And worse still, the people who rent are often those who don't have the money lying around for a down payment on a mortgage, and because they are having to pay rent (and higher taxes) while trying to save up for that down payment, may never have that kind of money.
Tax breaks on mortgages but not rent are the worst kind of regressive tax. I can see a tax break on a mortgage, at least a first mortgage, just trying to get yourself into your own home and out of someone else's... but if anything, there should be even bigger tax breaks on renting, since you are throwing money down a hole and ending up with no property at the end of that, just because you don't have enough money to get out of that situation.
My point was that militarily defeating someone and getting them to cede their lands to you counts as "taking". Not to deny that they formally signed any agreement to cede them. We may have won it in a fair fight, but it still took a fight to win it. Generally, if I have to fight you to get something from you, that counts as taking; it's not like you just gave it up willingly, even if in the end you knowingly gave it up and I didn't just sneak out with it in the night.
I actually meant what I wrote to be quite relevant to what you were saying, but I guess maybe I didn't state the relevancy quite explicitly.
The essence of what I was saying is that the burden of proof is on anyone who wants to change someone else's mind, whether they are making positive claims or negative ones. So if you want to convince those who believe in God not to believe in God, then the burden of proof is on you to disprove God's existence; and "you can't prove his existence" doesn't count as proof. However, conversely, if they want to convince you to believe in their God, then the burden is on them to prove his existence, and "you can't disprove his existence" doesn't count as proof.
In absence of proof either way, all either of you can really say is "I disagree", not "you're wrong". And then share anything you find to be (inconclusively) in favor of your position, and see what they think of that, but if it's inconclusive then you can't really say they're wrong for disagreeing; you can just balk at the apparent absurdity, which isn't really an argument at all.
The infinite regress of skepticism I gestured at is just (half of) the reason to take this position: if you privilege negative claims over positive ones until proven otherwise, then no positive claims can ever get off the ground because they need some positive claims to start from, and you'll be left in nihilism, believing nothing. But if any positive claim is privileged over its negation until proven otherwise, then you are taking something on faith versus all the contrary positive claims you might have taken instead.
The only way out of this dichotomy of faith-vs-nihilism (which fideists and nihilists alike both love to use, so they can paint anybody not on their side as the absurd other side), the only way to be rational and still believe anything at all, is to reject justificationism, and say that any beliefs either direction are OK until someone can show evidence one way or another -- and it's fine if we disagree until then.
Courtesy of the scientific method and burden of proof, a positive claim is false until proven.
Not quite. Even taking "is false" to mean "should be considered false" (our proof or lack thereof doesn't change the facts, just what we should consider facts), that standard would leave everything outside of mathematics to be considered false, since there is never any definitive proof of anything in empirical matters, only a tentative preponderance of evidence which is never beyond doubt.
Instead, any claim, positive or negative, is not epistemically obligatory until it is proven. That is, you are not wrong for not believing in it, or equivalently, in believing its negation, until someone can present evidence contrary to that negation.
For example, we might not be having this conversation; I might be a figment of your imagination. However, if that seems intuitively unlikely to you, then you have no reason to change your mind until presented with some evidence contrary to that intuition. "You can't prove you're right" is not a sound argument that you're wrong.
Proof and evidence are required to obligate someone to change their opinion. But they are not required to settle on an opinion in the first place, for it they were, no opinions would ever be warranted, because conclusive proof from first principles is impossible; you can always question those "first principles" further.
So either belief or disbelief in God is warranted, but neither is obliged, until sound argument in either direction is presented. Likewise elves and teapots in orbit. Which is not to say you should give it any serious consideration if these undecided matters don't seem likely to you.
The case with God is a bit different, however, as there are sound arguments against the existence of any kind of God more cosmically significant than aliens.
You may turn out to be right, but to assert that human free will does not exist in your first 2 sentences without any real argument is a bit of a leap.
Nobody said anything about free will. You are the one jumping to the conclusion that your choices being predictable makes them no longer your choices.
You mean "shown almost unimaginable restraint against divulging too much of your own opinions"? I wouldn't say I really do that at all. If anything, it's going into excruciating detail on my opinions that I would credit with dodging downmods in disagreement. Well, and more to the point, having opinions which are so detailed to begin with, and not just "[your favorite thing] sucks!"
I've been quite vocal about my opinions, and gotten into lots of great arguments with people who disagree vehemently. I want smoking in public banned (smokers call me a Nazi, but no Troll mods), I want copyright abolished completely (musicians scream bloody murder, but no Troll mods), I think drinking and driving shouldn't be a crime per se (people imply I'm happy to let maniacs run over children, but no Troll mods), I drive the speed limit in the fast lane on two-lane highways full of slower traffic in the slow lane even if people behind me want to speed (people call me an asshole, but no Troll mods), I'm a philosophical anarchist and libertarian socialist (everybody on every side of every debate thinks my ways would destroy everything they love, but no Troll mods).
But because my opinions are more subtle and reasoned than "fuck smokers", "fuck musicians I want free music", "fuck it I'll drink and drive if I want", "fuck other drivers I own the road", "and fuck society I don't need them", the responses I get back are more than just "fuck you", -1 Disagree. Reason seems to invite reason in response.
Or you can voice your controversial opinions in subtle, intelligent, and detailed ways that prevent people from just going "nuh uh!" and modding you -1 Disagree. I've been around at least around 12 years myself, almost never post unless I have something controversial to say (like, for two recent examples, "all laws are death threats" and "musicians who rely on copyright protection to make a living should just get a real job"), and can't remember once being modded Troll. Overrated a few times, but never Troll.
