This qualifies me as a slashdot stalker? Well, there's always a first time for everything. Pretty low threshold, IMHO.
I was looking through your posting history to see what kind of a poster you were and your comment in this article was just too ironic to let slip. You look completely reasonable and rational here, if a little opinionated, but as we both know, there's no learning to be done by you, it's all about informing the rest of us poor sods how we're wrong...
You remind me of one of my favorite quotes: "People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who do."
Don't get apprehensive about any more "stalking". I've found out what I wanted to learn and based on your (lack of) response in the other thread, it looks like you've conceded the argument and we're done.
I am not saying that GPS on child = fascism, you fucking window licker.
Give up. He's not here to discuss. He's here to tell you (and me) what the TRUTH is. He's already figured it out and has absolutely no interest in understanding your argument or forming a cogent counter-argument. Your carefully-explained arguments cannot reach their intended target.
I got stuck in a tangential thread discussing another aspect of personal freedom and societal utility regarding gun ownership and it went nowhere. Lots of effort from me, lots of cussing and "big lie" assertions from him. Now I'm feeling sheepish for wasting all of that time.
At least his arguments are utterly and completely trounced for the few who will come after and bother to read the thread.
99% of the people in your life are full of shit ideas. 99% of what you yourself say is incomplete and ill thought out
the whole point is, only through communication do we develop better ideas. [...snip...]
don't lament that so much of humanity, including yourself, is so unenlightened. rejoice that so many strive to be better. how do i know they strive to be better?
because they go online, and communicate. this is the first step towards becoming a better person
Physician, heal thyself.
if i were 100% certain of my beliefs, i would sit in smug condescension and talk to no one. what would be the point?
Do you even want to have a discussion? I honestly feel that (1) the NRA are a bunch of tards and (2) guns are a net benefit to society, most definitely including urban dwellers like myself. You seem to want to be angry and name call.
If you want to have a discussion, please step up. If not, I'm done. I feel that anyone reading this little exchange between us would feel that I've hugely substantiated my argument that gun ownership is a net benefit in the USA while you have not actually made an argument of your own nor have you refuted even a single point that I've made.
The author (Kleck) of the criminology paper where those charts originally appeared is a widely respected criminologist who is trying to find out which gun control policies might be effective for reducing crime and/or violence.
You'd like him as he's also pretty hostile to the NRA.
Step up with some numbers that substantiate your position or go away. As a reminder, you have yet to assemble a cogent argument for your position. So far, all you've done is assert wildly.
That's funny. I refuse to join the NRA because they're pansies who are more often in the way of RKBA than helping it. I do like their "Eddie Eagle" child gun safety training, however, and have paid a small amount of money for those materials.
do you mix your own propaganda or do you merely regurgitate what's fed to you gimp?
On the analysis of the Kellerman study, some of the flaws were pointed out by others, some of the flaws were from my own analysis (though I'm sure I'm not alone).
MORE PEOPLE ARE KILLED BY GUNS THAN SAVED BY GUNS
BY AT LEAST A FUCKING ORDER OF MAGNITUDE
understand that ironclad truth you lying turd?
9,369 homicides/year from firearms in the USA.
Estimated 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 successful uses of a firearm in self-defense per year (unknown number of lives saved).
So there are about 250-500 uses of a firearm in self-defense for each firearm murder. Pull it together, dude. Your assertions about the numbers don't stand up to even basic scrutiny.
