In two parallel worlds, this guy's idiocy would cause him to quickly evolve out of society.
Passive resistance worked for Ghandi, who, being English educated, knew the inherent justice in their system. The same would not have worked for Nazi Germany.
Such a passive system would, in the absence of English-type restraints, actually breed or call into existance an overlord class, after decades of general local thuggery.
Anyway, not only do you have the right to defend yourself, you are under no moral obligation to take the "nicest" path to do so, especially should some of the "nicer" paths be less likely to succeed.
> Sure, they might become evil and corrupt, but how > can you be sure that some less reputable people > don't use that power to install their own even more > evil and corrupt totalitarian government?
You can't, of course. You can, however, turn to history. Oh, yeah. I guess a ban on guns is the first thing such corrupt, totalitarian governments do.
> democratically, though referendums, not through > the use of weapons. It might be slow, it might be > painful, but the alternative potentially is utter > chaos.
Why not just have a constitution with guaranteed freedoms? Then nobody, even the people through voting, can stomp on rights.
After all, it's all about freedom, not democracy. Wielding the murderous claw of history with the force of democracy doesn't make it any more right than if a small dictatorship did it. You don't get un-evil by having a large mass of people do the evil.
> "Reasonable" is usually taken to mean what the > average person would consider to be reasonable.
Which, of course, is circular reasoning in a democracy. What the majority vote for is by definition what the average person would consider reasonable. It sounds pretty reasonable to round up the Jews, remember, or that people who don't accept Jesus should be burned at the stake, or at least tortured until they do. It's pretty reasonable that Miss Cleo and John Edwards are not lying charlatans ripping people off.
> but world class mathematicians will agree -- > properly implemented (mathematically) cryptography > is unbreakable except by brute force.
This is the "gut feeling", yes, but it has never been proven. Indeed, if the NSA secretely cracked this, wouldn't they continue to buy supercomputers and hire mathematicians, leaving them in the dark, just to provide a cover?
Re:Litter doesn't decompose quickly.
on
Cradle to Cradle
·
· Score: 1
And what about college students in dorms? They're the ones who typically pick up furniture just as it's collapsing at the end of its life, anyway. Then they stick it into their:
To bust this straw man comparison, I will only point out that capitalism, as derivative of freedom, has brought magnitudes more progress to the average individual than any other "system" (as if choice of system were morally ambiguous, which 't'ain't.)
Hint: What's the correct terminology to use for a nominally privately owned medial industry controlled by the government, all bathed in nationalistic rhetoric?
When cornered by doctors regarding the government setting rates, supplies, etc., Hillary DID suggest to limit the number of specialists.
What's the point of making something environmentally friendly so it won't end up in a landfill?
Here's the proper plan for the immediate (50-200 years) future:
Dump yard waste and other things into sealed, non-biodegrading landfills. No shortage of space and it reduces CO2.
In two hundred years, or fifty, send robots into the landfills to manually separate junk for recycling, in ways that aren't economically feasible now.
To sum up:
1. Landfills (leaks notwithstanding) are not a problem.
2. Even if they were, in a few hundred years they won't be.
Someone from the future reading this, please resurrect me and one envirogeek so I can sit there and laugh at their massively incorrect world view.
Re:you're right, but it's not that simple
on
Cradle to Cradle
·
· Score: 1
> The nation with less strict rules will steal all > the business.
I would argue this is a good thing. It allows the purchasers of items to get away from the higher costs associated with oppressive thumb of silly, mass-idiocy serving governments.
The only legitimate use of restrictions would be to encourage other governments lacking in human rights laws (ironically, things like freedom of speech, movement, your own body, to own property, etc.)
What about the cost of us living with lesser technology than we otherwise would have had, thanks to the slowing of the economy of any of various proposed (and real) environmental laws?
Guess what, people? The cost of 99% of environmentalism hurts more than it helps; any advantage is a magnitude or more less helpful than the truncated economy the enviro laws lopped off, and it ain't even close. I mean, it's not even a contest.