There's a difference between what motivates someone to act and what makes that act legally compulsory. People do all kinds of things they don't legally have to, and refrain from things they legally could do, for all kinds of reasons, all the time.
What makes "illegal" different from something like "impolite" is that nobody is going to physically harm you for using the wrong fork on your salad, or mentioning how unflattering their clothes look; at least, we don't as a society condone such violence on the odd occasions that it might occur. But if you have the gall to drive 5mph faster than a posted sign on an empty highway, and don't even fork over hundreds of dollars to make up for that heinous crime, and don't voluntarily take a vacation in jail to make up for that lack of payment, and have the gall to run away or (heaven forbid) fight back when some men in uniform try to kidnap you and drag you there against your will, well then, you deserve to get shot, eh?
I'm not saying that the only reason people do things the law says to do is because they will get shot if they don't. I'm saying that what makes those things illegal, instead of just good ideas, or polite, or whatever, is that we as a society have officially condoned the use of whatever force is necessary to make them happen. Contrast the above paragraph with, say, a fine at a fancy restaurant for using the wrong fork. You don't pay the fine, and what recourse do they have? They could eject you from the restaurant, but they could always do that anyway for no reason. It's ridiculous to even call that a fine, because there is no (socially condoned) way of coercively collecting on it. They can ask you for money, sure, but you can always just say "no". They can't lock you up in their basement as punishment for failure to pay; they can ask you to come down there, but you can say "no" to that too. They can't drag you down there against your will, and if they did, and if you ran away or fought back, everyone would recognize that they were in the wrong and you were in the right. Not so with a fine from the state; if you don't pay the fine, that warrants stronger action, and if you don't comply with that, that warrants stronger action, and so on escalating as far as necessary.
I'm not saying that the state could carry out such escalation against every violation. In fact I use this as an argument that every state is on some deep level inherently democratic; any group of people in power, even a supposedly absolute monarch, only has the power they have because enough people support them and few enough people resist them. If ever enough people stand up and say "hell no", good luck carrying out punishment against all of them together at once. As you say, any country facing that situation would collapse; that would, almost by definition, be the collapse of the Weberian state, when its monopoly on the use of force is no longer considered legitimate by its people.
I will also be the first to agree that people not only don't, but especially shouldn't, base their actions entirely on what is or isn't legal, precisely because threats are not the best of reasons for action. I am what is called a philosophical anarchist, which means that I don't necessarily advocate the demolition of any particular state or government, but that I consider their decrees non-compulsory; the state saying to do something no more obligates me to do it than you saying to do it. I may be obligated to do it anyway, for other reasons, in which case the state has told me to do something which is legitimately obligatory, but that is because the state correctly asserted what was obligatory, not because whatever the state decrees becomes obligatory. The only difference between the state telling me to do something and you telling me to do something is that you can't ruin my life and get away with it if I disobey. The state can.
Note that this doesn't mean I want no government, and no punishment for anything. It means that I think we should only condone such escalation o
When was the last time the United States government "put a gun to people's heads" to work an economic policy? A policy of any kind? Even if they throw you in jail they're not going to point a gun at you.
They will if that's what it takes to get you into the jail.
Every single law on the books comes down to "do this, or we will use whatever force necessary to make you wish you had when we asked nicely".
Break a law that only carries the punishment of a fine? Oh, that's not violent at all. Except if you don't pay that fine, then (possibly after additional fines first) you get a warrant out for your arrest. Some men with guns show up at your door and ask you to come sit in a concrete room for a while. If you don't, they will eventually try to physically drag you there, and if you manage to circumvent that, they will eventually pull out the mace, taser, or gun as necessary. If, on the very slim chance you manage to circumvent those measures, even more deadly force will be brought out until eventually you are either in that concrete room or dead.
It doesn't matter if the original crime was jaywalking. You do what they say (and you get a choice of options: don't jaywalk, or pay a fine now, or pay a bigger fine later, or hang out in a concrete room for a while now, or a longer while later, etc), or they will fucking kill you.
This is why it is very important to consider very carefully every time we want to make anything illegal: in the end, every law boils down to a threat of deadly force, and we have to ask what is really worth threatening someone's life over?
True, but not very relevant to my point, because a broadcast and a recording are different products: request lines not withstanding, you can't just make the radio play any song any time you like. The only way you could obtain a recording for free before easy copying was to steal one or force someone to make one (not that I suspect anyone ever did the latter, but it's an option in the "unethical things you can do to get free music" category, and is what some musicians claim copying amounts to -- forced labor for no reward).
People seem to have a lot of trouble with reading comprehension here.
I am not telling anyone to stop playing. I am saying, if you are not satisfied with what playing gets you, nobody is forcing you to keep playing against your will.
If you enjoy playing for its own sake -- and I'm sure tons of people, including the most talented musicians, do -- then please, keep playing.
If you only play for money, and you can find some way to make money from playing -- without coercing other people -- then please, keep playing.
If you only play for money and you can't find a way to make money from playing without coercing other people, then tough shit, get a different job. Nobody is forcing you to play music for a living; if you can't make a living from playing music, you can stop, if you want, and do something else more profitable with your time, if that's what suits you. You don't get to force other people to do or not do things just because it's bad for your business model.
You might note that that graph has its x-axis logarithmic. That means that if you were to convert it to a linear graph, you'd have a sudden rise to $300/yr on the left, and then an exponential decrease extending far out to the right. It's not strictly a logarithmic curve, but it's such a heavily skewed bell curve that most of it resembles a logarithmic curve. If it was an un-skewed normal distribution, you would expect the peak to be about halfway down the range on the x-axis, not way off to the left.
