Why should you even care about your own personal survival and comfort? Obviously most people do, but that's a far cry from should.
Even if God exists, why should you do what he commands? Even if the answer is back to "because he will punish you if you don't", why should I avoid punishment? That is, come back to the first question up there: why should I care about my own personal survival and comfort?
Most people do care about their own personal survival and comfort, sure. But then a lot of people just do have empathy for others too. Then again, a lot of people do get sadistic pleasure from hurting others too —sometimes the same people as have empathy for others too, just in different circumstances. And a lot of people probably would obey the commands of something they considered God, if not just to avoid punishment, then just because a lot of people just do obey supposed authorities, whether they should or not. (Look at the Stanford Prison Experiment. Or the Nazis who were "just following orders").
Asking what people do do isn't going to tell us anything about what they should do, and when you start asking what people should do and why, "God says so" doesn't really add much to the conversation. Maybe we'd better take a few steps back and start asked what exactly "should" even means, and how the heck we're supposed to assess the truth or falsity of "should" propositions in the first place.
I lost it as soon as he got to "by definition" and making room for God. As soon as you get into arguing about things from definitions you're doing analytic philosophy and if you're just saying "by definition" without offering support for why that is the right definition, you're probably doing it wrong.
The original Liberal Arts (a term which literally means, more idiomatically translated from ars liberalis, "skills [needed] of free men") were, funny enough, mostly things that we would consider branches of mathematics today, and thus STEM fields.
First there was the "trivium" (from whence our word "trivial", because these skills were considered so basic and elementary): - Grammar - Logic (now considered a branch of mathematics) - Rhetoric
But then there was the "quadrivium" which followed that: - Arithmetic (obviously a branch of mathematics) - Geometry (obviously a branch of mathematics) - "Music" - "Astronomy"
The last two are the most interesting ones, because "music" was not about playing instruments or singing, it was essentially harmonics, the study of "number in time"; and likewise, "astronomy" was not about the actual particulars of celestial bodies, but was essentially dynamics, the study of "number in space and time". These complemented geometry as the study of "number in space" and arithmetic as "number in itself".
In short, the quadrivium, which was over half of the original Liberal Arts, was entirely things we'd now consider mathematics; and a third of the remaining portion in the trivium, logic, would also be considered mathematics today. Five sevenths or over 71% of the Liberal Arts were all math subjects.
These were all intended to prepare one for the study of philosophy, which at that time encompassed what would become the natural sciences of today. (In the middle ages philosophy was in turn considered to be essentially in a support role to theology, but of course you'd get that kind of attitude in the continent-wide theocracy that was old Christendom.)
The Liberal Arts were to teach people how to communicate their thoughts coherently, rigorously, and persuasively, and to be able to think quantitatively about things in themselves and also their relations in space and time, all of that for the purpose of conducting the kind of broad and deep critical thinking about of the world we live necessary to live life as a free individual and to preserve the freedom of one's society.
Dismissing all of that for "science lol stem envy much" is the start of the road to serfdom.
I would think, if the stuff kept flying off the shelf like that (even is only due to one customer), you would just stock more of it and then sell more of it. Stock enough to let her buy all she wants and still have enough left over for everyone else who wants to buy it to get theirs too.
Reference frame is irrelevant to this question. If you, in whatever reference frame, measure travel distance as 80 mile and speed as 80mph, you will measure travel time as 1 hour. Others in other reference frames may measure different travel times, but they will also measure correspondingly different distances and speeds; and whatever they measure as 80 miles will still take what they measure as 1 hour to traverse at what they measure as 80mph.
Etymologically, to prove means to test. Hence phrases like "proving grounds" and, more tellingly, "the exception that proves the rule" -- an apparent exception, an anomaly, which puts the rule to the test.
So a well-tested theory is "proven" in an etymologically sound way, just a way that doesn't mean "demonstrated to be true with absolute certainty".
To be completely accurate, the sun doesn't produce any energy, it converts energy from one form (rest mass) to another form (electromagnetic radiation), increasing entropy in the process in keeping with the second law. That conversion process itself requires an input of energy (though one less than the energy output by said process) to initialize and sustain, and that energy is in turn supplied, in the form of kinetic energy, by conversion from yet another form (gravitational potential energy) spontaneously, precisely because of the second law of thermodynamics.
