You will find that even the most hardcore anti-science religious nutjob is driving a car, flying around in planes, using a computer, enjoying modern healthcare and thousands of other things that came out of science, not out of the holy books.
Have you met the Amish?;-)
(And yes, I know that's not the kind of hardcore anti-science religious nutjobs you meant, but they do fit that description—to the point of not teaching their children about science or history—and there are significant populations of them around where I live; I see horse-drawn buggies go past my house more than once a month.)
People like this, for whom tradition and emotion are more important than fact, will not "get used to being wrong"—because they're not wrong. Ever. There's some other explanation for why the things they believed would happen did not. Many of them (who are of the die-hard conservative stripe) simply revert to the old standard "liberal conspiracy" theories.
This wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if there weren't now a large media faction dedicated to telling people that these theories are true.
I'm not going to go into long rants about why Keynesian economics works and Reaganomics doesn't, or about what the functions and dangers of the national debt actually are. I doubt I'd convince you on those points anyway.
What I will say is this:
Signing the Grover Norquist pledge means that you will never, ever vote for a measure that increases the revenue the government takes in. This means that, as time goes on and takes this to its logical conclusion, the revenue the government takes in will go to 0. This will also mean that the government's ability to do anything will go to 0.
That means no police. No army. No judiciary. All gone, because the people who make it up need to be paid for their work, and without any taxes, government and everything it does will cease to exist. It leads to honest-to-goodness anarchy, and, in effect, the dissolution of our nation.
This sounds like a "slippery slope" argument, but it's not. There's no "until X happens" in the Grover Norquist pledge. It's just "never raise taxes." Will it stop before it reaches that point in practice? I think it probably would, because I don't think even the American electorate is that stupid. But that's not what any of them are saying. All they're saying is "taxes bad. Less taxes good."
And how many people do you know who wouldn't just keep nodding their heads if that were continued one step further, to saying, "No taxes for everyone is even better!"
To expand somewhat, particularly if you haven't heard of him (I don't know how closely you follow the bizarre inanities of US politics), Grover Norquist is a conservative lobbyist and activist who has, through means I haven't particularly explored, managed to convince enough of America that taxes are, in and of themselves, bad, that it's nearly impossible for a Republican to get elected without signing his pledge. This pledge effectively states that those signing it will never ever raise taxes, and seems to be getting interpreted lately as meaning they will never do anything that increases the share of revenue the government collects.
This idea, that taxes are the source of all our government's financial problems, has now been sold to a huge proportion of America, whose grasp of math apparently extends to, "Taxes are money that I pay out of my pocket. I like having more money in my pocket. These people are telling me that not only will I be happier if I'm paying less taxes, we'll all be better off if we pay less taxes and the government gets shrunk!"
Unfortunately, particularly in times of crisis, people want simple answers to their problems. The answer, "Well, if everyone making more than some very low yearly income pays a little more, and we make the very rich pay a lot more, we can do a lot better for everyone because of this, that, and the other," just doesn't have the same appeal as, "We can fix everything in America by letting you keep more of your money!"
This, of course, becomes even more true when you look at the effect the very rich can have on the landscape, because they are able to essentially buy public opinion for their ideas (not even getting into their ability to actually buy legislation for their ideas). Furthermore, America has a special vulnerability to their blandishments due to our historical culture of "rugged individualism" and whatnot: there's still a strong streak in American culture that believes that not only does everyone have a right to the fruits of their own labours, but everyone in America has a real chance to somehow become very rich themselves (see some politician this past election cycle boldlyand utterly falsely proclaiming that "we are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves"). And people who believe that they will, someday Real Soon Now, be rich themselves, do not want to see there being serious restrictions on the rich or attempts to steal away their hard-earned money, because "That's gonna be me someday, and I wanna keep all my money for myself!"
tl;dr version: People are stupid, especially about money and what it means for a society.
You mean Apple isn't the only company that uses Foxconn for manufacturing?
