Evolution can't explain where matter comes from, or how it just happened to become oriented in just the right way to allow life
I honestly wish there were a way to mod you up. More people need to realize that those people who "oppose evolution" do so because, at a fundamental level, they just don't understand it. You statments say more than you realize, and they say you don't know what you're talking about.
As a hint, evolution concerns itself with neither of those things... other theories and fields of science do, but not evolution per say.
You might as well say evolution is wrong because it can't explain magnetism.
Similarly, the attempt to repeat the pleasure of sex beyond the needs of procreation (birth control, gay lifestyle, etc) has generally bad results - physical, emotional, and spiritual.
And there we have it ladies and gentlemen.... the modern, conservative chrstian 'nanny state'. They get full access to your bedroom because 'your actions could have negative emotional consequences for you'
How about the fact that more liberal leaning areas have lower divorce rates? How does that affect your view of seperation of sex and procreation as pertaining to the family and society?
Try before you buy was adopted for clothes because it leads to less returns... same thing for marriage.
If true, it kinda makes the extreme right a bit hypocritical, doesn't it?
That's because you think the point of 'pro-life' is to protect life. Its primary focus is sex. Abortion clinics allow people, in their view, to have sex without consequences. Fertility clinics, while destroying more embreyos (per woman) have nothing to do with sex, so their 'killing of babies' is ok for christians.
This same mentality allow 'pro-life' america to have one of the highest rate of infant mortality in the developed world... the woman has already dealt with the 'consequence' of sex, which is the primary goal of the movement.
It is also why many 'pro-lifers' disagree with abortion in the case of ectopic pregnancies, where the embreyo is certain to die, but an abortion will save the mother's life/health.
Why not also correct for the average global growth that everybody is taking for granted ?
Because the difference between this, and all the previous things you desribed is now you are correcting for an average... which means it will always be zero. This is only a trick of math however, since in a non-zero sum game someone can gain without taking from another person... however, when you correct for average they'll still come out as zero.
Put another way: lets say everyone suddenly starts living 50 years longer. The average difference between the life expectance of rich and poor would still be the same... zero difference... however in the latter scenario everyone will have gained (ie. not zero-sum)
OK, that's strict zero-sum, but my constant-sum
Thank you... yes, it is zero-sum. However, you aren't arguing constant sum, you are arguing constant inequality. There is a huge difference. Under constant inequality, everyone can gain (life expectancy lets say) but still be better off than they were previously (or under any other system perhaps). This is a fundamental key difference.
Does playing in the stock market produce that kind of mutual benefit ?
Yes, although this is perhaps too detailed to go into. Stock trading has a number of benifits, most notably allowing people with money to find people with ideas... and to allow people to invest in small companies knowing they will be able to realize a return easily by cashing out (liquidity)
Could be that the utility function evaluates to 0 when you grow at the same rate as everyone else.
At this point, we aren't even talking about the same thing anymore and I don't know if this is worth persuing...
Could you please define zero-sum game for me?
My definition: a system in which one agents gain is only possible through an equal expense on a seperate agent.
This is why none of you arguments make sense: when two people are gaining, it can not be zero sum.
Or, given another way... if everyone has a 2nd gen drug that allows you to live 20 years, and then I personally invent a 3rd gen drug that allows 30 years, but keep it to myself... are all the other people somehow poorer? Is 20 years somehow worse now than if I never invented my 3rd gen drug? The point is 20 years is still better than 0, whether or not the 3rd gen drug exists... so no one is a 'loser'.
(But then you declined to clarify what you had on your mind)
Are you being obtuse on purpose... I said there was another option: "you have $100 taken from you when someone else earns $100. "
No offense, but if this is how you debate (or think) in real life, I feel sorry for you:
Personally I'd rather adopt the $150/$200 system, because it means there is a game, and I can learn to play better and aim for $250 on the next round
Dear god, that wasn't even a choice! You gave two examples, which were rhetorical questions designed to illustrate a point about relative wealth.