HOW MANY VIOLENT CRIMES WERE COMMITTED LAST YEAR
HOW MANY WERE DONE WITH FIREARMS
HOW MANY MURDERS WERE COMMITTED LAST YEAR (16,204 in 2006)
HOW MANY WERE DONE WITH FIREARMS (9,369 in 2006)
look it up you propagandized asshole
Well, I looked up the last two , but you have yet to make a connection between these numbers and a claim that guns are a net negative in society. The fact that guns are used for ill is part of their cost to society. The fact that they are also used for good is part of their benefit to society. Any analysis which purports to demonize or valorize guns needs to account for cost and benefit based on real numbers.
your days are numbered you fucking dinosaur. its all inevitable demographic change from here
I wonder. As I mentioned earlier, it is my belief that many cultural changes are much like pendulums, swinging from extreme to extreme over long periods of time. Right now, it feels like we're swinging away from the extreme "fear of self" and "fear of neighbor" that motivates gun-banning and headed back towards more of a "trust yourself" and "trust your neighbor" culture that is tolerant of responsible gun ownership. I'm doing my best to make as many of my liberal friends comfortable and safe around guns and they're definitely interested.
One point in favor of your goals is the increasing difficulty finding affordable places to hunt, and maintaining a hunting culture with increasing population pressure. One of the biggest reasons that my wife and I talk about expatriating or at least moving out of Los Angeles is lack of access to public wilderness nearby as our children grow up. But there is a healthy sport of target and sport shooting that's gaining popularity in urban areas. We'll just have to see if that is sufficient to maintain a gun culture as the country becomes more urbanized.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see who is right as the struggle to shift the culture plays out. As for our little micro-thread, I wish that it had been nice discussing the issue with you, but your debating skills have been a severe disappointment. Good luck with that.
According to Kleck, the numbers go the other way. For each victim of a crime where a gun was used, there are dozens of cases of successful self-defense using a gun.
I suspect that you've believed something someone told you and not looked any deeper because the number felt right (or there is no way the authority could be wrong about that).
Specifically, the most common bad study is the Kellerman study (that a gun is 43 times more likely to kill you or someone you know than to kill someone in self-defense) which is horribly flawed. The study was of a one year period in a Detroit neighborhood overrun with gangs and drugs. Because the drug dealers knew the person they were killing in most of the homicides, those homicides were counted in the "or someone you know" category. That accounted for 37 of the 43x. Of the remaining 6x, there was a very high gun suicide rate in the same neighborhood over the same year, which accounted for 5.5x of the remaining deaths in the "you or someone you know" category. Of the self-defense uses, only those uses which resulted in the death of the attacker were counted in the self-defense category. As stated in my previous post, various criminologists estimate that 80-99% of successful defensive uses of firearms do not involve firing the gun. If we assume that every defensive shot fired killed someone, that shifts the proportion from 10:1 to 200:1 successful defensive uses of firearms to accidents and domestic violence homicides. Since most gunshot wounds are survivable, the number is definitely even lower than that, even in one of the most violent inner cities in the US.
So even looking at the Kellerman study with a little more insight reveals that the benefits of guns solidly outweigh the costs.
As for your hatred and venom, well, I'm sorry that that's happening. I don't see changing my mind on something I feel is so clearly beneficial to society and my community without a really compelling argument. The way I understand the issue, you've been misinformed and this particular misinformation appears to have a very real effect on your level of happiness. I sincerely hope that you find a way through this venom and hatred (you don't have to change your mind, but that anger doesn't help you, nor does it help you change anyone's mind).
I'm curious if you remember how you became a fan? I seriously wondered if I should post that previous one AC or not but decided for the AC because it was way off-topic (just nit-picking a single point that wasn't even his argument). This time I figured I'd respond directly. Hope it's constructive.
The characterization as a redneck would be really funny if you knew me. Based on other things you've written, I just don't see where the venom comes from.
the only truth about uncontrolled gun ownership is that rural folk benefit from them (police are far away) while urban people suffer for them (in urban settings they are the provenance of thugs)
Interesting assertion. I live in an urban area: Santa Monica, California. I think the argument for law-abiding carry of weapons for self-defense in cities is much stronger than for rural areas. In the countryside, the strongest arguments for having guns is their utility as tools. The self-defense argument is much weaker. Interestingly, in national parks and forests, the self-defense argument is more relevant as most large parks and forests harbor marijuana growers who are armed and "unfriendly".
