And worse yet- there's nothing India wants anymore. Their basic trade theory- trade only what they have in surplus and keep everything else for themselves- serves them very well. I just talked to our dear intern about this- she said the last time she went home to Hydrabad, she thought she had picked out novel and unique gifts- but her relatives already had them all.
Besides- what the hell could we make here to sell to India that China can't make for 1/100th the labor cost?
You miss a key point: this empirical observation lacks *independent* verification. Plus, you have a real freaking strange definition of empirical.
Only if it's a religion of a single person does it not have independant verification- every convert to a religion independantly verifies that religion, or else they wouldn't convert.
Funny how few people who end up supporting, say, Christian beliefs, came to those beliefs without influence from a parent, preacher, missionary, or other source of information specifically crafted to instill a particular set of beliefs in others.
Funny how few people who end up supporting, say, the Scientific Method, came to that belief without influence from a parent, teacher, or some other source of information specirically crafted to instill a particular set of beliefs in others. EVERY form of knowledge we have as a human culture follows THAT pattern.
How many people, through private revelation, come up, through that revelation *alone*, with the doctrine of transubstantiation? Or the Trinity?
How many people, through private revelation, come up, through that revelation *alone* with the doctrine of theory and experimentation? NONE. It took centuries to develop those methods and doctrines- Trinity came to us through the councilar method for instance, as did transsubstantiation.
I can do scientific experiments to determine, say, the speed of light, and I get results that match the handbook without having to peek at the value first.
Can you design the experiment from starting with the rock without any help or apparatus from the outside? I doubt it strongly. You take advantage of the work of others in every experiment you do.
Whereas if I want to know Catholic doctrine, I have to pull out the catechism and read it.
Heck, if you want to know the speed of light, you need to refer to a book to get several definitions first- the definition of light, of a second, of distance.
Or, if I meditate by myself, I find their doctrine on homosexuality to be stupid.
Just as I find your example to be stupid- you don't get the speed of light by meditating by yourself either.
How is that empirical?
The very fact that there is more than one person who DOES find their doctrines on life issues to be consistent within those doctrines, is empirical.
Funny, those "elves" respond to magnetic fields in remarkably consistent ways.
All myths respond to their input conditions in consistent ways. If they didn't, they wouldn't have the longevity to become myths- they'd just be stories that your father told you when you were young that you don't tell to your children because they don't have any application to your life.
Physics fucking *works*. It is no accident that the transistor, LCD, CRT, laser diode, etc., etc., all arose in the twentieth century, and nothing *at all* like them were developed earlier.
All religions work. If they didn't, they wouldn't have any adherants. But actually, you've missed out on some very interesting archeology over the last 50 years if you think "nothing *at all* like them were developed earlier."
This is the same logical misstep as before. If everything we believe in is a myth, then believing that everything is a myth is also a myth.
Exactly right! You're getting there. It's obvious that the probelm is equating a myth with a lie- it isn't. A myth is just a story that comes to a conclusion with incomplete data.
But how do you know that our sensory perception is tainted?
Because it's lied in the past.
Besides, you've already said that if you can see a tree, you know that it exists. How can you know that tree exists if your sense of sight is tainted?
You don't. You don't know anything. Knowledge is impossible.
How do you walk across the street without getting run over?
You don't.
I don't know about you, but I use my eyes and ears to determine when it's safe to cross the street quite often, and they haven't been wrong yet.
Mine have been in the past. I've had some very near misses and even time in the hospital because of this. Same with driving. Nothing is perfect.
An elephant is hardly infinite.
It is in comparison to the blind man. Just as reality is in comparison to us.
Besides, didn't you say that mathematics is not a source of truth?
Yep- it's just another model. In the end, that's all we have, a collection of models we believe and have faith in. We're not equiped to have anything else. We're not equipped to have knowlege, only faith.
You're talking about having insufficient evidence, not how that evidence is gathered. I was talking about sensory perceptions.
It's all the same. Some people in Tripoli in 1986 remember seeing a mushroom cloud over the palace. Some people in Tripoli in 1988 remember seeing the mushroom cloud. Some people in Tripoli don't remember seeing the mushroom cloud in 1986 or 1988, but only saw the palace destroyed. Nobody knows the actual truth about this incident, or even the actual year or the cause of the bombing for sure, though it was probably related to terrorism of one form or another.
Then how do you know that our senses are wrong?
We don't. We don't KNOW anything. Knowledge is impossible. We can believe. We can have faith. We can inform that faith based on what we think the evidence is. But we can never KNOW.
Great, so we can infer characteristics of the cause by observing the effect. I think this conversation started with something about black holes being a myth. Well if we can see movements of stars and light as an effect of a cause that is very small and has a huge gravitational pull, then that matches with the characteristics of what is called a black hole. So I don't understand what the problem is with astronomers thinking there are black holes out there in space when they can see evidence for them. As for what you say about origins, that's only a problem for those with a materialistic worldview. For myself, I don't think the origin of the universe is an uncaused effect, but is the effect of a cause transcendant to time and space.
Actually- it all started as an attempt to use the second meaning of the word "myth" to show that the separation of Church and State is ridiculous- because EVERYTHING we believe in is a myth. We can't have evidence without myths.
I don't think you answered my other two questions;) How can we know our information is imperfect, innaccurate, or incomplete? To me that premise seems absurd. Another problem with that proposition is that the only way to know that our information is imperfect is to compare it to information that is perfect. The only way to know that our information is inaccurate is to compare it to information that is accurate.
Or a third way is to realize that our very sensory apparatus taints whatever we look at to the point that our information can never be accurate.
Again, this is an absurd statement. How can you be sure that we can't be sure of anything?
I can't- but what I can be sure about is that my eyes, my nose, and my memories have lied to me in the past- and thus I can't trust them.
Only evidence comes through our senses? That doesn't seem to be a conclusion arrived at from sensory evidence, is it? Besides that, our senses can be fooled, yes, but I think that's different from them lying. There is a difference between being dishonest, and being naive.
From the standpoint of accuracy, there is no difference- in that we can't tell the difference between being dishonest and being naive.
