1. cell phone cameras are already ubiquitous, so a world without cameras is impossible. you're going to be recorded in public one way or another. make peace with that fact
2. if big bad government is taking the pictures, how can the footage represent to you anything but protection of your rights rather an abridgment of them? right: bceause the "gubmint" is in a conspiracy to frame you and has a dark secret desire to remove your rights
i feel like i have to be a paranoid schizophrenic to even begin to care about street cameras
1. i was joking. very obviously. i got modded funny, see? you need a new humor chip
2. finland is the hillbilly alabama of europe? wtf? ever hear of nokia? lucky for you you've insulted a people of famously morose and taciturn character, so you should escape with your life
to merely put the newspaper industry's reason for existence into doubt
now google actually has to go out and confiscate newspapers' means of production and forcibly convert paper mills into data centers? talk about insult on top of injury
i think someone at google is taking this whole notion of the digital "revolution" a little too seriously, no? do they assassinate rupert murdoch and demolish the conde nast building next?
it is impossible to be rich without also being complex
also, a complex society must, by necessity, have a complex legal code
it is not possible to satisfy the legal needs of a complex economic and social system with a simple set of laws
therefore, if you wish to live in a rich western society, it is completely impossible for your legal system to be easily understood by the common man
you need to accept that and make peace with that fact. it is completely unavoidable
you must have a dedicated legal profession dedicated to the study and interpretation of the law. the common man cannot be expected to have the time to completely absorb and understand the unavoidably inescapably complex legal code
in a related way, it always makes me laugh to hear simpletons talk about replacing the complex tax code with a flat sales tax. in a complex economy (again complexity is NECESSARY in order to be rich) there are myriad ways to obtain income. so lets imagine the simpletons win, scrap the complex tax code, and replace it with a flat sales tax. all of a sudden, you have all these yahoos able to make money without paying a dime of taxes. then, the exact same simpletons asking for a simple tax code would whine and complain about the tax code being unfair, about freeloaders on the system
you don't want your laws and taxes to be unfair? then accept that it is complex. being complex means it is beyond the easy understanding of the uninitiated layman. all of these observations are completely inescapable facts of life. you need to understand, accept, and make peace with these observations
fair and complex, or simple and unfair. those are your choices in taxes and law. pick one. but no, sorry, you don't get a fair and simple tax code, you don't get a fair and simple legal code. such a tax code or legal code is completely impossible in a complex society, which is the only kind of society in which you can enjoy a comfortable standard of living
agreed. i agree with you about the "but the usa..." type bullshit whining deflections of valid criticism
but its different from holding the usa to say, the directive not to torture prisoners of war, than it is to hold the usa to ideologically neutral standards
well... unequal access to communication and media is not ideologically neutral, in results. but in cause, what is contributing to the problem, geography and population density, really is ideologically neutral
your goal is noble, i'm not criticizing that. but you must include the fact that the goal is harder for the usa. genuinely, ideologically neutrally, harder
criticizing bolivia for not having a strong navy is invalid for a landlocked country, while criticizing bolivia for ethnic strife (lowlanders versus uplanders) is valid. a bolivian has every right to scoff at your first criticism, and no right at all to scoff at your second criticism. not all criticism of a country is the same and bound to the same level of excuse making
is an idea that has wings (pun intended). incremental technological improvements will get us there eventually i think. a 747 can already fly hypersonic, but your passengers will feel like they are being violently shaken inside a blender, and you would want to fly the 747 more than the 10 flights it would have in it before the fatigue broke it to pieces. but reinforcement makes a heavier aircraft, which costs more fuel, and thats why the current technology versus fuel cost sweet spot is currently subsonic. doesn't have to be in the future though
but suborbital flight has the added problem of needing to carry all of its fuel. yes, atmospheric resistance disappears, but not needing to carry oxygen around is an incredible benefit both economically and technologically. you could just launch the thing and let it coast on momentum, but all of the upfront fuel cost to get it that high and that fast is enormous, not to mention, as you noted, all of the technological challenges with reentry comfort issues, aircraft integrity issues, landing issues, etc.
