I hear what you are saying: Better someone who is awake, wrong but heading in the right direction than someone who is asleep, wrong and heading in the wrong direction.
But again the scientist in me simply cannot abide by it. Also when you have people spouted complete shite it makes it easier to tar everyone with the same brush. Humans over-generalise concepts and ideas frequently - its one of the flaws of being a pattern recognition monkey .
In fact (just to bring things full circle) the reason the term "conspiracy theorist" was so easily maligned in the first place was that people spouted such ridiculous, yet unduly popular, theories.:)
We would agree except for the word "intentionally". I am going to ramble on about something I have been thinking about over the past few weeks but I think this is all related to a more fundamental truth about the psyche of human society in general.
I think MOST human beings just have an innate desire for the world to make sense, be fair and for things to be the way they are happy to think they are. Accepting conspiracies such as these is hard to take - I know they depress the hell out of me! We already know people will unconsciously invoke selective reasoning and bias to reinforce beliefs they already hold or avoid ones they don't want to believe are true. Some people seem to be resistant to change in general and don't really want to change their mind about anything. People's views on politics are a great example. Most likely its a defence mechanism we developed some time ago.
I find the concept fascinating. (One of my majors was psychology also:) )
You see it on all sorts of things such as the global warming debate - even after a mountain of evidence is presented. You will often see it in addicts talking about their addiction - e.g. try discussing their habit with a unrepentant chain smoker some time. You will see it in pointless RIght vs Left "debates" where both sides discuss an issue without listening to anything the other has to say or any possibility of changing their minds.
I have a feeling that some ideas get rooted in parts of the brain that are resistant to reason. (it could be the same part) We do know religion (and apparently apple fanatics) have a particular area engaged with those beliefs.
I started to think about other instances of this that might be even more pervasive and came to a startling one: population control.
It is evident that the world cannot survive the current rate of population growth even by the most optimistic measures. I am not even sure most people would disagree with the fact if presented it in isolation, right?
I mean global warming/peak oil/food shocks/rare earth metal shortages/poverty/etc are all symptoms of a far more essential truth: there are too many people in the world and it is getting exponentially worse and cannot continue.
But think about the mainstream discourse on this. Does it exist?
Almost none whatsoever. The few times I have seen it anywhere it is typically shot down, even sometimes by green affiliates who typically advocate for conservation. In fact it is typically political suicide for a mainstream politician to suggest anything remotely like this.
We know the solutions and they are easy ones. China was amazingly successful decades ago but now even they are starting to reverse these policies.
Is it not reasonable to suggest that we are addicted to procreation due to our biological imperative? Might it not be the case that this is leading to our apparent inability to stare this obvious problem in the face?
In fact it is not only that we ignore it, we actively promote "growth" in all its forms and exacerbate it beyond all reason. It seems to me that across the board all our societies are addicted to unmanageable growth and are rendered completely unable to even discuss anything other than increasing growth.
Not to say individuals and small groups are not discussing it (case in point this post), but mainstream discourse is completely bereft of it.
But I digress I guess. Random musings and speculation.
Well I am happy for the opportunity to converse with a philosopher then. The phd part was simply because most philosophers require one for their career teaching at university. (I taught at university for 7 years myself) I did not mean to be insulting BTW - I just have had people in the past claim such and have no real foundation.
I went to the trouble of defining each term because getting your point across on the internet is very hard at times and I never know the intellectual capacity of the person I am dealing with.
You comments are very clear and my thanks for taking that time. I think we agree the sole issue is simply the term "conspiracy theorist" and the baggage that term has. In fact I think we don't really disagree on anything, its just a misunderstanding of terminology.
Regardless of what the term COULD or arguably SHOULD mean, the common definition is more or less as I described above. One can argue till they are blue in the face that the world should change their definition of a word or phrase but ultimately word definitions are a "majority wins" situation. I am happy to admit conspiracies exist (As I state explicitly in my previous post) and there are people who study conspiracies with intellectual rigour and who are certainly not the people who I am referring to - see my aside at the end for evidence of this.
So having said that I feel perfectly justified in using the phrase in this context while sidestepping the argument of whether the common usage is correct/fair or not. IOW: Conspiracy Theorist = Irrational Nut-job. If you are not an irrational nut-job that term does not apply to you in this context.
