Because online poker companies around the would would love to get their hands on the software and plug it into their system, so that you'd never know if you were playing a computer or a real person. If you were playing the computer, you'd always lose.
No, with the probabilities involved in poker no player (AI or otherwise) can always win. Rather you'd loose over the long term, but that's already the case for most players.
Moreover, there is no financial incentive for on-line poker companies to have you always lose, or lose in any given hand. Like all effective gambling products (even those, unlike poker, where the house is your counter-party) what they want you to do is to win often enough to keep you coming back for more.
Of course they could program their computers to simply know what you have in your hand and bet accordingly, but still.
Exactly, and thus largely eliminating the chance to which the AI is still subject. But again they wouldn't because they have no financial incentive to do so. They make their money from the rake remember.
If on-line poker companies were to rig the system it would instead be to produce situations which encourage heavy post-flop action. The accusation that they do so is often made by players who have experienced (what they intuit as) more than their fair share of bad beats. But again the probabilities of Holdem will see to frequent bad beats even without undue interference. Now let me tell you about the time I had this perfect read on the villain, I was K full of Qs and he was Q full of As and then the river came a...
What's more this misuse of the term "fake news" to apply to errors of reporting, is itself a cynical ploy aimed at legitimating outright fiction and bad-faith spin
And Fake Troll Mods do nothing by drive the point home.:p
The term "fake news" has been thrown about -- and misapplied -- far too freely of late.
Fake news is a deliberate fiction on the part of the writer, with an intent to deceive.
It is not the same as a news story reported in good faith, but with errors.
Indeed! What's more this misuse of the term "fake news" to apply to errors of reporting, is itself a cynical ploy aimed at legitimating outright fiction and bad-faith spin. Thank you for calling this shit out.
'Freedom of speech' and 'Freedom of thought' should be basic human rights, not something to be granted or taken away, and any government
On the legal positivist view: A right is that which you can get it enforced in your favour in a court of law. Only those "rights" which have been granted, say by inclusion in a Bill of Rights, are actually rights (as opposed to aspirations). Freedom of speech is indeed a universal aspiration, but it is a right only where either in the course of devising government (i.e. via a Constitution), or statutorily by being enacted by Parliament, that right has been granted.
Alternatively on a natural law view: Chinese citizens have a right of free speech, they simply risk being executed if the exercise it.
China doesn't have a first amendment, so it's not censorship.
This may seem like a bit of a fine distinction to you. It is censorship, but since China does not have the equivalent of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution, Chinese nationals enjoy no constitutional protection from state, or indeed corporate, censorship.
You will understand, of course, that since this is being done to protect the purity of the young, only those who for whatever perverse reasons want minors corrupted could possibly object. Ahem.
The cited text (Lion & Unicorn) would explain better than I could hope.
From the point of view of Marxism (and I'm obviously not a Marxist) neither of the situations you describe are socialism. The first, I believe would be dismissed as "primitive communalism." The second seems to be a self-defeatingly histrionic* description welfare state ideology. It is a common these days to confuse the welfare state with socialism. Historically, however, the modern welfare state was the invention of conservatives (esp of Otto von Bismarck) and was explicitly an anti-socialist measure. It is an accident of history that the welfare state has become associated with nominally 'socialist' parties (long after the imminent threat of a socialist takeover faded, rendering the welfare state no longer necessary to conservative purposes).
Marxists view socialism as a "transitional state," as a the final form of state power on the path to their utopian (though Marxists would object strenuously to that term) vision of stateless communism. The famous motto "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" which is meant to characterise communism is matched by the starker motto of socialism, "to each according to their contribution" (if memory serves me both come from Marx' Critique of the Gotha Programme). The idea was that the proletariat as the "universal class" (a imho mystical conception Marx inherited from the conservative philosopher Hegel who regard the bureaucracy as the universal class) would set up a self dissolving "dictatorship" in which the fruits of production would be shared only by those whose labour brought them into being. That is the owners of factories etc (the means of production) would be dispossed. Socialism then is most easily defined as the state ownership of the means of production as a path to the eventual state self-elimination which was to be communism. [Note that no country under Communist Party rule has ever claimed to be communist. They did claim to be socialist]
And that was their "scientific" socialism which they distinguished from "utopian" socialism!