lawyers are the same as computer programmers
on
You Are Not a Lawyer
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
they both work in a complex technical language
a programmer worth his salt knows most of the important classes and functions and syntax in a given language needed to get a programming task done, whether serving webpages or making an operating system run. a lawyer does exactly the same thing: he knows certain important case points, the usual range of legal maneuvers in case law, and the prevailing legal opinions, and he applies them to the given legal task at hand, whether criminal or civil
an ASP.NET C# programmer wouldn't jump in and start telling a C++ device driver how to do his work. with the same sort of humility in mind, techies really should learn a little more about the law before shooting their mouths off
a diesel locomotive requires an order of magnitude less fuel to use compared to something like a diesel truck, and that really matters, especially with fuel prices on a permanent creeping rise globally
at an eventual future higher pricepoint, fuel costs would put air travel out of the reach of the middle class, and make diesel and ICE cars indulgent luxuries. so rail definitely has an important strategic future, and any country that ignores rail is going to suffer for it in the future
of course, as you note, infrastructure investments with rail is enormous. but most of it is upfront cost. maintenance is a real cost, but not unbearable
let's assume i want to go to new delhi from new york
the concorde can do it in 4 hours, the 747 in 24 hours. but the concorde will cost me 10x as much: speed and fuel cost is not a linear relationship. for me, the extra money is not worth the time savings. sure, to someone it is worth it, but such a person is rich, and there's not enough of them that would make investing the infrastructure to make this possible
avoiding all other arguments, such as safety, a hypothetical concorde that made that trip would burn a lot more fuel than a 747. this is a permanent limitation, not some sort of economics of scale limitation that would make the concorde eventually profitable
besides, 747s CAN fly supersonic. but they remain subsonic because their hull strength can't handle the fatigue of flying supersonic. it wouldn't be that much of a feat to start flying supersonically around the world in modified 747s that didn't shake their occupants. the limiting factor is fuel cost, its not a linear relationship to fly faster, and that's a permanent, hard limitation on the concorde or any supersonic aircraft
there are also schemes to leave the earth's atmosphere and come back in. but then you need to transport half of your fuel, because current airplanes have the luxury of flying through half of their fuel: oxygen
so yes, the 747 really is some sort of transportation sweet spot, a zenith in human technological progress that won't be passed for a long time in speed, cost, and distance (all measurements at the same)
and on that judgment, can not be beat (for land transport)
but i can't go to hawaii by rail, so on "further", rail is permanently limited, and as for faster, it sucks taking 3 days to get to san francisco from new york, as opposed to 6 hours
now what we could do is build some sort of global mach 1 maglev rail system so i could take a supsersonic bullet train on superconducting rails to moscow from new york via a bering straight tunnel/ bridge
but then the idea of rail being cheap disappears. building such a system and maintaining it is a colossal cost
because sweden's population is concentrated in the bottom of the country
if the population of sweden were uniformly distributed from lapland to jutland, you would be 100% correct. but if 90% of the population is concentrated in a small area near denmark, and the other 10% is scattered about the rest of the area, sweden can still rank highly even if that 10% were completely ignored
meanwhile, the usa's population, while concentrated somewhat on the coasts, is not so nearly concentrated as sweden's is
in other words, the population density of kansas is much higher than the population density of lapland, making kansans a much greater foil to a high usa rating than the sami people are to sweden's rating
what i mean by that is, to do better than the 747, one has to go faster further and cheaper. what mode of transport can outdo the 747 on all 3 counts at the same time?
the 747 is outdone by the concorde in terms of faster, but not further or cheaper. and so the concorde failed because in the end it was a niche tool for the rich: it offered marginally better speed for exorbitant increases in costs. we can't put a nuclear engine safely in an airplane, and so there is no cheaper for the immediate future
if we exclude extraterrestrial transport, transport on earth is pretty much at its zenith in our lifetimes. until some dramatic technological breakthroughs gives us a mode of transport that is, all at the same time, faster, further, and cheaper than the 747. in fact, on one count, further, the 747 can't really be topped. on that measure, the 747 pretty much is a dream: i, as a middle class westerner, can go anywhere on the earth i want in 24 hours. think about the history of mankind: that's a really incredible power. starting with us sitting on the back of horses, up through wheels, carriages, sails, the steam engine, rails, the ICE, jet engines... what else can there be?
