Clearly you've never read the Bible. Check out Leviticus sometime. Look at how God himself sends the Angel of Death to commit mass infanticide when he could've just teleported the Israelites out of Egypt.
You mean Exodus, right?
Jesus himself promised to come back one day and, in a bloody display, kill everyone and sentence those who didn't believe in him to an eternity of torture.
You seem awfully sure of that. Matthew 24 and Luke 17/18 have Jesus speaking about his return, but he says nothing about killing everyone or sending them to hell and the display is described as 'with power and great glory'. Maybe you are thinking of Revelation, but that is a record of a vision, not the words of Jesus. And according to Wikipedia: 'Protestant founder Martin Luther considered Revelation to be "neither apostolic nor prophetic" and stated that "Christ is neither taught nor known in it"'.
Ptolemy didn't follow the modern scientific method.
Many scientists have followed the scientific method and produced bad results. Einstein's quantuum theory, for example. Incidentally, intelligent design advocates make the same argument you are making to undermine the public's confidence in science.
You haven't addressed the core point that the Bible encourages racist behavior. You simply deny that these passages even exist.
Do those passages actually exist? You haven't shown that they do. Its true that God is said to have committed infanticide and various horrible things, but you don't say where it commands believers to engage in the same acts as a matter of policy. God also let his son die - do you interpret that to mean that the Bible teaches us to let our children die?
On the specific topic of racism, the parable of the Good Samaritan is notable because for the Jews of the time, Samaritans were a despised ethnic and religious minority group. Do you admit that this parable exists in Christian literature, and that it is a clearly anti-racist message? Let's assume for now that you are right that there are racist passages in the Bible, or that some passages could be interpreted in that light. At best, you might be able to conclude that the Bible is ambiguous on racism, but you are making a much stronger claim that the Bible is clearly racist. Furthermore, this is a very bizzare reductive claim, that the level of racism in a society is determined by what is written in their holy books and if holy books were different (or didn't exist at all), racism would not exist.
Under what contexts are the murder of thousands of innocent children acceptable? Or unleashing biological weapons on the entire Egyptian population? Or disrupting their water supply? Do you not see the parallels between Moses' actions and modern-day terrorism?
I will join you in denouncing this God that neither of us believes exists for doing things that, according to the non-religious historical record, never happened. I hope you will join with me in also condemning the cannibal-witch who ate Hansel and Gretel, and even though the Pied Piper had a legitimate expectation that he should be paid for his work for the town of Hamelin, I feel strongly that he should have pursued legal remedies. Kidnapping an entire town's children is never an acceptable response to a business dispute!
I'm sure Justin Jardine will be taking down the Google Search Bar from the front page of his website any day now. He's probably busy taking care of customers though, because he just managed to spam Slashdot with a link to his ATV online store.
Please cite an example of racism in the Republican party.
Hurricane Katrina. "Immigration reform." Conservatives have always said that racism isn't a problem, even since before the civil war. They were wrong then and they were wrong during the 60s when they switched to the Republican party. That's a pretty lousy track record if you ask me. Why should we believe them now?
Also, lots of white supremacists on Stormfront.org claim they aren't racists. I imagine they come to that conclusion through some convoluted word-parsing, like how some people insist that because Republicans helped black people 150 years ago, they are still committed to the cause, even though 90% of black voters mysteriously don't vote for them.
Exercise for the reader: one of stormfront.org's strategy for making white supremacist beliefs mainstream is to infiltrate right-leaning and Republican websites like FreeRepublic.com. Why is that? Why don't they go after left-wing and Democratic websites?
The Minuteman Project is a militia-type organization that patrols the border with Mexico looking for illegal immigrants. The head of the California chapter quit, charging that the organization had become racist and fascist and was working with the Nazi party. But they have been praised by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO) went so far as to suggest they should be deputized, and they have been lauded by right-wing media figures and GOP supporters like Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin.
Well, consider the social platforms of the Democratic party... and consider how those points conflict with the very spiritual base of African-Americans.
Consider the administration's respones to Hurricane Katrina. How do you think that played with the African-American voter? What do you think that does for the Republican Party's chances with minorities? 90% of African-American voters favor Democrats, which means that abstract religious committments have less of a priority than practical matters, especially when the Party of God harbors strong anti-minority sentiments.
If you think about it, maybe there are a few missing pieces to the rationale for choosing Apple hardware. But doesn't it feel like the right thing...right here in the gut? Because that's where the truth comes from, ladies and gentlemen...the gut.
Did you know that you have more nerve endings in your stomach than in your head? Look it up. Now, somebody's gonna say `I did look that up and its wrong'. Well, Mister, that's because you looked it up in a book. Next time, try looking it up in your gut. I did. And my gut tells me that's how our nervous system works.
Now I know some of you may not trust your gut...yet. But with my help you will. The "truthiness" is, anyone can make IT decisions. I promise to feel IT decisions!
I have yet to meet a person (even the diehard communists I know) who don't do everything out of self sufficiency and personal profit.
