A six week old baby shouldn't die of Whooping Cough because some idiot thinks it's their "personal right" to be a disease carrier.
People who want the right not to be vaccinated are not motivated out of a desire to kill babies with the diseases they carry. That's a ridiculous argument. It's just like how people who want the right to drive are not motivated out of a desire to cause car accidents and kill babies, even though they know that getting in the car raises the risk that they will kill a baby in a car accident.
However, when someone tries to claim that their actions (not vaccinating) that affect other people is their choice, I highly disagree.
All of our actions affect other people, so you'll have to be more specific.
I keep waiting for them to claim that it's their right to choose to drive drunk - railing against police enforcing driver sobriety and completely ignoring how many people are killed by drunk drivers.
That's a great example... to me, it's not okay for the police to do things I think are unconstitutional in the name of ending drunk driving. Are you really okay with things like police checkpoints where everybody is forced to submit to a search in order to get past it?? It's not worth giving up our rights to slightly reduce the chance that some people will die. We're all going to die eventually.
Your rationale for absolving parents of vaccinated kids is that "you have done everything you could, so it's just unfortunate" -- but that makes no sense because vaccination is not "everything you could" do to prevent illness. Just as a small example, say you give your child the flu vaccine, but he still catches the flu at daycare. You're not absolved. You could have quit your job and kept your child at home instead of sending him to daycare (which is a known risk factor for illness). So you should still be held criminally negligent according to the spirit of your law.
Perhaps that points to why laws like yours are not acceptable. You are criminalizing things which many people still believe fall within their freedoms to take care of themselves and their families as they see fit. I'm curious what you think about the myriad other activities that may (or may not) harm children. I'm guessing you would be pro-criminalization for things like your child twisting his ankle while playing basketball, since you could have easily prevented it by not letting him play basketball. Maybe that's not harmful enough for you to take notice. I'm sure you would agree that the parents of children who are shot in school shootings should be sent to jail for not protecting their kids. "You don't *have* to homeschool your kids, but if you don't and they get shot at school, then you are responsible for their murder." Something like that?
The main thing I'm curious about is why you wrote your hypothetical law the way you did. You clearly want to encourage vaccination. So why not make the law "You have to get your kids vaccinated" rather than the circuitous route you took?
I think you're being a bit too strict with your interpretation of the idiom. From your own link, "This also gives rise to the phrase "the last/final straw", used when something is deemed to be the last in a line of unacceptable occurrences."
Therefore the straw is an unacceptable occurrence, not a red herring. To explore the difference, would putting a single straw on an unburdened camel be an unacceptable occurrence, e.g. would a single straw be too heavy?
While related, I don't think you can fairly call someone's characterization of something as "the last straw" to mean that it was a perfectly acceptable incident except for the buildup of past incidents.
I find that hard to believe. Just looking at one common item that I've really noticed has gone up, ground beef has gone up from $3.005/lbs to $3.467/lbs since 2012, which is 15.4%. Lean ground beef has gone from $3.884/lbs to $5.021/lbs, which is 29.3%.
That's had a huge knock-on affect in fast food as well. Compare Wendy's "value menu" or "right price menu" or whatever they're calling it to the dollar menu of yesteryear (long ago in the foggy past of 2012). Same food items, now 20%, 30%, 50% more expensive.
I'd love to see inflation statistics from Visa and Mastercard rather than theoretical "baskets" from researchers.
I hope you're joking about Baby Boomers earning Social Security. SS taxes were half the current level when the Boomers started their careers. See http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progda...
I'm all for paying them back based on what they paid in, but they have not earned the current benefit level.
People tend to forget stuff they don't use. Right now the thing most people retain through adulthood is the rote memorization they learned in 2nd grade. For instance most people know 4 + 4 = 8 without counting on their fingers.
Think about how many times throughout school people recalled the fact that 4 + 4 = 8, compared to how many times they practiced an algorithm like long division. That's why people forget long division, not because they didn't get the "concept" of division or because learning long division by rote somehow shriveled their soul.
But go on ruining people's educations, except for those with an exceedingly high aptitude and willpower.
That doesn't make sense. Currently, most high school graduates have demonstrated an ability with algebra and geometry at a minimum. Very few people would ever get there if it weren't forced on them.
Everyone suffers at least a bit under the current system.
Sure, and there's plenty of room for improvement.
I think it identifies at least part of the problem.
He touches on some subjects that I agree with, such as the tedium of geometric proofs.. but for the wrong reason. It's not because we should trust our instincts and not bother proving stuff that is obvious as the author recommends. That's terrible advice. In fact sometimes the proofs of the most basic, intuitive concepts are beautiful and complex, if short and elegant. For instance in abstract algebra the proof that a group's identity element is unique is lovely and a great exercise that probably every abstract algebra student goes through.
Are you talking about your long, angry post, or the paper? It seems more like you're talking about your post.
That's a reading comprehension problem on your part. Clearly I was talking about "that paper" just like I indicated at the start of the sentence you quoted... not sure how you missed that.
And yes it does make me angry when idiots start convincing people to take a self-destructive path. I notice you didn't comment on what I said about people not understanding the benefits they themselves accrued under the system which they seek to destroy. It's a huge thing I see time and time again. It's even worse when the change is forced on people who know better, as happens so often in public education.
Well, judging from the tone of your post, you're a lost cause.
I'm certainly "lost" to your cause. That's the nature of fundamental disagreements. Stop trying to make it sound tragic, you sound silly.
