But again, trying to argue about the scientific method with someone from SurvivalScience.org is probably futile, as I'm sure you're convinced that your brand of science is much more valid than anything that is done by the folks associated with the JREF.
Wow, that was an amazing assumption. I haven't looked into their actual science. I've merely perused the "Debunking the Debunkers" section.
It is a logical fallacy to attach the truth of an argument to its source. The criticisms of "skeptical" arguments are valid, despite that they come from "belivers".
I can't claim today that he doesn't follow the scientific method in testing claimaints to his million dollar prize, because it's been a while since I read the specifics of his tests. However, as he assumes that all "paranormal" events are false and looks for evidence to change his mind is contradictory to the scientific method.
It doesn't bother me if you still trust Randi after reading some of the criticisms (that isn't the best one I've seen, simply one I stumbled across recently), but I felt that people would be interested some of the criticisms of his work. No harm in seeing both sides of the story.
James Randi crosses the line from healthy skepticism to a "I'm right, even though I have no evidence. Prove me wrong" psuedo-scientist. He takes the vantage point that any thing he thinks is "paranormal" must neccesarily be false, and then looks for evidence to validate his view. Sure, most of these claims are probably false, but that doesn't mean you get to ditch the scientific method.
This is the same reason I don't agree with Atheists. Sure, there's little to no evidence of divinity, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Agnostics are the only ones who can claim that their beliefs are based off the scientific method, since they admit there's not enough evidence to make a conclusion, either way.
That's not liberal. When we go into Liberia, how much you want to bet they predict doom and gloom there? The media loves to exaggerate. Is anyone surprised?
And another thing - what about conservatives predicting doom and gloom all over the airwaves during our actions in Kosovo? Were they being liberal?
My interpretation is that this man was simply hoping to get reactions from people like this man. I've heard rumor that it's actually an unliscened escort service, but I'd like to see more evidence of that before I decide either way.
I figure he was trying to get people to be enraged, a la a shock jock. He seems to have succeeded.
cannot apply to Baghdad, as it's never had great religious significance for christians. It may have been a great city but Nostrodamus would never have described it as a City of God.
Christians and Muslims both believe in the same God, just disagree in the nature of Jesus Christ. Chrisitians believe he was the Messiah. Muslims believe he was just another prophet. The two, combined with Judaism, are referred to Abrahamic, because they all worship the God of Abraham.
Clever.
"MG: To what degree is the internet featured in your archives.
DM: A surprising degree. For instance, the tech sight slashdot (slashdot.org) is rife with urban legends. The two most obvious ones being that Rob "cmdr pedophile" Malda is straight -which almost no one believes, and that it is a 'community site'...again, no-one who has witnessed the removal of 'questionable' posts and the rampant mod-bombing by the OSDN janitors (ed: slashdot terminology for the editors) can take that particular claim seriously."
-- is not featured in the article. Nice addition though. Not obvious at all or anything.
If I read the grandparent correctly, he wasn't saying that problems were dumb. He was saying that understanding the idea behind the problems before attempting them is a better way of learning for him.
When I was back in high school, Calculus came pretty easy for me, but I remember some of the kids having problems doing the examples. The problem was that after they got the hang of one type of problem, they would get the next type of problem (say, differentiation), and not understand what to do.
Since my teacher focused on rote techniques to teach things, when we moved from simple problems like differentiating x^2 to relatively nasty ones like x^3*sin(x)/(2*x). Since they didn't really understand *what* they were doing with the simple examples, they got way over their heads when they hit the uglier stuff.
The best thing for me was having a friend that explained what I was *actually* doing when I did the techniques, so that when I got to the nastier stuff, I still understood what was going on.
If I read the grandparent correctly, he wasn't saying that problems were dumb. He was saying that understanding the idea behind the problems before attempting them is a better way of learning for him.
When I was back in high school, Calculus came pretty easy for me, but I remember some of the kids having problems doing the examples. The problem was that after they got the hang of one type of problem, they would get the next type of problem (say, differentiation), and not understand what to do.