What about doing things for fun? Does fun not exist in your tiny world? It sure sounds like it doesn't. "The whole world runs on profit!", he roared. "Now excuse me, I have to go buy more top hats and monocles!" I'm sure you'll find some way to define everything as either self-sufficiency and personal profit, but let me say that money can't buy peace of mind, spare you from death or make your life meaningful. I will grant that the pursuit of profit can be a meaningful way of living, but it is not the end product of money that makes it so, but the process of it and experience. The thrill of strategizing and working the system to produce a desired result, of perceiving a pattern and using it to your advantage, yes, it can be quite exciting. But you might feel that people who don't understand and don't value your kind of fun are trying to regulate and destroy it, which might be true, but claiming that what you value is the only thing worth valuing is no way to win friends. Which is something else money can't buy.
A good scientist understands that the progress of humanity came from self-reliance and cooperation for profit, not from doing what is good for man.
You are exactly wrong. A good scientist understands that historically, scientific progress came largely from wealthy aristocrats who already had more money than they could possibly ever spend, so they turned their attentions to the secret lives of birds and trees and planets and electrons, out of simple curiosity and wonder.
...every human being should be allowed to rise to the level of his own potential, rather than being forced to conform to the herd.
But no-one is forced to conform to the herd. There are some things that society will look at you funny for doing, make fun of you for doing or maybe just not help you to not conform, but that's not the same as forcing you to conform. If you choose to not rise to your potential because its too hard, you don't get enough help, it alienates you from other people or any other reason, it seems like you've made a cost-benefit analysis and made a choice based on it. Everything comes at a cost, don't blame society for how you choose to weigh those costs. That's like wanting a big house but can't afford the one you want because you just bought an expensive car, so you complain that it's the seller's fault for making the house too expensive and "forcing" you to live in a different, smaller house. Its a nonsense argument made by people who don't have the guts to make hard choices and live with them. It might even be true that the house is ridiculously overpriced, but it doesn't follow that you have the right to compel the seller to lower his price so you can buy it, even if the price is inflated to discourage buyers.
There's a third option though: negotiation. You can choose non-conformity, accept the cost, but argue that your choice is actually beneficial to society and that it stands to gain from lowering the price and making it easier for you to rise to your potential, but that means acknowledging that society has a general right to create incentives and disincentives for certain behaviors.
...the voices of those who support that foreign policy objective are reinforced by criticism of US policy from abroad.
I don't agree with that. I think the overriding consensus is not whether we will have an active foreign policy, but what form it will take. Some might say that because the Left opposed the invasion of Iraq, it signals they are fundamentally isolationist, which I also disagree with. I think the Left has very little confidence that interventionist policy can be accomplished without being subverted for neo-imperalist aims. To the extent that a true isolationist wing of the Left exists, I think they are useful as a threat that they will be capable of eroding public confidence in interventionist policies if the strictest standards are not upheld. Its incumbent upon the interventionists to ensure that that happens, but it looks more like Powell was left holding the bag at the UN.
I see no a priori reason for your use of the word 'should'.
If the argument for being a leader in spreading democracy is made on the basis that it is an objectively better form of government, the US should be the first in line to be measured against that standard. If, however, 'democracy' is merely a euphemism for a government that is favorable to the actions taken by the US as a proxy for corporations, then no such standard exists, we're acting just as any other empire would. If we're honest about our definitions, the argument begins by listing the various benefits of a democratic society, then concludes by saying, "And that is why America is allowed to be an empire." Its a complete non-sequitor. They can't justify an empire in the traditional way, so they just call it 'democracy', and make irrelevant justifications for something they have no intention of establishing.
Why should the US hold themselves to a standard that no one else seems to maintain?
If you advocate interventionism, you have either humanitarian motivations or imperial designs disguised as humanitarian motivations. The only way to sort out which is which is to demand that actions follow from the rhetoric from all parties.
Because those were brutal regimes that exploited the colonized people to the advantage of the empire's citizens. Often, the justification for exploitation was that they colonized people were objectively inferior according to the religious and cultural traditions and mythology and it was their place in the world to serve their empirical masters. We now recognize that those justifications are fig leafs for the morally corrupt to hide a more simple motivation: greed.
If the US declines to exert its power and influence, you can bet that China will.
You present us with a false dichotomy between imperialism and isolationism. In fact, most people agree that the US should exert its influence, in co-operation with other democratic nations. You bemoan the fact that other nations have conflicts of interest and can't be trusted, but for some reason you fail to pursue that to its logical conclusion: The US should hold itself to the highest standards of democracy and transparency and have an impeccable record of weeding out corruption in its own house. The hypocrisy of some people who denounce the UN and European nations for their corruption, but protect and defend the behavior of our own American scoundrels is, quite frankly, disgusting. They hold themselves up as the standard bearers of morality when pointing their fingers at other people, but refuse to apply the standard to themselves.
The subtext of your argument is that everyone is immoral, so let's just let it all go to shit. At least we come out on top and its not as bad as it could be.
Are you going to tell me that the everyone around the world will just arbitrarily keep the global map static? You must be smoking something.