You mean there are other companies involved with this Chinese behemoth that is so obviously the very worst exploiter of workers in the whole wide world?
But...but...but...how will I get my hate on now that I have actual knowledge like this?
Wealthy people already get a good education for their kids. They move to wealthy neighborhoods. All the senior teachers want to teach at their schools. Poor kids in poor neighborhoods get stuck with whoever is left. This is the current system.
And what you're proposing is to simply widen the gap, so that the poor children get practically no education, and the wealthy children get an even better one.
I think that's a dumb plan that's the opposite of fixing anything.
An obvious compromise for FUDsters like yourself would be this: Keep the old system around for everyone who likes one-size-fits-all government, and allow the rest of us to take, say, 80% of the per-child expense and pay for schools and teachers that we think will do a better job. Poor folks too.
But that doesn't "keep the old system around," and it certainly doesn't do anything to fix the problems with it. What it does is give everyone with the money to pay for the rest of what a private-school education costs large chunks of money that would otherwise have gone to maintaining and improving the public schools. (Because if you think that you can realistically buy a measurably better education at a private school in the vast majority of the country for what public schools spend per student, you're kidding yourself. Especially if we're talking about public schools in poor districts.) A significant percentage of those able to comfortably afford the difference between the voucher and the actual price of a private school could have afforded it without the voucher, so all they gain is a little extra dough from the government.
And what happens to those at or below the median income level? Well, the quality of education their kids get goes down. Yes, there are fewer kids in the classroom now, so the student:teacher ratio drops—at first. But then you realize that not only do the schools still have the same size buildings for so many fewer students—and so much less money to keep them maintained—but the number of teachers is also more than can be maintained on the smaller budget. So the class sizes go up again. Probably higher than they were before, since the overhead hasn't gone down any.
Anyone who thinks that flinging wide the gates of school choice and encouraging everyone in America to pick The Best Option For Their Kid is actually going to provide a good education for everyone—or even a better education for anyone but the wealthy—is deluded, and either buying the propaganda of the far right or choosing not to see the true costs because they need to believe that pulling money out of public schools to give to private schools is the best thing for everyone.
And if you have public schools, then having a system for them is a good thing, because otherwise those who can do the least about it will once again draw the short sticks.
There's that argument again: We have to maintain this inefficient, extremely expensive, oppressive system that keeps poor kids from getting a reasonable education because... otherwise poor kids won't get an education.
So do you, in fact, believe that it is a good idea to just abandon those who are currently unable to afford a top-flight education to be a permanent poor caste? Never able to gain access to any education, eking out only the most miserable living not because of anything they have done or not done, but because of the socioeconomic stratum they were born into?
That's not because the concept of a school system is bad. That's because our current implementation is flawed. We need a more even distribution of funds to schools, rather than having each school being funded primarily by the district it's in.
BC does this - schools get the same amount of money per kid. And "poor schools", which is a misnomer, because the schools are now the same as anywhere else, get more aid time. The students still do substantially worse than in better neighborhoods.
Poor students do badly because they have poor parents. They get worse nutrition due to bad dietary choices. They do not have enforced bed times. Their parents don't value education. Many of them don't value the hard work that is necessary for success. A good percentage of the kids are born with medical problems due to their mother's drug usage, that cause lifelong behaviour and learning problems.
Obviously none of these are 100% true, but they are enough true that on average the students of poor families just do a lot worse academically than the students of wealthier families, regardless of the school or how much money is spent on them.
And how long has BC been doing this?
Like I said, it's a generational problem. You can't solve it with any one simple change in a short period of time—which doesn't mean that we should give up on the long-term solutions.
The purpose of a system is the to make results less the result of chance and fortunate circumstances and more predictable.
It doesn't work for kids in poor neighborhoods. It's a failure, and an extremely expensive one. But people who defend the school "system" generally don't care about kids in poor neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, homeschoolers don't, in general, have the problems you claim to be worried about. Home schooled kids get a better education than government schooled kids. It doesn't take an institutional setting to have learning standards -- anyone can do it.