But actually my main point was, notwithstanding the dig at the Soviet system, in 1984 Orwell was not so much describing a dictatorship of any political colour, but rather showing a state whose purpose served no ideological agenda at all, other than the exercise of power for powers sake. It is a very worthwhile read.
[*It is more persuasive to define a system first and then go on to show how aspects of that system ineluctably lead to poor outcomes rather than over-obviously writing the untoward outcomes into the very definition. Just an idea if ever you want a good essay mark.]
To such a "free man" 7 need not be a prime number either.
... violates the first principle of human rights.
And the canonical example of what might constitute a "valid law" of the English Parliament, namely that "all blue-eyed babies be put to death"doesn't?!*
Prohibition was "duly enacted" in the US, too, but it was a stupid, ill-advised, and evil power trip.
It may well have been stupid, ill-advised and an evil power trip. It was nonetheless, as a matter of mere fact, a valid law. After all, Prohibition was repealed rather than being struck down.
[*Besides which, those so-called "human rights" which are actual rights rather than aspirations, are simply called "rights"]
Maybe, just maybe..... the distinguishment between having thoughtcrime and other laws on the book supporting tyranny and kangaroo courts VS no actual law and no courts is not so important a distinction.
Well thoughtcrime is neither a law nor is it on the books, that's the point. There are no written rules as such, one never knows with certitude what the elements of a particular "crime" might be (nor is there a process where a prosecution must make them out), or when one has overstepped the line... unless of course one writes out "I Hate Big Brother".
But yes... absolutely! Having the mere simulacrum of Law: prosection of people who don't actually commit the offence; defence lawyers who don't actually defend you; courts whose decisions are determined not with reference to the evidence but to the wishes of political masters... does in effect amount to having no Law restraining the power of state at all.* My point was simply that Orwell makes the absence of Law stark.
I recently read Anna Funder's Stasiland. The counterfeit of Law in the GDR notwithstanding, Orwell was more accurate than he could have known, the similarities are chilling (if less extreme). A highly recommend read if you are interested in the threat posed by the surveillance state.
Perhaps the no law binding government thing is just a later evolution of where this path takes us.
I prefer to think of it as a more primitive phase of human society. I hope I'm not being unduly optimistic.
[*I'm defining 'Law' here as the social technology by which we restrain the arbitrary exercise of power (private or state) on the individual person]
I'm making a pun on the fact that the word 'opinion' is a term of art at Law: it's another word of a judgment, and that OP was delivering an opinion as to the validity of a law. It was my obtuse way of telling OP that their opinion is hardly pertinent. Had OP simply opined that it should not be, as a matter of principle, be made an offence merely to browse websites, I might not have been inclined to disagree.
1984 was made about a Collectivist (Leftist) dystopia.
That's both an oversimplification and a not uncommon misunderstanding of the text. A misunderstanding which reading the book will occasionally (but apparently not invariably) clear up.
As the text explains via the device of Emanuel Goldstein's inserted Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism --which is left deliberately ambiguous to the reader as to whether it is a genuine text of a genuine dissident or rather a work of the Party describing itself with dark irony --Ingsoc "rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it does so in the name of Socialism" (doublethink)!
1984 should be read in light especially of Orwell's essay The Lion and the Unicorn in which Orwell sketched out what a distinctly English Socialism (as against the prevailing internationalism of the time) ought to look like. 1984 represents the exact opposite, a totalitarian state neither actually Socialist nor English. A state whose sole purpose had become the exercise of power for its own sake. To label it Leftist or Anti-Leftist, or even Fascist is entirely to miss the point of the work. [There is also the implied accusation that the Soviet Union has rejected and vilified every Socialist principle, of course, remember Orwell fought with the Trotsyist POUM in the Spanish Civil War.]