Not arbitrarily. What kept the US map static for so many centuries? Not democracy, but respect and enforcement of the Constitution. The profound achievement of the founding of this country is that it brought together 13 colonies all with competing interests and created a single, co-operative entity. The Constitution and the make-up of the government was designed to prevent one powerful (or populous) state from dominating and enforcing its will on other states, and it was reasonably successful at that. But taking that analogy to the United Nations, the US consistently refuses to respect the "Constitution", undermines all attempts to make the UN cohesive and effective, and then turns around and argues that the UN that it has purposely sabatoged is an example of why coalitions of nations are doomed to fail. The UN will fail as long as the United States fails to set aside its narrow self-interests and stand firmly on the moral high ground that it should take. Right now, all we have is the US justifying itself by pointing to the same moral and humanitarian principles that it discards when pursuing its self-interest.
The meaning behind all of this obvious lying is fairly apparent. Its no longer possible to justify pursuing America's self-interests through empire in the previous manner. It's not "politically correct" to openly advocate getting rich off the toil and misery of other, lesser human beings, much to the chagrin of certain groups. This is the true nature of your argument, that the principles the US was founded on apply to Americans and not to lesser human beings.
I never said that hierarchies were better, only that they are useful. A lot of people view hierarchies as being inherently oppressive, rigid and inflexible, etc., and it does seem that this Ted Nelson falls into this contradictory trap. Its contradictory, because he's not creating a list of document formats he uses, he's expressing a preference for non-linear formats. You cannot have preferences without ranking and ranking creates a hierarchy. Your list of things containing red and blue don't indicate a ranking, but Ted Nelson most definitely does rank non-linearity over hierarchy, which he considers to be somehow oppressive.
But there's nothing inherently oppressive about hierarchies, or any organizing system. They become oppressive and inflexible when they are applied universally for all situations. For example, if we were sorting apples, no-one objects to not eating green, unripe bananas or black, overripe bananas. But if we expressed a similar preference for the color of people's skin, it would be a misapplied hierarchy, and in fact, a false one. But misusing a hierarchy doesn't imply that hierarchies are inherently bad, nor does it imply that non-hierarchal systems are inherently better. In fact, we could just as easily misapply a non-hierarchal system that refuses to acknowledge differences between things to create a different kind of oppression. I say that whether you look at things in a hierarchal way or a non-linear way, you are imposing a perspective. Just as you can place anything into a hierarchal system, you can put it in a non-linear system, and neither one are any more true than the other.
The conservative people tend to have the mindset of they themselves are responsible for their futures. The more liberal people feel that we should be have some sort help to make sure that they are on a level playing field.
This is circular reasoning. You claim that an individual's mindset determines the outcome, not their environment, which is supported by the claim that conservatives have the mindset that an individual's mindset determines the outcome, not their environment. Well, at least we know where you stand.
Conservatives subscribe to the myth of the self-made man, which is a romantic, egocentric fantasy that refuses to acknowledge the responsibility that successful individuals owe to society for taking advantage of the subsidized resources that have been provided to them. The question is not whether government should help individuals to succeed -- that is, after all, its only purpose -- but in what areas and to what degree. Conservatives are egocentric to claim that the resources provided to them to help them succeed are sufficient for everyone, and have a pathological need to deny that anyone could have a different experience or different needs. They put on one-size-fits-all blinders not out of genuine ignorance, but a selfishness that refuses to take responsibility for their fellow man. "I don't see how I benefit from this, so I'm against it."
The only mindset change that you've made is to say that we're going to pretend that hierarchies don't exist. When you say one thing is awesome and another thing sucks, you've created a hierarchy. The only similarity between our two diagrams is that they are lists of things. My diagram shows the implicit ranking hierarchy in the argument in the story, but yours shows a collection of items with some attributes. Its true that your diagram is non-hierarchal, but does that mean that hierarchy doesn't exist in what you are describing? Not at all, you've just chosen to ignore it.
You seem to be saying that the reason his arguments appear hierarchal is because they have to be communicated, that its the communication of the philosophy that makes it seem hierarchal, when really its non-linear. This is nonsense. If I have a preference for blue over red, I've created a hierarchy, which is completely different from non-linear awareness of red things and blue things that doesn't privilege one or the other. When I choose blue things instead of red things, I am applying my hierarchy, just as when I choose non-linearity over hierarchy, I am also applying a hierarchy. Pretending that we're not doing that, or simply not bringing it up doesn't make it go away.
I'm going to make a diagram of the proposed relationship between non-linear thinking and hierarchical thinking, made in the writeup:
Non-linear thinking - awesome!
Hierarchical thinking - lame
Copyrights - even lamer
Ideological agendas - teh lam0rz
Wait... the argument that denounces hierarchies and lauds non-linearity is itself hierarchical? Turns out, you can't even make an argument against hierarchies without using a hierarchy. You can make a weaker argument, saying that hierarchies are sometimes useful, sometimes not, but that's not nearly as dramatic.
I can't decide what's more childish: the analogy you made, or the attitude behind it. Try considering that maybe the whole world need not revolve around you and what you consider interesting.
I suggest a meme, (hate that word)... start calling "DRM'ed CDs" something else.
I guess its true that people hate what they don't understand. Memes are not catch-phrases or jargon or any word of any kind. The concept that goes by the name "DRM" is a meme, and so is the concept that DRM is bad.
But renaming something is not creating a meme. Maybe you mean 'reframing'?
