Humans are sometimes faced with those decisions, too. The reality is that there are some solutions that don't have any good answers -- just a bad answer and a worse one, and we can argue about which is which.
For every one of those kids/octogenarians the computer decides to execute, it could be that there will be 100's of people who get to live because computers took over the driving. So your "look at all the blood" argument is a little misleading.
That is just so stupid. Use a password-keeper and use strong passwords everywhere. Then you only need (1) physical access to your password keeper and (2) to remember one strong passphrase.
I didn't RTA, but when you say it's stupid not to always use a strong password, aren't you making an unwarranted assumption? There are some sites where it truly doesn't matter. On such sites I will never send any sensitive data, and all I want is to get past the annoying login to get to something I care about. You know, like the bugmenot cases. If you take the time to create such accounts for yourself with an insecure(!) and memorable password, there's nothing wrong with that.
Yeah and the 97% was about the climatologists doing formal climate change science.
How useful many of those papers are is another question. And the most useful function Cook's 97% paper serves is to filter out the scientists from the cargo cultists. I find it difficult not to laugh at anybody who considers the 97% paper a high quality scientific research result that is meaningful for the climate change action/inaction debate. In a way Cook was unintentionally sabotaging his own camp by putting out such nonsense, and sort of descending into self parody of everything that's wrong with politicized AGW alarmism.
You keep on insisting that AGW catastophism and AGW are basically the same thing. They are not. The first one you made up, the second is real.
I didn't insist that they are the same thing. I am well aware that they are not the same thing, and that's why the 97% number (even if rigorously derived, which I doubt) is not particularly relevant to the climate change action/inaction debate. Richard Lindzen could easily fall under the 97%.
97% of climatologists agree that the evidents to global warming caused by humans.
What does that even mean? Are you drunk?
Stop pretending this is not the case by lumping in loonies with scientists.
I agree with that approach. In general, we need to distinguish between formal climate science, which is largely a rational undertaking that aims to be useful, versus political agendas. Like the way certain loonies at the IPCC politicize this stuff, focus on unimportant or misleading elements[1], remove statements of uncertainty in the summaries[2], and blow warnings way out of proportion into Armageddon[3].
[1] Such as the (in)famous hockey stick, endlessly presented as the face of the IPCC reports for its shock value, even though it's not really as shocking as it seems when you understand how it was put together, e.g. dropping all of Briffa's tree ring proxies after 1960 or so because they didn't fit the desired curve, yet retaining earlier values from the series because they "fit the narrative".
[2] In fact, the actual peer reviewed academic material assembled by the IPCC tends to be very cautious in tone, and most people would be surprised to learn that the wild eyed AGW catastrophism associated with it has more to do with people's opinions (including scientists' opinions, don't get me wrong), but is not so much driven by the research itself.
[3] For example "All the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035! Doom! Flee for the hills!"
And saying "scientists" question it is an illegitimate statement. No one cares what a neurobiologist thinks of climate, and no one cares what a climatoligy thinks of nuerobiology. A non-expert is still a non-expert, even if he happens to be a scientist in some other field.
I agree with you on one level, and disagree on another. It is perfectly fine for a generic "scientist" to audit and evaluate scientific methods of another scientist. You don't have to be a biologist to criticize faulty statistics in one of our sadly abundant faulty medical studies. And similarly, if climate scientists claim more than is warranted by the data, you don't have to be a climate scientist to raise your hand and say "there's a problem with your handling of this data". Math is math, and statistics is statistics, and the kinds of errors people can make are really the same in a fundamental way across disciplines.
Now, if you want to predict exactly how much global temperatures will increase in the next 100 years or the next ten years, then yes, you need very complex models. If you want to understand what forces are behind those trends, you do not need complex models at all.
Carbon sensitivity can make the difference between an expectation of climate change catastrophe, versus the anthropogenic component being dwarfed in the long term by the fluctuations of natural variability. As far as I can tell, the urgency or non-urgency of the climate change debate rests on this piece. And we don't know the answer to it.