I just read the first 6 pages of that pdf and had to stop. I'm just blown away that you think that pdf has any valuable insights.
All of the premises so far are incorrect. The idea that math is supposed to be this playful fun activity that people just kind of discover on their own, perhaps with little nudges, would lead to a society where almost nobody learns math because most people aren't that smart or creative. The premise that math is not useful to society is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. The premise that math is not a tool for science and technology is maybe tied for that.
Those are obviously wrong so I won't elaborate, but I want to talk more about the music and painting allegory in the intro which seems to inform the author's view on how math "should" be. I don't know much about music (the same as the author, I'm guessing), but my wife spent a few years at a painting atelier learning classical realist painting, and let me tell you, it's absolutely not about "expressing yourself and your feelings and things like that—really way-out-there abstract stuff." Nope. You know why? Because that produces trash. It's what got us the modern art movement, which is a laughingstock to most people in this world. (If you genuinely find yourself swooning over the "expression" and "feelings" in a Mondrian painting of squares or the swooping colors and "eroticism" of a Georgia O'Keeffe flower painting, you need your head examined.)
So yeah, in your first 6 months to a year of learning painting it's pretty common to not pick up a paintbrush unless you're a prodigy. Learning to paint starts with learning to see and learning to measure. Then you go on to copying simple figures. Not drawing from life! No don't even think of that, it's a waste of your time and you'll learn bad habits that you need to unlearn later. You copy classical studies like the Bargue drawings. The first Bargue that you copy is probably an eye or a forearm made with just a few lines that the master threw down as a basic exercise for his students. It took him seconds to produce a general eye-like shape. But the student is going to spend hours copying that. You master the ability to have a drawing sitting next to your paper, and copying the lengths and angles and weights exactly, just by looking. Then later, you move the drawing you're copying a few feet away so that you have to adjust the size in your head. Notice we're not even close to starting to learn how to shade. And boy, actually painting with paints is a lonnnng way off still.
Does this kill the retarded exuberance of just throwing paint on paper, literally splashing it, and then looking at it and saying "OMG I totally expressed myself I'm so awesome I'm a special snowflake" -- yes, absolutely. That's the point. It's a craft that has to be mastered, and it's not easy. The fun part begins after that.
I don't think it's possible for a person today to reach the same artistic heights as the classical masters on their own. It's exceedingly rare to do so. All the classical masters spent years, usually from their early childhoods to adulthood, studying in someone else's studio, before making their own style.
It would be similar to finding someone who independently reinvented modern math. You may be thinking of Srinivasa Ramanujan here, but would he have reached the heights he did if he hadn't been given that initial formal training and been exposed to those advanced trig books? Who knows. But in any case, how many Srinivasas are there in the world at a given time?
Most people need to be trained to master something. The author disagrees derisively when he says:
"SIMPLICIO: I don’t think that’s very fair. Surely teaching methods have improved since then.
SALVIATI: You mean training methods. Teaching is a messy human relationship; it does not require a method. Or rather I should say, if you need a method you’re probably not a very good teacher"
I can't figure out what you're trying to get out of me, but from my point of view, the daycare example is nonsense.
I'm trying to get you to explain how your out for age discrimination doesn't also apply to racial discrimination.
You're saying that daycares don't discriminate based on the characteristics of kids, because they are actually providing the service to the parents. So I'm responding that if the daycare doesn't provide service to black kids, but black parents are fine (in other words, black parents could enroll an adopted while child), that's STILL racial discrimination. I mean it's rather obvious.
So if we accept that the child's race plays a role, then why doesn't the child's age?
I mean the real answer is that the needs and supervision requirements of a 20 year old are very different than a 2-5 year old, so the daycare is justified in having an age policy. In other words, we as a society say that it's okay for daycares to discriminate based on age because age plays a significant role in what is required. Race, in theory, does not... the care required by a black 5 year old is not substantially different than the care required by a white 5 year old.
But you didn't say that.
Just like it wouldn't be discrimination for a university to deny addmission to a preschooler. Or is that discr4imination based on age as well?
Yes, of course it is.. if the preschooler is qualified to be admitted, and they don't admit him, that is age discrimination. In reality universities are happy to admit underage people if they are qualified. I've heard of 12 year olds in college. If an 11 year old were qualified, they'd admit the 11 year old. I don't believe there is a minimum age to attend university, although practically speaking no 2 year old is realistically going to be qualified.
Dog food is a huge exaggeration, unless you mean it metaphorically in which case I agree -- people should eat their own dog food in that their benefits should be tied to what they produced themselves. That's kind of how it is already, except that current retirees are taking too much out of the system compared to what they produced, and there's a pretty radical wealth redistribution component where poor people get much more than they put in, and "rich" people (middle class and up) get less.
I don't have an iPad (or a tablet of any kind) so maybe I'm not understanding this.. does Apple really not know who the device and/or user account belongs to? Surely Apple products have some kind of user system, and when you create your user account you reveal your name and probably address, and if the person ever bought anything there's a credit card linked to it as well... no?
I have an Android phone and I'm virtually certain that Google could tie my name and address to this bit of hardware.
I see... Your argument confused me because we are talking about what the laws should be. But now you're revealing that your definition of consequential and inconsequential is simply a mirror of what the state already says.
If the laws changed so that it's okay to not do business with minorities, then you would support that, because minorities would not be able to win a court case about it, because it's not against the law.
I've been fascinated with algae production of biodiesel for a decade now. I'm curious, the DOE proof of concept that you're talking about.. is that in 1980's dollars or today?