But if we don't know what it is, how do we know that we can't see the whole elephant?
Mathematical set theory- the finite cannot encompass the infinite.
I am not aware of anything that is not real that makes me perceive anything at all. How is this possible?
Well, parallel universes aren't real- but there is an argument over how many nuclear weapons the United States has used in the last 50 years (someplace between 2-50,000 depending on what you think a nuclear weapon is, and what timelines you remember).
Even illusions are caused by real things. A desert mirage of an oasis is not real, but it is caused by heat waves in the air which are real.
The mind is a tricky thing- we don't know the cause of how we think, let alone what could cause our senses to be wrong.
If you're opening a business, you're taking on the risks of that business. Want to minimize those risks? Keep the business small and your customers happy.
how it is immoral to protect my house, my children's college funds, etc?
There are other ways to protect those than incoporating.
the problem is that it wont stop with chiquita. i worked for a guy (an architect) where that the developer basically didnt want to pay his bill, so he found a reason to sue - everyone - involved in the project.
At which point your architect countersued for services rendered, correct?
luckily everything was frivilous. these are the people who use the 'shotgun approach' that i as an architect have to protect myself against. if you are just installing antivirus software there is probably a lot less you have to worry about.
The best way around that is to check out developers before you take them on as customers. Due dilligence before signing contracts- bet he had pulled that one in the past.
there would just be a group of deep pocket individuals who would lose everything and be out on the street with their families.
At which point, by definition, they no longer have deep pockets, yes? Like I said, suing the poor won't even pay the lawyer bills. Free market at work.
believe it or not, there are honest, moral capitalist people out there.
Yeah, but they all get sued out of business, destroyed by the parasites. If we let the system eat itself, we'd all be better off.
I would think anyone that bought a house would know the first thing to do is go out and change all the locks, yourself, by hand. You have no idea if the builder or if prevous owners kept keys.
I do- don't you? Same with used cars.
Yet few people do this, because they just don't bother. This nature extends to many other actions. Perhaps it shouldn't but it does. My wireless network at home has the longest access code I could create - long enough that I had to walk it around to each machine on a USB stick because I couldn't accurately retype the numbers. But there are 2-3 other networks available from my house that are completely unprotected. Those people should set that stuff up, but they don't because they just don't know or assume it will be ok.
Where I run an open access point on purpose. It's down right now- I think *maybe* somebody got in and uploaded different firmware and I haven't had time to check- but when it was operating, it was set up properly for the job, blocking access to my wired LAN.
One of my desktop machines at work during college was an SGI Irix workstation. It turns out that, buried on page 43 of chapter 5 of documentation book 7, there was a list of default accounts (like a printer manager) that are automatically created with no passwords. Who knew? I didn't. But someone did when the rooted my machine. =( Fortunately my machine had nothing on it. Another Irix workstation, the one that was being used to demo a new movie-on-demand system to college kids in the dorms, was also rooted. It's user got in a lot more trouble, since the infiltrator got copies of all the movies.
Yeah, but look back at the original article- that wasn't the assignment.
Still- what the heck is a college doing with UNIX workstations that aren't locked down? Didn't your sysadmins read The Cookoo's Nest?
Sadly, not true. People routinely sue the poor to put them out of business. I'm sure you can figure out a number of reasons why someone would want to do this.
None that make sense if corporations aren't allowed- because countersuits are available.
What all of your comments completely miss is that dividends are still taxed just like normal income, at normal income rates depending upon your total income over the course of the year, just like anyone else's normal income. Someone with a corp, s-corp, llc, or other form of limited-liability legal organization structure still pays the same amount of income taxes as anyone else, if they want access to the earnings of that business.
There are more ways to use the earnings of a business than just paying them out as dividends if you are in control of that business. You can also use that money for self-improvement (giving yourself an eductation benefit), housing (by charging the buisness rent for your home office), equipment (by giving the business the newest ones and taking the depreciated-out surplus for personal use), etc. All sorts of interesting ways of doing it- the GGP poster is correct that there's a lot of tax avoidance to be gotten this way.
The difference comes in the way Social Security and Medicare witholdings are calculated. Given that both systems are helplessly broken beyond repair (especially in our current political climate where anyone with a potential solution is labeled a partisan hack), I have no problem with minimizing a person's contributions to either of those systems.
Well, even the both of those are used by just about any businessperson I can think of. Medicare, for instance, prevents epidemics from wiping out both your customers and your clients.
I myself, a young (27) professional engineer working for a large company, am forced to pay social security and medicare into systems out of which I will never see a single dime,
I disagree. Unless you have your grandparents living with you (and maybe even if you do) you're getting something out of the Social Security program. If you like not having to avoid people to avoid Tuberculosis, you've gotten something out of the Medicare program. Now admittedly, you're going to get a lot less out of these programs than a couple of generations ago, but hey, the same thing with the stock market or for that matter wages and salaries.
which is why I take responsibility for my own situation and shove the maximum amount I can into my 401K out of evey paycheck plus an additional roth IRA every year and manage it carefully using a well-thought-out, diversified, index-fund-based investment plan.
You remind me of me at 27- I thought so too until the recession of 2001 completely wiped out both my 401K and my Roth IRA. Both of these are just more corporate scams.
As for writeoffs, companies of all shapes and sizes take advantage of the tax code to write off various capital equipment purchases and other business expenses such as mileage driven on the job. It is foolish for any small businessperson NOT to take advantage of these same rules; they are then placing themselves at a severe competitive disadvantage and will consequently increase their likelihood of failing as a business.
Agreed- but my point isn't that it isn't "good" from a greed standpoint to take advantage of these things. My point is that the entire damned system that requires businesses to be based on profit is morally bankrupt. Thus, this isn't a point against the general premise, but rather proof of it.
If you want to complain about the workings of the capitalist system, I suggest you understand it first. It will either help you make better arguments or perhaps open your eyes to the reason it's been the most successful socioeconomic system by such a wide margin.