Anybody who denies AGW catastrophism is termed a "denier" and the 97% number is trotted out to refute them. So it's fair to point out that the number 97% is "nonsense" when used for that purpose. Even if the paper wasn't shoddy in its methods, its conclusion would be useless for the AGW alarmism debate, because pretty much everybody believes that climate changes and that humans "play a role".
Cheaper, cleaner, more efficient, renewable energy should be a goal regardless of global warming, and sooner is better than later.
I agree that this is highly desirable, although the execution of the goal is the tricky part. Ethanol is a great example of why government mandating of an allegedly cleaner alternative doesn't necessarily improve the situation.
Cook's paper doesn't mean what you want it to mean. Even if its methods were above reproach (which they're not, it's massively arbitrary and subject to confirmation bias), the result is still un-useful nonsense. And since pretty much everybody believes that humans impact the environment and thus impact climate change on some level, ITS SLOPPY METHODOLOGY WOULD INCLUDE SKEPTICS OF AGW CATASTROPHISM IN ITS 97%!!!!
Sorry, but yelling that made me feel a little better. And besides, you yelled. Toodle-oo!
No, sorry, the paper was nonsense. The link is to a skeptical blog that copies an open letter sent by a scientist who wanted to check their work. What Professor Tol was able to check revealed serious problems, but most of the source data was stubbornly held onto by Professor Cook, who didn't want anybody to refute his work.:p
Besides, if you read carefully above, you will see that the OP claimed that 97% of scientists believe in AGW catastrophism, which is obvious nonsense as well (there's a difference between 97% of scientists and 97% of published climate scientists that happened to be evaluated by Cook's highly arbitrary and secretive study).
OK, that was funny. But the 97% number is nonsense, just for the record. Skepticism about AGW catastrophism is rampant among the world's scientists at large (physicists, biologists, etc.), and many climate scientists have been cautiously coming out of the closet and poking sticks at the shaky foundations as well.
I'm a little bit surprised that Slashdot doesn't have more AGW catastrophism skeptics, to be honest. Ordinary people hear "supercomputer driven model simulation" and they think "oooh, it must be really accurate and able to predict the future". Anybody who understands statistics and the banal realities of computation knows the good old GIGO principle. Not to mention the reality that nobody has ever successfully predicted long term climate changes, so throwing a supercomputer at an impossible problem doesn't magically add credibility. *sigh* (goes back to reading Professor Judith Curry's blog)
As far as I can tell, this lawsuit determined that the Freedom of Information Act can't be used to get access to some official email correspondence paid for by public funds. Even if you are really gung-ho on AGW, that's not a result to automatically crow about.
Michael Mann is not my favorite scientist, as he has a pattern of cargo cultist behavior that has annoyed his peers (provoking words like "vomit" and "crock of s**t"). The lawsuit to watch is the one where Mann is suing the National Review (a conservative magazine) and Mark Steyn, a conservative satirist and commentator. Whether or not his overall beliefs about AGW are justified, Professor Mann does have skeletons in his closet, and if the court does its job properly, he will be smacked down hard.
Streaming quality is inversely related to video consumption. For example, at 2am when hardly anybody is online, you can get great streaming quality. I agree that it's confusing, since it should really be "Video consumption and streaming quality problem/contention level" or something.
I agree (as a regular VS, Xcode, and Eclipse user, in addition to Xamarin Studio and others) that Visual Studio is the awesomest IDE, but it's only fair to add that the "E" part has actually regressed a little in recent years. For example, they dropped support for macro recording/playback. I'm guessing their excuse was that they rewrote everything and didn't get around to it, but still... *grump* *grump*
OK, smartass, what is the evolutionary advantage for stupidity?
I suggest you ask evolutionary biologists. Specifically, go ask that group of evolutionary biologists standing over there lamenting their inability to connect with females, who somehow prefer muscularly ripped albeit less cranially endowed surfer dudes.
