Rather than using my moderator points to label this for the flamebait that it is, I'll just address it.
What the parent poster means by "thinning the herd" is to expose and kill all of the susceptable people. What's the stated benefit to this act of mass murder? To prevent the future deaths of all of the susceptable people. Clearly, this is not just cruel; it's stupid.
Of course, this argument isn't just flawed logically. It's also flawed in it's assumption of how immunity works. A genetic resistance to SARS does not necessarily suggest a genetic resistance to a "new virus." If it did, there wouldn't be so many human pathogens!
At the risk of opening a discussion as to what attributes would make a person "strong" or "weak" so categorically as to determine who lives and who dies, being immune to SARS is not such an attribute.
The only thing close to a credible point in the parent's post is that we have an impending (if not current) over population issue. How to address this will be one of the 21st centuries greatest problems. Murdering millions with a Social Darwinistic biological killing spree isn't exactly a feasible solution.
The vast majority of spam I get is from my SourceForge address. And it increased dramatically fairly recently ( 6 months), even though I've had the account for more than a year.
to siphon tax dollars away from issues that are a lot less preventable and affect more people.
You mean like heart disease?
You like Big Macs? You accept the risk of clogged arteries.
Oh. I guess not.
American Heart Association, you can close up shop now that Alethes has found the answer to heart disease: stop eating stuff that causes heart disease.
If I were to beat you every time you drank a Coke instead of a Pepsi, would you conclude that your only choice was to either drink the Pepsi or accept the risk of a beating? Yes, you would have to, so long as I can beat you. But while you may find it prudent to reduce the amount of Coke you drink while still susceptable to my fists, I would hope that you would be working feverishly on the side to reduce the risk of the beatings you were getting for drinking Coke by preventing me from beating you.
Similarly, even if you found Coke to be distasteful and it was a friend of yours I was beating rather than you, would you advise your friend to either drink Pepsi like a real man or accept the risk of a brutal beating? I mean, after all, all he had to do was stop that nasty habit of drinking Coca-Cola. But no, your friend just has to be a rebel and drink what he likes. In a way, he's kind of asking for a beating, don't you think?
No? You would try to find a way to help your friend reduce the risk of getting beat?
Even if you had to pay more in taxes? No, I didn't think so.
Slashdot Mirror
Rather than using my moderator points to label this for the flamebait that it is, I'll just address it.
What the parent poster means by "thinning the herd" is to expose and kill all of the susceptable people. What's the stated benefit to this act of mass murder? To prevent the future deaths of all of the susceptable people. Clearly, this is not just cruel; it's stupid.
Of course, this argument isn't just flawed logically. It's also flawed in it's assumption of how immunity works. A genetic resistance to SARS does not necessarily suggest a genetic resistance to a "new virus." If it did, there wouldn't be so many human pathogens!
At the risk of opening a discussion as to what attributes would make a person "strong" or "weak" so categorically as to determine who lives and who dies, being immune to SARS is not such an attribute.
The only thing close to a credible point in the parent's post is that we have an impending (if not current) over population issue. How to address this will be one of the 21st centuries greatest problems. Murdering millions with a Social Darwinistic biological killing spree isn't exactly a feasible solution.
The vast majority of spam I get is from my SourceForge address. And it increased dramatically fairly recently ( 6 months), even though I've had the account for more than a year.
to siphon tax dollars away from issues that are a lot less preventable and affect more people.
You mean like heart disease?
You like Big Macs? You accept the risk of clogged arteries.
Oh. I guess not.
American Heart Association, you can close up shop now that Alethes has found the answer to heart disease: stop eating stuff that causes heart disease.
If I were to beat you every time you drank a Coke instead of a Pepsi, would you conclude that your only choice was to either drink the Pepsi or accept the risk of a beating? Yes, you would have to, so long as I can beat you. But while you may find it prudent to reduce the amount of Coke you drink while still susceptable to my fists, I would hope that you would be working feverishly on the side to reduce the risk of the beatings you were getting for drinking Coke by preventing me from beating you.
Similarly, even if you found Coke to be distasteful and it was a friend of yours I was beating rather than you, would you advise your friend to either drink Pepsi like a real man or accept the risk of a brutal beating? I mean, after all, all he had to do was stop that nasty habit of drinking Coca-Cola. But no, your friend just has to be a rebel and drink what he likes. In a way, he's kind of asking for a beating, don't you think?
No? You would try to find a way to help your friend reduce the risk of getting beat?
Even if you had to pay more in taxes? No, I didn't think so.
Insist they call it GNU/Microsoft Rights Management Services, of course.
:)
What? You didn't see that coming?