"Successful" being a relative term, of course. Based on greed, I'm willing to concede that it is successful. Based on morality, it's an abject failure. But so is anything else that allows human beings to exert power over each other. Oh yeah- and actually, it's corporatism that has the problem, because without corporations, a HUGE part of the problem simply goes away. Distributism is also a capitali
Ok, granted- but I'd point out that anybody stupid enough to run a server that they have to install software for and not know the implications of installing that software gets what they deserve. Anonymous FTP logons? Telnet sessions that don't require passwords? And you're still complaining about people breaking in? At what point do you take responsibility for your actions?
Well, that may be true of some folks, but, it is a very GOOD thing to do, if you want to work in the US, and keep more of your hard earned $$'s.
Uh, yeah, that's the very definition of being morally bankrupt. Taking something (working in the United States with a government-supported fiat currency, infrastructure, and economy) and not being willing to pay for it. But yes- from the point of view of greed being good, I completely agree.
For example, an "S" corporation, which I have formed, allows you to write off a ton of things used in the course of your business. Also, you can more easily contract to other corporations rather than just try to 1099 with them. They feel much more cozy about a corp to corp contract....not as easily sued for not paying benefits, etc.
Funny, I'd call that second a major downside- that it allows other corporations to take advantage of you...
Also, you can keep from paying the insipid FICA and medicare on all of your earnings. You pay yourself a small, 'reasonable' salary....and you pay employement taxes on them...grant it you do have to pay both halves...employer ane employee, but, only on what you pay yourself as salary. The rest of the money is just taxed normally to you as if falls through the corporation to you in the end....
Yep. Thus removing the money the government needs to protect you from such things as foreign invasion.
Say your billing for $75/hr...that's approx. $140,400/yr. the corp collects on you. So, pay yourself a salary of maybe $35K...employment taxes only apply to that $35K.
Yep, thus freeloading off of other taxpayers for the rest of your taxes.
This is simplified of course...but, you look at that, and all the things you can write off...it adds up in a big way. And if you are incorporated, is all perfectly legal...just keep good records, and be honest. It is really about the only way today in the US, that you can earn decent money, and not have to pay it all back in the legislated wealth redistribution system...managed by the IRS.
Yep- you get to take advantage of all the benefits of that "legislated wealth redistribution system" for things like roads, not having to worry about Mexican Hordes invading and knocking down your house, etc, without paying for your fair share of it. Can you say "Freeloader"? I agree it's completely legal- that's not the point. The point is that becoming a corporation allows you to avoid your responsibility as a citizen of the United States- not just for lawsuits, but for a lot of other stuff as well.
I guess you could point out that you didn't ask to live here and be a citizen- many people didn't, they were just born here- but once you start using public infrastructure to earn money, heck, once you start relying on the value of a stable money supply to earn money, society has a right to request payment for that service. We do so through taxes.
So I guess, in conclusion, I'd like to say thank you for proving my point- that incorporating just allows people to skip out on being personally responsible for what they do.
yes, but it often goes to the claiment in this type of case, almost irregardless of how frivilous the claim is.
Yep, you can't get blood out of a stone though- lawyers aren't idiots and want to be paid too.
and even if they don't win, they can often foot drag enough to cost you a fair lot in legal fees, which if you're a tiny mom&pop store, can drive you out of bussiness.
It would be stupid for any lawyer to be involved in that one- tiny mom&pop stores don't have enough assets to even pay the legal fees of the claimant. Which is why, for the most part, these frivolous lawsuits always name at least one deep-pocket defendant- mom&pop store + company that shipped them the bannana the peel came from, that sort of thing. At which point, mom&pop store should simply sit back and act as their own lawyer- saving the legal fees- and depend on Chiquita to pay the real legal bills and defeat the lawsuit.
But I'd also point out that if it wasn't for corporations to begin with, there would be no deep pocket defendants for such lawyers to prey upon.
One suspects that the Gen X'ers aren't succeeding simply because they suffer from the affliction of Hyper-consumerism whereas most corporations do not, one suspects that Corporations are in reality the next step in the evolution of Gen X'ers.:)
I agree- though I'd point out these days hyperconsumerism means trying to juggle the costs of housing, health care, and food.
I think that if their actions were criminal then they should be open to a lawsuit and jail time.
The problem is that articles of incorporation for limited liability can't tell the difference- got to go to court for an intelligent decision.
Otherwise, people sue for silly crap and since we don't yet have the laws that state that the loser of a (frivolous) civil case pays all the court costs as they have across the pond, what he's doing is the next best thing.
While I have a tendency to agree- a wrong and a wrong just make a larger wrong.
Good thing you refered to the TRUE Stella Awards, or I would have jumped on you about that. I'd point out that if you get the newsletter- and there are several available at that site- very few of these end up getting a favorable judgement for the plaintiff. When they do, there's usually a reason WHY they do. Plus, the people who attract such lawsuits have to already be making an obscene profit- nobody sues the poor because they can't collect.
so, i hire someone who appears to be a smart, good person who then does something wrong or illegal and i get sued for it.
In a system without corporations, the person you hired would get sued for it unless you specifically ordered them to do it. If you ordered them to do it, you're as morally culpable as they are. If you didn't, you get your day in court to prove that you're not morally culpable. The danger of hiring people and having them use your name in business is that they may do something wrong or illegal; but that's the responsibility you take when you open a business, same as anybody else. If you get sued, well, that's a part of the cost of doing business, sorry.
Of course, the big point is that if you are on the hook for it, you're going to watch your employees one hell of a lot closer- to keep them from doing wrong and illegal things on company time.
the problem is morally bankrupt people. capitalism, socialism, communism all fail becuase of bad people.
True- and I'd say that somebody who creates a corporation merely to escape the consequences of their actions counts as a good example of being morally bankrupt.
But that is *exactly* what the article is suggesting: that under survival stress, primate brains going all the way back to the marmosets concentrate their learning entirely on subjects that help them survive and *nothing* else. This explains the phenomenon of "street smarts" in poor urban human populations, where somebody who completely failed at school and is unable to read nevertheless is able to survive, but wastes all their money on alcohol, drugs, and TV.
