How is me not pretending to have a crystal ball a weasel word? What non-weasely word would you prefer?
Because all you need to do is add the word "not" and the meaning does not change. Clinton could have horrific consequences. Or Clinton could not have horrific consequences. It is the same meaningless diatribe whose meaning does not change.
Saying Trump could have horrific consequences implies that I think Trump significantly raises the probability of horrific consequences, that's not weasel words that's just communication.
Weasel words are an attempt to mislead. "Some people say Trump eats babies." Is weasel words. I don't believe Trump eats babies, I don't want to take credit for making the claim that Trump eats babies, but I'm trying to leave you with the impression that Trump eats babies.
potential cost to exercising your principle in this way
And? There is potential for anything. There is a cost in blood for the rights we enjoy.
I let people off the hook for reasonably unforseen outcomes, not really obvious outcomes.
How does it feel to argue against principles? I feel pity for you.
What makes you think I'm not arguing on principle? My principle is that people should be aware of the consequences of their actions and take reasonable responsibility for them.
And? Trump > Clinton. Accountable in what way? Do I need to pay reparations to your feelings?
Accountability doesn't mean reparations, it means accepting that your actions have consequences, even if those are only moral consequences.
Does that mean you are accountable for Clinton when she uses her known poor judgement?
I don't think she has "known poor judgement" outside of some specific areas, but I'm perfectly willing to own the consequences of Clinton's presidency just as I owned the positive, and negative, consequences of Obama's.
Don't imagine I'm some hyper-partisan,
could have fooled me.
I believe that was your own doing. For all your complaints about being patronizing not everyone supports a mainstream candidate out of pure partisanship, some actually think they're the best option.
Sanders was unknown.
Too bad democrats rejected him. He was more appealing across the aisle as opposed to "doing what is necessary" for the good of The Party.
Sander's was fine but had his own issues, if I was an American I would have voted Clinton.
And there is nothing wrong with the status-quo. Right?
Absolutely not, there are huge problems. Some Clinton may make better, some she'll make worse. But that doesn't mean you should burn down the system instead.
Actually, you don't know what ideas and habits he will bring if elected. That is the whole point. He is a complete unknown with no political history.
Except every signal he gives off is either bad or ambiguous.
Even if all you carry out is corruption he's the guy who made his money though sweetheart deals with politicians and who brags about buying people with campaign contributions. He's had actual mob ties!
lol, you sound like a right-wing partisan hack I have had similar conversations about in previous elections. Congrats, I guess.
Only superficially. Their worries about Obama were based in fantasy, my Trump fears are well justified by his comments and behaviour.
What damage could he possibly do?
The same damage as the one who "should have known better" and was "extremely careless". But I got an Idea, lets promote someone who makes poor judgement decisions, lies about that judgement, and brushes off criticism of that judgement as a right-wing conspiracy. You are comparing shit with shit. Not a compelling position to be on.
Clinton messed up with her emails, big friggin deal.
Yes it was a screw up, it was a serious screw up, but she's not even in the same ballpark as concerns about Trump.
He's not hypocritical, Sanders has been very consistent that Hillary is vastly better than Trump and they share a lot of important policy objectives.
Similarly it's not dishonest.
I guess it depends on why someone would initially support Sanders in the first place doesn't it? If you disagree with a lot of Sanders positions then it doesn't matter what platform position Clinton adopts. I disagree with Sanders on many things including "vastly better than Trump". Shit is shit regardless of the nuttiness. Only one piece of shit has an unknown to it.
So then you don't think Sanders is "hypocritical, dishonest, or paid-off".
There are many different reasons for protest vote everyone can have a different one.
And if it's a bad one I can criticize it.
But whatever you think of Clinton (I actually think she's be great) Trump is VASTLY worse and could have horrific consequences if he got in.
It is pretty obvious you think she's great. I don't. I don't think Trump is "vastly worse". "could" is a weasel word. There can always be horrific consequences.
How is me not pretending to have a crystal ball a weasel word? What non-weasely word would you prefer?
You don't get the excuse of ignorance that your protest vote doesn't matter
WTF? I am the one arguing that a protest vote is not a "half-vote" for Trump, like you.
Outside of very specific circumstances in a national US election voting 3rd party is effectively a half-vote for each party.
I am not trying to undermine someones vote of principle with scare mongering defeatism. I am literally arguing for more opinions in the body politic by advocating for a 3rd party vote to try and break the duopoly we see with R/D. And you want to say I don't get an excuse of ignorance? You can keep your partisanship bullshit and I will keep my principled vote.
I'm saying there is a massive potential cost to exercising your principle in this way. And if Trump wins because of your decision I believe that makes you accountable.
What is necessary? For the good of The Party, right?
For the good of the planet. Don't imagine I'm some hyper-partisan, I'm a Canadian who has voted for 4 different parties in national elections. I though Romney would have been a decent President, though not as good as Obama, and the Republican legislators really freaked me out.
As far as the "Russian roulette", we have had bad presidents before and survived. We will have another bad president in the future and survive. Trump brings unknown. If that's what makes you afraid then fine but don't be patronizing or disingenuous just because you are a partisan apologist afraid of something different.
Sanders was unknown.
Trump is unknown only in the sense of how many of his terrible ideas and habits he'll bring to office.
How far will he go in his battle against media outlets he doesn't like? How successful will he be?
Will he do mass deportations of illegal Mexican immigrants and Muslims?
Will he carry out executions of terrorist's families?
How many of the conspiracy nuts will he drag with him into the White House?
The only possible "good" outcome I can see is that the political system will unite against him and basically have a reformation of some kind. But that's a bit like drinking sewer water to give yourself an awesome immune system.
Bush campaigned as a common sense regular-guy, ignoring experts and following his gut is exactly what lead to the Iraq war.
Even if we assume that following his gut is what lead to the Iraq War, following your gut is not the only way you can end up in a terrible war. JFK was a democrat who wasn't an idiot who never listened to experts, how did we end up in vietnam?
There were many good arguments for going into Vietnam, they were wrong in retrospect but it wasn't obvious.
The experts knew exactly what would happen in Iraq.
I actually think they are quite different. I think trump follows his gut because he knows he is right about a lot of things. He is right that a lot people are racist, a lot of people don't care about the truth, and that a lot of people hate polished politicians.
Trump is also outrageously wrong about a lot of things, it's just hard to hell whether he's deliberately lying or whether he's just wrong.