This graph of US income distribution in 2011 (first relevant result off Google Image Search) looks pretty similar too. If it was a normal distribution, you would have as slow a buildup to the peak as you do a decline from it; discounting the >$250K outliers (if they can really be considered outliers, it looks like there's a good number of them), you should see the peak at around $125K, not way down in the $15K range. And likewise the median would be there, too, not in the $50K range.
In fact, that's a good way of looking at it: most people make below an average income; if you were to divide the GDP by the population, you'd have a significantly bigger number than what significantly more than half the population makes. (Nine folks have $1 each and another has $91 each; they all have $10 each on average, but 90% of them only have a tenth of that average, and the other 10% have over nine times the average). That's not possible in a normal distribution, where the mean, median, and mode are all roughly equal.
No, previously people bought music on physical media, or before that paid to see live performances, because that was the only way you could get music without doing something really unethical like physically depriving someone of something (stealing their record/tape/disc) or something even worse (like kidnapping a musician and forcing them to play at gunpoint).
just because it is technologically feasible doesn't make it right.
You fail at reading comprehension.
People, being generally ethical for the most part, used to be happy to pay for music because you couldn't get it for free without doing something most people would consider unethical, like theft or forced labor.
Now, thanks to technology, it is possible to get music for free without doing anything most people would consider unethical, so now people get music for free.
The technological feasibility didn't make a wrong action right; it doesn't make theft or forced labor OK. What it does is make it possible to get free music without theft or forced labor.
Musicians arguing that getting free music is inherently theft or forced labor are free to lock up all their recordings and stop playing, and see if that puts a stop to people getting free music. Hint: it won't, because they're not getting it by stealing or forcing the musicians to play. They're copying something already in their possession, at their own (negligible) cost, and giving that away for free.
If we invented Star Trek replicators, would all the restaurants have a claim against people sharing food for free? Right now, you have to steal to get a Big Mac for for free, and that is wrong. But some day, technology could change that, and then getting a Big Mac for free wouldn't have to involve doing anything wrong. That is what has happened with music.
Awesome, dude! You totally didn't have to coerce your friend to not pay a dime for music. It's good to have bros, right bro?
I also didn't coerce the musician to play it, or to sell me a copy of it, which is more the point. And now he wants to coerce me to stop using my equipment that I own to make something to give to someone for free?
Logically, the place where musicians have an ethical right to stop that completely ethical process is not recording their music, or not selling copies of that recording. That's their choice to make, if they like. Sure, that will mean fewer professional musicians producing music, and that those former musicians will have to go and do something else for a living.
Wow. That's about as "ethical" as I mugger telling you that shouldn't have walked down a dark alley. Now, he is ethically in the right to rob and beat you.
No, because mugging is inherently unethical. If the only way to get money from you walking down an alley is to mug you, then that is wrong. But if there is some strange means by which I can profit indefinitely from you having walked down that alley, without having to mug you or anything else unethical like that, then there is nothing wrong with that.
You are a complete ass. Farmers have been farming for 12,000 years. For free. They shouldn't have the right to keep what they produce by that logic.
Farmers have never farmed for free. Farmers farm so that they have food to eat, or something to sell in exchange for other food to eat, and other things they need. Taking away the product of their labor takes away the entire point of doing all that hard labor.
On the other hand, people who have plenty of money from other sources play music just for fun, because it's an inherently enjoyable activity. Sure, it takes skill, and produces something of value to other people. But if the supply of that valuable goes to infinity, because infinitely many people can enjoy it at no extra cost to you, then the price you can expect for it drops to zero, despite that value.
Nobody is forcing musicians to give away music for free
They're not giving it away for free; they're trying to sell it, and you're taking it.
I'm not saying they're *trying* to give it away for free. I'm saying that the situation they're complaining about -- they make music, a bunch of legitimate intermediate steps happen, then people get free music -- is not something that they are forced to participate in. They can stop feeding in to their end of that chain, if they want; if they can't make money from playing music, they are free to stop playing music. What they can't do is stop other people from doing the harmless things they do in the middle of that chain.
Do you know what makes people take up an instrument? It's the same drive that makes people study art, or write poems. Musicians love, love, love to make music. Musicians will make music even if no-one is there to hear them. Musicians have a passion for music. Musicians will dedicate years of their life to study and learn and practise for hours on end just so they can get better at their passion, their hobby.
I explicitly stated in the paragraph before the one you're replying to that some people will continue to make music even if they're not getting paid for it. That some people do art for the love of the art, not just to make money.
And then I said that *if* anyone is doing it just for the money, and finds that they can't make money, they're free to stop if they like. Nobody is forcing them to play for free. But if they want to -- and some people will -- that's great. And if they can find a way to make money without artificially creating a market by force, they are welcome to do that too.
Now we are being asked to undo this not because we think this is a bad or unfair way to compensate artists but simply because it is technologically possible for corporations or individuals to exploit artists work without their permission on a massive scale and globally.
No, previously people bought music on physical media, or before that paid to see live performances, because that was the only way you could get music without doing something really unethical like physically depriving someone of something (stealing their record/tape/disc) or something even worse (like kidnapping a musician and forcing them to play at gunpoint).
Now, it is technologically possible to listen to music for free without doing anything unethical like stealing or kidnapping. A musician can willingly make a recording of their music, and willingly sell copies of that recording, and I can willingly trade some money for one of those copies, and then I can willingly make an identical copy of it on equipment that I willingly traded someone else money for, and then willingly give that identical copy to a friend, and... wow, now my friend has free music, and nobody had to do anything coercive at all. No violence, no threats, just normal sales and gifts, with some fancy technology in the middle enabling the gifts.