From what I've heard there have been plenty of commercial attempts to produce biodiesel from algae and they have failed.
I'm not speaking of the active terrorists, I'm talking about all the civilians getting slaughtered by our machines.
That's what people say, but it's impossible to know for sure what drives terrorism recruitment. If we were sending in troops on the ground to do hand to hand fighting and getting our asses whooped by terrorists who still used dirty tactics, I personally don't think it would make one whit of difference. There would still be civilians getting killed (perhaps fewer). There would probably be more disruption (more invaders, take longer, less ability to target precisely). The local populations would still be Muslim and the war would still be cast as the foreign infidels fighting against the noble lions of Islam.
I mean all you have to do is look at how Pakistan reacted to the secret CIA program that found Bin Laden. That didn't kill innocent people... in fact it helped vaccinate their country. Did they say "Oh wow what awesome humanitarian tactics, we approve!! Please start doing this more instead of drone strikes this is so cool." Nope.
Remember, Al Qaeda was a mostly-irrelevant organization in the final stages of collapse
It's true that al Qaeda was off our radar.. that's largely because the US public did not give two shits about the Middle East or any Muslim countries prior to 9/11. That stuff was Israel's problem and India's problem and Russia's problem... and we kinda sorta thought maybe they deserved it for their own actions. Kashmiri Muslim terrorists were still thought of as freedom fighters or rebels. Same with Chechens, Palestinians, etc.
Al Qaeda was receiving state support from the Taliban in Afghanistan before 9/11. There is also a large chance that they received funding from the Saudis and from Pakistan, both of which have interests in keeping terrorism alive and well, if at a low buzz inside their own borders. I haven't heard the argument you're making that al Qaeda was in the final stages of collapse, I'm curious what evidence you have of that.
The days when men won wars are mostly over - in a conflict between Major Powers it'll be all about who has the best and most hardware. And those costs aren't dramatically different around the world.
What if those costs are more different than you think? For instance, what do you think Iran's army pays for gas and oil? What does China's army pay? Even if ultimately the cost is the same due to opportunity costs, that would mask the true military expenditure. For instance, if China (which is an oil importer) says "Here in China, the army pays $0.10/gallon for gas. If you sell gas here, you have to do that" then they report $0.10/gallon gas in their military expenditures... but obviously they are getting more value for that.
The US military establishment has shit tons of money and most of the budget operates transparently and within the overall economy. I mean we know that when they buy gas, they are paying market price. When they build an airbase, they probably acquired the land through the market, or eminent domain which is supposed to be a fair price. What do you think China does when they build a new airbase? What cost is recorded?
Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not saying that the US doesn't have more military capability than other countries. I'm just saying that I think the differences are somewhat exaggerated because the US is a really expensive place to do stuff. Our Navy gets sued over stupid shit like SONAR hurting whales and dolphins. In China they execute activists who cause problems. All that stuff has an impact too, it's not just dollars that we need to look at.
Oh yeah, forgot to add.. after abolishing Social Security, old people with no income could go on welfare.
Social Security actually is a welfare program since poor people get a disproportionately high benefit compared to what they paid in.. it's just not called welfare because back when it was originally proposed, most people were still properly ashamed at not pulling their own weight.
I support regressive taxes in general because it makes all people at least somewhat aware of what stuff costs.
Considering things like the EITC were invented to offset payroll taxes for the poor, I don't think you can say it's entirely regressive.. it's just that the numbers appear on different pieces of paper so some people don't connect them. It's still regressive for some people (guess who... the middle class of course!) but not for the poor.
Personally I think the concept of Social Security is utterly stupid and should be abolished. The vast majority of people don't even understand what it is. It's billed as a forced savings program... and you can see how effective that idea is when you read comments from folks nearing retirement who say dumb stuff like they have "paid into the system" and therefore they "earned" their full benefits. They honestly don't know that people starting their careers today pay a higher rate than they did when they started their careers. They honestly don't know that the money they saved largely went to pay for existing retirees... who paid EVEN LESS into the system than they did.
The common man won't be allowed to have his own fusion reactor, so it will remain under control of the existing power brokers. All it will do is reduce their costs.
Since they are given state-sanctioned monopolies they don't need to worry about a competitor offering lower rates either.
That's misleading. Social Security is paid for with Social Security withholding
Mostly... it's also paid for with interest on the debt that Social Security owns. I'm not sure what percentage of public debt is held by the SS Trust Fund, but I'm sure it's not negligible.. and about 6% of the overall budget goes to interest in general.
it actually pays more into the budget than it pays out.
For now, but it's projected to run out and then become a burden on the general tax revenue. Or result in a SS tax increase. Probably both, plus reduced benefits.
Yay, my generation gets to pay more than any generation before it, and get either the same or worse benefits than previous generations! Awesome deal! I love social safety nets that fuck over future generations!
In both cases, the money goes into the General Fund to be spent, and is "replaced" with an Interest Free Intragovernmental T-Bill.
Wrong, the debt that the Social Security Trust Fund purchases is not interest-free. You can see that here: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progda...
If the net effect of something existing is exactly the same as the net effect of it NOT existing, it can safely be assumed that it doesn't actually exist.
Even if the special issue bonds were interest-free, that criticism wouldn't make sense. That would mean the Trust Fund is giving the government interest-free loans, and then being paid back later. That is completely different than if they didn't save the money to begin with, but still had to be paid back later when they're out of money.