In this respect he is absolutely more right than the "experts" who said that he had no chance of winning the republican nomination.
People around Trump say he didn't expect to win either, he was supposedly banking on a respectable showing in a few primary and was caught off guard when he started winning.
Trump did not support the Iraq war. In an interview in 2002, when asked if he supported the war answered "I guess so". While it is not true that he predicted the war would be bad (as he claims), it is well documented that trump opposed the war as far back as 2004.
He didn't strongly support it and he turned relatively quickly but he did support it.
I think he is certainly likely to get into a war, but I don't think it is fair to associate him with that particular war. And this is for a man that routinely takes both sides of every issue and is basically a compulsive liar. There is so much to legitimately criticize him for, there is no need to invent things.
I'm happy to admit the nuance in his soft support and relatively early change, but I think it's valid to say he supported it.
I'm not saying it has to do with D vs R, I'm saying it has to do with seeing the scale of damage a bad president (Bush) did, and realizing the epic damage Trump could do.
Yes bad presidents can get us into bad wars. What I am saying is that even having a good president (much less a democrat president) is *far* from a guarantee of not getting into a bad war. And we don't even know if Gore would have been a good president. I don't think there is any good evidence for that. All I can confidently say about Gore is that he would have been a democrat president, which isn't saying much.
That's basically the same argument that saying that since wearing a seatbelt could potentially trap you in a burning car then wearing a seatbelt might be just as dangerous as not wearing one.
We can't run an alternate history but we've seen the consequences of an ignorant president when Bush walked into an easily avoidable catastrophe.
It's possible that Trump won't be bad, or even that Clinton could be worse, but that's a terribly poor gamble.
This isn't about hard to read comments, it's about comment format that someone doesn't like. I can read the "crap" comments as easily as I can read the good ones, I'm not brain-dead. It's more about a visual style preference.
And I've worked on large proprietary projects, and finding code with random inconsistent styles is ugly and a massive PITA, and it does take up time when you're trying to figure out unfamiliar code and you're spending extra brainpower picking out comments.
It's not even that one commenting style is fundamentally more readable (but I think Linus's suggestions are slightly more readable, and on a big project that matters). But having a consistent style throughout the project is very important.
And we wonder why people don't like the open source community? They resort to petty insults and swearing to make points, and I am supposed to devote my free time to supporting the projects? Give me a break. If I wanted to be subjected to name calling I would go back to High School or jump into an FPS.
Agreed, Linus's "management" style could certainly use a loss less swearing and insults.
No bugs left other than comment style disagreements? Rejoice, the year of Linux on the desktop can't be far! For what it's worth, my single contribution to the Linux kernel fucked up some white space. Torvalds didn't notice or I guess I would have woken up in the burn ward.
Hard-to-read comments make hard-to-read code. On a large project with multiple developers that matters.
The same congress controlled by Republicans who so effectively united to prevent him from getting the nomination, and even once he did, never walked back their criticisms of him at all?
Congress that is made up of both Republicans and Democrats hate Trump. It won't be one party trying to stop people voting how they see fit. It will be the Legislative branch against the Executive branch. Literally nothing wrong with two branches of government in disagreement.
If Trump wins it will probably be a Republican legislative branch. And as I just pointed out Republicans haven't exactly demonstrated an ability to keep demagogues in check, they couldn't even stop Cruz from walking them into a Federal shutdown and almost default that no one except Cruz wanted.
Counting on Republicans to constrain Trump is like expecting a frat house to make an alcoholic go sober.
Maybe if Congress hates the president so much they would actually limit the power of the Executive. Imagine that. That won't happen with Clinton.
I'd put a lot more money on a Republican congress constraining a Clinton executive than a Trump executive.
Yes, I know how much power the president has and aside from a few things like foreign relations, federal bureaucracies, etc. he has to follow the law the legislative passes. Perhaps, it speaks more about the laws the executive enforces than it does who enforces them.
He just has control of a vast bureaucracy, law enforcement agencies, and the military. What damage could he possibly do?
Where did I say I wanted a Trump president? The closest I have said in a different post was: "If I want to throw a wrench in the political system with my vote, name a better wrench than Trump." Name a better wrench than Trump.
Sanders? Or since he didn't win maybe just hit yourself a few times with an actual wrench? It will be very unpleasant, but far less harmful than Trump.
He might have started some wars in the way that Obama did Libya, some bombing and maybe some special forces but nothing major.
Iraq was a determined project by Bush and the neo-conservatives that surrounded him. That does not happen with a Democratic president.
I think you have a very short sighted view of history. Republicans being the warmongers of the 2 major parties is a new development with the neoconservative movement. That hasn't always been the case, and could easily change with one warmonger democrat president or a pacifist republican president.
In fact, Bush actually campaigned on a platform of "no nation building". You can look back in retrospect and call bullshit on that platform, but what you can't do is know that Gore wouldn't make some horrible foreignn policy mistakes equivalent to the Iraq war after a 9/11 type attack.
Bush campaigned as a common sense regular-guy, ignoring experts and following his gut is exactly what lead to the Iraq war.
Trump is basically tripling down on the ignore-experts follow-your-instinct philosophy.
I don't know why we would associate Trump with the Iraq war. At least he actually claims (now) that it was a giant disaster. The only thing linking Trump to the Iraq war is that he's a republican. But Trump isn't really a republican. He could have just as easily been a democrat, if he decided that was better for his chances.
Trump supported Iraq, has been much more hawkish on Libya and Syria, and his foreign policy framework consists of using US power to push other countries around. Assuming he'd be more likely to get in a bad war is a very good bet.
I don't. I just don't see what any of this has to do with democrats vs. republicans. Trump is a disaster regardless of his party. Bush turned out to be a disaster. And we never really got the opportunity to know what a Gore presidency would have been like.
I'm not saying it has to do with D vs R, I'm saying it has to do with seeing the scale of damage a bad president (Bush) did, and realizing the epic damage Trump could do.
So do you think that Bernie is corrupt for endorsing Hillary then?
Definitely lost my support and respect. This endorsement makes Sanders come across as a hypocrite, liar, paid off, or all the above.
He's not hypocritical, Sanders has been very consistent that Hillary is vastly better than Trump and they share a lot of important policy objectives.
Similarly it's not dishonest.
And he wasn't paid off except to the extent that his endorsement was in return for embracing some more of his policies.