Since my teacher focused on rote techniques to teach things, when we moved from simple problems like differentiating x^2 to relatively nasty ones like x^3*sin(x)/(2*x). Since they didn't really understand *what* they were doing with the simple examples, they got way over their heads when they hit the uglier stuff.
The best thing for me was having a friend that explained what I was *actually* doing when I did the techniques, so that when I got to the nastier stuff, I still understood what was going on.
My statistics: New Infections 70% Men, 15% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 10.5% total population 30% Women, 75% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 22.5% total population
Your statistic: 60%+25% = 85% 85% + 15% = 100%. Your statistic does not conflict with mine, in fact it is to be expected if there are only three listed causes for infection. Mine simply addresses the universe of new infections, rather than simply men. This is important, since 22.5% of the new infections comes from heterosexual women.
You neglected to note that I added women, to demonstrate that the disease afflicts more than just gay men or IV users of either gender.
I think you're misunderstanding the NIH stats, but it doesn't matter. Even with your interpretation, most people with AIDS (new or old cases, your choice) also have gay sex and/or use IV drugs. That's the insensitive claim for which I was taken to task. It has been demonstrated to be true now twice, with stats from two different sources that were both provded by the people arguing against me. I'm sorry that it's hard to accept that, but it's true. Please stop trying to force reality to come into line with your ideas of what you want it to be. 66% is a far cry from 100%. That was my, and probably everyone else's, point. HIV/AIDS does not just affect gay men or IV drug users, it affects everybody. As I stated in my previous post, and I note you didn't disagree with it, the population distribution is changing.
No one said being gay makes anyone less-deserving of life-saving, via transplant or otherwise. Actually, you did. In the post that started this whole mess: Who cares about homosexuals / IV drug users in this case anyway? They should neither donate organs nor receive them. Obvious-fucking-ly. As for that line being a straw-man, I disagree. It is a logical corollary from your position. If your position is that gay men should not be able to recieve organs because some of them have HIV/AIDS, it is entirely logical to point out that gay men would no longer deserve to recieve organs because of the high-risk behaviors. Since you feel it needs proof: A) Gay men should not be eligible to receive organs, since they engage in a high-risk activity. B) People who are not eligible to receive organs do not deserve to receive organs. C) Gay men are a group of people who are not eligible to receive organs. D) Gay men do not deserve to receive organs. QED.
In the context of the discussion, we were talking about making organ donation mandatory to recieve organs, period. No seperate club a la LifeSharers. (A link to that post, for your convienence: )
You forgot option C): start your own organ exchange club for people with AIDS or high-risk lifestyles and those who don't mind the idea of thier new liver possibly coming with some free bonus HIV. I'm guessing you really don't love that game -- since it's called Being Accountable For Your Own Decisions. In the context of this discussion, that wasn't an option. See above post.
No one said being gay makes anyone less-deserving of life-saving, via transplant or otherwise. You did. See above.
It DOES however, make an organ donated by a gay man or an IV drug-user worth somewhat less, in trade, than a organ from someone who isn't as likely to have a hard-to-detect infectious fatal disease. When we start checking for genetic diseases, will we make it harder for people, like myself, with one, to recieve organs? Note that my condition is both non-contagious, and 100% due to nature, not lifestyle.
Gay sex and IV drug use are strongly correlated with AIDS. Causality is also pretty certain. I don't know what statistics class you took, but that's why I threw in the line about how many gay people had HIV/AIDS. 1%-2% is hardly a correlation. Nevermind the fact that you need controlled exp
New Infections 70% Men, 15% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 10.5% total population 30% Women, 75% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 22.5% total population
For a grand total of 33%, or fully one-third of new HIV/AIDS cases in America. Since there are anywhere between 10 and 20 times as many heterosexuals than homosexuals in America, odds are that the more and more heterosexual people are going to be getting HIV before things get any better.