The present situation is however to be distinguished from that describe in Orwell's dystopia on the basis that the sentence has been handed down by a court, duly according to a Law itself duly enacted by the French Parliament. A Leitmotif of 1984 is that Big Brother represents a state entirely unburdened by Law. Orwell is explicit: not only is there no Law in 1984, there is nothing even resembling it, not even a simulacrum of Law such as Stalin's show trials.
That being said, and the real dangers posed by Islamism notwithstanding, it might reasonable be argued that we as a voting public ought to guard ourselves against laws which criminalise mere browsing. While it may be seductive to think that punishing those who frequent obviously nefarious sites such as Islamist or anti-feminist;p websites, there may come a time when our own browsing habits will not be appreciated by those upon whom we choose to bestow power.
You're also mixing up gender and sex. Skirt-wearing behavior is not physiological. Skirt-wearing behavior in a society where only women wear skirts is more complicated..
Read more carefully, read WAY more carefully. Beginning with "Bearing children is a function of female physiology, skirt wearing is not. Or start even earlier from "'Sex' is a biological fact, and it falls into the classification of male, female, or occasionally intersex. 'Gender' on the other hand is a social construct by definition..."
Okay, why the hell do you care this much about stopping other people from trying to find solutions to their problems?
That is not reasonably to be inferred from anything I have written here. Please address what I have written --and it would help actually to read it first --rather than what you imagine I may have written. The problem I'm addressing here is an unwillingness to admit the distinction between 'sex' and 'gender.' In fact if you didn't get that re-read from the beginning of OP's comment. That frames the context of this comment. And yes, this is a highly simplified explanation of gender... baby steps.
And what the hell is this "trans-gender lobby"? Can I get a job with them?
Very weak Hylandr. You "bet [I] found [my] psychology book at Good Will," I just happen to have, inter alia, a psychology degree. The odds were against it but you lost that bet, it happens.
But the pertinent question remains, do you now understand the the sex/gender distinction?
Queen Gertrude to Hamlet in lovely (and recursive) example of dramatic irony, but yes, appropriate here too.
As it happens, his protestations notwithstanding, Hylandr's psychology is a but distant concern to me. Instead I marvel at the unintentional irony with which he portrayed his (willful) ignorance when trying to demonstrate that "science and truth hurt the liberal cause," an irony compounded by his signature as to the question of how science hurts what passes for "conservatism" these days. Edmund Burke must be rolling in his grave!
You bet wrong, I read three years of psych for one of my degrees (is that not what you would call a 'major' over there?)... damn waste of time too. I thought between revulsion, lust and longing I'd just about exhausted the possibilities for this obsession, thus avoiding making anything resembling a definitive diagnosis, but I missed one? So tell me why is transsexualism so important to you?
More pertinently, can I take your silence on the substantial matter to mean that you do now grok the sex/gender distinction? Great!
Firstly, you are WAY too obsessed with trannies. Your revulsion, lust, or repressed urge to be one is clouding your mind when it comes to understanding what is even being discussed in those links.
Everywhere you see sex that's outside a human social construct there's a male and female. Only humans social structure describes non-existent genders...
As I've explained to you more than once I believe (will this be the time the penny finally drops?), the very purpose of the concept of 'gender' used in contradistinction to 'sex' is to distinguish biology from narrative.
'Sex' is a biological fact, and it falls into the classification of male, female, or occasionally intersex. 'Gender' on the other hand is a social construct by definition, usually described by the adjectives masculine, feminine and, given there is hardly any limit to our ability to craft narrative, all this contemporary gender fluid stuff (though even in traditional societies the idea of a 3rd gender for feminine (gender) males (biological sex)).
Gender used in this sense refers to that which is not biologically determined, but instead reflects the cultural ideas of how people of a given biological sex ought to behave. Eg. Bearing children is a function of female physiology, skirt wearing is not. A clue that skirt wearing behaviour is a matter of gender, and child-bearing is not, is to be found, as we have discussed, in the fact that in certain cultures skirts are items of masculine (gender) attire. This illustrates that the idea in our culture (with apologies to all you Scots out there) that skirts are for females (biological sex) and pants for males (biological sex) is a social construct. Thus a skirt (in our culture) is a feminine (gender) garment, not a female (biological sex) one.