Logically, the place where musicians have an ethical right to stop that completely ethical process is not recording their music, or not selling copies of that recording. That's their choice to make, if they like. Sure, that will mean fewer professional musicians producing music, and that those former musicians will have to go and do something else for a living. Other people will continue making music either because they can somehow find a market for it, or just for the love of it. I think the free software community is ample evidence that people will develop and practice skills that they enjoy for free just for the love of the art, not to mention all the people playing music for the sake of music across all of human history. The music will not die.
Nobody is forcing musicians to give away music for free; they are free to stop playing music any time, if they find there is not a market for their goods, and marketability is the only reason they play. What they may not do is use the coercive force law to artificially create a market for their goods.
Are you sure that success at football is not a normal distribution? Certainly, the majority of people are not the exceptional players that get hired for the big leagues. But do you find larger and larger numbers of people as you look at lower and lower skill levels, or do the numbers swell around a mediocre but passable level, and then diminish as you get down into truly physically incapable people? I'd wager that most people are at least capable of playing a decent game of football; I personally despise professional sports, never played team sports after elementary school, do not make a special effort to be in good physical shape (and would consider myself in sub-par physical shape), and I'm told be people who play football casually that I'm not bad at it. (I'll play with friends if invited, despite not caring for sports). I'm certainly not going to go up against a pro any time soon, but neither am I utterly incapable of running or throwing a ball at all. And I'd wager that the number of people *that* bad at football is similar to the number of people who are exceptionally good at it.
Similarly with intelligence. Most people are not geniuses. But most people are not morons either (as inclined as I may be to claim otherwise sometimes). Most people are average. Most people can't calculate a derivative in their heads (if they even know what that means), but neither are most people incapable of adding a couple of numbers together. Exceedingly few people are capable of independently discovering what a derivative is and how to calculate one, but then exceedingly few people are completely incapable of grasping the concept of addition, too. And so on.
Even without a way to concretely and accurately measure overall aptitude, we can still say meaningful things about it in the context of meritocracy.
As I wrote in another post up in this thread, pretty much any test of any kind of ability, anything that might be a factor in overall aptitude, tends to find people distributed normally, i.e. on a gaussian curve. So regardless of the validity of any one particular test, it stands to reason that if the trend for all factors of aptitude is a normal distribution, then aptitude itself should follow a normal distribution (even if we can't test that directly). There should thus be a bulge of alright but mediocre people, and smaller and smaller amounts of really capable and really incompetent people off to either side.
If we had a meritocracy then, if opportunities were uniformly distributed, the product of such a normal distribution of ability and a uniform distribution of opportunity should be a normal distribution of outcomes; we should see a big bulge of middle-class people with smaller and smaller numbers of filthy rich and piss poor people on either side of that curve. We don't see that, rather the numbers swell the poorer you get in an almost logarithmic skew of the curve. So either ability is not normally distributed or opportunity is not evenly distributed. Since we observe many individual factors of ability to be normally distributed, it stands to reason that the likely culprit is that opportunity is not evenly distributed -- that we do not, in fact, have a meritocracy.
I specifically said "aptitude" to include all factors which make someone good at something, not limited to just intelligence; including things like discipline.
And I was explicitly making the point that there is evidently more to success than aptitude; if there wasn't, we would have a meritocracy.
The replies to my last post are reminiscent of the song "Give Up" by The Postal Service.
You clarify below that you meant the song "Sleeping In" specifically. What does that have to do with any of this?
More to the point, nobody is disputing that hard work is a factor in success, and thus that all else being equal, trying harder is generally better advice than just giving up. Nobody is saying "life is unfair, so don't bother trying". We're saying that not all failings are attributable to lack of effort or skill (nor all successes to skill and effort), because those are only partial factors in success.
To use your own analogy, it's hardly from a lack of effort or skill that you didn't get a royal flush on the deal; that's just the luck of the draw. You still have to play the hand you're dealt as best you can, but that doesn't make your crummy hand the fault of crummy playing. Poker is not a meritocracy any more than life; the best players don't always win, and the losers aren't always bad players, some people just get lucky, or unlucky. You can gauge how good a player is by how well they play a variety of hands dealt over a number of games; good players will win more often than not, when the luck of the draw is diluted over many games. But if the hand you're dealt is an analogy for the circumstances you're born into, then good luck comparing people's successes across a number of lives.
And more to the original point: if you admit that life is not fair, that flies in the face of your claim that life is a meritocracy. A meritocracy is by definition fair: nobody gets any advantages, either systemic or random, everybody starts on the same footing, and their score reflects only their skill. If life is not fair, which everybody agrees it isn't, then that is not true, and you don't have a meritocracy.
Yes, this exactly. There is a meritocracy only where opportunity is equal. And we can quite easily prove that opportunity is not equal, and likely never has been at any point in history.
Outcome is the product of ability and opportunity.
Ability, of any sort, including things like discipline and motivation on top of intelligence and strength etc -- basically any human quality -- is distributed normally, i.e. on a gaussian curve.
If opportunity was equal, outcome would be distributed normally, along a gaussian curve, and most people would be middle-class, with diminishing amounts of rich and poor.
Instead, outcome is distributed more logarithmically, with diminishing amounts of rich and swelling numbers of poor.
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And worse still, the people who rent are often those who don't have the money lying around for a down payment on a mortgage, and because they are having to pay rent (and higher taxes) while trying to save up for that down payment, may never have that kind of money.
Tax breaks on mortgages but not rent are the worst kind of regressive tax. I can see a tax break on a mortgage, at least a first mortgage, just trying to get yourself into your own home and out of someone else's... but if anything, there should be even bigger tax breaks on renting, since you are throwing money down a hole and ending up with no property at the end of that, just because you don't have enough money to get out of that situation.