As an aside:
There was a Philosophy student in NZ who studied conspiracy theory formally as part of his phd. He did a weekly radio spot on the university radio station which I used to listen to (via podcast) every week. It was fascinating and very informative and he was quite funny also. My googling shows that surprisingly he is still going strong and now has his phd!:) "Conspiracy Corner with Dr. Matthew Dentith" He is very much a "conspiracy theorist" in the academic sense.:)
The person I knew who was a conspiracy theorist in the nut-job sense and simply watched a lot of youtube videos of the likes of David Ickle. I knew a lot about him from Dr Dentith's show which enabled me to call her out on her complete and utter shite in a very informed way which she was not used to as almost know one knows of his work. When she was highly selective of his theories (e.g. leaving out lizard people and moon bases) I merely made sure that people listening were educated on the full body of his work.
It was a lot like like kicking puppies and not that satisfying by the scientist in me cannot let such things go....
Just to be clear: My thoughts on the US government and the US citizens are two totally separate things. Every American I have ever met has been perfectly nice.
I mean, its not as if the citizens are in control of the government any more so really the worst you could accuse them of is not rising up and taking the power back. (RATM semi-quote)
You are confusing risk management with veracity. Perhaps he meant the former but that was not the topic of conversation and he did not elaborate enough in the one sentence reply to tell!:)
Feel free to be as paranoid as you feel is appropriate and take whatever safety measure you deem necessary. To be honest in terms of risk management I agree that it appears you cannot really be considered "paranoid" any more in terms of surveillance - they really are listening to everything.
But don't spout random theories with no evidence and say they are fact or that we should assume they are true - which is what I was arguing against.
Your perception of this dynamic is being skewed by your personal involvement.
You comments are not as insightful as you perceive them to be but your lack of perception prevents you from being able to see this and as your outrage rises at the lack of positive reception increases the insightful content decreases sharply.
hang on hang on. I sort of agree with your core message you are giving but you are using a lot labels completely incorrectly.
1) You country does NOT have a mainstream left party of any description. You have a far right party and (at best) a centre right party although they swing well right on many many issues. There is no possible way you could argue this otherwise if you understand the global political spectrum. Also my personal opinion is that using terms like "left" and "right" in the modern political space as if they mean something specific is a completely ridiculous notion - case in point calling the democrats a "left" party.
2) Republicans != conservative. (nor for the tea party!) I am not sure if you meant this but that is how it came across. While they talk constantly about cutting social spending (because let's face it they are super rich and don't care about the poor/middle class one iota) every time there is republican president the deficit skyrockets. In recent times the only president to balance a budget was Clinton! They DO NOT care about being conservative, they care about cutting social spending and reducing government - there is a HUGE difference between the two! And before I get accused of bias I am not saying either is better, I am just saying that this myopic premise (if that IS what you meant) is complete and utter bullshit.
3) The RIGHT does NOT want informed voters and never has - and BOTH your parties are right wing. Bush decimated the education system and the democrats have not bothered to fix it. The US education system is considered a joke both internationally and locally. "The left" desperately want more education - "left parties" (i.e. social policy advocates) ALWAYS want to improve education while the right typically want cut backs and private school subsidies. Studies worldwide show that well educated populations tend to be socially minded, happier and more politically involved. To suggest the "right" are education advocates is nonsensical.
4) "Fuck the rich people" is NOT the message of "the left" (i.e. socially minded) How on EARTH could you think this in a country where the rich own almost everything including your politicians? Where income equality is some of the worst in the first world? Where 1% of the population owns over 40% of the wealth. There IS some fucking going on but it is certainly not how you are describing it! Their message is: "Christ on a stick the rich people are utterly and completely destroying this country, stealing all its wealth and political power and fucking us all in the arse with a razor wire wrapped baton - we should do SOMETHING about this! Who will save us?!"
But I do agree that US citizens need to be educated, just not by politicians or Media organisations as happens now.
And I also agree that a true conservative (i.e. not 99% of the republicans) would be utterly HORRIFIED at the current situation and rightly so. And I mean in general, not just this one issue or current government.
It was a media stunt for the media. Not for the servicemen.
You cannot honestly believe that it was anything else??
