Apple's goal with allowing cloning was for other manufacturers to licence their basic Mac tech (both HW and SW) and extend it into markets that Apple themselves couldn't reach, growing the MacOS marketplace. The problem was that cloners instead made machines targeted at the exact same range as Apple, taking their (Apple's) R&D investment which they got for cheap and using it to cannibalize Apple's own sales.
When Jobs returned, he cranked up the licencing fees when licence renewal time came for the cloners. None of the cloners would go for it because it ruined their business model. (I believe UMAX was an exception to this but I don't remember the details).
If the cloners had instead taken that Mac tech and gone after new markets, making something like the Xserve or Mac Mini (which at that time had no equivalent in Apple's lineup), it would have been what Apple had hoped for opening up cloning. But as it was, there was no incentive for cloners to do such a thing - far easier to make a quick buck by taking Apple's cheap licensing and then gobbling up their market.
PowerComputing, of "You can take my Mac when you pry my cold dead fingers off the mouse!" fame, even admitted later that they had only intended to get a start with Mac cloning, as a big fish in a small pond, to use as leverage to start off doing PC cloning instead. Which they wound up doing after Jobs returned... and I haven't heard of them since. Not so easy competing on level grounds, is it?
This is mostly an American vs British distinction in my experience: Americans tend to call corporations "it" while Brits tend to call them "they". Growing up in American I tend toward the former but now that you mention it, the latter fits my philosophy a bit better.
Corporations are non-entities: they do not exist as natural things, but are government licences granted to groups of individuals. I find that this is one of the biggest failings of our capitalist economy or any so-called free market, and that without such a construct, capitalism would function much more fairly and efficiently.
I think I'll start calling corporations "they" now...
Really? You don't think you're fudging that a bit? How large must X be before we're satisfied? Have you done many experiments? How often do you get 100%? Is 98% sufficient to say, "it's pretty much 100%"? Are you seriously telling me that, in your entire life, you've never struck a deductive argument that didn't seem to work out, but you couldn't tell why?
I can't off the top of my head recall any times that didn't turn out to be because I wasn't formulating the argument properly. Granted, that may sound like a cop-out, but consider: I also can't recall any time that I have flown off the Earth because gravity stopped working. It's still possible that I might have... but if you start calling that into question, then we've left the realm of rational discussion, because you could claim that I may have seen evidence of any impossible thing and I simply don't remember it.
I have a magic rock that keeps tigers away. I know it's magic because, the times that I've carried it, 100% of the time, I haven't seen tigers.
[ObSimpsonsRef]Nine-times, I would like to BUY your magic rock![/ObSimpsonsRef]
Then why is it, do you think, that Euclid went through a proof, instead of just *measuring*? How many triangles have you summed the angles of? What was your margin of error? Could it have been 179.99999999999999999 degrees? And what do you find more convincing, the measurement or the proof?
This is why I mentioned the word "certainty". Absolute certainty is better to have than just knowledge, which can have different degrees of certainty. Knowledge in the normal English meaning, not some specifically constructed deductive-logician's meaning, would include the type of knowledge that most people basically educated in math have about triangles and the sums of their angles. Most people aren't aware of Euclids deductive proof of it, but they still *know* it. They just aren't absolutely *certain*.
A child need only touch a hot frying pan once to KNOW that it burns. Now that knowledge may not be absolutely certain, if the child's conclusion is incompletely defined (for example, "frying pans burn" without the "hot" qualifier).
Perhaps I was wrong to include induction under the word "proof", since that does have such a specific meaning, and should instead throw aside the direct proof-to-justification correlation I made earlier. Justification for knowledge does not require absolute deductive proof; good inductive testing is enough to call it knowledge. But knowledge does not neccesitate absolute certainty, only some degree of it.
Now, do you know that, or do you believe that? If you *know* that knowledge is only those ideas which can be proven, then prove it.
This is a tautological matter of definition of the word, such as knowing that all bachelors are unmarried men - that's just what the word means. As stated above, I concede that my definitions of 'knowledge' and 'proof' were slightly out of synch with the common definitions: induction does not count as proof, but rather, good testing; yet, good testing is enough justification for knowledge, although not certainty, which requires proof.
Consider these definitions: an 'idea' is a proposition, the basic atom of knowledge. Ideas are either 'true' or not, independant of what any people think of them, but they don't come clearly and unquestionably labeled as such. To 'believe' an idea is to consider it to be true. To 'test' that belief and get all positive results is to 'know' the idea to be true. More testing lends greater 'certainty' to that knowledge, and a deductive 'proof' that any test would yeild positive results yeilds absolute certainty. Can you agree with that?
(As an aside: I wonder if there might be some mathematical way to express that certainty, such as perhaps the number of tests 'N' divided by 'N+1', so that no finite number of tests will yeild absolute certainty).
Oh, and is it sufficient that it *could* be proven in order for it to be knowledge, or d
But, you see, that was one of my earlier questions (that I don't feel got fully addressed). Is it possible to know something without it being "logically proven"? If you define knowledge as "that which is logically proven", then, well, no. That's just the sort of corner you dig yourself into when you run too quickly into tautologies. But then, the logical system can't be logically proven, so according to that definition, there is no possible knowledge. This leads me to suspect that "knowledge" needs a new definition, one that doesn't necessitate that something contain a full mathematical proof to call something knowledge.
Knowledge is typically defined as requiring justification, which I find synonymous with proof. Perhaps proof is too fine and specific a word to use, with it's precise meaning in formal deductive logic. But in the more general sense, I see no problem with saying that, for all things knowable, logic must work, because proof is neccesary for knowledge and logic is the foundation of proof... just, with some qualification on "logic", as per below.
But if that's not clear, let me put it another way. If you want to *know* the sum of the angles of a triangle, then according to knowledge as "that which is proven", then you'll need to recollect all of Euclid up to the point of proving the sum of the angles of a triangle equals two right angles. However, this presupposes *knowledge* of logic, spacial intuition, and that you *know* all of Euclid's postulates and definitions and common notions. However, none of these things can be *proven*. Therefore, there can be no hope of attaining any knowledge of triangles.
Your triangle example is very tricky, but I think I have a solution without compromising much of my earlier stances. (A few things I may have said can't technically be known, despite their good testing and high probability, would under this definiton be actually knowable).
Simply put: proof may be inductive as well as (or instead of) deductive.
In the deductive logic, mathematical sense, this is no longer really "proof", but rather, "extremely good testing". For every value of X I have ever in my life encountered, and every value of X I can presently concieve of, X = X. This is not a deductive proof, but it is VERY inductively sound, and I believe that in light of your triangle example, that it must count as proof in the more general sense of knowledge, if we are to keep the common definition of knowledge, and not limit it to a further special case.
It seems only fair, actually, that inductive proof should count as well as deductive, if I am taking logic and observation to be on equal footing as primary sources of ideas. Deductive conclusions can be known a priori, without observation; but inductive conclusions are the result of repeated observations. If I'm treating observation equally, then consistent repeated observations should count for something the same as pure deductive reasoning does.
