A lot of places have thought of children as "children of everyone".
It means children get abandoned. And the average lifespan is about 6.
Soviet Russia tried moving in this direction ("wives and children in common") and decided it wasn't tenable. A lot of indigineous tribes do this (before they implode).
You are right about what the earth can support. Emphasis on "easily".
What scares me is how angry people get about OTHER people living longer and how incredibly they think the drug companies will resist making money off middle and lower class people.
Drug patents only last two years on average past trials anyway.
In the US you can't keep patent rights more than 2 years longer than it takes to develop and test. What are you talking about not releasing to the public? Even if they could keep them indefinitely, how would they decide to ignore the profits they could be making on middle and low income potential customers?
This is just all kinds of messed up. A lot of people have been happier un-retired.
If subsidies were removed the US could (easily) produce enough agriculture to feed all 6 billion people on the earth. If everyone globally became more like the US, everyone would be (1) VERY affluent and (2) fully feds (since the US is very production-capable). At that point the US wouldn't have to go to other countries for cheap labor / manfactured goods, etc. Defending arbitrary lines in the sand (i.e. setting rations on what poor nations can consume, gas price fixing in Hawaii, etc) impedes the growth toward affluence that the US enjoys.
Secularism didn't make the US into a world power (where some of the most affluent people in the world live btw). Educated people are more likely to be republicans (professors are the only exception: they tend to vote D). Social inequality accelerates during redistributionist administrations (that acceleration has been epitomized by the last 6 years). Secularist leaders (Stalin, Lenin, Polpot, Hussein) are far more likely to kill off massive amounts of people for purely political reasons.
My dad told me I was too superficial when I was a teenager. I didn't understand what he meant until I had a near death experience a couple years later.
What about you? If your time on the earth was quickly running out, would you reach to quickly learn as much as possible about quarks?
Government intervention can make business cycles experience milder highs and milder lows (but the long term trend is plateaued by doing this, and it's hard to campaign on long term wins).
"However you make the hypothesis more exacting, you incompass more detail and you can answer bigger questions"
I concede you can answer *BIG* questions (or, as Dr. Hume would correct me), you would *SEEM* to be able to answer bigger questions. But a bigger question does not necessarily make for a better question.
Suppose you could confirm 2000 people around the world die every second. That could seem like a big answer... but what can you infer from this about when you are going to die personally? You are *only* one guy, so this is a *SMALLER* question. But is it less significant to you? The same could be said about how many people get married everyday, or how many people have babies every day.
Anyway, back to Hume. Hume is not trying to motivate you into the arms of Jesus (I'll take you understand this and not belabor it) like I am, but he understood that science doesn't really prove anything at the end of the day. Science just says what is probable based on past observations. If that is what you prefer to hang the final moments of your life on (which could be 10 years from now or today for all you or I know) then that is your prerogative.
Science isn't giving you any kind of Cartesian certainty about anything. Any it certainly can't explain what is meaningful to you. (Even as far as appearances go, you can't reproduce ameoba's transitioning into primates, and -even if you could- you didn't necessarily reproduce the exact path of their origin).
So call it an excuse or whatever you please, but at the end of the day you are condemned (to use a different athiest's word) to decide how you are going to live your life and how you believe the universe originated.
Let's say you observe the natural phenomenon that flashy electronics seem very desirable (confirmed by sensors in your head!). Posit that you don't have enough money for a piece of electronics and hypothesize that, yes, you can steal electronics and get away with it.
To test out your hypothesis you examine newspaper and police reports and on the basis of these break in reports determine that it is possible to steal electronics and get away with it. And this observation is repeatable (and thereby scientific).
Sometimes people get caught, and sometimes they don't, but suppose you learn that those who do get away with it consistently apply certain characteristics (more sub-hypotheses).
So let's say you dig a little deeper and identify the people who successfully stole electronics and conduct some monitoring of them.
They are breathing. Their hearts are still beating. They seem (on the surface, because that's the realm of science) to be doing just fine.
You are not able to (scientifically) detect that they are dealing with any kind of remorse. You don't detect they are trying to run away from having to understand their own actions. You don't detect their despair or lack of self-awareness or dred.
Or another example. By making scientific (and very sketchy) observations you can determine which females are healthy and functionally capable of breeding well. That's not going to tell you anything about any individual person you observe. Only their bodies.
So science can tell you practical things, but there is nothing inspiring about it. Certainly it cannot tell you who you are or what is important to you. If you elevate science over love, morality, religion, etc. you are really going to live on the surface and let life pass you by.
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A lot of places have thought of children as "children of everyone".
It means children get abandoned. And the average lifespan is about 6.
Soviet Russia tried moving in this direction ("wives and children in common") and decided it wasn't tenable. A lot of indigineous tribes do this (before they implode).
You are right about what the earth can support. Emphasis on "easily".
If you set an age limit at 65 people will start having kids at 64.
Even if the didn't want kids.
What scares me is how angry people get about OTHER people living longer and how incredibly they think the drug companies will resist making money off middle and lower class people.
Drug patents only last two years on average past trials anyway.
Huh?
In the US you can't keep patent rights more than 2 years longer than it takes to develop and test. What are you talking about not releasing to the public? Even if they could keep them indefinitely, how would they decide to ignore the profits they could be making on middle and low income potential customers?
This is just all kinds of messed up. A lot of people have been happier un-retired.