Or it is possible that you've massively misjudged the "criminality" of Hillary's actions and the reasons that she got so many endorsements and votes?
Yes, because we all know how sweet and innocent Clinton is. Everything is a right wing conspiracy against her. Obviously, "should have known better" and "extremely careless" is something I want to promote, amirite? What is "is" anyway?
The emails were a huge screwup, no question.
But you don't get perfect candidates.
Whom you know won't possibly win, so you're basically giving a half-vote to Trump.
Have you ever heard of a protest vote? Voting for Johnson, Stein, or Mickey Mouse is not giving "half-vote" to Trump you disingenuous busy-body. Your partisan apologetics are why 3rd parties are a joke in the US.
But you're right, I should just shut up the fuck up and vote the way you say because you know better! You are the reason why we end up with the two shittiest candidates in US history because god forbid people actually vote on principle instead of listening to know-it-all-busy-bodies like you.
Yes I know what a protest vote is, it's a claim that both candidates are more-or-less equally bad so you can't in good conscience pick either.
But whatever you think of Clinton (I actually think she's be great) Trump is VASTLY worse and could have horrific consequences if he got in.
I mean protest voting for Nader in Florida gave you Bush over Gore. And that led to the Iraq war and at least a quarter-million needless deaths. You don't get the excuse of ignorance that your protest vote doesn't matter. If Trump wins and you threw your vote away saying "It was a protest vote!" doesn't let you dodge responsibility.
You wanted to protest against Clinton so you voted for Sanders. That was your protest vote, not only did everyone hear but you actually changed both the party platform and Clinton's platform. That's a pretty damn effective protest.
But you didn't win everything you wanted, too bad, welcome to reality. Now it's time to do what's necessary and not play Russian roulette with a Trump presidency because Hillary offends your sensibilities.
you seem to have missed the term "illegal" and it isnt mexicans its all non americans. This is half the problem when people misrepresent the actual argument, its hard to have a civil disccusion about anything
For sure his policies are directed at illegal Mexicans, but it's hard to miss the us-vs them racial component, especially since Trump himself does so much to reinforce that narrative.
For instance no one forced him to attack a born-in-the-US judge on the basis of his Mexican ethnicity, in fact people begged him to stop, yet Trump still did that repeatedly.
Nor has he done much to repudiate avowed racists who back him, or even bothered to check that the people he re-tweets aren't obvious white supremacists.
At least Trump is hated by Congress so hopefully nothing would get done.
The same congress controlled by Republicans who so effectively united to prevent him from getting the nomination, and even once he did, never walked back their criticisms of him at all?
You are the dumb-ass that thinks a professional liar is good so long as you agree with the lie they speak. Why don't you drink more kool-aid? Your cup is empty.
Trump is of course utterly unacceptable, and the Democratic Party has shown itself to be controlled by an unaccountable politburo that fixed the nomination. I wont be a part of either of these criminals' rise to power.
So do you think that Bernie is corrupt for endorsing Hillary then?
Or it is possible that you've massively misjudged the "criminality" of Hillary's actions and the reasons that she got so many endorsements and votes?
Im moving on from Feeling the Bern to Feeling the Johnson.
Whom you know won't possibly win, so you're basically giving a half-vote to Trump.
Sure. Gore didn't start any wars from 2000-2008 when he wasn't president, therefore he wouldn't have started any if he was... Makes sense.
He might have started some wars in the way that Obama did Libya, some bombing and maybe some special forces but nothing major.
Iraq was a determined project by Bush and the neo-conservatives that surrounded him. That does not happen with a Democratic president.
Also, is it fair to say that 9/11 wouldn't have happened if he was president?
Very dubious, and even if 9/11 was a consequence of Bush's incompetence it's hard to reliably prevent one-off events.
I think it is very possible that had we elected Gore, some different terrible shit would have happened, and there'd be people saying, "who is the lesser of 2 evils now" (having no idea what would have happened under Bush).
I think this underestimates just how awful a thing the Iraq war was.
We're looking at at least 250k deaths.
Trillions of dollars.
A huge radicalizing factor for Arab Muslims.
The rise of ISIS, the refugee crisis in the EU.
Hell, even Brexit is ultimately a consequence of the Iraq war (though the refugee crisis).
And this wasn't even unexpected, the foreign services of both the US and Britain knew that the Iraq war would be pretty much as bad as it was, but the Bush administration was so deadset on going forward they didn't even plan for the event that the experts were right.
To all those who think a Trump Presidency isn't a big deal, just look at how badly Bush screwed the world up, and he was a more or less typical politician who was perceived as a not quite as smart but otherwise really nice regular guy.
Trump is in the midst of a presidential campaign and he can't be bothered to act like he's taking the job seriously or turn down the extremism. If the system couldn't keep Bush from being such an epic disaster then why do they think it can constrain Trump?
Or, better yet, hold people responsible for their own actions..
People are always susceptible to doing dumb stuff, one responsibility of technology makers is to be aware that people sometimes do dumb things with their technology.
The Tesla autopilot is an example from early this week, it lulls you into tuning out on the road and letting the AI drive.
This is another facet, augmented reality mixes virtual games with real environments. Someone who deliberately hung toys next to a highway for drivers to grab as they went by would rightly be criticized for luring people into dangerous actions. If an app is unintentionally doing something similar it's valid to question it.
It doesn't mean we should ban the game or even force them to change something, but it's a valid issue to discuss.
You get the current academic system of research grants, where funded evidence is produced and the peer-review system is skewed by endowments for tenure, etc.
Good societies produce valid science.
Valid science can't produce good societies!
So I think real concern isn't that valid science can't guide a valid society. I think the problem is that you only get valid science when people want a valid outcome but don't really care what the particular outcome is.
For instance no one really cared if there was a Higgs Boson, they just wanted to know for the sake of understanding the universe.
But the outcomes of AGW research put one of the biggest industries on the planet at risk and could change the power balance of regions of countries.
So there's a lot of people with a huge interest in influencing the outcome of AGW research.
A government isn't going to want its major policy accomplishment be undercut by some random researcher releasing a paper, particularly if that researcher is a political opponent fudging the numbers so they can win the news cycle for their party.
If major political and business interests need science to endorse a particular policy they're going to find a way to create science to endorse that policy.
Allow me two literary examples, that will surely illustrate the quandry better than can I, myself.