At one time in the history of science, it was thought that all of the energy of the sun was converted more or less directly from gravitational potential energy: a cloud of hydrogen collapses under gravity, converting its potential energy into kinetic energy, rendered macroscopically as temperature, causing the ball of collapsing gas to glow incandescently. The problem was that that process can't last for very long, so the sun (and consequently the whole solar system) would have to be pretty young, relatively (still massively old on a human scale) if that's what's making the sun glow. When we discovered that the Earth itself, and space rocks, are much older than the sun would have to be according to that theory, it required that something else be powering the sun on a longer scale. The introduction of nuclear fusion to the model solved that problem, and nowadays almost nobody even remembers that we once thought the sun was just, in effect, gravity-powered.
Except that another place, even another comparable place, would now cost a lot more than $249,999 more than what he paid for his current place.
So if he wants to move to a different but comparable house in a different but comparably priced location, he has to lose a whole lot of money in the process. Meanwhile, people moving frequently to slightly more valuable places continuously over the time he's lived in this one place don't lose anything.
Early Sheldon was a character I really liked, for all the reasons E-Rock pointed out. Other characters had friction with him mostly just because he was an insufferable genius who was always technically correct and looked down on everyone else for not living up to his standards of perfection, and ordinary fallible people find that kind of person hard to get along with because it such a person uncompromisingly highlights their own foibles.
But over the years Sheldon has morphed into a socially retarded asshole -- not just someone who awkwardly doesn't understand how best to interact with other people, but someone who thinks he does and yet is constantly wrong and will never hear anyone who tries to tell him so. He is no longer an insufferable genius who is always technically correct. He is an insufferable idiot who arrogantly insists that he is correct even when he is clearly, blatantly not.
And when a person starts to run roughshod over other people because of their own wrongly self-assessed "superiority", it goes from harmless "shamelessly ability to like himself" to dangerous borderline sociopathy as the AC I'm replying to said.
Unless we want to coin the verb "to police-police", meaning second-order policing, rather than ordinary first order-policing. In which case police-police-police-police(n) police-police(v) police-police-police(n), as you said.
Unless you've found a way to make "police" an adjective, I think you have one too many iterations of it there. Police(n) [whom] police(n) police(v) [in turn] police(v) [other] police(n).
The buffalo sentence in turn has eight, not five (or your six), iterations. Buffalo(NY) buffalo(bison) [whom] Buffalo(NY) buffalo(bison) buffalo(bully) [in turn] buffalo(bully) [other] Buffalo(NY) buffalo(bison).
How exactly is a massive government agency massively overstepping its already questionable legal bounds a result of "you wanted smaller government"? That sounds exactly like a prime example of bigger government and why someone might want a smaller one.
Interest, and the broader phenomenon of rent (interest is just rent on money), is the thing that breaks a free market and turns it into capitalism.
There would be no cause for forcible redistribution of wealth if only this mechanism by which wealth becomes concentrated was removed.
Without rent and interest, wealth would naturally redistribute from those with more to those with less, as those with more traded their excess capital for the labor of those with less; for what use is that excess if you're just sitting on it, not getting anything for it?
But when you can lend it out, and not only get it all back but more on top of that, and keep repeating that process, then you can spend that extra you get back to buy the labor of those with less than you, without ever losing any capital in the process. Capital becomes a free money machine, if you can charge usury on it (that is, charge for the mere use of it, without actually selling it).
And conversely, those who have to borrow from you, the same working poor whose labor you're buying, get to keep less of the product of their labor because they have to pay you that same little extra that you turn turn around and pay them with. The "free money" you get out of your free money machine is actually money out of their pockets; money that they would otherwise use to buy, rather than merely borrow, the things that they need.
In short, with rent and interest in existence, those with more wealth can perpetually extract labor from those with less wealth without ever losing anything in the process, perpetuating and even exacerbating the wealth gap between them.
While without rent and interest, that wealth gap would naturally close without any forceful intervention just by natural market forces.
Even worse, there are sometimes even deceptive statements made about how much you will have to pay, and business arrangements you enter into without even knowing that the other party exists, much less that you're getting their services.
I didn't see a doctor for ten years because I couldn't afford insurance, and when I finally got covered through a decent job and went to get my first general checkup in my adult life, there was a big sign up front saying "ALL CO-PAYS DUE AT TIME OF VISIT". I figured that meant what it said: anything I owed, that was not getting billed to my insurance, was going to be billed to me before I left. When they let me walk out without paying anything, I figured that meant I must not have had a co-pay, which made sense to me as it was just a general physical exam, and a blood draw for some basic general-health lab tests (cholesterol, blood sugar, STDs, etc).