so until someone invents a technology that can move us as far as the 747, perhaps 10x faster (to make an appreciable difference since 24 hours is a very comfortable amount of time to go to the other end of the globe), and perhaps 2x cheaper, we are in a golden age of transport that will not be surpassed for a very long time. we already have technologies like ramjets that are only used in exotic military applications, so really the bottleneck is cheaper fuel
until such future time, the 747 is the peak of human transportation technology
the reason the usa lags behind other countries is that the other countries are small, compact and densely populated. like korea, or any european country
if you were to examine say, new york and new england, alone, or california, alone, the usa does fine in broadbrand penetration. but the usa is still sparsely populated in vast rural areas in the middle
want proof? look at canada. canada obviously has different governmental mechanisms, but it has virtually the same digital access ratings as the usa:
violence is trending down, not up. it has been trending down since the roman empire. once you realize that, linking violent videogames with real world violence is absurd. but there are a lot of historically mypoic people out there. every generation that has ever lived views its children as more violent than themselves, even though we're not wantonly crucifying and disemboweling neighboring tribes anymore. it's fauly measuring equipment, myopia, to assert violence is increasing. the existence of civilization allows us to air our differences with words, not swords. and civilization has been steadily growing for centuries
as for occams razor, anyone can assert a hypothesis gives a correct prediction. when of course, just as you say, testing it can be problematic. such that, the complexity of a hypothesis is pretty much all you have to judge: correctness of prediction is impossible to pin down. you can't measure correctness of prediction to the level of certainty you are depending upon in your argument
furthermore, the weaker the correlation, the more complex the hypothesis. if you wish to establish causation, this is unavoidable. saying that dwindling pirates leads to climate change requires an incredibly complex explanation, because the correlation is so weak: establish the mechanism. there is no mechanism. meanwhile, saying violent media leads to catharsis that results in less real world violence requires a simple explanation. the psychological mechanism can be readily appreciated. and so the correlation is strong. the bible is violent media. and reading the stories in that leads to psychological catharsis that means less real world violence. extrapolate from that ancient media to modern forms, and you understand why violence is so low nowadays as compared to precivilization
therefore, directly in line with occam's razor, as i asserted, correlation and causation being tightly linked makes occam's razor possible, since causation and correlation must be limited to simple explanations. what you say even supports this assertion, once you realize the assertion that the notion of a "correct prediction" is very fuzzy and mostly untestable. you even stated this yourself, without realizing the full implication thereof
look, if someone says a toast at a dinner party, and then another guy has a heart attack, correlation and causation are not valuable, because the explanatory mechanism for how cause and effect flows here is quite complex. meanwhile, if someone yawns, and then someone else yawns, correlation and causation are valuable to consider, since the explanation is a very simple psychological phenomenon. ie, occam's razor, as defined by you and understood by me, not defined by some contact movie watching simpleton you patronizingly labeled me as
we should let this meme roam free, and see if it survives against various ideological predators and competes successfully against perhaps better adjusted memes. it may need to give birth to offspring with modified arguments, some of which might better serve to ensure the idea's longterm survivability, however altered
yes, pirates have nothing to do with global warming. but including this correlation in with the sets of correlations we are talking about is insulting my intelligence, your intelligence, everyone's intelligence
so my assertion that correlation and causation are tightly bound is appropriate in situations where an intellectually honest, educated, prudent, and ideologically neutral person is making the link
i am automatically excluding all the idiotic correlations and causations, that are well outside an honest probability rating
i will underline my assertion with a dull overused weapon: occam's razor. i won't insult your intelligence and explain occam's razor for you, but i will assert that if correlation!=causation,for most intellectually honest sets of correlation, occam's razor would not be a useful dictum
the next person i see who writes "correlation does not equal causation"
it's a mindless kneejerk reply, and it insults the intelligence of anyone reading your words
1. it announces with smarmy glee a concept that your audience already knows
2. a lot if not most times correlation does actually reveal causation
i wish i had the power to singlehandedly wipe that meme from every reply i ever read a again. it's an insulting mindless remark that pisses people off. next time, just explain why you believe what you believe about cause and effect, and leave out the patronizing smarmy "correlation!=causation" please
no, it does not come as an amazing mind blowing observation when you point it out for the 10,000th time, can you believe it?