> I have long been interested in what the > philosophical framework is for property rights in > the West.... I can't understand why we sacrifice > the future of our species on the altar of > production and trade.
Because so far it's been an incalculably great boon. How's that for an answer?
If you slow technological development because of the alter of eco-fury, you will cause more and more people to die who otherwise would have lived.
This inexorable climb, slowed, outweighs all but the most severe of possible environmental problems. Never forget that people choking in London a hundred and fifty years ago were STILL living much longer and healthier lives because of the very industries choking them. Any government "solution" should be only as a very last resort to a severe and recognized problem.
Re:Didn't here the E or T words..
on
Cradle to Cradle
·
· Score: 1
The US still has massive reserves in Alaska and off the shores of CA and the Gulf of Mexico (not to mention Texas and Pennsylvania, with modern technology.) Most are closed due to political issues, not scientific (or even environmentally rational) reasons. (Note that this benefits the US -- use up the rest of the world's oil first, which isn't a bad policy. Of course, that won't happen either as substitutes will emerge [invention] long before a true oil crisis happens.)
Re:Didn't here the E or T words..
on
Cradle to Cradle
·
· Score: 1
> consuption of oil is exceeding discovery of new reserves 4:1
So you are claiming that people who say we have more oil reserves than ever before, in the sense of more years left of oil than ever before, and that this is increasing year by year, are lying?
In any event, long before oil begins to become scarce (as measured by increasing price) we'll have substitutes produced directly from bacteria or some such thing. If an environmentalist wants to worry about hydrocarbons, they should realize, if honest, that we'll more likely than not always have them, until powerful batteries and fusion become cost effective, thus the harmful effects of hydrocarbon useage are something to be watched for, not a false worry about running out of oil.
> Other than incoming energy from the sun, our > environment is basically a closed system. Whenever > (non-human) life on our planet uses a resource, it > is left in a form readily useable to other life.
I beg to differ with the article poster. This does sound like another eco-nut.
In anywhere from 10 to 200 years we'll produce energy from fusion and won't have to rely on energy from the sun. Now, which type of society will get us there fastest? A powerful economy pumping technological development both thru private enterprise and government funding, or a busted economy with little private enterprise, little government funding (can't tax if it isn't there and can only borrow so much before you collapse)?
Heck, more than a trivial amount of energy is already derived from non-sun induced fission.
Your mind ported to a hardware brain with accompanying military ruggedized robot body would be capable both of bullet time and rocket jumping. Of course, the body should have many extra counterbalancing limbs to thrust whatever you want wherever.
It's an engineering problem, man. Now dodging a laser ray gun may be a bit of a problem.
One of the stupidest things I ever heard about physics was that it refused to deal with the subjective perceptual experience (for example, the "green" you experience looking at a tree.)
These are a very real, existing, physical phenomenon. That it is "introspective" is a cop-out of physics.
AI has made little progress in that, either. Until better computers come along, they still can't get past the question of whether such perceptual experience arises as a physical phenomenon of the brain, or as a physical phenomenon of the data pushing the brain itself does. Note to the religious: pushing it into the spirit world only suggests an acompanying spiritual physics, sorry to say.
Yes, but it's the important one from the "time does not exist" question.
Stastically, the pool balls bouncing around on the table probably won't meet at a perfect and sudden triangle rack with all momentum cancelled. Why should the balls follow mathematical rules that follow from a presumption of time? Seems like a waste for the universe to go to all the bother.
That things, particles, whatever, behave mathematically (bouncing off each other, whatever) in a manner that fits a timestream, I don't see why people pedantically want to consider it illusory.
Yes, on a particle level, there is no difference in the direction of time. However, when you look at the larger picture with the "spread out" happening only in one direction...
Re:Change the data: change the conclusion
on
Data Quality Act
·
· Score: 1
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive...but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience..." C. S. Lewis
The scientific models of the environment are so iffy it's not surprising the environmentalist movement more resembles a religion than real science. And it resembles a religion insofar as it encroaches that other religion, politics.