It will thrill you, no doubt, to learn, that the most extreme (and thus easily ridiculed) branch of feminism, ie. RadFem (cf TERF), shares your disgust not only of gender (which they understand to exist, but wish to eliminate, see 'Gender critical' or GC) but also of male-to-female transsexuals, referring to them as male-to-transsexuals (or MTTs), that is when they are not too busy calling for fun stuff like the restriction of males (biological sex) to being 10% of the human population and the like... Horseshoe effect?
What this does indicate though is that the very concept of gender (in contradistinction to sex) can be deployed to undermine the notion of gender-fluidity (i.e. as traditional gender roles break down what does this even mean anymore?) It is for this reason that the trans-gender lobby is seeking to infect the notion of gender with physiology by relying on the, imho rather dubious, concept of "brain-sex" as an explanation of why their gendered (feminine/masculine) self-image is at odds with their biological sex (male/female). Which amounts in effect to arguing that skirt-wearing behaviour is a function of physiology. That mainstream feminism (as opposed to RadFem) is so happy to accommodate the claim of trans-gendered males (biological sex) to being 'women' (biological sex or gender???) seems self-defeating to me. Were they not trying to escape the idea of sex as destiny (i.e. physiological femininity) But as a traditionally masculine (gender) male (biological sex) all I can say it's your movement girls.
And I'm WAY too obsessed with someone being obviously wrong on the internet.
From what I've read, the law was written by the MPAA/RIAA cartel, along with considerable input from Big Pharma. The law was designed more for the protection of those conglomerates, and less for any benefit of consumers.
That's the insight from a municipal US perspective.
Globally "the worst parts" of (Disney authored) US IP law have already been imposed (thus also locking the situation in in the US) most notably via the TRIPS agreement enacted under the WTO.
By means international agreements, the IP system has already rigged so that global wealth flows preferentially into the coffers of those US corporations who are engaged primarily in IP related business, to the expense of consumers and business even in developed nations (only countries with scant protection or respect for IP are immune to this flow of capital into the US) and of course, as you pointed out, consumers at home. In the same way that moving manufacturing from the US to labour-cheap countries has benefited consumers world-wide in the form of more affordable goods (albeit goods often of lesser quality), any diminution of the over-reaching IP protection offered mainly to US corporations will benefit international consumers especially, in the form of more affordable medicine, digital technology and also entertainment (hence, of course, the MPAA/RIAA's deep involvement in this process). Now it seems unlikely that entertainment jobs will be off-shored in the same way manufacturing jobs have been and IT jobs probably will be (Russian pop music anyone?), but the excessive income this industry is able to generate is founded upon global IP overreach.
Any diminution of the global IP regime will thus act to stem the flow of capital internationally into the US. While that may not be obvious form a purely municipal perspective, that is the clear reason that US administrations of both political colours from the Reagan administration onwards --1988 the year the US finally signed up to the 1886 Berne Convention marks the flip from America's prior global IP scepticism -- have, at the behest of IP corporations, pursued an ever more aggressive international IP regime.
Slashdot Mirror
There will be a nuclear war in one year. I guarantee.
I might take you up on that one ... what odds are you are offering?
Because online poker companies around the would would love to get their hands on the software and plug it into their system, so that you'd never know if you were playing a computer or a real person. If you were playing the computer, you'd always lose.
No, with the probabilities involved in poker no player (AI or otherwise) can always win. Rather you'd loose over the long term, but that's already the case for most players.
Moreover, there is no financial incentive for on-line poker companies to have you always lose, or lose in any given hand. Like all effective gambling products (even those, unlike poker, where the house is your counter-party) what they want you to do is to win often enough to keep you coming back for more.