even though this is the wrong forum, i wouldn't know where else to put the put the request, so here goes:
time measurements usually work from sometime in the 1970s, or maybe back to the 1800s, and peter out in the 2000s, or perhaps go to something like the year 9999
completely dismissed in all of these schemes is historical time, over which there is valid reason to take measurements and establish dates
why not, instead of going to some absurd future date in milliseconds, pinpoint the start date in the distant past? say around the time the pyramids were built. you could still go to some absurd future date in milliseconds
of course, then there is the issue of exactness. however, even without all of the changes in time measurements over history, we ever could firmly establish certain dates and times
no one is promising that the precise millisecond king canute was born or zheng he left port can be pinpointed
but it would be very useful for genealogists, or climate researchers, as well as just plain history software
that is an instinct which has driven the entire history of human innovation and technological progress
the guy who goes "say, i could make a mechanical loom powered by a waterwheel, and sell yarn at $1/ yard rather than $10/ yard" does you a service. of course, he also puts 5 human yarnspinners out of work
but based on some sort of "moral validation" argument, we should not pursue technological progress. we shouldn't, in order to continue employing the human yarnspinners, and to continue paying $10/ yard for yarn
no, sorry, not going to happen
this "moral validation" argument is hollow, and is really just an argument for luddites, and an absurd one at that, since we are both sitting at computer keyboards, arguing over fiber optic cables: innovations that would otherwise be impossible, innovations that, ironically, some of which happened at ibm
innovation is something that flows directly from human laziness and cheapness. we want more for less. and our minds are such that we can actually dream up ways to make that happen with novel organizational structures, energy sources, and bizarre new materials
so i say, fuck "moral validation", fuck the yarnspinners, and fuck the out of work american ibmers
progress isn't all fun and games, and is often cruel. but one of those laid off ibmers will innovate the next big thing that will employ the children of those laid off ibmers, and none of them will question the principle of creative destruction, and they will look at their father's mode of employment the way we look at blacksmithing jobs and chimney sweeping
i have spoken to an employee of ibm, who lives and works in the hudson valley (ibm's historical stomping grounds), and he is being relocated to bangalore under this exact program. he is indian anyways, so not that huge of a deal, and he even looks forward to the massive decrease in cost of living
but he's done a lot of recent improvements on his home, like installing 45K worth of solar panels (not including the 10K new york state gives him for doing that), and now he has to sell his home in the current real estate environment. ugh. i don't think this ibm program has a home value relief program?
according to him, ibm had already planned the move in semisecrecy for years, on a 10-20 year timetable. but the worldwide economic recession has meant a rapid acceleration of the process
it has been observed extensively in hundreds of other animals, has been part of human behavior since before we even evolved to become humans- it occurs in all of our simian relatives, and is mentioned in historical texts from every culture that ever existed
it is a sexual behavior. no worse than any heterosexual behavior or kink
and yes, if everyone only engaged in homosexual behavior, humanity would go extinct. and? this a completely retarded observation. its like saying if everyone ate hot chilis we would all starve. humanity is never going to only eat chilis. humanity is never going to engage in homosexuality beyond 10% of the population. so what's your point in fearing or being hostile to the practice?
Slashdot Mirror
exactly how street cameras threaten your liberty?