There is a large difference. I can see it when I compare the source code I write today to what I used to write before my layoff in 2001. I can see it in my political attitudes before 2000 and after. I can see it in my own abiliity to trust other human beings now, and in the growth of bigotry in my mind. I completely agree with this study- and I'd say that while postive stress can concentrate the mind on the task on hand, negative stress is extremely destructive to sanity.
Part of being a successful mindless cubicle drone is "actually UNDERSTANDING THE ASSIGNMENT and doing it". Part of being an academic is doing things for no reason other than to learn, or to do something new.
The purpose of having a degree is to earn a living- if you're just getting degrees to be having degrees you're going to end up either a Professor with Tenure or unmarried, alone, and under a bridge because you can't earn a real living.
Part of being an academic is doing things for no reason other than to learn, or to do something new.
I wish- but academics is falling to offshore outsourcing just like everything else, and with it, the harsh reality is that the world can no longer afford academics.
Maybe at whatever community college you attended this is a strategy for success, but at a real university "just doing it" gets you Cs.
Maybe in postgraduate programs- but last I looked, in computer science a Master's degree just guarantees that you will be unemployable compared to the IIT student with a Bachelor's degree who DOES know how to complete an assignment within spec.
I dunno, if port 139 is open... then port 139 is open. I should now be asked to second guess the owner of the machine?
The problem being that owners are stupid- and Port 139 is open *by default* on all versions of Windows prior to XPSP2. There might be nothing there- but there might be shared printers, files, and if Les Barker is to be believed, anger there.
I really think we need to shift the analogy a bit. A person who connects to a port and completes a TCP handshake has just made a connection to a process on the machine that was being made available.
Yes, true. Of course, an efficient port scan will only do 2/3rds of a TCP/IP handshake. (SYN, ACK, no Return ACK). That's how to catch a port scanner.
This is more akin to entering your enclosed porch to ring your doorbell (assuming your doorbell is on the inside of the porch, rare, but ive seen it) than it is to comming into your house. Hes there, he can ring the bell, or ask your butler (the deamon) for service etc.
True, though it's more like he can come inside the porch, ring the bell, and run. Annoying, yes. Illegal, no.
Its up to the deamon to turn them away now or grant them entrance. Now, if this was about compromising deamons, thats breaking in. I would contend that everything right up to the point of actually subverting an access control, is asinine to consider anything but innocuous.
Good students try to do more than is necessary so as to gain a real understanding of the situation.
In my experience, students that go beyond the assignment waste so much time going beyond the assingment that they get a bad grade on the assignment.
In this case- the server reports using the standard tool that it's running "Mighty Mouse Webserver (Linux Foo Distribution)", but the kid does the extra work and finds out that it's really "Apache 3.2 (Debian Linux)", which is the string he turns in. The undergraduate earning $2.50/hr in Bangalore who actually grades the assignment uses his own tool, and gets back "Mighty Mouse Webserver (Linux Foo Distribution)", at which point the assignment gets points taken off for having the wrong string.
A part of being a good student is actually UNDERSTANDING THE ASSIGNMENT and doing it.
Ok, so we have causes requiring an effect. The effect of the change in the form of the tree must have some cause. Would you go even further to say that if we see that the tree is very big and is still in one piece - that the tree was uprooted - we could conclude that it was not a guy with only an axe that knocked it over?
Barring a Paul Bunyan hitting the tree with the blunt side of a single bladed axe in a rainstorm in Portland, sure....:-) But that's where the claims of scientists have a tendency to fall down- when we're talking about origins, we've got an uncaused event at the very begining.
Even if that were the case, you must still exist as a machine. In addition, if that were the case, where do those rules come from and where does the machine come from? I think what you're talking about is the concept of free will, yes?
Actually, I'm talking about the problem with comming to conclusions with imperfect, inaccurate, or incomplete information- it's fine to come to such conclusions, but you've got to stay open to the idea that your conclusions may very well be tainted, and that the process of coming to such conclusion bears a lot of resemblance to religious mythology, which is another form of coming to conclusions without complete evidence.
Does not an illusion imply a subjective perception? If there is a subjective perception, there must be a perceptor, which would be a mind. If there is an illusion, does that not also imply a reality that is not percieved? So even if we cannot perceive reality, we can be sure that it exists, right?
No, in fact, we can't be sure of anything at all- we're making conclusions without having complete information. We can believe in reality. We can have faith that it exists. We can have moral certainty that it exists- but we can't have absolute certainty because our brains are simply incapable of it.
But you did, you said this a few posts ago... Which is the core of my point- absolute certainty doesn't exist for human beings, nor reality. Have I misunderstood what you said?
I think what you're missing here is the word ABSOLUTE. Working theories and models are fine- but it's important to remember that absolute certainty doesn't exist for human beings. Because of this, certainty is always a problem. It doesn't matter WHO is certain- a certain scientist is just as dangerous as any other cult.
I have been inside a cloud while in a plane, so I know that it is a collection of something. The name that represents that something is water molecules. And when you take one collection of something and add it to another collection of that something, you end up with a collection of something that is larger than the two that were added together. Mathematics is how that relationship is quantified. Two somethings added to two somethings makes four somethings. It doesn't matter what those somethings are, or even if they exist.
The point isn't that mathematics is wrong- the point is that just because the mathematics is right does not make the model any closer to reality than the guy who says that clouds are made up of angels drinking beer who piss on us.
So you define a "right" answer as one that is consistent with the available evidence, and a "correct" answer as one that is absolutely true, is that right?
Well, there's another important step to being right- you also have to be consistent with the logical system you and your audience is thinking in. And I'd also say absolutely correct, also known as sure, is outside of our capability as human beings or machines made by human beings. Our only evidence comes through our senses- and those senses have been shown to lie to us in the past.
It seems to me that if the person who thought the elephant is a rope examined the elephant further he would realize he came to an incorrect conclusion and change his conclusion to fit with all the evidence he has available. Perhaps he would still be incorrect, but he wo
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And worse yet- there's nothing India wants anymore. Their basic trade theory- trade only what they have in surplus and keep everything else for themselves- serves them very well. I just talked to our dear intern about this- she said the last time she went home to Hydrabad, she thought she had picked out novel and unique gifts- but her relatives already had them all.