You're right. What sort of coder could possibly learn and understand complicated, unforgivingsyntax? The human mind was just not meant for such things!
Lots of open source applications offer similar licensing arrangements. For commercial use, they have a commercial license. For non-profit personal use, they have a non-commercial, Creative Commons-like license. The GPL makes some kinds of commercial use such as the boxed software model virtually impossible, so I don't see how this is all that different. Comparing Burning Man to Disney because they make use of copyrights makes as much sense as comparing Disney to the Free Software Foundation.
So...what would you suggest we do? Sit around solemnly shaking our heads and saying "Sad. So very sad."?
Just do what everyone else does. It seems like some individuals want to make humanitarian catastrophes more relevant to the tech community by inflating the value of their favorite obsession, and by extension, themselves. This is called narcissism. A tragedy strikes, and the main efforts go into highlighting the unique contributions of the tech community and congratulating ourselves for the vital role we play in society.
You have clearly misunderstood the parent post. On the contrary, you should go about your business as normal, and not try to invent an important role for yourself or your community beyond what you actually contribute.
In the interests of fostering greater bipartisanship and co-operation, I think the time has come for the Senate to create official chill-out zones with trippy light shows, downtempo beats and massage circles, especially for those extended debates that last all night and even early morning, when the risk of becoming overheated and dehydrated is very high.
I have many other ideas that I think you are best qualified to spearhead in the Senate, such as reforming the electoral system by converting voter ballots to flyers with psychedelic graphics. What do you think? Seriously, that would be awesome.
Let me see if I can understand your point. The parent complains that people aren't paying attention in class, but you have such respect for the learning process and the professor that you are outraged that someone would divert their attention for a few seconds to notice a student playing a game. Is that what you are upset about? I suppose in your world, lugging in a widescreen TV with surround sound and xbox to play games in class would be OK, but being distracted by it while trying to focus on the lecture is the real problem.
Your logic is a maze of twisty passages that only a Bush Administration official could navigate, so let me simplify it for you. Playing games in class shows no effort to concentrate on the lecture while distracting other people. Being distracted by games being played by other people means you are at least trying to concentrate.
I think there's a distinction between doing good for some highly predictable, immediate benefit to the someone, and an altruistic act whose benefit is not immediately apparent or easily predictable. It is something like a stock market day trader and a long term investor. To say that both types are identical because they have the same motivation obscures the larger point that people intend to make when they use words like selfish or altruistic.
Its true that a person who is motivated primarily for the short-term benefit of an altruistic act is nearly identical to a person acting in a way that we would call selfish, but once again, people typically consider both of those acts to be selfish. Ayn Rand makes no distinction between different motivations for altruism, even though the differences exist even on a neurological level. We know that rewarding behavior quickly reinforces it much better than rewarding it much later and people usually think of selfishness in this way, of choosing immediate, short-term benefits above larger long-term benefits, whereas altruism is valued because it implies the ability to use reason to override those pavlovian impulses. That's not to say that altruism is not ever self-motivated, but that its not self-motivated by an immediate desire or specific expectation, and people understand this difference. Rand extends the accepted definition of selfishness on technical grounds to include altruism, then uses it to justify the most heinous acts of egoism.
But even selfish altruism is valued because empathy is remarkably efficient economically. If I have sufficient empathy that I can virtually co-experience the benefits of a something, it effectively doubles the utility of that thing. For example, let's say the incentive for owning a red balloon is sheer joy where J = the level of joy experienced. I own 10 balloons which, for argument's sakes, gives me joy = 10J. But if I have a high degree of empathy, I can go around town distributing those balloons to 10 small children, and since I experience the level of joy that they do, the total joy output produced by those 10 balloons has doubled. We can make this scenario more real world by pointing out that a child typically experiences more joy for having a balloon that an adult would, let's say 2J, therefore creating a total joy output of 40J (including the empathy effects). But the value of having 10 balloons is surely not 10J, because having 1 balloon is great, a second balloon is pretty good, a third balloon is good, a forth is ok, and anything beyond that doesn't make very much real difference, so let's say that the amount of joy you experience per balloon decays logarithmically with each additional balloon, in which case, an adult owning 10 balloons would produce even less than 10J, which is much less than the 20J he would acquire through empathy, and far less than the 40J total joy output.
In general, maximizing the total joy output would be an efficient use of limited resources, which would be best accomplished by maximizing our ability to empathize, while minimizing the suffering of others that produces large negative J.
The article is about Hillary, not about everyone who discussed the matter.
Right, let's keep it on topic. This is about castigating Democrats for the same things that Republicans do, i.e. pandering to the family values voters. Why are you trying to distract people from what Republicans are most proud of? (I think I know.)
If you followed the link in the sig, all your questions would be answered. It refers to the July 21, 2005 vote, and just 21% of Democrats voted for it.
First, I don't believe it misses the point. I am objecting to the excessive glorification of the individual that your thesis seems to rely on, with precious little acknowledgement that, as you now say, we are standing on the shoulders of giants.
Secondly, I am accusing you of putting forward an extreme right-wing opinion by suggesting that teachers beyond the 5th grade are unnecessary, and you do so irresponsibly, on the basis of a single data point that you assure us is the average. I would consider the possibility that your niece is in fact a gifted student, well above average, and that we should not design a Nietzschean education system to exclusively favor those who are already favored by nature.