First, I propose Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Anybody embarking on a discussion of technophillic, purely-rational society without having read this book, speaks from a deficit. That supposedly well-educated men like De Grasse Tyson make shallow, straw-man proposals are a strong argument that Huxley's literary presentation is as valid today, as it was in 1931. Wikipaedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World The full text of the novel: Brave New World
A second point is made metaphorically, by Gothe, in his "Sorcerer's Apprentice". It is a poem, and suffers in English. For the purpose of our argumentation, it is sufficient to be familiar with the presentation of this material in Disney's "Fantasia" - provided that an audience is equipped with an ability to understand allusions, and to make practical intuitions.
In the end, I suppose Dr. De Grasse Tyson - a delightful fellow - is adept at understanding and representing the powerful creative and intellectual efforts of others, while exhibiting little individual insight or power for deep thought.
It's been a while since I read BNW but the point of a speculative novel is to investigate a potential outcome of a scenario, not the only outcome.
BNW shows that it's possible for a "rationally" run society to still be run badly. Big friggin' surprise. It's possible to do anything badly!
Tyson's proposal was fairly simple, policy should be backed up by evidence. The idea is to discourage stupid policies where you say "we want to reduce pregnancy so we're going to teach abstinence only", or "we want to protect the environment and combat climate change by shutting down Nuclear plants".
Presumably those policies could still happen, but there would be an expectation that you're proposing law X so we can do Y you have to show your work that X will really achieve Y without other negative consequences.
You only end up doing something stupid and inhumane like eugenics if you combine scientific policy making with a complete disregard for human rights, and in case you missed in Eugenics were hardly the only inhumane set of policies from the early 20th century.
"Podcasts" are audio files of people talking about shit they don't know much about and that you only listen to because you're bored out of your mind.
On the contrary Podcasts are probably the outstanding example of user-generated content (or at least non big-corporation content).
Video is extremely difficult to make look professional, but making a podcast with professional or at least decent sound quality is doable and far cheaper. Distribution is also a big advantage since you don't need to adhere to specific formats like a television or even radio program does such as being X minutes long or having planned commercial breaks.
And instead of "people talking about shit they don't know much about" you get knowledgeable experts who for once don't have to worry about meddling from corporate overlords who are ignorant or have different objectives (like promoting a corporate agenda).
In other revelations, professional wresting is fake, something weird is going on with Donald Trump's hair, and people will uncritically accept ridiculous information if it reinforces their priors!
If his big hack of Hilary was a lie, why is he in jail? Shouldn't you let him go home? No crime, no felony, no jail. At least that is how it is supposed to work.
Because he was never in jail for hacking into Clinton's server. The claimed Clinton hack was just him attention-whoring.
And how do you propose we FIX that issue? I can think of three ways... (Assuming we really intend to do law enforcement and don't want to just fire all the cops out there..)
1. Roast all the cops, condemn them all because some segments of the population seem to be shot at by cops more often and send them to hours of diversity and sensitivity training -- Not going to help at all.
Actually not a bad idea. While there are only a few "bad apples" the police culture is to accommodate and protect those bad apples.
The problem isn't police protecting themselves, in the majority of these incidents there's virtually no hint of danger for the officers, it comes from police officers being able to use force, including deadly force, with basically no consequence.
Police culture needs to change.
2. Mount protests and fire up segments of the population and do all you can to stir up civil unrest over something, stage riots even. (Remember Ferguson MO?) - Again Absolutely NOT helpful at all. This just foments bad attitudes towards police officers, destroys the property of the innocent and causes more folks to get shot. Why? Because you end up having MORE confrontations with bigger attitudes. More folks start to not trust the police and stupidly act out their distrust and disrespect. This results in more violent confrontations and shootings.
Not protesting wasn't particularly helpful either. There's a short term increase in tension but the goal is to create enough of a political issue that significant changes are made.
3. Use these incidents as a way to educate the public about how to handle interactions with police and how to effectively air their grievances about how they are policed without upping their chances of having a negative outcome. THIS is the only EFFECTIVE solution here if you think about it.
I'm gonna guess you're white (as am I) because that's an almost completely useless solution.
Asking a black if they know how to act around police is like asking a white person if they know the lyrics to Y.M.C.A.
They know they're regularly confronted by police and if they don't act properly they can end up dead.
There's two big problems with the "educate the public" solution.
1) You're putting the responsibility on members of the public who have only occasional interactions and can easily screw up. Supposedly this guy was following your rules fairly well. We don't know the exact scenario but seemingly the only mistake he may have made is telling the officer he was reaching for his wallet rather than waiting for the officer to ask him to get his wallet. That's a pretty easy mistake to make if you're trying to be cooperative.
2) Sometimes members of the public are actually agitated or otherwise not cooperative around police! This killing was actually an outlier, most of these unnecessary killings have involved men who had done something wrong and were confrontational or disobedient but not an actual threat. Educating people about those rules is completely useless for those people.
3) If you want to be effective then it's far better off to train the much smaller number of police who are the common element in all these interactions. Give them sensitivity training, teach them to de-escalate and not overreact, and when you find the ones who have a history of being unusually confrontational with the public (very common in these cases), fire them if you can't fix their behaviour.
Put yourself in the Cop's shoes and THINK about what they are concerned about, preferably in advance, and don't do anything stupid and you are very unlikely to get shot.
It's good advice but misses the point.
As a white person I can violate one or more of those rules and I'm still very unlikely to get shot.
As a black or hispanic person I need to follow those rules to the letter or, like Philando Castile, my odds of getting shot will sky-rocket.
It is Their Site. So they make Their rules. Based on their business model.
So what? Because they're a business acting in their self-interest that makes it proper and ethical and we're not supposed to discuss or criticize them?
In a free market system consumers are supposed to discuss and judge products and the companies that make them, that's not a bug, that's one of the basic mechanisms that makes free markets work.
Slashdot Mirror
Different entity.
Guccifer broke into a few people's emails, got arrested, then fabricated a claim about hacking Clinton's server.
Guccifer 2.0 apparently broke into some DNC servers and has been dumping docs from there ever since.
How is me not pretending to have a crystal ball a weasel word? What non-weasely word would you prefer?
Because all you need to do is add the word "not" and the meaning does not change. Clinton could have horrific consequences. Or Clinton could not have horrific consequences. It is the same meaningless diatribe whose meaning does not change.
