, poverty etc. can be compared across different systems and the results can be surprising. On the other hand it is difficult to deduce causation from those statistics. One of the strongest arguments in favour of socialist policies I have ever heard was from a TED video which showed that statistically economic inequality (unfair distribution of wealth) is a very strong indicator for almost every form of social of social problem, to such a degree that if all the rich people in an inequal country were to give 90% of their wealth to a trust to support the poorest in society, even those rich people would be better off.
#1 thing to do about it- stop living in cities.
#2 thing to do about it- those who are unable to do #1, should plant food.
#3 thing to do about it- buy local as the #1 use of greenhouse gas causing fuel is SHIPPING.
None of this is rocket science.
I am doing 2 out of those three things (I live in a city). Even more I try to reduce my consumption or power and resources in other ways such as turning things off, and not buying things. It really isn't rocket science. On the other hand even rocket science is something that modern technology has made relatively easily, even hobbyists are doing it. We could each do more. We also need to work on the problems in larger scope, cooperative ways. Even with a large number of people living very sustainably in their own lives, there is still the problems of multinational corporations and industry and national governments, especially the war machine. So we need to work on things together as a species to really get this kind of thing sorted out. That is kind of the problem I was attempting to get at, even if you don't believe in global warming all (most of) these things still need to be done. We need more people to see this so they start helping instead of arguing.
Slashdot Mirror
Can you stand up? I do believe it's working. Why would we want to numb existential distress? This emotion is a social corrective mechanism that tells us when society is moving in the wrong direction. The reason it is becoming more of a problem in modern times is because our society is profoundly ill and we perceive that on some level. In the same way physical pain makes one pull one's hand out of the fire, existential stress makes one reevaluate one's life and look at ways it could be made more meaningful and more fulfilling. Why don't we just make a drug to cure ambition, sexual desire and distress of the conscience while while we are at it and wreck the human race for good?
I think he was referring to the camps outside of Israel, and incidents like this.
Having said that, you are of course right that a comparison to nazi Germany is a great exaggeration. This does not make the behaviour any less reprehensible however.
I don't entirely agree with this. I think the reason major development houses don't put resources into procedural content generation is lack of imagination, and fear of taking risks. Several independent software researchers have solo developed demonstration projects recently that hint at what can be achieved and how much work it takes, and in terms of programmer hours vs. artist hours it actually looks very promising, as well as in terms of actual product quality. I think the big studios just have a winning formula that is making them millions and they are afraid to step out of their comfort zone and risk trying something new.
It's not just whether there are other civilizations out there. It's also whether either of us would develop technology that the other would be able to understand or recognize as signals AND broadcast them during the time when they could be received AND with sufficient power to be received.
Actually I don't see it as being about that at all. The debate here is about other species existing, us knowing about them specifically is merely a question of our own knowledge about reality and has no bearing on reality outside of our heads. It is very anthropocentric to base theoretical assumptions about extraterrestrial life on our own ability to perceive that life.
A resource being finite does not guarantee that we will ever run out. The current theory is based on the observation that the cost and difficulty of exploiting the resource rises as we use more. It seems in fact to be exponential. We can therefore run out of economically exploitable fossil fuels in the distant future, but there will always be some left somewhere.
On my PC I use Pidgin, this is an irc client as well as supporting all the major IM networks. It even supports steam chat. It doesn't support skype chat but that is skype's fault and I don't have a facebook account so I can't say whether support in that area has been fixed. It is open source, someone should just set up an android port project. The net says this would be complicated and difficult but worth it IMO.
Being dickish? This sounds like an excellent addition to enhancing realism and add to the challenge. I hope they also support creating free to play and open source games, as well as donation based monetisation models. I am totally getting the pirate version of this game.
Because, in my eyes, when people stop getting paid for what they do, they'll stop doing it.
This is false. Sure they might do it less because they have to work another job, and don't have as much time for their personal passions. But real artists don't do it for the money. The fact that we force people to do work to survive is a separate issue and part of our social system. It has nothing to do wit DRM. It applies equally to charity and volunteer work and anything worthwhile that people do because they think it is worthwhile and not because of money.