And my point was that it was a cartoony joke which it was. That sign probably gave us more comedic mileage than any other sign in history - at least in the top 5.
I was mostly responding to the cartoony part, not the hypocrite part.
Also it is hard to tell sometimes with this sort of thing because many, many Americans believe this and would not see sarcasm in any of what was written.
You sound a lot like an ostrich. From your comment I see there is little chance you possess the intellectual rigour to have a meaningful conversation so I wont bother.
You are also an AC - putting the coward into term I see.
You really needed to watch the "low persistence" video before commenting.
I thought it was just a high refresh rate screen or similar and almost did not bother. Turns out they have essentially SOLVED the problem you are talking about in an truly ingenious way. This is pretty amazing news buried in a terrible slashdot summary. Its sad when reporters are too ignorant to understand the ramifications of what they are reporting on.
Remember that when you move your head your proprioceptors and other organic systems are telling your brain that movement is occurring and thus it should compensate for this visually. With VR the mismatch between what it sees (a series of static images each held in place for a fraction of a second) and what it is expecting (a constantly updating image) are what cause the quesyness and other side effects.
Summary of persistence video for the time constrained:
The solution was not in the refresh rate/screen quality/FPS. To eliminate this problem using faster updates you would have to up the FPS (not just the refresh rate) to unrealistic levels. They proved it was not the screen refresh itself by using a high speed video camera and playing back the screen contents in slow motion - every frame was perfect. The "motion blur" was an artefact your brain was adding itself. The core problem was that the VR frames were only "valid" to your brain for a fraction of a second. The rest of the time the frame was out of date data and this is what was causing motion blur. (e.g. 3d text would blur and be unreadable with only tiny head movements)
Their solution was simple and elegant but did require custom hardware: They only show the frame when it is "valid" and blacken the screen otherwise. Due to their high FPS (60-75 fps I believe) there is no perceptible flicker.
What I find neat about this solution is that as systems improve and can support higher and higher FPS the amount of "black" time can be naturally reduced to improve screen quality and this the solution scales naturally - the initial models will support a max of 75 FPS though.
I imagine the only downside is that if your system fails to produce the min required FPS will will begin to see flickering. Of course that is far preferable to the alternative on the old system: The worse your FPS, the worse the vomit effects are as there is more frozen old data per second.
They tried that with Putin and look how that turned out.
I agree that the problem is not with the individuals but the entire system.
Its not only that the new person be the same as the last it is that the current batch are little more than hand puppets with a billionaires hand up their arse.
Meh. I have taken so much flak for my posts sometimes the sarcasm gets lots in the vitriol spat my way.
I don't mind as playing the devil's advocate is a strength of mine...and kind of a hobby. I aim to make people think about what they believe instead of just being sheeple.
I am all for decentralised democracy such as the examples used in South America and Europe. I would even settle for people being highly informed and engaged in the political process. This is irrespective of the economic/political ideology - this is not a left/right thing. I would even go as far to argue that anything other than this is NOT democracy but a farcical approximation of it. Just because a vote is involved every few years does not make it democratic!
Sadly the opposite is true in the US and in my own country of NZ. (although not as bad here since we are smaller and have the MMP system for elections thus smaller parties are viable options)
I wrote a long reply and hit the wrong shortcut and lost it all. I miss autosave when typing on forums....someone should write a plugin for that!
I cannot be bothered to write it all again so here is the general gist: You are a big stupid head, meany!
But seriously....
You are jumbling up what I said and the concepts of "truth", "conspiracy", "conspiracy theorist", "speculation", "prediction" and "knowing". It is almost like you are responding to other people's posts - namely the common "You are just a conspiracy theorist" post that I have seen countless times. (not in relation to me BTW) If you are an actual philosopher (i.e. phd, life long study etc) then I am surprised.
So here is an interpretation to clear all this up...as if anyone actually cares...
Here is how I define the following concepts:
TRUTH = Reality. Almost impossible to know 100% in most cases. e.g. The whole universe could just be the dreams of a higher being etc
KNOWING = Being pretty sure about something and also understanding it to a high level.
SPECULATION = More of a creative mental exercise. e.g. Weak evidence extrapolated far beyond what is reasonable.