Saying Trump could have horrific consequences implies that I think Trump significantly raises the probability of horrific consequences, that's not weasel words that's just communication.
Weasel words are an attempt to mislead. "Some people say Trump eats babies." Is weasel words. I don't believe Trump eats babies, I don't want to take credit for making the claim that Trump eats babies, but I'm trying to leave you with the impression that Trump eats babies.
potential cost to exercising your principle in this way
And? There is potential for anything. There is a cost in blood for the rights we enjoy.
I let people off the hook for reasonably unforseen outcomes, not really obvious outcomes.
How does it feel to argue against principles? I feel pity for you.
What makes you think I'm not arguing on principle? My principle is that people should be aware of the consequences of their actions and take reasonable responsibility for them.
And? Trump > Clinton. Accountable in what way? Do I need to pay reparations to your feelings?
Accountability doesn't mean reparations, it means accepting that your actions have consequences, even if those are only moral consequences.
Does that mean you are accountable for Clinton when she uses her known poor judgement?
I don't think she has "known poor judgement" outside of some specific areas, but I'm perfectly willing to own the consequences of Clinton's presidency just as I owned the positive, and negative, consequences of Obama's.
Don't imagine I'm some hyper-partisan,
could have fooled me.
I believe that was your own doing. For all your complaints about being patronizing not everyone supports a mainstream candidate out of pure partisanship, some actually think they're the best option.
Sanders was unknown.
Too bad democrats rejected him. He was more appealing across the aisle as opposed to "doing what is necessary" for the good of The Party.
Sander's was fine but had his own issues, if I was an American I would have voted Clinton.
And there is nothing wrong with the status-quo. Right?
Absolutely not, there are huge problems. Some Clinton may make better, some she'll make worse. But that doesn't mean you should burn down the system instead.
Actually, you don't know what ideas and habits he will bring if elected. That is the whole point. He is a complete unknown with no political history.
Except every signal he gives off is either bad or ambiguous.
Even if all you carry out is corruption he's the guy who made his money though sweetheart deals with politicians and who brags about buying people with campaign contributions. He's had actual mob ties!
lol, you sound like a right-wing partisan hack I have had similar conversations about in previous elections. Congrats, I guess.
Only superficially. Their worries about Obama were based in fantasy, my Trump fears are well justified by his comments and behaviour.
What damage could he possibly do?
The same damage as the one who "should have known better" and was "extremely careless". But I got an Idea, lets promote someone who makes poor judgement decisions, lies about that judgement, and brushes off criticism of that judgement as a right-wing conspiracy. You are comparing shit with shit. Not a compelling position to be on.
Clinton messed up with her emails, big friggin deal.
Yes it was a screw up, it was a serious screw up, but she's not even in the same ballpark as concerns about Trump.
He's not hypocritical, Sanders has been very consistent that Hillary is vastly better than Trump and they share a lot of important policy objectives.
Similarly it's not dishonest.
I guess it depends on why someone would initially support Sanders in the first place doesn't it? If you disagree with a lot of Sanders positions then it doesn't matter what platform position Clinton adopts. I disagree with Sanders on many things including "vastly better than Trump". Shit is shit regardless of the nuttiness. Only one piece of shit has an unknown to it.
So then you don't think Sanders is "hypocritical, dishonest, or paid-off".
There are many different reasons for protest vote everyone can have a different one.
And if it's a bad one I can criticize it.
But whatever you think of Clinton (I actually think she's be great) Trump is VASTLY worse and could have horrific consequences if he got in.
It is pretty obvious you think she's great. I don't. I don't think Trump is "vastly worse". "could" is a weasel word. There can always be horrific consequences.
How is me not pretending to have a crystal ball a weasel word? What non-weasely word would you prefer?
You don't get the excuse of ignorance that your protest vote doesn't matter
WTF? I am the one arguing that a protest vote is not a "half-vote" for Trump, like you.
Outside of very specific circumstances in a national US election voting 3rd party is effectively a half-vote for each party.
I am not trying to undermine someones vote of principle with scare mongering defeatism. I am literally arguing for more opinions in the body politic by advocating for a 3rd party vote to try and break the duopoly we see with R/D. And you want to say I don't get an excuse of ignorance? You can keep your partisanship bullshit and I will keep my principled vote.
I'm saying there is a massive potential cost to exercising your principle in this way. And if Trump wins because of your decision I believe that makes you accountable.
What is necessary? For the good of The Party, right?
For the good of the planet. Don't imagine I'm some hyper-partisan, I'm a Canadian who has voted for 4 different parties in national elections. I though Romney would have been a decent President, though not as good as Obama, and the Republican legislators really freaked me out.
As far as the "Russian roulette", we have had bad presidents before and survived. We will have another bad president in the future and survive. Trump brings unknown. If that's what makes you afraid then fine but don't be patronizing or disingenuous just because you are a partisan apologist afraid of something different.
Sanders was unknown.
Trump is unknown only in the sense of how many of his terrible ideas and habits he'll bring to office.
How far will he go in his battle against media outlets he doesn't like? How successful will he be?
Will he do mass deportations of illegal Mexican immigrants and Muslims?
Will he carry out executions of terrorist's families?
How many of the conspiracy nuts will he drag with him into the White House?
The only possible "good" outcome I can see is that the political system will unite against him and basically have a reformation of some kind. But that's a bit like drinking sewer water to give yourself an awesome immune system.
Bush campaigned as a common sense regular-guy, ignoring experts and following his gut is exactly what lead to the Iraq war.
Even if we assume that following his gut is what lead to the Iraq War, following your gut is not the only way you can end up in a terrible war. JFK was a democrat who wasn't an idiot who never listened to experts, how did we end up in vietnam?
There were many good arguments for going into Vietnam, they were wrong in retrospect but it wasn't obvious.
The experts knew exactly what would happen in Iraq.
I actually think they are quite different. I think trump follows his gut because he knows he is right about a lot of things. He is right that a lot people are racist, a lot of people don't care about the truth, and that a lot of people hate polished politicians.
Trump is also outrageously wrong about a lot of things, it's just hard to hell whether he's deliberately lying or whether he's just wrong.
In this respect he is absolutely more right than the "experts" who said that he had no chance of winning the republican nomination .
People around Trump say he didn't expect to win either, he was supposedly banking on a respectable showing in a few primary and was caught off guard when he started winning.