1. cell phone cameras are already ubiquitous, so a world without cameras is impossible. you're going to be recorded in public one way or another. make peace with that fact
2. if big bad government is taking the pictures, how can the footage represent to you anything but protection of your rights rather an abridgment of them? right: bceause the "gubmint" is in a conspiracy to frame you and has a dark secret desire to remove your rights
i feel like i have to be a paranoid schizophrenic to even begin to care about street cameras
1. i was joking. very obviously. i got modded funny, see? you need a new humor chip
2. finland is the hillbilly alabama of europe? wtf? ever hear of nokia? lucky for you you've insulted a people of famously morose and taciturn character, so you should escape with your life
to merely put the newspaper industry's reason for existence into doubt
now google actually has to go out and confiscate newspapers' means of production and forcibly convert paper mills into data centers? talk about insult on top of injury
i think someone at google is taking this whole notion of the digital "revolution" a little too seriously, no? do they assassinate rupert murdoch and demolish the conde nast building next?
as dr. liposuction diesel:
http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/21/fat-fuel-biodiesel-tech-sciences-cz_pcb_1222fatfuel.html
is also a complex society
it is impossible to be rich without also being complex
also, a complex society must, by necessity, have a complex legal code
it is not possible to satisfy the legal needs of a complex economic and social system with a simple set of laws
therefore, if you wish to live in a rich western society, it is completely impossible for your legal system to be easily understood by the common man
you need to accept that and make peace with that fact. it is completely unavoidable
you must have a dedicated legal profession dedicated to the study and interpretation of the law. the common man cannot be expected to have the time to completely absorb and understand the unavoidably inescapably complex legal code
in a related way, it always makes me laugh to hear simpletons talk about replacing the complex tax code with a flat sales tax. in a complex economy (again complexity is NECESSARY in order to be rich) there are myriad ways to obtain income. so lets imagine the simpletons win, scrap the complex tax code, and replace it with a flat sales tax. all of a sudden, you have all these yahoos able to make money without paying a dime of taxes. then, the exact same simpletons asking for a simple tax code would whine and complain about the tax code being unfair, about freeloaders on the system
you don't want your laws and taxes to be unfair? then accept that it is complex. being complex means it is beyond the easy understanding of the uninitiated layman. all of these observations are completely inescapable facts of life. you need to understand, accept, and make peace with these observations
fair and complex, or simple and unfair. those are your choices in taxes and law. pick one. but no, sorry, you don't get a fair and simple tax code, you don't get a fair and simple legal code. such a tax code or legal code is completely impossible in a complex society, which is the only kind of society in which you can enjoy a comfortable standard of living
if you are making a joke or if you are totally serious
in which case
reply=joke?"haha":"get a life";
agreed. i agree with you about the "but the usa..." type bullshit whining deflections of valid criticism
but its different from holding the usa to say, the directive not to torture prisoners of war, than it is to hold the usa to ideologically neutral standards
well... unequal access to communication and media is not ideologically neutral, in results. but in cause, what is contributing to the problem, geography and population density, really is ideologically neutral
your goal is noble, i'm not criticizing that. but you must include the fact that the goal is harder for the usa. genuinely, ideologically neutrally, harder
criticizing bolivia for not having a strong navy is invalid for a landlocked country, while criticizing bolivia for ethnic strife (lowlanders versus uplanders) is valid. a bolivian has every right to scoff at your first criticism, and no right at all to scoff at your second criticism. not all criticism of a country is the same and bound to the same level of excuse making
is an idea that has wings (pun intended). incremental technological improvements will get us there eventually i think. a 747 can already fly hypersonic, but your passengers will feel like they are being violently shaken inside a blender, and you would want to fly the 747 more than the 10 flights it would have in it before the fatigue broke it to pieces. but reinforcement makes a heavier aircraft, which costs more fuel, and thats why the current technology versus fuel cost sweet spot is currently subsonic. doesn't have to be in the future though
but suborbital flight has the added problem of needing to carry all of its fuel. yes, atmospheric resistance disappears, but not needing to carry oxygen around is an incredible benefit both economically and technologically. you could just launch the thing and let it coast on momentum, but all of the upfront fuel cost to get it that high and that fast is enormous, not to mention, as you noted, all of the technological challenges with reentry comfort issues, aircraft integrity issues, landing issues, etc.