Of course they could program their computers to simply know what you have in your hand and bet accordingly, but still.
Exactly, and thus largely eliminating the chance to which the AI is still subject. But again they wouldn't because they have no financial incentive to do so. They make their money from the rake remember.
If on-line poker companies were to rig the system it would instead be to produce situations which encourage heavy post-flop action. The accusation that they do so is often made by players who have experienced (what they intuit as) more than their fair share of bad beats. But again the probabilities of Holdem will see to frequent bad beats even without undue interference. Now let me tell you about the time I had this perfect read on the villain, I was K full of Qs and he was Q full of As and then the river came a ...
What's more this misuse of the term "fake news" to apply to errors of reporting, is itself a cynical ploy aimed at legitimating outright fiction and bad-faith spin
And Fake Troll Mods do nothing by drive the point home. :p
The term "fake news" has been thrown about -- and misapplied -- far too freely of late. Fake news is a deliberate fiction on the part of the writer, with an intent to deceive. It is not the same as a news story reported in good faith, but with errors.
Indeed! What's more this misuse of the term "fake news" to apply to errors of reporting, is itself a cynical ploy aimed at legitimating outright fiction and bad-faith spin. Thank you for calling this shit out.
'Freedom of speech' and 'Freedom of thought' should be basic human rights, not something to be granted or taken away, and any government
On the legal positivist view: A right is that which you can get it enforced in your favour in a court of law. Only those "rights" which have been granted, say by inclusion in a Bill of Rights, are actually rights (as opposed to aspirations). Freedom of speech is indeed a universal aspiration, but it is a right only where either in the course of devising government (i.e. via a Constitution), or statutorily by being enacted by Parliament, that right has been granted.
Alternatively on a natural law view: Chinese citizens have a right of free speech, they simply risk being executed if the exercise it.
China doesn't have a first amendment, so it's not censorship.
This may seem like a bit of a fine distinction to you. It is censorship, but since China does not have the equivalent of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution, Chinese nationals enjoy no constitutional protection from state, or indeed corporate, censorship.
You will understand, of course, that since this is being done to protect the purity of the young, only those who for whatever perverse reasons want minors corrupted could possibly object. Ahem.
Which of the socialisms was Orwell advocating?
The cited text (Lion & Unicorn) would explain better than I could hope.
From the point of view of Marxism (and I'm obviously not a Marxist) neither of the situations you describe are socialism. The first, I believe would be dismissed as "primitive communalism." The second seems to be a self-defeatingly histrionic* description welfare state ideology. It is a common these days to confuse the welfare state with socialism. Historically, however, the modern welfare state was the invention of conservatives (esp of Otto von Bismarck) and was explicitly an anti-socialist measure. It is an accident of history that the welfare state has become associated with nominally 'socialist' parties (long after the imminent threat of a socialist takeover faded, rendering the welfare state no longer necessary to conservative purposes).
Marxists view socialism as a "transitional state," as a the final form of state power on the path to their utopian (though Marxists would object strenuously to that term) vision of stateless communism. The famous motto "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" which is meant to characterise communism is matched by the starker motto of socialism, "to each according to their contribution" (if memory serves me both come from Marx' Critique of the Gotha Programme). The idea was that the proletariat as the "universal class" (a imho mystical conception Marx inherited from the conservative philosopher Hegel who regard the bureaucracy as the universal class) would set up a self dissolving "dictatorship" in which the fruits of production would be shared only by those whose labour brought them into being. That is the owners of factories etc (the means of production) would be dispossed. Socialism then is most easily defined as the state ownership of the means of production as a path to the eventual state self-elimination which was to be communism. [Note that no country under Communist Party rule has ever claimed to be communist. They did claim to be socialist]
And that was their "scientific" socialism which they distinguished from "utopian" socialism!
But actually my main point was, notwithstanding the dig at the Soviet system, in 1984 Orwell was not so much describing a dictatorship of any political colour, but rather showing a state whose purpose served no ideological agenda at all, other than the exercise of power for powers sake. It is a very worthwhile read.
