That is a hard one to answer because everyones idea of "reasonable" is different, one way to deal with unreasonable skepticisim is to debunk each claim one by one, in court if required. However this also has to be balanced against declaring a winner in a timely manner for purely pragmatic reasons (as in the 2000 election). All I really know is that the more it is "seen to be fair" the simpler it becomes to spot a real wolf amongst all the imaginary ones.
"One can only hope that the US 2008 election is won clearly, decisively, and cleanly by one side." - Ahmen, that outcome would be in everyones interest.
Quite true, you can never escape a fundemental dependence on blind faith (even via the scientific method). However you can minimise the number of assumptions you are forced to make in any particular situation by prudent use of Occam's razor. Observers have been used for along time and have generally been regarded as a reliable "check and balance" due to the fact they have very strong opposing interests in the outcome. The major difference (as I understand it) is that the diebold machines are inherently non-auditable, meaning the only valid audit possible is a new election.
I am not from the US so do not know all the political details but IIRC there was strong resistance from republicans to have international observers participate in the 2004 election. The link I provided shows that many observers were clearly concerned about the opportunity for cheating provided by these machines (apparently India had a very different experience using much simpler and cheaper technology).
As you point out, in reality we can never be 100% sure about what is "real", therfore a fair election is not enough to inspire confidence, it must also must be "seen to be fair".
So yes, in the case of an election, confidence in people looking after their own interest trumps confidence in the techonolgy used to conduct the election. If you degrade the ability of any of the participants involved to look out for their own interests then those who create the technology will have the last word, regardless of what or who the voters trust.
I didn't want to imply that universal education is mutually exclusive with teaching people at their own pace, but if I found myself in the black and white world of the OP, I would pick teaching everyone and put up with a few bored smart people.
When I was at school, (granted, along time ago), bored smart kids were labeled as "troublemakers".
I agree, why have a govt if only the rich/poor/black/white/...benifit, there is no denying that money talks but the rich will be more inclined to go along with something if it benifts everyone. I grew up in Australia in the 60's, the US seemed like wonderland, you could buy all sorts of "stuff" not found in shops over here.
Now it's hard to tell the difference between the two cultures until you look at health care and retirement. We have taxpayer funded universal health cover and compulsory employer funded superanuation. Guess what, the schemes are far from perfect but our economy did not fall apart when they were introduced in the 70's and 90's respectively. You may think that forcing the rich to pay their workers supperanuation would fall flat due to "politics 101", the financial houses thought otherwise and we now have billions in workers funds invested back into the economy.
The conservatives have tried to kill off our universal health cover many times over the last three decades, fortunately on this subject the Australian public have an accute bullshit detection ability. There is still an underlying resentment of the scheme amongst many conservative politicians, (it was rammed through by the left), but on the whole they have become pragmatic and now generally concede it is a voter demand that is ignored only by the politically suicidal.
Ummm, the idea of universal eductaion is that it is, well, universal. (ie: everyone gets a BASIC education.) What you do with those basics during adulthood is entirely up to you.
"Normal and dim-witted people don't like seeing most of the money go to where it will do the most good."
Thankfully that translates into: the majority of people dissagree with you.
You can add me to that majority for the following reason: If you are "smart" you have a greater ability to educate yourself. Therefore, I would rather a few "smart" people feel ripped-off by the education system than rip-off the majority by focusing on prima-dona's. Not to mention the fact that the prima-dona's would be left facing a larger, more ignorant and more dominant mob mentality as adults.
BTW: I am not from the US but paying teachers for experince would seem to be designed to lower the turnover of teachers, thus providing some consitency and expertise. Wether you like it or not, childeren will emotionally bind to thier teachers.
I myself have 26yrs of experience raising my own kids, I find that an underlying consistency of environment for a child greatly enhances the chances of creating a well balanced adult. Me thinks you simply don't like the word "Union", paying a premium for experienced teachers is a perfectly "sane" thing to do with the taxpayers money.
I see what you are saying but there is a bigger picture than privacy. The laws are obstensibly about how to deal with those who incite violence, that problem is as old as the human race itself. History has shown time and again that the answer is not to silence them but to educate ourselves to recognise those who manipulate our fears into vengence.