If we accept inductive as well as deductive proof, then it becomes phenominally easy to prove that deductive logic works: because it always has. That's not a deductively valid argument, but it is inductively valid. Inductive logic doesn't need to be proven that it always works 100% of the time, because it deals not with absolute certainties but with likelihoods; and fortunately in this case, X out of every X times, deductive logic works, so there seems to be 100% likelihood, inductively, that deductive logic works.
Ditto your triangles: every triangle ever measured (on a Euclidian flat surface) has had the sum of its angles equal two right angles, so inductively there is 100% likelihood that that is always true.
As for having absolute certainty from deductive proof, why not call that something other than the general term "knowledge". Call it, say, "certainty" perhaps? Certainty is a subset of knowledge, then, and can be substituted for "knowledge" in many of my earlier arguments to keep them valid.
Are you really prepared to say that there is such a thing as "false knowledge"? That opens a whole new can of worms. How does one distinguish between 'true knowledge' and 'false knowledge'? How can an immediate emotional state be 'false'? What does it mean to be 'false' in the context of our earlier discussion about the possibility that we live in an extra-logical universe where something might very well be both true and false at the same time?
I didn't mean "true knowledge" as oppose to "false knowledge". I meant "true" in the sense of I'm not misusing the word 'knowledge' where I should be using 'belief' or 'idea', but I mean actual, proven-true belief that I could really say I *know*.
Still, that we gain knowledge or ideas from language is not entirely clear. As you say, the impression of language is elementally sensation, interpreted by intellect (perhaps you'd use other words). So it's not it's own source, it seems, but a composite effect of two of your other sources of ideas.
Which is why I consider it a secondary source of ideas, because it is built upon logic (intellect) and observation (sensation).
Further, would you truly claim that language "contains" knowledge, ideas, or concepts? A statement itself means nothing without those to understand. And argument in a language that no one has ever spoken and no one will ever speak, would that contain more ideas than a rock?
Language no more "contains" knowledge of anything than photons "contain" the knowledge of the things I am seeing; as you say, it is the interpretation of these sources that leads to knowledge. But they do convey ideas, and as such, they are "sources" of ideas.
Likewise, pure logic doesn't really convey knowledge; it can give me the idea that "for all x, x=x", but that's a meaningless logicla construct without something to plug in for the x. Knowledge comes from the combination of ideas from both observation and logic, with emotion and language (both mixtures of the former two sources) being further sources of ideas to refine one's body of knowledge.
But isn't the "I feel angry" just the observation of emotion? Just as "I don't see red" and "the argument doesn't work" are observations sense and logic, respectively. However, the observation isn't necessary for the emotion to take place or to exercise influence over thoughts and actions and other feelings. In other words, you don't need to recognize that you're angry in order for the fact of being angry to affect you.
I'm not disputing that you might BE angry, and that it might be affecting you in various ways, including your ability to think logically; but the knowledge that you are angry comes through observation and reason. My eyes might be blue, but if I have never seen my reflection (or perhaps been told of my eye color), I don't know this. It doesn't change whether or not my eyes ARE blue, but only whether I KNOW they are blue.
Due to the tremendous influence of emotion, I'm saying I might say that emotional state is not a source of knowledge, but it's either a sort of knowledge itself, or a component of all other sources of ideas or knowledge. Whether your you're angry or calm or sad or happy or indifferent or detached, this influences all modes of thought.
To be honest, if i were constructing a venn diagram of "thought" or "knowledge", I'm not sure if I would put emotion in the center of it all, contained in everything, or as a super-set which encompasses everything, but it would probably hold one of those positions.
Ah, I see where we're having a difference here. I do have an all-encompassing concept of "happiness" separate from the emotions, what the Greeks called "eudamonia". It is a notion similar to knowledge - knowledge is the product of the process of ideas, and eudamonia is the product of the process of deeds. It's effectively the concept that "things are good", and reflects the overal behavior of a person as a system - I find it very hard to express in wo
I don't like arbitrary authority, so I don't like big centralized government. On the other hand, I cannot think of another way to slow down the assholes who want to charge me for the privilege of working (using "their" "intellectual" "property"). It's a dilemma that I don't know how to resolve.
I too have faced this dilemma, and believe the solution is simple (though of course, hard to impliment in the face of all the powerful people who would oppose it). Just remove one artificial construct from the economic system: corporations.
Corporations are not people and do not exist in nature. They are like patents or trademarks: a license granting certain extra rights to certain people and removing rights from others. Remove the concept of corporations and keep the rest of the American economy the same, and I imagine you'd see a much more fair market place.
You could still have "companies", but ultimately at the head of each company would be it's sole proprietor, who would be ultimately responsible for the actions of the company (although, of course, not for individual employees acting outside company policy). In effect, you would have an economy based strictly on people working for other people, with no artificial 'people' (corporations) involved; the most efficient organization of who-works-for-who would provide for the most efficient "company".
True, if a large company of people all working directly for one man was extremely successful, he would be a very wealthy man, but in such a case, I'd say such a phenominally successful manager would deserve it. He would have to make the company that successful using all the same above-the-law, clean-cut rules as everyone else, and take legal and financial responsibility for any screwups made under his watch. Thus you'd see much less underhanded illegitimate activity *coughENRONcough*, and you'd probably also see much less conglomeration under a single entity, and more cooperation between smaller, independant companies, to disperse the risk and responsibility around.
Think of it as the democratization of economy and the abolishment of the old corporate monarchies.
oh, I wasn't arguing with your separation of emotion into its own "source of knowledge", but more arguing about which of your modes of knowledge was more primary. You put reason and senses as primary, and emotion and language second.
I guess when I say "primary" I don't mean so much chronologically which gives you ideas first, or which is more internal or external, but primary as in foundational, which ones form the stronger base for true knowledge. As you say below, you might BE angry, which is an emotional expression (an action, not an idea), but you don't KNOW you are angry until you observe that you are grinding your teeth, at which point you realize you FEEL angry (which is an idea). Chronologically the emotional expression came first, but the knowledge of your anger came from the "feeling", which is built upon observation of yourself.
Tangentally, the counterpart to my philosophy of ideas is a philosophy of deed (ethics, basically), in which I also take these four basic components of senses, reason, emotion, and society, and concern myself with behavior in society (and acceptability), expression of emotions (and enjoyability), expectation in reasoning (and desire), and stimulation of the senses (and pleasure). In that part, I consider the emotional expression and social behavior the "primary" forms of action, as what stimulation you seek and what expectations you strive for are just manifestations of those.
Well, I might question language as a true form of knowledge. It seems more to me that language is a mode of expression, not knowledge. Language might allow you to pass along a rational form of knowledge through argument, or an emotional form of knowledge through poetry. But a kind of knowledge on it's own? I'm not so sure. Maybe if you explained.