[*It is more persuasive to define a system first and then go on to show how aspects of that system ineluctably lead to poor outcomes rather than over-obviously writing the untoward outcomes into the very definition. Just an idea if ever you want a good essay mark.]
He is referring to right and wrong.
This right and wrong you speak of ... it's a lot more difficult to establish than statutory validity I suppose. ;)
To a free man it's not valid
To such a "free man" 7 need not be a prime number either.
And the canonical example of what might constitute a "valid law" of the English Parliament, namely that "all blue-eyed babies be put to death" doesn't?! *
Prohibition was "duly enacted" in the US, too, but it was a stupid, ill-advised, and evil power trip.
It may well have been stupid, ill-advised and an evil power trip. It was nonetheless, as a matter of mere fact, a valid law. After all, Prohibition was repealed rather than being struck down.
[*Besides which, those so-called "human rights" which are actual rights rather than aspirations, are simply called "rights"]
Maybe, just maybe..... the distinguishment between having thoughtcrime and other laws on the book supporting tyranny and kangaroo courts VS no actual law and no courts is not so important a distinction.
Well thoughtcrime is neither a law nor is it on the books, that's the point. There are no written rules as such, one never knows with certitude what the elements of a particular "crime" might be (nor is there a process where a prosecution must make them out), or when one has overstepped the line ... unless of course one writes out "I Hate Big Brother".
But yes ... absolutely! Having the mere simulacrum of Law: prosection of people who don't actually commit the offence; defence lawyers who don't actually defend you; courts whose decisions are determined not with reference to the evidence but to the wishes of political masters ... does in effect amount to having no Law restraining the power of state at all.* My point was simply that Orwell makes the absence of Law stark.
I recently read Anna Funder's Stasiland. The counterfeit of Law in the GDR notwithstanding, Orwell was more accurate than he could have known, the similarities are chilling (if less extreme). A highly recommend read if you are interested in the threat posed by the surveillance state.
Perhaps the no law binding government thing is just a later evolution of where this path takes us.
I prefer to think of it as a more primitive phase of human society. I hope I'm not being unduly optimistic.
[*I'm defining 'Law' here as the social technology by which we restrain the arbitrary exercise of power (private or state) on the individual person]
[T]he answer to 2) is "Free speech".
I'm making a pun on the fact that the word 'opinion' is a term of art at Law: it's another word of a judgment, and that OP was delivering an opinion as to the validity of a law. It was my obtuse way of telling OP that their opinion is hardly pertinent. Had OP simply opined that it should not be, as a matter of principle, be made an offence merely to browse websites, I might not have been inclined to disagree.
1) no valid crime (in my opinion) was committed
1) On what basis do you argue that Article 421-2-5-2 was not duly enacted as a valid law of France?
2) On what basis do you claim your entitlement to an opinion on a matter of French constitutional law?
1984 was made about a Collectivist (Leftist) dystopia.
That's both an oversimplification and a not uncommon misunderstanding of the text. A misunderstanding which reading the book will occasionally (but apparently not invariably) clear up.
As the text explains via the device of Emanuel Goldstein's inserted Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism --which is left deliberately ambiguous to the reader as to whether it is a genuine text of a genuine dissident or rather a work of the Party describing itself with dark irony --Ingsoc "rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it does so in the name of Socialism" (doublethink)!
1984 should be read in light especially of Orwell's essay The Lion and the Unicorn in which Orwell sketched out what a distinctly English Socialism (as against the prevailing internationalism of the time) ought to look like. 1984 represents the exact opposite, a totalitarian state neither actually Socialist nor English. A state whose sole purpose had become the exercise of power for its own sake. To label it Leftist or Anti-Leftist, or even Fascist is entirely to miss the point of the work. [There is also the implied accusation that the Soviet Union has rejected and vilified every Socialist principle, of course, remember Orwell fought with the Trotsyist POUM in the Spanish Civil War.]