If I read the statistics that you are using correctly, they are cumulative. In that case, your results are numerically correct, but misleading. According to the this page you get your numbers from, more than half of those people are dead. This is repeated in the page where I got my data. This means that new infections are going to considerably skew the dataset of living people with HIV/AIDS.
Your data falls prey to a different problem, also related to the fact that the numbers you use are cumulative: The disease was indeed, at first, being solely contracted by gay men and IV drug users. They had quite a head start, as it were. Any deviation towards a statistic on par with the population distribution of America would take a while. Again, going by new infections alleviates this problem.
I particuarily love this gem (emphasis mine, some removed from original): I said, and I still do, that people with AIDS, AND people who admitted to gay sex and/or IV drug use would simply be excluded from this program as they are from current organ, blood, plasma, and bone-marrow donor programs.
I can see your point for drug users, since they aren't born drug users, though I certainly disagree they should be banned from recieving organs. However, your banning of gay men from the program is ridiculous. Under your system, a man who is born gay should: A) Choose to remain celibate their entire life, so that in the event that they need an organ, they can be saved B) Live normally, and hope they never need an organ, because gay people don't deserve those organs, because they engage in high-risk behaviors.
Don't 'cha love that game? Low risk, but infinite stakes.
Let's look at how many gay men there are in America. Estimates range from 5 to 10%. Let's go with the 10, for the purpose of arguement. There are roughly 292,000,000 people in America according to the US census, so about 29,200,000 gay people. Divide by 2, since gender is pretty well 50/50. 14,600,000 gay men. Let's also assume that everyone is as likely to die of AIDS once they get it. 42.6% of the patients are alive, so there are around 368,971 *.426 = 157,434 gay men with AIDS. That means that 157,434/14,600,000 = 1% of gay men have AIDS.
So you're proposing that all gay men be barred from recieving organs on the basis that 1 out of every 100 might have AIDS, and therefore be ineligible to donate an organ?
Hey, I hear that there are over 2 million people in prison (roughly.7% of the population)... does that mean that we should all be in prison?
First, an off-topic question. Didn't Ayn Rand change her mind about Objectivism? I thought I remembered reading that she did, but I honestly can't recall the source anymore.
Of COURSE, self-determination is one of the most important principles of civilization.
I agree. That's why I feel compulsory voting would be a good thing. By forcing people to vote, they could still choose not to pick between the candidates, but they would still be upholding their end of the bargain by saying something. To get existential, compulsory voting with the recognition that refusal to make a decision is a decision in of itself simply forces people to make that decision.
You could say that voter apathy is a decision, but I disagree in everything but a very vague and insubstantial way. The government represents the people, and the people have an obligation to let the government know what that means.
To make an analogy, the people are the boss of the government, right? If you weren't getting instructions from your bosses, wouldn't you demand that they tell you what to do? I think it is well within any democratic government's right to insist that the people vote, even if that vote is for nothing at all.
I hadn't heard of range voting before, though I have visited ElectionMethods.org... Just read about it, and I have to say, my gut instinct is "ick." That's naturally an imprecise system, and odds are that the only numbers in a 1-10 system used would be 1, 5, and 10. Think about how bad it is for medicine that all they can get for readings on pain is a number between 1 and 10... makes it hard, since every person has different standards.
The man doing these tests raises an interesting point, in whether or not it is fair to force voters to rank all candidates. However, that's easy enough to fix - allow ties, which don't add a win to either candidate. In the hypothetical example:
A - 2 1 1 1 B - 3 2 4 1 C - 4 3 1 1 D - 1 4 2 1 E - 3 5 3 1 F - 1 6 4 1
I get this as my pairwise matrix (check it if you feel so inclined - I did this manually).
A B C D E F A - 3 2 2 3 2 B 0 - 1 1 1 1 C 0 1 - 2 2 2 D 1 2 1 - 3 2 E 0 1 1 0 - 2 F 1 1 1 0 1 -
I'm just bored enough that I might try to implement this guys voting test program in C++ and see how this works out compared to the other systems. It removes the problem of extremists getting more of a vote than moderates.