Then, after all this, you say... I'd rather have the 3rd option (which wan't mentione before). Why not say, I'd rather have the $100/$100 system, so then when I make $250 I'll have even more? Nothing about either of your choices precludes it... so how do you go about adding that in to only one? Do you understand? You might as well have said: I'd rather have the $150/$250 system, because then I can try hard and get a pony!
huh?
The global economy is a zero-sum game, if you choose any realistic utility function.
Wrong... you have not yet shown this, and I have consistently shown the opposite. You only showed how political power is zero-sum... but that is not economic
Since everyone enjoys the same growth, there's no relative benefit in playing
Again, are you really this dense... 'relative growth' has nothing to do with it.... it is about whether your gains cause an equal loss to someone else. If everyone is growing then the global economy can not be a zero-sum game by definition
You PS2 example is illogical, and only would make sense to a spoiled young suburbanite... try replacing Playstation with Medicine: Yes, getting 2nd generation drugs is better than getting nothing, getting 3rd generation is even better. But 3rd generation isn't 'all that matters' if the choice is between 2nd gen and death.
This is getting tedious. This isn't a debate anymore, it is me trying to explain to you that just because you end up worse off than someone else does not make something a zero-sum game.
Read that again, understand it... please
Of course I'd rather have $100 when everyone has $100... I thought it was a rhetorical question, so I didn't answer it.
My point was that the example wasn't a zero-sum game because everyone still gains!!!!!
Is it honestly that difficult of a concept?
You can whine about the global economy not distributing wealth equally... but if it creates more wealth for everyone than there would be under any system... how is that bad?
Basically, you are saying you'd rather live in a cave and die at 30 because you'd feel better knowing everyone else would too... and that would instill a sense of 'justice' in your mind.
But if your utility function is the power that economic wealth brings in world affairs
Exactly, and if we were talking about politics this entire time, your comment would be relevant. We are instead talking about economics and growth... which I've repeatedly shown are not zero sum games
In case anyone missed it though, there was a good insight in that humor: a clear way of expressing the answer to the posed question:
If two 64 bit encryptions equals one 128 bit, then 128 one-bit encryptions should also.
This means the file would have a password of either 1 or 0... you would be prompted for this password, and if you got it wrong, you could try again. Obviously you'd get it on the second try. You could repeat this 128 times, and that would be the total of all protection. Naturally, this means the most number of guesses you'd need to make is 256.
After thinking about it that way, it becomes quite clear: 128 bit encryption obviously requires more than 128 guesses to get the right key. As another poster pointed out, two 64 bit passes equals 65 bit encryption.
If you haven't noticed. I've won this debate. You asked me to show how the global economy isn't a zero sum game, and then how those growing slower aren't "losing".
I've done this, by showing how you fundamentally don't understand what you're talking about. You are confusing zero-sum with equality, which are different. Your post shows this:
Would you rather earn $100 when everybody is making $100, or $150 when everybody else is making $200 ?
The point is that those aren't the only two choices Read that again, understand it. Zero sum would be: you have $100 taken from you when someone else earns $100.
Can you at least admit the global economy isn't a zero-sum game?
Next you bring up equality. The world is not equal... deal with it. This is how things happen. Forced equality always leads to stagnation, and slower growth. So the real option would be: would you rather eat less as long as everyone else eats less too, or be well nourished while some people eat gourmet every night?
Some people are spiteful enough to starve just so others will to, you appear to be one of those 'idealistic' people.
Of course the standard of living improves for everybody. But it improves faster for the winners.
then it is not a zero sum game! Look up the definition. You are directly contradicting it. You are describing averages where someone is exactly below the average, and someone is exactly the opposite amount above it. For it to be zero-sum, the average has to be.... wait for it.... ZERO. If it is not, then it is not a zero-sum game.
Explain to me how any country, company or individual that grows slower than the global average is not a loser in this game.
First you say (or atleast imply) that it is a zero-sum gain... then you say that the losers are those who 'grow slower than average'.