The present situation is however to be distinguished from that describe in Orwell's dystopia on the basis that the sentence has been handed down by a court, duly according to a Law itself duly enacted by the French Parliament. A Leitmotif of 1984 is that Big Brother represents a state entirely unburdened by Law. Orwell is explicit: not only is there no Law in 1984, there is nothing even resembling it, not even a simulacrum of Law such as Stalin's show trials.
That being said, and the real dangers posed by Islamism notwithstanding, it might reasonable be argued that we as a voting public ought to guard ourselves against laws which criminalise mere browsing. While it may be seductive to think that punishing those who frequent obviously nefarious sites such as Islamist or anti-feminist ;p websites, there may come a time when our own browsing habits will not be appreciated by those upon whom we choose to bestow power.
The 2 Russian girls I know are both very attractive... I wouldn't mind finding either one of them under (or on top of) my bed...
Don't be a fool man! They're only there to sap your precious bodily fluids!
You're also mixing up gender and sex. Skirt-wearing behavior is not physiological. Skirt-wearing behavior in a society where only women wear skirts is more complicated..
Read more carefully, read WAY more carefully. Beginning with "Bearing children is a function of female physiology, skirt wearing is not . Or start even earlier from "'Sex' is a biological fact, and it falls into the classification of male, female, or occasionally intersex. 'Gender' on the other hand is a social construct by definition ..."
Okay, why the hell do you care this much about stopping other people from trying to find solutions to their problems?
That is not reasonably to be inferred from anything I have written here. Please address what I have written --and it would help actually to read it first --rather than what you imagine I may have written. The problem I'm addressing here is an unwillingness to admit the distinction between 'sex' and 'gender.' In fact if you didn't get that re-read from the beginning of OP's comment. That frames the context of this comment. And yes, this is a highly simplified explanation of gender ... baby steps.
And what the hell is this "trans-gender lobby"? Can I get a job with them?
Wikipedia is a good place to start. As to job prospects, that question would properly be addressed to the organisation in question.
Upon a presumption in your favour, I'll take that as "I do, but I don't want to admit it."
So much for his sig :o
Legitimacy? ... I'm sorry, you do or you do not understand the sex/gender distinction?
Very weak Hylandr. You "bet [I] found [my] psychology book at Good Will," I just happen to have, inter alia, a psychology degree. The odds were against it but you lost that bet, it happens.
But the pertinent question remains, do you now understand the the sex/gender distinction?
"The lady doth protest too much methinks"
Queen Gertrude to Hamlet in lovely (and recursive) example of dramatic irony, but yes, appropriate here too.
As it happens, his protestations notwithstanding, Hylandr's psychology is a but distant concern to me. Instead I marvel at the unintentional irony with which he portrayed his (willful) ignorance when trying to demonstrate that "science and truth hurt the liberal cause," an irony compounded by his signature as to the question of how science hurts what passes for "conservatism" these days. Edmund Burke must be rolling in his grave!
You bet wrong, I read three years of psych for one of my degrees (is that not what you would call a 'major' over there?)... damn waste of time too. I thought between revulsion, lust and longing I'd just about exhausted the possibilities for this obsession, thus avoiding making anything resembling a definitive diagnosis, but I missed one? So tell me why is transsexualism so important to you?
More pertinently, can I take your silence on the substantial matter to mean that you do now grok the sex/gender distinction? Great!
Firstly, you are WAY too obsessed with trannies. Your revulsion, lust, or repressed urge to be one is clouding your mind when it comes to understanding what is even being discussed in those links.
Everywhere you see sex that's outside a human social construct there's a male and female. Only humans social structure describes non-existent genders ...
As I've explained to you more than once I believe (will this be the time the penny finally drops?), the very purpose of the concept of 'gender' used in contradistinction to 'sex' is to distinguish biology from narrative.
'Sex' is a biological fact, and it falls into the classification of male, female, or occasionally intersex. 'Gender' on the other hand is a social construct by definition, usually described by the adjectives masculine, feminine and, given there is hardly any limit to our ability to craft narrative, all this contemporary gender fluid stuff (though even in traditional societies the idea of a 3rd gender for feminine (gender) males (biological sex)).