The Trust Fund will run out of money one day and we'll have to cut benefits or divert general funds to pay make it up or raise SS taxes, but that is quantitatively different from if there was no Trust Fund to begin with.
I asked you an analogous question about race but you didn't reply.
Your viewpoint simply does not make sense because it would provide an end-run around all discrimination laws. "My lawn mowing service does not do business with blacks. But we don't discriminate against blacks... we discriminate against people with black biological parents. But we're not providing service to the biological parents so that's okay!!"
Your analogy with the barber doesn't make sense because you are asking the barber to perform a different service for the same client. I'm talking about a daycare providing the same service to a different client. The needs and supervision requirements of a 6 year old don't substantially differ from those of a 5 year old... and yet, a daycare would be perfectly within its rights to say "Sorry, we stop providing care at 5." That's age discrimination.
Let us beat soundly upon a bunch of cobbled together resistance in a desert country nobody cares about except for their oil
That's a HUGE "except" right there, until we're weaned off the stuff in the next few decades (hopefully).
but from the opposite perspective what sort of man slaughters people without even giving them a chance to fight back?
You can't seriously think that's the terrorist perspective. In asymmetric warfare, the smaller group rarely gives the bigger group a chance to fight back, or they'd be destroyed pretty quickly. Most tactics in asymmetric warfare involve hiding before the enemy can retaliate, and using surprise attacks to your advantage. Not to mention terrorists have no problem attacking people who have no capability to fight back (women and children, wounded people in hospitals, etc) even if you did give them the chance.
We'd still be spending more on the military than the next many, many countries combined, most of whom are allies.
I haven't read a study about this, but common sense says that comparing our dollars to China's dollars and Iran's dollars doesn't make sense because they have different purchasing power. One of the big costs in the military, even today when it's so driven by technology and equipment, is manpower. If China's soldiers cost 1/5 what we pay, then we may be outspending them but not necessarily getting more for it. You can't necessarily use economy-wide purchasing power parity figures either because I suspect a lot of military expenditure falls outside the normal economy, especially in some countries.
Two paychecks doesn't mean the same number of hours or the same level of difficulty.
Also I wonder how comprehensive the definition of "housework" is. It should include all work outside of your job, I guess, not just stuff in the house. So things like taking the car for an oil change should count, coaching the kids' soccer team should count, etc.
So if we are guiding women into non-STEM careers, we are removing a large portion of the population from the training necessary to be capable of doing STEM jobs.
Those hypothetical female STEM workers who were guided into alternate careers can and will be replaced by males guided into STEM careers. There's no loss. If more women go into STEM, then fewer men will.
That is the problem our society is trying to solve by creating more female STEM workers.
There are two or more separate problems. 1. Not enough STEM workers 2. Gender balance of STEM workers doesn't reflect population (3. Racial balance..)
If you are targeting the labor supply only (increasing female STEM workers) then you are going to do one of two things: 1. Make it easier for only women to get in than before with no impact on men, resulting in more job applicants, resulting in lower salaries, resulting in fewer men going into STEM 2. Make it harder for only men to get in than before with no impact on women, resulting in fewer job applicants, resulting in higher salaries, resulting in more women going into STEM
You are reducing male involvement one way or another, it just depends which end of the education-career pipeline you are pressuring.
To solve problem 1, I'd suggesting we begin employer subsidies for STEM jobs, which allows more jobs to be created (newly created jobs don't have to be as productive if they're subsidized), which will lead to more people going into STEM. (The existing productive jobs will see salary increases, the new less productive jobs will be comparable to pre-subsidy salaries.)
Remember that the gap isn't just about being paid the same for doing exactly the same job either.
Wrong, that's exactly what the wage gap is and that's all it is. Any attempt to alter that to include "opportunities to advance" and what-not is piggybacking a less popular issue onto a more popular issue for political expedience. Being paid the same for the same work appeals to everybody's sense of fairness and has widespread support.
Things like women leaving the workforce to have and raise kids to school-age, then having trouble coming back in because their skills have atrophied for 5+ years, and subsequently not getting the same "opportunities to advance" is a legitimate issue, but one with MUCH less popular sympathy. You'll find plenty of people who say "Yeah, so?"
You're only doing yourself a disservice because when those people find out that "wage gap" includes all these things they don't actually support, you get a strong backlash.
Children are a choice, but at the same time society needs them so that when we get old there are still skilled people around to carry on and look after us. If society makes them too much of a burden it ends up like Japan with massive population decline.
This is something that we have to solve. In my opinion, putting the burden on employers to solve it is the wrong solution, because it hugely disadvantages small employers. If I have 3 employees, I simply cannot afford to let one take a full year off with pay, for instance. In this case, the government needs to step in because it's a society-wide problem.
I think poverty is similar.. I am virulently against the minimum wage, because it puts the entire burden of helping the working poor on employers. You know what's supposed to help the poor? Welfare. Not requiring people to pay them more than their labor is worth economically. We are missing out on so many goods and services in our economy because we'd rather people be paid $3*X/hour instead of $X/hour, but $3*X/hour isn't "worth it" for these goods and services. As an example, child care. People in this country pay vast amounts for child care unless they are lucky enough to have family members provide the service below minimum wage (even free). The people who are unemployed or on welfare who can provide child care could do it for $1/hour with the government making up the difference, and suddenly lots more people could afford to go back to work and put their more productive skills to use.
Slashdot Mirror
A six week old baby shouldn't die of Whooping Cough because some idiot thinks it's their "personal right" to be a disease carrier.