Of the various attacks and violent crimes in this area, strangely none of them happened while police were in sight. If you're under the apprehension that the police are there to protect you, check your assumptions and fast. The police are there to do two things: clean up afterwards and find who did it.
If you want someone to stop a crime in progress, your cell phone isn't going to help. You're going to have to do it yourself. I offer two examples that even cover the justifiable use of high capacity magazines: Watts 1965, Rodney King 1992. In both cases, the police abandoned residents to their own devices.
instead of rural assholes holding urban folk hostage and allowing hundreds of urban folks to die every year at the hands of urban gun toting thugs, the reverse will hold true. welcome to fucking democracy, you fucking red neck
Hm. Someone has their panties in a serious twist.
Sorry to disappoint your preconception of gun owners, but... I live in a condo. I live in a densely populated city near the ocean in southern California. I voted for Obama. I have two daughters in private school. I write software for Google. I drive a bicycle to work to save on gas. I go barefoot wherever I can. I buy hemp clothing and buy locally produced natural products whenever possible (lately, natural soaps). I want to buy a Chevy Volt if they ever sell it. I deplore trophy hunters, gas-guzzling trucks, drunkenness, and "buy USA" attitudes. I also happen to legally own a number of firearms and I regularly hunt for meat.
You seem to believe that there are no benefits to legal gun ownership. And yet, by various estimates, the number of times guns are used in self-defense is between 100,000 and 2,000,000 per year (depending on who you read, between 80-99% of defensive firearm uses do not involve firing the gun, just presenting it is enough to end the attack).
I think guns are certainly a mixed benefit, but in the end, I believe that a rational analysis will find that they are a net benefit to society. As is often quoted by the Brady group, there are about 34,000 gun deaths per year. That number includes police shootings, and justifiable homicides, which are beneficial uses. It also includes suicides, which I'm not bothered by since I'm not convinced that any of tall buildings, bridges, pills, ropes, razor blades or guns cause suicide. Most importantly, the remainder of that number after removing those categories (about 17,000/year) doesn't provide any hint of how many times someone would be killed with a knife or a club if a gun was not available, nor can that number tell us how many more violent crimes would have resulted in death if someone hadn't defended themselves.
The number of accidental firearms deaths has been falling since WWII despite more people and more guns, is currently half the number of accidental drownings in swimming pools (~1400/year vs. ~3000/year), and 1/40th the number of accidental deaths in cars. While each accidental death is a tragedy, accidental gun deaths are not a problem in my opinion.
in places where urban dominance is well-established, like europe, guns are seen as vile, not beneficial
Actually, there are lots of slippery slopes that are very real. Even the link you provided clearly limits the scope of the argumentative fallacy to asserting that a small change will lead to a large change without substantiation. But to argue that a current proposal is a logical first step towards a bigger unacceptable goal is absolutely a valid argument, as long as a logical connection is made between the current proposal and the supposed larger goal.
His argument as to why "gps tracking becomes acceptable" may some day become "gps tracking becomes normal" and why that's a problem is therefore not an example of the slippery slope fallacy. Unfortunately, this means that:
just admit you fucked up, and moved on, and drop the slippery slope bullshit in all future arguments, for the sake of your own lucidity
is incorrect.
As an aside, the "slippery slope fallacy" is a specific case of Proof by assertion fallacy.
I have a potato cannon that's accurate enough from 50-100 yards away but also works like a mortar launcher that we can peg a bush roughly 5 acres away (about 250 yards).
5 acres away? If you planted those 250 yards with zucchini, how many neighbors could you bother over the next furlong?
(Yeah, yeah, so I'm not all that great with jokes about improperly used units.)
I know this will hard for you US'ians to accept but it's a proper role for Government to regulate what you can eat when your obesity rates are driving up the cost of medicine.
What if the government regulations are harmful? What if they're based off of bad science and reinforced by deceptive politics? What if fat (and saturated fat) isn't bad for you? What if it's carbohydrates, including complex carbohydrates, that is the really dangerous stuff?