they both work in a complex technical language
a programmer worth his salt knows most of the important classes and functions and syntax in a given language needed to get a programming task done, whether serving webpages or making an operating system run. a lawyer does exactly the same thing: he knows certain important case points, the usual range of legal maneuvers in case law, and the prevailing legal opinions, and he applies them to the given legal task at hand, whether criminal or civil
an ASP.NET C# programmer wouldn't jump in and start telling a C++ device driver how to do his work. with the same sort of humility in mind, techies really should learn a little more about the law before shooting their mouths off
a diesel locomotive requires an order of magnitude less fuel to use compared to something like a diesel truck, and that really matters, especially with fuel prices on a permanent creeping rise globally
at an eventual future higher pricepoint, fuel costs would put air travel out of the reach of the middle class, and make diesel and ICE cars indulgent luxuries. so rail definitely has an important strategic future, and any country that ignores rail is going to suffer for it in the future
of course, as you note, infrastructure investments with rail is enormous. but most of it is upfront cost. maintenance is a real cost, but not unbearable
let's assume i want to go to new delhi from new york
the concorde can do it in 4 hours, the 747 in 24 hours. but the concorde will cost me 10x as much: speed and fuel cost is not a linear relationship. for me, the extra money is not worth the time savings. sure, to someone it is worth it, but such a person is rich, and there's not enough of them that would make investing the infrastructure to make this possible
avoiding all other arguments, such as safety, a hypothetical concorde that made that trip would burn a lot more fuel than a 747. this is a permanent limitation, not some sort of economics of scale limitation that would make the concorde eventually profitable
besides, 747s CAN fly supersonic. but they remain subsonic because their hull strength can't handle the fatigue of flying supersonic. it wouldn't be that much of a feat to start flying supersonically around the world in modified 747s that didn't shake their occupants. the limiting factor is fuel cost, its not a linear relationship to fly faster, and that's a permanent, hard limitation on the concorde or any supersonic aircraft
there are also schemes to leave the earth's atmosphere and come back in. but then you need to transport half of your fuel, because current airplanes have the luxury of flying through half of their fuel: oxygen
so yes, the 747 really is some sort of transportation sweet spot, a zenith in human technological progress that won't be passed for a long time in speed, cost, and distance (all measurements at the same)
and on that judgment, can not be beat (for land transport)
but i can't go to hawaii by rail, so on "further", rail is permanently limited, and as for faster, it sucks taking 3 days to get to san francisco from new york, as opposed to 6 hours
now what we could do is build some sort of global mach 1 maglev rail system so i could take a supsersonic bullet train on superconducting rails to moscow from new york via a bering straight tunnel/ bridge
but then the idea of rail being cheap disappears. building such a system and maintaining it is a colossal cost
because sweden's population is concentrated in the bottom of the country
if the population of sweden were uniformly distributed from lapland to jutland, you would be 100% correct. but if 90% of the population is concentrated in a small area near denmark, and the other 10% is scattered about the rest of the area, sweden can still rank highly even if that 10% were completely ignored
meanwhile, the usa's population, while concentrated somewhat on the coasts, is not so nearly concentrated as sweden's is
in other words, the population density of kansas is much higher than the population density of lapland, making kansans a much greater foil to a high usa rating than the sami people are to sweden's rating
what i mean by that is, to do better than the 747, one has to go faster further and cheaper. what mode of transport can outdo the 747 on all 3 counts at the same time?
the 747 is outdone by the concorde in terms of faster, but not further or cheaper. and so the concorde failed because in the end it was a niche tool for the rich: it offered marginally better speed for exorbitant increases in costs. we can't put a nuclear engine safely in an airplane, and so there is no cheaper for the immediate future
if we exclude extraterrestrial transport, transport on earth is pretty much at its zenith in our lifetimes. until some dramatic technological breakthroughs gives us a mode of transport that is, all at the same time, faster, further, and cheaper than the 747. in fact, on one count, further, the 747 can't really be topped. on that measure, the 747 pretty much is a dream: i, as a middle class westerner, can go anywhere on the earth i want in 24 hours. think about the history of mankind: that's a really incredible power. starting with us sitting on the back of horses, up through wheels, carriages, sails, the steam engine, rails, the ICE, jet engines... what else can there be?