People who want the right not to be vaccinated are not motivated out of a desire to kill babies with the diseases they carry. That's a ridiculous argument. It's just like how people who want the right to drive are not motivated out of a desire to cause car accidents and kill babies, even though they know that getting in the car raises the risk that they will kill a baby in a car accident.
However, when someone tries to claim that their actions (not vaccinating) that affect other people is their choice, I highly disagree.
All of our actions affect other people, so you'll have to be more specific.
I keep waiting for them to claim that it's their right to choose to drive drunk - railing against police enforcing driver sobriety and completely ignoring how many people are killed by drunk drivers.
That's a great example... to me, it's not okay for the police to do things I think are unconstitutional in the name of ending drunk driving. Are you really okay with things like police checkpoints where everybody is forced to submit to a search in order to get past it?? It's not worth giving up our rights to slightly reduce the chance that some people will die. We're all going to die eventually.
Your rationale for absolving parents of vaccinated kids is that "you have done everything you could, so it's just unfortunate" -- but that makes no sense because vaccination is not "everything you could" do to prevent illness. Just as a small example, say you give your child the flu vaccine, but he still catches the flu at daycare. You're not absolved. You could have quit your job and kept your child at home instead of sending him to daycare (which is a known risk factor for illness). So you should still be held criminally negligent according to the spirit of your law.
Perhaps that points to why laws like yours are not acceptable. You are criminalizing things which many people still believe fall within their freedoms to take care of themselves and their families as they see fit. I'm curious what you think about the myriad other activities that may (or may not) harm children. I'm guessing you would be pro-criminalization for things like your child twisting his ankle while playing basketball, since you could have easily prevented it by not letting him play basketball. Maybe that's not harmful enough for you to take notice. I'm sure you would agree that the parents of children who are shot in school shootings should be sent to jail for not protecting their kids. "You don't *have* to homeschool your kids, but if you don't and they get shot at school, then you are responsible for their murder." Something like that?
The main thing I'm curious about is why you wrote your hypothetical law the way you did. You clearly want to encourage vaccination. So why not make the law "You have to get your kids vaccinated" rather than the circuitous route you took?
I think you're being a bit too strict with your interpretation of the idiom. From your own link, "This also gives rise to the phrase "the last/final straw", used when something is deemed to be the last in a line of unacceptable occurrences."
Therefore the straw is an unacceptable occurrence, not a red herring. To explore the difference, would putting a single straw on an unburdened camel be an unacceptable occurrence, e.g. would a single straw be too heavy?
While related, I don't think you can fairly call someone's characterization of something as "the last straw" to mean that it was a perfectly acceptable incident except for the buildup of past incidents.
Red herring for whom? It was brought up by Horvath and cited as the last straw.
I find that hard to believe. Just looking at one common item that I've really noticed has gone up, ground beef has gone up from $3.005/lbs to $3.467/lbs since 2012, which is 15.4%. Lean ground beef has gone from $3.884/lbs to $5.021/lbs, which is 29.3%.
That's had a huge knock-on affect in fast food as well. Compare Wendy's "value menu" or "right price menu" or whatever they're calling it to the dollar menu of yesteryear (long ago in the foggy past of 2012). Same food items, now 20%, 30%, 50% more expensive.
I'd love to see inflation statistics from Visa and Mastercard rather than theoretical "baskets" from researchers.
I hope you're joking about Baby Boomers earning Social Security. SS taxes were half the current level when the Boomers started their careers. See http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progda...
I'm all for paying them back based on what they paid in, but they have not earned the current benefit level.
If Social Security is "tweaked" it won't go broke...
So in other words, right now it's going broke.
And also easier to forget, as we've seen.
People tend to forget stuff they don't use. Right now the thing most people retain through adulthood is the rote memorization they learned in 2nd grade. For instance most people know 4 + 4 = 8 without counting on their fingers.
Think about how many times throughout school people recalled the fact that 4 + 4 = 8, compared to how many times they practiced an algorithm like long division. That's why people forget long division, not because they didn't get the "concept" of division or because learning long division by rote somehow shriveled their soul.
But go on ruining people's educations, except for those with an exceedingly high aptitude and willpower.
That doesn't make sense. Currently, most high school graduates have demonstrated an ability with algebra and geometry at a minimum. Very few people would ever get there if it weren't forced on them.
Everyone suffers at least a bit under the current system.
Sure, and there's plenty of room for improvement.
I think it identifies at least part of the problem.
He touches on some subjects that I agree with, such as the tedium of geometric proofs.. but for the wrong reason. It's not because we should trust our instincts and not bother proving stuff that is obvious as the author recommends. That's terrible advice. In fact sometimes the proofs of the most basic, intuitive concepts are beautiful and complex, if short and elegant. For instance in abstract algebra the proof that a group's identity element is unique is lovely and a great exercise that probably every abstract algebra student goes through.
Are you talking about your long, angry post, or the paper? It seems more like you're talking about your post.
That's a reading comprehension problem on your part. Clearly I was talking about "that paper" just like I indicated at the start of the sentence you quoted... not sure how you missed that.
And yes it does make me angry when idiots start convincing people to take a self-destructive path. I notice you didn't comment on what I said about people not understanding the benefits they themselves accrued under the system which they seek to destroy. It's a huge thing I see time and time again. It's even worse when the change is forced on people who know better, as happens so often in public education.
Well, judging from the tone of your post, you're a lost cause.
