I think that our neurons are doing calculus at some level -- certainly not at any conscious level. If not calculus, then some other math. I don't think is a 'natural process' like a weather system where we can describe it with mathematics, but the atoms aren't actually doing math. I think neurons are actually doing math. It might be a math that we don't understand, but ultimately I think it is calculable.
It's not unreasonable to prepare ahead of time. What is unreasonable is telling the American public that it's an unrehearsed, frank dialogue between the president and soldiers, when it is not. That is a lie, and it is unfitting for an American president to lie to the public.
You're right -- it's a computer that caculates a single problem. OTOH, if the greeks who built this lived on another planet, they could take the same principles and build another device that calculated the positions of those planets. Yet again, this isn't a general planetary positioning device, it just shows the future positions of *particular* planets.
I'm coming down on the side of 'glorified watch.' Just wind it up and watch it go. No programming, no modularity, no general problem solving. Certainly nowhere near a Turing machine.
"The one where Lisa becomes a vegetarian, and Homer lists all the types of meat she won't eat 'ham? bacon? pork?' 'Dad! those are all from the same animal!'
"
You forgot the best part -- the punchline:
"Heh heh -- sure, Lisa. A magical animal..."
Re:The show will need local humor appeal
on
Homer Becomes Omar
·
· Score: 3, Funny
See, it's funny because he's an unsuccessful suicide bomber.
"Oh! Now I'll never get my 72 virgins..."
That wacky Omar! How will he screw it up this week?
No, I take it as gospel truth because I heard the tape of the coaching beforehand, which wasn't supposed to go out. Specifically, the white house co-ordinator said "if he goes off script". Also, I heard the press interview Scott McClelland after the event, who vehemently denied that this event was co-ordinated in any way, until he realized that the reporters had seen the preparations. And anyone who saw the event thought it was obvious that the soldiers were reading prepared questions.
Yes, it's okay to brief both sides before a talk like this, but the white house billed this as an open and frank discussion between the president and the troops. It was neither. They lied to us. Again.
This is just like when Bush when on his tour to sell social security reform in town-hall meetings, and gave an answer to the next question, which he hadn't heard yet.
How about America too afraid to deal with the realities of its own present? "Free Speech Zones" when the president or other member of the administration comes to speak, and the government paying columnists to support administration programs, which has been determined to be illegal propaganda, and the recent phony "interview" the president gave with troops in Iraq.
Do you really want *this* organization running the internet?
I think a dictatorship is the worst -- unless your goal is tyranny. Benevolent dictators are far outnumbered by tyrannical ones.
You're talking about the same problem that the framers of the constitution encountered, namely, the tyranny of the majority. If you have representation based strictly on population, then the most populous states become the most powerful. They solved this problem -- or, at least came to a compromise -- by creating a bi-cameral legislature, where the House of Representatives would be based on population, and the Senate would have an equal number of representatives for each state ( two in this case ).
There's nothing in direct democracy that prevents you from implementing a simliar system.
Those are false analogies. Law is different than a car -- a car is designed with a user interface that hides more complex systems so that the user doesn't have to know about them. With law, there is no 'user interface'. The text is the interface itself. You have to be able to understand it in order to follow it. You may not understand it to the letter, but you at least have to get the gist. If you don't really understand the law, you can't really follow it. A law is a generalization, and in order to follow it, you have to know whether or not it applies to a specific event that is presenting itself in your life. If you don't understand the law, you have no way of knowing whether or not this event falls under this law, thus you cannot be repsonsible for the law.
Laws, or legal codes, or justice systems, are found all over the world. Everywhere a group gets together they decide on rules of fairness that they must obey. Children practice 'law' in the form of games, with rules set up ahead of time, and punishments for cheaters. Anger is an emotion that arises in response to percieved 'wrongness', that is, something unfair, a violation of law. Laws are universal, found in every culture in the world, hardwired into the human brain.
There is nothing special about laws that prevents your average Joe from understanding them and even creating them. This is in fact different from cars or software.
Europe, North America, and Australia have been populated with democratic republics for about the past century, and they are most stable and wealthy countries in the world. There are very few monarchies these days, and those that are really are in name only -- the royal families are just figureheads. The facist and communist states of the 20th century have imploded -- no more exist. at this point, I would say that representational democracy has either won out, or shown itself to be vastly superior to the alternatives.
Why would *you* vote for this law? Wouldn't you bring up your valid points on the discussion before the vote?