"Allow me to control this type of person in such and such a way, and that type of person in such and such a way, and I'll make your life better, I promise!" -- Mantra of politicians and priests for millenia, right up to the present
Re:Can We Callanmge the SEC and FAASB?
on
Data Quality Act
·
· Score: 1
> once again I have to remind someone that the US > has a negative net greenhouse emmision thanks to a > shitload of forests
We'd be doing better, still, if the idiot environmentalists would stop convincing state legislators to ban yard waste from landfills. We are not running out of room to store garbage, and any carbon you dump into a non-biodegrading landfill is all that less to muck up the atmosphere as CO2.
Of course, that presumes CO2 is (only) a bad thing. It also happens to be a very good thing for farming and forests because plants get their carbon from the atmosphere. A cornstalk's non-air components amount to a thimblefull of matter.
> If actual supply is decreasing - as it is for every > non-renewable resource - and price is not > increasing, that's not something to brag about,
Actually, this is precisely his point, and why scientists discussing these issues often trip up here -- they presume that what's "in the ground" is all there is. It isn't.
When an economist looks at something, they consider not just the stuff in the ground but also:
- direct substitutes (ethanol, LPG) - indirect substitutes (solar, etc.) - advancing technology to make previously uneconomical or impossible extractions attractive - advancing technology to make automobile concepts obsolete
Of course, this is partly what this is all about. The question is, "How do we get there the quickest?"
Smashing an economy with grotesque legislative weights will actually slow things down. Meanwhile, in a world without them, oil, for example, will not simply and suddenly run out. As some sources get scarce, more and more difficult sources will be used, and economies of scale and advancing technology will keep the price low.
So powerful is this force of freedom, i.e. greedy capitalism, that we now have more known reserves even at our accelerated useage than ever before. To bust the economy because of some misplaced hyperventillation of non-economist scientists who don't understand this principle is completely, and murderously, irresponsible.
Slashdot Mirror
> I'm not offering the US as an example of perfect
> democracy, though we've had...0wN3d legislatures
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." P.J. O'Rourke
In two parallel worlds, this guy's idiocy would cause him to quickly evolve out of society.
Passive resistance worked for Ghandi, who, being English educated, knew the inherent justice in their system. The same would not have worked for Nazi Germany.
Such a passive system would, in the absence of English-type restraints, actually breed or call into existance an overlord class, after decades of general local thuggery.
Anyway, not only do you have the right to defend yourself, you are under no moral obligation to take the "nicest" path to do so, especially should some of the "nicer" paths be less likely to succeed.
> Sure, they might become evil and corrupt, but how
> can you be sure that some less reputable people
> don't use that power to install their own even more
> evil and corrupt totalitarian government?
You can't, of course. You can, however, turn to history. Oh, yeah. I guess a ban on guns is the first thing such corrupt, totalitarian governments do.
> democratically, though referendums, not through
> the use of weapons. It might be slow, it might be
> painful, but the alternative potentially is utter
> chaos.
Why not just have a constitution with guaranteed freedoms? Then nobody, even the people through voting, can stomp on rights.
After all, it's all about freedom, not democracy. Wielding the murderous claw of history with the force of democracy doesn't make it any more right than if a small dictatorship did it. You don't get un-evil by having a large mass of people do the evil.
> "Reasonable" is usually taken to mean what the
> average person would consider to be reasonable.
Which, of course, is circular reasoning in a democracy. What the majority vote for is by definition what the average person would consider reasonable. It sounds pretty reasonable to round up the Jews, remember, or that people who don't accept Jesus should be burned at the stake, or at least tortured until they do. It's pretty reasonable that Miss Cleo and John Edwards are not lying charlatans ripping people off.
Unless they try to open a medical clinic for rich people. Then the free there are sent to jail.
Or if you talk about certain court cases.
Or if you try to import simple, consentual adults-only pr0n.