While I'm pretty sure you're just trolling, I'll go ahead and respond.
Wasn't intentionally trolling, thanks for taking the time to write out your thoughts. I actually debated somebody else on Slashdot who took your argument to another level and said that no company should be allowed to engage in political advocacy. I raised the example of the NYT and asked if he would axe their editorial department (as far as political commentary/advocacy goes), and was shocked that he said he would. Of course, it wasn't fair to paint you with that brush...
... except... that to me the freedom for corporations to engage in political advocacy flows from the 1st Amendment, so in a sense I do believe that if you chop down that tree, then the NYT loses its legal protection from further government censorship. If people working together as a corporation don't have the right to speak (with a single voice) as that corporation, that's a big problem to me under the 1st Amendment and also on purely philosophical/ethical/civic grounds.
OK, I admit to a few fallacies; thanks for useful links.:p
As for the rest of that comment, how does lack of ownership make my opinion irrelevant?
There's nothing wrong with you having an opinion, but the owners of a company get to decide what that company does and says.
For instance: I support Net Neutrality, should I quit my job at Comcast? I'm just a cable tech, but the Corporate guys are using the revenue I generate for the company to fight against Net Neutrality.
I certainly hear you on the monopoly thing. When a company gets that big and ubiquitous it enters a gray area where I will not be so quick to a libertarian analysis of their right to do whatever they want within the law.
Truth be told though, I'd much rather attack the problem from the other side, as proposed and discussed way back in TFA. Limit the total revenue that a politician can spend on campaigns, from all sources, and more strictly monitor gifts/bribes. Not only will this solve the root problem of Corpos buying politicians by the bucket, but it will allow the politician to actually do their jobs and legislate, instead of spending their entire terms fundraising to compete with the challenger who has nothing but free time to fundraise.
I think this will change the problem, but most likely not solve it. They will just shift the money to the fringes and advocate indirectly, which they are already doing in many ways. ("See, we're not working for Joe, we're just attacking Mary!")
But the corporation, the group, the amassed collection of people does not have rights.
Really? Two people working together lose their freedom of speech just because they happen to be working together? You will next suggest shutting down the NYT editorial department, I suppose?
CocaCola does not get a vote in November.
Yawn, straw man fallacy.
I didn't band together with the CEO of my company to accomplish something political.
You don't own the company you work for, so this is irrelevant. The rights of the company to freedom of speech should be equivalent to the rights of the owners of the company, since the company does what they say and speaks for them.
I'd wager that the vast VAST majority of Americans didn't pick their current job because of the political leanings of the C-suite (if those political leanings are even allowed to leak into public knowledge)
Who cares? Private companies are owned and run by people. Those people should decide what the companies do and say. If you want the company to do or say something different, start your own business and spend your own money. What is this, communism?:p
Corporations are absolutely NOT people.
Obviously it depends on the sense in which you use the phrase. In the sense in which I use it, every company is people. You can list out their names -- the owners or stockholders of the company who decide what that company will do.
English lesson time: the word "company" refers to a "company of people", i.e. more than one person joined together to do something together. In this context, a non-owning employee (like yourself) is not a member of that company.
Something like that would be obviously unconstitutional
No it wouldn't be. Once Lessig's crowd drills it into everybody's heads that it's OK for the government to block expenditure of money for political ends, then the government will proceed to do so whenever and wherever it can get away with it -- that is, whenever it's to the advantage of the current administration. This is giving government a new avenue to restrict people's political freedoms, and it will certainly be abused.
Raising money to make a political documentary that we don't like? We're gonna shut you down. Gotta get all that dirty money out of politics, you know. It's for the people's good.
So where do you think this would stop? What administration since that of Cincinattus and a few others has ever been anything other than the camel's nose in the tent?
