While I am not sure that I agree with the sentiment on religion (we all have our own ways of coping... religion isn't the worst), I think you pretty much got it with string theory. It's disingenuous to call it science. Calling it math would be more appropriate. As a matter of fact, if it must remain a priory because its assumptions are not testable, it must be math. Now calling it religion is probably not fitting the bill. It is still based on postulate-and-then-use-logic-to-deduce paradigm. As opposed to religions' vision-followed-by-political-expedience paradigm. For anyone who wants to argue that "religion uses logic, too," I say "fair enough." But math uses only logic to come up with conclusions. And math can be based on arbitrary assumptions from which those conclusions are drawn (the only restriction is non-self-contradiction). Whereas religion will attempt to use plausible assumptions and then draw arbitrary (from the point of view of logical consistency) conclusions.
It's just kowtowing to religious conservatives who are scared of the truth. Personally, I bet that Utah is behind it because they didn't want everyone to know how much porn they were buying.
"...how much coffee they were..."
There. Fixed it for you. Trust me. If you know Mormons, they are just as offended by coffee as they
by porn.
they think that the site implies relationship with goldman despite the 666 at the end? are they then implying that 666 is an appropriate manner to label them?
making the efficency increasing discovey that allows you to fire everyone (not bad in itself)
You'd think so because it frees up people's time to do other things. But it's simply not how society takes it. In 1850 80% of the population were farmers. By 1950 only 5% were farmers. The biggest contributing factor? Fertilizers. Yet, around 1900 everyone seemed to be of the opinion that "banks were ruining" farmers. So banks were vilified.
And newspapers are trying to vilify craigslist right now for "destroying their profits".
Free market is not a religion. It's not ethical or unethical. It's a natural force resulting from the way human being are. Any attempt to subvert it does nothing but change price points (see "war on drugs"). Adam Smith was not preaching a religion -- he was conducting a scientific investigation of how things were happening in the world around him.
The untruth will not become true just because majority decides that it is more ethical.
You were allowed to use resources, equipment and knowledge provided by the society.
Whitewash. The "share" of the resources that you got for free is the same as the share everyone else got. You didn't get any more protection from the military nor any more access to public streets. The extra resources (better education, access to more financing, access to anything extra really) is something you paid for along the way. If you took those expenditures, you took risks. The rewards for risks are yours (or at least most of them).
You are ignoring the facts that many private sector jobs depend almost entirely on public financing (defense contractors) and that almost all of the private sector depends to some extent on public expenditures (infrastructure, schools, hospitals, housing).
Defense is less than 5% of the US GDP. If you want to realize just how insignificant those jobs are, count how many of the fortune 500 are defense contractors (a rough look at the list tells me that it's way under 10%). Other sectors (infrastructure, schools, hospitals, etc.) have to go through expenditures regardless of whether they are in public or private hands.
It's interesting then how many technologies are invented by universities are other government-funded bodies, even in the US.
That's an often repeated lie. Academic research is not interest in providing anything "useful". It's only interested in providing stuff that is "interesting". Very little useful research comes out of academia. The statistics that say otherwise use false measures. For instance, they count the number of "papers published" as a criterion for amount of research produced. But 99.99% of all papers never lead to anything useful. Whereas, corporations have no interest in publishing papers. They only have interest in creating stuff that people want so much that they are willing to part with their money for it. So they are forced to created actual treatments (and if they get lucky cures) for diseases.
Top 1% of earners in the US pay 40% of all of the government's expenses (ie, they provide 40% of
the tax revenue). If they paid their fair share, they would be paying 1%. "fair" means of equal
value. They pay more than others. I don't think you want them to pay their fair share.
Actually, if you read Atlas Shrugged carefully, you'll see how the CEO fit into Rand's model. Towards the end of the falling apart of the looting society the people who were top earners were the people with the closest access to political power. CEO's main function is generally managing interactions with power structures (politicians, courts, unions) more than actual production. The fact that this interaction is more imperative to company's survival (and profitability) than actual production is an indication of how regressed society has become.
I still must attack one assumption that you and GGP are making here: that how much you get paid should be a function of how hard you work. That's just counterproductive, because it provides an incentive for working harder, and a disincentive for working smarter.
Welcome to modernity. Increased efficiency leads to bankruptcy of a large fraction of people involved in old ways of doing things. Those who profit from being the first to work smarter are eyed with jealousy. Those who cease enabling the old ways of doing things are seen as plain villainous.
Very highly paid people do very little work for each dollar they earn. This is not my opinion, it is simple mathematics.
It's also very irrelevant. The money you earn is an indication of how useful the collective "others" deem you to be. Anyone who makes billions must be doing something useful for a lot of people (or fooling a lot of people into thinking so). In the first case, it's hardly justified to use an axe, in the latter, the courts should be enough. Like it or not, people don't get paid because it's "the right thing to do", but rather so that they would continue to do the work they are doing. If a CEO isn't worth his salary, those who pay it should stop paying (and, no, he doesn't pay his own salary unless he owns 50% of the company + 1 share).
agreed. terrorism is the act of spreading fear and intimidation. unfortunately, nowadays this word is being used for anything the gov't doesn't like.
