I don't get why Americans are so anti-nationalized health care. I think it's great. I pay NOTHING for health care.
THAT was really naive! It is paid by taxes, so you pay anyway.
The question is how you organize the system so it fulfills lots of demands, like effectivity and give good health care to (at least) most of the people. I don't trust state systems anymore.
One disadvantage with nationalized health care is that if you get problems because of bad treatment, it's very, very hard to sue the state and win. The gigantic health care system have little motivation to fix problems that are big for you -- but not for them. ("We're larger than the phone compan{y,ies} -- we don't care because we don't have to.")
Please note that if you are in that situation, you will have a hard time to buy private health care, since you're poor from the high taxes (to pay for the state health care system.)
In a real example, people had to go somewhere private and buy cancer tests because the place doing that was closed for the summer...
(Any budget cuts decided by the administrating politicians are done so many users will suffer -- otherwise the politicians will cut more from the health care...)
Another scenario:
The doctor will get rid of you by telling you it is because of X without really knowing (to cure the problem would take long and damage their treatment statistics, I believe). X is never treatable without dangerous surgery that they don't recommend... You will believe in X the first couple of times you get that diagnosis -- and not bother the health care system with the problem for years.
Yes, I have experience with that scenario here in Sweden. ("Runner's knee" that took two decades(!!) before someone cared enough to find the problem and fix it. This has meant a lot for my quality of life.)
Applying logic to argue that religious feelings are divine inspirations? Try this argument...
People of very conflicting beliefs have religious feelings and experiences.
Since religious feelings/experiences are assumed to be from the one and only god (tm), I see three solutions to the problem of godly inspired feelings not being consistent:
1. God is a nut case and/or a liar.
2. Some devil/demon inspires the feelings in all religions but your own
3. The feelings only has to do with internal psychology of believers.
The main problem with 2 is that the psychology of believers of different religions seem very consistent. Is that devil as strong as god? Contradicts all religions I know of.
Supporting 3 is that few people who grew up in a non-religious environment become religious (I'm from Sweden and very few people from non-religious areas get religious here. Frankly, most of those I know obviously aren't that mentally stable.)
Case 1, an insane or evil god, I could almost find believable myself. At least in mornings before caffeine.
And as an added bonus, it costs billions and billions of dollars!
Billions and billions less than alternative methods for the same power produced.
Please excuse me if you are doing a parody of idiot environmentalists and I'm missing the joke?
Sorry if I'm nasty but here in Sweden environmentalists replaced a nuclear reactor with electricity from imported coal. This costs a lot of money.
(Nuclear fission plants will probably disappear in a few decades, replaced with new generations of solar cells and other sources (even fusion research is at long last getting somewhere). Just not yet.)
when i notice i'm talking about something that shows some superior knowledge of a subject, i feel like i'm gloating, and that feeling isn't one i like.
I only have a superior knowledge of subjects I find very interesting.
Those subjects are mainly the complex "toys" I love (games, Perl, Lisp, the Orion project with other esoteric uses of atomic bombs, my favorite books, etc, etc).
When I learn/do something new about what I love in life, it is hard not to talk about it. I'm also a 100% certain that everyone else will also drool over that new stuff given a chance. Of course, mostly I'm wrong about the majority of people. [:-( and:-) ]
You seem to have the same motivation. That is hardly gloating! (-: If you really care about "respect" from the mainstream, train thai boxing and lift weights (good ideas anyway).:-)
Cygwin is a shared lib (DLL) that simplifies porting of unix software. IHNRTS (I Have Not Read The Source) but most functionality shouldn't be slowed down more than maybe a fraction of a percent.
(If you haven't seen the quote in the "Subject" before, check it on Google.)
The basic problem with competition on a monopolist O/S is that if you compete with the monopolist then your programs will not work well, particularly these days of almost daily O/S updates...
I think it is not a solution to get people to use Open Source on Windows.
Maybe Open Source Software on Cygwin (or similar) under Windows? Then all applications will break at the same time when an O/S update is released, which makes it quite obvious...
I thought it was quite obvious when I used the term "big" in the Subject and my point was that a way of planning the whole world really could work in villages...
All communist experiments that have not turned totalitarian (and there were plenty, dating all the way back to before Marx) quickly failed.
Don't exaggerate. I think history shows that communism works well up to village sized units. (They might have to be isolated from capitalist societies, though.)