Then I got a bill in the mail a month later. Called and complained, why am I getting billed, didn't my insurance cover this, and THEN they tell me that that bill is for the remainder that's left after what my insurance paid (IOW my copay). I argued about the sign saying all co-pays were due at time of visit and they said... I don't even remember what now, exactly, but something to the extent that that's no excuse and I have to pay the bill. Not knowing what else to do, I did.
A month later I got a different bill for the blood tests, from a different company. I called and complained that I already got a bill for that visit and paid it and even that was unexpected and what the hell is with two different companies trying to collect for the same fucking service. They explained that they are the lab that my doctor sent the blood off to for the tests, and they they bill separately, and that paying my doctor for their service doesn't get me off the hook for the lab service. I had no knowledge that I was even buying services from this lab company: the only entity I interfaced with was my doctor, they hired the fucking lab, let them pay the lab and roll the cost into their bill, I figured. But no, and lab insisted I owed them money, and not knowing what to do, I paid up.
A year later, my second doctor's visit in my adult life, different doctor in a different town as I had since moved. They at least had the decency to say up front how their billing works (without me even asking), and that they will send me a bill for the copay after they process it through my insurance. And they don't do in-house blood draws and send out to a lab, they send you to the lab of your choice with orders for what tests to run. So that's better, much more clear. But the lab itself also has a "ALL CO-PAYS DUE AT TIME OF SERVICES" sign... and this time, they actually billed me at time of services! Awesome. So far, I was liking the medical establishments in this new town a lot better.
Until a month or two later I got a bill from the lab. When I called to complain that I already paid them at the time of services as their sign said, they told me then that that was only an estimated copay, and that after they put the bill through insurance, there was still a balance remaining on my copay, which is what that bill was for. Again, no idea on what grounds to dispute it, so I paid up... but ugh, what the hell
For emergency services where the patient may not have the time or awareness to evaluate the costs and benefits, I can understand you just do the service and bill later. But for a motherfucking general checkup and routine bloodwork? Jesus fucking christ, how can you not just say what it will cost up front and bill before I accept your services?
It's only one step removed from the homeless guy who washes your windows without your consent and then demands you owe him money. "Hey man you need some medical services?" "Yeah uh I guess how much?" "Can't tell you yet now turn your head and cough." "Uh... [cough]" "Aight you cool man, that'll be $100." "WTF no you didn't say it would be that much" "Too late you got the work now you pay the bill man... don't make me go get my collections posse to shake down yo ass, pay up sucka."
When you get your pilot's license. Moller International builds car-sized wingless VTOL craft already, and has for decades. It's even called the Skycar. It's just technically an aircraft, so, pilot's license and all...
Mach's Principle neatly explains why inertial mass and gravitational mass are the same: inertia is a product of the gravitational effects of the rest of the universe.
For illustration, consider the infamous spinning bucket thought experiment:
When you view it from the reference frame of the rest of the universe, the reason why the water in the bucket initially stays put instead of spinning with the bucket, and then presses against the edges of the bucket once friction starts it moving, is inertia.
When you view if from the reference frame of the bucket itself, around which the rest of the universe is spinning, the reason why the water starts spinning, and then presses against the sides of the bucket when friction slows it down, is because the gravity of the rest of the universe is dragging the water's reference frame around with it.
My city is actually shrinking in size and we still have well-maintained and even upgraded roads compared to when I was younger and the city was slightly bigger.
I think what you want is a pro-market, anti-capitalism party. Capitalism doesn't just mean free markets; it means those with more capital can exploit those with less. If you want a competitive, non-monopolistic or -oligopolistic, genuinely free market, you need to get rid of capitalism; that is to say, you need to protect the smallest players in the market from being held down and exploited by the bigger players. You need to make sure that all gains are made and all advantaged held through the continued production of genuine value, not just by rent-seeking and choice-limiting behaviors.
I agree that the left thinks that's impossible to do without forced wealth redistribution, but most of the right does too; and having some party backing that angle, and investigating and addressing the myriad ways that capitalists make the market less free, would be great.