PREDICTION = Historical evidence is used to predict the most likely future outcome using the best means available. Certainly not factual but not complete BS like speculation.
CONSPIRACY = A group of individuals acting in secret for some purpose, typically nefarious. e,g, The overt job description of the CIA and NSA
CONSPIRACY THEORIST = Typically someone who starts from the conclusion that global conspiracies exist and works backwards to prove this. Almost always using poor reasoning, wild speculation, circumstantial evidence and misinterpretations etc to "prove" their predefined conclusion. To be fair only a few do this while the rest just swallow the theory whole after watching a fabricated, yet convincing youtube video. Sometimes there IS a conspiracy, especially since that is what the NSA/CIA do for a living, but more often than not the conspiracy is not the same one that the theorists were saying - although the will reverse reason that this makes them 100% right all and is used as evidence of future theories.
So in these terms what I was trying to convey is: ==== We have discovered evidence of several CONSPIRACIES and we already KNOW about many other historical ones. The evidence for these if very strong. While I could not pretend I KNOW what the future will hold (to pretend I did would make me a CONSPIRACY THEORIST) I am worried about the current trajectory and my own PREDICTIONS about the future are not good based on the current data. None of what I have said can be 100% guaranteed to be the TRUTH and PREDICTIONS can always be wrong. ====
Hope that clears it up in the most anally retentive way possible...:)
Slashdot Mirror
I hear what you are saying: Better someone who is awake, wrong but heading in the right direction than someone who is asleep, wrong and heading in the wrong direction.
:)
But again the scientist in me simply cannot abide by it. Also when you have people spouted complete shite it makes it easier to tar everyone with the same brush. Humans over-generalise concepts and ideas frequently - its one of the flaws of being a pattern recognition monkey .
In fact (just to bring things full circle) the reason the term "conspiracy theorist" was so easily maligned in the first place was that people spouted such ridiculous, yet unduly popular, theories.
PS: I should mention that people do sometimes discuss the symptoms of overpopulation or even reference the overpopulation itself.
But they will almost never discuss the only realistic solution we have: have less babies.
This is a cardinal sin.
We would agree except for the word "intentionally". I am going to ramble on about something I have been thinking about over the past few weeks but I think this is all related to a more fundamental truth about the psyche of human society in general.
:) )
I think MOST human beings just have an innate desire for the world to make sense, be fair and for things to be the way they are happy to think they are. Accepting conspiracies such as these is hard to take - I know they depress the hell out of me!
We already know people will unconsciously invoke selective reasoning and bias to reinforce beliefs they already hold or avoid ones they don't want to believe are true. Some people seem to be resistant to change in general and don't really want to change their mind about anything. People's views on politics are a great example.
Most likely its a defence mechanism we developed some time ago.
I find the concept fascinating. (One of my majors was psychology also
You see it on all sorts of things such as the global warming debate - even after a mountain of evidence is presented.
You will often see it in addicts talking about their addiction - e.g. try discussing their habit with a unrepentant chain smoker some time.
You will see it in pointless RIght vs Left "debates" where both sides discuss an issue without listening to anything the other has to say or any possibility of changing their minds.
I have a feeling that some ideas get rooted in parts of the brain that are resistant to reason. (it could be the same part) We do know religion (and apparently apple fanatics) have a particular area engaged with those beliefs.
I started to think about other instances of this that might be even more pervasive and came to a startling one: population control.
It is evident that the world cannot survive the current rate of population growth even by the most optimistic measures. I am not even sure most people would disagree with the fact if presented it in isolation, right?
I mean global warming/peak oil/food shocks/rare earth metal shortages/poverty/etc are all symptoms of a far more essential truth: there are too many people in the world and it is getting exponentially worse and cannot continue.
But think about the mainstream discourse on this. Does it exist?
Almost none whatsoever. The few times I have seen it anywhere it is typically shot down, even sometimes by green affiliates who typically advocate for conservation. In fact it is typically political suicide for a mainstream politician to suggest anything remotely like this.
We know the solutions and they are easy ones. China was amazingly successful decades ago but now even they are starting to reverse these policies.
Is it not reasonable to suggest that we are addicted to procreation due to our biological imperative? Might it not be the case that this is leading to our apparent inability to stare this obvious problem in the face?
