I had a computer screen once that would turn bright pink after about 2 hours of being on. I sharp whack to the side would fix it for about half an hour, before I'd have to hit it again. It was quite the therapeutic computer.
And I'm of above average intellegence, I'm in the top 20% of drivers, my parenting technique is clearly the best (and any issues my kids have is due to the schools screwing them up), and my religion is the correct one. If I had been given the same opportunities as Joe CEO, I'd be at least as wealthy, and do a better job running his company. If I had been subjected to the same difficulties as Sam HomeLessGuy, I would have "pulled myself up by the bootstraps" and got myself a real job. Given the opportunity my pet economic policy would simultaneously eliminate inflation, and guarantee ever-increasing profits for everyone (as well a unicorn and a fairy for every household).
Polls basically just say that we all just selfish ego-centric bastards.
No no, one column for each resident, plus a column for the row header. Each row holds one item of information: Name, address, etc... That way, adding a new data point to keep track of is a simple as inserting a new row.
This model works much better when you're dealing with people face to face. Had you set up a table and asked people to pay what they wanted, you would have either gotten a lot more money, or no one would have grabbed anything. People are a lot more "honest" when someone's watching, even if they know that there won't be consequences of not being so. This is why busking works, but you'll have a hard time selling music on line in a pay-what-you-want model.
It's best if you pick a crazy enough sounding survivor with shifty eyes and a panicked disposition, and sit him/her across from a calm, reasonable-sounding flat-earther with some sort of accreditation from the Flat Earth Society, and run with the headline "Airplane survivor claims to have discovered 'Antarctica'. Experts skeptical."
It is unethical to support something unless you support to the extreme. You can't support any form of birth control unless you support abortions, even late-term abortions, and even post-birth abortions up until the kid is 18.
If you turn off your lights when you leave a room to save electricity, you should really be living in a cave using no electricity at all and living on a vegan diet of locally grown plants.
If you support hunters being allowed to own a gun, you really support requiring every man, woman, and child to be equipped with, and constantly carrying an automatic assault rifle.
If you support a progressive tax, you might as well just throw every rich person in jail, and give all their money to the poor.
If you think welfare encourages dependency on the nanny state, you obviously support Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal...
If we start allowing people to hold moderate positions, then discussion and compromise might happen, and people might start fixing problems instead of being able to complain about everything.
Because "common sense" and "gut" feelings are so reliable? "Pseudo-intellualism" can at least generally be argued with.
Unfortunately, with things like gun-control, it's hard to find good evidence for either side of the argument. The correlation between gun ownership and homicides is pretty much non-existent. There are plenty of hypothetical scenarios that can be manipulated to support either side. As a fairly left-siding person myself, I don't see enough evidence to warrant a ban in the name of reducing crime. The biggest correlation that can be drawn to crime is poverty, and I'd rather we focused on that, rather than on who can own a gun, or who can marry whom, or whether abortions should be legal, or whether I offend someone by celebrating Christmas, or Xmas or Festivus.
First, fascism is generally thought of as a version of extreme-right-wing thought that just happens to have a lot in common with the extreme left.
But aside from that, the only thing your stats really say is that extreme nationalism/religious fanaticism is bad for those who do not go along with the flow. Nationalism is what kept communism alive while everyone suffered for the good of "Mother Russia". Racially-defined nationalism kept the Germans willing to ignore and contribute to atrocities in the name of the superior german race. Fanatical devotion to a religion does the same thing - present-day Iran, Spain in the 1400s, the Crusades, etc...
I define "left" to be the point of view that best reflects reality. Assuming that there is an abstract point of view that would be objectively closest to the way humans and reality functions, that view should be the one sought. The left is only left insofar as its policies reflect evidence-based reality. Where those policies ignore evidence in favour of ideologies, then they are no longer "left" but "bleeding-heart", "communist", "enviro-nut", etc.. as appropriate.
Of course reality isn't biased. It's a pithy, inflammatory statement, that implies that on average, people leaning to the left are more aware of the world around them. Of course, "left" is a pretty useless term on its own - where do you fit if you are an atheistic gay libertarian, or a fundamentalist christian socialist?
I'd claim that the traditional "right-wing" stance on the war-on-drugs has failed due to placing ideology ahead of reality and assuming that their approach SHOULD work instead of trying a variety of approaches and measuring what DOES work. A good way to find these ideologies, is to ask people (or yourself) what it would take to convince you otherwise. If the answer is "nothing would change my mind", then conversation with that person on that topic is really futile. You may be able to learn something from them, but they've already excluded the possibility of reciprocating.
The "left", of course has their own ideologies that they will hold to regardless of what evidence they may be presented with. It's just that people who trust Glenn Beck have significantly more of these ideas.
He's obviously adjusted for inflation - there was actually deflation in the early 1800s, and $1.00 in 1880 would buy roughly what $100 would buy today. By that time on his chart though, he has countries entering an average income of around $4000. I'm pretty sure that those countries didn't have average incomes equivalent to $400,000 of today's money.