Disclosure: I lost (and kept off) 35 lbs. and improved my cholesterol numbers by going off a low-fat diet and starting a high-fat, high-saturated-fat, largely carnivorous diet.
So the government wants to help, but it's badly misinformed. This issue appears to have dogged government regulation in multiple domains: environment, finance, pharma, health care, diet, etc. In the end, I wouldn't mind government regulation so much if the government could be trusted to get the regulation right (or at least close). Since so often, the regulation provided by the US Government is wildly off-base, I have a lot of difficulty trusting it.
No, US inner city culture historical interactions of race and drugs along with the uniquely US "War on (some) Drugs" is dramatically different from Germany's history of drugs and race in culture (not to mention much less draconian drug enforcement efforts).
Those myriad differences have led to higher demand in the US, more severe penalties, fewer legal outlets (Netherlands), etc. Add to all of that being adjacent to a poor, third-world country with porous borders and you've got a very different drug problem in the US than in Germany.
Drug prohibition is necessary but not sufficient to explain the extraordinarily high levels of violence associated with drug distribution in the US.
What's-his-name's accomplishments were stupid because they were simultaneously low value by how I define value and high risk.
Fixed that for you. You probably also meant "stupid by my [as in your] subjective and highly moral(istic) standards".
While I agree that judgment usually comes with perspective (and is therefore subjective), I honestly thought that this was a pretty cut and dry issue. As in, so far over into the spectacularly stupid end of the dial that there would be almost none who would disagree. Guess I found one...
Well, I'll tell you what would be interesting. You making a cogent argument that anything he's done has any value beyond the stimulation of his adrenal gland. Something more "Galilean" in durability of contribution towards nature or humanity or community or...
Please come up with something, since at this point, your total argument appears to be "Rossifer is a judgmental meanie." I'm not going to disagree with your assertion, but that assertion is completely irrelevant to the discussion.
We aren't disagreeing with each other. I posit that it's the War on Drugs and the resulting black-market profit that causes the violence. Not the drugs themselves.
Germany has something like 1 intentional homicide per 100,000 people (about 1/4 of the USA murder rate, which is about half of the Zimbabwean murder rate... not that the US needs gun control).
Exclude drug-related murders from both Germany and the US. The remaining violence statistics are on par.
The "War on (some) Drugs" is the most common proximal cause of murder in the US. Firearms are just the most popular tool for accomplishing a bit of drug fueled violence.
You're projecting some serious assumptions about how I value accomplishments. Luckily for my argument, your assumptions and my argument have very little in common and were never properly introduced anyway.
What's-his-name's accomplishments were stupid because they were simultaneously low value and high risk. The accomplishments that you assume I would scorn by Galileo, Louis and Clark, Hudson (presumably Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, et.al. were skipped for brevity) have had their claims and achievements validated time and again as high value, even if they most definitely were also high risk.
As for fictional accomplishments, the Jesus story posits a supernatural valuation of that sacrifice. Sacrifice can also be valuable, and that retelling of the age old hero myth doesn't disappoint in that regard. After all, Jesus saved the whole world...
If these interns were so smart, then how come they got caught?
Because smart and dumb are not always or never qualities. In this case, the thrill-seeking aspect of his personality meant that the smarts were dedicated to achieving difficult but spectacularly stupid accomplishments.
Can I restate your response as, "There's no way to tell the religious 'you're fundamentally wrong' in such a way that will avoid offending them."?
That's fair. I think he could have cushioned the blow a little more, but your point is taken. Religious believers often seem to be spoiling for a fight anyway, so any "cushioning" probably would have been wasted effort.
You have to admit that Hawking sought out his conflict with religion. His thesis of "Where can God exist? [lots of argument trimmed] Nowhere." appears to be deliberately framed to antagonize religious believers.