"...utilize the vast array of self-tutorials, peer-forums and the sheer power of the internet to learn...She is self-sufficient."
This must be some new definition of 'self-sufficient' that I was previously unaware of, because it sure seems that unless your niece derived the principles of mathematics independently, she's in no way self-sufficient, since she's obviously heavily dependent on the efforts of other people playing a teacher-like role in her education. You could make a much more reasonable argument that teachers could play a more fruitful role than they one they currently occupy, but maybe that isn't Inflammatory-Right-Wing-Lunatic enough for your taste.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean Exodus, right?
Jesus himself promised to come back one day and, in a bloody display, kill everyone and sentence those who didn't believe in him to an eternity of torture.
You seem awfully sure of that. Matthew 24 and Luke 17/18 have Jesus speaking about his return, but he says nothing about killing everyone or sending them to hell and the display is described as 'with power and great glory'. Maybe you are thinking of Revelation, but that is a record of a vision, not the words of Jesus. And according to Wikipedia: 'Protestant founder Martin Luther considered Revelation to be "neither apostolic nor prophetic" and stated that "Christ is neither taught nor known in it"'.
Ptolemy didn't follow the modern scientific method.
Many scientists have followed the scientific method and produced bad results. Einstein's quantuum theory, for example. Incidentally, intelligent design advocates make the same argument you are making to undermine the public's confidence in science.
You haven't addressed the core point that the Bible encourages racist behavior. You simply deny that these passages even exist.
Do those passages actually exist? You haven't shown that they do. Its true that God is said to have committed infanticide and various horrible things, but you don't say where it commands believers to engage in the same acts as a matter of policy. God also let his son die - do you interpret that to mean that the Bible teaches us to let our children die?
On the specific topic of racism, the parable of the Good Samaritan is notable because for the Jews of the time, Samaritans were a despised ethnic and religious minority group. Do you admit that this parable exists in Christian literature, and that it is a clearly anti-racist message? Let's assume for now that you are right that there are racist passages in the Bible, or that some passages could be interpreted in that light. At best, you might be able to conclude that the Bible is ambiguous on racism, but you are making a much stronger claim that the Bible is clearly racist. Furthermore, this is a very bizzare reductive claim, that the level of racism in a society is determined by what is written in their holy books and if holy books were different (or didn't exist at all), racism would not exist.
Under what contexts are the murder of thousands of innocent children acceptable? Or unleashing biological weapons on the entire Egyptian population? Or disrupting their water supply? Do you not see the parallels between Moses' actions and modern-day terrorism?
I will join you in denouncing this God that neither of us believes exists for doing things that, according to the non-religious historical record, never happened. I hope you will join with me in also condemning the cannibal-witch who ate Hansel and Gretel, and even though the Pied Piper had a legitimate expectation that he should be paid for his work for the town of Hamelin, I feel strongly that he should have pursued legal remedies. Kidnapping an entire town's children is never an acceptable response to a business dispute!
I'm sure Justin Jardine will be taking down the Google Search Bar from the front page of his website any day now. He's probably busy taking care of customers though, because he just managed to spam Slashdot with a link to his ATV online store.
Hurricane Katrina. "Immigration reform." Conservatives have always said that racism isn't a problem, even since before the civil war. They were wrong then and they were wrong during the 60s when they switched to the Republican party. That's a pretty lousy track record if you ask me. Why should we believe them now?
Also, lots of white supremacists on Stormfront.org claim they aren't racists. I imagine they come to that conclusion through some convoluted word-parsing, like how some people insist that because Republicans helped black people 150 years ago, they are still committed to the cause, even though 90% of black voters mysteriously don't vote for them.
Exercise for the reader: one of stormfront.org's strategy for making white supremacist beliefs mainstream is to infiltrate right-leaning and Republican websites like FreeRepublic.com. Why is that? Why don't they go after left-wing and Democratic websites?
The Minuteman Project is a militia-type organization that patrols the border with Mexico looking for illegal immigrants. The head of the California chapter quit, charging that the organization had become racist and fascist and was working with the Nazi party. But they have been praised by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO) went so far as to suggest they should be deputized, and they have been lauded by right-wing media figures and GOP supporters like Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin.
Well, consider the social platforms of the Democratic party... and consider how those points conflict with the very spiritual base of African-Americans.
Consider the administration's respones to Hurricane Katrina. How do you think that played with the African-American voter? What do you think that does for the Republican Party's chances with minorities? 90% of African-American voters favor Democrats, which means that abstract religious committments have less of a priority than practical matters, especially when the Party of God harbors strong anti-minority sentiments.
If you think about it, maybe there are a few missing pieces to the rationale for choosing Apple hardware. But doesn't it feel like the right thing...right here in the gut? Because that's where the truth comes from, ladies and gentlemen...the gut.
Did you know that you have more nerve endings in your stomach than in your head? Look it up. Now, somebody's gonna say `I did look that up and its wrong'. Well, Mister, that's because you looked it up in a book. Next time, try looking it up in your gut. I did. And my gut tells me that's how our nervous system works.