I agree about Condorcet not being complex... it's might be a pain in the ass to count the votes, but computerized counting is what we do now, even with paper ballots.
Now, when you have an intelligent reason why my solution wouldn't work, you can feel free to get back to me.
I'm not the same person, but I feel I have an intelligent reason. Does that count? If not, please ignore.
I have a chronic disease which forces me to take all sorts of fun drugs. I know this makes me ineligible to donate blood, and I'm pretty sure most of my parts wouldn't be eligible for donation either.
I don't have a problem with your idea, so long as you allow people who will probably never be able to donate organs be allowed to sign up as well (ie, no health restrictions).
Hell, you could even make the program opt-out rather than opt-in. Make everyone check yes or no at 18, with children automatically opted in at birth unless the parents object.
I remember seeing a study mentioned on the news about problems with computer voting, but I don't see it mentioned in this story.
Potential for fraud is a good thing in the eyes of sufficiently corrupt politicians. If it were completely impregnable, then those with the inclination wouldn't be able to fix elections. As much as I love throwing technology at a problem to try and solve it, I really don't think that eliminating a paper trail is *really* a good idea when we talk about electing such powerful people.
How about instead of changing the way we cast our ballot, let's focus on changing the ballot? Plurality voting is about the worst voting system there is. Of course, if we went with Condorcet, third-party politicians might actually get elected.
Don't buy from RadioShack, buy from GreenBatteries. I've shopped with them before, and gotten great deals... haven't seen $2.75 each for NiMH AAs in 12 packs at WalMart.
Unfortunately, they don't seem to have the common form factor Li-Ion batteries either, but I've been sastisfied with the NiMH so far.
Against Bush's tax plan? Then explain to me why people who don't pay income tax deserve a tax refund/credit.
Because income tax isn't all the taxes taken out of your check... remember that thing called Social Security? Or Medicare? Those are funded from a seperate tax from the federal withholding tax. The "negative credit" is basically refunding some of that money.
- So he screwed us economicaly how? He talked the economy into recession... we were doing OK, and he kept saying the god-damned R-word every time he opened his mouth. That doesn't help.
- So he screwed us in scientific research how? Remember stem cell research? Nevermind any sort of therapeautic cloning research.
- So he screwed us in basic civil rights how? *cough*USA PATRIOT act*cough*
If that were too strict, they could always force them to release code the versions after they've "died"... that way people wouldn't be forced to upgrade, at least.
If I recall correctly, problem was when the first judge talked out of turn to the press, the government felt they had to ease up on the restrictions so people wouldn't feel that they were being too hard on Microsoft.
In retrospect, no one seems to care what happens to corporate criminals (excluding Martha Stewart, but that's just because she, as Lewis Black said "made us feel bad about using parsley as a garnish").
I used to think that breaking MS up would have been a bad idea... now I'm wondering if it was the only feasible situation.
Actually, a civil claim is based solely on a preponderance of evidence - whichever side has more supporting facts wins... there's no "reasonable doubt" in a civil claim.
It's a good thing people have you to tell them how to live their lives and what choices to choose. Otherwise, they might be tempted to substitute their own judgement.
It's interesting that your all-important education can't provide the thus-educated masses with the necessary education to make their own choices without your help.
I don't tell people how to live their lives, nor do I tell them what choices to make. It amazes me that you think that education is something that we can just take a pass on, however. I'm not saying our current system is the greatest; I think it needs *a lot* of reform. But to say that it is emblematic of public education as a whole is to say that, to use a coding reference, a high school implementation of Quicksort is crappy, and therefore the entire algorithm is poor.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny you said that, 'cause I just was reading this page of the site:
Debunking Debunker's Arguments - Occam's Razor.
By the way, The Scientific Method.
But again, trying to argue about the scientific method with someone from SurvivalScience.org is probably futile, as I'm sure you're convinced that your brand of science is much more valid than anything that is done by the folks associated with the JREF.