I still maintain that there's a cultural (and rather Freudian) slant on things in this study.[...]
The article is rather short on specifics.
Yes, popular articles tend to be short on specifics, slanted and not have references to the primary literature... (-: A new insight?!:-)
From my reading in other fields, I think it's hard to find as simplified views as you assume Dr Kanazawa have.
I don't know if the research by Dr Kanazawa (or other research in the field) looks into and discounts your complaints. Since you don't know about that either but still feel qualified to complain, I reach one conclusion:
Your "cultural slant" shine through quite clearly...
This guy theorizes that testosterone levels drop after marriage
I think it is
documented that testosterone levels fall for men in stable relationships. (I just Googled for a reference -- the researcher you assumed just "theorizes" is probably aware of the results and how well documented they are.)
Don't assume -- without good proof -- that all theories you disagree with are total garbage. (-: If you want to be correct, that is. If you're a follower of some religion (or ideology), it seems to be an axiom that researchers disagreeing with The Truth are morons or in a conspiracy.:-)
(And yes, the theory might be total garbage -- but find that out before you have an opinion.)
I was in a discussion about the Spec suite 6-7 years ago.
A processor company could write "Spec compilers" with special cases for the Spec code -- and that was half-OK for anything else. Then the code could be run on special test machines. Also, the processor company could be a member of the spec organization so they could influence what is part of the Spec suite -- and also know what will be in the next version, so they could update the specialised compilers in advance...
Intel seemed to be doing all of the above 6-7 years ago.
The main problem was that the Spec suite wasn't available for everyone to test on real systems with compilers that don't unroll loops exactly right for the Spec code, etc...
Some or most of the previous points might not be applicable anymore (e.g. the building of special "spec test machines", probably.) But I really doubt the value of specialised compilers for a test suite -- especially when the test suite isn't free!!
I'll go back to university this autumn and do a year of chemistry and biochemistry before deciding on the exact subject area. (-: The only person hoping the economy stays bad three years more -- so I don't start to work instead!:-)
This is your position, then:
You are condemning an experimental science using the scientific method that studies certain phenomena. The physical basis for the phenomena will be better known in ten or twenty years, yes. (When we understand the connection from the genes of insects, etc, to their brain and behaviour.)
You consider it weak despite that lots of data and well tested models exists. And you can't even point to big trouble spots when challenged?!
With that basis, you could condemn anything. Including bridgebuilding, because we will know physics better in ten years... ("Noone knows what a quark really is or what makes up dark matter. Obviously, we can't really have a certain opinion; an unknown phenomena might break that planned bridge. Better not build it.") Yes, that was a parody -- but not that extreme.
I see three possibilites for your position:
Like creationism, your argument needs that all researchers in the subject area are idiots.
The evolutionary biology researchers could be in a conspiracy against marxists and christians?!:-)
You really do dismiss all information from all sciences in this world... and refuses to go out on any bridge.
(-: The really fun part is that your criticism would be classed as "reductionist" by an earlier generation of marxist apologists!!:-)
I'm sorry, but I think you're pulling my leg. I have problems taking this seriously, because you seem very educated in the area (from your home page), complains loudly -- but still can't present any specifics!! If you do believe in an ideology I'll make a prediction -- in ten years, you will find something else to complain about so you don't have to accept the research data.
However, those harms are quite small, slow, and managable when compared to a large release from a nuclear reactor which can affect much larger areas, and leave an area uninhabitable for a good many years.
Of course. I argued against a point in the article that claimed coal as less harmful than nuclear power.
You have to run modern nuclear power plants literally thousands of reactor-years to get a bad accident. (We know this, since hundreds of modern reactors run for quite a few years haven't had a big accident yet.) With the containment of modern reactor cores a big accident [probably] wouldn't be a China syndrome, either.
So, that considered, my problem with the article is that we almost certainly have less people killed/KWh from modern nuclear power plants than from coal power plants, even if we had an accident.
The consequences of a new kind of power plant would have to be studied quite before I have a certain opinion. I do agree with you, that it's probably worth the research money.
The main problem with new power plants is that the propaganda from idealist fools like Baard might have made the subject "nucular" impossible. (When cynical, I tend to see similarities with Roman social changes that removed the social class that made up their armies and the social changes in USA that removed science education from the mainstream...)