I think the more that power is spread out over the people, the better. I don't like power collected in the hands of a few powerful elite, elected as they may be. Direct Democracy wouldn't be perfect, but I think it would be the least worst system.
I think that people don't bother to vote in America because, with the two party system, their vote really doesn't count and their representatives really aren't responsive to their contituents. You either vote for the party in power, or against it.
Contrast that to a parliamentary system, where seats in the congress a apportioned according to the percentage of votes one. Parliamentary democracies usually have about 5-6 parties that actually wield power.
I think if people could vote, and more importanly, propose and debate law, knowing that there would be a chance other people listened to them, then they would be interested in voting, and people would participate more.
"People who have studied the American Constitution and the ideas upon which it was founded would recognize this debate as "Tyranny of the Majority." In essence, the founding fathers knew that the vast majority of the population would not have the necessary knowledge and skill to successfully judge laws. That is why they purposely instituted a series of checks and balances within a representative democracy."
You obviously have not studied the American Constitution, or you have not understood what you read. This debate is not the tyranny of the majority. Tyranny of the Majority is the problem of a popular legislature based strictly on population -- thus, large states like New York and Virginia would always win out over small states like Rhode Island and Vermont. The solution -- or compromise -- was a bicameral legistature, with the number of representatives in the house being based solely on population, and the number of senators always being two -- so that the states all had an equal number of votes in the senate. Recently the EU went through some political gyrations over the same issue, but I don't know enough about it to summarize or comment.
Anyway, how can a debate about a king or representational legislature be called a Tyranny of the Majority? By definition, a king, ruling family, or legislature is a very small part of the population. By definition, such a debate would be called the Tyranny of the Minority.
"If "people" were as smart as you suppose, we would live in a utopia filled with well educated, wealthy, upstanding entrepeneurs. But we don't do we?"
I didn't say they were geniuses, I just said they were smart enough. Big difference.
"Your suggestion that if we deployed direct democracy, the "people" would grow into it and flourish with new found power is reminiscent of the father who thinks he can teach his badu to swim by dumping him in the deep end. The people don't want to govern themselves, they can't even be bothered to spend an hour a week figuring out what's going on and communicating with their representatives about it."
You have laid out a perfect argument for divine kingship. We should abandon this representational democracy, since people can't even bother to contact their representative every week. Leave it up to the experts, royal families.
"Your suggestion that if we deployed direct democracy, the "people" would grow into it and flourish with new found power is reminiscent of the father who thinks he can teach his badu to swim by dumping him in the deep end. The people don't want to govern themselves, they can't even be bothered to spend an hour a week figuring out what's going on and communicating with their representatives about it."
Have you ever thought that people don't care about politics because they can't contact their representative, and they really don't influence legislation? We are in a state of affairs where now corporations are literally writing law and using lobbyists to pass it through congress (See the recent bankrupcy bill. It was literally written by the finance industry, not lawmakers). Representatives really aren't listening to their constiuencies. The real motor of legislation is now corporations. Constituents are just a 'brake' on really extreme legislation, if the opposition is organized enough to get thousands of letters, faxes, calls, and emails to the rep. Law is not originating with the people who are allegedly being represented.
The real point of direct democracy is taking power out of the hands of politicians, whose only qualification is able to make rousing speeches. Power corrupts, and we see this regularly as congresspeople are thrown in jail for bribery. The fact is, in this day and age, politicians, even elected politicians, wield too much power. They cannot simply represent their constituents; instead they represent the special interests and lobbyists who got them where they are.
Like James Madison said:
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
Direct Democracy is just another control, to keep the ruling class from getting too powerful. Representatives are not angels.
I think most of your criticisms are due to the fact that direct democracy is rather new. People made the same arguments about democracy in the 1700s and they were right -- democracy was messy, people didn't understand it, and it didn't work. It took the United States 20 years to go from the Articles of Confederacy to the Constitution. Talk about not having your act together!
So you're not smart enough to understand current legislation in order to vote on it. Well, after it is passed by your representative, you are expected to follow it. How can you be smart enough to follow it, but yet not be smart enough to create or vote on it?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, we agree that a bullet is not doing math, but I think nuerons *are* doing math when they plan movement signals to send to the body.
I think that our neurons are doing calculus at some level -- certainly not at any conscious level. If not calculus, then some other math. I don't think is a 'natural process' like a weather system where we can describe it with mathematics, but the atoms aren't actually doing math. I think neurons are actually doing math. It might be a math that we don't understand, but ultimately I think it is calculable.