Hawking is far too smart to accidentally do something like that, which leads me to believe that his conflict with religion was deliberately sought.
Not in so many words, no. Many Democrats have, however, called for us to pull out of Iraq under conditions that are equivalent (in my, and many other people's opinion) to admitting that we've lost.
I believe that you have inadvertently stated the essence of my argument. It's not that we want the US to lose, it's that an Iraqi conflict was never winnable. All I want is for the US to admit that we've lost and get out.
Based only on a cursory understanding of "winning" and "losing" and looking at the situation in Iraq, there is no outcome from Iraq where we can reasonably claim that we've won. In fact, we lost before we even landed in Iraq, simply because what we were told was the "win" criteria (the demolition of WMD's or Saddam's ouster) are now clearly seen to be red herrings.
A subsequent goal that might constitute a win (bringing a modern democracy to Iraq) is a goal that we cannot possibly deliver since it requires a cultural shift equivalent to the Enlightenment and the only tools we brought are Predator drones and troops with M16M4's.
Slashdot Mirror
This qualifies me as a slashdot stalker? Well, there's always a first time for everything. Pretty low threshold, IMHO.
I was looking through your posting history to see what kind of a poster you were and your comment in this article was just too ironic to let slip. You look completely reasonable and rational here, if a little opinionated, but as we both know, there's no learning to be done by you, it's all about informing the rest of us poor sods how we're wrong...
You remind me of one of my favorite quotes: "People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who do."
Don't get apprehensive about any more "stalking". I've found out what I wanted to learn and based on your (lack of) response in the other thread, it looks like you've conceded the argument and we're done.
Give up. He's not here to discuss. He's here to tell you (and me) what the TRUTH is. He's already figured it out and has absolutely no interest in understanding your argument or forming a cogent counter-argument. Your carefully-explained arguments cannot reach their intended target.
I got stuck in a tangential thread discussing another aspect of personal freedom and societal utility regarding gun ownership and it went nowhere. Lots of effort from me, lots of cussing and "big lie" assertions from him. Now I'm feeling sheepish for wasting all of that time.
At least his arguments are utterly and completely trounced for the few who will come after and bother to read the thread.
Physician, heal thyself.
That's not your only choice as you've so eloquently demonstrated elsewhere.
Do you even want to have a discussion? I honestly feel that (1) the NRA are a bunch of tards and (2) guns are a net benefit to society, most definitely including urban dwellers like myself. You seem to want to be angry and name call.
If you want to have a discussion, please step up. If not, I'm done. I feel that anyone reading this little exchange between us would feel that I've hugely substantiated my argument that gun ownership is a net benefit in the USA while you have not actually made an argument of your own nor have you refuted even a single point that I've made.
So, what's your goal here?
I used a summary that I'd read years ago. Here's what a quick Google search says:
Thirteen surveys, 800k to 3.6M defensive uses/year.
http://www.guncite.com/kleckandgertztable1.html
The author (Kleck) of the criminology paper where those charts originally appeared is a widely respected criminologist who is trying to find out which gun control policies might be effective for reducing crime and/or violence.
You'd like him as he's also pretty hostile to the NRA.
Step up with some numbers that substantiate your position or go away. As a reminder, you have yet to assemble a cogent argument for your position. So far, all you've done is assert wildly.
The 2006 numbers that I found were from http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us-united-states/cri-crime
That's funny. I refuse to join the NRA because they're pansies who are more often in the way of RKBA than helping it. I do like their "Eddie Eagle" child gun safety training, however, and have paid a small amount of money for those materials.
On the analysis of the Kellerman study, some of the flaws were pointed out by others, some of the flaws were from my own analysis (though I'm sure I'm not alone).
9,369 homicides/year from firearms in the USA.
Estimated 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 successful uses of a firearm in self-defense per year (unknown number of lives saved).
So there are about 250-500 uses of a firearm in self-defense for each firearm murder. Pull it together, dude. Your assertions about the numbers don't stand up to even basic scrutiny.