so until someone invents a technology that can move us as far as the 747, perhaps 10x faster (to make an appreciable difference since 24 hours is a very comfortable amount of time to go to the other end of the globe), and perhaps 2x cheaper, we are in a golden age of transport that will not be surpassed for a very long time. we already have technologies like ramjets that are only used in exotic military applications, so really the bottleneck is cheaper fuel
until such future time, the 747 is the peak of human transportation technology
the reason the usa lags behind other countries is that the other countries are small, compact and densely populated. like korea, or any european country
if you were to examine say, new york and new england, alone, or california, alone, the usa does fine in broadbrand penetration. but the usa is still sparsely populated in vast rural areas in the middle
want proof? look at canada. canada obviously has different governmental mechanisms, but it has virtually the same digital access ratings as the usa:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/list3.htm#dai
broadband penetration has to do with only two factors:
1. how rich the country is
2. population density
all other factors, including government policy, are neglible in comparison
violence is trending down, not up. it has been trending down since the roman empire. once you realize that, linking violent videogames with real world violence is absurd. but there are a lot of historically mypoic people out there. every generation that has ever lived views its children as more violent than themselves, even though we're not wantonly crucifying and disemboweling neighboring tribes anymore. it's fauly measuring equipment, myopia, to assert violence is increasing. the existence of civilization allows us to air our differences with words, not swords. and civilization has been steadily growing for centuries
as for occams razor, anyone can assert a hypothesis gives a correct prediction. when of course, just as you say, testing it can be problematic. such that, the complexity of a hypothesis is pretty much all you have to judge: correctness of prediction is impossible to pin down. you can't measure correctness of prediction to the level of certainty you are depending upon in your argument
furthermore, the weaker the correlation, the more complex the hypothesis. if you wish to establish causation, this is unavoidable. saying that dwindling pirates leads to climate change requires an incredibly complex explanation, because the correlation is so weak: establish the mechanism. there is no mechanism. meanwhile, saying violent media leads to catharsis that results in less real world violence requires a simple explanation. the psychological mechanism can be readily appreciated. and so the correlation is strong. the bible is violent media. and reading the stories in that leads to psychological catharsis that means less real world violence. extrapolate from that ancient media to modern forms, and you understand why violence is so low nowadays as compared to precivilization
therefore, directly in line with occam's razor, as i asserted, correlation and causation being tightly linked makes occam's razor possible, since causation and correlation must be limited to simple explanations. what you say even supports this assertion, once you realize the assertion that the notion of a "correct prediction" is very fuzzy and mostly untestable. you even stated this yourself, without realizing the full implication thereof
look, if someone says a toast at a dinner party, and then another guy has a heart attack, correlation and causation are not valuable, because the explanatory mechanism for how cause and effect flows here is quite complex. meanwhile, if someone yawns, and then someone else yawns, correlation and causation are valuable to consider, since the explanation is a very simple psychological phenomenon. ie, occam's razor, as defined by you and understood by me, not defined by some contact movie watching simpleton you patronizingly labeled me as
we should let this meme roam free, and see if it survives against various ideological predators and competes successfully against perhaps better adjusted memes. it may need to give birth to offspring with modified arguments, some of which might better serve to ensure the idea's longterm survivability, however altered
yes, pirates have nothing to do with global warming. but including this correlation in with the sets of correlations we are talking about is insulting my intelligence, your intelligence, everyone's intelligence
so my assertion that correlation and causation are tightly bound is appropriate in situations where an intellectually honest, educated, prudent, and ideologically neutral person is making the link
i am automatically excluding all the idiotic correlations and causations, that are well outside an honest probability rating
i will underline my assertion with a dull overused weapon: occam's razor. i won't insult your intelligence and explain occam's razor for you, but i will assert that if correlation!=causation,for most intellectually honest sets of correlation, occam's razor would not be a useful dictum
the next person i see who writes "correlation does not equal causation"
it's a mindless kneejerk reply, and it insults the intelligence of anyone reading your words
1. it announces with smarmy glee a concept that your audience already knows
2. a lot if not most times correlation does actually reveal causation
i wish i had the power to singlehandedly wipe that meme from every reply i ever read a again. it's an insulting mindless remark that pisses people off. next time, just explain why you believe what you believe about cause and effect, and leave out the patronizing smarmy "correlation!=causation" please
no, it does not come as an amazing mind blowing observation when you point it out for the 10,000th time, can you believe it?
