It's your country not mine, my country had that debate in the 70's, as a result our health costs are ~1/10th of yours for a family earning $100K/yr and we no longer have to choose between grandma and bankruptcy.
"The only thing you would have to worry about would be animals, and the vagaries of nature."
That's correct you would only be subject to the law of the jungle; "eat and be eaten". Rights have no meaning for a "lone wolf" they only have meaning in the context of a society (human or otherwise) they are all about how members of that society are expected to behave toward each other. Therefore the society must determine what those rights are via evolutionary pressure or abstract thought.
I've read a lot of vile comments on slashdot that if implemented would send society back to the dark ages. However your vile comment takes the cake since it would set back the evolution of society at least 2 million years to a time when our pre-human ancestors did not attempt to take care of their elders.
Children turn into young adults when they hit puberty, the notion that they require constant supervision of even the most mundane aspects of life is utter nonesense. If a 13yo can't get up, fix breakfast and catch the bus to school without parental supervison then in my book their maturity is already severly retarded. You start teaching that stuff as soon as they start school by showing them there are consquences for behaving beneath their capabilities. Eg: If you have to badger your 6yo to get dressed for school in the morning then your doing it wrong, the consequence for not getting dressed is simple, drive them to school in their pj's. As a grandfather I assure you, you will only need to do it once.
So Beaudry assulted him for obeying the orders of the first officer and then gave a contradictory order, then when he askes for an explaination he is given another order and a dose of capsicum by the first officer. To make matters worse the two officers then conspired to lie about being attacked by Watts.
If a pedantic DA saw fit to charge Watts for the crime of disobedience when he was in a state of confusion created by the officers contradictions and a punch to the head then the obvious question is; when will the same pedantic DA be charging the two officers with the multitude of apparent crimes such as assult, battery, perjury, conspiring to pervert the course of justice, etc?
"Its a journal of political 'science'. Thats no more a science than social science is."
Just for the record, political "science" IS one of the social "sciences". They call it science because it makes predictions but as you have rightly pointed out testing those predictions is more often a subjective art than an objective measurement.
Allowing corporations to play governments off against each other in terms of how much corporate welfare and favourable legislation they can squeeze out of them is nothing more than a race to the bottom.
"That sounds right, but isn't part of being the best explanation, that such an explanation is true? Establishing the truth of an explanation would fit into one of the commonly used meanings of "proof.""
Sure, but then you fall into circular reasoning since you need proof to assert truth. I would go as far as to call well established science "beyond reasonable doubt" but that is neither proof nor truth.
The strength of scientific philosophy is that it is never 100% certain about anything and is willing to change it's explaination if provided with compelling evidence that an alternative explaination is a better fit for the observations. This usually doesn't mean the first explanation was wrong, mearly incomplete (see: Asimov's insightfull essay The relativity of wrong).
Most other philosophies (especially religious ones) view uncertainty and imperfection as weaknesses and hold up dogma and blind faith as virtues, my pet theory on that is that those philosophies seek to control people rather than inform them.
"I don't think your restriction of proof to axiomatic systems coincides with the way that that word is usually used."
Maybe, but that would be because few people are ever taught the basics of epistomology and science itself is generally taught as a grab-bag of usefull factoids rather than a coherent worldview. Also I would love to take the credit for that idea, but I am not that bright.
"I mean, there has to be something terribly wrong if a large part of population (I'd love to cite some statistics here but couldn't find anything recent) is considered to actively participate in criminal/illegal activities."
"Contrary to the parent poster's claim, the article does not focus on correlation vs causation. It focuses on people getting the correlation wrong in the first place."
Fair point, I only skimmed the TFA but I still stand by my assertion that it's a troll of the "scientists don't understand statistics" genre, it even starts by claiming statistics is a "mutant form of math". Had they ommitted that drivel and not refrenced discredited papers then maybe I would have read the whole thing.
I'm not talking about original intent, I'm talking about contempory practice, the first peer-review policy I looked at to check your assertion was the journal Nature. It doesn't say anything about clarity or repeatability, it appears to back up what I said, quoth the policy...
"Nature journals receive many more submissions than they can publish. Therefore, we ask peer-reviewers to keep in mind that every paper that is accepted means that another good paper must be rejected. To be published in a Nature journal, a paper should meet four general criteria:
* Provides strong evidence for its conclusions.
* Novel (we do not consider meeting report abstracts and preprints on community servers to compromise novelty).
* Of extreme importance to scientists in the specific field.
