I think you make a great point. With complex enough mathematical instruments you can make a model that accounts for all the data. But that opens up a philosophical question. If it does actually account for everything so well that it can't be falsified, doesn't that make it true anyway? And if we come up with any series of equations that models the universe correctly, won't brilliant mathematicians eventually come up with simplifications to it if possible?
It is a fun point. But there are several types of "true"; in the case you bring up it would be epistemologically true, but its actual ("really-ness", as one of my professors called it) truth would still be unknown. In another way of speaking, it would be lower-case "t" true, but possibly not uppercase "T" true. This isn't just the philosophical bane of theories like string-theory, but even what we are convinced as true (standard physics, mathematics, etc..).
All of our science is basically building a giant model of the interior of a black box. We can have degrees of certainty, but never absolute certainty being that we don't have access to the noumenal existence of things. The best we can hope for is building a decent model to explain the various inputs and outputs of the unknowable.
A fun game I used to play at school (philosophy, obviously, with emphasis on philosophy of science) was pondering whether an incompatible, but equally robust, theory could explain most of natural phenomena. Could this exist? there is no way of saying, but there is a decent possibility. Theoretically you could have two equally valid, but incompatible, theories of everything existing side by side, both would be conventionally true, even if both theoretically, by their own system, could not exist. Fun to think about, if not useful.
You might be right, but I somewhat doubt it. Linux isn't much more of a threat than Windows or OS X (which runs on top of bastardized BSD, and has most of the functionality of Linux with a couple simple hacks). I really doubt that any bit of open source software out there (sans the bits made just for infringement) are that scary either. I'm guessing the MPAA is even running some open source on their computers or servers.
Linux isn't big enough to be perceived as a threat by anyone, nor do most people think it will ever really get to that point. Don't get me wrong, I love my Linux boxes as much as the next nerd, but it really isn't that big, popular, or scary to the "powers that be". What is the estimated usage percent of Linux desktops? 2%? Less? A rather stagnant number two, I haven't seen any numbers reporting much growth in the last 10 years. Of all piracy, I'm guessing people using Linux has the smallest share, and not just because of the small number of users, but also because we're more likely to be idealists.
This is probably why we don't see much support. We are so small as to not matter. Porting Flash or Silverlight DRM over to Linux isn't really worth the effort. I doubt it has ever even been brought up in a board meeting, much less ever been the subject of serious attention.
As for open source... I really don't see it. Open source is rather ubiquitous when you look for it. There are several open source chunks in Windows, OS X is built on top of it, most media players and televisions run almost exclusively on it. It has long been the accepted that open source doesn't run against profit, or the free market, or corporate interests... Open source is just, when it comes down to it, and ignoring RMS, another way of making software. Yes, there are some idealists out there, but not many. There are many code monkeys churning out open source software in giant corporate shops.
Not to sound disparaging. As stated, I love my Linux boxes, and I am bordering on one of those OS zealots, but the world is much bigger than our little, almost microscopic, corner of the computer ecosystem.
Long term supply != infinite. Also nothing is 100% recyclable or re-retreivable, meaning that things still eventually dwindle, even if you try to reuse every scrap (we don't). Also recycling takes energy, meaning the amount of recycling is limited by our energy supplies, which are finite (even the amount of solar radiation is finite, though large).
Yes, I'm being pedantic; life is more amusing that way.
Really the only materials on Earth that are truly finite are some of the metals, silver, gold, the platinum group, and those are found in abundance up in the asteroids.
I hate to break it to you but; all the materials on Earth are truly finite. This is easily proven by asking yourself: "does the Earth have infinite mass?"
If you answered yes... Then prepare for the rest of universe to come crashing down on our heads any second. If no... then obviously everything is finite, since... well... things mostly have mass. Though we might have infinite photons or electrons hiding somewhere around here... (checks under sofa)
True, this is one of my pet peeves too, that and selling products that are "Chemical Free!"* But most natural fertilizers have been around for a very long time, and thus their effects are better known, most also are derived from existing things which are already part of the food chain. While being "non-synthetic" doesn't imply safety, it is a decent rule of thumb until more specific data can be collected.
*see also the term "Organic" itself... I will only eat food whose molecules are mainly based off of carbon atoms!
A nerve you've hit. You directly attacked the integrity of myself and my profession.I know that to some people this might not mean much, but to me it does.
Not the person you were talking to originally, but: This is the point. Most people are completely SICK of being marketed to constantly, and thus you should expect some flack for it. Advertising HAS, uncontroversially, gotten completely out of hand, and some people in your profession are at fault for this. You might even be, don't take that as an insult, I don't know you so can't judge. People are also sick of being dehumanized by advertisers (you are a demographic, not a person), and sick of being manipulated by stupid psychological tricks, and worse outright lied to. I think they are justified in these feelings, since most advertising deserves to die.
I don't think most advertisers deserve to die, mind you, since that is just a bit immature and possibly creepy. My grandfather was in the field (though mostly on the creative/design end), and I obviously had nothing against him. I'm sure there are other nice people in the field, but ultimately I wouldn't feel too bad if all of them were stuck trying to find new work. If we chopped the amount of marketing down by 50%, there still would be too much. If there was a law allowing most marketers to drug us and implant ads on our eye balls, against out will, they would do it and sleep easily at night. Advertising has become completely non-consensual, and people don't like having stuff forced on them, with good reason.