Wow, that was an amazing assumption. I haven't looked into their actual science. I've merely perused the "Debunking the Debunkers" section.
It is a logical fallacy to attach the truth of an argument to its source. The criticisms of "skeptical" arguments are valid, despite that they come from "belivers".
I can't claim today that he doesn't follow the scientific method in testing claimaints to his million dollar prize, because it's been a while since I read the specifics of his tests. However, as he assumes that all "paranormal" events are false and looks for evidence to change his mind is contradictory to the scientific method.
It doesn't bother me if you still trust Randi after reading some of the criticisms (that isn't the best one I've seen, simply one I stumbled across recently), but I felt that people would be interested some of the criticisms of his work. No harm in seeing both sides of the story.
James Randi crosses the line from healthy skepticism to a "I'm right, even though I have no evidence. Prove me wrong" psuedo-scientist. He takes the vantage point that any thing he thinks is "paranormal" must neccesarily be false, and then looks for evidence to validate his view. Sure, most of these claims are probably false, but that doesn't mean you get to ditch the scientific method.
This is the same reason I don't agree with Atheists. Sure, there's little to no evidence of divinity, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Agnostics are the only ones who can claim that their beliefs are based off the scientific method, since they admit there's not enough evidence to make a conclusion, either way.
One scientist responds to Randi's accusations.
That's not liberal. When we go into Liberia, how much you want to bet they predict doom and gloom there? The media loves to exaggerate. Is anyone surprised?
And another thing - what about conservatives predicting doom and gloom all over the airwaves during our actions in Kosovo? Were they being liberal?
What about leftist egalitarians?
My interpretation is that this man was simply hoping to get reactions from people like this man. I've heard rumor that it's actually an unliscened escort service, but I'd like to see more evidence of that before I decide either way.
I figure he was trying to get people to be enraged, a la a shock jock. He seems to have succeeded.
Christians and Muslims both believe in the same God, just disagree in the nature of Jesus Christ. Chrisitians believe he was the Messiah. Muslims believe he was just another prophet. The two, combined with Judaism, are referred to Abrahamic, because they all worship the God of Abraham.
Clever. "MG: To what degree is the internet featured in your archives. DM: A surprising degree. For instance, the tech sight slashdot (slashdot.org) is rife with urban legends. The two most obvious ones being that Rob "cmdr pedophile" Malda is straight -which almost no one believes, and that it is a 'community site'...again, no-one who has witnessed the removal of 'questionable' posts and the rampant mod-bombing by the OSDN janitors (ed: slashdot terminology for the editors) can take that particular claim seriously." -- is not featured in the article. Nice addition though. Not obvious at all or anything.
Repost with proper formatting (stupid misclick):
If I read the grandparent correctly, he wasn't saying that problems were dumb. He was saying that understanding the idea behind the problems before attempting them is a better way of learning for him.
When I was back in high school, Calculus came pretty easy for me, but I remember some of the kids having problems doing the examples. The problem was that after they got the hang of one type of problem, they would get the next type of problem (say, differentiation), and not understand what to do.
Since my teacher focused on rote techniques to teach things, when we moved from simple problems like differentiating x^2 to relatively nasty ones like x^3*sin(x)/(2*x). Since they didn't really understand *what* they were doing with the simple examples, they got way over their heads when they hit the uglier stuff.
The best thing for me was having a friend that explained what I was *actually* doing when I did the techniques, so that when I got to the nastier stuff, I still understood what was going on.
If I read the grandparent correctly, he wasn't saying that problems were dumb. He was saying that understanding the idea behind the problems before attempting them is a better way of learning for him. When I was back in high school, Calculus came pretty easy for me, but I remember some of the kids having problems doing the examples. The problem was that after they got the hang of one type of problem, they would get the next type of problem (say, differentiation), and not understand what to do. Since my teacher focused on rote techniques to teach things, when we moved from simple problems like differentiating x^2 to relatively nasty ones like x^3*sin(x)/(2*x). Since they didn't really understand *what* they were doing with the simple examples, they got way over their heads when they hit the uglier stuff. The best thing for me was having a friend that explained what I was *actually* doing when I did the techniques, so that when I got to the nastier stuff, I still understood what was going on.