Besides- what the hell could we make here to sell to India that China can't make for 1/100th the labor cost?
You miss a key point: this empirical observation lacks *independent* verification. Plus, you have a real freaking strange definition of empirical.
Only if it's a religion of a single person does it not have independant verification- every convert to a religion independantly verifies that religion, or else they wouldn't convert.
Funny how few people who end up supporting, say, Christian beliefs, came to those beliefs without influence from a parent, preacher, missionary, or other source of information specifically crafted to instill a particular set of beliefs in others.
Funny how few people who end up supporting, say, the Scientific Method, came to that belief without influence from a parent, teacher, or some other source of information specirically crafted to instill a particular set of beliefs in others. EVERY form of knowledge we have as a human culture follows THAT pattern.
How many people, through private revelation, come up, through that revelation *alone*, with the doctrine of transubstantiation? Or the Trinity?
How many people, through private revelation, come up, through that revelation *alone* with the doctrine of theory and experimentation? NONE. It took centuries to develop those methods and doctrines- Trinity came to us through the councilar method for instance, as did transsubstantiation.
I can do scientific experiments to determine, say, the speed of light, and I get results that match the handbook without having to peek at the value first.
Can you design the experiment from starting with the rock without any help or apparatus from the outside? I doubt it strongly. You take advantage of the work of others in every experiment you do.
Whereas if I want to know Catholic doctrine, I have to pull out the catechism and read it.
Heck, if you want to know the speed of light, you need to refer to a book to get several definitions first- the definition of light, of a second, of distance.
Or, if I meditate by myself, I find their doctrine on homosexuality to be stupid.
Just as I find your example to be stupid- you don't get the speed of light by meditating by yourself either.
How is that empirical?
The very fact that there is more than one person who DOES find their doctrines on life issues to be consistent within those doctrines, is empirical.
Funny, those "elves" respond to magnetic fields in remarkably consistent ways.
All myths respond to their input conditions in consistent ways. If they didn't, they wouldn't have the longevity to become myths- they'd just be stories that your father told you when you were young that you don't tell to your children because they don't have any application to your life.
Physics fucking *works*. It is no accident that the transistor, LCD, CRT, laser diode, etc., etc., all arose in the twentieth century, and nothing *at all* like them were developed earlier.
All religions work. If they didn't, they wouldn't have any adherants. But actually, you've missed out on some very interesting archeology over the last 50 years if you think "nothing *at all* like them were developed earlier."
I hadn't heard of that- but even so, if no corporations are allowed and there are no rich people, who would you sue to get the payout?
This is the same logical misstep as before. If everything we believe in is a myth, then believing that everything is a myth is also a myth.
Exactly right! You're getting there. It's obvious that the probelm is equating a myth with a lie- it isn't. A myth is just a story that comes to a conclusion with incomplete data.
But how do you know that our sensory perception is tainted?
Because it's lied in the past.
Besides, you've already said that if you can see a tree, you know that it exists. How can you know that tree exists if your sense of sight is tainted?
You don't. You don't know anything. Knowledge is impossible.
How do you walk across the street without getting run over?
You don't.
I don't know about you, but I use my eyes and ears to determine when it's safe to cross the street quite often, and they haven't been wrong yet.
Mine have been in the past. I've had some very near misses and even time in the hospital because of this. Same with driving. Nothing is perfect.
An elephant is hardly infinite.
It is in comparison to the blind man. Just as reality is in comparison to us.
Besides, didn't you say that mathematics is not a source of truth?
Yep- it's just another model. In the end, that's all we have, a collection of models we believe and have faith in. We're not equiped to have anything else. We're not equipped to have knowlege, only faith.
You're talking about having insufficient evidence, not how that evidence is gathered. I was talking about sensory perceptions.
It's all the same. Some people in Tripoli in 1986 remember seeing a mushroom cloud over the palace. Some people in Tripoli in 1988 remember seeing the mushroom cloud. Some people in Tripoli don't remember seeing the mushroom cloud in 1986 or 1988, but only saw the palace destroyed. Nobody knows the actual truth about this incident, or even the actual year or the cause of the bombing for sure, though it was probably related to terrorism of one form or another.
Then how do you know that our senses are wrong?
We don't. We don't KNOW anything. Knowledge is impossible. We can believe. We can have faith. We can inform that faith based on what we think the evidence is. But we can never KNOW.
Great, so we can infer characteristics of the cause by observing the effect. I think this conversation started with something about black holes being a myth. Well if we can see movements of stars and light as an effect of a cause that is very small and has a huge gravitational pull, then that matches with the characteristics of what is called a black hole. So I don't understand what the problem is with astronomers thinking there are black holes out there in space when they can see evidence for them. As for what you say about origins, that's only a problem for those with a materialistic worldview. For myself, I don't think the origin of the universe is an uncaused effect, but is the effect of a cause transcendant to time and space.
;) How can we know our information is imperfect, innaccurate, or incomplete? To me that premise seems absurd. Another problem with that proposition is that the only way to know that our information is imperfect is to compare it to information that is perfect. The only way to know that our information is inaccurate is to compare it to information that is accurate.
Actually- it all started as an attempt to use the second meaning of the word "myth" to show that the separation of Church and State is ridiculous- because EVERYTHING we believe in is a myth. We can't have evidence without myths.
I don't think you answered my other two questions
Or a third way is to realize that our very sensory apparatus taints whatever we look at to the point that our information can never be accurate.
Again, this is an absurd statement. How can you be sure that we can't be sure of anything?
I can't- but what I can be sure about is that my eyes, my nose, and my memories have lied to me in the past- and thus I can't trust them.
Only evidence comes through our senses? That doesn't seem to be a conclusion arrived at from sensory evidence, is it? Besides that, our senses can be fooled, yes, but I think that's different from them lying. There is a difference between being dishonest, and being naive.
From the standpoint of accuracy, there is no difference- in that we can't tell the difference between being dishonest and being naive.
But if we don't know what it is, how do we know that we can't see the whole elephant?