Here's one that was spotted in Sydney the week before the AlanJones riots that caught the attention of international media late last year. The fact that our top politicians have (for years) regularly appeared on his show and have often invited him to wine and dine in the halls of power,,,,makes me want to puke!
If politicians were interested in the public well being they would refuse to dignify/support ANYONE who preaches hate and violence from their mass media soap box, instead they wait a few months before pandering to the mob mentality
Note to AC's and right wing nut-jobs: The fact that, if I lived in Iran I could not make similar critisims about politicians, does not detract from their validity.
I didn't read the whole anti-moore article, but I did read this in the introduction.
"This means that while Moore's "facts" are not all false, essentially none of his "arguments" turns out to be true."
This line demonstrates the "problem" everyone is facing. The author is doing exactly the same thing as MM. First "not all false" is another way of saying "accurate", second the authour can not claim the "argument" is false, in the same way that MM cannot claim it is true, both are "opinions".
Off course the "problem" I am talking about is propoganda and won't go away any day soon. I'm an Aussie and I have seen two MM films and read two MM books. I thought Bowling for Colombine was sincere and it raised some excellent "big questions", Angry white men was interesting because it reminded me of many facts that I had forgoten and gave me many more I had not known.
F9/11 and Where's my country were both dissapointing. Not a great deal in the way of new material, basically political propoganda pieces attacking political propoganda. Having said that, there are enough "facts" about the election from MM and others that a reasonable and informed "we the people" could at least demand future votes be auditable and transparent to "we the people" and international observers.
Ignoring the "MM hate America" vs "America hates MM" crap, it is hard to deny he is a commited pacifist and that point of view is always worth listening too, especially when it is in danger of being overwhelmed by gunfire.
BTW: I too don't know the EPCC from a bar of soap, the "google opinion" on the words "EPCC" "ethics" "funding" is that they are funded by the right-wing to promote "jewish-christian values" through foreign policy.
Fair point, but without modern software and systems it would be impossible for the controllers to safely manage the amount of traffic found at a modern airport.
Let me just adjust my tinfoil hat, ahhhhh there we go.
"nor that faulty voting machines would have changed the outcome of the election"
Try telling that to the QA people for an air traffic control systems or something more serious than life and death, somethinggggg, something like a stock exchange. We have systems across a large chunk of the planet that do a very good job at preventing planes and stockmarkets from crashing. People would also get pretty fucked off if the gazzillion dollar lotteries or even the local bookie had "disconnected anomolies".
Maybe it was "fool play" rather than "foul play" but whoever is in charge of running the election should, at a minimum, step aside until the negligence (or otherwise) is investigated with the rigor a technological disaster desrves.
Even if the GP is making heavy use of a "conclusion mat", nobody has "stolen the thunder", it's just can't be heard over the noise of the media steamtrain as it endlessly wizzes past.
"A small digital to composite converter that you plug in between the player and the TV. It would securly decode the data into a high-res composite stream, then send that to the television. Voila! We're back to sqaure one."
If you replaced the words "TV/televison" with the word "pirates", it would have more "oommff". Nonetheless, a very nice summary.
"It really must take a lot of effort for millions of people to remain so stubournly ignorant. You've all had twenty years to find this stuff out; what's been keeping you?"
Quite the opposite, it takes no effort at all.
True, it is about ignorance but not about stubborness, the nuclaer saftey debate went on for decades (much like the GHG debate of the last 20-30yrs). The majority of people do not know the difference between a Nuclear bomb and an Atomic bomb let alone the model numbers and specifications of reactors.
One bunch of experts says "oh, perfectly safe", the other bunch says "a terrible accident will happen one day". Well Chernobyl was the accident that killed public debate because the public found out reactors do explode, exactly as one bunch of experts had predicted. That was all the public needed to know at that time to make a decision and in general is the reason why we employ experts in the first place! We (as in the people) don't give a shit about the details we just want the lights to come on when we flick the switch.