My point was that militarily defeating someone and getting them to cede their lands to you counts as "taking". Not to deny that they formally signed any agreement to cede them. We may have won it in a fair fight, but it still took a fight to win it. Generally, if I have to fight you to get something from you, that counts as taking; it's not like you just gave it up willingly, even if in the end you knowingly gave it up and I didn't just sneak out with it in the night.
WE did not take ANYTHING from Mexico.
Maybe Texas has its own story, but tell that to Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico.
I actually meant what I wrote to be quite relevant to what you were saying, but I guess maybe I didn't state the relevancy quite explicitly.
The essence of what I was saying is that the burden of proof is on anyone who wants to change someone else's mind, whether they are making positive claims or negative ones. So if you want to convince those who believe in God not to believe in God, then the burden of proof is on you to disprove God's existence; and "you can't prove his existence" doesn't count as proof. However, conversely, if they want to convince you to believe in their God, then the burden is on them to prove his existence, and "you can't disprove his existence" doesn't count as proof.
In absence of proof either way, all either of you can really say is "I disagree", not "you're wrong". And then share anything you find to be (inconclusively) in favor of your position, and see what they think of that, but if it's inconclusive then you can't really say they're wrong for disagreeing; you can just balk at the apparent absurdity, which isn't really an argument at all.
The infinite regress of skepticism I gestured at is just (half of) the reason to take this position: if you privilege negative claims over positive ones until proven otherwise, then no positive claims can ever get off the ground because they need some positive claims to start from, and you'll be left in nihilism, believing nothing. But if any positive claim is privileged over its negation until proven otherwise, then you are taking something on faith versus all the contrary positive claims you might have taken instead.
The only way out of this dichotomy of faith-vs-nihilism (which fideists and nihilists alike both love to use, so they can paint anybody not on their side as the absurd other side), the only way to be rational and still believe anything at all, is to reject justificationism, and say that any beliefs either direction are OK until someone can show evidence one way or another -- and it's fine if we disagree until then.
Courtesy of the scientific method and burden of proof, a positive claim is false until proven.
Not quite. Even taking "is false" to mean "should be considered false" (our proof or lack thereof doesn't change the facts, just what we should consider facts), that standard would leave everything outside of mathematics to be considered false, since there is never any definitive proof of anything in empirical matters, only a tentative preponderance of evidence which is never beyond doubt.
Instead, any claim, positive or negative, is not epistemically obligatory until it is proven. That is, you are not wrong for not believing in it, or equivalently, in believing its negation, until someone can present evidence contrary to that negation.
For example, we might not be having this conversation; I might be a figment of your imagination. However, if that seems intuitively unlikely to you, then you have no reason to change your mind until presented with some evidence contrary to that intuition. "You can't prove you're right" is not a sound argument that you're wrong.
Proof and evidence are required to obligate someone to change their opinion. But they are not required to settle on an opinion in the first place, for it they were, no opinions would ever be warranted, because conclusive proof from first principles is impossible; you can always question those "first principles" further.
So either belief or disbelief in God is warranted, but neither is obliged, until sound argument in either direction is presented. Likewise elves and teapots in orbit. Which is not to say you should give it any serious consideration if these undecided matters don't seem likely to you.
The case with God is a bit different, however, as there are sound arguments against the existence of any kind of God more cosmically significant than aliens.
True, and humans didn't evolve from dinosaurs either, so it's an analogously fallacious argument they're making, which was my point.
I think their line of "reasoning" here is probably similar to the "argument" that "if humans evolved from chimps, why are there still chimps around?"
They're trying to go "Look, dinosaurs still exist! So how could anything new have evolved since them if they're still around, eh?"
It's a failure to realize that evolution is a branching of the tree of life, not the creep of one single vine of life or something.
You may turn out to be right, but to assert that human free will does not exist in your first 2 sentences without any real argument is a bit of a leap.
Nobody said anything about free will. You are the one jumping to the conclusion that your choices being predictable makes them no longer your choices.
You mean "shown almost unimaginable restraint against divulging too much of your own opinions"? I wouldn't say I really do that at all. If anything, it's going into excruciating detail on my opinions that I would credit with dodging downmods in disagreement. Well, and more to the point, having opinions which are so detailed to begin with, and not just "[your favorite thing] sucks!"
I've been quite vocal about my opinions, and gotten into lots of great arguments with people who disagree vehemently. I want smoking in public banned (smokers call me a Nazi, but no Troll mods), I want copyright abolished completely (musicians scream bloody murder, but no Troll mods), I think drinking and driving shouldn't be a crime per se (people imply I'm happy to let maniacs run over children, but no Troll mods), I drive the speed limit in the fast lane on two-lane highways full of slower traffic in the slow lane even if people behind me want to speed (people call me an asshole, but no Troll mods), I'm a philosophical anarchist and libertarian socialist (everybody on every side of every debate thinks my ways would destroy everything they love, but no Troll mods).
But because my opinions are more subtle and reasoned than "fuck smokers", "fuck musicians I want free music", "fuck it I'll drink and drive if I want", "fuck other drivers I own the road", "and fuck society I don't need them", the responses I get back are more than just "fuck you", -1 Disagree. Reason seems to invite reason in response.
Or you can voice your controversial opinions in subtle, intelligent, and detailed ways that prevent people from just going "nuh uh!" and modding you -1 Disagree. I've been around at least around 12 years myself, almost never post unless I have something controversial to say (like, for two recent examples, "all laws are death threats" and "musicians who rely on copyright protection to make a living should just get a real job"), and can't remember once being modded Troll. Overrated a few times, but never Troll.