Stop spreading FUD.
That's not because the concept of a school system is bad. That's because our current implementation is flawed. We need a more even distribution of funds to schools, rather than having each school being funded primarily by the district it's in.
Of course, making that change and then expecting to have instant results is also stupid, because a lot of the difference in poor neighbourhoods is the attitude at home, which was developed partly through not having a properly-funded school when the parents were students. It will take a few generations of ensuring that all our schools are well-funded and well-supplied (both with supplies and good teachers) for it to be a true equalizer.
Perhaps the most well-known example of methane making its way from frack wells into homes was in heavily fracked Dimock, Pa. It was in this small Pennsylvania town that residents reported exploding water wells and tap water that was famously lit on fire in the Academy Award-nominated documentary, "Gasland."
The study itself (http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/methane-contamination-of-drinking-water-accompanying-gas-well-drilling) seems to have done their home-work, testing the isotopic ratios, but the example from Gasland is certainly didn't. Even when they have a good point, the critics of frakking insists on damaging their own case by mentioning the embarrassment that is Gasland. Why? Do they hate convincing people?
I think the trouble is that there are two types of people they need to convince: First, there's the type like you, who will look at real data and understand it. That's the type who will just roll their eyes when Gasland is mentioned.
Then there's the type whose eyes would glaze over if you tried to give them scientific data. They would watch Gasland and be scared spitless, and come away wanting to ban fracking forever. (Either that, or dismiss it all as commie propaganda.)
How do you know this? - If he didn't get caught he wasn't convicted and then it basically didn't happen.
Oh! OK, then.
How about I come over to your house, steal absolutely everything of value in it, and clean out your bank account, and leave you a note so you know I did it—but I never get arrested because I've got plenty of money to bribe the cops and the DAs? You'll still think I'm a great guy, right? Because if I don't get convicted, "then it basically didn't happen."
Seriously, though, that's some of the dumbest logic I've seen in a good long while.
It's perfectly possible to know someone has committed crimes, even though he's not legally guilty of them. And saying that it "basically didn't happen..." Well (assuming you're from the US and at least 20-odd years old), do you think Nicole Brown Simpson came back to life when OJ was acquitted of her murder?
The philosophy of communism inevitably leads to the model actually employed by the states.
On a large scale, empirical evidence suggests you're right, though does not prove it.
On a small scale, I believe that communism can work well—but we're talking no more than a couple hundred people, self-selected. So...not really a terribly viable model for world governance. ^_~
Gambling is when not only you don't want to own the stuff, you don't even care what the stuff is at all, for all you care, it could be mining rights on Jupiter.
I'm not sure I see a distinction.
From where I sit, in both cases, the point isn't the stuff, it's what the stuff is worth that's important. Why would someone trading in pork belly futures to make money care if it was, in fact, pork belly futures, and not mining rights on Jupiter, as long as he understood the market for it and how to tell when to buy and sell?
Yeah, because just what the world needs is a ton of old people supported by only a few young people?
Well, I can't say that now would necessarily be the best time to make such a shift, but...think about what you're saying.
By the logic put forward in that post, we should be always seeking to grow the human population on Earth. The end result of this should be obvious to anyone who can understand simple math.
The only way to avoid having a problem like this in the future is to make sure that the population stays (within certain bounds) stable—neither growing more than X% nor shrinking more than X% away from a particular sustainable median.
As they say there are two places to see a real genuine communist these days: 1. A theme park in Poland, 2. A western university humanities department.
I thought the Republican convention was on the list. Communism is where the leaders own everything (well, theoretically, the people do, but the people, in practice, have no say). Republicanism is where the business owners own the government, thus the leaders to own everything.
You are making the common mistake of equating the philosophy of communism with the actual model employed by the states that have called themselves communist.