I'm not calling language a form of knowledge, but a source of ideas. I think I misused the phrase "source of knowledge" earlier, substitute "ideas" in it instead. Talking to you here has given me some ideas, mostly logical ones, but I recieved these ideas through my senses and they are not internal to me, so they are subject not only to logical evaluation but also so sensory; did I read you right? Basically, pure logic is internal and pure observation is external; but I can also get observational ideas ("I feel angry", "I feel love") internally to myself, in my emotions, and I can get logical ideas (such as ones you've presented) externally to myself, through language.
Logical argumentation, on the other hand, requires a sort of removal from the situation around you. It requires attention to internal understanding of "what makes sense" and "what doesn't make sense". It requires that you cultivate an emotional state of detachment, since being too angry or upset or happy can throw your understanding and even perception way off the mark.
Therefore, I think I might place emotional input as more primary than logic. I might even place it above sensory input, given the way that perception, and perhaps even the senses themselves, can be affected by emotional state, and the way emotion seems to not need external input (at least not immediate input). At the very least, sensation seems to come from outside, and emotion seems to come from inside, which might be considered when deciding which is more fundamental to one's being.
You have a good point about emotion's influence on other aspects of thought, and I'm not really sure how to address it at the moment. I have given some thought to the order in which the four aspects should be addressed, but unfortunately I never wrote it down and remember it somewhat poorly.
I will say though, that I agree with you about emotion being more "central" to one's being. I have a graph I use to visualize my whole philosophy, a concept map of sorts; I place emotion and reason inside the realm of one's "mental reality", and senses and society in the realm of "perceptual reality". (There's also "physical reality", the real world, and "metaphysical reality", the abstract laws of the real world, but those aren't really relevant here). To have more certainty in your ideas, and more control of your deeds as well, requires a buildup from the inside out, starting with emotions and reason.
think I might say that expression and knowledge of emotion comes from internal observation of some non-logical aspect of the mind, but what of the non-logical aspect of the mind itself? Wouldn't that aspect be the emotion itself?
This is why I include emotion as a separate source of knowledge and don't just group it in as a function of the senses; it is fundamentally similar to the senses, however, which is why I say it is "effectively" (but not exactly, literally) "internal observation". I know I feel the emotion "love" the same way I know I see the color "red". As you say:
It's immediate, non-logical, and pre-linguistic, but it is none the less there, and we all "know what you mean" when you say you "love your mother". There doesn't even seem to be any requirement for rules or external stimuli. How, precisely, do you account for that?
To know "I am seeing the color red" requires only that I sense a certain stimulation of my eyes, and associate the word "red" with it - that simple definition of the word as that sensation is all the logical connection needed to think "I know that is red". Likewise, the only logical connection needed to know "I feel love" is the emotional feeling (composed of internal body sensations and the sensation of neurochemical states - all of which are in some sense 'observed' by yourself, though not as distinctly as visual or auditory sensations), and the word "love" to label it.
This is not to say that I could not see red or feel love if I didn't have the words "red" and "love", or some other words, to label them; just that I would not KNOW that what I was seeing was red, or what I was feeling was love. Many people I'm sure can remember a time of not knowing whether these new emotions they were feeling for someone were love or not, because they had not yet formed the association of the sensation to any symbolic idea, or word. Similarly, a blind person who regains his sight may ask what a new color he's just seen is. Or more complexly, who the person in that picture is, even though the person in the picture might be a good friend of his, simply because he doesn't know that the sight of that face is associated with the idea of that friend of his.
However, I'm left wondering if there might be other kinds of "knowledge" that aren't what we think of as "logical". I refer back to things like, "I love my mother". Might that be a sort of genuine knowledge that merely falls outside the realm of what's commonly referred to as "logic"? If we have an extra-logical universal set with the comprehensible as a subset of knowledge, and "logic" a subset of that, might there be room for something else, non-logical, but within comprehensible?
Well, the four sources of knowledge that I work with in my philosophy (I'm actually writing a paper on this ATM) are sensory observation, logical reasoning, emotional feelings, and social language. The first two I consider "primary", in that the latter are founded upon them: emotion is effectively the internal observation of some nonlogical aspect of your mind, and language is in effect a sort of external logic being conveyed to you through your senses.
So a statement such as "I love my mother" would be known through, in essense, observation: you observe in yourself the sensation and/or behavior of love, in association with the object of your mother.
I've thought of perhaps a nice analogy to help me wrap my head around this.
Consider the old metaphysical concept of our reality being a subset of another, greater reality; a dream, a simulation, or something of that nature. Within our reality, things seem to follow certain physical rules, and we can attempt to learn things about them: our reality is knowable by observation. There may be SOMETHING beyond it, but even if we can conclude for there that there is something (say by somehow proving that our reality is finite), we cannot observe it; it is beyond that facility of ours, and in fact the notion of "observation" doesn't very well even apply to it, as it is not "real" in the sense of what we consider "reality"; so it's not very well worth our time thinking about what we might see "out there" if we could look, because the notion of "looking out there" is nonsense.
The same seems to work for knowledge through reason. We've pretty clearly demonstrated here that there is a mental "realm" (so to speak), that cannot be logically known; there are ideas that just do not follow logic. We can know that they exist, just as we might someday know that an "outer" metaphysical reality exists, but we can't actually *know* anything about them, because we understand ideas through logic, so the notion of knowing an illogical idea is again nonsense.
So we could perhaps say that, within the domain of ideas that are knowable, logic must work, by definition, because logic is neccesary for proof and proof is neccesary for knowledge. We have basically defined "knowledge" as "that domain of ideas to which logic applies", and thus tautologically logic must apply to all ideas that are knowable.
We cannot prove that we can prove anything, because it begs the question (assumes its conclusion is true as a premise) and is thus logically false. However, this proof against proof relies on a logical fallacy to make it's point, contradicting itself (by assuming logic does work) and is thus logically false itself.
However, my own preceeding proof against the proof against proof is reliant on logical fallacy to make it's point, which goes back to the initial premise that logic works, which cannot be proven, and we're in a loop.
It's late and I'm not sure what this means. I thought for a moment I had a proof that logic doesn't work... which sounds self-contradictory, but if logic doesn't work then self-contradiction holds nothing against an argument.
Let me think freely for a moment...
If you assume that logic doesn't work, then that assumption reinforces itself, because you cannot prove, given that assumption, _ANYTHING_, including that proofs mean anything. Though assuming that logic doesn't work, you could then be free to just assume anything else, including that logic DOES work.
But if you assume that logic does work, then you get into the above recursively self-contradictory loop, which seems (though my mind is not working it out rigorously right now) to prove that the assuption that logic works is, in itself, logically false, bringing you right back to "logic doesn't work".
Strictly from the roots of the words that may be correct, but in modern English the term "atheist" refers to one who specifically believes in a lack of God, not one who lacks a belief in God. That is, one who would say "Goes does not exist. Period." rather than "I've seen no proof that God exists, so I will not accept the proposition that he does."
The former is an inherantly unprovable statement (you cannot prove a negative) and thus an article of faith; the latter is a rational and strictly scientific viewpoint that requires no faith whatsoever. You sound, from your earlier post, that you merely lack a belief in God; that it has not been proven to you that God exists, so you take the logical position (given the principle of bivalence the the subsequent impossibility of assuming positive propositions to be true by default) of assuming the proposition "God exists" to be false unless proven otherwise. If that is so, then you are what is called an agnostic, not an atheist.