I understand, there is a need to raise consciousness about new products and services, especially now that there are so many alternatives. This is fine. But forcing me to watch these advertisements isn't good, and then peppering them on every single public space, then trying to stick them in every pleasurable pursuit I have just so I have to know that "Happy Soap makes me virile and popular!". Not that "Happy Soap cleans 30% better than Sad Soap", that would be a fair bit information that might be useful, no "Happy Soap makes your penis grow 30 feet longer, and makes Russian supermodels rain down from the heavens. Plus it makes your family really love you, since they all hate you now!" This is just obnoxious and dishonest.
The nicely stated goal of advertising is to "raise awareness", and actual goal, often times, is to try to manipulate us into buying something that we do not want, need, or would otherwise buy. This is NOT a noble goal, this is an obnoxious and morally dubious thing. This is the other thing people hate about your profession, outside of trying to force themselves on us constantly.
Your profession used to be decent, then moved into the annoying but tolerated as necessary category. Thanks to abuses, it has now moved into the pure hatred category. This is pretty much a justified reclassification, if you ask me, since a world completely free from your profession wouldn't be optimal, but would be much better than the world today, and where we're trending towards in the future. Also, a world without professional advertisers wouldn't be free from advertising, people might have to actually make a decent goddamn product and have to live up to their stated quality, instead of making absolute crap and using their marketing budget to cover it up, this way genuine (not seeded) word of mouth would be useful.
Sorry for the rant. I probably could go on for awhile, but won't. But you see why you get hate? You should, your profession is probably as reviled as politics or law. And really you should be getting some hate for it, since you are guilty by association, and share some blame in completely valid problems. Shame is a strong tool to force people to go fix problems.
But I really don't wish you dead, no matter if you're one of the (seemingly) few good guys, or even if you are the idiot that invented pop-under-with-sound flash ads.
They have a foggy recollection of games of old that had these MASSIVE universes and say "Why can't that be done?" forgetting that those massive universes were full of nothing.
This isn't completely true. One of the things I loved about Morrowind (and which annoyed me about Oblivion) was that there WAS stuff hidden all of the massive world. Yes, there were big expanses with pretty much nothing in them, except hidden in the middle, where you would never look, was a huge cave full of bandits worshipping dremora, with some random super-magical item hiding somewhere at the bottom of a small underground river. And said cave is not part of a quest, nor ever directly eluded to in the game dialog. It made exploration fun.
Morrowind is one of those games that I played for days on end, completely ignoring the story the devs wanted me to be worrying about. I didn't even care if I finished it, I just wanted to see the whole world, and slaughter every non-essential NPC and take their pretty baubles to decorate my stolen house. To me this is the best type of game. This is what also made the original Fallout games so good, spending hours doing your own thing completely oblivious of the bigger plot.
Oblivion was somewhat lacking in this vibe. Fallout 3 (haven't tried New Vegas yet, waiting for it to not suck) was also lacking this. You could probably beat Morrowind's actual quest in around 20 hours, but I must have put 80 in exploring; same with the original Fallouts.
This is what also, originally, sold me on WoW. When it first came out, a low level mage and I spent a couple days just exploring the land, seeing if we could sneak into opposing cities, etc... It was more fun than the actual game.
I never liked the Call of Duty games, shooters got rather tedious for me (they are all pretty much the same: this may be true or I'm just getting old). They are the epitome of "go here, kill that", with very little player created gameplay. I don't like being locked into what the devs want me to do, I want to make my own story as well. (I'm going to spend two days wandering around in New Reno, wearing nothing but a purple robe, shooting prostitutes in the back of the head with my SMG, while yelling; "I AM THE BRINGER OF JUSTICE!". Instead of worrying about your damn Enclave/super mutant problems!).
Also; the real world is mostly empty space too. No problem with that, unless it gets tedious, but then again most video game worlds have a fast travel alternative.
Or I highlight the fact that sometimes people make mistakes, or people don't heavily proofread throw-away forum posts enough. With that lesson learned, I will continue making mistakes and not proofreading silly forum posts enough.
My original reply was "Holy shit! "He didn't use the right your (even if his point was clear)! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" It might be more apt.
I understand what your saying, and even sort of agree with it. But personally I think the risk of temporarily inconveniencing some small vendors is worth it. How else to you strike back at companies that only exist to facilitate money transfers? There really is no way around it.
I really doubt, though, that Anon is causing anything much past a mild annoyance to anyone. Really this whole thing is geared more towards getting publicity than actually hurting anyone. And its working quite well.
I don't understand the visceral hatred towards this... Perhaps its because I was raised by a bunch of uppity ex-hippies and union members who saw protest as a god-given right. I brought coffee to the last bunch of picketers I saw, even if I didn't really have any shared interest in what they were picketing, and they were being rather inconvenient to me and local businesses. They serve a vital function.
Anon is a bit childish (but strangely sophisticated, actually grabbing a decent chunk of attention about something that the media around here has almost completely ignored). Its hard to really relate to the chans, or not hold/b/ with some level of contempt, but at least they see something wrong, and are doing something about it. That is admirable, and possibly worth whatever small amount of annoyance they incur.
And really, if Anon is right, this is a bit bigger than people making a couple bucks. I don't know if it is or not, but I have no sympathy for Mastercard, Paypal, or Amazon, even if I do have some for the people caught in the middle of things.
I never called our government "horribly, horribly corrupt". Our government is just, right now, somewhere between unreasonably corrupt and too corrupt. People (and I) worry that it is on the road towards "horribly, horribly corrupt", and would like to stop and reverse the trend before it hits the tragic finish.
I'm not jumping on the revolution wagon (yet), we haven't gotten quite that bad yet. I think there might be other cures left still, but none of them are very simple.