The "rational reasons" have nothing to do with technology, the public in general still don't understand a fucking thing about reactors except that one exploded in Russia and is still "burning" to this day...... Oh shit, there I go again talking to AC's, grow some balls guys...
That's nice that you are a perfectly consistent human being and I suppose that from your "home in the UK" Chernobyl didn't matter as much as it would if you had of been living in what is now known as "the exclusion zone".
"I took the time to educate myself"
That's great but most people saw the explosion as "education", ie: the answer is no nukes. WTF am I talking to an AC for????
I happen to agree with James Lovelock, (and oddly enough GWB), that modular reactors are a big part of the answer to clean energy right now, both for electricity and hydrogen production. I belive "pebble bed" reactors can be made cheap and safe, there is no need to risk another "China syndrome" ( the movie was another big factor in the nuclear power debate ).
I also noticed that life experience (actually watching a smoldering reactor live on TV) is now moderated "overrated". In the 60's and 70's people were still blowing up islands and deserts with nukes, in the 50's the US/USSR/UK were all deliberately exposing their own soldiers to fallout!!! Guess the moderator and the OP have never heard of the term "20/20 hindsight".
I was in grade five in the late 60's and there was a unusually large bushfire nearby (Australia). The teachers assembled us to evacuate but didn't tell us why at first. The whole school was gathered in the yard looking up at the huge column of smoke that had mushroomed out high in the atmosphere. All the kids in the school started saying the USSR had dropped a nuke. The teachers eventually got around to telling us what was happening but for a while we all thought WW3 had started.
And yes, those rational arguments still apply, do we trust goverments and corporations to play with fire? Have we got any other choice? Probably not.
"Truth is, we are not particularly rational about such things as a culture. The anti-tech, anti-nuclear movment of the 1960's didn't help matters one bit, by training an entire generation of people to baseless fear of anything "nuclear"."
Truth is, in the 60's it was about testing bombs, reactors didn't really rate as a big public contraversy until the 70's.
Truth is, for those who remember it, Chernobyl ended the saftey argument for very "rational" reasons.
Truth is, the 60's was 4 decades ago and technology has progressed much faster than public opinion.
Truth is, you weren't alive in the 60's, were you?
Did you watch Billy Connely discussing Johnny on Denton....
ANDREW DENTON: Our Prime Minister John Howard recently talked about what he called vulgarisms in public and how they're...
BILLY CONNOLLY: He's a vulgarism in public.
Laughter and applause
BILLY CONNOLLY: How dare he.
Applause
BILLY CONNOLLY: His only function is to let you know what Harry Potter's going to look like when he's old.
Laughter
ANDREW DENTON: Have you met him?
BILLY CONNOLLY: No I would go miles to avoid meeting him. What a boring little man. What a silly boring little man.
Probably just a fluke that our "respectable" politicians started moralising about foul language a few weeks ago, surely nothing to do with Billy's tour?
"Mr Murdoch's newspapers" - Pffft, if holding a different view to Andrew Bolt is "elite", why isn't GWB kissing my arse? "Some call you the elite, I call you my base" - GWB
Your sig: Am I just getting old or is the trip getting stranger?
I love the music and think the lyrics are nothing short of poetry (disregarding their early weird stuff like animal noises). I was married for 20yrs and it was a favourite of ours. The question in the quote is something I often sung along too, but never asked about my marriage until years after it was over. I have also read it in different ways at different times, "married with children" is certainly not the only or even the worst cage to get comfortable in.
BTW: Would I be correct in saying you are not a fan of AJ?
"Animals hunt in herds and packs too. Are they a society too?"
Yes, and I'm sure if a species of bass cooperated sufficiently to develop laser technology they would strap them to their own heads and use them against predators and rival schools of Bass.
Slashdot Mirror
"What about the question of a denial-of-service?"
That is a hard one to answer because everyones idea of "reasonable" is different, one way to deal with unreasonable skepticisim is to debunk each claim one by one, in court if required. However this also has to be balanced against declaring a winner in a timely manner for purely pragmatic reasons (as in the 2000 election). All I really know is that the more it is "seen to be fair" the simpler it becomes to spot a real wolf amongst all the imaginary ones.