Now I know some of you may not trust your gut...yet. But with my help you will. The "truthiness" is, anyone can make IT decisions. I promise to feel IT decisions!
What about doing things for fun? Does fun not exist in your tiny world? It sure sounds like it doesn't. "The whole world runs on profit!", he roared. "Now excuse me, I have to go buy more top hats and monocles!" I'm sure you'll find some way to define everything as either self-sufficiency and personal profit, but let me say that money can't buy peace of mind, spare you from death or make your life meaningful. I will grant that the pursuit of profit can be a meaningful way of living, but it is not the end product of money that makes it so, but the process of it and experience. The thrill of strategizing and working the system to produce a desired result, of perceiving a pattern and using it to your advantage, yes, it can be quite exciting. But you might feel that people who don't understand and don't value your kind of fun are trying to regulate and destroy it, which might be true, but claiming that what you value is the only thing worth valuing is no way to win friends. Which is something else money can't buy.
A good scientist understands that the progress of humanity came from self-reliance and cooperation for profit, not from doing what is good for man.You are exactly wrong. A good scientist understands that historically, scientific progress came largely from wealthy aristocrats who already had more money than they could possibly ever spend, so they turned their attentions to the secret lives of birds and trees and planets and electrons, out of simple curiosity and wonder.
But no-one is forced to conform to the herd. There are some things that society will look at you funny for doing, make fun of you for doing or maybe just not help you to not conform, but that's not the same as forcing you to conform. If you choose to not rise to your potential because its too hard, you don't get enough help, it alienates you from other people or any other reason, it seems like you've made a cost-benefit analysis and made a choice based on it. Everything comes at a cost, don't blame society for how you choose to weigh those costs. That's like wanting a big house but can't afford the one you want because you just bought an expensive car, so you complain that it's the seller's fault for making the house too expensive and "forcing" you to live in a different, smaller house. Its a nonsense argument made by people who don't have the guts to make hard choices and live with them. It might even be true that the house is ridiculously overpriced, but it doesn't follow that you have the right to compel the seller to lower his price so you can buy it, even if the price is inflated to discourage buyers.
There's a third option though: negotiation. You can choose non-conformity, accept the cost, but argue that your choice is actually beneficial to society and that it stands to gain from lowering the price and making it easier for you to rise to your potential, but that means acknowledging that society has a general right to create incentives and disincentives for certain behaviors.
I don't agree with that. I think the overriding consensus is not whether we will have an active foreign policy, but what form it will take. Some might say that because the Left opposed the invasion of Iraq, it signals they are fundamentally isolationist, which I also disagree with. I think the Left has very little confidence that interventionist policy can be accomplished without being subverted for neo-imperalist aims. To the extent that a true isolationist wing of the Left exists, I think they are useful as a threat that they will be capable of eroding public confidence in interventionist policies if the strictest standards are not upheld. Its incumbent upon the interventionists to ensure that that happens, but it looks more like Powell was left holding the bag at the UN.
I see no a priori reason for your use of the word 'should'.
If the argument for being a leader in spreading democracy is made on the basis that it is an objectively better form of government, the US should be the first in line to be measured against that standard. If, however, 'democracy' is merely a euphemism for a government that is favorable to the actions taken by the US as a proxy for corporations, then no such standard exists, we're acting just as any other empire would. If we're honest about our definitions, the argument begins by listing the various benefits of a democratic society, then concludes by saying, "And that is why America is allowed to be an empire." Its a complete non-sequitor. They can't justify an empire in the traditional way, so they just call it 'democracy', and make irrelevant justifications for something they have no intention of establishing.
Why should the US hold themselves to a standard that no one else seems to maintain?
If you advocate interventionism, you have either humanitarian motivations or imperial designs disguised as humanitarian motivations. The only way to sort out which is which is to demand that actions follow from the rhetoric from all parties.
Because those were brutal regimes that exploited the colonized people to the advantage of the empire's citizens. Often, the justification for exploitation was that they colonized people were objectively inferior according to the religious and cultural traditions and mythology and it was their place in the world to serve their empirical masters. We now recognize that those justifications are fig leafs for the morally corrupt to hide a more simple motivation: greed.
If the US declines to exert its power and influence, you can bet that China will.
You present us with a false dichotomy between imperialism and isolationism. In fact, most people agree that the US should exert its influence, in co-operation with other democratic nations. You bemoan the fact that other nations have conflicts of interest and can't be trusted, but for some reason you fail to pursue that to its logical conclusion: The US should hold itself to the highest standards of democracy and transparency and have an impeccable record of weeding out corruption in its own house. The hypocrisy of some people who denounce the UN and European nations for their corruption, but protect and defend the behavior of our own American scoundrels is, quite frankly, disgusting. They hold themselves up as the standard bearers of morality when pointing their fingers at other people, but refuse to apply the standard to themselves.
The subtext of your argument is that everyone is immoral, so let's just let it all go to shit. At least we come out on top and its not as bad as it could be.
Are you going to tell me that the everyone around the world will just arbitrarily keep the global map static? You must be smoking something.