My statistics:
New Infections
70% Men, 15% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 10.5% total population
30% Women, 75% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 22.5% total population
Your statistic:
60%+25% = 85%
85% + 15% = 100%. Your statistic does not conflict with mine, in fact it is to be expected if there are only three listed causes for infection. Mine simply addresses the universe of new infections, rather than simply men. This is important, since 22.5% of the new infections comes from heterosexual women.
You neglected to note that I added women, to demonstrate that the disease afflicts more than just gay men or IV users of either gender.
I think you're misunderstanding the NIH stats, but it doesn't matter. Even with your interpretation, most people with AIDS (new or old cases, your choice) also have gay sex and/or use IV drugs. That's the insensitive claim for which I was taken to task. It has been demonstrated to be true now twice, with stats from two different sources that were both provded by the people arguing against me. I'm sorry that it's hard to accept that, but it's true. Please stop trying to force reality to come into line with your ideas of what you want it to be.
66% is a far cry from 100%. That was my, and probably everyone else's, point. HIV/AIDS does not just affect gay men or IV drug users, it affects everybody. As I stated in my previous post, and I note you didn't disagree with it, the population distribution is changing.
No one said being gay makes anyone less-deserving of life-saving, via transplant or otherwise.
Actually, you did. In the post that started this whole mess:
Who cares about homosexuals / IV drug users in this case anyway? They should neither donate organs nor receive them. Obvious-fucking-ly.
As for that line being a straw-man, I disagree. It is a logical corollary from your position. If your position is that gay men should not be able to recieve organs because some of them have HIV/AIDS, it is entirely logical to point out that gay men would no longer deserve to recieve organs because of the high-risk behaviors. Since you feel it needs proof:
A) Gay men should not be eligible to receive organs, since they engage in a high-risk activity.
B) People who are not eligible to receive organs do not deserve to receive organs.
C) Gay men are a group of people who are not eligible to receive organs.
D) Gay men do not deserve to receive organs. QED.
In the context of the discussion, we were talking about making organ donation mandatory to recieve organs, period. No seperate club a la LifeSharers.
(A link to that post, for your convienence: )
You forgot option C): start your own organ exchange club for people with AIDS or high-risk lifestyles and those who don't mind the idea of thier new liver possibly coming with some free bonus HIV. I'm guessing you really don't love that game -- since it's called Being Accountable For Your Own Decisions.
In the context of this discussion, that wasn't an option. See above post.
No one said being gay makes anyone less-deserving of life-saving, via transplant or otherwise.
You did. See above.
It DOES however, make an organ donated by a gay man or an IV drug-user worth somewhat less, in trade, than a organ from someone who isn't as likely to have a hard-to-detect infectious fatal disease.
When we start checking for genetic diseases, will we make it harder for people, like myself, with one, to recieve organs? Note that my condition is both non-contagious, and 100% due to nature, not lifestyle.
Gay sex and IV drug use are strongly correlated with AIDS. Causality is also pretty certain.
I don't know what statistics class you took, but that's why I threw in the line about how many gay people had HIV/AIDS. 1%-2% is hardly a correlation. Nevermind the fact that you need controlled exp
'Fraid not... this was recent recent... as in I saw it a few days ago. Damn crappy memory.
NIH Statistics
.7% of the population)... does that mean that we should all be in prison?
New Infections
70% Men, 15% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 10.5% total population
30% Women, 75% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 22.5% total population
For a grand total of 33%, or fully one-third of new HIV/AIDS cases in America. Since there are anywhere between 10 and 20 times as many heterosexuals than homosexuals in America, odds are that the more and more heterosexual people are going to be getting HIV before things get any better.