Though I would have nothing against a bunch of people trying to start one, if they could get enough people behind it, then perhaps it is time. As long as it is one of those rare revolutions that don't end in tyranny. That probably is the biggest thing I have against revolution, most of the people proclaiming it have worse ideas than what they want to fight against.
I would really hate to be forced to live in either a Libertarian, christian, or socialist utopia against my will. They seem to be the ones screaming for it the most.
That argument doesn't make sense... Just because there are entities much worse, does not negate the problems with our own entity.
You can't yell at me for killing one person, since there are people who kill a whole lot more!
I think people are more worried about where we are going, and what we risk becoming, than what we currently are. We don't want to wake up one morning and realize that we are suddenly one of those "horribly, horribly, horribly corrupt governments out there"
University is a cult, it should be regulated as one.
Huh?
I don't want to live in the world you embrace, where the least educated are the highest regarded. A little education is alway better than none. A little more education is always a little better than less. The pridefully uneducated are idiots and shouldn't be allowed to make decisions that impact anyone outside of themselves.
Perhaps education is about more than employment (as written by a person who majored in philosophy, living with a woman with english and art degrees). The fact that university has become a glorified trade school is more troubling to me than... whatever your ranting about.
There is no nobility in ignorance.
Also... How the hell do you change society? Care to give us a guide book on that one? Generations change society, and in the mean time we just live with tyranny and injustice? Should we be mad at all those black protesters fighting for rights, since they wasted their time picketing and sitting in, and disrupting poor white people by sitting in the wrong section of buses and diners? They shouldn't have inconvenienced us, they should have changed society in a more polite way. You don't need to use the white man's bathroom, or sit at the front of buses to be successful anyways.
Hell, I would be happy if the streets of my city were closed once a week for protests! It would mean we are doing something other than sitting on our ass talking about stupid. I would be happy even if I didn't agree with them.
As advocates of Democracy and transparency, let's do nothing, which in turn does nothing.
Your example doesn't work. I have no sympathy* for anyone who wants to allow the government to murder people for revenge, no matter how nasty these people are it puts us right in the same place they are. Revenge is not noble.
Some of us think our government is to far gone for calm letter writing campaigns to make much of a difference. If you get every American together behind a cause and we're still going to be smaller, and less significant, than a massively wealthy and powerful multinational. Our government has made a habit of doing things against our wishes, or our interests, for a long time now. I doubt some people writing nice, polite, letters to their congress men is going to make a difference. They don't care about letters, they care about nice big fat checks, kickbacks, and cushy consulting jobs when they either get to old to be in government or finally get thrown out for being hypocritical corrupt bastards.
I really don't care if grassroots activivists (or whatever jargon makes you happy) do, and I really don't care if I agree with their cause or not. The fact that there IS activists, people who care enough to do something, is worth all of the potential inconvenience. Hell, I think the Tea Party folks are mostly a bunch of misguided people who are mad at nothing, and completely blinded by an erroneous ideology, I think if they got their way America would be infinitely worse than it is even at its current sorry state; but I am still glad they are there. Groups of people speaking up against perceived injustice should always trump a couple percentage points of corporate profit, whether or whether not I agree with them.
As long as no one is actually injured, then they should carry on freely and be celebrated, even if you don't like their cause.
*obviously I have sympathy for the victims, but being a victim doesn't make you a saint.
I doubt it is just "for the lulz" (I feel stupider for typing that), I'm guessing that some portion of Anon does care. They probably care a bit more than you think, since there are probably targets out there that could get even more "lulz" with a bit less risk or work. Looking around, there is a ton of media, IRC channels, forums, and such supporting Operation Payback, or Leakspin, or whatever the hell their calling it these days.
There is no rule stating that you can't find amusement in protests. Go to some modern protests, or view some footage of protests in the '60s, there was almost a carnival like atmosphere. People enjoyed it. You don't have to be serious faced, completely devoted zealot to have a meaningful protest. You can find it fun as well. It might even be better, since to be human is to garner more sympathy (how much sympathy do we have for raving, utterly devoted, religious zealot protesters?), and it makes a better mockery of whoever your protesting. Your having fun inspite of their nasty behaviors.
Rebellion has always been playful.
I would never argue against doing things you believe in AND getting your "lulz" from it, I would rather you go protest laughing. Everything is better when there is some humor, and element of joie de vivre involved. There is a difference between being serious about something, and being just plain creepy.
I do have some distaste over anything 4Chan, and specifically/b/ does, but I think thats mainly just a generational, or cultural thing and really has no relevance on much of anything.
I recommend Spam Gourmet, personally. Its free, it has many domains you can use for forms in case one is blocked, and it is rather robust. I've been using it for years, and yet to have any serious problems with it (sometimes it has eaten something it shouldn't have, or has had a decent delay in resending, but this is rare, and I doubt your using it is a primary email address for things that are actually important
Your message stats: 3,789 forwarded, 224,298 eaten. You have 326 disposable address(es).
As stated, my personal views go towards the "erring on the side of caution" camp. But I can't actually say with any confidence that I should be allowed to force this opinion on others.
Yes, you (perhaps) think that a undifferentiated mass of cells lacking any form of brain or CNS is a human. But it can be pretty easily argued that it isn't. You can't really hop on the moralistic train with that since a large portion of the population doesn't agree. Basically you're (I mean that mostly rhetorically) willing to enforce your wholly subjective, and unverifiable, view on others, I find this equally disturbing. Especially since forcing this view often leads to harm and suffering (and sometimes death) among the unequivocally human.