Pretty sure you dropped "via random acts of violence" from your definition of "terrorism". And I am not sure why anyone
would link to Wikipedia for a definition... Wikipedia is a moderated collection of opinions -- not facts.
Ok, I probably have to take that back. There is a single profession more indicative of anti-social behavior. Approximately 10% of all Catholic priests in the US at molested a child. The rate of recidivism among police officers is lower.
That anyone wearing a police uniform and a badge is likely to exhibit violent and anti-social behavior. A police officer
is much more likely to attack, insult or otherwise harm and unarmed civilian than a person of any single ethnic group, any
single religious affiliation or any person involved in any other profession.
I'm going to personally inundate the world of warcraft forums with links to that website.
Oh, c'mon. Sure, insulting him will land you in jail, but is that really as bad as having to listen to WoW
players' comments?
Find a way to get him addicted to WoW, that would be a punishment indeed. WoW's best service to humanity is keeping the worst of humanity locked up in a Sisyphean task.
But if he was accusing police officers of breaking the law, then it is his duty as a citizen
We don't have "Good Samaritan" duties. So, no.
Bloggers aren't journalists.
They are. They report what they observe to whoever would read it and offer their opinions to whomever would read them. That's journalism. If you attempt to define it any more narrowly, then none of the press of the time of the writing of the Constitution will meet your standard.
They don't have to live up to any standards of ethical journalism, and so they don't get protection for their sources.
Possibly true, except for the "so" part. It just doesn't follow. Traditional ("orthodox" is probably a better term) media is often unscrupulous about their fact checking. It doesn't mean their informants lose protection. Both bloggers and traditional media have exactly the same reasons for providing accurate information: possibility of being sued for libel if they lie intentionally and egregiously and/or loss of readership if the quality of their content doesn't meet the demands of their readers.
So the all or none dichotomy was implied in the comment I replied to.
I see what your counter-argument says. But I think your original post would have been more accurate if you asked if the post to which you replied was arguing for making all subjects elective. I realize that you probably were being colloquial in your choice of words. But, I guess, that's always the problem with being colloquial. The most straight-forward reading of what you said was that you accused the original poster of arguing for no-education rather than a system of having no requirements (ie, the system of making all courses elective).
The "all" vs "none" quantity in the argument is the number of people that are to be taught a particular $X. The original author did not insist that no one should be taught $X if it can be shown that some people have no interest in $X. He did, however, imply that "not all" should be taught $X given that some have not interest in $X. Your question (as to whether the original author's assertion, when extended to subjects other than $X, must mean that kids should not be "taught any such $X") implied that the only alternative to teaching $X to ALL was to teach them to NONE. This implication is guilty of the above-mentioned flaw. I, too, am a professional mathematician. I am only aware of formal logic on informal level, however. Thanks for reminding me what a universal quantifier is.
Actually, "Not everyone is interested in $X" is a true statement for all values of X. Are you proposing not to teach kids anything?
You are guilty of a common logical flaw. The logical opposite of "everyone" (ie, "not everyone") does not happen to be equal to "no one". To be more precise (or more arcane if it's outside of your background), you asserted that "not all" is equal to an empty set. Logically that's not true. For example, if one sheep is black and ninety nine are white, then not all sheep are white. But it doesn't mean that all sheep are not white (99 of them are).
But I'll say it just a reminder of where the actual statutory damages point of view comes from.
Penalty payments are not meant to compensate for the damage done. They are meant to be compensation for the damage adjusted for the probability of getting caught. That's why they are penalties rather than simple compensations. For example, how much does a municipality lose when someone doesn't put coins in a parking meter? About $1. How much is the ticket for not putting the coins? I would say (the hypothetical national average is) around $50. This would mean that the municipalities are assuming that only 1 in 50 offenders get caught. The same goes for the penalties (fines, statutory damages, or whatever else you want to call them) for copyright infringement. If the penalty is $150,000 for 1 instance of infringement (that is tantamount to stealing $0.99), then we (as a nation) are going on the assumption that only 1 in 150,000 copyright violators get caught.
Please, don't try to correct me on this assumption. I don't care if it's right or wrong. I am only trying to explain here what is the logic behind this point of view. I am not supporting or condemning the view itself.
If you disagree with the assumption that 1 in 150,000 violators get caught (as I suspect most people here do), the correct venue to express thit disagreement is to inform your elected legislators (senator and congressman). Legislature's primary mandate is to turn the collective wisdom of the people into law. I am sure, you'll find a myriad of different ways to poke fun at that statement. But read it again. The statement was about the primary mandate of the legislature -- not about its actual performance. As for the question "what's the point of contacting your senator?", it's all you can do.