DISCLAIMER: I consider myself an agnostic and do not subscribe to any religion. Furthermore I am making no value judgements in this post; this is merely a matter of semantics.
I myself hold to four axioms, corresponding to the four philosophically traditional sources of knowledge (senses, reason, emotion, and language), one of which addresses your concern:
That logic works such that valid reasoning from true premises always leads to true conclusions (reason) - basically, that there is objective "truth" of some sort.
That observations are of a consistent universe, regardless of it's metaphysical nature (senses).
That other beings similar in facilities to myself exist with whom I can interact (language, or more aptly described, social learning).
And that things other than my personal, immediate emotions matter - basically, that there is a universal "good" of some sort.
None of these can be proven, but none of them have yet been satisfactorily falsified in my experience, so they seem good theories to me.
GPL gives freedom (to control the relicensing of his code) to the developer by placing limits (only to GPL projects) on the distribution of the code.
BSD gives freedom (of distribution) to the code, by placing limits (on control of relicensing) on the developer.
You could go even further in either direction of the spectrum.In the BSD direction you will hit the public domain licenses (complete freedom of code distribution, complete lack of developer relicensing control), and in the GPL direction you will hit proprietary licenses (complete lack of code distribution freedom, complete control by the developer).
So it depends on what "freedom" you're talking about - not "speech" vs "beer", but producer vs product. To have one neccesarily requires the sacrifice of the other, and there are many places on the spectrum to choose from. If your concern is with the freedom of your code to spread and be used anywhere, BSD is more free than GPL, and public domain is the most free. If your concern is with your freedom to control the use of your code, then GPL is more free than BSD, and proprietary licences afford you the most freedoms.
My first thought in response to this, which I'd be rather surprised if nobody in the Wiki community has thought of this before: why not allow two different viewpoints in one article? Similar to the point-counterpoint articles in many newspapers, if an article on Wikipedia is controversial enough to spawn an edit war, just format the page into two columns (or some such) and have both, opposing viewpoints covered, in all of their bias.
Heck, that in general seems a much better idea than trying to maintain single-source impartiality. Instead of "some people thing this, but they don't take into account the views of that", just let authors from both sides build up their own polar views in the split-article, and let readers decided where in the continuum between them the truth lies. In some (many?) cases one side may just be full of shit, but let the reader decide that.
Seriously, this could have very useful applications. I think a lot of the problems we have with road rage today is that communication is limited to hand gestures and obnoxious horns.
If you barge your way like an asshole through pedestrian traffic (on foot), you'll get yelled at. Likewise, it's possible to say "excuse me" and avoid having to barge in the first place. In cars, all you can do to approximate an "excuse me" is tailgate, honk, flash your brights, gesture in some way... all of which is nowhere near as polite and likely to piss off the person you're trying to get the message to.
Some sort of gesturally activated car-to-care comm system would make things flow much more smoothly. Flick some thumbstick to indicate the direction you want to signal (the SUV with brights behind you, the person to your right blocking your exit, the slowpoke in front of you going 20Mph under the speed limit on a one-lane mountain road) and just speak, hands-free.
Many years ago I worked out something I called the Neometric Calendar. Generic stupid name but I think the idea still works well.
Six day weeks. Five weeks per month. Twelve months per year.
Every three months add an extra day (I'd do it in the middle of each season, before or after Feb, May, Aug, and Nov).
Add another day per year (I'd do the Winter Solstice).
On leap years (every 4 except every 100 except every 400), add another day (I'd do Summer Solstice).
A Six-day week is halvable and thirdable. Nobody cares how many weeks are in a month and it's not standard now anyway. A twelve month year is halvable, thirdable, quarterable and sixthable. The programming logic of it is simple:
Six days per week, five weeks per month, every three months add a day, every twelve months add a day, that's one year, every four (except every 100 (except every 400)) years add a day.
Wait, how is that possible? Your post pointing out the irony in the confusing nature of his confusion-oriented post is a part of this branch of discussion, so how could the amount of confusion in your post alone exceed the total amount of confusion in the superset of posts containing it? It's logically impossible!
This is in response to this entire sub-thread started by your post:
I am bisexual. I find nothing offensive whatsoever in the grandparent's post. He is not describing PROBLEMS, he is describing SYMPTOMS of a problem, that may have evolved as a population control mechanism (a GOOD thing, so that we don't overpopulate ourselves to death). There was no value judgement involved.
That said, I think his science is a little bad - I can't think of any selection mechanism that would lead a population to suddenly increase it's homosexual behavior due to overpopulation. But then, we don't know exactly why people have homosexual tendancies. It seems to be a naturally occurring phenomenon in more species than humans, and is not a black-or-white thing (witness people like myself).
So I don't think homosexuality is a population-control mechanism, but it's not neccesarily a condemnation of the practice to say that it might be.
I'm curious... what exactly makes me a jackass? Is it suggesting that interactivity in entertainment is good? (That is, games are in such a way superior to TV).
Or is it suggesting that people be involved in the creation of their own entertainment, instead of relying on others for it? (Doing something creative, like art or writing, or making your own games or what have you).
Or is it the suggestion that it's nice outside, and the natural world is full of lots of pre-made sensory experiences ready to be enjoyed?
Maybe I didn't lay the sarcasm on thick enough, and you think I'm actually calling people who play video games lazy bums, categorically?
Let me be perfectly clear: 1) I watch TV some times. I enjoy some programs. But not enough to own a set or subscribe to cable or satellite. And I think there can be much better forms of entertainment. Nothing wrong with watching TV, unless that's all you do. 2) I enjoy playing video games. In fact I used to enjoy it so much, I decided to start making them. Problem is, I enjoy making them more than playing them, so I don't play them as much anymore. Nothing wrong with playing games, unless that's all you do. 3) I'm a computer geek, at least in part. I love to sit around in front of my screens and build things, or write things, or just browse the net or chat. Nothing wrong with working on a computer, unless you have to work for EA, cause... 4) It's really nice outside, too, and I see so little of it between work, school, and computer-based projects, that what little free time I spend is out there enjoying nature, while it still lasts.
Because people are morons who would rather passively sit and be hypnotised by whatever is fed to them, rather than actively engage themselves in their own entertainment.
And since I'm sure someone will bring this up somewhere: heaven forbid those lazy videogaming bums get off their, er... bums... and actually go OUTSIDE and DO something for entertainment.
(For the record, I don't own a TV but don't mind watching it, or movies, at times; I used to be a hardcore gamer but now I just make games for a hobby; and I prefer to spend what little time I don't spend making things or working, appreciating what's left of the great outdoors),
Slashdot Mirror
MacWorldExpo.com is dead.
Apple's goal with allowing cloning was for other manufacturers to licence their basic Mac tech (both HW and SW) and extend it into markets that Apple themselves couldn't reach, growing the MacOS marketplace. The problem was that cloners instead made machines targeted at the exact same range as Apple, taking their (Apple's) R&D investment which they got for cheap and using it to cannibalize Apple's own sales.