I'm certainly "lost" to your cause. That's the nature of fundamental disagreements. Stop trying to make it sound tragic, you sound silly.
I just read the first 6 pages of that pdf and had to stop. I'm just blown away that you think that pdf has any valuable insights.
All of the premises so far are incorrect. The idea that math is supposed to be this playful fun activity that people just kind of discover on their own, perhaps with little nudges, would lead to a society where almost nobody learns math because most people aren't that smart or creative. The premise that math is not useful to society is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. The premise that math is not a tool for science and technology is maybe tied for that.
Those are obviously wrong so I won't elaborate, but I want to talk more about the music and painting allegory in the intro which seems to inform the author's view on how math "should" be. I don't know much about music (the same as the author, I'm guessing), but my wife spent a few years at a painting atelier learning classical realist painting, and let me tell you, it's absolutely not about "expressing yourself and your feelings and things like that—really way-out-there abstract stuff." Nope. You know why? Because that produces trash. It's what got us the modern art movement, which is a laughingstock to most people in this world. (If you genuinely find yourself swooning over the "expression" and "feelings" in a Mondrian painting of squares or the swooping colors and "eroticism" of a Georgia O'Keeffe flower painting, you need your head examined.)
So yeah, in your first 6 months to a year of learning painting it's pretty common to not pick up a paintbrush unless you're a prodigy. Learning to paint starts with learning to see and learning to measure. Then you go on to copying simple figures. Not drawing from life! No don't even think of that, it's a waste of your time and you'll learn bad habits that you need to unlearn later. You copy classical studies like the Bargue drawings. The first Bargue that you copy is probably an eye or a forearm made with just a few lines that the master threw down as a basic exercise for his students. It took him seconds to produce a general eye-like shape. But the student is going to spend hours copying that. You master the ability to have a drawing sitting next to your paper, and copying the lengths and angles and weights exactly, just by looking. Then later, you move the drawing you're copying a few feet away so that you have to adjust the size in your head. Notice we're not even close to starting to learn how to shade. And boy, actually painting with paints is a lonnnng way off still.
Does this kill the retarded exuberance of just throwing paint on paper, literally splashing it, and then looking at it and saying "OMG I totally expressed myself I'm so awesome I'm a special snowflake" -- yes, absolutely. That's the point. It's a craft that has to be mastered, and it's not easy. The fun part begins after that.
I don't think it's possible for a person today to reach the same artistic heights as the classical masters on their own. It's exceedingly rare to do so. All the classical masters spent years, usually from their early childhoods to adulthood, studying in someone else's studio, before making their own style.
It would be similar to finding someone who independently reinvented modern math. You may be thinking of Srinivasa Ramanujan here, but would he have reached the heights he did if he hadn't been given that initial formal training and been exposed to those advanced trig books? Who knows. But in any case, how many Srinivasas are there in the world at a given time?
Most people need to be trained to master something. The author disagrees derisively when he says:
"SIMPLICIO: I don’t think that’s very fair. Surely teaching methods have improved since then.
SALVIATI: You mean training methods. Teaching is a messy human relationship; it does not require a method. Or rather I should say, if you need a method you’re probably not a very good teacher"
A) What
I can't figure out what you're trying to get out of me, but from my point of view, the daycare example is nonsense.
I'm trying to get you to explain how your out for age discrimination doesn't also apply to racial discrimination.
You're saying that daycares don't discriminate based on the characteristics of kids, because they are actually providing the service to the parents. So I'm responding that if the daycare doesn't provide service to black kids, but black parents are fine (in other words, black parents could enroll an adopted while child), that's STILL racial discrimination. I mean it's rather obvious.
So if we accept that the child's race plays a role, then why doesn't the child's age?
I mean the real answer is that the needs and supervision requirements of a 20 year old are very different than a 2-5 year old, so the daycare is justified in having an age policy. In other words, we as a society say that it's okay for daycares to discriminate based on age because age plays a significant role in what is required. Race, in theory, does not... the care required by a black 5 year old is not substantially different than the care required by a white 5 year old.
But you didn't say that.
Just like it wouldn't be discrimination for a university to deny addmission to a preschooler. Or is that discr4imination based on age as well?
Yes, of course it is.. if the preschooler is qualified to be admitted, and they don't admit him, that is age discrimination. In reality universities are happy to admit underage people if they are qualified. I've heard of 12 year olds in college. If an 11 year old were qualified, they'd admit the 11 year old. I don't believe there is a minimum age to attend university, although practically speaking no 2 year old is realistically going to be qualified.
Dog food is a huge exaggeration, unless you mean it metaphorically in which case I agree -- people should eat their own dog food in that their benefits should be tied to what they produced themselves. That's kind of how it is already, except that current retirees are taking too much out of the system compared to what they produced, and there's a pretty radical wealth redistribution component where poor people get much more than they put in, and "rich" people (middle class and up) get less.
I don't have an iPad (or a tablet of any kind) so maybe I'm not understanding this.. does Apple really not know who the device and/or user account belongs to? Surely Apple products have some kind of user system, and when you create your user account you reveal your name and probably address, and if the person ever bought anything there's a credit card linked to it as well... no?
I have an Android phone and I'm virtually certain that Google could tie my name and address to this bit of hardware.
I see... Your argument confused me because we are talking about what the laws should be. But now you're revealing that your definition of consequential and inconsequential is simply a mirror of what the state already says.
If the laws changed so that it's okay to not do business with minorities, then you would support that, because minorities would not be able to win a court case about it, because it's not against the law.