OK, you are giving some fine analogies. But really, we're not talking about making it illegal to explicitly buy out a politician, because that is already illegal. You are suggesting that it should be illegal (by analogy) to pay money to a woman at all, whether or not there is sleeping with oneself involved. Or that there should be limits as to how much money a man can pay a woman. You want to cut out the gold digger girlfriends, and don't care whether you destroy legitimate gift giving freedoms between couples in the process (again, all by analogy). Right?
I don't have a problem with scrutinizing politicians and making sure they aren't selling their legislative votes, because that's a basic corruption issue. And I appreciate that you're trying to catch the more obscure cases of this. But the government isn't going to stop there. Politicians in power will use an ill-conceived campaign finance law like this as a hammer to silence political dissent, whether it's films, newspapers, bloggers, etc. They'll say "money, money!" and violate 1st Amendment rights to freedom of speech. Losses of liberties like this need to be nipped in the bud before they grow into a full Broadway person-eating plant.
You are refuting your own point by that line of argument. Everyone has the right to speak, but not everybody has the same persuasiveness/loudness/venue/charisma for speaking. And it would be a horrible idea for the government to try to equalize people's speech. Similarly, everyone has the right to spend their money to advance a political cause, but not everyone has the same amount of money to spend.
So money and speech are very similar there, and what you perceive as "unfair" really just boils down to the same thing as whining because you can't sway the men in the forum like Cicero can. Some people have always had more effective speech than others, and some people have always had more money than others.
So you are saying that when people band together to accomplish something, they no longer have rights as people. Banded together, they may be censored by the government. They may have their property arbitrarily seized. All the normal rights of people are taken away, right?
I don't think you've thought this through. Corporations are people. They are not owned or run by robots. If you disagree with that, then you're not thinking deeply about it yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Humans are sometimes faced with those decisions, too. The reality is that there are some solutions that don't have any good answers -- just a bad answer and a worse one, and we can argue about which is which.
For every one of those kids/octogenarians the computer decides to execute, it could be that there will be 100's of people who get to live because computers took over the driving. So your "look at all the blood" argument is a little misleading.
That is just so stupid. Use a password-keeper and use strong passwords everywhere. Then you only need (1) physical access to your password keeper and (2) to remember one strong passphrase.
I didn't RTA, but when you say it's stupid not to always use a strong password, aren't you making an unwarranted assumption? There are some sites where it truly doesn't matter. On such sites I will never send any sensitive data, and all I want is to get past the annoying login to get to something I care about. You know, like the bugmenot cases. If you take the time to create such accounts for yourself with an insecure(!) and memorable password, there's nothing wrong with that.
Yeah and the 97% was about the climatologists doing formal climate change science.
How useful many of those papers are is another question. And the most useful function Cook's 97% paper serves is to filter out the scientists from the cargo cultists. I find it difficult not to laugh at anybody who considers the 97% paper a high quality scientific research result that is meaningful for the climate change action/inaction debate. In a way Cook was unintentionally sabotaging his own camp by putting out such nonsense, and sort of descending into self parody of everything that's wrong with politicized AGW alarmism.
You keep on insisting that AGW catastophism and AGW are basically the same thing. They are not. The first one you made up, the second is real.
I didn't insist that they are the same thing. I am well aware that they are not the same thing, and that's why the 97% number (even if rigorously derived, which I doubt) is not particularly relevant to the climate change action/inaction debate. Richard Lindzen could easily fall under the 97%.
97% of climatologists agree that the evidents to global warming caused by humans.
What does that even mean? Are you drunk?
Stop pretending this is not the case by lumping in loonies with scientists.
I agree with that approach. In general, we need to distinguish between formal climate science, which is largely a rational undertaking that aims to be useful, versus political agendas. Like the way certain loonies at the IPCC politicize this stuff, focus on unimportant or misleading elements[1], remove statements of uncertainty in the summaries[2], and blow warnings way out of proportion into Armageddon[3].