You've contradicted yourself quite obviously. If it is a zero sum game, then the global average growth would be zero. What the parent was pointing out is that this is not the case.
You can't then change your definition and say that people lose now because some grow faster... the point is everyone grows. Which is exactly what makes it not a zero-sum game.
Obviously someone will always be below average, infact it is a mathematical certainty of averages.
Still a better deal than the green pieces of paper not even saying that!
I love gold people... at a fundamental level they don't realize that both paper and gold are completely useless unto themselves, and are only worth what people will pay for it. If you really worry about your well being in an apocalypse, buy canned food and ammmo, because that is all that will be worth anything.
why not just prove it's there, stake a claim on it, and then sell it here on Earth?
Fine... I've just claimed all the gold on the moon, care to buy it from me? I'll start the bidding at $1,000 and you can have first dibs.
Using that logic, why even mine it here on earth?... eventually we'd wind up with some wierd paper notes completely disconnected from actual known gold amounts... crazy!
Wow... Slashdot is a "Nerd" site, but this is the first I've heard of this feature. I'd mod you +6 if I could. For all the eye candy worship I've seen over the new OS... where on slashdot is the feature list that is interesting to *developers*?
>The only states where their people would feel they have something to gain would be those that are consistantly "too close to call".
Interestingly enough, under our current system those states get boat loads of attention... any by attention I mean money... in an effort to lock in votes.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what they develop new chips for is PROFIT
Its funny how people (like the grandparent) usually don't get this. They expect companies to develop new tech and loose money doing it.
Interestingly, I've never met someone who says this and pays to go to work... that would be sticking to your guns.
Your post confuses me... did anyone ever think there was no genetic difference?
I think Yahoo tried that same excuse against France... didn't work so well.
GM food will not solve either capitalism or the distribution system's problems.
Dead wrong. GM foods can be grown in new places (where there is hunger) so it does indeed solve the distribution system.
Considering you have a '911 truth' sig, I doubt you let facts stand in the way of your opinions however.
Evolution can't explain where matter comes from, or how it just happened to become oriented in just the right way to allow life
I honestly wish there were a way to mod you up. More people need to realize that those people who "oppose evolution" do so because, at a fundamental level, they just don't understand it. You statments say more than you realize, and they say you don't know what you're talking about.
As a hint, evolution concerns itself with neither of those things... other theories and fields of science do, but not evolution per say.
You might as well say evolution is wrong because it can't explain magnetism.
Similarly, the attempt to repeat the pleasure of sex beyond the needs of procreation (birth control, gay lifestyle, etc) has generally bad results - physical, emotional, and spiritual.
And there we have it ladies and gentlemen.... the modern, conservative chrstian 'nanny state'. They get full access to your bedroom because 'your actions could have negative emotional consequences for you'
How about the fact that more liberal leaning areas have lower divorce rates? How does that affect your view of seperation of sex and procreation as pertaining to the family and society?
Try before you buy was adopted for clothes because it leads to less returns... same thing for marriage.
If true, it kinda makes the extreme right a bit hypocritical, doesn't it?
That's because you think the point of 'pro-life' is to protect life. Its primary focus is sex. Abortion clinics allow people, in their view, to have sex without consequences. Fertility clinics, while destroying more embreyos (per woman) have nothing to do with sex, so their 'killing of babies' is ok for christians.
This same mentality allow 'pro-life' america to have one of the highest rate of infant mortality in the developed world... the woman has already dealt with the 'consequence' of sex, which is the primary goal of the movement.
It is also why many 'pro-lifers' disagree with abortion in the case of ectopic pregnancies, where the embreyo is certain to die, but an abortion will save the mother's life/health.
Why not also correct for the average global growth that everybody is taking for granted ?
Because the difference between this, and all the previous things you desribed is now you are correcting for an average... which means it will always be zero. This is only a trick of math however, since in a non-zero sum game someone can gain without taking from another person... however, when you correct for average they'll still come out as zero.