If I read the statistics that you are using correctly, they are cumulative. In that case, your results are numerically correct, but misleading. According to the this page you get your numbers from, more than half of those people are dead. This is repeated in the page where I got my data. This means that new infections are going to considerably skew the dataset of living people with HIV/AIDS.
Your data falls prey to a different problem, also related to the fact that the numbers you use are cumulative: The disease was indeed, at first, being solely contracted by gay men and IV drug users. They had quite a head start, as it were. Any deviation towards a statistic on par with the population distribution of America would take a while. Again, going by new infections alleviates this problem.
I particuarily love this gem (emphasis mine, some removed from original):
I said, and I still do, that people with AIDS, AND people who admitted to gay sex and/or IV drug use would simply be excluded from this program as they are from current organ, blood, plasma, and bone-marrow donor programs.
I can see your point for drug users, since they aren't born drug users, though I certainly disagree they should be banned from recieving organs. However, your banning of gay men from the program is ridiculous. Under your system, a man who is born gay should:
A) Choose to remain celibate their entire life, so that in the event that they need an organ, they can be saved
B) Live normally, and hope they never need an organ, because gay people don't deserve those organs, because they engage in high-risk behaviors.
Don't 'cha love that game? Low risk, but infinite stakes.
Let's look at how many gay men there are in America. Estimates range from 5 to 10%. Let's go with the 10, for the purpose of arguement. There are roughly 292,000,000 people in America according to the US census, so about 29,200,000 gay people. Divide by 2, since gender is pretty well 50/50. 14,600,000 gay men. Let's also assume that everyone is as likely to die of AIDS once they get it. 42.6% of the patients are alive, so there are around 368,971 *.426 = 157,434 gay men with AIDS. That means that 157,434/14,600,000 = 1% of gay men have AIDS.
So you're proposing that all gay men be barred from recieving organs on the basis that 1 out of every 100 might have AIDS, and therefore be ineligible to donate an organ?
Hey, I hear that there are over 2 million people in prison (roughly
First, an off-topic question. Didn't Ayn Rand change her mind about Objectivism? I thought I remembered reading that she did, but I honestly can't recall the source anymore.
Of COURSE, self-determination is one of the most important principles of civilization.
I agree. That's why I feel compulsory voting would be a good thing. By forcing people to vote, they could still choose not to pick between the candidates, but they would still be upholding their end of the bargain by saying something. To get existential, compulsory voting with the recognition that refusal to make a decision is a decision in of itself simply forces people to make that decision.
You could say that voter apathy is a decision, but I disagree in everything but a very vague and insubstantial way. The government represents the people, and the people have an obligation to let the government know what that means.
To make an analogy, the people are the boss of the government, right? If you weren't getting instructions from your bosses, wouldn't you demand that they tell you what to do? I think it is well within any democratic government's right to insist that the people vote, even if that vote is for nothing at all.
I hadn't heard of range voting before, though I have visited ElectionMethods.org. .. Just read about it, and I have to say, my gut instinct is "ick." That's naturally an imprecise system, and odds are that the only numbers in a 1-10 system used would be 1, 5, and 10. Think about how bad it is for medicine that all they can get for readings on pain is a number between 1 and 10... makes it hard, since every person has different standards.
The man doing these tests raises an interesting point, in whether or not it is fair to force voters to rank all candidates. However, that's easy enough to fix - allow ties, which don't add a win to either candidate. In the hypothetical example:
A - 2 1 1 1
B - 3 2 4 1
C - 4 3 1 1
D - 1 4 2 1
E - 3 5 3 1
F - 1 6 4 1
I get this as my pairwise matrix (check it if you feel so inclined - I did this manually).
A B C D E F
A - 3 2 2 3 2
B 0 - 1 1 1 1
C 0 1 - 2 2 2
D 1 2 1 - 3 2
E 0 1 1 0 - 2
F 1 1 1 0 1 -
A-B:A B-C:T C-D:C D-E:D E-F:E
A-C:A B-D:D C-E:C D-F:D
A-D:A B-E:T C-F:C
A-E:A B-F:T
A-F:A
I'm just bored enough that I might try to implement this guys voting test program in C++ and see how this works out compared to the other systems. It removes the problem of extremists getting more of a vote than moderates.