Stick them in a refridgerator.
Hey, I could do that site in plain old HTML.
It's not unreasonable to prepare ahead of time. What is unreasonable is telling the American public that it's an unrehearsed, frank dialogue between the president and soldiers, when it is not. That is a lie, and it is unfitting for an American president to lie to the public.
You're right -- it's a computer that caculates a single problem. OTOH, if the greeks who built this lived on another planet, they could take the same principles and build another device that calculated the positions of those planets. Yet again, this isn't a general planetary positioning device, it just shows the future positions of *particular* planets.
I'm coming down on the side of 'glorified watch.' Just wind it up and watch it go. No programming, no modularity, no general problem solving. Certainly nowhere near a Turing machine.
"The one where Lisa becomes a vegetarian, and Homer lists all the types of meat she won't eat 'ham? bacon? pork?' 'Dad! those are all from the same animal!' "
You forgot the best part -- the punchline:
"Heh heh -- sure, Lisa. A magical animal..."
See, it's funny because he's an unsuccessful suicide bomber.
"Oh! Now I'll never get my 72 virgins..."
That wacky Omar! How will he screw it up this week?
Bitwhoring.
Torrentwhoring.
I don't get it either. I wasn't karma whoring -- just trying to get better pooling for the torrent I was downloading! ;)
What is the filename of the 2.0b product? The torrent page that I linked to has a filename of 2.0.0.
This page has bittorrent links.
No, I take it as gospel truth because I heard the tape of the coaching beforehand, which wasn't supposed to go out. Specifically, the white house co-ordinator said "if he goes off script". Also, I heard the press interview Scott McClelland after the event, who vehemently denied that this event was co-ordinated in any way, until he realized that the reporters had seen the preparations. And anyone who saw the event thought it was obvious that the soldiers were reading prepared questions.
Yes, it's okay to brief both sides before a talk like this, but the white house billed this as an open and frank discussion between the president and the troops. It was neither. They lied to us. Again.
This is just like when Bush when on his tour to sell social security reform in town-hall meetings, and gave an answer to the next question, which he hadn't heard yet.
"Additionally the Firefox 2/3 roadmap also looks promising."
Really? All I saw listed for 2 and 3 was "The Next Big Thing" and "The Next Next Big Thing". Maybe this is the wrong link?
How about America too afraid to deal with the realities of its own present? "Free Speech Zones" when the president or other member of the administration comes to speak, and the government paying columnists to support administration programs, which has been determined to be illegal propaganda, and the recent phony "interview" the president gave with troops in Iraq.
Do you really want *this* organization running the internet?
Be... where?
I think a dictatorship is the worst -- unless your goal is tyranny. Benevolent dictators are far outnumbered by tyrannical ones.
You're talking about the same problem that the framers of the constitution encountered, namely, the tyranny of the majority. If you have representation based strictly on population, then the most populous states become the most powerful. They solved this problem -- or, at least came to a compromise -- by creating a bi-cameral legislature, where the House of Representatives would be based on population, and the Senate would have an equal number of representatives for each state ( two in this case ).
There's nothing in direct democracy that prevents you from implementing a simliar system.
Those are false analogies. Law is different than a car -- a car is designed with a user interface that hides more complex systems so that the user doesn't have to know about them. With law, there is no 'user interface'. The text is the interface itself. You have to be able to understand it in order to follow it. You may not understand it to the letter, but you at least have to get the gist. If you don't really understand the law, you can't really follow it. A law is a generalization, and in order to follow it, you have to know whether or not it applies to a specific event that is presenting itself in your life. If you don't understand the law, you have no way of knowing whether or not this event falls under this law, thus you cannot be repsonsible for the law.
Laws, or legal codes, or justice systems, are found all over the world. Everywhere a group gets together they decide on rules of fairness that they must obey. Children practice 'law' in the form of games, with rules set up ahead of time, and punishments for cheaters. Anger is an emotion that arises in response to percieved 'wrongness', that is, something unfair, a violation of law. Laws are universal, found in every culture in the world, hardwired into the human brain.
There is nothing special about laws that prevents your average Joe from understanding them and even creating them. This is in fact different from cars or software.