Mathematical set theory- the finite cannot encompass the infinite.
I am not aware of anything that is not real that makes me perceive anything at all. How is this possible?
Well, parallel universes aren't real- but there is an argument over how many nuclear weapons the United States has used in the last 50 years (someplace between 2-50,000 depending on what you think a nuclear weapon is, and what timelines you remember).
Even illusions are caused by real things. A desert mirage of an oasis is not real, but it is caused by heat waves in the air which are real.
The mind is a tricky thing- we don't know the cause of how we think, let alone what could cause our senses to be wrong.
so a moral person leaves his/her assets open?
If you're opening a business, you're taking on the risks of that business. Want to minimize those risks? Keep the business small and your customers happy.
how it is immoral to protect my house, my children's college funds, etc?
There are other ways to protect those than incoporating.
the problem is that it wont stop with chiquita. i worked for a guy (an architect) where that the developer basically didnt want to pay his bill, so he found a reason to sue - everyone - involved in the project.
At which point your architect countersued for services rendered, correct?
luckily everything was frivilous. these are the people who use the 'shotgun approach' that i as an architect have to protect myself against. if you are just installing antivirus software there is probably a lot less you have to worry about.
The best way around that is to check out developers before you take them on as customers. Due dilligence before signing contracts- bet he had pulled that one in the past.
there would just be a group of deep pocket individuals who would lose everything and be out on the street with their families.
At which point, by definition, they no longer have deep pockets, yes? Like I said, suing the poor won't even pay the lawyer bills. Free market at work.
believe it or not, there are honest, moral capitalist people out there.
Yeah, but they all get sued out of business, destroyed by the parasites. If we let the system eat itself, we'd all be better off.
I would think anyone that bought a house would know the first thing to do is go out and change all the locks, yourself, by hand. You have no idea if the builder or if prevous owners kept keys.
I do- don't you? Same with used cars.
Yet few people do this, because they just don't bother. This nature extends to many other actions. Perhaps it shouldn't but it does. My wireless network at home has the longest access code I could create - long enough that I had to walk it around to each machine on a USB stick because I couldn't accurately retype the numbers. But there are 2-3 other networks available from my house that are completely unprotected. Those people should set that stuff up, but they don't because they just don't know or assume it will be ok.
Where I run an open access point on purpose. It's down right now- I think *maybe* somebody got in and uploaded different firmware and I haven't had time to check- but when it was operating, it was set up properly for the job, blocking access to my wired LAN.
One of my desktop machines at work during college was an SGI Irix workstation. It turns out that, buried on page 43 of chapter 5 of documentation book 7, there was a list of default accounts (like a printer manager) that are automatically created with no passwords. Who knew? I didn't. But someone did when the rooted my machine. =( Fortunately my machine had nothing on it. Another Irix workstation, the one that was being used to demo a new movie-on-demand system to college kids in the dorms, was also rooted. It's user got in a lot more trouble, since the infiltrator got copies of all the movies.
Yeah, but look back at the original article- that wasn't the assignment.
Still- what the heck is a college doing with UNIX workstations that aren't locked down? Didn't your sysadmins read The Cookoo's Nest?
Sadly, not true. People routinely sue the poor to put them out of business. I'm sure you can figure out a number of reasons why someone would want to do this.
None that make sense if corporations aren't allowed- because countersuits are available.
What all of your comments completely miss is that dividends are still taxed just like normal income, at normal income rates depending upon your total income over the course of the year, just like anyone else's normal income. Someone with a corp, s-corp, llc, or other form of limited-liability legal organization structure still pays the same amount of income taxes as anyone else, if they want access to the earnings of that business.
There are more ways to use the earnings of a business than just paying them out as dividends if you are in control of that business. You can also use that money for self-improvement (giving yourself an eductation benefit), housing (by charging the buisness rent for your home office), equipment (by giving the business the newest ones and taking the depreciated-out surplus for personal use), etc. All sorts of interesting ways of doing it- the GGP poster is correct that there's a lot of tax avoidance to be gotten this way.
The difference comes in the way Social Security and Medicare witholdings are calculated. Given that both systems are helplessly broken beyond repair (especially in our current political climate where anyone with a potential solution is labeled a partisan hack), I have no problem with minimizing a person's contributions to either of those systems.
Well, even the both of those are used by just about any businessperson I can think of. Medicare, for instance, prevents epidemics from wiping out both your customers and your clients.
I myself, a young (27) professional engineer working for a large company, am forced to pay social security and medicare into systems out of which I will never see a single dime,
I disagree. Unless you have your grandparents living with you (and maybe even if you do) you're getting something out of the Social Security program. If you like not having to avoid people to avoid Tuberculosis, you've gotten something out of the Medicare program. Now admittedly, you're going to get a lot less out of these programs than a couple of generations ago, but hey, the same thing with the stock market or for that matter wages and salaries.
which is why I take responsibility for my own situation and shove the maximum amount I can into my 401K out of evey paycheck plus an additional roth IRA every year and manage it carefully using a well-thought-out, diversified, index-fund-based investment plan.
You remind me of me at 27- I thought so too until the recession of 2001 completely wiped out both my 401K and my Roth IRA. Both of these are just more corporate scams.
As for writeoffs, companies of all shapes and sizes take advantage of the tax code to write off various capital equipment purchases and other business expenses such as mileage driven on the job. It is foolish for any small businessperson NOT to take advantage of these same rules; they are then placing themselves at a severe competitive disadvantage and will consequently increase their likelihood of failing as a business.
Agreed- but my point isn't that it isn't "good" from a greed standpoint to take advantage of these things. My point is that the entire damned system that requires businesses to be based on profit is morally bankrupt. Thus, this isn't a point against the general premise, but rather proof of it.
If you want to complain about the workings of the capitalist system, I suggest you understand it first. It will either help you make better arguments or perhaps open your eyes to the reason it's been the most successful socioeconomic system by such a wide margin.