I agree about Condorcet not being complex... it's might be a pain in the ass to count the votes, but computerized counting is what we do now, even with paper ballots.
Now, when you have an intelligent reason why my solution wouldn't work, you can feel free to get back to me.
I'm not the same person, but I feel I have an intelligent reason. Does that count? If not, please ignore.
I have a chronic disease which forces me to take all sorts of fun drugs. I know this makes me ineligible to donate blood, and I'm pretty sure most of my parts wouldn't be eligible for donation either.
I don't have a problem with your idea, so long as you allow people who will probably never be able to donate organs be allowed to sign up as well (ie, no health restrictions).
Hell, you could even make the program opt-out rather than opt-in. Make everyone check yes or no at 18, with children automatically opted in at birth unless the parents object.
I remember seeing a study mentioned on the news about problems with computer voting, but I don't see it mentioned in this story.
Potential for fraud is a good thing in the eyes of sufficiently corrupt politicians. If it were completely impregnable, then those with the inclination wouldn't be able to fix elections. As much as I love throwing technology at a problem to try and solve it, I really don't think that eliminating a paper trail is *really* a good idea when we talk about electing such powerful people.
How about instead of changing the way we cast our ballot, let's focus on changing the ballot? Plurality voting is about the worst voting system there is. Of course, if we went with Condorcet, third-party politicians might actually get elected.
Don't buy from RadioShack, buy from GreenBatteries. I've shopped with them before, and gotten great deals... haven't seen $2.75 each for NiMH AAs in 12 packs at WalMart. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have the common form factor Li-Ion batteries either, but I've been sastisfied with the NiMH so far.
Quiet, you fool! You'll ruin it for everyone!
Because income tax isn't all the taxes taken out of your check... remember that thing called Social Security? Or Medicare? Those are funded from a seperate tax from the federal withholding tax. The "negative credit" is basically refunding some of that money.
One example for each:
- So he screwed us economicaly how?
He talked the economy into recession... we were doing OK, and he kept saying the god-damned R-word every time he opened his mouth. That doesn't help.
- So he screwed us in scientific research how?
Remember stem cell research? Nevermind any sort of therapeautic cloning research.
- So he screwed us in basic civil rights how?
*cough*USA PATRIOT act*cough*
Good point... hadn't thought about that.
If that were too strict, they could always force them to release code the versions after they've "died"... that way people wouldn't be forced to upgrade, at least.
If I recall correctly, problem was when the first judge talked out of turn to the press, the government felt they had to ease up on the restrictions so people wouldn't feel that they were being too hard on Microsoft.
In retrospect, no one seems to care what happens to corporate criminals (excluding Martha Stewart, but that's just because she, as Lewis Black said "made us feel bad about using parsley as a garnish").
I used to think that breaking MS up would have been a bad idea... now I'm wondering if it was the only feasible situation.
As a sidenote, I've been using the corporate edition of XP since the first public betas, and I've never had to do any product activation.
That'd be why you don't have to do any product activation: Corporate edition doesn't *have* product activation.
Actually, a civil claim is based solely on a preponderance of evidence - whichever side has more supporting facts wins... there's no "reasonable doubt" in a civil claim.
Yes. Mandate away.
It's a good thing people have you to tell them how to live their lives and what choices to choose. Otherwise, they might be tempted to substitute their own judgement.
It's interesting that your all-important education can't provide the thus-educated masses with the necessary education to make their own choices without your help.
I don't tell people how to live their lives, nor do I tell them what choices to make. It amazes me that you think that education is something that we can just take a pass on, however. I'm not saying our current system is the greatest; I think it needs *a lot* of reform. But to say that it is emblematic of public education as a whole is to say that, to use a coding reference, a high school implementation of Quicksort is crappy, and therefore the entire algorithm is poor.