If there is a solution it would be a nuanced one, engineered to address points on both sides of the debate (and ideally completely ignoring the purely subjective religious points), and make both sides equally uncomfortable. I see no real problem with aborting fetuses when there is no brain, and thus no capability to actually think or feel pain. At early points a fetus is basically indistinguishable from cancers. The only distinguishing feature is "potential", which is real but completely nebulous, and thus hard to actually justify as a matter of forced policy. In cases where the mother would die, or be severly distressed, I also have no problem, since this is an argument of potentials, the actual always should have more rights.
If there was no suffering that could be caused by the banning of abortion, I would completely agree with you. But this is not the case. Making this a more interesting argument. It isn't, "do fetuses have rights", or "are fetuses human", it is "are the rights of fetuses greater than the people who carry them?".
It is a question of "until we formulate a test", since that test will NEVER exist, it cannot ever exist. It will always be a subjective judgement.
And we do kill fully human people for not being fully human enough for our tastes all the time. This is the point of the death penalty. Some would argue war, as well. I find America very amusing, at times. Thou shall not kill unthinking masses of cells, but though shall kill just about everyone else.
Sorry if my language was a bit vague, it happens. By human I didn't mean "genetically human", or "human in origin", I meant "is it functionally human". Meaning does it have enough characteristics which we classify as human to be accorded any basic rights that we, as fully formed humans, would like to ascribe to ourselves.
Yes, a fetus is human in some technical senses, but not in some meaningful senses (i.e. it isn't self-aware, it can't survive interdependently of the host, etc...). When people talk about the rights of fetuses they aren't talking about origin or genetics. Personally, if something doesn't have a brain, or rudimentary central nervous system, I have a very hard time calling it "human", at early stages fetuses are as human as cancers, to put it bluntly.
So the argument breaks into potential. A fetus is a potential human, and should we accord that rights? Rights equal to me and you, presumably full humans?
Some people also talk about souls, but that should have no bearing on legal policy since it holds no force to large portions of the population. Fetus have no souls, since nothing has a soul. This is as valid an argument as to the contrary, and always will be, thus the whole point is a bit worthless being that it only applies to the faithful who already believe it who already have internal and social forces pointing at them to not abort. You really can't make a decent case for the legalistic of forcing subjective religious tenets on a group of people for whom these tenets have no force or bearing. So I will completely dismiss this line of thought.
Corporate person-hood is pretty daft, I agree.
To be short (pardon my rambling, haven't hit the caffeine quota yet); how is a fetus a person?
The problem is that there still is a very large, and probably completely unsolvable, debate over whether or whether not a fetus, or embryo is human. There isn't an objective answer to that question, and thus you really can't force your opinion on others. If there was some definitive test to prove, for once and for all, that a mass of rapidly dividing cells embedded in a woman's body is actually a human being, then I would have no problem with call (and legislating) abortion murder.
We're not there, so it should remain a personal judgement call.
Yes, there are points where it gets dubious (after the development of a central nervous system, or a functional brain for example), and we should perhaps lean more towards "murder", than "subjective choice based on non-universal and non-objective views".
what difference is there between Communism and Fascism?
In one you get raped by the government, and in the other you get raped by private industry protected by the government.
Not a huge difference for citizens (they still get raped), but still and important difference. In America we're rallying against some mythological Communist plague (and branding anyone who is even moderately left of the extreme right such), while wholly supporting fascist ideology. Amusingly there has been some interesting historical precedents for this, and all of them ended badly.
My favorite is people branding Obama as a commie, when his policies more smell like fascism (forcing people to support giant, rich, corporations).
On one hand I am kind of happy that I haven't had children yet (we're at the phase where we talk about it more and more, but still haven't got past the self-centered phase), it all seems hell of a lot more complicated than when I was growing up. My parents would give me a stick and expect me to be happy for the next six hours until dinner, or later just let me wander about our neighborhood on my bike until the sun went down. Or wander of to the neighbors and play Starcon or DnD with the neighbor's dad.
Some of my girlfriends relations have just ventured into parenthood, and it somewhat boggles my mind. But then again people are giving 4 year olds iPod touches now... Who knows!
Simply put, any act that ends the life of another (in this case even an abortion) must be justified-- and for many people there is even more simply no justification for the taking of another life.
I would understand this if all anti-abortion people were also vehemently anti-war and anti-death penalty. From my experience (anecdotal, so mostly useless), it is mostly the opposite that is the case.
I am mostly against abortion, but not firm enough in this that I would ever try to force that viewpoint on another person. If I was female, I probably wouldn't get one. But there is a point where things get absurd. A bunch of rapidly developing cells is not human, or at least they are as human as a cancer cluster. Yes, they MAY turn into a human at some point in time, but they are definitely not human.
The bigger problem is that they are willing to dictate my behavior based on a belief system I do not share, and thus has no grounding. There is no potential for this grounding since this system is based on metaphysical claims that can never be empirically proven. If they say an embryo is sacred, their point is as valid as me saying it is nothing more than a mass of cells and thus not worthy of special rights*. There is no way to break this stand-off. There never will be a way. But yet they force their opinion on others.
The worst thing is, all the anti-abortion efforts could be better spent on taking care of children born to unfit or overly poor families, and taking care of the children born with various defects. I feel the same about the big anti-birthcontrol catholic crusade, all that effort would be better spend on STD research and care, and caring for children born into truly terrible conditions.
*The longest standing philosophical debate in existence (arguably) goes like this: "God exists!" "No he doesn't!". And so it has stood for thousands of years, neither claim is provable, and thus resolution is impossible.