Put another way: lets say everyone suddenly starts living 50 years longer. The average difference between the life expectance of rich and poor would still be the same... zero difference... however in the latter scenario everyone will have gained (ie. not zero-sum)
OK, that's strict zero-sum, but my constant-sum
Thank you... yes, it is zero-sum. However, you aren't arguing constant sum, you are arguing constant inequality. There is a huge difference. Under constant inequality, everyone can gain (life expectancy lets say) but still be better off than they were previously (or under any other system perhaps). This is a fundamental key difference.
Does playing in the stock market produce that kind of mutual benefit ?
Yes, although this is perhaps too detailed to go into. Stock trading has a number of benifits, most notably allowing people with money to find people with ideas... and to allow people to invest in small companies knowing they will be able to realize a return easily by cashing out (liquidity)
Could be that the utility function evaluates to 0 when you grow at the same rate as everyone else.
At this point, we aren't even talking about the same thing anymore and I don't know if this is worth persuing...
Could you please define zero-sum game for me?
My definition: a system in which one agents gain is only possible through an equal expense on a seperate agent.
This is why none of you arguments make sense: when two people are gaining, it can not be zero sum.
Or, given another way... if everyone has a 2nd gen drug that allows you to live 20 years, and then I personally invent a 3rd gen drug that allows 30 years, but keep it to myself... are all the other people somehow poorer? Is 20 years somehow worse now than if I never invented my 3rd gen drug? The point is 20 years is still better than 0, whether or not the 3rd gen drug exists... so no one is a 'loser'.
(But then you declined to clarify what you had on your mind)
Are you being obtuse on purpose... I said there was another option: "you have $100 taken from you when someone else earns $100. "
No offense, but if this is how you debate (or think) in real life, I feel sorry for you:
Personally I'd rather adopt the $150/$200 system, because it means there is a game, and I can learn to play better and aim for $250 on the next round
Dear god, that wasn't even a choice! You gave two examples, which were rhetorical questions designed to illustrate a point about relative wealth.
Then, after all this, you say... I'd rather have the 3rd option (which wan't mentione before). Why not say, I'd rather have the $100/$100 system, so then when I make $250 I'll have even more? Nothing about either of your choices precludes it... so how do you go about adding that in to only one? Do you understand? You might as well have said: I'd rather have the $150/$250 system, because then I can try hard and get a pony!
huh?
The global economy is a zero-sum game, if you choose any realistic utility function.
Wrong... you have not yet shown this, and I have consistently shown the opposite. You only showed how political power is zero-sum... but that is not economic
Since everyone enjoys the same growth, there's no relative benefit in playing
Again, are you really this dense... 'relative growth' has nothing to do with it.... it is about whether your gains cause an equal loss to someone else. If everyone is growing then the global economy can not be a zero-sum game by definition
You PS2 example is illogical, and only would make sense to a spoiled young suburbanite... try replacing Playstation with Medicine: Yes, getting 2nd generation drugs is better than getting nothing, getting 3rd generation is even better. But 3rd generation isn't 'all that matters' if the choice is between 2nd gen and death.
IHBT
This is getting tedious. This isn't a debate anymore, it is me trying to explain to you that just because you end up worse off than someone else does not make something a zero-sum game.
Read that again, understand it... please
Of course I'd rather have $100 when everyone has $100... I thought it was a rhetorical question, so I didn't answer it.
My point was that the example wasn't a zero-sum game because everyone still gains!!!!!
Is it honestly that difficult of a concept?
You can whine about the global economy not distributing wealth equally... but if it creates more wealth for everyone than there would be under any system... how is that bad?
Basically, you are saying you'd rather live in a cave and die at 30 because you'd feel better knowing everyone else would too... and that would instill a sense of 'justice' in your mind.
But if your utility function is the power that economic wealth brings in world affairs
Exactly, and if we were talking about politics this entire time, your comment would be relevant. We are instead talking about economics and growth... which I've repeatedly shown are not zero sum games
Thank you.