Gender used in this sense refers to that which is not biologically determined, but instead reflects the cultural ideas of how people of a given biological sex ought to behave. Eg. Bearing children is a function of female physiology, skirt wearing is not. A clue that skirt wearing behaviour is a matter of gender, and child-bearing is not, is to be found, as we have discussed, in the fact that in certain cultures skirts are items of masculine (gender) attire. This illustrates that the idea in our culture (with apologies to all you Scots out there) that skirts are for females (biological sex) and pants for males (biological sex) is a social construct. Thus a skirt (in our culture) is a feminine (gender) garment, not a female (biological sex) one.
It will thrill you, no doubt, to learn, that the most extreme (and thus easily ridiculed) branch of feminism, ie. RadFem (cf TERF), shares your disgust not only of gender (which they understand to exist, but wish to eliminate, see 'Gender critical' or GC) but also of male-to-female transsexuals, referring to them as male-to-transsexuals (or MTTs), that is when they are not too busy calling for fun stuff like the restriction of males (biological sex) to being 10% of the human population and the like ... Horseshoe effect?
What this does indicate though is that the very concept of gender (in contradistinction to sex) can be deployed to undermine the notion of gender-fluidity (i.e. as traditional gender roles break down what does this even mean anymore?) It is for this reason that the trans-gender lobby is seeking to infect the notion of gender with physiology by relying on the, imho rather dubious, concept of "brain-sex" as an explanation of why their gendered (feminine/masculine) self-image is at odds with their biological sex (male/female). Which amounts in effect to arguing that skirt-wearing behaviour is a function of physiology. That mainstream feminism (as opposed to RadFem) is so happy to accommodate the claim of trans-gendered males (biological sex) to being 'women' (biological sex or gender???) seems self-defeating to me. Were they not trying to escape the idea of sex as destiny (i.e. physiological femininity) But as a traditionally masculine (gender) male (biological sex) all I can say it's your movement girls.
And I'm WAY too obsessed with someone being obviously wrong on the internet.
You are a hyperbolic idiot, this isn't the Breitbart comment section
And you continue the hyperbole ...
This is the Breitbart comment section?!
From what I've read, the law was written by the MPAA/RIAA cartel, along with considerable input from Big Pharma. The law was designed more for the protection of those conglomerates, and less for any benefit of consumers.
That's the insight from a municipal US perspective.
Globally "the worst parts" of (Disney authored) US IP law have already been imposed (thus also locking the situation in in the US) most notably via the TRIPS agreement enacted under the WTO.
By means international agreements, the IP system has already rigged so that global wealth flows preferentially into the coffers of those US corporations who are engaged primarily in IP related business, to the expense of consumers and business even in developed nations (only countries with scant protection or respect for IP are immune to this flow of capital into the US) and of course, as you pointed out, consumers at home. In the same way that moving manufacturing from the US to labour-cheap countries has benefited consumers world-wide in the form of more affordable goods (albeit goods often of lesser quality), any diminution of the over-reaching IP protection offered mainly to US corporations will benefit international consumers especially, in the form of more affordable medicine, digital technology and also entertainment (hence, of course, the MPAA/RIAA's deep involvement in this process). Now it seems unlikely that entertainment jobs will be off-shored in the same way manufacturing jobs have been and IT jobs probably will be (Russian pop music anyone?), but the excessive income this industry is able to generate is founded upon global IP overreach.
Any diminution of the global IP regime will thus act to stem the flow of capital internationally into the US. While that may not be obvious form a purely municipal perspective, that is the clear reason that US administrations of both political colours from the Reagan administration onwards --1988 the year the US finally signed up to the 1886 Berne Convention marks the flip from America's prior global IP scepticism -- have, at the behest of IP corporations, pursued an ever more aggressive international IP regime.
Picat looks like what you get after Python eats Javascript and then vomits.
Looks a lot more like Prolog which has swallowed an OO-flavour of Pascal actually.