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I think you make a great point. With complex enough mathematical instruments you can make a model that accounts for all the data. But that opens up a philosophical question. If it does actually account for everything so well that it can't be falsified, doesn't that make it true anyway? And if we come up with any series of equations that models the universe correctly, won't brilliant mathematicians eventually come up with simplifications to it if possible?
It is a fun point. But there are several types of "true"; in the case you bring up it would be epistemologically true, but its actual ("really-ness", as one of my professors called it) truth would still be unknown. In another way of speaking, it would be lower-case "t" true, but possibly not uppercase "T" true. This isn't just the philosophical bane of theories like string-theory, but even what we are convinced as true (standard physics, mathematics, etc..).
All of our science is basically building a giant model of the interior of a black box. We can have degrees of certainty, but never absolute certainty being that we don't have access to the noumenal existence of things. The best we can hope for is building a decent model to explain the various inputs and outputs of the unknowable.
A fun game I used to play at school (philosophy, obviously, with emphasis on philosophy of science) was pondering whether an incompatible, but equally robust, theory could explain most of natural phenomena. Could this exist? there is no way of saying, but there is a decent possibility. Theoretically you could have two equally valid, but incompatible, theories of everything existing side by side, both would be conventionally true, even if both theoretically, by their own system, could not exist. Fun to think about, if not useful.
You might be right, but I somewhat doubt it. Linux isn't much more of a threat than Windows or OS X (which runs on top of bastardized BSD, and has most of the functionality of Linux with a couple simple hacks). I really doubt that any bit of open source software out there (sans the bits made just for infringement) are that scary either. I'm guessing the MPAA is even running some open source on their computers or servers.
Linux isn't big enough to be perceived as a threat by anyone, nor do most people think it will ever really get to that point. Don't get me wrong, I love my Linux boxes as much as the next nerd, but it really isn't that big, popular, or scary to the "powers that be". What is the estimated usage percent of Linux desktops? 2%? Less? A rather stagnant number two, I haven't seen any numbers reporting much growth in the last 10 years. Of all piracy, I'm guessing people using Linux has the smallest share, and not just because of the small number of users, but also because we're more likely to be idealists.
This is probably why we don't see much support. We are so small as to not matter. Porting Flash or Silverlight DRM over to Linux isn't really worth the effort. I doubt it has ever even been brought up in a board meeting, much less ever been the subject of serious attention.
As for open source... I really don't see it. Open source is rather ubiquitous when you look for it. There are several open source chunks in Windows, OS X is built on top of it, most media players and televisions run almost exclusively on it. It has long been the accepted that open source doesn't run against profit, or the free market, or corporate interests... Open source is just, when it comes down to it, and ignoring RMS, another way of making software. Yes, there are some idealists out there, but not many. There are many code monkeys churning out open source software in giant corporate shops.
Not to sound disparaging. As stated, I love my Linux boxes, and I am bordering on one of those OS zealots, but the world is much bigger than our little, almost microscopic, corner of the computer ecosystem.
Long term supply != infinite. Also nothing is 100% recyclable or re-retreivable, meaning that things still eventually dwindle, even if you try to reuse every scrap (we don't). Also recycling takes energy, meaning the amount of recycling is limited by our energy supplies, which are finite (even the amount of solar radiation is finite, though large).
Yes, I'm being pedantic; life is more amusing that way.
Really the only materials on Earth that are truly finite are some of the metals, silver, gold, the platinum group, and those are found in abundance up in the asteroids.
I hate to break it to you but; all the materials on Earth are truly finite. This is easily proven by asking yourself: "does the Earth have infinite mass?"
If you answered yes... Then prepare for the rest of universe to come crashing down on our heads any second. If no... then obviously everything is finite, since... well... things mostly have mass. Though we might have infinite photons or electrons hiding somewhere around here... (checks under sofa)
True, this is one of my pet peeves too, that and selling products that are "Chemical Free!"* But most natural fertilizers have been around for a very long time, and thus their effects are better known, most also are derived from existing things which are already part of the food chain. While being "non-synthetic" doesn't imply safety, it is a decent rule of thumb until more specific data can be collected.
*see also the term "Organic" itself... I will only eat food whose molecules are mainly based off of carbon atoms!
I can tell.
A nerve you've hit. You directly attacked the integrity of myself and my profession.I know that to some people this might not mean much, but to me it does.
Not the person you were talking to originally, but: This is the point. Most people are completely SICK of being marketed to constantly, and thus you should expect some flack for it. Advertising HAS, uncontroversially, gotten completely out of hand, and some people in your profession are at fault for this. You might even be, don't take that as an insult, I don't know you so can't judge. People are also sick of being dehumanized by advertisers (you are a demographic, not a person), and sick of being manipulated by stupid psychological tricks, and worse outright lied to. I think they are justified in these feelings, since most advertising deserves to die.
I don't think most advertisers deserve to die, mind you, since that is just a bit immature and possibly creepy. My grandfather was in the field (though mostly on the creative/design end), and I obviously had nothing against him. I'm sure there are other nice people in the field, but ultimately I wouldn't feel too bad if all of them were stuck trying to find new work. If we chopped the amount of marketing down by 50%, there still would be too much. If there was a law allowing most marketers to drug us and implant ads on our eye balls, against out will, they would do it and sleep easily at night. Advertising has become completely non-consensual, and people don't like having stuff forced on them, with good reason.
I understand, there is a need to raise consciousness about new products and services, especially now that there are so many alternatives. This is fine. But forcing me to watch these advertisements isn't good, and then peppering them on every single public space, then trying to stick them in every pleasurable pursuit I have just so I have to know that "Happy Soap makes me virile and popular!". Not that "Happy Soap cleans 30% better than Sad Soap", that would be a fair bit information that might be useful, no "Happy Soap makes your penis grow 30 feet longer, and makes Russian supermodels rain down from the heavens. Plus it makes your family really love you, since they all hate you now!" This is just obnoxious and dishonest.