* Ideally, interesting to researchers in other related disciplines."
....[snip]...
"The editors then make a decision based on the reviewers' advice, from among several possibilities:
* Accept, with or without editorial revisions
* Invite the authors to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached
* Reject, but indicate to the authors that further work might justify a resubmission
* Reject outright, typically on grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems"
You are conflating repeatability with peer-review. Peer-review is the formalised, first cut of the "many eyes effect" and will usually pick up obvious flaws in statistical methodology. To be sure peer-review is not perfect but I do not think it's being "oversold to the public", in fact I think it's been quite the opposite recently, especially in the field of climate science.
It's in the bussiness of providing the best explaination for the available evidence. Proof is confined to axiomatic systems such as maths and generally you can't prove the axioms of axiomatic systems. Science is not an axiomatic system. See epistomology for further details.
The entire article can be summed up by the tiresome cliche "correlation != causation". To make matters worse they quote an economic historian who does not understand that science is not in the bussiness of proof...
"“That test itself is neither necessary nor sufficient for proving a scientific result,” asserts Stephen Ziliak, an economic historian at Roosevelt University in Chicago."
"If you don't agree with the groupthink, then your voice is excluded. This means that wikipedia, in a certain and very real sense, controls the cultural gestalt for, well, most of the civilized world."
Yeah right, because if you get your "group think" from elswhere Jimmy will send a few editors around to your house, bust your door down, smash your PC, gouge your eyes out, break all your fingers, burn down your book shelf, and shoot your paper boy.
The first thing anyone should be taught about collage level research is that an encyclopedia is not a primary source but it's an excellent starting point to find primary sources.
I remember watching an F1 race where just before the finish line the guy in second place does a 360deg flip lands on his wheels then rolls across the finish line still in secind place. I love youtube, took me 5 minutes to find it at 2:13 on this compilation.
Slashdot Mirror
It's your country not mine, my country had that debate in the 70's, as a result our health costs are ~1/10th of yours for a family earning $100K/yr and we no longer have to choose between grandma and bankruptcy.
"The only thing you would have to worry about would be animals, and the vagaries of nature."
That's correct you would only be subject to the law of the jungle; "eat and be eaten". Rights have no meaning for a "lone wolf" they only have meaning in the context of a society (human or otherwise) they are all about how members of that society are expected to behave toward each other. Therefore the society must determine what those rights are via evolutionary pressure or abstract thought.
I've read a lot of vile comments on slashdot that if implemented would send society back to the dark ages. However your vile comment takes the cake since it would set back the evolution of society at least 2 million years to a time when our pre-human ancestors did not attempt to take care of their elders.
Children turn into young adults when they hit puberty, the notion that they require constant supervision of even the most mundane aspects of life is utter nonesense. If a 13yo can't get up, fix breakfast and catch the bus to school without parental supervison then in my book their maturity is already severly retarded. You start teaching that stuff as soon as they start school by showing them there are consquences for behaving beneath their capabilities. Eg: If you have to badger your 6yo to get dressed for school in the morning then your doing it wrong, the consequence for not getting dressed is simple, drive them to school in their pj's. As a grandfather I assure you, you will only need to do it once.
So Beaudry assulted him for obeying the orders of the first officer and then gave a contradictory order, then when he askes for an explaination he is given another order and a dose of capsicum by the first officer. To make matters worse the two officers then conspired to lie about being attacked by Watts.
If a pedantic DA saw fit to charge Watts for the crime of disobedience when he was in a state of confusion created by the officers contradictions and a punch to the head then the obvious question is; when will the same pedantic DA be charging the two officers with the multitude of apparent crimes such as assult, battery, perjury, conspiring to pervert the course of justice, etc?
"As for how to reduce emissions to avoid such property damage, this is less clear cut."
Yes, in the long run the tradgedy of the commons is a more destructive failure of politics than war.
"Its a journal of political 'science'. Thats no more a science than social science is."
Just for the record, political "science" IS one of the social "sciences". They call it science because it makes predictions but as you have rightly pointed out testing those predictions is more often a subjective art than an objective measurement.
Allowing corporations to play governments off against each other in terms of how much corporate welfare and favourable legislation they can squeeze out of them is nothing more than a race to the bottom.
So you're saying that the best problem solvers can't solve the problem of getting into tertiary education?
"That sounds right, but isn't part of being the best explanation, that such an explanation is true? Establishing the truth of an explanation would fit into one of the commonly used meanings of "proof.""