[1] Such as the (in)famous hockey stick, endlessly presented as the face of the IPCC reports for its shock value, even though it's not really as shocking as it seems when you understand how it was put together, e.g. dropping all of Briffa's tree ring proxies after 1960 or so because they didn't fit the desired curve, yet retaining earlier values from the series because they "fit the narrative".
[2] In fact, the actual peer reviewed academic material assembled by the IPCC tends to be very cautious in tone, and most people would be surprised to learn that the wild eyed AGW catastrophism associated with it has more to do with people's opinions (including scientists' opinions, don't get me wrong), but is not so much driven by the research itself.
[3] For example "All the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035! Doom! Flee for the hills!"
With computers, an output derived from garbage input is rarely useful. But perhaps the computation will help heat the server room. :p
And saying "scientists" question it is an illegitimate statement. No one cares what a neurobiologist thinks of climate, and no one cares what a climatoligy thinks of nuerobiology. A non-expert is still a non-expert, even if he happens to be a scientist in some other field.
I agree with you on one level, and disagree on another. It is perfectly fine for a generic "scientist" to audit and evaluate scientific methods of another scientist. You don't have to be a biologist to criticize faulty statistics in one of our sadly abundant faulty medical studies. And similarly, if climate scientists claim more than is warranted by the data, you don't have to be a climate scientist to raise your hand and say "there's a problem with your handling of this data". Math is math, and statistics is statistics, and the kinds of errors people can make are really the same in a fundamental way across disciplines.
Now, if you want to predict exactly how much global temperatures will increase in the next 100 years or the next ten years, then yes, you need very complex models. If you want to understand what forces are behind those trends, you do not need complex models at all.
Carbon sensitivity can make the difference between an expectation of climate change catastrophe, versus the anthropogenic component being dwarfed in the long term by the fluctuations of natural variability. As far as I can tell, the urgency or non-urgency of the climate change debate rests on this piece. And we don't know the answer to it.
You can't calculate carbon sensitivity on the back of a napkin, and that's what everything depends on.
Anybody who denies AGW catastrophism is termed a "denier" and the 97% number is trotted out to refute them. So it's fair to point out that the number 97% is "nonsense" when used for that purpose. Even if the paper wasn't shoddy in its methods, its conclusion would be useless for the AGW alarmism debate, because pretty much everybody believes that climate changes and that humans "play a role".
It's just a figure of speech, but that would be really funny.
Cheaper, cleaner, more efficient, renewable energy should be a goal regardless of global warming, and sooner is better than later.
I agree that this is highly desirable, although the execution of the goal is the tricky part. Ethanol is a great example of why government mandating of an allegedly cleaner alternative doesn't necessarily improve the situation.
Cook's paper doesn't mean what you want it to mean. Even if its methods were above reproach (which they're not, it's massively arbitrary and subject to confirmation bias), the result is still un-useful nonsense. And since pretty much everybody believes that humans impact the environment and thus impact climate change on some level, ITS SLOPPY METHODOLOGY WOULD INCLUDE SKEPTICS OF AGW CATASTROPHISM IN ITS 97%!!!!
Sorry, but yelling that made me feel a little better. And besides, you yelled. Toodle-oo!
No, sorry, the paper was nonsense. The link is to a skeptical blog that copies an open letter sent by a scientist who wanted to check their work. What Professor Tol was able to check revealed serious problems, but most of the source data was stubbornly held onto by Professor Cook, who didn't want anybody to refute his work. :p
Besides, if you read carefully above, you will see that the OP claimed that 97% of scientists believe in AGW catastrophism, which is obvious nonsense as well (there's a difference between 97% of scientists and 97% of published climate scientists that happened to be evaluated by Cook's highly arbitrary and secretive study).
The FOIA doesn't apply to AC's on Slashdot. Just in case you were unaware.
OK, that was funny. But the 97% number is nonsense, just for the record. Skepticism about AGW catastrophism is rampant among the world's scientists at large (physicists, biologists, etc.), and many climate scientists have been cautiously coming out of the closet and poking sticks at the shaky foundations as well.