> What is the greek word for a question that answers itself?
autofellatio
Oh, wait. That's half Latin.
> but world class mathematicians will agree --
> properly implemented (mathematically) cryptography
> is unbreakable except by brute force.
This is the "gut feeling", yes, but it has never been proven. Indeed, if the NSA secretely cracked this, wouldn't they continue to buy supercomputers and hire mathematicians, leaving them in the dark, just to provide a cover?
And what about college students in dorms? They're the ones who typically pick up furniture just as it's collapsing at the end of its life, anyway. Then they stick it into their:
Dark
Organic
Rat-infested
Moist
rooms.
To bust this straw man comparison, I will only point out that capitalism, as derivative of freedom, has brought magnitudes more progress to the average individual than any other "system" (as if choice of system were morally ambiguous, which 't'ain't.)
Bingo.
Hint: What's the correct terminology to use for a nominally privately owned medial industry controlled by the government, all bathed in nationalistic rhetoric?
When cornered by doctors regarding the government setting rates, supplies, etc., Hillary DID suggest to limit the number of specialists.
What's the point of making something environmentally friendly so it won't end up in a landfill?
Here's the proper plan for the immediate (50-200 years) future:
Dump yard waste and other things into sealed, non-biodegrading landfills. No shortage of space and it reduces CO2.
In two hundred years, or fifty, send robots into the landfills to manually separate junk for recycling, in ways that aren't economically feasible now.
To sum up:
1. Landfills (leaks notwithstanding) are not a problem.
2. Even if they were, in a few hundred years they won't be.
Someone from the future reading this, please resurrect me and one envirogeek so I can sit there and laugh at their massively incorrect world view.
> The nation with less strict rules will steal all
> the business.
I would argue this is a good thing. It allows the purchasers of items to get away from the higher costs associated with oppressive thumb of silly, mass-idiocy serving governments.
The only legitimate use of restrictions would be to encourage other governments lacking in human rights laws (ironically, things like freedom of speech, movement, your own body, to own property, etc.)
What about the cost of us living with lesser technology than we otherwise would have had, thanks to the slowing of the economy of any of various proposed (and real) environmental laws?
Guess what, people? The cost of 99% of environmentalism hurts more than it helps; any advantage is a magnitude or more less helpful than the truncated economy the enviro laws lopped off, and it ain't even close. I mean, it's not even a contest.
Non-intuitive? Yes. True? Yes again.
> I have long been interested in what the
> philosophical framework is for property rights in
> the West.... I can't understand why we sacrifice
> the future of our species on the altar of
> production and trade.
Because so far it's been an incalculably great boon. How's that for an answer?
If you slow technological development because of the alter of eco-fury, you will cause more and more people to die who otherwise would have lived.
This inexorable climb, slowed, outweighs all but the most severe of possible environmental problems. Never forget that people choking in London a hundred and fifty years ago were STILL living much longer and healthier lives because of the very industries choking them. Any government "solution" should be only as a very last resort to a severe and recognized problem.
The US still has massive reserves in Alaska and off the shores of CA and the Gulf of Mexico (not to mention Texas and Pennsylvania, with modern technology.) Most are closed due to political issues, not scientific (or even environmentally rational) reasons. (Note that this benefits the US -- use up the rest of the world's oil first, which isn't a bad policy. Of course, that won't happen either as substitutes will emerge [invention] long before a true oil crisis happens.)
> consuption of oil is exceeding discovery of new reserves 4:1
So you are claiming that people who say we have more oil reserves than ever before, in the sense of more years left of oil than ever before, and that this is increasing year by year, are lying?
In any event, long before oil begins to become scarce (as measured by increasing price) we'll have substitutes produced directly from bacteria or some such thing. If an environmentalist wants to worry about hydrocarbons, they should realize, if honest, that we'll more likely than not always have them, until powerful batteries and fusion become cost effective, thus the harmful effects of hydrocarbon useage are something to be watched for, not a false worry about running out of oil.