One of the wonderful things about molecular biology is that it has turned evolutionary biology into a real experimental science.
Come back with this argument in ten years when we understand the brain enough to understand how genetic changes influence behaviour through the brain for any larger organisms...:-)
Again -- do you have any results that contradict the evolutionary biology research described in The Selfish Gene? As I wrote:
There are lots and lots of testable predictions in the mathematical models for behaviour in animals. (What an ethologist study.) And that has been well tested and argued for decades. Can you give any pointers to research that e.g. contradicts Hamilton's kinship relationships?
Regarding marxists, etc. I wrote that inside ":-)"!! But, OK... You don't really want to accuse the non-marxist side of being dishonest -- then I could start quoting Rose and old stuff from Science For The People, etc. Or a long list of people with good credentials accusing Gould et al of doing straw man attacks in the popular press (probably for political reasons).
Instead:
If you do have any serious arguments that contradict the math, please write them down instead. I would be very interested.
(-: Re Maynard Smith -- there are christians who aren't creationists...:-)
the real question is, when will mark baard stop posting his own stories to slashdot?
Well, that don't really disturb me. I just wish Baard didn't write simple propaganda, though.
E.g., he makes a snide insinuation that energy producing companies don't do research on new ways of producing energy.
Basic research (that won't pay off in decades, if ever) tend to be financed by governments. Fusion is an example. (And companies researching new kinds of power plants tend to be the companies that build energy plants (ABB, etc) -- not the companies running power plants!)
For another point, Baard wrote: Scientists have not yet designed a nuclear facility whose safety and efficiency trumps that of gas or coal.
Well, the fallout of coal based power plants kill people. Quite a few people. If you compare the number of people killed by coal in USA/KWh and the number killed by nuclear power/KWh, I am quite certain that nuclear power has been safer than coal for the last decades.
I don't really have an opinion on the subject of the article. I need to get facts from more dependable sources -- that don't have so many axes to grind that it could arm a viking army... (My basic position on long-term energy is that funding for fusion research should probably be larger.)
Dawkins is an ethologist -- he studies animals frolicking about. He's not a geneticist.
[...] While there is some evidence for a few genes influencing some behaviors, it's nothing close to what the sociobiologists claim.
TSG is about research done by e.g. Hamilton and Maynard-Smith in the '60s. Those guys are as heavy as heavy can be in evolutionary biology.
Research on humans is a small part. There are lots and lots of testable predictions in the mathematical models for behaviour in animals. (What an ethologist study.) And that has been well tested and argued for decades. Can you give any pointers to research that e.g. contradicts Hamilton's kinship relationships?
(-: Gould wasn't exactly using enzymes on DNA either, if that is a demand for credibility... Even though he wasn't half as much a card-carrying marxist as to Lewontin... but then, who is?!:-)
Re:I don't read much fiction but...
on
A Good Summer Read?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The Selfish Gene
Hear hear!
That book changed my world view by applying game theory to behaviour of evolved creatures. The Selfish Gene is probably the best book on popular science I've read in my life. (If you know any better books, please add them as comments!)
Be aware that religious people (e.g. christians, marxists, etc) tend to hate the research presented by TSG. The idealists can't accept that some of people's mental characteristics are partially genetic. (Personally, I have the ambition to look at facts first and build opinions on how the world works after that. No theory that goes the other way will succeed since there are so many more ways of being totally wrong than close to correct.)
Also, be sure to read the notes in the second edition -- they are as interesting as the book itself.
Slashdot Mirror
The question is how you organize the system so it fulfills lots of demands, like effectivity and give good health care to (at least) most of the people. I don't trust state systems anymore.
One disadvantage with nationalized health care is that if you get problems because of bad treatment, it's very, very hard to sue the state and win. The gigantic health care system have little motivation to fix problems that are big for you -- but not for them. ("We're larger than the phone compan{y,ies} -- we don't care because we don't have to.")
Please note that if you are in that situation, you will have a hard time to buy private health care, since you're poor from the high taxes (to pay for the state health care system.)
In a real example, people had to go somewhere private and buy cancer tests because the place doing that was closed for the summer...
(Any budget cuts decided by the administrating politicians are done so many users will suffer -- otherwise the politicians will cut more from the health care...)
Another scenario:
The doctor will get rid of you by telling you it is because of X without really knowing (to cure the problem would take long and damage their treatment statistics, I believe). X is never treatable without dangerous surgery that they don't recommend... You will believe in X the first couple of times you get that diagnosis -- and not bother the health care system with the problem for years.