If subsidies were removed the US could (easily) produce enough agriculture to feed all 6 billion people on the earth. If everyone globally became more like the US, everyone would be (1) VERY affluent and (2) fully feds (since the US is very production-capable). At that point the US wouldn't have to go to other countries for cheap labor / manfactured goods, etc. Defending arbitrary lines in the sand (i.e. setting rations on what poor nations can consume, gas price fixing in Hawaii, etc) impedes the growth toward affluence that the US enjoys.
Secularism didn't make the US into a world power (where some of the most affluent people in the world live btw). Educated people are more likely to be republicans (professors are the only exception: they tend to vote D). Social inequality accelerates during redistributionist administrations (that acceleration has been epitomized by the last 6 years). Secularist leaders (Stalin, Lenin, Polpot, Hussein) are far more likely to kill off massive amounts of people for purely political reasons.
I can shenanigans.
There's over 6 acres of land on the earth per person.
In cities people can live quite comfortably on inches of land per person.
We are PAYING exhorbitant amounts of money to farmers to NOT grow food.
Italy (and much of Europe), Japan are dying off, the US population is plateauing, and we're afraid of overpopulation?
This is just misanthropy.
Society doesn't care about going to hell.
Only (specific) individuals care about that.
Nietchze hated the theory of evolution as much as he did because he feared it promoted a herd ideal.
Looking to evolution to inform etiquette and behavior sounds like some parlor game where people are blowing smoke in each others faces.
Other than embracing mediocrity per se, killing people for being old is, well, too awful to be worth my time considering.
On the other hand I'll be there's an ivy league university out there that would like to extend a chair to you.
Space can move faster than light.
(Not a joke: it's different than nothing)
Wouldn't that make the countries in Africa very wealthy?
What austerity exactly are you talking about?
Name for me one country that has spend LESS money on any given year than any of the previous years.
How do you explain how most people who win the lottery declare bankruptcy in a year or two?
The problem isn't that ordinary people don't have access to capital. The problem is ordinary people are poor at managing money.
What's going to happen is that instead of "replacing" the gas tax, the politicians will arrive at a "compromise" solution.
Meaning: you're paying two taxes now instead of one.
I know that sounds cynical, but look at the AMT.
My dad told me I was too superficial when I was a teenager. I didn't understand what he meant until I had a near death experience a couple years later.
What about you? If your time on the earth was quickly running out, would you reach to quickly learn as much as possible about quarks?
How can unelected beaurocrats in the FCC overrule the states?
If the federal government didn't pass a law about it, the states don't have to do it.
Huh?
Haven't you seen the Churchill quote about young people vote lib and old people vote conservative.
Unless you include the 1940's as part of the "shift" you're identifying, I don't think anything has shifted.
Blabbing about policy is not doing anything by example.
Listen up kids: talk is cheap. Politicians do a lot of that.
I wasn't trying to say science can't prove anything.
I was saying it can't prove anything meaningful.
A daring post on /.
Another example of "basically by wrecking": everyone can be paid the same.
Nice. You are bold for posting that on /. !!
What alternative to economics do you have?
Government intervention can make business cycles experience milder highs and milder lows (but the long term trend is plateaued by doing this, and it's hard to campaign on long term wins).
"However you make the hypothesis more exacting, you incompass more detail and you can answer bigger questions"
... but what can you infer from this about when you are going to die personally? You are *only* one guy, so this is a *SMALLER* question. But is it less significant to you? The same could be said about how many people get married everyday, or how many people have babies every day.
I concede you can answer *BIG* questions (or, as Dr. Hume would correct me), you would *SEEM* to be able to answer bigger questions. But a bigger question does not necessarily make for a better question.
Suppose you could confirm 2000 people around the world die every second. That could seem like a big answer
Anyway, back to Hume. Hume is not trying to motivate you into the arms of Jesus (I'll take you understand this and not belabor it) like I am, but he understood that science doesn't really prove anything at the end of the day. Science just says what is probable based on past observations. If that is what you prefer to hang the final moments of your life on (which could be 10 years from now or today for all you or I know) then that is your prerogative.
Science isn't giving you any kind of Cartesian certainty about anything. Any it certainly can't explain what is meaningful to you. (Even as far as appearances go, you can't reproduce ameoba's transitioning into primates, and -even if you could- you didn't necessarily reproduce the exact path of their origin).
So call it an excuse or whatever you please, but at the end of the day you are condemned (to use a different athiest's word) to decide how you are going to live your life and how you believe the universe originated.
So you have a framework: science.
Let's say you observe the natural phenomenon that flashy electronics seem very desirable (confirmed by sensors in your head!). Posit that you don't have enough money for a piece of electronics and hypothesize that, yes, you can steal electronics and get away with it.
To test out your hypothesis you examine newspaper and police reports and on the basis of these break in reports determine that it is possible to steal electronics and get away with it. And this observation is repeatable (and thereby scientific).
Sometimes people get caught, and sometimes they don't, but suppose you learn that those who do get away with it consistently apply certain characteristics (more sub-hypotheses).
So let's say you dig a little deeper and identify the people who successfully stole electronics and conduct some monitoring of them.
They are breathing. Their hearts are still beating. They seem (on the surface, because that's the realm of science) to be doing just fine.
You are not able to (scientifically) detect that they are dealing with any kind of remorse. You don't detect they are trying to run away from having to understand their own actions. You don't detect their despair or lack of self-awareness or dred.
Or another example. By making scientific (and very sketchy) observations you can determine which females are healthy and functionally capable of breeding well. That's not going to tell you anything about any individual person you observe. Only their bodies.
So science can tell you practical things, but there is nothing inspiring about it. Certainly it cannot tell you who you are or what is important to you. If you elevate science over love, morality, religion, etc. you are really going to live on the surface and let life pass you by.