Well, I looked up the last two , but you have yet to make a connection between these numbers and a claim that guns are a net negative in society. The fact that guns are used for ill is part of their cost to society. The fact that they are also used for good is part of their benefit to society. Any analysis which purports to demonize or valorize guns needs to account for cost and benefit based on real numbers.
I wonder. As I mentioned earlier, it is my belief that many cultural changes are much like pendulums, swinging from extreme to extreme over long periods of time. Right now, it feels like we're swinging away from the extreme "fear of self" and "fear of neighbor" that motivates gun-banning and headed back towards more of a "trust yourself" and "trust your neighbor" culture that is tolerant of responsible gun ownership. I'm doing my best to make as many of my liberal friends comfortable and safe around guns and they're definitely interested.
One point in favor of your goals is the increasing difficulty finding affordable places to hunt, and maintaining a hunting culture with increasing population pressure. One of the biggest reasons that my wife and I talk about expatriating or at least moving out of Los Angeles is lack of access to public wilderness nearby as our children grow up. But there is a healthy sport of target and sport shooting that's gaining popularity in urban areas. We'll just have to see if that is sufficient to maintain a gun culture as the country becomes more urbanized.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see who is right as the struggle to shift the culture plays out. As for our little micro-thread, I wish that it had been nice discussing the issue with you, but your debating skills have been a severe disappointment. Good luck with that.
According to Kleck, the numbers go the other way. For each victim of a crime where a gun was used, there are dozens of cases of successful self-defense using a gun.
I suspect that you've believed something someone told you and not looked any deeper because the number felt right (or there is no way the authority could be wrong about that).
Specifically, the most common bad study is the Kellerman study (that a gun is 43 times more likely to kill you or someone you know than to kill someone in self-defense) which is horribly flawed. The study was of a one year period in a Detroit neighborhood overrun with gangs and drugs. Because the drug dealers knew the person they were killing in most of the homicides, those homicides were counted in the "or someone you know" category. That accounted for 37 of the 43x. Of the remaining 6x, there was a very high gun suicide rate in the same neighborhood over the same year, which accounted for 5.5x of the remaining deaths in the "you or someone you know" category. Of the self-defense uses, only those uses which resulted in the death of the attacker were counted in the self-defense category. As stated in my previous post, various criminologists estimate that 80-99% of successful defensive uses of firearms do not involve firing the gun. If we assume that every defensive shot fired killed someone, that shifts the proportion from 10:1 to 200:1 successful defensive uses of firearms to accidents and domestic violence homicides. Since most gunshot wounds are survivable, the number is definitely even lower than that, even in one of the most violent inner cities in the US.
So even looking at the Kellerman study with a little more insight reveals that the benefits of guns solidly outweigh the costs.
As for your hatred and venom, well, I'm sorry that that's happening. I don't see changing my mind on something I feel is so clearly beneficial to society and my community without a really compelling argument. The way I understand the issue, you've been misinformed and this particular misinformation appears to have a very real effect on your level of happiness. I sincerely hope that you find a way through this venom and hatred (you don't have to change your mind, but that anger doesn't help you, nor does it help you change anyone's mind).
I'm curious if you remember how you became a fan? I seriously wondered if I should post that previous one AC or not but decided for the AC because it was way off-topic (just nit-picking a single point that wasn't even his argument). This time I figured I'd respond directly. Hope it's constructive. The characterization as a redneck would be really funny if you knew me. Based on other things you've written, I just don't see where the venom comes from.
Interesting assertion. I live in an urban area: Santa Monica, California. I think the argument for law-abiding carry of weapons for self-defense in cities is much stronger than for rural areas. In the countryside, the strongest arguments for having guns is their utility as tools. The self-defense argument is much weaker. Interestingly, in national parks and forests, the self-defense argument is more relevant as most large parks and forests harbor marijuana growers who are armed and "unfriendly".