In fact it is not only that we ignore it, we actively promote "growth" in all its forms and exacerbate it beyond all reason. It seems to me that across the board all our societies are addicted to unmanageable growth and are rendered completely unable to even discuss anything other than increasing growth.
Not to say individuals and small groups are not discussing it (case in point this post), but mainstream discourse is completely bereft of it.
But I digress I guess. Random musings and speculation.
Well I am happy for the opportunity to converse with a philosopher then. The phd part was simply because most philosophers require one for their career teaching at university. (I taught at university for 7 years myself) I did not mean to be insulting BTW - I just have had people in the past claim such and have no real foundation.
:) "Conspiracy Corner with Dr. Matthew Dentith" :)
I went to the trouble of defining each term because getting your point across on the internet is very hard at times and I never know the intellectual capacity of the person I am dealing with.
You comments are very clear and my thanks for taking that time. I think we agree the sole issue is simply the term "conspiracy theorist" and the baggage that term has. In fact I think we don't really disagree on anything, its just a misunderstanding of terminology.
Regardless of what the term COULD or arguably SHOULD mean, the common definition is more or less as I described above. One can argue till they are blue in the face that the world should change their definition of a word or phrase but ultimately word definitions are a "majority wins" situation.
I am happy to admit conspiracies exist (As I state explicitly in my previous post) and there are people who study conspiracies with intellectual rigour and who are certainly not the people who I am referring to - see my aside at the end for evidence of this.
So having said that I feel perfectly justified in using the phrase in this context while sidestepping the argument of whether the common usage is correct/fair or not.
IOW: Conspiracy Theorist = Irrational Nut-job.
If you are not an irrational nut-job that term does not apply to you in this context.
As an aside:
There was a Philosophy student in NZ who studied conspiracy theory formally as part of his phd. He did a weekly radio spot on the university radio station which I used to listen to (via podcast) every week. It was fascinating and very informative and he was quite funny also.
My googling shows that surprisingly he is still going strong and now has his phd!
He is very much a "conspiracy theorist" in the academic sense.
The person I knew who was a conspiracy theorist in the nut-job sense and simply watched a lot of youtube videos of the likes of David Ickle. I knew a lot about him from Dr Dentith's show which enabled me to call her out on her complete and utter shite in a very informed way which she was not used to as almost know one knows of his work. When she was highly selective of his theories (e.g. leaving out lizard people and moon bases) I merely made sure that people listening were educated on the full body of his work.
It was a lot like like kicking puppies and not that satisfying by the scientist in me cannot let such things go....
Just to be clear: My thoughts on the US government and the US citizens are two totally separate things. Every American I have ever met has been perfectly nice.
I mean, its not as if the citizens are in control of the government any more so really the worst you could accuse them of is not rising up and taking the power back. (RATM semi-quote)
You are confusing risk management with veracity. Perhaps he meant the former but that was not the topic of conversation and he did not elaborate enough in the one sentence reply to tell! :)
Feel free to be as paranoid as you feel is appropriate and take whatever safety measure you deem necessary. To be honest in terms of risk management I agree that it appears you cannot really be considered "paranoid" any more in terms of surveillance - they really are listening to everything.
But don't spout random theories with no evidence and say they are fact or that we should assume they are true - which is what I was arguing against.
Your perception of this dynamic is being skewed by your personal involvement.
You comments are not as insightful as you perceive them to be but your lack of perception prevents you from being able to see this and as your outrage rises at the lack of positive reception increases the insightful content decreases sharply.
Sort of a negative feedback system.
hang on hang on. I sort of agree with your core message you are giving but you are using a lot labels completely incorrectly.
1) You country does NOT have a mainstream left party of any description. You have a far right party and (at best) a centre right party although they swing well right on many many issues.
There is no possible way you could argue this otherwise if you understand the global political spectrum.
Also my personal opinion is that using terms like "left" and "right" in the modern political space as if they mean something specific is a completely ridiculous notion - case in point calling the democrats a "left" party.
2) Republicans != conservative. (nor for the tea party!) I am not sure if you meant this but that is how it came across. While they talk constantly about cutting social spending (because let's face it they are super rich and don't care about the poor/middle class one iota) every time there is republican president the deficit skyrockets. In recent times the only president to balance a budget was Clinton!