"One can only hope that the US 2008 election is won clearly, decisively, and cleanly by one side." - Ahmen, that outcome would be in everyones interest.
Quite true, you can never escape a fundemental dependence on blind faith (even via the scientific method). However you can minimise the number of assumptions you are forced to make in any particular situation by prudent use of Occam's razor. Observers have been used for along time and have generally been regarded as a reliable "check and balance" due to the fact they have very strong opposing interests in the outcome. The major difference (as I understand it) is that the diebold machines are inherently non-auditable, meaning the only valid audit possible is a new election.
I am not from the US so do not know all the political details but IIRC there was strong resistance from republicans to have international observers participate in the 2004 election. The link I provided shows that many observers were clearly concerned about the opportunity for cheating provided by these machines (apparently India had a very different experience using much simpler and cheaper technology).
As you point out, in reality we can never be 100% sure about what is "real", therfore a fair election is not enough to inspire confidence, it must also must be "seen to be fair".
So yes, in the case of an election, confidence in people looking after their own interest trumps confidence in the techonolgy used to conduct the election. If you degrade the ability of any of the participants involved to look out for their own interests then those who create the technology will have the last word, regardless of what or who the voters trust.
"My question is, how can you implement any kind of system, voting or otherwise, and escape placing confidence in things which you cannot see?"
International observers.
I didn't want to imply that universal education is mutually exclusive with teaching people at their own pace, but if I found myself in the black and white world of the OP, I would pick teaching everyone and put up with a few bored smart people.
When I was at school, (granted, along time ago), bored smart kids were labeled as "troublemakers".
I agree, why have a govt if only the rich/poor/black/white/...benifit, there is no denying that money talks but the rich will be more inclined to go along with something if it benifts everyone. I grew up in Australia in the 60's, the US seemed like wonderland, you could buy all sorts of "stuff" not found in shops over here.
Now it's hard to tell the difference between the two cultures until you look at health care and retirement. We have taxpayer funded universal health cover and compulsory employer funded superanuation. Guess what, the schemes are far from perfect but our economy did not fall apart when they were introduced in the 70's and 90's respectively. You may think that forcing the rich to pay their workers supperanuation would fall flat due to "politics 101", the financial houses thought otherwise and we now have billions in workers funds invested back into the economy.
The conservatives have tried to kill off our universal health cover many times over the last three decades, fortunately on this subject the Australian public have an accute bullshit detection ability. There is still an underlying resentment of the scheme amongst many conservative politicians, (it was rammed through by the left), but on the whole they have become pragmatic and now generally concede it is a voter demand that is ignored only by the politically suicidal.
"kick out the dumb kids"
Ummm, the idea of universal eductaion is that it is, well, universal. (ie: everyone gets a BASIC education.) What you do with those basics during adulthood is entirely up to you.
"Normal and dim-witted people don't like seeing most of the money go to where it will do the most good."
Thankfully that translates into: the majority of people dissagree with you.
You can add me to that majority for the following reason: If you are "smart" you have a greater ability to educate yourself. Therefore, I would rather a few "smart" people feel ripped-off by the education system than rip-off the majority by focusing on prima-dona's. Not to mention the fact that the prima-dona's would be left facing a larger, more ignorant and more dominant mob mentality as adults.
BTW: I am not from the US but paying teachers for experince would seem to be designed to lower the turnover of teachers, thus providing some consitency and expertise. Wether you like it or not, childeren will emotionally bind to thier teachers.
I myself have 26yrs of experience raising my own kids, I find that an underlying consistency of environment for a child greatly enhances the chances of creating a well balanced adult. Me thinks you simply don't like the word "Union", paying a premium for experienced teachers is a perfectly "sane" thing to do with the taxpayers money.
I see what you are saying but there is a bigger picture than privacy. The laws are obstensibly about how to deal with those who incite violence, that problem is as old as the human race itself. History has shown time and again that the answer is not to silence them but to educate ourselves to recognise those who manipulate our fears into vengence.