Have a bunch of human judges and some instances of the bot in question all participating in a chat together, or randomly paired together for a while and then re-paired, so that humans are judging humans as well as bots, and have no idea which is which.
If a human is frequently judged as a bot by other humans, that human's judgements are de-weighted, because apparently they're too stupid to be distinguished themselves from an AI, so why should we trust their ability to distinguish other humans from AIs.
Although, I wonder if exceptionally intelligent humans with perfect spelling and grammar, a wide range of knowledge, and high typing speed, might be mis-judged as AIs too, for being "too good". Some hunt-and-pecker who can't tell their/they're/there apart might see someone who gives an intelligent response in complete, grammatically-correct sentences in half a minute as inhuman.
Governments are made of people and do whatever the majority of politically active people want or at least allow them to do. You're reading too much into my position and wrongly assuming, as most do, that the negation of capitalism necessarily entails some kind state-controlled command economy, and that opposition to capitalism means support of the state. There's a thing called libertarian socialism which opposes both. You should look it up.
Anyway, yeah, governments can enslave and exploit and steal and so on just as others can -- and note here that "governments" is not the antonym of "individuals", as there are non-government aggregate entities (corporations being the big one here, but clubs, coops, NPOs and NGOs, even families, all count too), and governments like all aggregate entities are still composed ultimately of individuals.
The point is that what people will tend to do is always constrained by what other people -- acting as individuals or in aggregate, as governments or otherwise -- let them do. And what people should or shouldn't let other people do is always going to be an ideological issue. What's happening now is what people tend to do, yeah -- when other people let them do that and don't let them do other things that they might do instead. Whether that is the right choice of things to let and not let people do is a moral question, and even saying "yeah it's fine how it is now whatever" is taking a position on that moral question, not some kind of above-the-fray neutrality.
Slashdot Mirror
Why should you even care about your own personal survival and comfort? Obviously most people do, but that's a far cry from should.
Even if God exists, why should you do what he commands? Even if the answer is back to "because he will punish you if you don't", why should I avoid punishment? That is, come back to the first question up there: why should I care about my own personal survival and comfort?
Most people do care about their own personal survival and comfort, sure. But then a lot of people just do have empathy for others too. Then again, a lot of people do get sadistic pleasure from hurting others too —sometimes the same people as have empathy for others too, just in different circumstances. And a lot of people probably would obey the commands of something they considered God, if not just to avoid punishment, then just because a lot of people just do obey supposed authorities, whether they should or not. (Look at the Stanford Prison Experiment. Or the Nazis who were "just following orders").
Asking what people do do isn't going to tell us anything about what they should do, and when you start asking what people should do and why, "God says so" doesn't really add much to the conversation. Maybe we'd better take a few steps back and start asked what exactly "should" even means, and how the heck we're supposed to assess the truth or falsity of "should" propositions in the first place.
I lost it as soon as he got to "by definition" and making room for God. As soon as you get into arguing about things from definitions you're doing analytic philosophy and if you're just saying "by definition" without offering support for why that is the right definition, you're probably doing it wrong.
Law enforcement began as [any given region's] largest street gang, long before recorded history.
You mean that that was in the brief period where it was a relatively popular idea to make law enforcement something better than that
The original Liberal Arts (a term which literally means, more idiomatically translated from ars liberalis, "skills [needed] of free men") were, funny enough, mostly things that we would consider branches of mathematics today, and thus STEM fields.
First there was the "trivium" (from whence our word "trivial", because these skills were considered so basic and elementary):
- Grammar
- Logic (now considered a branch of mathematics)
- Rhetoric
But then there was the "quadrivium" which followed that:
- Arithmetic (obviously a branch of mathematics)
- Geometry (obviously a branch of mathematics)
- "Music"
- "Astronomy"
The last two are the most interesting ones, because "music" was not about playing instruments or singing, it was essentially harmonics, the study of "number in time"; and likewise, "astronomy" was not about the actual particulars of celestial bodies, but was essentially dynamics, the study of "number in space and time". These complemented geometry as the study of "number in space" and arithmetic as "number in itself".
In short, the quadrivium, which was over half of the original Liberal Arts, was entirely things we'd now consider mathematics; and a third of the remaining portion in the trivium, logic, would also be considered mathematics today. Five sevenths or over 71% of the Liberal Arts were all math subjects.