Why? The point of the graph is not to show absolute disparity, but to show the correlation between two things. Focusing on the relevant sections makes it easier to see that relation.
second let's have a non-logarithm axes for a typical unit that is thought of as linear... money.
Money is by no means linear. If I was making $1000 / year, and got a $1000 / year raise, then that's a very significant event for me. At $100,000 / year, making an extra $1000 is just a little something extra. In raises, taxes, and pretty much anything related to income, people talk in percentages - and when things change by percentages, not absolute amounts, you are dealing with exponential curves. So a logarithmic scale is extremely appropriate in this situation.
if we are going to compare wealth then we should be comparing amount of money held vs what it can buy
I'll give you that one - I don't know for sure that he didn't include cost-of-living in his calculations and just didn't mention it for simplicities sake, but he probably should of made a passing mention of it and included it in his data.
You also have to dollar adjust for inflation even for specific countries over time.
The data would definitely suggest that he's done that. Given that by the 1900's, he has countries moving into the $4000 average income range, which would be roughly equivalent to an absurd $400,000 average income today if he hadn't adjusted for inflation already. I'm far more willing to believe that our standard of living has gone up by a factor of 10, rather than down by a factor of 10 in the last 100 years.
Which is the biggest breakthrough in a long time, and no body else seems to have realized this. The ability to conceive by mail rather than having to be there in person is incredible! This has nothing to do with whether the donors are male or female, and everything to do with their physical location.
There are many more books that are considered "classics" than would fit on a top 100 list. Movies are starting to be the same way. There are just too many "classics". I suppose it was presumptuous of me to assume that any movies from this year will become classics - you can't really say much until they've continued in popularity for years. I'm more trying to say that the movies this year weren't of particularly lower quality than an average year from the past 90 years.
Because when you look at movies from years gone by, you only remember the interesting ones. You forget about the thousands and thousands of terrible movies that preceded the terrible movies being produced today. You're also comparing a sample of nearly 100 years against a recent sample. There will be movies from this year that in 50 years will be considered classics.
Slashdot Mirror
I had a computer screen once that would turn bright pink after about 2 hours of being on. I sharp whack to the side would fix it for about half an hour, before I'd have to hit it again. It was quite the therapeutic computer.
That's because the Mennonites started their own encyclopedia.
No, the correct logical conclusion is that Hawaii was not a US state when Obama was born.
And I'm of above average intellegence, I'm in the top 20% of drivers, my parenting technique is clearly the best (and any issues my kids have is due to the schools screwing them up), and my religion is the correct one. If I had been given the same opportunities as Joe CEO, I'd be at least as wealthy, and do a better job running his company. If I had been subjected to the same difficulties as Sam HomeLessGuy, I would have "pulled myself up by the bootstraps" and got myself a real job. Given the opportunity my pet economic policy would simultaneously eliminate inflation, and guarantee ever-increasing profits for everyone (as well a unicorn and a fairy for every household).
Polls basically just say that we all just selfish ego-centric bastards.
No no, one column for each resident, plus a column for the row header. Each row holds one item of information: Name, address, etc...
That way, adding a new data point to keep track of is a simple as inserting a new row.
And don't forget:
Sweden - 22.4
Norway - 15.7
Canada - 3.66
Australia - 2.77
I'm pretty sure it would all work out if they just reversed the polarity of the tachyon emitter.
I had nothing against Arthur C. Clarke, until I read 3001.
Unfortunately, thanks to the GIFT, the drive to not look like an asshole doesn't apply online.
This model works much better when you're dealing with people face to face. Had you set up a table and asked people to pay what they wanted, you would have either gotten a lot more money, or no one would have grabbed anything. People are a lot more "honest" when someone's watching, even if they know that there won't be consequences of not being so. This is why busking works, but you'll have a hard time selling music on line in a pay-what-you-want model.
True enough. Reality spends most its time being annoyed at people anthropomorphizing it.
It's best if you pick a crazy enough sounding survivor with shifty eyes and a panicked disposition, and sit him/her across from a calm, reasonable-sounding flat-earther with some sort of accreditation from the Flat Earth Society, and run with the headline "Airplane survivor claims to have discovered 'Antarctica'. Experts skeptical."
Slashdot.
Yup, that's about right.
No. There can be no happy medium.
It is unethical to support something unless you support to the extreme. You can't support any form of birth control unless you support abortions, even late-term abortions, and even post-birth abortions up until the kid is 18.
If you turn off your lights when you leave a room to save electricity, you should really be living in a cave using no electricity at all and living on a vegan diet of locally grown plants.
If you support hunters being allowed to own a gun, you really support requiring every man, woman, and child to be equipped with, and constantly carrying an automatic assault rifle.
If you support a progressive tax, you might as well just throw every rich person in jail, and give all their money to the poor.
If you think welfare encourages dependency on the nanny state, you obviously support Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal...