Here's a tip: It's not the same thing. What the Republicans espouse is actually much closer (as I understand it) to fascism, in which the state and the corporations more or less merge.
Of course, that's a loaded term, too, and when you say it, you're not likely to have people understand what you actually mean; they'll just think you're calling the Republicans Nazis.
When it ceases to be trading and becomes gambling instead.
Basically, if you are looking at numbers and not meaning, you aren't trading anymore. Here's a suggestion for a totally impractical test: If you call up the trader in question and ask him what the company behind the shares does (i.e. which business it is in) and he has no clue, then he's not a trader, he's a gambler.
It seems to me that there's always been a significant element of gambling in the stock market. In excess it's a problem, but it doesn't have to be.
No, the problem is when it ceases to even be gambling, and becomes a sure thing. That's when you know that something's gone wrong. As I understand it, the whole point of HFT is to avoid the problem of actually taking any risk in the stock market, and making sure that the people running them can just make sure money at a certain rate.
That's waaaaay more of a problem than the gamblers in the stock market.
Most "pensions" these days are actually something along the lines of a 401(k) plan. How would you suggest that he not put his pension in the stock market? Do you think he actually has a choice in the matter?
I would love to play, for instance, StarCraft 2 against people of my own social circle. Unfortunately, none of them are in the least interested in playing.
Maybe they tried the game and didn't see much of a point in buying it over SC1? I'm going to note that I'm going off of my own personal experience here, except that I made the mistake of buying it before realizing that I like SC1 better.
Sorry, I wasn't clear: I don't really have any gaming friends.
I would suggest you would first at least have to have a testable theory as to how they would work and perhaps show some evidence in a petri dish. As far as I can tell they have done neither.
If I thought that drug companies did as much, I might agree with you.
Yes, real drugs.
They do not test one placebo vs another. That means 0 patients get actual medicine which is why it would fail any ethical review.
Isn't that begging the question? I mean, I know that there have, in fact, been studies that showed that homeopathy was ineffective, but assuming that the point is that double-blind studies are the standard of evidence required for determining medical efficacy...don't you have to do the double-blind study before you can definitively say that homeopathics are no more medically effective than a placebo?
You might as well say that running a double-blind test to see what effect aspirin has on heart attacks is a placebo against another placebo, because everyone knows aspirin is headache medicine!...Until you actually do the tests, and find out that aspirin has a measurable effect against heart attacks.
Not saying that such tests would find that homeopathics are effective, just that until you have done the tests, based on the assumption that double-blind studies are the standard of evidence required for determining medical efficacy, you can't rule it out.
There is abslolutely no reward or interest in fighting against/being beaten by anonymous opponents which have otherwise no personal connection to the player. I love quake, command and conquer, etcetera, but only in the same way as I love chess, and I would never even contemplate playing chess against someone I had never met in person, because that would be boring; a soulless challenge, so pointless that I may as well play against a computer.
I would love to play, for instance, StarCraft 2 against people of my own social circle. Unfortunately, none of them are in the least interested in playing. (I used to regularly play WarCraft 2 with a group of my high school friends, but they have since all gone off who knows where, and we didn't really keep in touch at all.)
Thus, I play on the ladder, against people I don't know, and try my best to improve my skill that way.
Slashdot Mirror
You will find that even the most hardcore anti-science religious nutjob is driving a car, flying around in planes, using a computer, enjoying modern healthcare and thousands of other things that came out of science, not out of the holy books.
Have you met the Amish? ;-)
(And yes, I know that's not the kind of hardcore anti-science religious nutjobs you meant, but they do fit that description—to the point of not teaching their children about science or history—and there are significant populations of them around where I live; I see horse-drawn buggies go past my house more than once a month.)
Dan Aris
Then they should get used to being wrong.
This is seriously missing the point.
People like this, for whom tradition and emotion are more important than fact, will not "get used to being wrong"—because they're not wrong. Ever. There's some other explanation for why the things they believed would happen did not. Many of them (who are of the die-hard conservative stripe) simply revert to the old standard "liberal conspiracy" theories.
This wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if there weren't now a large media faction dedicated to telling people that these theories are true.
Dan Aris
I'm not going to go into long rants about why Keynesian economics works and Reaganomics doesn't, or about what the functions and dangers of the national debt actually are. I doubt I'd convince you on those points anyway.
What I will say is this:
Signing the Grover Norquist pledge means that you will never, ever vote for a measure that increases the revenue the government takes in. This means that, as time goes on and takes this to its logical conclusion, the revenue the government takes in will go to 0. This will also mean that the government's ability to do anything will go to 0.
That means no police. No army. No judiciary. All gone, because the people who make it up need to be paid for their work, and without any taxes, government and everything it does will cease to exist. It leads to honest-to-goodness anarchy, and, in effect, the dissolution of our nation.
This sounds like a "slippery slope" argument, but it's not. There's no "until X happens" in the Grover Norquist pledge. It's just "never raise taxes." Will it stop before it reaches that point in practice? I think it probably would, because I don't think even the American electorate is that stupid. But that's not what any of them are saying. All they're saying is "taxes bad. Less taxes good."
And how many people do you know who wouldn't just keep nodding their heads if that were continued one step further, to saying, "No taxes for everyone is even better!"
Dan Aris
Grover Norquist.
To expand somewhat, particularly if you haven't heard of him (I don't know how closely you follow the bizarre inanities of US politics), Grover Norquist is a conservative lobbyist and activist who has, through means I haven't particularly explored, managed to convince enough of America that taxes are, in and of themselves, bad, that it's nearly impossible for a Republican to get elected without signing his pledge. This pledge effectively states that those signing it will never ever raise taxes, and seems to be getting interpreted lately as meaning they will never do anything that increases the share of revenue the government collects.
This idea, that taxes are the source of all our government's financial problems, has now been sold to a huge proportion of America, whose grasp of math apparently extends to, "Taxes are money that I pay out of my pocket. I like having more money in my pocket. These people are telling me that not only will I be happier if I'm paying less taxes, we'll all be better off if we pay less taxes and the government gets shrunk!"
Unfortunately, particularly in times of crisis, people want simple answers to their problems. The answer, "Well, if everyone making more than some very low yearly income pays a little more, and we make the very rich pay a lot more, we can do a lot better for everyone because of this, that, and the other," just doesn't have the same appeal as, "We can fix everything in America by letting you keep more of your money!"
This, of course, becomes even more true when you look at the effect the very rich can have on the landscape, because they are able to essentially buy public opinion for their ideas (not even getting into their ability to actually buy legislation for their ideas). Furthermore, America has a special vulnerability to their blandishments due to our historical culture of "rugged individualism" and whatnot: there's still a strong streak in American culture that believes that not only does everyone have a right to the fruits of their own labours, but everyone in America has a real chance to somehow become very rich themselves (see some politician this past election cycle boldlyand utterly falsely proclaiming that "we are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves"). And people who believe that they will, someday Real Soon Now, be rich themselves, do not want to see there being serious restrictions on the rich or attempts to steal away their hard-earned money, because "That's gonna be me someday, and I wanna keep all my money for myself!"
tl;dr version: People are stupid, especially about money and what it means for a society.
Dan Aris
Wait, wait, wait...
You mean Apple isn't the only company that uses Foxconn for manufacturing?
You mean there are other companies involved with this Chinese behemoth that is so obviously the very worst exploiter of workers in the whole wide world?
But...but...but...how will I get my hate on now that I have actual knowledge like this?
Dan Aris
Wealthy people already get a good education for their kids. They move to wealthy neighborhoods. All the senior teachers want to teach at their schools. Poor kids in poor neighborhoods get stuck with whoever is left. This is the current system.
And what you're proposing is to simply widen the gap, so that the poor children get practically no education, and the wealthy children get an even better one.
I think that's a dumb plan that's the opposite of fixing anything.