Yes, I have experience with that scenario here in Sweden. ("Runner's knee" that took two decades(!!) before someone cared enough to find the problem and fix it. This has meant a lot for my quality of life.)
People of very conflicting beliefs have religious feelings and experiences.
Since religious feelings/experiences are assumed to be from the one and only god (tm), I see three solutions to the problem of godly inspired feelings not being consistent:
1. God is a nut case and/or a liar.
2. Some devil/demon inspires the feelings in all religions but your own
3. The feelings only has to do with internal psychology of believers.
The main problem with 2 is that the psychology of believers of different religions seem very consistent. Is that devil as strong as god? Contradicts all religions I know of.
Supporting 3 is that few people who grew up in a non-religious environment become religious (I'm from Sweden and very few people from non-religious areas get religious here. Frankly, most of those I know obviously aren't that mentally stable.)
Case 1, an insane or evil god, I could almost find believable myself. At least in mornings before caffeine.
Please excuse me if you are doing a parody of idiot environmentalists and I'm missing the joke?
Sorry if I'm nasty but here in Sweden environmentalists replaced a nuclear reactor with electricity from imported coal. This costs a lot of money.
(Nuclear fission plants will probably disappear in a few decades, replaced with new generations of solar cells and other sources (even fusion research is at long last getting somewhere). Just not yet.)
Spread the pain... :-)
Those subjects are mainly the complex "toys" I love (games, Perl, Lisp, the Orion project with other esoteric uses of atomic bombs, my favorite books, etc, etc).
When I learn/do something new about what I love in life, it is hard not to talk about it. I'm also a 100% certain that everyone else will also drool over that new stuff given a chance. Of course, mostly I'm wrong about the majority of people. [ :-( and :-) ]
You seem to have the same motivation. That is hardly gloating! (-: If you really care about "respect" from the mainstream, train thai boxing and lift weights (good ideas anyway). :-)
Cygwin is a shared lib (DLL) that simplifies porting of unix software. IHNRTS (I Have Not Read The Source) but most functionality shouldn't be slowed down more than maybe a fraction of a percent.
The basic problem with competition on a monopolist O/S is that if you compete with the monopolist then your programs will not work well, particularly these days of almost daily O/S updates...
I think it is not a solution to get people to use Open Source on Windows.
Maybe Open Source Software on Cygwin (or similar) under Windows? Then all applications will break at the same time when an O/S update is released, which makes it quite obvious...
Sorry, I will use ":-)" next time.
That is not a troll -- and has less fact problems than what it comments!
Sorry.
I've bookmarked this and will reread it once every few weeks for ideas. (No, I didn't post the question.)
(This is a (kludgy) way of making a bookmark, anyway!)
From my reading in other fields, I think it's hard to find as simplified views as you assume Dr Kanazawa have.
I don't know if the research by Dr Kanazawa (or other research in the field) looks into and discounts your complaints. Since you don't know about that either but still feel qualified to complain, I reach one conclusion:
Your "cultural slant" shine through quite clearly...
Iran just tested a missile that can reach Israel. Much more war-like than a privately financed rocket with a credible civilian use...
Don't assume -- without good proof -- that all theories you disagree with are total garbage. (-: If you want to be correct, that is. If you're a follower of some religion (or ideology), it seems to be an axiom that researchers disagreeing with The Truth are morons or in a conspiracy. :-)
(And yes, the theory might be total garbage -- but find that out before you have an opinion.)
Who cares if there are any military applications? :-)
A processor company could write "Spec compilers" with special cases for the Spec code -- and that was half-OK for anything else. Then the code could be run on special test machines. Also, the processor company could be a member of the spec organization so they could influence what is part of the Spec suite -- and also know what will be in the next version, so they could update the specialised compilers in advance...
Intel seemed to be doing all of the above 6-7 years ago.
The main problem was that the Spec suite wasn't available for everyone to test on real systems with compilers that don't unroll loops exactly right for the Spec code, etc...
Some or most of the previous points might not be applicable anymore (e.g. the building of special "spec test machines", probably.) But I really doubt the value of specialised compilers for a test suite -- especially when the test suite isn't free!!