If we start allowing people to hold moderate positions, then discussion and compromise might happen, and people might start fixing problems instead of being able to complain about everything.
Because "common sense" and "gut" feelings are so reliable? "Pseudo-intellualism" can at least generally be argued with.
Unfortunately, with things like gun-control, it's hard to find good evidence for either side of the argument. The correlation between gun ownership and homicides is pretty much non-existent. There are plenty of hypothetical scenarios that can be manipulated to support either side. As a fairly left-siding person myself, I don't see enough evidence to warrant a ban in the name of reducing crime. The biggest correlation that can be drawn to crime is poverty, and I'd rather we focused on that, rather than on who can own a gun, or who can marry whom, or whether abortions should be legal, or whether I offend someone by celebrating Christmas, or Xmas or Festivus.
First, fascism is generally thought of as a version of extreme-right-wing thought that just happens to have a lot in common with the extreme left.
But aside from that, the only thing your stats really say is that extreme nationalism/religious fanaticism is bad for those who do not go along with the flow. Nationalism is what kept communism alive while everyone suffered for the good of "Mother Russia". Racially-defined nationalism kept the Germans willing to ignore and contribute to atrocities in the name of the superior german race. Fanatical devotion to a religion does the same thing - present-day Iran, Spain in the 1400s, the Crusades, etc...
I define "left" to be the point of view that best reflects reality. Assuming that there is an abstract point of view that would be objectively closest to the way humans and reality functions, that view should be the one sought. The left is only left insofar as its policies reflect evidence-based reality. Where those policies ignore evidence in favour of ideologies, then they are no longer "left" but "bleeding-heart", "communist", "enviro-nut", etc.. as appropriate.
As evidence, I present the definition of "left".
Of course reality isn't biased. It's a pithy, inflammatory statement, that implies that on average, people leaning to the left are more aware of the world around them. Of course, "left" is a pretty useless term on its own - where do you fit if you are an atheistic gay libertarian, or a fundamentalist christian socialist?
I'd claim that the traditional "right-wing" stance on the war-on-drugs has failed due to placing ideology ahead of reality and assuming that their approach SHOULD work instead of trying a variety of approaches and measuring what DOES work. A good way to find these ideologies, is to ask people (or yourself) what it would take to convince you otherwise. If the answer is "nothing would change my mind", then conversation with that person on that topic is really futile. You may be able to learn something from them, but they've already excluded the possibility of reciprocating.
The "left", of course has their own ideologies that they will hold to regardless of what evidence they may be presented with. It's just that people who trust Glenn Beck have significantly more of these ideas.
Reality has a decidedly left-leaning bias.
He's obviously adjusted for inflation - there was actually deflation in the early 1800s, and $1.00 in 1880 would buy roughly what $100 would buy today. By that time on his chart though, he has countries entering an average income of around $4000. I'm pretty sure that those countries didn't have average incomes equivalent to $400,000 of today's money.
First, let's have all axes start at zero
Why? The point of the graph is not to show absolute disparity, but to show the correlation between two things. Focusing on the relevant sections makes it easier to see that relation.
second let's have a non-logarithm axes for a typical unit that is thought of as linear... money.
Money is by no means linear. If I was making $1000 / year, and got a $1000 / year raise, then that's a very significant event for me. At $100,000 / year, making an extra $1000 is just a little something extra. In raises, taxes, and pretty much anything related to income, people talk in percentages - and when things change by percentages, not absolute amounts, you are dealing with exponential curves. So a logarithmic scale is extremely appropriate in this situation.
if we are going to compare wealth then we should be comparing amount of money held vs what it can buy
I'll give you that one - I don't know for sure that he didn't include cost-of-living in his calculations and just didn't mention it for simplicities sake, but he probably should of made a passing mention of it and included it in his data.
You also have to dollar adjust for inflation even for specific countries over time.
The data would definitely suggest that he's done that. Given that by the 1900's, he has countries moving into the $4000 average income range, which would be roughly equivalent to an absurd $400,000 average income today if he hadn't adjusted for inflation already. I'm far more willing to believe that our standard of living has gone up by a factor of 10, rather than down by a factor of 10 in the last 100 years.
produce offspring from two mail donors
Which is the biggest breakthrough in a long time, and no body else seems to have realized this. The ability to conceive by mail rather than having to be there in person is incredible! This has nothing to do with whether the donors are male or female, and everything to do with their physical location.
There are many more books that are considered "classics" than would fit on a top 100 list. Movies are starting to be the same way. There are just too many "classics". I suppose it was presumptuous of me to assume that any movies from this year will become classics - you can't really say much until they've continued in popularity for years. I'm more trying to say that the movies this year weren't of particularly lower quality than an average year from the past 90 years.
Because when you look at movies from years gone by, you only remember the interesting ones. You forget about the thousands and thousands of terrible movies that preceded the terrible movies being produced today. You're also comparing a sample of nearly 100 years against a recent sample. There will be movies from this year that in 50 years will be considered classics.