Of the various attacks and violent crimes in this area, strangely none of them happened while police were in sight. If you're under the apprehension that the police are there to protect you, check your assumptions and fast. The police are there to do two things: clean up afterwards and find who did it.
If you want someone to stop a crime in progress, your cell phone isn't going to help. You're going to have to do it yourself. I offer two examples that even cover the justifiable use of high capacity magazines: Watts 1965, Rodney King 1992. In both cases, the police abandoned residents to their own devices.
Hm. Someone has their panties in a serious twist.
Sorry to disappoint your preconception of gun owners, but... I live in a condo. I live in a densely populated city near the ocean in southern California. I voted for Obama. I have two daughters in private school. I write software for Google. I drive a bicycle to work to save on gas. I go barefoot wherever I can. I buy hemp clothing and buy locally produced natural products whenever possible (lately, natural soaps). I want to buy a Chevy Volt if they ever sell it. I deplore trophy hunters, gas-guzzling trucks, drunkenness, and "buy USA" attitudes. I also happen to legally own a number of firearms and I regularly hunt for meat.
You seem to believe that there are no benefits to legal gun ownership. And yet, by various estimates, the number of times guns are used in self-defense is between 100,000 and 2,000,000 per year (depending on who you read, between 80-99% of defensive firearm uses do not involve firing the gun, just presenting it is enough to end the attack).
I think guns are certainly a mixed benefit, but in the end, I believe that a rational analysis will find that they are a net benefit to society. As is often quoted by the Brady group, there are about 34,000 gun deaths per year. That number includes police shootings, and justifiable homicides, which are beneficial uses. It also includes suicides, which I'm not bothered by since I'm not convinced that any of tall buildings, bridges, pills, ropes, razor blades or guns cause suicide. Most importantly, the remainder of that number after removing those categories (about 17,000/year) doesn't provide any hint of how many times someone would be killed with a knife or a club if a gun was not available, nor can that number tell us how many more violent crimes would have resulted in death if someone hadn't defended themselves.
The number of accidental firearms deaths has been falling since WWII despite more people and more guns, is currently half the number of accidental drownings in swimming pools (~1400/year vs. ~3000/year), and 1/40th the number of accidental deaths in cars. While each accidental death is a tragedy, accidental gun deaths are not a problem in my opinion.
Your characterization is overly broad.
Actually, there are lots of slippery slopes that are very real. Even the link you provided clearly limits the scope of the argumentative fallacy to asserting that a small change will lead to a large change without substantiation. But to argue that a current proposal is a logical first step towards a bigger unacceptable goal is absolutely a valid argument, as long as a logical connection is made between the current proposal and the supposed larger goal.
His argument as to why "gps tracking becomes acceptable" may some day become "gps tracking becomes normal" and why that's a problem is therefore not an example of the slippery slope fallacy. Unfortunately, this means that:
is incorrect.
As an aside, the "slippery slope fallacy" is a specific case of Proof by assertion fallacy.
Well, yeah. Kittens grow up to be cats. Puppies grow up to be dogs. Therefore, puppies are better than kittens. QED.
5 acres away? If you planted those 250 yards with zucchini, how many neighbors could you bother over the next furlong?
(Yeah, yeah, so I'm not all that great with jokes about improperly used units.)
What if the government regulations are harmful? What if they're based off of bad science and reinforced by deceptive politics? What if fat (and saturated fat) isn't bad for you? What if it's carbohydrates, including complex carbohydrates, that is the really dangerous stuff?
Disclosure: I lost (and kept off) 35 lbs. and improved my cholesterol numbers by going off a low-fat diet and starting a high-fat, high-saturated-fat, largely carnivorous diet.
So the government wants to help, but it's badly misinformed. This issue appears to have dogged government regulation in multiple domains: environment, finance, pharma, health care, diet, etc. In the end, I wouldn't mind government regulation so much if the government could be trusted to get the regulation right (or at least close). Since so often, the regulation provided by the US Government is wildly off-base, I have a lot of difficulty trusting it.