Dan Aris
An obvious compromise for FUDsters like yourself would be this: Keep the old system around for everyone who likes one-size-fits-all government, and allow the rest of us to take, say, 80% of the per-child expense and pay for schools and teachers that we think will do a better job. Poor folks too.
But that doesn't "keep the old system around," and it certainly doesn't do anything to fix the problems with it. What it does is give everyone with the money to pay for the rest of what a private-school education costs large chunks of money that would otherwise have gone to maintaining and improving the public schools. (Because if you think that you can realistically buy a measurably better education at a private school in the vast majority of the country for what public schools spend per student, you're kidding yourself. Especially if we're talking about public schools in poor districts.) A significant percentage of those able to comfortably afford the difference between the voucher and the actual price of a private school could have afforded it without the voucher, so all they gain is a little extra dough from the government.
And what happens to those at or below the median income level? Well, the quality of education their kids get goes down. Yes, there are fewer kids in the classroom now, so the student:teacher ratio drops—at first. But then you realize that not only do the schools still have the same size buildings for so many fewer students—and so much less money to keep them maintained—but the number of teachers is also more than can be maintained on the smaller budget. So the class sizes go up again. Probably higher than they were before, since the overhead hasn't gone down any.
Anyone who thinks that flinging wide the gates of school choice and encouraging everyone in America to pick The Best Option For Their Kid is actually going to provide a good education for everyone—or even a better education for anyone but the wealthy—is deluded, and either buying the propaganda of the far right or choosing not to see the true costs because they need to believe that pulling money out of public schools to give to private schools is the best thing for everyone.
Dan Aris
And if you have public schools, then having a system for them is a good thing, because otherwise those who can do the least about it will once again draw the short sticks.
There's that argument again: We have to maintain this inefficient, extremely expensive, oppressive system that keeps poor kids from getting a reasonable education because ... otherwise poor kids won't get an education.
So do you, in fact, believe that it is a good idea to just abandon those who are currently unable to afford a top-flight education to be a permanent poor caste? Never able to gain access to any education, eking out only the most miserable living not because of anything they have done or not done, but because of the socioeconomic stratum they were born into?
Dan Aris
That's not because the concept of a school system is bad. That's because our current implementation is flawed. We need a more even distribution of funds to schools, rather than having each school being funded primarily by the district it's in.
BC does this - schools get the same amount of money per kid. And "poor schools", which is a misnomer, because the schools are now the same as anywhere else, get more aid time. The students still do substantially worse than in better neighborhoods.
Poor students do badly because they have poor parents. They get worse nutrition due to bad dietary choices. They do not have enforced bed times. Their parents don't value education. Many of them don't value the hard work that is necessary for success. A good percentage of the kids are born with medical problems due to their mother's drug usage, that cause lifelong behaviour and learning problems.
Obviously none of these are 100% true, but they are enough true that on average the students of poor families just do a lot worse academically than the students of wealthier families, regardless of the school or how much money is spent on them.
And how long has BC been doing this?
Like I said, it's a generational problem. You can't solve it with any one simple change in a short period of time—which doesn't mean that we should give up on the long-term solutions.
Dan Aris
The purpose of a system is the to make results less the result of chance and fortunate circumstances and more predictable.
It doesn't work for kids in poor neighborhoods. It's a failure, and an extremely expensive one. But people who defend the school "system" generally don't care about kids in poor neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, homeschoolers don't, in general, have the problems you claim to be worried about. Home schooled kids get a better education than government schooled kids. It doesn't take an institutional setting to have learning standards -- anyone can do it.
Stop spreading FUD.
That's not because the concept of a school system is bad. That's because our current implementation is flawed. We need a more even distribution of funds to schools, rather than having each school being funded primarily by the district it's in.