"Successful" being a relative term, of course. Based on greed, I'm willing to concede that it is successful. Based on morality, it's an abject failure. But so is anything else that allows human beings to exert power over each other. Oh yeah- and actually, it's corporatism that has the problem, because without corporations, a HUGE part of the problem simply goes away. Distributism is also a capitali
Ok, granted- but I'd point out that anybody stupid enough to run a server that they have to install software for and not know the implications of installing that software gets what they deserve. Anonymous FTP logons? Telnet sessions that don't require passwords? And you're still complaining about people breaking in? At what point do you take responsibility for your actions?
Well, that may be true of some folks, but, it is a very GOOD thing to do, if you want to work in the US, and keep more of your hard earned $$'s.
Uh, yeah, that's the very definition of being morally bankrupt. Taking something (working in the United States with a government-supported fiat currency, infrastructure, and economy) and not being willing to pay for it. But yes- from the point of view of greed being good, I completely agree.
For example, an "S" corporation, which I have formed, allows you to write off a ton of things used in the course of your business. Also, you can more easily contract to other corporations rather than just try to 1099 with them. They feel much more cozy about a corp to corp contract....not as easily sued for not paying benefits, etc.
Funny, I'd call that second a major downside- that it allows other corporations to take advantage of you...
Also, you can keep from paying the insipid FICA and medicare on all of your earnings. You pay yourself a small, 'reasonable' salary....and you pay employement taxes on them...grant it you do have to pay both halves...employer ane employee, but, only on what you pay yourself as salary. The rest of the money is just taxed normally to you as if falls through the corporation to you in the end....
Yep. Thus removing the money the government needs to protect you from such things as foreign invasion.
Say your billing for $75/hr...that's approx. $140,400/yr. the corp collects on you. So, pay yourself a salary of maybe $35K...employment taxes only apply to that $35K.
Yep, thus freeloading off of other taxpayers for the rest of your taxes.
This is simplified of course...but, you look at that, and all the things you can write off...it adds up in a big way. And if you are incorporated, is all perfectly legal...just keep good records, and be honest. It is really about the only way today in the US, that you can earn decent money, and not have to pay it all back in the legislated wealth redistribution system...managed by the IRS.
Yep- you get to take advantage of all the benefits of that "legislated wealth redistribution system" for things like roads, not having to worry about Mexican Hordes invading and knocking down your house, etc, without paying for your fair share of it. Can you say "Freeloader"? I agree it's completely legal- that's not the point. The point is that becoming a corporation allows you to avoid your responsibility as a citizen of the United States- not just for lawsuits, but for a lot of other stuff as well.
I guess you could point out that you didn't ask to live here and be a citizen- many people didn't, they were just born here- but once you start using public infrastructure to earn money, heck, once you start relying on the value of a stable money supply to earn money, society has a right to request payment for that service. We do so through taxes.
So I guess, in conclusion, I'd like to say thank you for proving my point- that incorporating just allows people to skip out on being personally responsible for what they do.
yes, but it often goes to the claiment in this type of case, almost irregardless of how frivilous the claim is.
Yep, you can't get blood out of a stone though- lawyers aren't idiots and want to be paid too.
and even if they don't win, they can often foot drag enough to cost you a fair lot in legal fees, which if you're a tiny mom&pop store, can drive you out of bussiness.
It would be stupid for any lawyer to be involved in that one- tiny mom&pop stores don't have enough assets to even pay the legal fees of the claimant. Which is why, for the most part, these frivolous lawsuits always name at least one deep-pocket defendant- mom&pop store + company that shipped them the bannana the peel came from, that sort of thing. At which point, mom&pop store should simply sit back and act as their own lawyer- saving the legal fees- and depend on Chiquita to pay the real legal bills and defeat the lawsuit.
But I'd also point out that if it wasn't for corporations to begin with, there would be no deep pocket defendants for such lawyers to prey upon.
One suspects that the Gen X'ers aren't succeeding simply because they suffer from the affliction of Hyper-consumerism whereas most corporations do not, one suspects that Corporations are in reality the next step in the evolution of Gen X'ers. :)
I agree- though I'd point out these days hyperconsumerism means trying to juggle the costs of housing, health care, and food.
I think that if their actions were criminal then they should be open to a lawsuit and jail time.
The problem is that articles of incorporation for limited liability can't tell the difference- got to go to court for an intelligent decision.
Otherwise, people sue for silly crap and since we don't yet have the laws that state that the loser of a (frivolous) civil case pays all the court costs as they have across the pond, what he's doing is the next best thing.
While I have a tendency to agree- a wrong and a wrong just make a larger wrong.
Good thing you refered to the TRUE Stella Awards, or I would have jumped on you about that. I'd point out that if you get the newsletter- and there are several available at that site- very few of these end up getting a favorable judgement for the plaintiff. When they do, there's usually a reason WHY they do. Plus, the people who attract such lawsuits have to already be making an obscene profit- nobody sues the poor because they can't collect.
so, i hire someone who appears to be a smart, good person who then does something wrong or illegal and i get sued for it.
In a system without corporations, the person you hired would get sued for it unless you specifically ordered them to do it. If you ordered them to do it, you're as morally culpable as they are. If you didn't, you get your day in court to prove that you're not morally culpable. The danger of hiring people and having them use your name in business is that they may do something wrong or illegal; but that's the responsibility you take when you open a business, same as anybody else. If you get sued, well, that's a part of the cost of doing business, sorry.
Of course, the big point is that if you are on the hook for it, you're going to watch your employees one hell of a lot closer- to keep them from doing wrong and illegal things on company time.
the problem is morally bankrupt people. capitalism, socialism, communism all fail becuase of bad people.
True- and I'd say that somebody who creates a corporation merely to escape the consequences of their actions counts as a good example of being morally bankrupt.
Correcting the grammar:
Pretty much the same as your run of the mill Gen X'er, huh?
To which I reply: The difference is that your run of the mill Gen X'er is completely failing at it, where the corporations are succeeding.
But that is *exactly* what the article is suggesting: that under survival stress, primate brains going all the way back to the marmosets concentrate their learning entirely on subjects that help them survive and *nothing* else. This explains the phenomenon of "street smarts" in poor urban human populations, where somebody who completely failed at school and is unable to read nevertheless is able to survive, but wastes all their money on alcohol, drugs, and TV.