Europe, North America, and Australia have been populated with democratic republics for about the past century, and they are most stable and wealthy countries in the world. There are very few monarchies these days, and those that are really are in name only -- the royal families are just figureheads. The facist and communist states of the 20th century have imploded -- no more exist. at this point, I would say that representational democracy has either won out, or shown itself to be vastly superior to the alternatives.
How is this easier to tamper with than the current system?
Why would *you* vote for this law? Wouldn't you bring up your valid points on the discussion before the vote?
I think the more that power is spread out over the people, the better. I don't like power collected in the hands of a few powerful elite, elected as they may be. Direct Democracy wouldn't be perfect, but I think it would be the least worst system.
I think that people don't bother to vote in America because, with the two party system, their vote really doesn't count and their representatives really aren't responsive to their contituents. You either vote for the party in power, or against it.
Contrast that to a parliamentary system, where seats in the congress a apportioned according to the percentage of votes one. Parliamentary democracies usually have about 5-6 parties that actually wield power.
I think if people could vote, and more importanly, propose and debate law, knowing that there would be a chance other people listened to them, then they would be interested in voting, and people would participate more.
"People who have studied the American Constitution and the ideas upon which it was founded would recognize this debate as "Tyranny of the Majority." In essence, the founding fathers knew that the vast majority of the population would not have the necessary knowledge and skill to successfully judge laws. That is why they purposely instituted a series of checks and balances within a representative democracy."
You obviously have not studied the American Constitution, or you have not understood what you read. This debate is not the tyranny of the majority. Tyranny of the Majority is the problem of a popular legislature based strictly on population -- thus, large states like New York and Virginia would always win out over small states like Rhode Island and Vermont. The solution -- or compromise -- was a bicameral legistature, with the number of representatives in the house being based solely on population, and the number of senators always being two -- so that the states all had an equal number of votes in the senate. Recently the EU went through some political gyrations over the same issue, but I don't know enough about it to summarize or comment.
Anyway, how can a debate about a king or representational legislature be called a Tyranny of the Majority? By definition, a king, ruling family, or legislature is a very small part of the population. By definition, such a debate would be called the Tyranny of the Minority.
"If "people" were as smart as you suppose, we would live in a utopia filled with well educated, wealthy, upstanding entrepeneurs. But we don't do we?"
I didn't say they were geniuses, I just said they were smart enough. Big difference.
"Your suggestion that if we deployed direct democracy, the "people" would grow into it and flourish with new found power is reminiscent of the father who thinks he can teach his badu to swim by dumping him in the deep end. The people don't want to govern themselves, they can't even be bothered to spend an hour a week figuring out what's going on and communicating with their representatives about it."
You have laid out a perfect argument for divine kingship. We should abandon this representational democracy, since people can't even bother to contact their representative every week. Leave it up to the experts, royal families.
"Your suggestion that if we deployed direct democracy, the "people" would grow into it and flourish with new found power is reminiscent of the father who thinks he can teach his badu to swim by dumping him in the deep end. The people don't want to govern themselves, they can't even be bothered to spend an hour a week figuring out what's going on and communicating with their representatives about it."
Have you ever thought that people don't care about politics because they can't contact their representative, and they really don't influence legislation? We are in a state of affairs where now corporations are literally writing law and using lobbyists to pass it through congress (See the recent bankrupcy bill. It was literally written by the finance industry, not lawmakers). Representatives really aren't listening to their constiuencies. The real motor of legislation is now corporations. Constituents are just a 'brake' on really extreme legislation, if the opposition is organized enough to get thousands of letters, faxes, calls, and emails to the rep. Law is not originating with the people who are allegedly being represented.
The real point of direct democracy is taking power out of the hands of politicians, whose only qualification is able to make rousing speeches. Power corrupts, and we see this regularly as congresspeople are thrown in jail for bribery. The fact is, in this day and age, politicians, even elected politicians, wield too much power. They cannot simply represent their constituents; instead they represent the special interests and lobbyists who got them where they are.
Like James Madison said:
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
Direct Democracy is just another control, to keep the ruling class from getting too powerful. Representatives are not angels.
I think most of your criticisms are due to the fact that direct democracy is rather new. People made the same arguments about democracy in the 1700s and they were right -- democracy was messy, people didn't understand it, and it didn't work. It took the United States 20 years to go from the Articles of Confederacy to the Constitution. Talk about not having your act together!
So you're not smart enough to understand current legislation in order to vote on it. Well, after it is passed by your representative, you are expected to follow it. How can you be smart enough to follow it, but yet not be smart enough to create or vote on it?