I was going to mention buddism too. Not as a recommendation, but as a counterexample. The article talks about God, with an upper case G, a monotheistic god. A middle eastern organised religion god. It seems like a fundamental assumption that was made in the study to such a degree that it was not even questioned. Patients either believed in 'God' or didn't or somewhere in between. There does not appear to have been any questioning of this basic assumption at all. The psychological well-being that comes from belief comes from the feeling that one is part of something big and important, and intrinsically good. It can also be derived from one or more gods or deities with lower case letters, such as in hinduism or paganism, and also from beliefs like buddism and confucianism which require no godhead at all. It can even be derived from being part of secular organisations and movements as long as the philosophical scale of importance is large. The inherent bias of cultures that have juchrislam as their primary belief system is as strong as ever and so deeply entrenched it is not even controlled for in psychologocal science. Can we please look at the bigger picture?
I used the idea of government based on social fairness and strong government merely as it was the opposite of what was discussed. It was meant as an example of something that is not mentioned or discussed in the article, there are other examples in between and in other ideological directions. I was disputing the summary here that suggests the article was expressing an opinion about whether open and connectedness in government is a bad idea. I believe TFA was not expressing such an idea. You appear to agree with me on that so we can move on. You brought up some new points to the discussion I would like to address those.
You don't believe in social fairness? As an idea? Social fairness is a principle that many governments (including the USA) are based on. Many countries do it better than the US. Income equality for example is a very strong indicator for almost all the things that signify well-being in a society. Economists use GDP, unemployment and national debt but the reality is the strongest statistical indicator is income equality. Things that signify well-being in a society include levels of mental illness, criminality, depression, violence, job productivity, life expectancy, child mortality, obesity, addiction, literacy. Saying you don't believe in social fairness is like saying you don't believe in freedom. Sure the exact meaning can be debated and perfection is unobtainable, but as a governing principle in societies it is not only common but also fairly powerful. For a short, easy to digest explanation of the statistical significance of economic inequality I recommend watching this video.
The point about openness and connectedness being at odds with strong government is also a major oversimplification. Most of the services and duties that a big government performs are things that need to be done. You maintain that many if not all of these would be better off being controlled by private citizens or corporations, but all these things need to be done by someone. Say we want openness and connectedness between things like sanitation, the power grid, telecommunications, justice, police, emergency services, medical care, education etc. etc. etc. are you really willing to claim that this would be easier if each of these areas were administrated by an independent private entity answerable only to it's shareholders? A single central authority by definition is already more connected than a group of private entities. Yes openness is difficult but I maintain that it would be even more difficult if all these services were split into the feudalistic private market.
There seems to be a fantasy among small government proponents that if you take a certain responsibility away from the government it will simply not need to be dealt with anymore, as though problems like crime, illness and household waste are somehow created by the government departments that deal with them. I believe in the US the waste disposal and sanitation are already run by private companies, probably this works ok although I am sure they must be heavily subsidised and the landfill and recycling infrastructure is still government administered (correct me if any of these assumptions are wrong). Can you imagine trying to get each of the many sanitation companies to commit to an open and connected system of public oversight?
Private owners tend to care more about capital and try to use it better than an indifferent government which doesn't have the incentives to care. So as a society, we have better use of capital to our benefit.
This is kind of a myth. Yes private owners care more about capital, but that doesn't mean that they use it for the improvement of society. These ideas have been tested and they don't measure up. Look historically at any instance of a government service being privatised. F
This results in an energy efficiency of more than 100 percent — a net energy gain.
So I think it is all a load of bull shoveled by 'we want to make people feel good about owning cars' lobby. This is true for most of the hydrogen as 'alternative energy' articles that show up here every other week. Hydrogen is an energy storage medium not an energy source.
For the "scared of guns" crowd out there: "What percentage of gun related crimes involve rifles?" "What makes something an "assault" rifle?" "If it is correct to ban something that is used more then 99% of the time for legal purposes then why are you allowed to use and own a car?"
This is not a very good analogy. The main legal purposes for assault rifles are hunting and target shooting. Both of these can be achieved with a bolt action rifle. If we wish to make an accurate firearm vs motor vehicle analogy it would be fairer to equate a bolt action rifle with a small efficient hatchback, and a high powered assault rifle with something like a HMMVW or an armored truck. Banning assault weapons is not like banning cars, it is like banning hummers and armoured trucks. While it might be a bit 'nanny state' to do so it is not actually taking anything away from people that they actually need.