There is a large difference. I can see it when I compare the source code I write today to what I used to write before my layoff in 2001. I can see it in my political attitudes before 2000 and after. I can see it in my own abiliity to trust other human beings now, and in the growth of bigotry in my mind. I completely agree with this study- and I'd say that while postive stress can concentrate the mind on the task on hand, negative stress is extremely destructive to sanity.
Part of being a successful mindless cubicle drone is "actually UNDERSTANDING THE ASSIGNMENT and doing it". Part of being an academic is doing things for no reason other than to learn, or to do something new.
The purpose of having a degree is to earn a living- if you're just getting degrees to be having degrees you're going to end up either a Professor with Tenure or unmarried, alone, and under a bridge because you can't earn a real living.
Part of being an academic is doing things for no reason other than to learn, or to do something new.
I wish- but academics is falling to offshore outsourcing just like everything else, and with it, the harsh reality is that the world can no longer afford academics.
Maybe at whatever community college you attended this is a strategy for success, but at a real university "just doing it" gets you Cs.
Maybe in postgraduate programs- but last I looked, in computer science a Master's degree just guarantees that you will be unemployable compared to the IIT student with a Bachelor's degree who DOES know how to complete an assignment within spec.
I dunno, if port 139 is open... then port 139 is open. I should now be asked to second guess the owner of the machine?
The problem being that owners are stupid- and Port 139 is open *by default* on all versions of Windows prior to XPSP2. There might be nothing there- but there might be shared printers, files, and if Les Barker is to be believed, anger there.
I really think we need to shift the analogy a bit. A person who connects to a port and completes a TCP handshake has just made a connection to a process on the machine that was being made available.
Yes, true. Of course, an efficient port scan will only do 2/3rds of a TCP/IP handshake. (SYN, ACK, no Return ACK). That's how to catch a port scanner.
This is more akin to entering your enclosed porch to ring your doorbell (assuming your doorbell is on the inside of the porch, rare, but ive seen it) than it is to comming into your house. Hes there, he can ring the bell, or ask your butler (the deamon) for service etc.
True, though it's more like he can come inside the porch, ring the bell, and run. Annoying, yes. Illegal, no.
Its up to the deamon to turn them away now or grant them entrance. Now, if this was about compromising deamons, thats breaking in. I would contend that everything right up to the point of actually subverting an access control, is asinine to consider anything but innocuous.
I completely agree.
Good students try to do more than is necessary so as to gain a real understanding of the situation.
In my experience, students that go beyond the assignment waste so much time going beyond the assingment that they get a bad grade on the assignment.
In this case- the server reports using the standard tool that it's running "Mighty Mouse Webserver (Linux Foo Distribution)", but the kid does the extra work and finds out that it's really "Apache 3.2 (Debian Linux)", which is the string he turns in. The undergraduate earning $2.50/hr in Bangalore who actually grades the assignment uses his own tool, and gets back "Mighty Mouse Webserver (Linux Foo Distribution)", at which point the assignment gets points taken off for having the wrong string.
A part of being a good student is actually UNDERSTANDING THE ASSIGNMENT and doing it.
Ok, so we have causes requiring an effect. The effect of the change in the form of the tree must have some cause. Would you go even further to say that if we see that the tree is very big and is still in one piece - that the tree was uprooted - we could conclude that it was not a guy with only an axe that knocked it over?
Barring a Paul Bunyan hitting the tree with the blunt side of a single bladed axe in a rainstorm in Portland, sure....:-) But that's where the claims of scientists have a tendency to fall down- when we're talking about origins, we've got an uncaused event at the very begining.
Even if that were the case, you must still exist as a machine. In addition, if that were the case, where do those rules come from and where does the machine come from? I think what you're talking about is the concept of free will, yes?
Actually, I'm talking about the problem with comming to conclusions with imperfect, inaccurate, or incomplete information- it's fine to come to such conclusions, but you've got to stay open to the idea that your conclusions may very well be tainted, and that the process of coming to such conclusion bears a lot of resemblance to religious mythology, which is another form of coming to conclusions without complete evidence.
Does not an illusion imply a subjective perception? If there is a subjective perception, there must be a perceptor, which would be a mind. If there is an illusion, does that not also imply a reality that is not percieved? So even if we cannot perceive reality, we can be sure that it exists, right?
No, in fact, we can't be sure of anything at all- we're making conclusions without having complete information. We can believe in reality. We can have faith that it exists. We can have moral certainty that it exists- but we can't have absolute certainty because our brains are simply incapable of it.
But you did, you said this a few posts ago... Which is the core of my point- absolute certainty doesn't exist for human beings, nor reality. Have I misunderstood what you said?
I think what you're missing here is the word ABSOLUTE. Working theories and models are fine- but it's important to remember that absolute certainty doesn't exist for human beings. Because of this, certainty is always a problem. It doesn't matter WHO is certain- a certain scientist is just as dangerous as any other cult.
I have been inside a cloud while in a plane, so I know that it is a collection of something. The name that represents that something is water molecules. And when you take one collection of something and add it to another collection of that something, you end up with a collection of something that is larger than the two that were added together. Mathematics is how that relationship is quantified. Two somethings added to two somethings makes four somethings. It doesn't matter what those somethings are, or even if they exist.
The point isn't that mathematics is wrong- the point is that just because the mathematics is right does not make the model any closer to reality than the guy who says that clouds are made up of angels drinking beer who piss on us.
So you define a "right" answer as one that is consistent with the available evidence, and a "correct" answer as one that is absolutely true, is that right?
Well, there's another important step to being right- you also have to be consistent with the logical system you and your audience is thinking in. And I'd also say absolutely correct, also known as sure, is outside of our capability as human beings or machines made by human beings. Our only evidence comes through our senses- and those senses have been shown to lie to us in the past.
It seems to me that if the person who thought the elephant is a rope examined the elephant further he would realize he came to an incorrect conclusion and change his conclusion to fit with all the evidence he has available. Perhaps he would still be incorrect, but he wo