They DO NOT care about being conservative, they care about cutting social spending and reducing government - there is a HUGE difference between the two!
And before I get accused of bias I am not saying either is better, I am just saying that this myopic premise (if that IS what you meant) is complete and utter bullshit.
3) The RIGHT does NOT want informed voters and never has - and BOTH your parties are right wing. Bush decimated the education system and the democrats have not bothered to fix it. The US education system is considered a joke both internationally and locally.
"The left" desperately want more education - "left parties" (i.e. social policy advocates) ALWAYS want to improve education while the right typically want cut backs and private school subsidies. Studies worldwide show that well educated populations tend to be socially minded, happier and more politically involved.
To suggest the "right" are education advocates is nonsensical.
4) "Fuck the rich people" is NOT the message of "the left" (i.e. socially minded) How on EARTH could you think this in a country where the rich own almost everything including your politicians? Where income equality is some of the worst in the first world? Where 1% of the population owns over 40% of the wealth.
There IS some fucking going on but it is certainly not how you are describing it!
Their message is: "Christ on a stick the rich people are utterly and completely destroying this country, stealing all its wealth and political power and fucking us all in the arse with a razor wire wrapped baton - we should do SOMETHING about this! Who will save us?!"
But I do agree that US citizens need to be educated, just not by politicians or Media organisations as happens now.
And I also agree that a true conservative (i.e. not 99% of the republicans) would be utterly HORRIFIED at the current situation and rightly so. And I mean in general, not just this one issue or current government.
Well I guess it is good for you and not me in this instance.
Also I come from NZ so we grow up learning this stuff so there is that also.
Please. That whole movie was an embarrassment to the Batman franchise. :)
He is getting what he deserved!
Spent (stupidly) and accounted for yes.
Not just vanished without a trace...
It was a media stunt for the media. Not for the servicemen.
You cannot honestly believe that it was anything else??
And my point was that it was a cartoony joke which it was. That sign probably gave us more comedic mileage than any other sign in history - at least in the top 5.
Don't turn this into a D vs R issue.
Both your parties are as corrupt, warmongering and evil as each other. At least so close as to be irrelevant.
I was mostly responding to the cartoony part, not the hypocrite part.
Also it is hard to tell sometimes with this sort of thing because many, many Americans believe this and would not see sarcasm in any of what was written.
So I am making sure.
I don't give a shit what you think either so we are even.
Also your post betrays a lack of intellectual insight and the arrogant, violent demeanour of the under-evolved.
Don't let your knuckle hair drag on the carpet on your way out.
You sound a lot like an ostrich. From your comment I see there is little chance you possess the intellectual rigour to have a meaningful conversation so I wont bother.
You are also an AC - putting the coward into term I see.
I was not saying it was not.
It was a comical accident of the sort one would see in cartoons.
Woosh....
You are just a scared little ostrich with his head in the sand.
You sure are putting the "coward" into AC.
You really needed to watch the "low persistence" video before commenting.
I thought it was just a high refresh rate screen or similar and almost did not bother. Turns out they have essentially SOLVED the problem you are talking about in an truly ingenious way.
This is pretty amazing news buried in a terrible slashdot summary. Its sad when reporters are too ignorant to understand the ramifications of what they are reporting on.
Remember that when you move your head your proprioceptors and other organic systems are telling your brain that movement is occurring and thus it should compensate for this visually. With VR the mismatch between what it sees (a series of static images each held in place for a fraction of a second) and what it is expecting (a constantly updating image) are what cause the quesyness and other side effects.
Summary of persistence video for the time constrained:
The solution was not in the refresh rate/screen quality/FPS. To eliminate this problem using faster updates you would have to up the FPS (not just the refresh rate) to unrealistic levels. They proved it was not the screen refresh itself by using a high speed video camera and playing back the screen contents in slow motion - every frame was perfect. The "motion blur" was an artefact your brain was adding itself.
The core problem was that the VR frames were only "valid" to your brain for a fraction of a second. The rest of the time the frame was out of date data and this is what was causing motion blur. (e.g. 3d text would blur and be unreadable with only tiny head movements)
Their solution was simple and elegant but did require custom hardware: They only show the frame when it is "valid" and blacken the screen otherwise. Due to their high FPS (60-75 fps I believe) there is no perceptible flicker.