There's a difference between what motivates someone to act and what makes that act legally compulsory. People do all kinds of things they don't legally have to, and refrain from things they legally could do, for all kinds of reasons, all the time.
What makes "illegal" different from something like "impolite" is that nobody is going to physically harm you for using the wrong fork on your salad, or mentioning how unflattering their clothes look; at least, we don't as a society condone such violence on the odd occasions that it might occur. But if you have the gall to drive 5mph faster than a posted sign on an empty highway, and don't even fork over hundreds of dollars to make up for that heinous crime, and don't voluntarily take a vacation in jail to make up for that lack of payment, and have the gall to run away or (heaven forbid) fight back when some men in uniform try to kidnap you and drag you there against your will, well then, you deserve to get shot, eh?
I'm not saying that the only reason people do things the law says to do is because they will get shot if they don't. I'm saying that what makes those things illegal, instead of just good ideas, or polite, or whatever, is that we as a society have officially condoned the use of whatever force is necessary to make them happen. Contrast the above paragraph with, say, a fine at a fancy restaurant for using the wrong fork. You don't pay the fine, and what recourse do they have? They could eject you from the restaurant, but they could always do that anyway for no reason. It's ridiculous to even call that a fine, because there is no (socially condoned) way of coercively collecting on it. They can ask you for money, sure, but you can always just say "no". They can't lock you up in their basement as punishment for failure to pay; they can ask you to come down there, but you can say "no" to that too. They can't drag you down there against your will, and if they did, and if you ran away or fought back, everyone would recognize that they were in the wrong and you were in the right. Not so with a fine from the state; if you don't pay the fine, that warrants stronger action, and if you don't comply with that, that warrants stronger action, and so on escalating as far as necessary.
I'm not saying that the state could carry out such escalation against every violation. In fact I use this as an argument that every state is on some deep level inherently democratic; any group of people in power, even a supposedly absolute monarch, only has the power they have because enough people support them and few enough people resist them. If ever enough people stand up and say "hell no", good luck carrying out punishment against all of them together at once. As you say, any country facing that situation would collapse; that would, almost by definition, be the collapse of the Weberian state, when its monopoly on the use of force is no longer considered legitimate by its people.
I will also be the first to agree that people not only don't, but especially shouldn't, base their actions entirely on what is or isn't legal, precisely because threats are not the best of reasons for action. I am what is called a philosophical anarchist, which means that I don't necessarily advocate the demolition of any particular state or government, but that I consider their decrees non-compulsory; the state saying to do something no more obligates me to do it than you saying to do it. I may be obligated to do it anyway, for other reasons, in which case the state has told me to do something which is legitimately obligatory, but that is because the state correctly asserted what was obligatory, not because whatever the state decrees becomes obligatory. The only difference between the state telling me to do something and you telling me to do something is that you can't ruin my life and get away with it if I disobey. The state can.
Note that this doesn't mean I want no government, and no punishment for anything. It means that I think we should only condone such escalation o
When was the last time the United States government "put a gun to people's heads" to work an economic policy? A policy of any kind? Even if they throw you in jail they're not going to point a gun at you.
They will if that's what it takes to get you into the jail.
Every single law on the books comes down to "do this, or we will use whatever force necessary to make you wish you had when we asked nicely".
Break a law that only carries the punishment of a fine? Oh, that's not violent at all. Except if you don't pay that fine, then (possibly after additional fines first) you get a warrant out for your arrest. Some men with guns show up at your door and ask you to come sit in a concrete room for a while. If you don't, they will eventually try to physically drag you there, and if you manage to circumvent that, they will eventually pull out the mace, taser, or gun as necessary. If, on the very slim chance you manage to circumvent those measures, even more deadly force will be brought out until eventually you are either in that concrete room or dead.
It doesn't matter if the original crime was jaywalking. You do what they say (and you get a choice of options: don't jaywalk, or pay a fine now, or pay a bigger fine later, or hang out in a concrete room for a while now, or a longer while later, etc), or they will fucking kill you.
This is why it is very important to consider very carefully every time we want to make anything illegal: in the end, every law boils down to a threat of deadly force, and we have to ask what is really worth threatening someone's life over?
True, but not very relevant to my point, because a broadcast and a recording are different products: request lines not withstanding, you can't just make the radio play any song any time you like. The only way you could obtain a recording for free before easy copying was to steal one or force someone to make one (not that I suspect anyone ever did the latter, but it's an option in the "unethical things you can do to get free music" category, and is what some musicians claim copying amounts to -- forced labor for no reward).
People seem to have a lot of trouble with reading comprehension here.
I am not telling anyone to stop playing. I am saying, if you are not satisfied with what playing gets you, nobody is forcing you to keep playing against your will.
If you enjoy playing for its own sake -- and I'm sure tons of people, including the most talented musicians, do -- then please, keep playing.
If you only play for money, and you can find some way to make money from playing -- without coercing other people -- then please, keep playing.
If you only play for money and you can't find a way to make money from playing without coercing other people, then tough shit, get a different job. Nobody is forcing you to play music for a living; if you can't make a living from playing music, you can stop, if you want, and do something else more profitable with your time, if that's what suits you. You don't get to force other people to do or not do things just because it's bad for your business model.
You might note that that graph has its x-axis logarithmic. That means that if you were to convert it to a linear graph, you'd have a sudden rise to $300/yr on the left, and then an exponential decrease extending far out to the right. It's not strictly a logarithmic curve, but it's such a heavily skewed bell curve that most of it resembles a logarithmic curve. If it was an un-skewed normal distribution, you would expect the peak to be about halfway down the range on the x-axis, not way off to the left.