Of course, making that change and then expecting to have instant results is also stupid, because a lot of the difference in poor neighbourhoods is the attitude at home, which was developed partly through not having a properly-funded school when the parents were students. It will take a few generations of ensuring that all our schools are well-funded and well-supplied (both with supplies and good teachers) for it to be a true equalizer.
Dan Aris
From your link
Perhaps the most well-known example of methane making its way from frack wells into homes was in heavily fracked Dimock, Pa. It was in this small Pennsylvania town that residents reported exploding water wells and tap water that was famously lit on fire in the Academy Award-nominated documentary, "Gasland."
The study itself (http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/methane-contamination-of-drinking-water-accompanying-gas-well-drilling) seems to have done their home-work, testing the isotopic ratios, but the example from Gasland is certainly didn't. Even when they have a good point, the critics of frakking insists on damaging their own case by mentioning the embarrassment that is Gasland. Why? Do they hate convincing people?
I think the trouble is that there are two types of people they need to convince: First, there's the type like you, who will look at real data and understand it. That's the type who will just roll their eyes when Gasland is mentioned.
Then there's the type whose eyes would glaze over if you tried to give them scientific data. They would watch Gasland and be scared spitless, and come away wanting to ban fracking forever. (Either that, or dismiss it all as commie propaganda.)
Dan Aris
How do you know this? - If he didn't get caught he wasn't convicted and then it basically didn't happen.
Oh! OK, then.
How about I come over to your house, steal absolutely everything of value in it, and clean out your bank account, and leave you a note so you know I did it—but I never get arrested because I've got plenty of money to bribe the cops and the DAs? You'll still think I'm a great guy, right? Because if I don't get convicted, "then it basically didn't happen."
Seriously, though, that's some of the dumbest logic I've seen in a good long while.
It's perfectly possible to know someone has committed crimes, even though he's not legally guilty of them. And saying that it "basically didn't happen..." Well (assuming you're from the US and at least 20-odd years old), do you think Nicole Brown Simpson came back to life when OJ was acquitted of her murder?
Dan Aris
Any morale that includes sentences ending in "...shall be put to death" is certainly inferior to one that has a more civilized punishment.
Does that include those relating to spammers, and the putting to death thereof?
[/snark]
Dan Aris
Yeah, I'm also kind of "meh".
I own an iPhone 4. I was fully intending to get an iPhone 5 (skipping the 4s, as I almost always skip a generation).
I'm not so sure anymore. Siri is about the only thing that my 4 doesn't have that I feel like it might be useful, but I can live without it.
So what were you expecting or hoping for that would have been incentive enough to upgrade?
Dan Aris
The philosophy of communism inevitably leads to the model actually employed by the states.
On a large scale, empirical evidence suggests you're right, though does not prove it.
On a small scale, I believe that communism can work well—but we're talking no more than a couple hundred people, self-selected. So...not really a terribly viable model for world governance. ^_~
Dan Aris
Gambling is when not only you don't want to own the stuff, you don't even care what the stuff is at all, for all you care, it could be mining rights on Jupiter.
I'm not sure I see a distinction.
From where I sit, in both cases, the point isn't the stuff, it's what the stuff is worth that's important. Why would someone trading in pork belly futures to make money care if it was, in fact, pork belly futures, and not mining rights on Jupiter, as long as he understood the market for it and how to tell when to buy and sell?
Dan Aris
"Have you every tried fighting a war while starving? "
FWIW, I've noticed my performance at paintball increases dramatically when on an empty stomach.
Fine. Now fast for three full days and nights before playing paintball and see if that increases your performance.
"An empty stomach" for a lower-middle-class or above person in the West is a very, very long way from "starving."
Dan Aris
Yeah, because just what the world needs is a ton of old people supported by only a few young people?
Well, I can't say that now would necessarily be the best time to make such a shift, but...think about what you're saying.
By the logic put forward in that post, we should be always seeking to grow the human population on Earth. The end result of this should be obvious to anyone who can understand simple math.
The only way to avoid having a problem like this in the future is to make sure that the population stays (within certain bounds) stable—neither growing more than X% nor shrinking more than X% away from a particular sustainable median.