How is that useful to the discussion?
I've been fascinated with algae production of biodiesel for a decade now. I'm curious, the DOE proof of concept that you're talking about.. is that in 1980's dollars or today?
From what I've heard there have been plenty of commercial attempts to produce biodiesel from algae and they have failed.
I'm not speaking of the active terrorists, I'm talking about all the civilians getting slaughtered by our machines.
That's what people say, but it's impossible to know for sure what drives terrorism recruitment. If we were sending in troops on the ground to do hand to hand fighting and getting our asses whooped by terrorists who still used dirty tactics, I personally don't think it would make one whit of difference. There would still be civilians getting killed (perhaps fewer). There would probably be more disruption (more invaders, take longer, less ability to target precisely). The local populations would still be Muslim and the war would still be cast as the foreign infidels fighting against the noble lions of Islam.
I mean all you have to do is look at how Pakistan reacted to the secret CIA program that found Bin Laden. That didn't kill innocent people... in fact it helped vaccinate their country. Did they say "Oh wow what awesome humanitarian tactics, we approve!! Please start doing this more instead of drone strikes this is so cool." Nope.
Remember, Al Qaeda was a mostly-irrelevant organization in the final stages of collapse
It's true that al Qaeda was off our radar.. that's largely because the US public did not give two shits about the Middle East or any Muslim countries prior to 9/11. That stuff was Israel's problem and India's problem and Russia's problem... and we kinda sorta thought maybe they deserved it for their own actions. Kashmiri Muslim terrorists were still thought of as freedom fighters or rebels. Same with Chechens, Palestinians, etc.
Al Qaeda was receiving state support from the Taliban in Afghanistan before 9/11. There is also a large chance that they received funding from the Saudis and from Pakistan, both of which have interests in keeping terrorism alive and well, if at a low buzz inside their own borders. I haven't heard the argument you're making that al Qaeda was in the final stages of collapse, I'm curious what evidence you have of that.
The days when men won wars are mostly over - in a conflict between Major Powers it'll be all about who has the best and most hardware. And those costs aren't dramatically different around the world.
What if those costs are more different than you think? For instance, what do you think Iran's army pays for gas and oil? What does China's army pay? Even if ultimately the cost is the same due to opportunity costs, that would mask the true military expenditure. For instance, if China (which is an oil importer) says "Here in China, the army pays $0.10/gallon for gas. If you sell gas here, you have to do that" then they report $0.10/gallon gas in their military expenditures... but obviously they are getting more value for that.
The US military establishment has shit tons of money and most of the budget operates transparently and within the overall economy. I mean we know that when they buy gas, they are paying market price. When they build an airbase, they probably acquired the land through the market, or eminent domain which is supposed to be a fair price. What do you think China does when they build a new airbase? What cost is recorded?
Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not saying that the US doesn't have more military capability than other countries. I'm just saying that I think the differences are somewhat exaggerated because the US is a really expensive place to do stuff. Our Navy gets sued over stupid shit like SONAR hurting whales and dolphins. In China they execute activists who cause problems. All that stuff has an impact too, it's not just dollars that we need to look at.
Oh yeah, forgot to add.. after abolishing Social Security, old people with no income could go on welfare.
Social Security actually is a welfare program since poor people get a disproportionately high benefit compared to what they paid in.. it's just not called welfare because back when it was originally proposed, most people were still properly ashamed at not pulling their own weight.
I support regressive taxes in general because it makes all people at least somewhat aware of what stuff costs.
Considering things like the EITC were invented to offset payroll taxes for the poor, I don't think you can say it's entirely regressive.. it's just that the numbers appear on different pieces of paper so some people don't connect them. It's still regressive for some people (guess who... the middle class of course!) but not for the poor.
Personally I think the concept of Social Security is utterly stupid and should be abolished. The vast majority of people don't even understand what it is. It's billed as a forced savings program... and you can see how effective that idea is when you read comments from folks nearing retirement who say dumb stuff like they have "paid into the system" and therefore they "earned" their full benefits. They honestly don't know that people starting their careers today pay a higher rate than they did when they started their careers. They honestly don't know that the money they saved largely went to pay for existing retirees... who paid EVEN LESS into the system than they did.
The common man won't be allowed to have his own fusion reactor, so it will remain under control of the existing power brokers. All it will do is reduce their costs.
Since they are given state-sanctioned monopolies they don't need to worry about a competitor offering lower rates either.
That's misleading. Social Security is paid for with Social Security withholding
Mostly... it's also paid for with interest on the debt that Social Security owns. I'm not sure what percentage of public debt is held by the SS Trust Fund, but I'm sure it's not negligible.. and about 6% of the overall budget goes to interest in general.
it actually pays more into the budget than it pays out.
For now, but it's projected to run out and then become a burden on the general tax revenue. Or result in a SS tax increase. Probably both, plus reduced benefits.
Yay, my generation gets to pay more than any generation before it, and get either the same or worse benefits than previous generations! Awesome deal! I love social safety nets that fuck over future generations!
In both cases, the money goes into the General Fund to be spent, and is "replaced" with an Interest Free Intragovernmental T-Bill.
Wrong, the debt that the Social Security Trust Fund purchases is not interest-free. You can see that here: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progda...
If the net effect of something existing is exactly the same as the net effect of it NOT existing, it can safely be assumed that it doesn't actually exist.
Even if the special issue bonds were interest-free, that criticism wouldn't make sense. That would mean the Trust Fund is giving the government interest-free loans, and then being paid back later. That is completely different than if they didn't save the money to begin with, but still had to be paid back later when they're out of money.