This graph of US income distribution in 2011 (first relevant result off Google Image Search) looks pretty similar too. If it was a normal distribution, you would have as slow a buildup to the peak as you do a decline from it; discounting the >$250K outliers (if they can really be considered outliers, it looks like there's a good number of them), you should see the peak at around $125K, not way down in the $15K range. And likewise the median would be there, too, not in the $50K range.
In fact, that's a good way of looking at it: most people make below an average income; if you were to divide the GDP by the population, you'd have a significantly bigger number than what significantly more than half the population makes. (Nine folks have $1 each and another has $91 each; they all have $10 each on average, but 90% of them only have a tenth of that average, and the other 10% have over nine times the average). That's not possible in a normal distribution, where the mean, median, and mode are all roughly equal.
No, previously people bought music on physical media, or before that paid to see live performances, because that was the only way you could get music without doing something really unethical like physically depriving someone of something (stealing their record/tape/disc) or something even worse (like kidnapping a musician and forcing them to play at gunpoint).
just because it is technologically feasible doesn't make it right.
You fail at reading comprehension.
People, being generally ethical for the most part, used to be happy to pay for music because you couldn't get it for free without doing something most people would consider unethical, like theft or forced labor.
Now, thanks to technology, it is possible to get music for free without doing anything most people would consider unethical, so now people get music for free.
The technological feasibility didn't make a wrong action right; it doesn't make theft or forced labor OK. What it does is make it possible to get free music without theft or forced labor.
Musicians arguing that getting free music is inherently theft or forced labor are free to lock up all their recordings and stop playing, and see if that puts a stop to people getting free music. Hint: it won't, because they're not getting it by stealing or forcing the musicians to play. They're copying something already in their possession, at their own (negligible) cost, and giving that away for free.
If we invented Star Trek replicators, would all the restaurants have a claim against people sharing food for free? Right now, you have to steal to get a Big Mac for for free, and that is wrong. But some day, technology could change that, and then getting a Big Mac for free wouldn't have to involve doing anything wrong. That is what has happened with music.
Awesome, dude! You totally didn't have to coerce your friend to not pay a dime for music. It's good to have bros, right bro?
I also didn't coerce the musician to play it, or to sell me a copy of it, which is more the point. And now he wants to coerce me to stop using my equipment that I own to make something to give to someone for free?
Logically, the place where musicians have an ethical right to stop that completely ethical process is not recording their music, or not selling copies of that recording. That's their choice to make, if they like. Sure, that will mean fewer professional musicians producing music, and that those former musicians will have to go and do something else for a living.
Wow. That's about as "ethical" as I mugger telling you that shouldn't have walked down a dark alley. Now, he is ethically in the right to rob and beat you.
No, because mugging is inherently unethical. If the only way to get money from you walking down an alley is to mug you, then that is wrong. But if there is some strange means by which I can profit indefinitely from you having walked down that alley, without having to mug you or anything else unethical like that, then there is nothing wrong with that.
You are a complete ass. Farmers have been farming for 12,000 years. For free. They shouldn't have the right to keep what they produce by that logic.
Farmers have never farmed for free. Farmers farm so that they have food to eat, or something to sell in exchange for other food to eat, and other things they need. Taking away the product of their labor takes away the entire point of doing all that hard labor.
On the other hand, people who have plenty of money from other sources play music just for fun, because it's an inherently enjoyable activity. Sure, it takes skill, and produces something of value to other people. But if the supply of that valuable goes to infinity, because infinitely many people can enjoy it at no extra cost to you, then the price you can expect for it drops to zero, despite that value.
The willful ignorance here is sickening.
I agree, but not in the way you think.
Nobody is forcing musicians to give away music for free
They're not giving it away for free; they're trying to sell it, and you're taking it.
I'm not saying they're *trying* to give it away for free. I'm saying that the situation they're complaining about -- they make music, a bunch of legitimate intermediate steps happen, then people get free music -- is not something that they are forced to participate in. They can stop feeding in to their end of that chain, if they want; if they can't make money from playing music, they are free to stop playing music. What they can't do is stop other people from doing the harmless things they do in the middle of that chain.
Do you know what makes people take up an instrument? It's the same drive that makes people study art, or write poems. Musicians love, love, love to make music. Musicians will make music even if no-one is there to hear them. Musicians have a passion for music. Musicians will dedicate years of their life to study and learn and practise for hours on end just so they can get better at their passion, their hobby.
I explicitly stated in the paragraph before the one you're replying to that some people will continue to make music even if they're not getting paid for it. That some people do art for the love of the art, not just to make money.
And then I said that *if* anyone is doing it just for the money, and finds that they can't make money, they're free to stop if they like. Nobody is forcing them to play for free. But if they want to -- and some people will -- that's great. And if they can find a way to make money without artificially creating a market by force, they are welcome to do that too.
Now we are being asked to undo this not because we think this is a bad or unfair way to compensate artists but simply because it is technologically possible for corporations or individuals to exploit artists work without their permission on a massive scale and globally.
No, previously people bought music on physical media, or before that paid to see live performances, because that was the only way you could get music without doing something really unethical like physically depriving someone of something (stealing their record/tape/disc) or something even worse (like kidnapping a musician and forcing them to play at gunpoint).
Now, it is technologically possible to listen to music for free without doing anything unethical like stealing or kidnapping. A musician can willingly make a recording of their music, and willingly sell copies of that recording, and I can willingly trade some money for one of those copies, and then I can willingly make an identical copy of it on equipment that I willingly traded someone else money for, and then willingly give that identical copy to a friend, and... wow, now my friend has free music, and nobody had to do anything coercive at all. No violence, no threats, just normal sales and gifts, with some fancy technology in the middle enabling the gifts.