Trump did not support the Iraq war. In an interview in 2002, when asked if he supported the war answered "I guess so". While it is not true that he predicted the war would be bad (as he claims), it is well documented that trump opposed the war as far back as 2004.
He didn't strongly support it and he turned relatively quickly but he did support it.
I think he is certainly likely to get into a war, but I don't think it is fair to associate him with that particular war. And this is for a man that routinely takes both sides of every issue and is basically a compulsive liar. There is so much to legitimately criticize him for, there is no need to invent things.
I'm happy to admit the nuance in his soft support and relatively early change, but I think it's valid to say he supported it.
I'm not saying it has to do with D vs R, I'm saying it has to do with seeing the scale of damage a bad president (Bush) did, and realizing the epic damage Trump could do.
Yes bad presidents can get us into bad wars. What I am saying is that even having a good president (much less a democrat president) is *far* from a guarantee of not getting into a bad war. And we don't even know if Gore would have been a good president. I don't think there is any good evidence for that. All I can confidently say about Gore is that he would have been a democrat president, which isn't saying much.
That's basically the same argument that saying that since wearing a seatbelt could potentially trap you in a burning car then wearing a seatbelt might be just as dangerous as not wearing one.
We can't run an alternate history but we've seen the consequences of an ignorant president when Bush walked into an easily avoidable catastrophe.
It's possible that Trump won't be bad, or even that Clinton could be worse, but that's a terribly poor gamble.
"Hard-to-read comments make hard-to-read code"
This isn't about hard to read comments, it's about comment format that someone doesn't like. I can read the "crap" comments as easily as I can read the good ones, I'm not brain-dead. It's more about a visual style preference.
And I've worked on large proprietary projects, and finding code with random inconsistent styles is ugly and a massive PITA, and it does take up time when you're trying to figure out unfamiliar code and you're spending extra brainpower picking out comments.
It's not even that one commenting style is fundamentally more readable (but I think Linus's suggestions are slightly more readable, and on a big project that matters). But having a consistent style throughout the project is very important.
And we wonder why people don't like the open source community? They resort to petty insults and swearing to make points, and I am supposed to devote my free time to supporting the projects? Give me a break. If I wanted to be subjected to name calling I would go back to High School or jump into an FPS.
Agreed, Linus's "management" style could certainly use a loss less swearing and insults.
No bugs left other than comment style disagreements? Rejoice, the year of Linux on the desktop can't be far!
For what it's worth, my single contribution to the Linux kernel fucked up some white space. Torvalds didn't notice or I guess I would have woken up in the burn ward.
Hard-to-read comments make hard-to-read code. On a large project with multiple developers that matters.
The same congress controlled by Republicans who so effectively united to prevent him from getting the nomination, and even once he did, never walked back their criticisms of him at all?
Congress that is made up of both Republicans and Democrats hate Trump. It won't be one party trying to stop people voting how they see fit. It will be the Legislative branch against the Executive branch. Literally nothing wrong with two branches of government in disagreement.
If Trump wins it will probably be a Republican legislative branch. And as I just pointed out Republicans haven't exactly demonstrated an ability to keep demagogues in check, they couldn't even stop Cruz from walking them into a Federal shutdown and almost default that no one except Cruz wanted.
Counting on Republicans to constrain Trump is like expecting a frat house to make an alcoholic go sober.
Maybe if Congress hates the president so much they would actually limit the power of the Executive. Imagine that. That won't happen with Clinton.
I'd put a lot more money on a Republican congress constraining a Clinton executive than a Trump executive.
Yes, I know how much power the president has and aside from a few things like foreign relations, federal bureaucracies, etc. he has to follow the law the legislative passes. Perhaps, it speaks more about the laws the executive enforces than it does who enforces them.
He just has control of a vast bureaucracy, law enforcement agencies, and the military. What damage could he possibly do?
Where did I say I wanted a Trump president? The closest I have said in a different post was: "If I want to throw a wrench in the political system with my vote, name a better wrench than Trump." Name a better wrench than Trump.
Sanders? Or since he didn't win maybe just hit yourself a few times with an actual wrench? It will be very unpleasant, but far less harmful than Trump.
He might have started some wars in the way that Obama did Libya, some bombing and maybe some special forces but nothing major.
Iraq was a determined project by Bush and the neo-conservatives that surrounded him. That does not happen with a Democratic president.
I think you have a very short sighted view of history. Republicans being the warmongers of the 2 major parties is a new development with the neoconservative movement. That hasn't always been the case, and could easily change with one warmonger democrat president or a pacifist republican president.
In fact, Bush actually campaigned on a platform of "no nation building". You can look back in retrospect and call bullshit on that platform, but what you can't do is know that Gore wouldn't make some horrible foreignn policy mistakes equivalent to the Iraq war after a 9/11 type attack.
Bush campaigned as a common sense regular-guy, ignoring experts and following his gut is exactly what lead to the Iraq war.
Trump is basically tripling down on the ignore-experts follow-your-instinct philosophy.
I don't know why we would associate Trump with the Iraq war. At least he actually claims (now) that it was a giant disaster. The only thing linking Trump to the Iraq war is that he's a republican. But Trump isn't really a republican. He could have just as easily been a democrat, if he decided that was better for his chances.
Trump supported Iraq, has been much more hawkish on Libya and Syria, and his foreign policy framework consists of using US power to push other countries around. Assuming he'd be more likely to get in a bad war is a very good bet.
I don't. I just don't see what any of this has to do with democrats vs. republicans. Trump is a disaster regardless of his party. Bush turned out to be a disaster. And we never really got the opportunity to know what a Gore presidency would have been like.
I'm not saying it has to do with D vs R, I'm saying it has to do with seeing the scale of damage a bad president (Bush) did, and realizing the epic damage Trump could do.
So do you think that Bernie is corrupt for endorsing Hillary then?
Definitely lost my support and respect. This endorsement makes Sanders come across as a hypocrite, liar, paid off, or all the above.
He's not hypocritical, Sanders has been very consistent that Hillary is vastly better than Trump and they share a lot of important policy objectives.
Similarly it's not dishonest.
And he wasn't paid off except to the extent that his endorsement was in return for embracing some more of his policies.
Or it is possible that you've massively misjudged the "criminality" of Hillary's actions and the reasons that she got so many endorsements and votes?
Yes, because we all know how sweet and innocent Clinton is. Everything is a right wing conspiracy against her. Obviously, "should have known better" and "extremely careless" is something I want to promote, amirite? What is "is" anyway?