In case anyone missed it though, there was a good insight in that humor: a clear way of expressing the answer to the posed question:
... you would be prompted for this password, and if you got it wrong, you could try again. Obviously you'd get it on the second try. You could repeat this 128 times, and that would be the total of all protection. Naturally, this means the most number of guesses you'd need to make is 256.
If two 64 bit encryptions equals one 128 bit, then 128 one-bit encryptions should also.
This means the file would have a password of either 1 or 0
After thinking about it that way, it becomes quite clear: 128 bit encryption obviously requires more than 128 guesses to get the right key. As another poster pointed out, two 64 bit passes equals 65 bit encryption.
If you haven't noticed. I've won this debate. You asked me to show how the global economy isn't a zero sum game, and then how those growing slower aren't "losing".
I've done this, by showing how you fundamentally don't understand what you're talking about. You are confusing zero-sum with equality, which are different. Your post shows this:
Would you rather earn $100 when everybody is making $100, or $150 when everybody else is making $200 ?
The point is that those aren't the only two choices Read that again, understand it. Zero sum would be: you have $100 taken from you when someone else earns $100.
Can you at least admit the global economy isn't a zero-sum game?
Next you bring up equality. The world is not equal... deal with it. This is how things happen. Forced equality always leads to stagnation, and slower growth. So the real option would be: would you rather eat less as long as everyone else eats less too, or be well nourished while some people eat gourmet every night?
Some people are spiteful enough to starve just so others will to, you appear to be one of those 'idealistic' people.
Of course the standard of living improves for everybody. But it improves faster for the winners.
then it is not a zero sum game! Look up the definition. You are directly contradicting it. You are describing averages where someone is exactly below the average, and someone is exactly the opposite amount above it. For it to be zero-sum, the average has to be.... wait for it.... ZERO. If it is not, then it is not a zero-sum game.
Explain to me how any country, company or individual that grows slower than the global average is not a loser in this game.
First you say (or atleast imply) that it is a zero-sum gain... then you say that the losers are those who 'grow slower than average'.
You've contradicted yourself quite obviously. If it is a zero sum game, then the global average growth would be zero. What the parent was pointing out is that this is not the case.
You can't then change your definition and say that people lose now because some grow faster... the point is everyone grows. Which is exactly what makes it not a zero-sum game.
Obviously someone will always be below average, infact it is a mathematical certainty of averages.
Still a better deal than the green pieces of paper not even saying that!
I love gold people... at a fundamental level they don't realize that both paper and gold are completely useless unto themselves, and are only worth what people will pay for it. If you really worry about your well being in an apocalypse, buy canned food and ammmo, because that is all that will be worth anything.
why not just prove it's there, stake a claim on it, and then sell it here on Earth?
Fine... I've just claimed all the gold on the moon, care to buy it from me? I'll start the bidding at $1,000 and you can have first dibs.
Using that logic, why even mine it here on earth?... eventually we'd wind up with some wierd paper notes completely disconnected from actual known gold amounts... crazy!
Wow... Slashdot is a "Nerd" site, but this is the first I've heard of this feature. I'd mod you +6 if I could. For all the eye candy worship I've seen over the new OS... where on slashdot is the feature list that is interesting to *developers*?
But I have Googled about a hundred other people and thousands of addresses
988905: Brittney Spears
988905: Bill Clinton
988905: George Clinton
988905: George Clooney
988905: G. Stegman
988905: Mother Teresa
Guess!
$5 dollar trades here: Ameritrade izone
>permission to use it is implied
Its idiots like you who make it so everyone has to build giant fences around their pool
>The only states where their people would feel they have something to gain would be those that are consistantly "too close to call".
Interestingly enough, under our current system those states get boat loads of attention... any by attention I mean money... in an effort to lock in votes.
In summary, no one likes this idea.
pick up a cheap football, go to a park, and...play football?
I assume you play paintball instead of FPSs?
What do you think about this latest in a long line of PSP ads of questionable taste?
I think thousands of people now know PSP is coming in white... mission accomplished. If you don't like the ad, don't talk about it.