Logically, the place where musicians have an ethical right to stop that completely ethical process is not recording their music, or not selling copies of that recording. That's their choice to make, if they like. Sure, that will mean fewer professional musicians producing music, and that those former musicians will have to go and do something else for a living. Other people will continue making music either because they can somehow find a market for it, or just for the love of it. I think the free software community is ample evidence that people will develop and practice skills that they enjoy for free just for the love of the art, not to mention all the people playing music for the sake of music across all of human history. The music will not die.
Nobody is forcing musicians to give away music for free; they are free to stop playing music any time, if they find there is not a market for their goods, and marketability is the only reason they play. What they may not do is use the coercive force law to artificially create a market for their goods.
Are you sure that success at football is not a normal distribution? Certainly, the majority of people are not the exceptional players that get hired for the big leagues. But do you find larger and larger numbers of people as you look at lower and lower skill levels, or do the numbers swell around a mediocre but passable level, and then diminish as you get down into truly physically incapable people? I'd wager that most people are at least capable of playing a decent game of football; I personally despise professional sports, never played team sports after elementary school, do not make a special effort to be in good physical shape (and would consider myself in sub-par physical shape), and I'm told be people who play football casually that I'm not bad at it. (I'll play with friends if invited, despite not caring for sports). I'm certainly not going to go up against a pro any time soon, but neither am I utterly incapable of running or throwing a ball at all. And I'd wager that the number of people *that* bad at football is similar to the number of people who are exceptionally good at it.
Similarly with intelligence. Most people are not geniuses. But most people are not morons either (as inclined as I may be to claim otherwise sometimes). Most people are average. Most people can't calculate a derivative in their heads (if they even know what that means), but neither are most people incapable of adding a couple of numbers together. Exceedingly few people are capable of independently discovering what a derivative is and how to calculate one, but then exceedingly few people are completely incapable of grasping the concept of addition, too. And so on.
Even without a way to concretely and accurately measure overall aptitude, we can still say meaningful things about it in the context of meritocracy.
As I wrote in another post up in this thread, pretty much any test of any kind of ability, anything that might be a factor in overall aptitude, tends to find people distributed normally, i.e. on a gaussian curve. So regardless of the validity of any one particular test, it stands to reason that if the trend for all factors of aptitude is a normal distribution, then aptitude itself should follow a normal distribution (even if we can't test that directly). There should thus be a bulge of alright but mediocre people, and smaller and smaller amounts of really capable and really incompetent people off to either side.
If we had a meritocracy then, if opportunities were uniformly distributed, the product of such a normal distribution of ability and a uniform distribution of opportunity should be a normal distribution of outcomes; we should see a big bulge of middle-class people with smaller and smaller numbers of filthy rich and piss poor people on either side of that curve. We don't see that, rather the numbers swell the poorer you get in an almost logarithmic skew of the curve. So either ability is not normally distributed or opportunity is not evenly distributed. Since we observe many individual factors of ability to be normally distributed, it stands to reason that the likely culprit is that opportunity is not evenly distributed -- that we do not, in fact, have a meritocracy.
The universe is a 3D projection of a 2D surface? How does that impact those of us who are not stoned enough to think up that sort of bullshit?
Actually that is fairly well-known current science which has been reported and discussed at length right here on Slashdot even.
I specifically said "aptitude" to include all factors which make someone good at something, not limited to just intelligence; including things like discipline.
And I was explicitly making the point that there is evidently more to success than aptitude; if there wasn't, we would have a meritocracy.
The replies to my last post are reminiscent of the song "Give Up" by The Postal Service.
You clarify below that you meant the song "Sleeping In" specifically. What does that have to do with any of this?
More to the point, nobody is disputing that hard work is a factor in success, and thus that all else being equal, trying harder is generally better advice than just giving up. Nobody is saying "life is unfair, so don't bother trying". We're saying that not all failings are attributable to lack of effort or skill (nor all successes to skill and effort), because those are only partial factors in success.
To use your own analogy, it's hardly from a lack of effort or skill that you didn't get a royal flush on the deal; that's just the luck of the draw. You still have to play the hand you're dealt as best you can, but that doesn't make your crummy hand the fault of crummy playing. Poker is not a meritocracy any more than life; the best players don't always win, and the losers aren't always bad players, some people just get lucky, or unlucky. You can gauge how good a player is by how well they play a variety of hands dealt over a number of games; good players will win more often than not, when the luck of the draw is diluted over many games. But if the hand you're dealt is an analogy for the circumstances you're born into, then good luck comparing people's successes across a number of lives.
And more to the original point: if you admit that life is not fair, that flies in the face of your claim that life is a meritocracy. A meritocracy is by definition fair: nobody gets any advantages, either systemic or random, everybody starts on the same footing, and their score reflects only their skill. If life is not fair, which everybody agrees it isn't, then that is not true, and you don't have a meritocracy.
Yes, this exactly. There is a meritocracy only where opportunity is equal. And we can quite easily prove that opportunity is not equal, and likely never has been at any point in history.
Outcome is the product of ability and opportunity.
Ability, of any sort, including things like discipline and motivation on top of intelligence and strength etc -- basically any human quality -- is distributed normally, i.e. on a gaussian curve.
If opportunity was equal, outcome would be distributed normally, along a gaussian curve, and most people would be middle-class, with diminishing amounts of rich and poor.
Instead, outcome is distributed more logarithmically, with diminishing amounts of rich and swelling numbers of poor.
Therefore opportunity is not equal. QED.
Life is a meritocracy.
Tell that to everyone who scores in the 1% across the board on aptitude tests but isn't in the 1% economically.