Here's one that was spotted in Sydney the week before the Alan Jones riots that caught the attention of international media late last year. The fact that our top politicians have (for years) regularly appeared on his show and have often invited him to wine and dine in the halls of power,,,,makes me want to puke!
If politicians were interested in the public well being they would refuse to dignify/support ANYONE who preaches hate and violence from their mass media soap box, instead they wait a few months before pandering to the mob mentality
Note to AC's and right wing nut-jobs: The fact that, if I lived in Iran I could not make similar critisims about politicians, does not detract from their validity.
"Muslim extremists."
That was the initial theory, Occam's razor has since shortened it to "extremists".
I didn't read the whole anti-moore article, but I did read this in the introduction.
"This means that while Moore's "facts" are not all false, essentially none of his "arguments" turns out to be true."
This line demonstrates the "problem" everyone is facing. The author is doing exactly the same thing as MM. First "not all false" is another way of saying "accurate", second the authour can not claim the "argument" is false, in the same way that MM cannot claim it is true, both are "opinions".
Off course the "problem" I am talking about is propoganda and won't go away any day soon. I'm an Aussie and I have seen two MM films and read two MM books. I thought Bowling for Colombine was sincere and it raised some excellent "big questions", Angry white men was interesting because it reminded me of many facts that I had forgoten and gave me many more I had not known.
F9/11 and Where's my country were both dissapointing. Not a great deal in the way of new material, basically political propoganda pieces attacking political propoganda. Having said that, there are enough "facts" about the election from MM and others that a reasonable and informed "we the people" could at least demand future votes be auditable and transparent to "we the people" and international observers.
Ignoring the "MM hate America" vs "America hates MM" crap, it is hard to deny he is a commited pacifist and that point of view is always worth listening too, especially when it is in danger of being overwhelmed by gunfire.
BTW: I too don't know the EPCC from a bar of soap, the "google opinion" on the words "EPCC" "ethics" "funding" is that they are funded by the right-wing to promote "jewish-christian values" through foreign policy.
Fair point, but without modern software and systems it would be impossible for the controllers to safely manage the amount of traffic found at a modern airport.
Sorry, I sould have explained it was a joke.
Let me just adjust my tinfoil hat, ahhhhh there we go.
"nor that faulty voting machines would have changed the outcome of the election"
Try telling that to the QA people for an air traffic control systems or something more serious than life and death, somethinggggg, something like a stock exchange. We have systems across a large chunk of the planet that do a very good job at preventing planes and stockmarkets from crashing. People would also get pretty fucked off if the gazzillion dollar lotteries or even the local bookie had "disconnected anomolies".
Maybe it was "fool play" rather than "foul play" but whoever is in charge of running the election should, at a minimum, step aside until the negligence (or otherwise) is investigated with the rigor a technological disaster desrves.
Even if the GP is making heavy use of a "conclusion mat", nobody has "stolen the thunder", it's just can't be heard over the noise of the media steamtrain as it endlessly wizzes past.
"A small digital to composite converter that you plug in between the player and the TV. It would securly decode the data into a high-res composite stream, then send that to the television. Voila! We're back to sqaure one."
If you replaced the words "TV/televison" with the word "pirates", it would have more "oommff". Nonetheless, a very nice summary.
"It really must take a lot of effort for millions of people to remain so stubournly ignorant. You've all had twenty years to find this stuff out; what's been keeping you?"
Quite the opposite, it takes no effort at all.
True, it is about ignorance but not about stubborness, the nuclaer saftey debate went on for decades (much like the GHG debate of the last 20-30yrs). The majority of people do not know the difference between a Nuclear bomb and an Atomic bomb let alone the model numbers and specifications of reactors.
One bunch of experts says "oh, perfectly safe", the other bunch says "a terrible accident will happen one day". Well Chernobyl was the accident that killed public debate because the public found out reactors do explode, exactly as one bunch of experts had predicted. That was all the public needed to know at that time to make a decision and in general is the reason why we employ experts in the first place! We (as in the people) don't give a shit about the details we just want the lights to come on when we flick the switch.