When Jobs returned, he cranked up the licencing fees when licence renewal time came for the cloners. None of the cloners would go for it because it ruined their business model. (I believe UMAX was an exception to this but I don't remember the details).
If the cloners had instead taken that Mac tech and gone after new markets, making something like the Xserve or Mac Mini (which at that time had no equivalent in Apple's lineup), it would have been what Apple had hoped for opening up cloning. But as it was, there was no incentive for cloners to do such a thing - far easier to make a quick buck by taking Apple's cheap licensing and then gobbling up their market.
PowerComputing, of "You can take my Mac when you pry my cold dead fingers off the mouse!" fame, even admitted later that they had only intended to get a start with Mac cloning, as a big fish in a small pond, to use as leverage to start off doing PC cloning instead. Which they wound up doing after Jobs returned... and I haven't heard of them since. Not so easy competing on level grounds, is it?
This iPod Shuffle do not eat!
This is mostly an American vs British distinction in my experience: Americans tend to call corporations "it" while Brits tend to call them "they". Growing up in American I tend toward the former but now that you mention it, the latter fits my philosophy a bit better.
Corporations are non-entities: they do not exist as natural things, but are government licences granted to groups of individuals. I find that this is one of the biggest failings of our capitalist economy or any so-called free market, and that without such a construct, capitalism would function much more fairly and efficiently.
I think I'll start calling corporations "they" now...
Really? You don't think you're fudging that a bit? How large must X be before we're satisfied? Have you done many experiments? How often do you get 100%? Is 98% sufficient to say, "it's pretty much 100%"? Are you seriously telling me that, in your entire life, you've never struck a deductive argument that didn't seem to work out, but you couldn't tell why?
I can't off the top of my head recall any times that didn't turn out to be because I wasn't formulating the argument properly. Granted, that may sound like a cop-out, but consider: I also can't recall any time that I have flown off the Earth because gravity stopped working. It's still possible that I might have... but if you start calling that into question, then we've left the realm of rational discussion, because you could claim that I may have seen evidence of any impossible thing and I simply don't remember it.
I have a magic rock that keeps tigers away. I know it's magic because, the times that I've carried it, 100% of the time, I haven't seen tigers.
[ObSimpsonsRef]Nine-times, I would like to BUY your magic rock![/ObSimpsonsRef]
Then why is it, do you think, that Euclid went through a proof, instead of just *measuring*? How many triangles have you summed the angles of? What was your margin of error? Could it have been 179.99999999999999999 degrees? And what do you find more convincing, the measurement or the proof?
This is why I mentioned the word "certainty". Absolute certainty is better to have than just knowledge, which can have different degrees of certainty. Knowledge in the normal English meaning, not some specifically constructed deductive-logician's meaning, would include the type of knowledge that most people basically educated in math have about triangles and the sums of their angles. Most people aren't aware of Euclids deductive proof of it, but they still *know* it. They just aren't absolutely *certain*.
A child need only touch a hot frying pan once to KNOW that it burns. Now that knowledge may not be absolutely certain, if the child's conclusion is incompletely defined (for example, "frying pans burn" without the "hot" qualifier).
Perhaps I was wrong to include induction under the word "proof", since that does have such a specific meaning, and should instead throw aside the direct proof-to-justification correlation I made earlier. Justification for knowledge does not require absolute deductive proof; good inductive testing is enough to call it knowledge. But knowledge does not neccesitate absolute certainty, only some degree of it.
Now, do you know that, or do you believe that? If you *know* that knowledge is only those ideas which can be proven, then prove it.
This is a tautological matter of definition of the word, such as knowing that all bachelors are unmarried men - that's just what the word means. As stated above, I concede that my definitions of 'knowledge' and 'proof' were slightly out of synch with the common definitions: induction does not count as proof, but rather, good testing; yet, good testing is enough justification for knowledge, although not certainty, which requires proof.
Consider these definitions: an 'idea' is a proposition, the basic atom of knowledge. Ideas are either 'true' or not, independant of what any people think of them, but they don't come clearly and unquestionably labeled as such. To 'believe' an idea is to consider it to be true. To 'test' that belief and get all positive results is to 'know' the idea to be true. More testing lends greater 'certainty' to that knowledge, and a deductive 'proof' that any test would yeild positive results yeilds absolute certainty. Can you agree with that?
(As an aside: I wonder if there might be some mathematical way to express that certainty, such as perhaps the number of tests 'N' divided by 'N+1', so that no finite number of tests will yeild absolute certainty).
Oh, and is it sufficient that it *could* be proven in order for it to be knowledge, or d
But, you see, that was one of my earlier questions (that I don't feel got fully addressed). Is it possible to know something without it being "logically proven"? If you define knowledge as "that which is logically proven", then, well, no. That's just the sort of corner you dig yourself into when you run too quickly into tautologies. But then, the logical system can't be logically proven, so according to that definition, there is no possible knowledge. This leads me to suspect that "knowledge" needs a new definition, one that doesn't necessitate that something contain a full mathematical proof to call something knowledge.
Knowledge is typically defined as requiring justification, which I find synonymous with proof. Perhaps proof is too fine and specific a word to use, with it's precise meaning in formal deductive logic. But in the more general sense, I see no problem with saying that, for all things knowable, logic must work, because proof is neccesary for knowledge and logic is the foundation of proof... just, with some qualification on "logic", as per below.
But if that's not clear, let me put it another way. If you want to *know* the sum of the angles of a triangle, then according to knowledge as "that which is proven", then you'll need to recollect all of Euclid up to the point of proving the sum of the angles of a triangle equals two right angles. However, this presupposes *knowledge* of logic, spacial intuition, and that you *know* all of Euclid's postulates and definitions and common notions. However, none of these things can be *proven*. Therefore, there can be no hope of attaining any knowledge of triangles.
Your triangle example is very tricky, but I think I have a solution without compromising much of my earlier stances. (A few things I may have said can't technically be known, despite their good testing and high probability, would under this definiton be actually knowable).
Simply put: proof may be inductive as well as (or instead of) deductive.
In the deductive logic, mathematical sense, this is no longer really "proof", but rather, "extremely good testing". For every value of X I have ever in my life encountered, and every value of X I can presently concieve of, X = X. This is not a deductive proof, but it is VERY inductively sound, and I believe that in light of your triangle example, that it must count as proof in the more general sense of knowledge, if we are to keep the common definition of knowledge, and not limit it to a further special case.
It seems only fair, actually, that inductive proof should count as well as deductive, if I am taking logic and observation to be on equal footing as primary sources of ideas. Deductive conclusions can be known a priori, without observation; but inductive conclusions are the result of repeated observations. If I'm treating observation equally, then consistent repeated observations should count for something the same as pure deductive reasoning does.
If we accept inductive as well as deductive proof, then it becomes phenominally easy to prove that deductive logic works: because it always has. That's not a deductively valid argument, but it is inductively valid. Inductive logic doesn't need to be proven that it always works 100% of the time, because it deals not with absolute certainties but with likelihoods; and fortunately in this case, X out of every X times, deductive logic works, so there seems to be 100% likelihood, inductively, that deductive logic works.