These were all intended to prepare one for the study of philosophy, which at that time encompassed what would become the natural sciences of today. (In the middle ages philosophy was in turn considered to be essentially in a support role to theology, but of course you'd get that kind of attitude in the continent-wide theocracy that was old Christendom.)
The Liberal Arts were to teach people how to communicate their thoughts coherently, rigorously, and persuasively, and to be able to think quantitatively about things in themselves and also their relations in space and time, all of that for the purpose of conducting the kind of broad and deep critical thinking about of the world we live necessary to live life as a free individual and to preserve the freedom of one's society.
Dismissing all of that for "science lol stem envy much" is the start of the road to serfdom.
I would think, if the stuff kept flying off the shelf like that (even is only due to one customer), you would just stock more of it and then sell more of it. Stock enough to let her buy all she wants and still have enough left over for everyone else who wants to buy it to get theirs too.
Reference frame is irrelevant to this question. If you, in whatever reference frame, measure travel distance as 80 mile and speed as 80mph, you will measure travel time as 1 hour. Others in other reference frames may measure different travel times, but they will also measure correspondingly different distances and speeds; and whatever they measure as 80 miles will still take what they measure as 1 hour to traverse at what they measure as 80mph.
Etymologically, to prove means to test. Hence phrases like "proving grounds" and, more tellingly, "the exception that proves the rule" -- an apparent exception, an anomaly, which puts the rule to the test.
So a well-tested theory is "proven" in an etymologically sound way, just a way that doesn't mean "demonstrated to be true with absolute certainty".
To be completely accurate, the sun doesn't produce any energy, it converts energy from one form (rest mass) to another form (electromagnetic radiation), increasing entropy in the process in keeping with the second law. That conversion process itself requires an input of energy (though one less than the energy output by said process) to initialize and sustain, and that energy is in turn supplied, in the form of kinetic energy, by conversion from yet another form (gravitational potential energy) spontaneously, precisely because of the second law of thermodynamics.
At one time in the history of science, it was thought that all of the energy of the sun was converted more or less directly from gravitational potential energy: a cloud of hydrogen collapses under gravity, converting its potential energy into kinetic energy, rendered macroscopically as temperature, causing the ball of collapsing gas to glow incandescently. The problem was that that process can't last for very long, so the sun (and consequently the whole solar system) would have to be pretty young, relatively (still massively old on a human scale) if that's what's making the sun glow. When we discovered that the Earth itself, and space rocks, are much older than the sun would have to be according to that theory, it required that something else be powering the sun on a longer scale. The introduction of nuclear fusion to the model solved that problem, and nowadays almost nobody even remembers that we once thought the sun was just, in effect, gravity-powered.
Correlation does not imply causation, but causation does imply correlation.
If A causes B, then A will also correlate with B. It's only the reverse that's false. (A correlating with B doesn't mean A causes B).
You mean like a gigantic array of mirrors in concentric circles around a couple of 40 story towers?
If I were parachuting or hang gliding I'd avoid something that looked like that without even knowing anything about it.
Except that another place, even another comparable place, would now cost a lot more than $249,999 more than what he paid for his current place.
So if he wants to move to a different but comparable house in a different but comparably priced location, he has to lose a whole lot of money in the process. Meanwhile, people moving frequently to slightly more valuable places continuously over the time he's lived in this one place don't lose anything.
As the kids these days say, "This."
Early Sheldon was a character I really liked, for all the reasons E-Rock pointed out. Other characters had friction with him mostly just because he was an insufferable genius who was always technically correct and looked down on everyone else for not living up to his standards of perfection, and ordinary fallible people find that kind of person hard to get along with because it such a person uncompromisingly highlights their own foibles.
But over the years Sheldon has morphed into a socially retarded asshole -- not just someone who awkwardly doesn't understand how best to interact with other people, but someone who thinks he does and yet is constantly wrong and will never hear anyone who tries to tell him so. He is no longer an insufferable genius who is always technically correct. He is an insufferable idiot who arrogantly insists that he is correct even when he is clearly, blatantly not.
And when a person starts to run roughshod over other people because of their own wrongly self-assessed "superiority", it goes from harmless "shamelessly ability to like himself" to dangerous borderline sociopathy as the AC I'm replying to said.
Unless we want to coin the verb "to police-police", meaning second-order policing, rather than ordinary first order-policing. In which case police-police-police-police(n) police-police(v) police-police-police(n), as you said.