In answer to your other questions:
Almost 0%
An assault rifle is a selective fire (selective between automatic, semi-automatic, or burst fire) rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. (suprised as a gun advocate you didn't know that one).
Yes, I am scared of guns. I am also scared of cars.
So what is the article specifically saying is a bad thing?
The fundamental problem with O’Reilly’s vision is that, on the one hand, it’s all about having the private sector build new services that were unavailable when the government ran the show. Thus, it’s all about citizen-consumers, guided by the Invisible Hand, creating new value out of thin air.
The article frequently accuses O'Reilly of 'Randian' ideology. It speaks of O'Reilly wanting to strip down and privatise government. This is the government 2.0 that is being argued against. Ideas of open government based on social fairness and strong government are not discussed or even mentioned in the article. The only thing that is mentioned is the specific idea of open government based on hardcore capitalism and tea partyish libertarianism.
I think I can claim that I agree with almost everything Evgeny Morozov wrote, and still answer that yes, I think making government more open and connected is a good idea.
Why are you so sure you weren't fooled or simply mistaken? That's far far more likely than magic actually existing. But if it were genuine magic, the consequences are so enormous that relegating it to a mere anecdote is almost criminal. If it's something you merely can't explain, making the leap to "magic" is no better than invoking a god to explain it.
This argument shows the exact complaint I have about skepticism and Randi in particular. What is magic if not simply something that we can't currently explain? You and most other skeptics define magic in such a way that it logically cannot exist. Clearly anyone using the word to refer to something they experienced isn't using that definition. If we are not using a uniform definition for magic we are not even having a scientific debate, merely a word fight. Let me go into more detail about the nuances of the two definitions. In each of these examples the skeptics are using the definition that is included in most dictionaries, which is understandable. But I am disagreeing with the dictionaries on the basis of logical inconsistency. The skeptics definition of magic is generally one that simply substitutes the word magic for the word supernatural. Supernatural is in turn defined as that which is outside nature or cannot be explained by natural laws. Nature and natural laws are defined as the matter and energy of the universe, and the way in which they interact in reality, ie. all that exists and is possible. So magic is therefore defined as that which does not exist and is not possible. This is fine if you want a word for that but I don't encounter things that don't exist and aren't possible in my daily life so I don't see a pressing need for a word so defined. If someone is talking about something they experienced in the real world and refer to it as magic, clearly they aren't using this definition, as it would be a logical contradiction and they would be saying something happened which didn't and can't happen. The real definition, ie. what people mean when they say magic, is that which is outside our current understanding of the natural laws. This is something that all scientists believe in, otherwise they wouldn't bother doing science. This is a definition of the word that actually has a use and isn't a complete waste of breath, and also that which is meant by the majority of people that use it. If it is something you merely can't explain, then it is magic. Even if it were found that something resembling Tolkein fantasy magic exists, and wizards were throwing fireballs at trolls, scientists would still be able and willing to test it, and develop theories as to how it works. Eventually a fuller understanding of the phenomena would be reached. It would therefore not be outside the laws of nature, and not supernatural. I would still prefer to call it magic however.
The basic problem is the false equivalence of 'all that we understand' and 'all that is'. The former is an infinitesimal subset of the latter, and many skeptics forget or ignore that.
Less than 5% of the power in the US is lost in transmission. This is significant, but hydrogen has many special problems which will probably make your idea a non-starter for the foreseeable future.
Problems such as the fact that hydrogen electrolysis loses way more than 5% of the energy. It was around 50% last time I checked and most of the new research that gets mentioned on slashdot completely fails to mention efficiency at all leading me to believe they have not improved it.
This. I remember in the original questions thread there were a number of questions which raised logical arguments expressing skepticism about the methods of the foundation itself especially the million dollar challenge. He responded to the drooling fanboy calling him 'mr. amazing' but not to his skeptics. Is skepticism discouraged from self reflection? Are there some things we shouldn't be skeptical about? I am skeptical about JR and his million dollar challenge. I believe it is pseudoscientific and also logically inconsistent in it's goals and methods. Want to encourage skepticism in all it's forms, or only use it to make a point? I am kind of skeptical about the methods and positions of the entire skepticism movement. Skepticism is about questioning everything, not just those things that make you psychologically uncomfortable.
"psychosomatic healing" There is no such thing. That has been put to rest.