Ditto your triangles: every triangle ever measured (on a Euclidian flat surface) has had the sum of its angles equal two right angles, so inductively there is 100% likelihood that that is always true.
As for having absolute certainty from deductive proof, why not call that something other than the general term "knowledge". Call it, say, "certainty" perhaps? Certainty is a subset of knowledge, then, and can be substituted for "knowledge" in many of my earlier arguments to keep them valid.
So, the only way to su
Are you really prepared to say that there is such a thing as "false knowledge"? That opens a whole new can of worms. How does one distinguish between 'true knowledge' and 'false knowledge'? How can an immediate emotional state be 'false'? What does it mean to be 'false' in the context of our earlier discussion about the possibility that we live in an extra-logical universe where something might very well be both true and false at the same time?
I didn't mean "true knowledge" as oppose to "false knowledge". I meant "true" in the sense of I'm not misusing the word 'knowledge' where I should be using 'belief' or 'idea', but I mean actual, proven-true belief that I could really say I *know*.
Still, that we gain knowledge or ideas from language is not entirely clear. As you say, the impression of language is elementally sensation, interpreted by intellect (perhaps you'd use other words). So it's not it's own source, it seems, but a composite effect of two of your other sources of ideas.
Which is why I consider it a secondary source of ideas, because it is built upon logic (intellect) and observation (sensation).
Further, would you truly claim that language "contains" knowledge, ideas, or concepts? A statement itself means nothing without those to understand. And argument in a language that no one has ever spoken and no one will ever speak, would that contain more ideas than a rock?
Language no more "contains" knowledge of anything than photons "contain" the knowledge of the things I am seeing; as you say, it is the interpretation of these sources that leads to knowledge. But they do convey ideas, and as such, they are "sources" of ideas.
Likewise, pure logic doesn't really convey knowledge; it can give me the idea that "for all x, x=x", but that's a meaningless logicla construct without something to plug in for the x. Knowledge comes from the combination of ideas from both observation and logic, with emotion and language (both mixtures of the former two sources) being further sources of ideas to refine one's body of knowledge.
But isn't the "I feel angry" just the observation of emotion? Just as "I don't see red" and "the argument doesn't work" are observations sense and logic, respectively. However, the observation isn't necessary for the emotion to take place or to exercise influence over thoughts and actions and other feelings. In other words, you don't need to recognize that you're angry in order for the fact of being angry to affect you.
I'm not disputing that you might BE angry, and that it might be affecting you in various ways, including your ability to think logically; but the knowledge that you are angry comes through observation and reason. My eyes might be blue, but if I have never seen my reflection (or perhaps been told of my eye color), I don't know this. It doesn't change whether or not my eyes ARE blue, but only whether I KNOW they are blue.
Due to the tremendous influence of emotion, I'm saying I might say that emotional state is not a source of knowledge, but it's either a sort of knowledge itself, or a component of all other sources of ideas or knowledge. Whether your you're angry or calm or sad or happy or indifferent or detached, this influences all modes of thought.
To be honest, if i were constructing a venn diagram of "thought" or "knowledge", I'm not sure if I would put emotion in the center of it all, contained in everything, or as a super-set which encompasses everything, but it would probably hold one of those positions.
Ah, I see where we're having a difference here. I do have an all-encompassing concept of "happiness" separate from the emotions, what the Greeks called "eudamonia". It is a notion similar to knowledge - knowledge is the product of the process of ideas, and eudamonia is the product of the process of deeds. It's effectively the concept that "things are good", and reflects the overal behavior of a person as a system - I find it very hard to express in wo
I don't like arbitrary authority, so I don't like big centralized government. On the other hand, I cannot think of another way to slow down the assholes who want to charge me for the privilege of working (using "their" "intellectual" "property"). It's a dilemma that I don't know how to resolve.
I too have faced this dilemma, and believe the solution is simple (though of course, hard to impliment in the face of all the powerful people who would oppose it). Just remove one artificial construct from the economic system: corporations.
Corporations are not people and do not exist in nature. They are like patents or trademarks: a license granting certain extra rights to certain people and removing rights from others. Remove the concept of corporations and keep the rest of the American economy the same, and I imagine you'd see a much more fair market place.
You could still have "companies", but ultimately at the head of each company would be it's sole proprietor, who would be ultimately responsible for the actions of the company (although, of course, not for individual employees acting outside company policy). In effect, you would have an economy based strictly on people working for other people, with no artificial 'people' (corporations) involved; the most efficient organization of who-works-for-who would provide for the most efficient "company".
True, if a large company of people all working directly for one man was extremely successful, he would be a very wealthy man, but in such a case, I'd say such a phenominally successful manager would deserve it. He would have to make the company that successful using all the same above-the-law, clean-cut rules as everyone else, and take legal and financial responsibility for any screwups made under his watch. Thus you'd see much less underhanded illegitimate activity *coughENRONcough*, and you'd probably also see much less conglomeration under a single entity, and more cooperation between smaller, independant companies, to disperse the risk and responsibility around.
Think of it as the democratization of economy and the abolishment of the old corporate monarchies.
oh, I wasn't arguing with your separation of emotion into its own "source of knowledge", but more arguing about which of your modes of knowledge was more primary. You put reason and senses as primary, and emotion and language second.
I guess when I say "primary" I don't mean so much chronologically which gives you ideas first, or which is more internal or external, but primary as in foundational, which ones form the stronger base for true knowledge. As you say below, you might BE angry, which is an emotional expression (an action, not an idea), but you don't KNOW you are angry until you observe that you are grinding your teeth, at which point you realize you FEEL angry (which is an idea). Chronologically the emotional expression came first, but the knowledge of your anger came from the "feeling", which is built upon observation of yourself.
Tangentally, the counterpart to my philosophy of ideas is a philosophy of deed (ethics, basically), in which I also take these four basic components of senses, reason, emotion, and society, and concern myself with behavior in society (and acceptability), expression of emotions (and enjoyability), expectation in reasoning (and desire), and stimulation of the senses (and pleasure). In that part, I consider the emotional expression and social behavior the "primary" forms of action, as what stimulation you seek and what expectations you strive for are just manifestations of those.
Well, I might question language as a true form of knowledge. It seems more to me that language is a mode of expression, not knowledge. Language might allow you to pass along a rational form of knowledge through argument, or an emotional form of knowledge through poetry. But a kind of knowledge on it's own? I'm not so sure. Maybe if you explained.
I'm not calling language a form of knowledge, but a source of ideas. I think I misused the phrase "source of knowledge" earlier, substitute "ideas" in it instead. Talking to you here has given me some ideas, mostly logical ones, but I recieved these ideas through my senses and they are not internal to me, so they are subject not only to logical evaluation but also so sensory; did I read you right? Basically, pure logic is internal and pure observation is external; but I can also get observational ideas ("I feel angry", "I feel love") internally to myself, in my emotions, and I can get logical ideas (such as ones you've presented) externally to myself, through language.