The nicely stated goal of advertising is to "raise awareness", and actual goal, often times, is to try to manipulate us into buying something that we do not want, need, or would otherwise buy. This is NOT a noble goal, this is an obnoxious and morally dubious thing. This is the other thing people hate about your profession, outside of trying to force themselves on us constantly.
Your profession used to be decent, then moved into the annoying but tolerated as necessary category. Thanks to abuses, it has now moved into the pure hatred category. This is pretty much a justified reclassification, if you ask me, since a world completely free from your profession wouldn't be optimal, but would be much better than the world today, and where we're trending towards in the future. Also, a world without professional advertisers wouldn't be free from advertising, people might have to actually make a decent goddamn product and have to live up to their stated quality, instead of making absolute crap and using their marketing budget to cover it up, this way genuine (not seeded) word of mouth would be useful.
Sorry for the rant. I probably could go on for awhile, but won't. But you see why you get hate? You should, your profession is probably as reviled as politics or law. And really you should be getting some hate for it, since you are guilty by association, and share some blame in completely valid problems. Shame is a strong tool to force people to go fix problems.
But I really don't wish you dead, no matter if you're one of the (seemingly) few good guys, or even if you are the idiot that invented pop-under-with-sound flash ads.
They have a foggy recollection of games of old that had these MASSIVE universes and say "Why can't that be done?" forgetting that those massive universes were full of nothing.
This isn't completely true. One of the things I loved about Morrowind (and which annoyed me about Oblivion) was that there WAS stuff hidden all of the massive world. Yes, there were big expanses with pretty much nothing in them, except hidden in the middle, where you would never look, was a huge cave full of bandits worshipping dremora, with some random super-magical item hiding somewhere at the bottom of a small underground river. And said cave is not part of a quest, nor ever directly eluded to in the game dialog. It made exploration fun.
Morrowind is one of those games that I played for days on end, completely ignoring the story the devs wanted me to be worrying about. I didn't even care if I finished it, I just wanted to see the whole world, and slaughter every non-essential NPC and take their pretty baubles to decorate my stolen house. To me this is the best type of game. This is what also made the original Fallout games so good, spending hours doing your own thing completely oblivious of the bigger plot.
Oblivion was somewhat lacking in this vibe. Fallout 3 (haven't tried New Vegas yet, waiting for it to not suck) was also lacking this. You could probably beat Morrowind's actual quest in around 20 hours, but I must have put 80 in exploring; same with the original Fallouts.
This is what also, originally, sold me on WoW. When it first came out, a low level mage and I spent a couple days just exploring the land, seeing if we could sneak into opposing cities, etc... It was more fun than the actual game.
I never liked the Call of Duty games, shooters got rather tedious for me (they are all pretty much the same: this may be true or I'm just getting old). They are the epitome of "go here, kill that", with very little player created gameplay. I don't like being locked into what the devs want me to do, I want to make my own story as well. (I'm going to spend two days wandering around in New Reno, wearing nothing but a purple robe, shooting prostitutes in the back of the head with my SMG, while yelling; "I AM THE BRINGER OF JUSTICE!". Instead of worrying about your damn Enclave/super mutant problems!).
Also; the real world is mostly empty space too. No problem with that, unless it gets tedious, but then again most video game worlds have a fast travel alternative.
Or I highlight the fact that sometimes people make mistakes, or people don't heavily proofread throw-away forum posts enough. With that lesson learned, I will continue making mistakes and not proofreading silly forum posts enough.
My original reply was "Holy shit! "He didn't use the right your (even if his point was clear)! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" It might be more apt.
I understand what your saying, and even sort of agree with it. But personally I think the risk of temporarily inconveniencing some small vendors is worth it. How else to you strike back at companies that only exist to facilitate money transfers? There really is no way around it.
I really doubt, though, that Anon is causing anything much past a mild annoyance to anyone. Really this whole thing is geared more towards getting publicity than actually hurting anyone. And its working quite well.
I don't understand the visceral hatred towards this... Perhaps its because I was raised by a bunch of uppity ex-hippies and union members who saw protest as a god-given right. I brought coffee to the last bunch of picketers I saw, even if I didn't really have any shared interest in what they were picketing, and they were being rather inconvenient to me and local businesses. They serve a vital function.
Anon is a bit childish (but strangely sophisticated, actually grabbing a decent chunk of attention about something that the media around here has almost completely ignored). Its hard to really relate to the chans, or not hold /b/ with some level of contempt, but at least they see something wrong, and are doing something about it. That is admirable, and possibly worth whatever small amount of annoyance they incur.
And really, if Anon is right, this is a bit bigger than people making a couple bucks. I don't know if it is or not, but I have no sympathy for Mastercard, Paypal, or Amazon, even if I do have some for the people caught in the middle of things.
I never called our government "horribly, horribly corrupt". Our government is just, right now, somewhere between unreasonably corrupt and too corrupt. People (and I) worry that it is on the road towards "horribly, horribly corrupt", and would like to stop and reverse the trend before it hits the tragic finish.
I'm not jumping on the revolution wagon (yet), we haven't gotten quite that bad yet. I think there might be other cures left still, but none of them are very simple.
Though I would have nothing against a bunch of people trying to start one, if they could get enough people behind it, then perhaps it is time. As long as it is one of those rare revolutions that don't end in tyranny. That probably is the biggest thing I have against revolution, most of the people proclaiming it have worse ideas than what they want to fight against.