Not arbitrarily. What kept the US map static for so many centuries? Not democracy, but respect and enforcement of the Constitution. The profound achievement of the founding of this country is that it brought together 13 colonies all with competing interests and created a single, co-operative entity. The Constitution and the make-up of the government was designed to prevent one powerful (or populous) state from dominating and enforcing its will on other states, and it was reasonably successful at that. But taking that analogy to the United Nations, the US consistently refuses to respect the "Constitution", undermines all attempts to make the UN cohesive and effective, and then turns around and argues that the UN that it has purposely sabatoged is an example of why coalitions of nations are doomed to fail. The UN will fail as long as the United States fails to set aside its narrow self-interests and stand firmly on the moral high ground that it should take. Right now, all we have is the US justifying itself by pointing to the same moral and humanitarian principles that it discards when pursuing its self-interest.
The meaning behind all of this obvious lying is fairly apparent. Its no longer possible to justify pursuing America's self-interests through empire in the previous manner. It's not "politically correct" to openly advocate getting rich off the toil and misery of other, lesser human beings, much to the chagrin of certain groups. This is the true nature of your argument, that the principles the US was founded on apply to Americans and not to lesser human beings.
But there's nothing inherently oppressive about hierarchies, or any organizing system. They become oppressive and inflexible when they are applied universally for all situations. For example, if we were sorting apples, no-one objects to not eating green, unripe bananas or black, overripe bananas. But if we expressed a similar preference for the color of people's skin, it would be a misapplied hierarchy, and in fact, a false one. But misusing a hierarchy doesn't imply that hierarchies are inherently bad, nor does it imply that non-hierarchal systems are inherently better. In fact, we could just as easily misapply a non-hierarchal system that refuses to acknowledge differences between things to create a different kind of oppression. I say that whether you look at things in a hierarchal way or a non-linear way, you are imposing a perspective. Just as you can place anything into a hierarchal system, you can put it in a non-linear system, and neither one are any more true than the other.
This is circular reasoning. You claim that an individual's mindset determines the outcome, not their environment, which is supported by the claim that conservatives have the mindset that an individual's mindset determines the outcome, not their environment. Well, at least we know where you stand.
Conservatives subscribe to the myth of the self-made man, which is a romantic, egocentric fantasy that refuses to acknowledge the responsibility that successful individuals owe to society for taking advantage of the subsidized resources that have been provided to them. The question is not whether government should help individuals to succeed -- that is, after all, its only purpose -- but in what areas and to what degree. Conservatives are egocentric to claim that the resources provided to them to help them succeed are sufficient for everyone, and have a pathological need to deny that anyone could have a different experience or different needs. They put on one-size-fits-all blinders not out of genuine ignorance, but a selfishness that refuses to take responsibility for their fellow man. "I don't see how I benefit from this, so I'm against it."
And other generalizations...
You seem to be saying that the reason his arguments appear hierarchal is because they have to be communicated, that its the communication of the philosophy that makes it seem hierarchal, when really its non-linear. This is nonsense. If I have a preference for blue over red, I've created a hierarchy, which is completely different from non-linear awareness of red things and blue things that doesn't privilege one or the other. When I choose blue things instead of red things, I am applying my hierarchy, just as when I choose non-linearity over hierarchy, I am also applying a hierarchy. Pretending that we're not doing that, or simply not bringing it up doesn't make it go away.
I'm going to make a diagram of the proposed relationship between non-linear thinking and hierarchical thinking, made in the writeup:
Wait... the argument that denounces hierarchies and lauds non-linearity is itself hierarchical? Turns out, you can't even make an argument against hierarchies without using a hierarchy. You can make a weaker argument, saying that hierarchies are sometimes useful, sometimes not, but that's not nearly as dramatic.
I can't decide what's more childish: the analogy you made, or the attitude behind it. Try considering that maybe the whole world need not revolve around you and what you consider interesting.
I guess its true that people hate what they don't understand. Memes are not catch-phrases or jargon or any word of any kind. The concept that goes by the name "DRM" is a meme, and so is the concept that DRM is bad.
But renaming something is not creating a meme. Maybe you mean 'reframing'?
You're right. What sort of coder could possibly learn and understand complicated, unforgiving syntax? The human mind was just not meant for such things!
Lots of open source applications offer similar licensing arrangements. For commercial use, they have a commercial license. For non-profit personal use, they have a non-commercial, Creative Commons-like license. The GPL makes some kinds of commercial use such as the boxed software model virtually impossible, so I don't see how this is all that different. Comparing Burning Man to Disney because they make use of copyrights makes as much sense as comparing Disney to the Free Software Foundation.
Bum Fuck Egypt
Just do what everyone else does. It seems like some individuals want to make humanitarian catastrophes more relevant to the tech community by inflating the value of their favorite obsession, and by extension, themselves. This is called narcissism. A tragedy strikes, and the main efforts go into highlighting the unique contributions of the tech community and congratulating ourselves for the vital role we play in society.
You have clearly misunderstood the parent post. On the contrary, you should go about your business as normal, and not try to invent an important role for yourself or your community beyond what you actually contribute.
In the interests of fostering greater bipartisanship and co-operation, I think the time has come for the Senate to create official chill-out zones with trippy light shows, downtempo beats and massage circles, especially for those extended debates that last all night and even early morning, when the risk of becoming overheated and dehydrated is very high.