Citation please. In Germany where I live most hospitals have a psychosomatic medicine department. If it has been properly put to rest please refer me to the relevant evidence so I can put hundreds of trained doctors in their place.
Don't forget education. The solution to any skill shortage is usually education. You are of course right though the hiring practices and working conditions play a big part in this particular one. Well that didn't take 12 hours.
Theory is not a dirty word. An idea can be both theory and fact, it just means it is unproven. A conspiracy theory is a theory about a conspiracy. There is nothing wrong with theories about conspiracy. Nixon was also partly responsible for the massive stigma that is currently attached to the word. I am a conspiracy theorist, although only as a hobbyist. All good police detectives are also conspiracy theorists, they do this professionally. Most politicians are required to do some theorising about conspiracies from time to time. Conspiracy theorist is not an insult, and by avoiding the term you are merely playing into the hands of those who work hard to keep the term stigmatised, by re-framing the debate as though thinking about conspiracies makes you insane.
The reality is, if you don't believe in conspiracies you are insane.
The US doesn't follow the existing Geneva conventions of war, what makes you think an internet version would apply?
This argument can be made for any form of mind altering substance. Beer was traditionally used as cheap fuel for slave labour so it is probably a stronger argument if you use psilocybin or marijuana.
Thank you for pointing that out. International is a major lie here. The US is the only country I know of that uses the absurd mm/dd/yy date format. I am so sick of people from the US tagging 'international' onto things that are entirely national. It is almost as bad as the miss universe pageant. For me it is international 'I am only wearing one sock while posting this' day. You better damn well celebrate with me it is international because I am the world.
Actually I hate the new pope because I love the bible and believe every word of it. You see the same part of the bible that says homosexuality is an abomination (Leviticus) also says:
Leviticus 21:20-23 "or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles...because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary"
Leviticus 19:27 "Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard."
This new pope wears glasses and is clean shaven, therefore according to the word of god he is just as much an abomination as any gay and he is desecrating the sanctuary of the lord. Stone him to death plz.
I could bring a few, mainly specific governments. I will list a few you can look up the details on wikipedia.
Socialist systems that didn't work (not always due to their socialist policies but nevertheless): USSR, North VIetnam, DDR, Greece
Governments with many socialist policies that seem to work well for them: Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, China.
Bear in mind this is a complex issue, the difference between the way things are done in these different countries is massive. It is not possible to compare for example the policies of China and Finland in any meaningful way as their situations are too different. The countries that have had failures with socialist systems usually had their problems as a result of things that had nothing to do with socialism, also the countries that had success with socialist policies often had other advantages from the start and can't point purely at socialism for their success. Cuba is a nice example of both. Socialism has given them a fairly good national system in terms of wealth equality, education, medicine. On the other hand they are still a very poor country, they have a lot of enemies (well at least one major one). One nice way to compare different systems is through statistics.
A nice tool for this is google public data explorer. Things like literacy. life expectancy, child mortality, teachers per capita, doctors per capita, poverty etc. can be compared across different systems and the results can be surprising. On the other hand it is difficult to deduce causation from those statistics.
One of the strongest arguments in favour of socialist policies I have ever heard was from a TED video which showed that statistically economic inequality (unfair distribution of wealth) is a very strong indicator for almost every form of social of social problem, to such a degree that if all the rich people in an inequal country were to give 90% of their wealth to a trust to support the poorest in society, even those rich people would be better off.
#1 thing to do about it- stop living in cities. #2 thing to do about it- those who are unable to do #1, should plant food. #3 thing to do about it- buy local as the #1 use of greenhouse gas causing fuel is SHIPPING.
None of this is rocket science.
I am doing 2 out of those three things (I live in a city). Even more I try to reduce my consumption or power and resources in other ways such as turning things off, and not buying things. It really isn't rocket science. On the other hand even rocket science is something that modern technology has made relatively easily, even hobbyists are doing it. We could each do more. We also need to work on the problems in larger scope, cooperative ways. Even with a large number of people living very sustainably in their own lives, there is still the problems of multinational corporations and industry and national governments, especially the war machine. So we need to work on things together as a species to really get this kind of thing sorted out. That is kind of the problem I was attempting to get at, even if you don't believe in global warming all (most of) these things still need to be done. We need more people to see this so they start helping instead of arguing.