I would really hate to be forced to live in either a Libertarian, christian, or socialist utopia against my will. They seem to be the ones screaming for it the most.
That argument doesn't make sense... Just because there are entities much worse, does not negate the problems with our own entity.
You can't yell at me for killing one person, since there are people who kill a whole lot more!
I think people are more worried about where we are going, and what we risk becoming, than what we currently are. We don't want to wake up one morning and realize that we are suddenly one of those "horribly, horribly, horribly corrupt governments out there"
Oh no! Some multi-million dollar political constructs didn't make as much money as they thought fair for a short period of time!
I don't think I'll lose much sleep over that.
University is a cult, it should be regulated as one.
Huh?
I don't want to live in the world you embrace, where the least educated are the highest regarded. A little education is alway better than none. A little more education is always a little better than less. The pridefully uneducated are idiots and shouldn't be allowed to make decisions that impact anyone outside of themselves.
Perhaps education is about more than employment (as written by a person who majored in philosophy, living with a woman with english and art degrees). The fact that university has become a glorified trade school is more troubling to me than... whatever your ranting about.
There is no nobility in ignorance.
Also... How the hell do you change society? Care to give us a guide book on that one? Generations change society, and in the mean time we just live with tyranny and injustice? Should we be mad at all those black protesters fighting for rights, since they wasted their time picketing and sitting in, and disrupting poor white people by sitting in the wrong section of buses and diners? They shouldn't have inconvenienced us, they should have changed society in a more polite way. You don't need to use the white man's bathroom, or sit at the front of buses to be successful anyways.
Hell, I would be happy if the streets of my city were closed once a week for protests! It would mean we are doing something other than sitting on our ass talking about stupid. I would be happy even if I didn't agree with them.
As advocates of Democracy and transparency, let's do nothing, which in turn does nothing.
Your example doesn't work. I have no sympathy* for anyone who wants to allow the government to murder people for revenge, no matter how nasty these people are it puts us right in the same place they are. Revenge is not noble.
Some of us think our government is to far gone for calm letter writing campaigns to make much of a difference. If you get every American together behind a cause and we're still going to be smaller, and less significant, than a massively wealthy and powerful multinational. Our government has made a habit of doing things against our wishes, or our interests, for a long time now. I doubt some people writing nice, polite, letters to their congress men is going to make a difference. They don't care about letters, they care about nice big fat checks, kickbacks, and cushy consulting jobs when they either get to old to be in government or finally get thrown out for being hypocritical corrupt bastards.
I really don't care if grassroots activivists (or whatever jargon makes you happy) do, and I really don't care if I agree with their cause or not. The fact that there IS activists, people who care enough to do something, is worth all of the potential inconvenience. Hell, I think the Tea Party folks are mostly a bunch of misguided people who are mad at nothing, and completely blinded by an erroneous ideology, I think if they got their way America would be infinitely worse than it is even at its current sorry state; but I am still glad they are there. Groups of people speaking up against perceived injustice should always trump a couple percentage points of corporate profit, whether or whether not I agree with them.
As long as no one is actually injured, then they should carry on freely and be celebrated, even if you don't like their cause.
*obviously I have sympathy for the victims, but being a victim doesn't make you a saint.
I doubt it is just "for the lulz" (I feel stupider for typing that), I'm guessing that some portion of Anon does care. They probably care a bit more than you think, since there are probably targets out there that could get even more "lulz" with a bit less risk or work. Looking around, there is a ton of media, IRC channels, forums, and such supporting Operation Payback, or Leakspin, or whatever the hell their calling it these days.
There is no rule stating that you can't find amusement in protests. Go to some modern protests, or view some footage of protests in the '60s, there was almost a carnival like atmosphere. People enjoyed it. You don't have to be serious faced, completely devoted zealot to have a meaningful protest. You can find it fun as well. It might even be better, since to be human is to garner more sympathy (how much sympathy do we have for raving, utterly devoted, religious zealot protesters?), and it makes a better mockery of whoever your protesting. Your having fun inspite of their nasty behaviors.
Rebellion has always been playful.
I would never argue against doing things you believe in AND getting your "lulz" from it, I would rather you go protest laughing. Everything is better when there is some humor, and element of joie de vivre involved. There is a difference between being serious about something, and being just plain creepy.
I do have some distaste over anything 4Chan, and specifically /b/ does, but I think thats mainly just a generational, or cultural thing and really has no relevance on much of anything.
I recommend Spam Gourmet, personally. Its free, it has many domains you can use for forms in case one is blocked, and it is rather robust. I've been using it for years, and yet to have any serious problems with it (sometimes it has eaten something it shouldn't have, or has had a decent delay in resending, but this is rare, and I doubt your using it is a primary email address for things that are actually important
Your message stats: 3,789 forwarded, 224,298 eaten. You have 326 disposable address(es).
As stated, my personal views go towards the "erring on the side of caution" camp. But I can't actually say with any confidence that I should be allowed to force this opinion on others.
Yes, you (perhaps) think that a undifferentiated mass of cells lacking any form of brain or CNS is a human. But it can be pretty easily argued that it isn't. You can't really hop on the moralistic train with that since a large portion of the population doesn't agree. Basically you're (I mean that mostly rhetorically) willing to enforce your wholly subjective, and unverifiable, view on others, I find this equally disturbing. Especially since forcing this view often leads to harm and suffering (and sometimes death) among the unequivocally human.