> Other than incoming energy from the sun, our
> environment is basically a closed system. Whenever
> (non-human) life on our planet uses a resource, it
> is left in a form readily useable to other life.
I beg to differ with the article poster. This does sound like another eco-nut.
In anywhere from 10 to 200 years we'll produce energy from fusion and won't have to rely on energy from the sun. Now, which type of society will get us there fastest? A powerful economy pumping technological development both thru private enterprise and government funding, or a busted economy with little private enterprise, little government funding (can't tax if it isn't there and can only borrow so much before you collapse)?
Heck, more than a trivial amount of energy is already derived from non-sun induced fission.
Your mind ported to a hardware brain with accompanying military ruggedized robot body would be capable both of bullet time and rocket jumping. Of course, the body should have many extra counterbalancing limbs to thrust whatever you want wherever.
It's an engineering problem, man.
Now dodging a laser ray gun may be a bit of a problem.
One of the stupidest things I ever heard about physics was that it refused to deal with the subjective perceptual experience (for example, the "green" you experience looking at a tree.)
These are a very real, existing, physical phenomenon. That it is "introspective" is a cop-out of physics.
AI has made little progress in that, either. Until better computers come along, they still can't get past the question of whether such perceptual experience arises as a physical phenomenon of the brain, or as a physical phenomenon of the data pushing the brain itself does. Note to the religious: pushing it into the spirit world only suggests an acompanying spiritual physics, sorry to say.
Yes, but it's the important one from the "time does not exist" question.
Stastically, the pool balls bouncing around on the table probably won't meet at a perfect and sudden triangle rack with all momentum cancelled. Why should the balls follow mathematical rules that follow from a presumption of time? Seems like a waste for the universe to go to all the bother.
That things, particles, whatever, behave mathematically (bouncing off each other, whatever) in a manner that fits a timestream, I don't see why people pedantically want to consider it illusory.
Yes, on a particle level, there is no difference in the direction of time. However, when you look at the larger picture with the "spread out" happening only in one direction...
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive...but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience..." C. S. Lewis
The scientific models of the environment are so iffy it's not surprising the environmentalist movement more resembles a religion than real science. And it resembles a religion insofar as it encroaches that other religion, politics.
"Allow me to control this type of person in such and such a way, and that type of person in such and such a way, and I'll make your life better, I promise!" -- Mantra of politicians and priests for millenia, right up to the present
> once again I have to remind someone that the US
> has a negative net greenhouse emmision thanks to a
> shitload of forests
We'd be doing better, still, if the idiot environmentalists would stop convincing state legislators to ban yard waste from landfills. We are not running out of room to store garbage, and any carbon you dump into a non-biodegrading landfill is all that less to muck up the atmosphere as CO2.
Of course, that presumes CO2 is (only) a bad thing. It also happens to be a very good thing for farming and forests because plants get their carbon from the atmosphere. A cornstalk's non-air components amount to a thimblefull of matter.
> If actual supply is decreasing - as it is for every
> non-renewable resource - and price is not
> increasing, that's not something to brag about,
Actually, this is precisely his point, and why scientists discussing these issues often trip up here -- they presume that what's "in the ground" is all there is. It isn't.
When an economist looks at something, they consider not just the stuff in the ground but also:
- direct substitutes (ethanol, LPG)
- indirect substitutes (solar, etc.)
- advancing technology to make previously uneconomical or impossible extractions attractive
- advancing technology to make automobile concepts obsolete
Of course, this is partly what this is all about. The question is, "How do we get there the quickest?"
Smashing an economy with grotesque legislative weights will actually slow things down. Meanwhile, in a world without them, oil, for example, will not simply and suddenly run out. As some sources get scarce, more and more difficult sources will be used, and economies of scale and advancing technology will keep the price low.
So powerful is this force of freedom, i.e. greedy capitalism, that we now have more known reserves even at our accelerated useage than ever before. To bust the economy because of some misplaced hyperventillation of non-economist scientists who don't understand this principle is completely, and murderously, irresponsible.