The emails were a huge screwup, no question.
But you don't get perfect candidates.
Whom you know won't possibly win, so you're basically giving a half-vote to Trump.
Have you ever heard of a protest vote? Voting for Johnson, Stein, or Mickey Mouse is not giving "half-vote" to Trump you disingenuous busy-body. Your partisan apologetics are why 3rd parties are a joke in the US.
But you're right, I should just shut up the fuck up and vote the way you say because you know better! You are the reason why we end up with the two shittiest candidates in US history because god forbid people actually vote on principle instead of listening to know-it-all-busy-bodies like you.
Yes I know what a protest vote is, it's a claim that both candidates are more-or-less equally bad so you can't in good conscience pick either.
But whatever you think of Clinton (I actually think she's be great) Trump is VASTLY worse and could have horrific consequences if he got in.
I mean protest voting for Nader in Florida gave you Bush over Gore. And that led to the Iraq war and at least a quarter-million needless deaths. You don't get the excuse of ignorance that your protest vote doesn't matter. If Trump wins and you threw your vote away saying "It was a protest vote!" doesn't let you dodge responsibility.
You wanted to protest against Clinton so you voted for Sanders. That was your protest vote, not only did everyone hear but you actually changed both the party platform and Clinton's platform. That's a pretty damn effective protest.
But you didn't win everything you wanted, too bad, welcome to reality. Now it's time to do what's necessary and not play Russian roulette with a Trump presidency because Hillary offends your sensibilities.
you seem to have missed the term "illegal" and it isnt mexicans its all non americans. This is half the problem when people misrepresent the actual argument, its hard to have a civil disccusion about anything
For sure his policies are directed at illegal Mexicans, but it's hard to miss the us-vs them racial component, especially since Trump himself does so much to reinforce that narrative.
For instance no one forced him to attack a born-in-the-US judge on the basis of his Mexican ethnicity, in fact people begged him to stop, yet Trump still did that repeatedly.
Nor has he done much to repudiate avowed racists who back him, or even bothered to check that the people he re-tweets aren't obvious white supremacists.
At least Trump is hated by Congress so hopefully nothing would get done.
The same congress controlled by Republicans who so effectively united to prevent him from getting the nomination, and even once he did, never walked back their criticisms of him at all?
You are the dumb-ass that thinks a professional liar is good so long as you agree with the lie they speak. Why don't you drink more kool-aid? Your cup is empty.
And you're the dumb-ass who wants to hand the Presidency to Trump! Do you realize how much power the president has? He hasn't finished the campaign and he's already threatening to put Amazon under anti-trust investigation because he didn't like the Washington Post's coverage. He's literally threatening to set law enforcement after media organizations for negative coverage!!
Trump is of course utterly unacceptable, and the Democratic Party has shown itself to be controlled by an unaccountable politburo that fixed the nomination. I wont be a part of either of these criminals' rise to power.
So do you think that Bernie is corrupt for endorsing Hillary then?
Or it is possible that you've massively misjudged the "criminality" of Hillary's actions and the reasons that she got so many endorsements and votes?
Im moving on from Feeling the Bern to Feeling the Johnson.
Whom you know won't possibly win, so you're basically giving a half-vote to Trump.
Sure. Gore didn't start any wars from 2000-2008 when he wasn't president, therefore he wouldn't have started any if he was... Makes sense.
He might have started some wars in the way that Obama did Libya, some bombing and maybe some special forces but nothing major.
Iraq was a determined project by Bush and the neo-conservatives that surrounded him. That does not happen with a Democratic president.
Also, is it fair to say that 9/11 wouldn't have happened if he was president?
Very dubious, and even if 9/11 was a consequence of Bush's incompetence it's hard to reliably prevent one-off events.
I think it is very possible that had we elected Gore, some different terrible shit would have happened, and there'd be people saying, "who is the lesser of 2 evils now" (having no idea what would have happened under Bush).
I think this underestimates just how awful a thing the Iraq war was.
We're looking at at least 250k deaths.
Trillions of dollars.
A huge radicalizing factor for Arab Muslims.
The rise of ISIS, the refugee crisis in the EU.
Hell, even Brexit is ultimately a consequence of the Iraq war (though the refugee crisis).
And this wasn't even unexpected, the foreign services of both the US and Britain knew that the Iraq war would be pretty much as bad as it was, but the Bush administration was so deadset on going forward they didn't even plan for the event that the experts were right.
To all those who think a Trump Presidency isn't a big deal, just look at how badly Bush screwed the world up, and he was a more or less typical politician who was perceived as a not quite as smart but otherwise really nice regular guy.
Trump is in the midst of a presidential campaign and he can't be bothered to act like he's taking the job seriously or turn down the extremism. If the system couldn't keep Bush from being such an epic disaster then why do they think it can constrain Trump?
no, its those who keep thinking we are stopping him because of his color and not his horrible horrible policy is flat out racebaiting scumbaggary
It that the only source of opposition? Absolutely not.
But Trump, one of the most prominent birthers, just won the Republican Primary on a platform of keeping out Mexicans and Muslims.
To think that race didn't play a major part in a lot of anti-Obama sentiment is to be in massive denial of the current state of the political right.
Or, better yet, hold people responsible for their own actions..
People are always susceptible to doing dumb stuff, one responsibility of technology makers is to be aware that people sometimes do dumb things with their technology.
The Tesla autopilot is an example from early this week, it lulls you into tuning out on the road and letting the AI drive.
This is another facet, augmented reality mixes virtual games with real environments. Someone who deliberately hung toys next to a highway for drivers to grab as they went by would rightly be criticized for luring people into dangerous actions. If an app is unintentionally doing something similar it's valid to question it.
It doesn't mean we should ban the game or even force them to change something, but it's a valid issue to discuss.
You get the current academic system of research grants, where funded evidence is produced and the peer-review system is skewed by endowments for tenure, etc.
Good societies produce valid science.
Valid science can't produce good societies!
So I think real concern isn't that valid science can't guide a valid society. I think the problem is that you only get valid science when people want a valid outcome but don't really care what the particular outcome is.
For instance no one really cared if there was a Higgs Boson, they just wanted to know for the sake of understanding the universe.
But the outcomes of AGW research put one of the biggest industries on the planet at risk and could change the power balance of regions of countries.
So there's a lot of people with a huge interest in influencing the outcome of AGW research.