Oh, why did this take me so long to get.
Police-police-police(n) police(v) police-police(n) as police-police(n) police(v) police(n) and police(n) police(v) people.
Unless you've found a way to make "police" an adjective, I think you have one too many iterations of it there. Police(n) [whom] police(n) police(v) [in turn] police(v) [other] police(n).
The buffalo sentence in turn has eight, not five (or your six), iterations. Buffalo(NY) buffalo(bison) [whom] Buffalo(NY) buffalo(bison) buffalo(bully) [in turn] buffalo(bully) [other] Buffalo(NY) buffalo(bison).
How exactly is a massive government agency massively overstepping its already questionable legal bounds a result of "you wanted smaller government"? That sounds exactly like a prime example of bigger government and why someone might want a smaller one.
Interest, and the broader phenomenon of rent (interest is just rent on money), is the thing that breaks a free market and turns it into capitalism.
There would be no cause for forcible redistribution of wealth if only this mechanism by which wealth becomes concentrated was removed.
Without rent and interest, wealth would naturally redistribute from those with more to those with less, as those with more traded their excess capital for the labor of those with less; for what use is that excess if you're just sitting on it, not getting anything for it?
But when you can lend it out, and not only get it all back but more on top of that, and keep repeating that process, then you can spend that extra you get back to buy the labor of those with less than you, without ever losing any capital in the process. Capital becomes a free money machine, if you can charge usury on it (that is, charge for the mere use of it, without actually selling it).
And conversely, those who have to borrow from you, the same working poor whose labor you're buying, get to keep less of the product of their labor because they have to pay you that same little extra that you turn turn around and pay them with. The "free money" you get out of your free money machine is actually money out of their pockets; money that they would otherwise use to buy, rather than merely borrow, the things that they need.
In short, with rent and interest in existence, those with more wealth can perpetually extract labor from those with less wealth without ever losing anything in the process, perpetuating and even exacerbating the wealth gap between them.
While without rent and interest, that wealth gap would naturally close without any forceful intervention just by natural market forces.
Even worse, there are sometimes even deceptive statements made about how much you will have to pay, and business arrangements you enter into without even knowing that the other party exists, much less that you're getting their services.
I didn't see a doctor for ten years because I couldn't afford insurance, and when I finally got covered through a decent job and went to get my first general checkup in my adult life, there was a big sign up front saying "ALL CO-PAYS DUE AT TIME OF VISIT". I figured that meant what it said: anything I owed, that was not getting billed to my insurance, was going to be billed to me before I left. When they let me walk out without paying anything, I figured that meant I must not have had a co-pay, which made sense to me as it was just a general physical exam, and a blood draw for some basic general-health lab tests (cholesterol, blood sugar, STDs, etc).
Then I got a bill in the mail a month later. Called and complained, why am I getting billed, didn't my insurance cover this, and THEN they tell me that that bill is for the remainder that's left after what my insurance paid (IOW my copay). I argued about the sign saying all co-pays were due at time of visit and they said... I don't even remember what now, exactly, but something to the extent that that's no excuse and I have to pay the bill. Not knowing what else to do, I did.
A month later I got a different bill for the blood tests, from a different company. I called and complained that I already got a bill for that visit and paid it and even that was unexpected and what the hell is with two different companies trying to collect for the same fucking service. They explained that they are the lab that my doctor sent the blood off to for the tests, and they they bill separately, and that paying my doctor for their service doesn't get me off the hook for the lab service. I had no knowledge that I was even buying services from this lab company: the only entity I interfaced with was my doctor, they hired the fucking lab, let them pay the lab and roll the cost into their bill, I figured. But no, and lab insisted I owed them money, and not knowing what to do, I paid up.
A year later, my second doctor's visit in my adult life, different doctor in a different town as I had since moved. They at least had the decency to say up front how their billing works (without me even asking), and that they will send me a bill for the copay after they process it through my insurance. And they don't do in-house blood draws and send out to a lab, they send you to the lab of your choice with orders for what tests to run. So that's better, much more clear. But the lab itself also has a "ALL CO-PAYS DUE AT TIME OF SERVICES" sign... and this time, they actually billed me at time of services! Awesome. So far, I was liking the medical establishments in this new town a lot better.