No, US inner city culture historical interactions of race and drugs along with the uniquely US "War on (some) Drugs" is dramatically different from Germany's history of drugs and race in culture (not to mention much less draconian drug enforcement efforts).
Those myriad differences have led to higher demand in the US, more severe penalties, fewer legal outlets (Netherlands), etc. Add to all of that being adjacent to a poor, third-world country with porous borders and you've got a very different drug problem in the US than in Germany.
Drug prohibition is necessary but not sufficient to explain the extraordinarily high levels of violence associated with drug distribution in the US.
While I agree that judgment usually comes with perspective (and is therefore subjective), I honestly thought that this was a pretty cut and dry issue. As in, so far over into the spectacularly stupid end of the dial that there would be almost none who would disagree. Guess I found one...
Well, I'll tell you what would be interesting. You making a cogent argument that anything he's done has any value beyond the stimulation of his adrenal gland. Something more "Galilean" in durability of contribution towards nature or humanity or community or...
Please come up with something, since at this point, your total argument appears to be "Rossifer is a judgmental meanie." I'm not going to disagree with your assertion, but that assertion is completely irrelevant to the discussion.
We aren't disagreeing with each other. I posit that it's the War on Drugs and the resulting black-market profit that causes the violence. Not the drugs themselves.
Exclude drug-related murders from both Germany and the US. The remaining violence statistics are on par.
The "War on (some) Drugs" is the most common proximal cause of murder in the US. Firearms are just the most popular tool for accomplishing a bit of drug fueled violence.
You're projecting some serious assumptions about how I value accomplishments. Luckily for my argument, your assumptions and my argument have very little in common and were never properly introduced anyway.
What's-his-name's accomplishments were stupid because they were simultaneously low value and high risk. The accomplishments that you assume I would scorn by Galileo, Louis and Clark, Hudson (presumably Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, et.al. were skipped for brevity) have had their claims and achievements validated time and again as high value, even if they most definitely were also high risk.
As for fictional accomplishments, the Jesus story posits a supernatural valuation of that sacrifice. Sacrifice can also be valuable, and that retelling of the age old hero myth doesn't disappoint in that regard. After all, Jesus saved the whole world...
Because smart and dumb are not always or never qualities. In this case, the thrill-seeking aspect of his personality meant that the smarts were dedicated to achieving difficult but spectacularly stupid accomplishments.
Holy crap! I even didn't notice that Taco was the reviewer I was calling out...
And the reviewer loses a geek point by not knowing how to spell "Sylar".
Can I restate your response as, "There's no way to tell the religious 'you're fundamentally wrong' in such a way that will avoid offending them."?
That's fair. I think he could have cushioned the blow a little more, but your point is taken. Religious believers often seem to be spoiling for a fight anyway, so any "cushioning" probably would have been wasted effort.
You have to admit that Hawking sought out his conflict with religion. His thesis of "Where can God exist? [lots of argument trimmed] Nowhere." appears to be deliberately framed to antagonize religious believers.
Hawking is far too smart to accidentally do something like that, which leads me to believe that his conflict with religion was deliberately sought.
I believe that you have inadvertently stated the essence of my argument. It's not that we want the US to lose, it's that an Iraqi conflict was never winnable. All I want is for the US to admit that we've lost and get out.
Based only on a cursory understanding of "winning" and "losing" and looking at the situation in Iraq, there is no outcome from Iraq where we can reasonably claim that we've won. In fact, we lost before we even landed in Iraq, simply because what we were told was the "win" criteria (the demolition of WMD's or Saddam's ouster) are now clearly seen to be red herrings.
A subsequent goal that might constitute a win (bringing a modern democracy to Iraq) is a goal that we cannot possibly deliver since it requires a cultural shift equivalent to the Enlightenment and the only tools we brought are Predator drones and troops with M16M4's.