I'm a little bit surprised that Slashdot doesn't have more AGW catastrophism skeptics, to be honest. Ordinary people hear "supercomputer driven model simulation" and they think "oooh, it must be really accurate and able to predict the future". Anybody who understands statistics and the banal realities of computation knows the good old GIGO principle. Not to mention the reality that nobody has ever successfully predicted long term climate changes, so throwing a supercomputer at an impossible problem doesn't magically add credibility. *sigh* (goes back to reading Professor Judith Curry's blog)
As far as I can tell, this lawsuit determined that the Freedom of Information Act can't be used to get access to some official email correspondence paid for by public funds. Even if you are really gung-ho on AGW, that's not a result to automatically crow about.
Michael Mann is not my favorite scientist, as he has a pattern of cargo cultist behavior that has annoyed his peers (provoking words like "vomit" and "crock of s**t"). The lawsuit to watch is the one where Mann is suing the National Review (a conservative magazine) and Mark Steyn, a conservative satirist and commentator. Whether or not his overall beliefs about AGW are justified, Professor Mann does have skeletons in his closet, and if the court does its job properly, he will be smacked down hard.
Streaming quality is inversely related to video consumption. For example, at 2am when hardly anybody is online, you can get great streaming quality. I agree that it's confusing, since it should really be "Video consumption and streaming quality problem/contention level" or something.
I agree (as a regular VS, Xcode, and Eclipse user, in addition to Xamarin Studio and others) that Visual Studio is the awesomest IDE, but it's only fair to add that the "E" part has actually regressed a little in recent years. For example, they dropped support for macro recording/playback. I'm guessing their excuse was that they rewrote everything and didn't get around to it, but still... *grump* *grump*
OK, smartass, what is the evolutionary advantage for stupidity?
I suggest you ask evolutionary biologists. Specifically, go ask that group of evolutionary biologists standing over there lamenting their inability to connect with females, who somehow prefer muscularly ripped albeit less cranially endowed surfer dudes.
Am I kidding? I'm not sure.
While I'm pretty sure you're just trolling, I'll go ahead and respond.
Wasn't intentionally trolling, thanks for taking the time to write out your thoughts. I actually debated somebody else on Slashdot who took your argument to another level and said that no company should be allowed to engage in political advocacy. I raised the example of the NYT and asked if he would axe their editorial department (as far as political commentary/advocacy goes), and was shocked that he said he would. Of course, it wasn't fair to paint you with that brush...
... that to me the freedom for corporations to engage in political advocacy flows from the 1st Amendment, so in a sense I do believe that if you chop down that tree, then the NYT loses its legal protection from further government censorship. If people working together as a corporation don't have the right to speak (with a single voice) as that corporation, that's a big problem to me under the 1st Amendment and also on purely philosophical/ethical/civic grounds.
... except
Speaking of logical fallacies : That communism snark is full of Appeal to Emotion and Ad Hominem, with just a touch of Bandwagon. Or maybe communism is just a red herring ...
OK, I admit to a few fallacies; thanks for useful links. :p
As for the rest of that comment, how does lack of ownership make my opinion irrelevant?
There's nothing wrong with you having an opinion, but the owners of a company get to decide what that company does and says.
For instance: I support Net Neutrality, should I quit my job at Comcast? I'm just a cable tech, but the Corporate guys are using the revenue I generate for the company to fight against Net Neutrality.
I certainly hear you on the monopoly thing. When a company gets that big and ubiquitous it enters a gray area where I will not be so quick to a libertarian analysis of their right to do whatever they want within the law.
Truth be told though, I'd much rather attack the problem from the other side, as proposed and discussed way back in TFA. Limit the total revenue that a politician can spend on campaigns, from all sources, and more strictly monitor gifts/bribes. Not only will this solve the root problem of Corpos buying politicians by the bucket, but it will allow the politician to actually do their jobs and legislate, instead of spending their entire terms fundraising to compete with the challenger who has nothing but free time to fundraise.
