Religion is about one idea - YOU ARE NOT YOUR BODY. Your thoughts and feelings and desires and goals are not a bag of chemicals. Life is a separate source of energy from the physical manifestation. Your existence does not begin and end with the growth of a toenail, or a curly hair, or the firing of a synapse. Life is not a physical force, but it can act on physical forces, and can be tangentially measured in physical means.
Frankly, imposing almost-certainly-negative externalities on unconsenting bystanders' persons and property during the course of your business makes you the ethical equivalent of a serial mugger. It is a pity that it doesn't make you the legal equivalent of one.
Too many people (and thus the companies they own) are all too happy to let other people suffer or die if it helps them make a buck.
They used to offshore the death and misery so we wouldn't have to see it, but we don't matter anymore either.
Good science should be pretty easy. How much did accident rates drop when cellphone bans were imposed?
That's a good idea, but it's not a very simple question. How many people are now driving while using a phone in their lap rather than up where everyone can see it? The laws might have made things worse...
Also, just a few years back the proponents of some dubious new traffic law cited reduced accidents to "prove" that they were right, but they cherrypicked the data, relying on years when gas prices or the economic meltdown reduced the overall amount of driving, rather than reporting on the entire period since the laws went into effect.
So even if we approach the question honestly, we've got to make sure other factors aren't in play.
Yes, but is it in fact, as you say, "good science?" I'm pretty skeptical.
Haven't you ever found yourself behind someone who's driving like crap, and you can see a hand to their ear or the little blue glow over their shoulder?
I don't feel the slightest need to be skeptical of the science.
No, the Bush administration dubbed them "unlawful combatants" so they wouldn't have to be treated according to the rules for either POWs or accused criminals.
I believe mainly an economic concern. It is cheaper for a company to pollute than it is not to pollute. Having to conform to environmental goals is like a "tax" on a company, which has to be passed down to the customer in the form of higher prices. There is tons of concern over all manufacturing jobs moving to China, imagine if now Canadian companies now had to spend even more to produce a product, and companies in China didn't.
What's the status of international law regarding tariffs on products from non-participating nations?
We're trying to tell the teeming masses in India and China that they can't aspire to have luxuries like refrigerators, washing machines and cars. Quite rightly, they don't give a damn about our rank hypocrisy.
Even if every decadent Western nation beggars itself (and we won't) then India and China will pick up the emissions slack within a decade or so (and they will anyway).
Emissions restrictions are dead in the water on the global scale. Instead, how about we start from the premise that people are going to strive to live rich, comfortable, high energy lives, and that they're going to keep having lots of kids who will expect to have more than their parents had.
There are essentially two solutions: cull about 4 billion people, or throw resources at clean power until it sticks, and I mean trillion dollar tranches of funding at fusion.
tl;dr version - emissions will go down when it's cheaper to produce green energy than to burn coal, and not one moment before.
Well said - every point.
(Except that IMO we ought to trim our population back to about one billion total, for long-term sustainability on this planet. Like that's going to happen.)
"Evil crowdsourcing on a very large scale." Influencing public opinion with fake "grassroots" activity is known as astroturfing, leading Zhao to coin the term "crowdturfing," since it is done via large crowdsourcing sites.
What's wrong with "evil crowd-sourced astroturfing"?
Or the more accurate, "massively parallel astroturfing"?
Or "why-don't-they-join-the-21st-Century-and-write-a-bot-to-do-it astroturfing"?
...
Heh. If the participants in a grassroots movement did this, you'd have "grassroots astroturfing".
The hypothesis that reality as you know it is in no way a deception, a misunderstanding, or some other "brain in a jar"-esque illusion also has no predictive power. It explains anything that can and will happen.
How you figure?
That is, the absence of God explains anything.
How you figure?
And as for "brain in a jar", it doesn't really matter if the universe we experience is real or illusory. If our hypotheses merely explain regularities in some dream or fraud, we're still modelling the reality we experience. We can leave "real" as a topic for philosophers and theologians to argue over.
The fact that Microsoft is willing to use deceptive, illegal practices quite rightly discredits other people who attempt to support Microsoft in forums.
I wonder if there is *any* company, or politician, who isn't trying to use {xyz}turf on the WWW to convert a displeasing reality into a sweet delusion.
Slashdot Mirror
subject says it all. I know that that the creator he did not believe in still loved him.
So he gets to go to Heaven, right?
Did he make a last minute bet?
Why would anyone expect a last-minute conversion?
Apparently people don't believe us when we say we don't believe their fantasies; we're just saying we don't so we won't have to behave.
Religion is about one idea - YOU ARE NOT YOUR BODY. Your thoughts and feelings and desires and goals are not a bag of chemicals. Life is a separate source of energy from the physical manifestation. Your existence does not begin and end with the growth of a toenail, or a curly hair, or the firing of a synapse. Life is not a physical force, but it can act on physical forces, and can be tangentially measured in physical means.
Now all you need is some evidence.
Yeah sure, that's why you posted anonymously with a talking points bullet list.
Why, we were discussing this kind of thing only yesterday
.
Frankly, imposing almost-certainly-negative externalities on unconsenting bystanders' persons and property during the course of your business makes you the ethical equivalent of a serial mugger. It is a pity that it doesn't make you the legal equivalent of one.
Too many people (and thus the companies they own) are all too happy to let other people suffer or die if it helps them make a buck.