Dan Aris
As they say there are two places to see a real genuine communist these days: 1. A theme park in Poland, 2. A western university humanities department.
I thought the Republican convention was on the list. Communism is where the leaders own everything (well, theoretically, the people do, but the people, in practice, have no say). Republicanism is where the business owners own the government, thus the leaders to own everything.
You are making the common mistake of equating the philosophy of communism with the actual model employed by the states that have called themselves communist.
Here's a tip: It's not the same thing. What the Republicans espouse is actually much closer (as I understand it) to fascism, in which the state and the corporations more or less merge.
Of course, that's a loaded term, too, and when you say it, you're not likely to have people understand what you actually mean; they'll just think you're calling the Republicans Nazis.
Dan Aris
Key question: when is fast trading too fast?
When it ceases to be trading and becomes gambling instead.
Basically, if you are looking at numbers and not meaning, you aren't trading anymore. Here's a suggestion for a totally impractical test: If you call up the trader in question and ask him what the company behind the shares does (i.e. which business it is in) and he has no clue, then he's not a trader, he's a gambler.
It seems to me that there's always been a significant element of gambling in the stock market. In excess it's a problem, but it doesn't have to be.
No, the problem is when it ceases to even be gambling, and becomes a sure thing. That's when you know that something's gone wrong. As I understand it, the whole point of HFT is to avoid the problem of actually taking any risk in the stock market, and making sure that the people running them can just make sure money at a certain rate.
That's waaaaay more of a problem than the gamblers in the stock market.
Dan Aris
Then don't put it all in the stock market.
Most "pensions" these days are actually something along the lines of a 401(k) plan. How would you suggest that he not put his pension in the stock market? Do you think he actually has a choice in the matter?
Dan Aris
I would love to play, for instance, StarCraft 2 against people of my own social circle. Unfortunately, none of them are in the least interested in playing.
Maybe they tried the game and didn't see much of a point in buying it over SC1? I'm going to note that I'm going off of my own personal experience here, except that I made the mistake of buying it before realizing that I like SC1 better.
Sorry, I wasn't clear: I don't really have any gaming friends.
Dan Aris
I would suggest you would first at least have to have a testable theory as to how they would work and perhaps show some evidence in a petri dish. As far as I can tell they have done neither.
If I thought that drug companies did as much, I might agree with you.
Dan Aris
Yes, real drugs. They do not test one placebo vs another. That means 0 patients get actual medicine which is why it would fail any ethical review.
Isn't that begging the question? I mean, I know that there have, in fact, been studies that showed that homeopathy was ineffective, but assuming that the point is that double-blind studies are the standard of evidence required for determining medical efficacy...don't you have to do the double-blind study before you can definitively say that homeopathics are no more medically effective than a placebo?
You might as well say that running a double-blind test to see what effect aspirin has on heart attacks is a placebo against another placebo, because everyone knows aspirin is headache medicine! ...Until you actually do the tests, and find out that aspirin has a measurable effect against heart attacks.
Not saying that such tests would find that homeopathics are effective, just that until you have done the tests, based on the assumption that double-blind studies are the standard of evidence required for determining medical efficacy, you can't rule it out.
Dan Aris
There is abslolutely no reward or interest in fighting against/being beaten by anonymous opponents which have otherwise no personal connection to the player. I love quake, command and conquer, etcetera, but only in the same way as I love chess, and I would never even contemplate playing chess against someone I had never met in person, because that would be boring; a soulless challenge, so pointless that I may as well play against a computer.
I would love to play, for instance, StarCraft 2 against people of my own social circle. Unfortunately, none of them are in the least interested in playing. (I used to regularly play WarCraft 2 with a group of my high school friends, but they have since all gone off who knows where, and we didn't really keep in touch at all.)
Thus, I play on the ladder, against people I don't know, and try my best to improve my skill that way.
Dan Aris