A government isn't going to want its major policy accomplishment be undercut by some random researcher releasing a paper, particularly if that researcher is a political opponent fudging the numbers so they can win the news cycle for their party.
If major political and business interests need science to endorse a particular policy they're going to find a way to create science to endorse that policy.
Bats are one of the more common vectors for rabies transmission. Would that be a concern for this species as well?
Allow me two literary examples, that will surely illustrate the quandry better than can I, myself.
First, I propose Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Anybody embarking on a discussion of technophillic, purely-rational society without having read this book, speaks from a deficit. That supposedly well-educated men like De Grasse Tyson make shallow, straw-man proposals are a strong argument that Huxley's literary presentation is as valid today, as it was in 1931.
Wikipaedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
The full text of the novel: Brave New World
A second point is made metaphorically, by Gothe, in his "Sorcerer's Apprentice". It is a poem, and suffers in English. For the purpose of our argumentation, it is sufficient to be familiar with the presentation of this material in Disney's "Fantasia" - provided that an audience is equipped with an ability to understand allusions, and to make practical intuitions.
In the end, I suppose Dr. De Grasse Tyson - a delightful fellow - is adept at understanding and representing the powerful creative and intellectual efforts of others, while exhibiting little individual insight or power for deep thought.
It's been a while since I read BNW but the point of a speculative novel is to investigate a potential outcome of a scenario, not the only outcome.
BNW shows that it's possible for a "rationally" run society to still be run badly. Big friggin' surprise. It's possible to do anything badly!
Tyson's proposal was fairly simple, policy should be backed up by evidence. The idea is to discourage stupid policies where you say "we want to reduce pregnancy so we're going to teach abstinence only", or "we want to protect the environment and combat climate change by shutting down Nuclear plants".
Presumably those policies could still happen, but there would be an expectation that you're proposing law X so we can do Y you have to show your work that X will really achieve Y without other negative consequences.
You only end up doing something stupid and inhumane like eugenics if you combine scientific policy making with a complete disregard for human rights, and in case you missed in Eugenics were hardly the only inhumane set of policies from the early 20th century.
Why can't we call these things what they are?
"Podcasts" are audio files of people talking about shit they don't know much about and that you only listen to because you're bored out of your mind.
On the contrary Podcasts are probably the outstanding example of user-generated content (or at least non big-corporation content).
Video is extremely difficult to make look professional, but making a podcast with professional or at least decent sound quality is doable and far cheaper. Distribution is also a big advantage since you don't need to adhere to specific formats like a television or even radio program does such as being X minutes long or having planned commercial breaks.
And instead of "people talking about shit they don't know much about" you get knowledgeable experts who for once don't have to worry about meddling from corporate overlords who are ignorant or have different objectives (like promoting a corporate agenda).
Absolutely shocked.
In other revelations, professional wresting is fake, something weird is going on with Donald Trump's hair, and people will uncritically accept ridiculous information if it reinforces their priors!
If his big hack of Hilary was a lie, why is he in jail? Shouldn't you let him go home? No crime, no felony, no jail. At least that is how it is supposed to work.
Because he was never in jail for hacking into Clinton's server. The claimed Clinton hack was just him attention-whoring.
And how do you propose we FIX that issue? I can think of three ways... (Assuming we really intend to do law enforcement and don't want to just fire all the cops out there..)
1. Roast all the cops, condemn them all because some segments of the population seem to be shot at by cops more often and send them to hours of diversity and sensitivity training -- Not going to help at all.
Actually not a bad idea. While there are only a few "bad apples" the police culture is to accommodate and protect those bad apples.
The problem isn't police protecting themselves, in the majority of these incidents there's virtually no hint of danger for the officers, it comes from police officers being able to use force, including deadly force, with basically no consequence.
Police culture needs to change.
2. Mount protests and fire up segments of the population and do all you can to stir up civil unrest over something, stage riots even. (Remember Ferguson MO?) - Again Absolutely NOT helpful at all. This just foments bad attitudes towards police officers, destroys the property of the innocent and causes more folks to get shot. Why? Because you end up having MORE confrontations with bigger attitudes. More folks start to not trust the police and stupidly act out their distrust and disrespect. This results in more violent confrontations and shootings.
Not protesting wasn't particularly helpful either. There's a short term increase in tension but the goal is to create enough of a political issue that significant changes are made.
3. Use these incidents as a way to educate the public about how to handle interactions with police and how to effectively air their grievances about how they are policed without upping their chances of having a negative outcome. THIS is the only EFFECTIVE solution here if you think about it.
I'm gonna guess you're white (as am I) because that's an almost completely useless solution.
Asking a black if they know how to act around police is like asking a white person if they know the lyrics to Y.M.C.A.
They know they're regularly confronted by police and if they don't act properly they can end up dead.
There's two big problems with the "educate the public" solution.
1) You're putting the responsibility on members of the public who have only occasional interactions and can easily screw up. Supposedly this guy was following your rules fairly well. We don't know the exact scenario but seemingly the only mistake he may have made is telling the officer he was reaching for his wallet rather than waiting for the officer to ask him to get his wallet. That's a pretty easy mistake to make if you're trying to be cooperative.
2) Sometimes members of the public are actually agitated or otherwise not cooperative around police! This killing was actually an outlier, most of these unnecessary killings have involved men who had done something wrong and were confrontational or disobedient but not an actual threat. Educating people about those rules is completely useless for those people.
3) If you want to be effective then it's far better off to train the much smaller number of police who are the common element in all these interactions. Give them sensitivity training, teach them to de-escalate and not overreact, and when you find the ones who have a history of being unusually confrontational with the public (very common in these cases), fire them if you can't fix their behaviour.
Put yourself in the Cop's shoes and THINK about what they are concerned about, preferably in advance, and don't do anything stupid and you are very unlikely to get shot.
It's good advice but misses the point.
As a white person I can violate one or more of those rules and I'm still very unlikely to get shot.
As a black or hispanic person I need to follow those rules to the letter or, like Philando Castile, my odds of getting shot will sky-rocket.
It is Their Site. So they make Their rules.
Based on their business model.
So what? Because they're a business acting in their self-interest that makes it proper and ethical and we're not supposed to discuss or criticize them?
In a free market system consumers are supposed to discuss and judge products and the companies that make them, that's not a bug, that's one of the basic mechanisms that makes free markets work.