Sure, but then you fall into circular reasoning since you need proof to assert truth. I would go as far as to call well established science "beyond reasonable doubt" but that is neither proof nor truth.
The strength of scientific philosophy is that it is never 100% certain about anything and is willing to change it's explaination if provided with compelling evidence that an alternative explaination is a better fit for the observations. This usually doesn't mean the first explanation was wrong, mearly incomplete (see: Asimov's insightfull essay The relativity of wrong).
Most other philosophies (especially religious ones) view uncertainty and imperfection as weaknesses and hold up dogma and blind faith as virtues, my pet theory on that is that those philosophies seek to control people rather than inform them.
"I don't think your restriction of proof to axiomatic systems coincides with the way that that word is usually used."
Maybe, but that would be because few people are ever taught the basics of epistomology and science itself is generally taught as a grab-bag of usefull factoids rather than a coherent worldview. Also I would love to take the credit for that idea, but I am not that bright.
"I mean, there has to be something terribly wrong if a large part of population (I'd love to cite some statistics here but couldn't find anything recent) is considered to actively participate in criminal/illegal activities."
Obvious example
"Contrary to the parent poster's claim, the article does not focus on correlation vs causation. It focuses on people getting the correlation wrong in the first place."
Fair point, I only skimmed the TFA but I still stand by my assertion that it's a troll of the "scientists don't understand statistics" genre, it even starts by claiming statistics is a "mutant form of math". Had they ommitted that drivel and not refrenced discredited papers then maybe I would have read the whole thing.
I'm not talking about original intent, I'm talking about contempory practice, the first peer-review policy I looked at to check your assertion was the journal Nature. It doesn't say anything about clarity or repeatability, it appears to back up what I said, quoth the policy...
....[snip]...
"Nature journals receive many more submissions than they can publish. Therefore, we ask peer-reviewers to keep in mind that every paper that is accepted means that another good paper must be rejected. To be published in a Nature journal, a paper should meet four general criteria:
* Provides strong evidence for its conclusions.
* Novel (we do not consider meeting report abstracts and preprints on community servers to compromise novelty).
* Of extreme importance to scientists in the specific field.
* Ideally, interesting to researchers in other related disciplines."
"The editors then make a decision based on the reviewers' advice, from among several possibilities:
* Accept, with or without editorial revisions
* Invite the authors to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached
* Reject, but indicate to the authors that further work might justify a resubmission
* Reject outright, typically on grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems"
Whoa, that's heavy dude.
You are conflating repeatability with peer-review. Peer-review is the formalised, first cut of the "many eyes effect" and will usually pick up obvious flaws in statistical methodology. To be sure peer-review is not perfect but I do not think it's being "oversold to the public", in fact I think it's been quite the opposite recently, especially in the field of climate science.
It's in the bussiness of providing the best explaination for the available evidence. Proof is confined to axiomatic systems such as maths and generally you can't prove the axioms of axiomatic systems. Science is not an axiomatic system. See epistomology for further details.
No it can't, what?
"These are subtler issues than the true-but-trivial—and tiresome—cliché you refer to."
Actually the subtler issue here has nothing to do with statistics, they are implying peer-review does not work.
It's a troll because it implies scientists don't know about those things.
Yes, it's rarely mentioned that causation implies correlation.
The entire article can be summed up by the tiresome cliche "correlation != causation". To make matters worse they quote an economic historian who does not understand that science is not in the bussiness of proof... "“That test itself is neither necessary nor sufficient for proving a scientific result,” asserts Stephen Ziliak, an economic historian at Roosevelt University in Chicago."
If you come second in every race of the season then it's very likely you will win the championship.
"If you don't agree with the groupthink, then your voice is excluded. This means that wikipedia, in a certain and very real sense, controls the cultural gestalt for, well, most of the civilized world."
Yeah right, because if you get your "group think" from elswhere Jimmy will send a few editors around to your house, bust your door down, smash your PC, gouge your eyes out, break all your fingers, burn down your book shelf, and shoot your paper boy.
Well I'm pretty sure this wikipedia article says the opposite!
The first thing anyone should be taught about collage level research is that an encyclopedia is not a primary source but it's an excellent starting point to find primary sources.
I remember watching an F1 race where just before the finish line the guy in second place does a 360deg flip lands on his wheels then rolls across the finish line still in secind place. I love youtube, took me 5 minutes to find it at 2:13 on this compilation.