The Trust Fund will run out of money one day and we'll have to cut benefits or divert general funds to pay make it up or raise SS taxes, but that is quantitatively different from if there was no Trust Fund to begin with.
I asked you an analogous question about race but you didn't reply.
Your viewpoint simply does not make sense because it would provide an end-run around all discrimination laws. "My lawn mowing service does not do business with blacks. But we don't discriminate against blacks... we discriminate against people with black biological parents. But we're not providing service to the biological parents so that's okay!!"
Your analogy with the barber doesn't make sense because you are asking the barber to perform a different service for the same client. I'm talking about a daycare providing the same service to a different client. The needs and supervision requirements of a 6 year old don't substantially differ from those of a 5 year old... and yet, a daycare would be perfectly within its rights to say "Sorry, we stop providing care at 5." That's age discrimination.
Let us beat soundly upon a bunch of cobbled together resistance in a desert country nobody cares about except for their oil
That's a HUGE "except" right there, until we're weaned off the stuff in the next few decades (hopefully).
but from the opposite perspective what sort of man slaughters people without even giving them a chance to fight back?
You can't seriously think that's the terrorist perspective. In asymmetric warfare, the smaller group rarely gives the bigger group a chance to fight back, or they'd be destroyed pretty quickly. Most tactics in asymmetric warfare involve hiding before the enemy can retaliate, and using surprise attacks to your advantage. Not to mention terrorists have no problem attacking people who have no capability to fight back (women and children, wounded people in hospitals, etc) even if you did give them the chance.
We'd still be spending more on the military than the next many, many countries combined, most of whom are allies.
I haven't read a study about this, but common sense says that comparing our dollars to China's dollars and Iran's dollars doesn't make sense because they have different purchasing power. One of the big costs in the military, even today when it's so driven by technology and equipment, is manpower. If China's soldiers cost 1/5 what we pay, then we may be outspending them but not necessarily getting more for it. You can't necessarily use economy-wide purchasing power parity figures either because I suspect a lot of military expenditure falls outside the normal economy, especially in some countries.
Two paychecks doesn't mean the same number of hours or the same level of difficulty.
Also I wonder how comprehensive the definition of "housework" is. It should include all work outside of your job, I guess, not just stuff in the house. So things like taking the car for an oil change should count, coaching the kids' soccer team should count, etc.
So if we are guiding women into non-STEM careers, we are removing a large portion of the population from the training necessary to be capable of doing STEM jobs.
Those hypothetical female STEM workers who were guided into alternate careers can and will be replaced by males guided into STEM careers. There's no loss. If more women go into STEM, then fewer men will.
That is the problem our society is trying to solve by creating more female STEM workers.
There are two or more separate problems.
1. Not enough STEM workers
2. Gender balance of STEM workers doesn't reflect population
(3. Racial balance..)
If you are targeting the labor supply only (increasing female STEM workers) then you are going to do one of two things:
1. Make it easier for only women to get in than before with no impact on men, resulting in more job applicants, resulting in lower salaries, resulting in fewer men going into STEM
2. Make it harder for only men to get in than before with no impact on women, resulting in fewer job applicants, resulting in higher salaries, resulting in more women going into STEM
You are reducing male involvement one way or another, it just depends which end of the education-career pipeline you are pressuring.
To solve problem 1, I'd suggesting we begin employer subsidies for STEM jobs, which allows more jobs to be created (newly created jobs don't have to be as productive if they're subsidized), which will lead to more people going into STEM. (The existing productive jobs will see salary increases, the new less productive jobs will be comparable to pre-subsidy salaries.)
Remember that the gap isn't just about being paid the same for doing exactly the same job either.
Wrong, that's exactly what the wage gap is and that's all it is. Any attempt to alter that to include "opportunities to advance" and what-not is piggybacking a less popular issue onto a more popular issue for political expedience. Being paid the same for the same work appeals to everybody's sense of fairness and has widespread support.
Things like women leaving the workforce to have and raise kids to school-age, then having trouble coming back in because their skills have atrophied for 5+ years, and subsequently not getting the same "opportunities to advance" is a legitimate issue, but one with MUCH less popular sympathy. You'll find plenty of people who say "Yeah, so?"
You're only doing yourself a disservice because when those people find out that "wage gap" includes all these things they don't actually support, you get a strong backlash.
Children are a choice, but at the same time society needs them so that when we get old there are still skilled people around to carry on and look after us. If society makes them too much of a burden it ends up like Japan with massive population decline.
This is something that we have to solve. In my opinion, putting the burden on employers to solve it is the wrong solution, because it hugely disadvantages small employers. If I have 3 employees, I simply cannot afford to let one take a full year off with pay, for instance. In this case, the government needs to step in because it's a society-wide problem.
I think poverty is similar.. I am virulently against the minimum wage, because it puts the entire burden of helping the working poor on employers. You know what's supposed to help the poor? Welfare. Not requiring people to pay them more than their labor is worth economically. We are missing out on so many goods and services in our economy because we'd rather people be paid $3*X/hour instead of $X/hour, but $3*X/hour isn't "worth it" for these goods and services. As an example, child care. People in this country pay vast amounts for child care unless they are lucky enough to have family members provide the service below minimum wage (even free). The people who are unemployed or on welfare who can provide child care could do it for $1/hour with the government making up the difference, and suddenly lots more people could afford to go back to work and put their more productive skills to use.