I think this will change the problem, but most likely not solve it. They will just shift the money to the fringes and advocate indirectly, which they are already doing in many ways. ("See, we're not working for Joe, we're just attacking Mary!")
Anyway, enjoyed the exchange!
But the corporation, the group, the amassed collection of people does not have rights.
Really? Two people working together lose their freedom of speech just because they happen to be working together? You will next suggest shutting down the NYT editorial department, I suppose?
CocaCola does not get a vote in November.
Yawn, straw man fallacy.
I didn't band together with the CEO of my company to accomplish something political.
You don't own the company you work for, so this is irrelevant. The rights of the company to freedom of speech should be equivalent to the rights of the owners of the company, since the company does what they say and speaks for them.
I'd wager that the vast VAST majority of Americans didn't pick their current job because of the political leanings of the C-suite (if those political leanings are even allowed to leak into public knowledge)
Who cares? Private companies are owned and run by people. Those people should decide what the companies do and say. If you want the company to do or say something different, start your own business and spend your own money. What is this, communism? :p
Corporations are absolutely NOT people.
Obviously it depends on the sense in which you use the phrase. In the sense in which I use it, every company is people. You can list out their names -- the owners or stockholders of the company who decide what that company will do.
English lesson time: the word "company" refers to a "company of people", i.e. more than one person joined together to do something together. In this context, a non-owning employee (like yourself) is not a member of that company.
Something like that would be obviously unconstitutional
No it wouldn't be. Once Lessig's crowd drills it into everybody's heads that it's OK for the government to block expenditure of money for political ends, then the government will proceed to do so whenever and wherever it can get away with it -- that is, whenever it's to the advantage of the current administration. This is giving government a new avenue to restrict people's political freedoms, and it will certainly be abused.
Raising money to make a political documentary that we don't like? We're gonna shut you down. Gotta get all that dirty money out of politics, you know. It's for the people's good.
So where do you think this would stop? What administration since that of Cincinattus and a few others has ever been anything other than the camel's nose in the tent?
OK, you are giving some fine analogies. But really, we're not talking about making it illegal to explicitly buy out a politician, because that is already illegal. You are suggesting that it should be illegal (by analogy) to pay money to a woman at all, whether or not there is sleeping with oneself involved. Or that there should be limits as to how much money a man can pay a woman. You want to cut out the gold digger girlfriends, and don't care whether you destroy legitimate gift giving freedoms between couples in the process (again, all by analogy). Right?
I don't have a problem with scrutinizing politicians and making sure they aren't selling their legislative votes, because that's a basic corruption issue. And I appreciate that you're trying to catch the more obscure cases of this. But the government isn't going to stop there. Politicians in power will use an ill-conceived campaign finance law like this as a hammer to silence political dissent, whether it's films, newspapers, bloggers, etc. They'll say "money, money!" and violate 1st Amendment rights to freedom of speech. Losses of liberties like this need to be nipped in the bud before they grow into a full Broadway person-eating plant.
You are refuting your own point by that line of argument. Everyone has the right to speak, but not everybody has the same persuasiveness/loudness/venue/charisma for speaking. And it would be a horrible idea for the government to try to equalize people's speech. Similarly, everyone has the right to spend their money to advance a political cause, but not everyone has the same amount of money to spend.
So money and speech are very similar there, and what you perceive as "unfair" really just boils down to the same thing as whining because you can't sway the men in the forum like Cicero can. Some people have always had more effective speech than others, and some people have always had more money than others.
more recent "corporations are people" lie
So you are saying that when people band together to accomplish something, they no longer have rights as people. Banded together, they may be censored by the government. They may have their property arbitrarily seized. All the normal rights of people are taken away, right?
I don't think you've thought this through. Corporations are people. They are not owned or run by robots. If you disagree with that, then you're not thinking deeply about it yet.