The "rational reasons" have nothing to do with technology, the public in general still don't understand a fucking thing about reactors except that one exploded in Russia and is still "burning" to this day...... Oh shit, there I go again talking to AC's, grow some balls guys...
That's nice that you are a perfectly consistent human being and I suppose that from your "home in the UK" Chernobyl didn't matter as much as it would if you had of been living in what is now known as "the exclusion zone".
"I took the time to educate myself"
That's great but most people saw the explosion as "education", ie: the answer is no nukes. WTF am I talking to an AC for????
Thanks mate! :)
I happen to agree with James Lovelock, (and oddly enough GWB), that modular reactors are a big part of the answer to clean energy right now, both for electricity and hydrogen production. I belive "pebble bed" reactors can be made cheap and safe, there is no need to risk another "China syndrome" ( the movie was another big factor in the nuclear power debate ).
I also noticed that life experience (actually watching a smoldering reactor live on TV) is now moderated "overrated". In the 60's and 70's people were still blowing up islands and deserts with nukes, in the 50's the US/USSR/UK were all deliberately exposing their own soldiers to fallout!!! Guess the moderator and the OP have never heard of the term "20/20 hindsight".
I was in grade five in the late 60's and there was a unusually large bushfire nearby (Australia). The teachers assembled us to evacuate but didn't tell us why at first. The whole school was gathered in the yard looking up at the huge column of smoke that had mushroomed out high in the atmosphere. All the kids in the school started saying the USSR had dropped a nuke. The teachers eventually got around to telling us what was happening but for a while we all thought WW3 had started.
And yes, those rational arguments still apply, do we trust goverments and corporations to play with fire? Have we got any other choice? Probably not.
"Truth is, we are not particularly rational about such things as a culture. The anti-tech, anti-nuclear movment of the 1960's didn't help matters one bit, by training an entire generation of people to baseless fear of anything "nuclear"."
Truth is, in the 60's it was about testing bombs, reactors didn't really rate as a big public contraversy until the 70's.
Truth is, for those who remember it, Chernobyl ended the saftey argument for very "rational" reasons.
Truth is, the 60's was 4 decades ago and technology has progressed much faster than public opinion.
Truth is, you weren't alive in the 60's, were you?
"Humans that could and would do this are rare"
Otherwise known as "The tragedy of the commons".
I dont think it is a binary choice of causes, climate and human pressure both conspired against the mammoths and giant beaver.
Elle, McPherson[sic], great episode.
Did you watch Billy Connely discussing Johnny on Denton....
ANDREW DENTON: Our Prime Minister John Howard recently talked about what he called vulgarisms in public and how they're...
BILLY CONNOLLY: He's a vulgarism in public.
Laughter and applause
BILLY CONNOLLY: How dare he.
Applause
BILLY CONNOLLY: His only function is to let you know what Harry Potter's going to look like when he's old.
Laughter
ANDREW DENTON: Have you met him?
BILLY CONNOLLY: No I would go miles to avoid meeting him. What a boring little man. What a silly boring little man.
Probably just a fluke that our "respectable" politicians started moralising about foul language a few weeks ago, surely nothing to do with Billy's tour?
"Mr Murdoch's newspapers" - Pffft, if holding a different view to Andrew Bolt is "elite", why isn't GWB kissing my arse? "Some call you the elite, I call you my base" - GWB
Your sig: Am I just getting old or is the trip getting stranger?
I love the music and think the lyrics are nothing short of poetry (disregarding their early weird stuff like animal noises). I was married for 20yrs and it was a favourite of ours. The question in the quote is something I often sung along too, but never asked about my marriage until years after it was over. I have also read it in different ways at different times, "married with children" is certainly not the only or even the worst cage to get comfortable in.
BTW: Would I be correct in saying you are not a fan of AJ?
"Animals hunt in herds and packs too. Are they a society too?"
Yes, and I'm sure if a species of bass cooperated sufficiently to develop laser technology they would strap them to their own heads and use them against predators and rival schools of Bass.
"there is love, hate, and then not caring. not caring is considerably different than hating"
Or put another way, indifference is the opposite to both love and hate.