I have many other ideas that I think you are best qualified to spearhead in the Senate, such as reforming the electoral system by converting voter ballots to flyers with psychedelic graphics. What do you think? Seriously, that would be awesome.
Let me see if I can understand your point. The parent complains that people aren't paying attention in class, but you have such respect for the learning process and the professor that you are outraged that someone would divert their attention for a few seconds to notice a student playing a game. Is that what you are upset about? I suppose in your world, lugging in a widescreen TV with surround sound and xbox to play games in class would be OK, but being distracted by it while trying to focus on the lecture is the real problem.
Your logic is a maze of twisty passages that only a Bush Administration official could navigate, so let me simplify it for you. Playing games in class shows no effort to concentrate on the lecture while distracting other people. Being distracted by games being played by other people means you are at least trying to concentrate.
ROBOT: Come on, Fhqwhgads.
STRONG BAD: I said come on Fhqwhgads
I said come on Fhqwhgads
Everybody to the limit
Everybody to the limit
Everybody come on Fhqwhgads
I said come on Fhqwhgads
I said come on Fhqwhgads
Everybody to the limit
Who's that? It's to the limit
Everybody come on Fhqwhgads
Come on Fhqwhgads
I see you jockin' me
Tryin' to play like
You know me
I'm like come on Fhqwhgads
I said come on Fhqwhgads
Everybody to the limit
The Cheat is to the limit
Everybody come on Fhqwhgads
I said ooh ah Fhqwhgads
I said ooh ah Fhqwhgads
Who's that fh-huh-hoo-huga-wha
I said who is that Fhqwhgads
I don't know who it is
But it probably is Fhqwhgads
I asked my friend Joe
I asked my friend Jake
They said it was Fhqwhgads
I said come on Fhqwhgads
I said come on Fhqwhgads
Who's-a to the limit?
C'est me! I'm to the limit
Everybody come on Fhqwhgads
Man, Fhqwhgads
You're just making yourself look worse, y'know
I mean, everybody's just gonna feel sorry for ya
I mean, I do.
Its true that a person who is motivated primarily for the short-term benefit of an altruistic act is nearly identical to a person acting in a way that we would call selfish, but once again, people typically consider both of those acts to be selfish. Ayn Rand makes no distinction between different motivations for altruism, even though the differences exist even on a neurological level. We know that rewarding behavior quickly reinforces it much better than rewarding it much later and people usually think of selfishness in this way, of choosing immediate, short-term benefits above larger long-term benefits, whereas altruism is valued because it implies the ability to use reason to override those pavlovian impulses. That's not to say that altruism is not ever self-motivated, but that its not self-motivated by an immediate desire or specific expectation, and people understand this difference. Rand extends the accepted definition of selfishness on technical grounds to include altruism, then uses it to justify the most heinous acts of egoism.
But even selfish altruism is valued because empathy is remarkably efficient economically. If I have sufficient empathy that I can virtually co-experience the benefits of a something, it effectively doubles the utility of that thing. For example, let's say the incentive for owning a red balloon is sheer joy where J = the level of joy experienced. I own 10 balloons which, for argument's sakes, gives me joy = 10J. But if I have a high degree of empathy, I can go around town distributing those balloons to 10 small children, and since I experience the level of joy that they do, the total joy output produced by those 10 balloons has doubled. We can make this scenario more real world by pointing out that a child typically experiences more joy for having a balloon that an adult would, let's say 2J, therefore creating a total joy output of 40J (including the empathy effects). But the value of having 10 balloons is surely not 10J, because having 1 balloon is great, a second balloon is pretty good, a third balloon is good, a forth is ok, and anything beyond that doesn't make very much real difference, so let's say that the amount of joy you experience per balloon decays logarithmically with each additional balloon, in which case, an adult owning 10 balloons would produce even less than 10J, which is much less than the 20J he would acquire through empathy, and far less than the 40J total joy output.
In general, maximizing the total joy output would be an efficient use of limited resources, which would be best accomplished by maximizing our ability to empathize, while minimizing the suffering of others that produces large negative J.
Right, let's keep it on topic. This is about castigating Democrats for the same things that Republicans do, i.e. pandering to the family values voters. Why are you trying to distract people from what Republicans are most proud of? (I think I know.)
If you followed the link in the sig, all your questions would be answered. It refers to the July 21, 2005 vote, and just 21% of Democrats voted for it.
Secondly, I am accusing you of putting forward an extreme right-wing opinion by suggesting that teachers beyond the 5th grade are unnecessary, and you do so irresponsibly, on the basis of a single data point that you assure us is the average. I would consider the possibility that your niece is in fact a gifted student, well above average, and that we should not design a Nietzschean education system to exclusively favor those who are already favored by nature.
This must be some new definition of 'self-sufficient' that I was previously unaware of, because it sure seems that unless your niece derived the principles of mathematics independently, she's in no way self-sufficient, since she's obviously heavily dependent on the efforts of other people playing a teacher-like role in her education. You could make a much more reasonable argument that teachers could play a more fruitful role than they one they currently occupy, but maybe that isn't Inflammatory-Right-Wing-Lunatic enough for your taste.