after all, look how miserably microsoft failed trying to dent netscape's marketshare when it started bundling internet explorer with windows
will anyone ever take netscape down as top dog of the browser wars?
he'll bribe the judges with $2 bills
even though this is the wrong forum, i wouldn't know where else to put the put the request, so here goes:
time measurements usually work from sometime in the 1970s, or maybe back to the 1800s, and peter out in the 2000s, or perhaps go to something like the year 9999
completely dismissed in all of these schemes is historical time, over which there is valid reason to take measurements and establish dates
why not, instead of going to some absurd future date in milliseconds, pinpoint the start date in the distant past? say around the time the pyramids were built. you could still go to some absurd future date in milliseconds
of course, then there is the issue of exactness. however, even without all of the changes in time measurements over history, we ever could firmly establish certain dates and times
no one is promising that the precise millisecond king canute was born or zheng he left port can be pinpointed
but it would be very useful for genealogists, or climate researchers, as well as just plain history software
why does that instinct require moral validation?
that is an instinct which has driven the entire history of human innovation and technological progress
the guy who goes "say, i could make a mechanical loom powered by a waterwheel, and sell yarn at $1/ yard rather than $10/ yard" does you a service. of course, he also puts 5 human yarnspinners out of work
but based on some sort of "moral validation" argument, we should not pursue technological progress. we shouldn't, in order to continue employing the human yarnspinners, and to continue paying $10/ yard for yarn
no, sorry, not going to happen
this "moral validation" argument is hollow, and is really just an argument for luddites, and an absurd one at that, since we are both sitting at computer keyboards, arguing over fiber optic cables: innovations that would otherwise be impossible, innovations that, ironically, some of which happened at ibm
innovation is something that flows directly from human laziness and cheapness. we want more for less. and our minds are such that we can actually dream up ways to make that happen with novel organizational structures, energy sources, and bizarre new materials
so i say, fuck "moral validation", fuck the yarnspinners, and fuck the out of work american ibmers
progress isn't all fun and games, and is often cruel. but one of those laid off ibmers will innovate the next big thing that will employ the children of those laid off ibmers, and none of them will question the principle of creative destruction, and they will look at their father's mode of employment the way we look at blacksmithing jobs and chimney sweeping
ibm will be an indian company
i have spoken to an employee of ibm, who lives and works in the hudson valley (ibm's historical stomping grounds), and he is being relocated to bangalore under this exact program. he is indian anyways, so not that huge of a deal, and he even looks forward to the massive decrease in cost of living
but he's done a lot of recent improvements on his home, like installing 45K worth of solar panels (not including the 10K new york state gives him for doing that), and now he has to sell his home in the current real estate environment. ugh. i don't think this ibm program has a home value relief program?
according to him, ibm had already planned the move in semisecrecy for years, on a 10-20 year timetable. but the worldwide economic recession has meant a rapid acceleration of the process
it has been observed extensively in hundreds of other animals, has been part of human behavior since before we even evolved to become humans- it occurs in all of our simian relatives, and is mentioned in historical texts from every culture that ever existed
it is a sexual behavior. no worse than any heterosexual behavior or kink
and yes, if everyone only engaged in homosexual behavior, humanity would go extinct. and? this a completely retarded observation. its like saying if everyone ate hot chilis we would all starve. humanity is never going to only eat chilis. humanity is never going to engage in homosexuality beyond 10% of the population. so what's your point in fearing or being hostile to the practice?