I'll go back to university this autumn and do a year of chemistry and biochemistry before deciding on the exact subject area. (-: The only person hoping the economy stays bad three years more -- so I don't start to work instead! :-)
You are condemning an experimental science using the scientific method that studies certain phenomena. The physical basis for the phenomena will be better known in ten or twenty years, yes. (When we understand the connection from the genes of insects, etc, to their brain and behaviour.)
You consider it weak despite that lots of data and well tested models exists. And you can't even point to big trouble spots when challenged?!
With that basis, you could condemn anything. Including bridgebuilding, because we will know physics better in ten years... ("Noone knows what a quark really is or what makes up dark matter. Obviously, we can't really have a certain opinion; an unknown phenomena might break that planned bridge. Better not build it.") Yes, that was a parody -- but not that extreme.
I see three possibilites for your position:
(-: The really fun part is that your criticism would be classed as "reductionist" by an earlier generation of marxist apologists!! :-)
I'm sorry, but I think you're pulling my leg. I have problems taking this seriously, because you seem very educated in the area (from your home page), complains loudly -- but still can't present any specifics!! If you do believe in an ideology I'll make a prediction -- in ten years, you will find something else to complain about so you don't have to accept the research data.
You have to run modern nuclear power plants literally thousands of reactor-years to get a bad accident. (We know this, since hundreds of modern reactors run for quite a few years haven't had a big accident yet.) With the containment of modern reactor cores a big accident [probably] wouldn't be a China syndrome, either.
So, that considered, my problem with the article is that we almost certainly have less people killed/KWh from modern nuclear power plants than from coal power plants, even if we had an accident.
The consequences of a new kind of power plant would have to be studied quite before I have a certain opinion. I do agree with you, that it's probably worth the research money.
The main problem with new power plants is that the propaganda from idealist fools like Baard might have made the subject "nucular" impossible. (When cynical, I tend to see similarities with Roman social changes that removed the social class that made up their armies and the social changes in USA that removed science education from the mainstream...)
Again -- do you have any results that contradict the evolutionary biology research described in The Selfish Gene? As I wrote:
Regarding marxists, etc. I wrote that inside ":-)"!! But, OK... You don't really want to accuse the non-marxist side of being dishonest -- then I could start quoting Rose and old stuff from Science For The People, etc. Or a long list of people with good credentials accusing Gould et al of doing straw man attacks in the popular press (probably for political reasons).Instead:
If you do have any serious arguments that contradict the math, please write them down instead. I would be very interested.
(-: Re Maynard Smith -- there are christians who aren't creationists... :-)
E.g., he makes a snide insinuation that energy producing companies don't do research on new ways of producing energy.
Basic research (that won't pay off in decades, if ever) tend to be financed by governments. Fusion is an example. (And companies researching new kinds of power plants tend to be the companies that build energy plants (ABB, etc) -- not the companies running power plants!)
For another point, Baard wrote: Scientists have not yet designed a nuclear facility whose safety and efficiency trumps that of gas or coal.
Well, the fallout of coal based power plants kill people. Quite a few people. If you compare the number of people killed by coal in USA/KWh and the number killed by nuclear power/KWh, I am quite certain that nuclear power has been safer than coal for the last decades.
I don't really have an opinion on the subject of the article. I need to get facts from more dependable sources -- that don't have so many axes to grind that it could arm a viking army... (My basic position on long-term energy is that funding for fusion research should probably be larger.)
Research on humans is a small part. There are lots and lots of testable predictions in the mathematical models for behaviour in animals. (What an ethologist study.) And that has been well tested and argued for decades. Can you give any pointers to research that e.g. contradicts Hamilton's kinship relationships?
(-: Gould wasn't exactly using enzymes on DNA either, if that is a demand for credibility... Even though he wasn't half as much a card-carrying marxist as to Lewontin... but then, who is?! :-)
That book changed my world view by applying game theory to behaviour of evolved creatures. The Selfish Gene is probably the best book on popular science I've read in my life. (If you know any better books, please add them as comments!)
Be aware that religious people (e.g. christians, marxists, etc) tend to hate the research presented by TSG. The idealists can't accept that some of people's mental characteristics are partially genetic. (Personally, I have the ambition to look at facts first and build opinions on how the world works after that. No theory that goes the other way will succeed since there are so many more ways of being totally wrong than close to correct.)
Also, be sure to read the notes in the second edition -- they are as interesting as the book itself.