Logical argumentation, on the other hand, requires a sort of removal from the situation around you. It requires attention to internal understanding of "what makes sense" and "what doesn't make sense". It requires that you cultivate an emotional state of detachment, since being too angry or upset or happy can throw your understanding and even perception way off the mark.
Therefore, I think I might place emotional input as more primary than logic. I might even place it above sensory input, given the way that perception, and perhaps even the senses themselves, can be affected by emotional state, and the way emotion seems to not need external input (at least not immediate input). At the very least, sensation seems to come from outside, and emotion seems to come from inside, which might be considered when deciding which is more fundamental to one's being.
You have a good point about emotion's influence on other aspects of thought, and I'm not really sure how to address it at the moment. I have given some thought to the order in which the four aspects should be addressed, but unfortunately I never wrote it down and remember it somewhat poorly.
I will say though, that I agree with you about emotion being more "central" to one's being. I have a graph I use to visualize my whole philosophy, a concept map of sorts; I place emotion and reason inside the realm of one's "mental reality", and senses and society in the realm of "perceptual reality". (There's also "physical reality", the real world, and "metaphysical reality", the abstract laws of the real world, but those aren't really relevant here). To have more certainty in your ideas, and more control of your deeds as well, requires a buildup from the inside out, starting with emotions and reason.
think I might say that expression and knowledge of emotion comes from internal observation of some non-logical aspect of the mind, but what of the non-logical aspect of the mind itself? Wouldn't that aspect be the emotion itself?
This is why I include emotion as a separate source of knowledge and don't just group it in as a function of the senses; it is fundamentally similar to the senses, however, which is why I say it is "effectively" (but not exactly, literally) "internal observation". I know I feel the emotion "love" the same way I know I see the color "red". As you say:
It's immediate, non-logical, and pre-linguistic, but it is none the less there, and we all "know what you mean" when you say you "love your mother". There doesn't even seem to be any requirement for rules or external stimuli. How, precisely, do you account for that?
To know "I am seeing the color red" requires only that I sense a certain stimulation of my eyes, and associate the word "red" with it - that simple definition of the word as that sensation is all the logical connection needed to think "I know that is red". Likewise, the only logical connection needed to know "I feel love" is the emotional feeling (composed of internal body sensations and the sensation of neurochemical states - all of which are in some sense 'observed' by yourself, though not as distinctly as visual or auditory sensations), and the word "love" to label it.
This is not to say that I could not see red or feel love if I didn't have the words "red" and "love", or some other words, to label them; just that I would not KNOW that what I was seeing was red, or what I was feeling was love. Many people I'm sure can remember a time of not knowing whether these new emotions they were feeling for someone were love or not, because they had not yet formed the association of the sensation to any symbolic idea, or word. Similarly, a blind person who regains his sight may ask what a new color he's just seen is. Or more complexly, who the person in that picture is, even though the person in the picture might be a good friend of his, simply because he doesn't know that the sight of that face is associated with the idea of that friend of his.
Pretty good thinking, if you ask me.
Thank you.
However, I'm left wondering if there might be other kinds of "knowledge" that aren't what we think of as "logical". I refer back to things like, "I love my mother". Might that be a sort of genuine knowledge that merely falls outside the realm of what's commonly referred to as "logic"? If we have an extra-logical universal set with the comprehensible as a subset of knowledge, and "logic" a subset of that, might there be room for something else, non-logical, but within comprehensible?
Well, the four sources of knowledge that I work with in my philosophy (I'm actually writing a paper on this ATM) are sensory observation, logical reasoning, emotional feelings, and social language. The first two I consider "primary", in that the latter are founded upon them: emotion is effectively the internal observation of some nonlogical aspect of your mind, and language is in effect a sort of external logic being conveyed to you through your senses.
So a statement such as "I love my mother" would be known through, in essense, observation: you observe in yourself the sensation and/or behavior of love, in association with the object of your mother.
I've thought of perhaps a nice analogy to help me wrap my head around this.
Consider the old metaphysical concept of our reality being a subset of another, greater reality; a dream, a simulation, or something of that nature. Within our reality, things seem to follow certain physical rules, and we can attempt to learn things about them: our reality is knowable by observation. There may be SOMETHING beyond it, but even if we can conclude for there that there is something (say by somehow proving that our reality is finite), we cannot observe it; it is beyond that facility of ours, and in fact the notion of "observation" doesn't very well even apply to it, as it is not "real" in the sense of what we consider "reality"; so it's not very well worth our time thinking about what we might see "out there" if we could look, because the notion of "looking out there" is nonsense.
The same seems to work for knowledge through reason. We've pretty clearly demonstrated here that there is a mental "realm" (so to speak), that cannot be logically known; there are ideas that just do not follow logic. We can know that they exist, just as we might someday know that an "outer" metaphysical reality exists, but we can't actually *know* anything about them, because we understand ideas through logic, so the notion of knowing an illogical idea is again nonsense.
So we could perhaps say that, within the domain of ideas that are knowable, logic must work, by definition, because logic is neccesary for proof and proof is neccesary for knowledge. We have basically defined "knowledge" as "that domain of ideas to which logic applies", and thus tautologically logic must apply to all ideas that are knowable.
Someone help me here...
We cannot prove that we can prove anything, because it begs the question (assumes its conclusion is true as a premise) and is thus logically false. However, this proof against proof relies on a logical fallacy to make it's point, contradicting itself (by assuming logic does work) and is thus logically false itself.
However, my own preceeding proof against the proof against proof is reliant on logical fallacy to make it's point, which goes back to the initial premise that logic works, which cannot be proven, and we're in a loop.
It's late and I'm not sure what this means. I thought for a moment I had a proof that logic doesn't work... which sounds self-contradictory, but if logic doesn't work then self-contradiction holds nothing against an argument.
Let me think freely for a moment...
If you assume that logic doesn't work, then that assumption reinforces itself, because you cannot prove, given that assumption, _ANYTHING_, including that proofs mean anything. Though assuming that logic doesn't work, you could then be free to just assume anything else, including that logic DOES work.
But if you assume that logic does work, then you get into the above recursively self-contradictory loop, which seems (though my mind is not working it out rigorously right now) to prove that the assuption that logic works is, in itself, logically false, bringing you right back to "logic doesn't work".
Someone please help me clarify all this.
Strictly from the roots of the words that may be correct, but in modern English the term "atheist" refers to one who specifically believes in a lack of God, not one who lacks a belief in God. That is, one who would say "Goes does not exist. Period." rather than "I've seen no proof that God exists, so I will not accept the proposition that he does."
The former is an inherantly unprovable statement (you cannot prove a negative) and thus an article of faith; the latter is a rational and strictly scientific viewpoint that requires no faith whatsoever. You sound, from your earlier post, that you merely lack a belief in God; that it has not been proven to you that God exists, so you take the logical position (given the principle of bivalence the the subsequent impossibility of assuming positive propositions to be true by default) of assuming the proposition "God exists" to be false unless proven otherwise. If that is so, then you are what is called an agnostic, not an atheist.