If there is a solution it would be a nuanced one, engineered to address points on both sides of the debate (and ideally completely ignoring the purely subjective religious points), and make both sides equally uncomfortable. I see no real problem with aborting fetuses when there is no brain, and thus no capability to actually think or feel pain. At early points a fetus is basically indistinguishable from cancers. The only distinguishing feature is "potential", which is real but completely nebulous, and thus hard to actually justify as a matter of forced policy. In cases where the mother would die, or be severly distressed, I also have no problem, since this is an argument of potentials, the actual always should have more rights.
If there was no suffering that could be caused by the banning of abortion, I would completely agree with you. But this is not the case. Making this a more interesting argument. It isn't, "do fetuses have rights", or "are fetuses human", it is "are the rights of fetuses greater than the people who carry them?".
It is a question of "until we formulate a test", since that test will NEVER exist, it cannot ever exist. It will always be a subjective judgement.
And we do kill fully human people for not being fully human enough for our tastes all the time. This is the point of the death penalty. Some would argue war, as well. I find America very amusing, at times. Thou shall not kill unthinking masses of cells, but though shall kill just about everyone else.
Sorry if my language was a bit vague, it happens. By human I didn't mean "genetically human", or "human in origin", I meant "is it functionally human". Meaning does it have enough characteristics which we classify as human to be accorded any basic rights that we, as fully formed humans, would like to ascribe to ourselves.
Yes, a fetus is human in some technical senses, but not in some meaningful senses (i.e. it isn't self-aware, it can't survive interdependently of the host, etc...). When people talk about the rights of fetuses they aren't talking about origin or genetics. Personally, if something doesn't have a brain, or rudimentary central nervous system, I have a very hard time calling it "human", at early stages fetuses are as human as cancers, to put it bluntly.
So the argument breaks into potential. A fetus is a potential human, and should we accord that rights? Rights equal to me and you, presumably full humans?
Some people also talk about souls, but that should have no bearing on legal policy since it holds no force to large portions of the population. Fetus have no souls, since nothing has a soul. This is as valid an argument as to the contrary, and always will be, thus the whole point is a bit worthless being that it only applies to the faithful who already believe it who already have internal and social forces pointing at them to not abort. You really can't make a decent case for the legalistic of forcing subjective religious tenets on a group of people for whom these tenets have no force or bearing. So I will completely dismiss this line of thought.
Corporate person-hood is pretty daft, I agree.
To be short (pardon my rambling, haven't hit the caffeine quota yet); how is a fetus a person?
The problem is that there still is a very large, and probably completely unsolvable, debate over whether or whether not a fetus, or embryo is human. There isn't an objective answer to that question, and thus you really can't force your opinion on others. If there was some definitive test to prove, for once and for all, that a mass of rapidly dividing cells embedded in a woman's body is actually a human being, then I would have no problem with call (and legislating) abortion murder.
We're not there, so it should remain a personal judgement call.
Yes, there are points where it gets dubious (after the development of a central nervous system, or a functional brain for example), and we should perhaps lean more towards "murder", than "subjective choice based on non-universal and non-objective views".
what difference is there between Communism and Fascism?
In one you get raped by the government, and in the other you get raped by private industry protected by the government.
Not a huge difference for citizens (they still get raped), but still and important difference. In America we're rallying against some mythological Communist plague (and branding anyone who is even moderately left of the extreme right such), while wholly supporting fascist ideology. Amusingly there has been some interesting historical precedents for this, and all of them ended badly.
My favorite is people branding Obama as a commie, when his policies more smell like fascism (forcing people to support giant, rich, corporations).
Ah... thanks for the explanation.
On one hand I am kind of happy that I haven't had children yet (we're at the phase where we talk about it more and more, but still haven't got past the self-centered phase), it all seems hell of a lot more complicated than when I was growing up. My parents would give me a stick and expect me to be happy for the next six hours until dinner, or later just let me wander about our neighborhood on my bike until the sun went down. Or wander of to the neighbors and play Starcon or DnD with the neighbor's dad.
Some of my girlfriends relations have just ventured into parenthood, and it somewhat boggles my mind. But then again people are giving 4 year olds iPod touches now... Who knows!
Off topic...
What the hell is a "play date"?
Simply put, any act that ends the life of another (in this case even an abortion) must be justified-- and for many people there is even more simply no justification for the taking of another life.
I would understand this if all anti-abortion people were also vehemently anti-war and anti-death penalty. From my experience (anecdotal, so mostly useless), it is mostly the opposite that is the case.
I am mostly against abortion, but not firm enough in this that I would ever try to force that viewpoint on another person. If I was female, I probably wouldn't get one. But there is a point where things get absurd. A bunch of rapidly developing cells is not human, or at least they are as human as a cancer cluster. Yes, they MAY turn into a human at some point in time, but they are definitely not human.
The bigger problem is that they are willing to dictate my behavior based on a belief system I do not share, and thus has no grounding. There is no potential for this grounding since this system is based on metaphysical claims that can never be empirically proven. If they say an embryo is sacred, their point is as valid as me saying it is nothing more than a mass of cells and thus not worthy of special rights*. There is no way to break this stand-off. There never will be a way. But yet they force their opinion on others.
The worst thing is, all the anti-abortion efforts could be better spent on taking care of children born to unfit or overly poor families, and taking care of the children born with various defects. I feel the same about the big anti-birthcontrol catholic crusade, all that effort would be better spend on STD research and care, and caring for children born into truly terrible conditions.
*The longest standing philosophical debate in existence (arguably) goes like this: "God exists!" "No he doesn't!". And so it has stood for thousands of years, neither claim is provable, and thus resolution is impossible.
Historically, the Catholic church has been a proponent of science.
Sans epidemiology.