They used to offshore the death and misery so we wouldn't have to see it, but we don't matter anymore either.
I've got the iPhone, how do I crib smother this Carrier IQ parasite?
Next time you drive across a bridge, toss it out the window.
guess I can't respond to the calls or automated alerts I get on my phone, the latter of which require keypad entry to acknowledge.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
I don't carry a phone because I don't want other people running my life.
Correct. When talking to a passenger, one has a much greater tendency to turn to face the person.
Most of us autism-spectrum Slashdotters don't have that problem.
Talking on the phone and talking to a passenger do not have the same impact on driver attention.
I suspect it's the visual engagement. You can't really drive very well while texting, dialing a number, or spinning the dial on your radio.
I don't know how much distraction talking causes, but talking per se doesn't take your eyes off the road for several seconds at a time.
Good science should be pretty easy. How much did accident rates drop when cellphone bans were imposed?
That's a good idea, but it's not a very simple question. How many people are now driving while using a phone in their lap rather than up where everyone can see it? The laws might have made things worse...
Also, just a few years back the proponents of some dubious new traffic law cited reduced accidents to "prove" that they were right, but they cherrypicked the data, relying on years when gas prices or the economic meltdown reduced the overall amount of driving, rather than reporting on the entire period since the laws went into effect.
So even if we approach the question honestly, we've got to make sure other factors aren't in play.
Yes, but is it in fact, as you say, "good science?" I'm pretty skeptical.
Haven't you ever found yourself behind someone who's driving like crap, and you can see a hand to their ear or the little blue glow over their shoulder?
I don't feel the slightest need to be skeptical of the science.
Why not just project goatse images to make everyone close their eyes?
We find people who use "USAian" to be embarrassing also.
The word looks wrong, is unpronounceable, and makes you look rather stupid. Why do you use it again?
Because I was talking to a Canadian, and I thought using "American" to distinguish me from him was just stupid.
People in Gitmo are in Cuba and are POW's.
No, the Bush administration dubbed them "unlawful combatants" so they wouldn't have to be treated according to the rules for either POWs or accused criminals.
I believe mainly an economic concern. It is cheaper for a company to pollute than it is not to pollute. Having to conform to environmental goals is like a "tax" on a company, which has to be passed down to the customer in the form of higher prices. There is tons of concern over all manufacturing jobs moving to China, imagine if now Canadian companies now had to spend even more to produce a product, and companies in China didn't.
What's the status of international law regarding tariffs on products from non-participating nations?
We're trying to tell the teeming masses in India and China that they can't aspire to have luxuries like refrigerators, washing machines and cars. Quite rightly, they don't give a damn about our rank hypocrisy.
Even if every decadent Western nation beggars itself (and we won't) then India and China will pick up the emissions slack within a decade or so (and they will anyway).
Emissions restrictions are dead in the water on the global scale. Instead, how about we start from the premise that people are going to strive to live rich, comfortable, high energy lives, and that they're going to keep having lots of kids who will expect to have more than their parents had.
There are essentially two solutions: cull about 4 billion people, or throw resources at clean power until it sticks, and I mean trillion dollar tranches of funding at fusion.
tl;dr version - emissions will go down when it's cheaper to produce green energy than to burn coal, and not one moment before.
Well said - every point.
(Except that IMO we ought to trim our population back to about one billion total, for long-term sustainability on this planet. Like that's going to happen.)
Conservative government that is about to make huge amounts of money for their oil buddies with the tar sands in the midwest part of the country.
Yeah I can see why they want out of the Kyoto protocol.
that $13 billion number is likely the amount they're about to reap from tar sand processing
Or kickbacks for the politicians...
Yes, it's an embarrassing time to be a Canadian.
Welcome to the club... my whole adult life has been an embarrassing time to be a USAian.
I thought Durban managed an agreement that China and India *will* now be included.
Is this guy speaking for the government, or just another political blowhard?
Here is a definition from the linked article:
"Evil crowdsourcing on a very large scale." Influencing public opinion with fake "grassroots" activity is known as astroturfing, leading Zhao to coin the term "crowdturfing," since it is done via large crowdsourcing sites.
What's wrong with "evil crowd-sourced astroturfing"?
Or the more accurate, "massively parallel astroturfing"?
Or "why-don't-they-join-the-21st-Century-and-write-a-bot-to-do-it astroturfing"?
Heh. If the participants in a grassroots movement did this, you'd have "grassroots astroturfing".
Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.
OK - that means I should believe everything I read on the internet.
Wait! Was that post some kind of paradox to make our heads explode?
The hypothesis that reality as you know it is in no way a deception, a misunderstanding, or some other "brain in a jar"-esque illusion also has no predictive power. It explains anything that can and will happen.
How you figure?
That is, the absence of God explains anything.
How you figure?
And as for "brain in a jar", it doesn't really matter if the universe we experience is real or illusory. If our hypotheses merely explain regularities in some dream or fraud, we're still modelling the reality we experience. We can leave "real" as a topic for philosophers and theologians to argue over.
The fact that Microsoft is willing to use deceptive, illegal practices quite rightly discredits other people who attempt to support Microsoft in forums.
I wonder if there is *any* company, or politician, who isn't trying to use {xyz}turf on the WWW to convert a displeasing reality into a sweet delusion.
Our species has gotten its hands on toys that we're just not grown-up enough to play with.
What if some of them also watch FOX News?