DISCLAIMER: I consider myself an agnostic and do not subscribe to any religion. Furthermore I am making no value judgements in this post; this is merely a matter of semantics.
I myself hold to four axioms, corresponding to the four philosophically traditional sources of knowledge (senses, reason, emotion, and language), one of which addresses your concern:
That logic works such that valid reasoning from true premises always leads to true conclusions (reason) - basically, that there is objective "truth" of some sort.
That observations are of a consistent universe, regardless of it's metaphysical nature (senses).
That other beings similar in facilities to myself exist with whom I can interact (language, or more aptly described, social learning).
And that things other than my personal, immediate emotions matter - basically, that there is a universal "good" of some sort.
None of these can be proven, but none of them have yet been satisfactorily falsified in my experience, so they seem good theories to me.
This has been said before, and not by me:
GPL gives freedom (to control the relicensing of his code) to the developer by placing limits (only to GPL projects) on the distribution of the code.
BSD gives freedom (of distribution) to the code, by placing limits (on control of relicensing) on the developer.
You could go even further in either direction of the spectrum.In the BSD direction you will hit the public domain licenses (complete freedom of code distribution, complete lack of developer relicensing control), and in the GPL direction you will hit proprietary licenses (complete lack of code distribution freedom, complete control by the developer).
So it depends on what "freedom" you're talking about - not "speech" vs "beer", but producer vs product. To have one neccesarily requires the sacrifice of the other, and there are many places on the spectrum to choose from. If your concern is with the freedom of your code to spread and be used anywhere, BSD is more free than GPL, and public domain is the most free. If your concern is with your freedom to control the use of your code, then GPL is more free than BSD, and proprietary licences afford you the most freedoms.
The choice is yours.
"There may be ways to reduce significantly the risk of future attacks but there is no doubts in my mind that the US will be attacked in the future."
Not if we destroy ourselves before the next time someone tries it. You can't kill me if I'm already dead!
My first thought in response to this, which I'd be rather surprised if nobody in the Wiki community has thought of this before: why not allow two different viewpoints in one article? Similar to the point-counterpoint articles in many newspapers, if an article on Wikipedia is controversial enough to spawn an edit war, just format the page into two columns (or some such) and have both, opposing viewpoints covered, in all of their bias.
Heck, that in general seems a much better idea than trying to maintain single-source impartiality. Instead of "some people thing this, but they don't take into account the views of that", just let authors from both sides build up their own polar views in the split-article, and let readers decided where in the continuum between them the truth lies. In some (many?) cases one side may just be full of shit, but let the reader decide that.
Seriously, this could have very useful applications. I think a lot of the problems we have with road rage today is that communication is limited to hand gestures and obnoxious horns.
If you barge your way like an asshole through pedestrian traffic (on foot), you'll get yelled at. Likewise, it's possible to say "excuse me" and avoid having to barge in the first place. In cars, all you can do to approximate an "excuse me" is tailgate, honk, flash your brights, gesture in some way... all of which is nowhere near as polite and likely to piss off the person you're trying to get the message to.
Some sort of gesturally activated car-to-care comm system would make things flow much more smoothly. Flick some thumbstick to indicate the direction you want to signal (the SUV with brights behind you, the person to your right blocking your exit, the slowpoke in front of you going 20Mph under the speed limit on a one-lane mountain road) and just speak, hands-free.
Many years ago I worked out something I called the Neometric Calendar. Generic stupid name but I think the idea still works well.
Six day weeks.
Five weeks per month.
Twelve months per year.
Every three months add an extra day (I'd do it in the middle of each season, before or after Feb, May, Aug, and Nov).
Add another day per year (I'd do the Winter Solstice).
On leap years (every 4 except every 100 except every 400), add another day (I'd do Summer Solstice).
A Six-day week is halvable and thirdable. Nobody cares how many weeks are in a month and it's not standard now anyway. A twelve month year is halvable, thirdable, quarterable and sixthable. The programming logic of it is simple:
Six days per week, five weeks per month, every three months add a day, every twelve months add a day, that's one year, every four (except every 100 (except every 400)) years add a day.
This "old people in Korea" thing seems to be a new meme that I don't even get the humor value of... would someone care to explain?
Wait, how is that possible? Your post pointing out the irony in the confusing nature of his confusion-oriented post is a part of this branch of discussion, so how could the amount of confusion in your post alone exceed the total amount of confusion in the superset of posts containing it? It's logically impossible!
This is in response to this entire sub-thread started by your post:
I am bisexual. I find nothing offensive whatsoever in the grandparent's post. He is not describing PROBLEMS, he is describing SYMPTOMS of a problem, that may have evolved as a population control mechanism (a GOOD thing, so that we don't overpopulate ourselves to death). There was no value judgement involved.
That said, I think his science is a little bad - I can't think of any selection mechanism that would lead a population to suddenly increase it's homosexual behavior due to overpopulation. But then, we don't know exactly why people have homosexual tendancies. It seems to be a naturally occurring phenomenon in more species than humans, and is not a black-or-white thing (witness people like myself).
So I don't think homosexuality is a population-control mechanism, but it's not neccesarily a condemnation of the practice to say that it might be.
I'm curious... what exactly makes me a jackass? Is it suggesting that interactivity in entertainment is good? (That is, games are in such a way superior to TV).
Or is it suggesting that people be involved in the creation of their own entertainment, instead of relying on others for it? (Doing something creative, like art or writing, or making your own games or what have you).
Or is it the suggestion that it's nice outside, and the natural world is full of lots of pre-made sensory experiences ready to be enjoyed?
Maybe I didn't lay the sarcasm on thick enough, and you think I'm actually calling people who play video games lazy bums, categorically?
Let me be perfectly clear:
1) I watch TV some times. I enjoy some programs. But not enough to own a set or subscribe to cable or satellite. And I think there can be much better forms of entertainment. Nothing wrong with watching TV, unless that's all you do.
2) I enjoy playing video games. In fact I used to enjoy it so much, I decided to start making them. Problem is, I enjoy making them more than playing them, so I don't play them as much anymore. Nothing wrong with playing games, unless that's all you do.
3) I'm a computer geek, at least in part. I love to sit around in front of my screens and build things, or write things, or just browse the net or chat. Nothing wrong with working on a computer, unless you have to work for EA, cause...
4) It's really nice outside, too, and I see so little of it between work, school, and computer-based projects, that what little free time I spend is out there enjoying nature, while it still lasts.
Still think I'm a jackass? I'd like to know why.
Because people are morons who would rather passively sit and be hypnotised by whatever is fed to them, rather than actively engage themselves in their own entertainment.
And since I'm sure someone will bring this up somewhere: heaven forbid those lazy videogaming bums get off their, er... bums... and actually go OUTSIDE and DO something for entertainment.
(For the record, I don't own a TV but don't mind watching it, or movies, at times; I used to be a hardcore gamer but now I just make games for a hobby; and I prefer to spend what little time I don't spend making things or working, appreciating what's left of the great outdoors),