Until a month or two later I got a bill from the lab. When I called to complain that I already paid them at the time of services as their sign said, they told me then that that was only an estimated copay, and that after they put the bill through insurance, there was still a balance remaining on my copay, which is what that bill was for. Again, no idea on what grounds to dispute it, so I paid up... but ugh, what the hell
For emergency services where the patient may not have the time or awareness to evaluate the costs and benefits, I can understand you just do the service and bill later. But for a motherfucking general checkup and routine bloodwork? Jesus fucking christ, how can you not just say what it will cost up front and bill before I accept your services?
It's only one step removed from the homeless guy who washes your windows without your consent and then demands you owe him money. "Hey man you need some medical services?" "Yeah uh I guess how much?" "Can't tell you yet now turn your head and cough." "Uh... [cough]" "Aight you cool man, that'll be $100." "WTF no you didn't say it would be that much" "Too late you got the work now you pay the bill man... don't make me go get my collections posse to shake down yo ass, pay up sucka."
When you get your pilot's license. Moller International builds car-sized wingless VTOL craft already, and has for decades. It's even called the Skycar. It's just technically an aircraft, so, pilot's license and all...
Mach's Principle neatly explains why inertial mass and gravitational mass are the same: inertia is a product of the gravitational effects of the rest of the universe.
For illustration, consider the infamous spinning bucket thought experiment:
When you view it from the reference frame of the rest of the universe, the reason why the water in the bucket initially stays put instead of spinning with the bucket, and then presses against the edges of the bucket once friction starts it moving, is inertia.
When you view if from the reference frame of the bucket itself, around which the rest of the universe is spinning, the reason why the water starts spinning, and then presses against the sides of the bucket when friction slows it down, is because the gravity of the rest of the universe is dragging the water's reference frame around with it.
I think you meant neutrinos where you wrote neutrons. Neutrons most certainly do interact electromagnetically.
My city is actually shrinking in size and we still have well-maintained and even upgraded roads compared to when I was younger and the city was slightly bigger.
I think what you want is a pro-market, anti-capitalism party. Capitalism doesn't just mean free markets; it means those with more capital can exploit those with less. If you want a competitive, non-monopolistic or -oligopolistic, genuinely free market, you need to get rid of capitalism; that is to say, you need to protect the smallest players in the market from being held down and exploited by the bigger players. You need to make sure that all gains are made and all advantaged held through the continued production of genuine value, not just by rent-seeking and choice-limiting behaviors.
I agree that the left thinks that's impossible to do without forced wealth redistribution, but most of the right does too; and having some party backing that angle, and investigating and addressing the myriad ways that capitalists make the market less free, would be great.
Have a bunch of human judges and some instances of the bot in question all participating in a chat together, or randomly paired together for a while and then re-paired, so that humans are judging humans as well as bots, and have no idea which is which.
If a human is frequently judged as a bot by other humans, that human's judgements are de-weighted, because apparently they're too stupid to be distinguished themselves from an AI, so why should we trust their ability to distinguish other humans from AIs.
Although, I wonder if exceptionally intelligent humans with perfect spelling and grammar, a wide range of knowledge, and high typing speed, might be mis-judged as AIs too, for being "too good". Some hunt-and-pecker who can't tell their/they're/there apart might see someone who gives an intelligent response in complete, grammatically-correct sentences in half a minute as inhuman.
Governments are made of people and do whatever the majority of politically active people want or at least allow them to do. You're reading too much into my position and wrongly assuming, as most do, that the negation of capitalism necessarily entails some kind state-controlled command economy, and that opposition to capitalism means support of the state. There's a thing called libertarian socialism which opposes both. You should look it up.
Anyway, yeah, governments can enslave and exploit and steal and so on just as others can -- and note here that "governments" is not the antonym of "individuals", as there are non-government aggregate entities (corporations being the big one here, but clubs, coops, NPOs and NGOs, even families, all count too), and governments like all aggregate entities are still composed ultimately of individuals.
The point is that what people will tend to do is always constrained by what other people -- acting as individuals or in aggregate, as governments or otherwise -- let them do. And what people should or shouldn't let other people do is always going to be an ideological issue. What's happening now is what people tend to do, yeah -- when other people let them do that and don't let them do other things that they might do instead. Whether that is the right choice of things to let and not let people do is a moral question, and even saying "yeah it's fine how it is now whatever" is taking a position on that moral question, not some kind of above-the-fray neutrality.