What I find neat about this solution is that as systems improve and can support higher and higher FPS the amount of "black" time can be naturally reduced to improve screen quality and this the solution scales naturally - the initial models will support a max of 75 FPS though.
I imagine the only downside is that if your system fails to produce the min required FPS will will begin to see flickering. Of course that is far preferable to the alternative on the old system: The worse your FPS, the worse the vomit effects are as there is more frozen old data per second.
The code IS the documentation.
Especially if it is in C++, the most readable and unobfuscatable language in history....
They tried that with Putin and look how that turned out.
I agree that the problem is not with the individuals but the entire system.
Its not only that the new person be the same as the last it is that the current batch are little more than hand puppets with a billionaires hand up their arse.
Changing the puppet is not the solution!
Meh. I have taken so much flak for my posts sometimes the sarcasm gets lots in the vitriol spat my way.
I don't mind as playing the devil's advocate is a strength of mine...and kind of a hobby. I aim to make people think about what they believe instead of just being sheeple.
Its harder than you would imagine....
You missed my point?
I am all for decentralised democracy such as the examples used in South America and Europe. I would even settle for people being highly informed and engaged in the political process. This is irrespective of the economic/political ideology - this is not a left/right thing.
I would even go as far to argue that anything other than this is NOT democracy but a farcical approximation of it. Just because a vote is involved every few years does not make it democratic!
Sadly the opposite is true in the US and in my own country of NZ. (although not as bad here since we are smaller and have the MMP system for elections thus smaller parties are viable options)
I am not being optimistic. I placed no lower bound on what could be happening.
For all I know Obama could actually be in league with Satan and the portal to hell could be opening up to swallow all our souls as I type this.
I just prefer to stick to what we know for know and leave the speculation to those with less intellectual rigour.
I wrote a long reply and hit the wrong shortcut and lost it all. I miss autosave when typing on forums....someone should write a plugin for that!
:)
I cannot be bothered to write it all again so here is the general gist: You are a big stupid head, meany!
But seriously....
You are jumbling up what I said and the concepts of "truth", "conspiracy", "conspiracy theorist", "speculation", "prediction" and "knowing". It is almost like you are responding to other people's posts - namely the common "You are just a conspiracy theorist" post that I have seen countless times. (not in relation to me BTW)
If you are an actual philosopher (i.e. phd, life long study etc) then I am surprised.
So here is an interpretation to clear all this up...as if anyone actually cares...
Here is how I define the following concepts:
TRUTH = Reality. Almost impossible to know 100% in most cases. e.g. The whole universe could just be the dreams of a higher being etc
KNOWING = Being pretty sure about something and also understanding it to a high level.
SPECULATION = More of a creative mental exercise. e.g. Weak evidence extrapolated far beyond what is reasonable.
PREDICTION = Historical evidence is used to predict the most likely future outcome using the best means available. Certainly not factual but not complete BS like speculation.
CONSPIRACY = A group of individuals acting in secret for some purpose, typically nefarious. e,g, The overt job description of the CIA and NSA
CONSPIRACY THEORIST = Typically someone who starts from the conclusion that global conspiracies exist and works backwards to prove this. Almost always using poor reasoning, wild speculation, circumstantial evidence and misinterpretations etc to "prove" their predefined conclusion. To be fair only a few do this while the rest just swallow the theory whole after watching a fabricated, yet convincing youtube video. Sometimes there IS a conspiracy, especially since that is what the NSA/CIA do for a living, but more often than not the conspiracy is not the same one that the theorists were saying - although the will reverse reason that this makes them 100% right all and is used as evidence of future theories.
So in these terms what I was trying to convey is:
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We have discovered evidence of several CONSPIRACIES and we already KNOW about many other historical ones. The evidence for these if very strong.
While I could not pretend I KNOW what the future will hold (to pretend I did would make me a CONSPIRACY THEORIST) I am worried about the current trajectory and my own PREDICTIONS about the future are not good based on the current data.
None of what I have said can be 100% guaranteed to be the TRUTH and PREDICTIONS can always be wrong.
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Hope that clears it up in the most anally retentive way possible...