Slashdot Mirror
While I am not sure that I agree with the sentiment on religion (we all have our own ways of coping... religion isn't the worst), I think you pretty much got it with string theory. It's disingenuous to call it science. Calling it math would be more appropriate. As a matter of fact, if it must remain a priory because its assumptions are not testable, it must be math. Now calling it religion is probably not fitting the bill. It is still based on postulate-and-then-use-logic-to-deduce paradigm. As opposed to religions' vision-followed-by-political-expedience paradigm. For anyone who wants to argue that "religion uses logic, too," I say "fair enough." But math uses only logic to come up with conclusions. And math can be based on arbitrary assumptions from which those conclusions are drawn (the only restriction is non-self-contradiction). Whereas religion will attempt to use plausible assumptions and then draw arbitrary (from the point of view of logical consistency) conclusions.
...math for a complex 3-D system ...
was probably meant to be "complicated". "Complex 3d" means C^3... or (R+iR)^3 if you prefer.
It's just kowtowing to religious conservatives who are scared of the truth. Personally, I bet that Utah is behind it because they didn't want everyone to know how much porn they were buying.
"...how much coffee they were..."
There. Fixed it for you. Trust me. If you know Mormons, they are just as offended by coffee as they by porn.
they think that the site implies relationship with goldman despite the 666 at the end? are they then implying that 666 is an appropriate manner to label them?
making the efficency increasing discovey that allows you to fire everyone (not bad in itself)
You'd think so because it frees up people's time to do other things. But it's simply not how society takes it. In 1850 80% of the population were farmers. By 1950 only 5% were farmers. The biggest contributing factor? Fertilizers. Yet, around 1900 everyone seemed to be of the opinion that "banks were ruining" farmers. So banks were vilified.
And newspapers are trying to vilify craigslist right now for "destroying their profits".
Free market is not a religion. It's not ethical or unethical. It's a natural force resulting from the way human being are. Any attempt to subvert it does nothing but change price points (see "war on drugs"). Adam Smith was not preaching a religion -- he was conducting a scientific investigation of how things were happening in the world around him.
The untruth will not become true just because majority decides that it is more ethical.
You were allowed to use resources, equipment and knowledge provided by the society.
Whitewash. The "share" of the resources that you got for free is the same as the share everyone else got. You didn't get any more protection from the military nor any more access to public streets. The extra resources (better education, access to more financing, access to anything extra really) is something you paid for along the way. If you took those expenditures, you took risks. The rewards for risks are yours (or at least most of them).
You are ignoring the facts that many private sector jobs depend almost entirely on public financing (defense contractors) and that almost all of the private sector depends to some extent on public expenditures (infrastructure, schools, hospitals, housing).
Defense is less than 5% of the US GDP. If you want to realize just how insignificant those jobs are, count how many of the fortune 500 are defense contractors (a rough look at the list tells me that it's way under 10%). Other sectors (infrastructure, schools, hospitals, etc.) have to go through expenditures regardless of whether they are in public or private hands.
It's interesting then how many technologies are invented by universities are other government-funded bodies, even in the US.
That's an often repeated lie. Academic research is not interest in providing anything "useful". It's only interested in providing stuff that is "interesting". Very little useful research comes out of academia. The statistics that say otherwise use false measures. For instance, they count the number of "papers published" as a criterion for amount of research produced. But 99.99% of all papers never lead to anything useful. Whereas, corporations have no interest in publishing papers. They only have interest in creating stuff that people want so much that they are willing to part with their money for it. So they are forced to created actual treatments (and if they get lucky cures) for diseases.
What's so troubling about paying your fair share?
Top 1% of earners in the US pay 40% of all of the government's expenses (ie, they provide 40% of the tax revenue). If they paid their fair share, they would be paying 1%. "fair" means of equal value. They pay more than others. I don't think you want them to pay their fair share.
I think you confuse freedom with free lunch. Look up "free as in beer" vs "free as in speech".
Actually, if you read Atlas Shrugged carefully, you'll see how the CEO fit into Rand's model. Towards the end of the falling apart of the looting society the people who were top earners were the people with the closest access to political power. CEO's main function is generally managing interactions with power structures (politicians, courts, unions) more than actual production. The fact that this interaction is more imperative to company's survival (and profitability) than actual production is an indication of how regressed society has become.
I still must attack one assumption that you and GGP are making here: that how much you get paid should be a function of how hard you work. That's just counterproductive, because it provides an incentive for working harder, and a disincentive for working smarter.
Welcome to modernity. Increased efficiency leads to bankruptcy of a large fraction of people involved in old ways of doing things. Those who profit from being the first to work smarter are eyed with jealousy. Those who cease enabling the old ways of doing things are seen as plain villainous.
Very highly paid people do very little work for each dollar they earn. This is not my opinion, it is simple mathematics.
It's also very irrelevant. The money you earn is an indication of how useful the collective "others" deem you to be. Anyone who makes billions must be doing something useful for a lot of people (or fooling a lot of people into thinking so). In the first case, it's hardly justified to use an axe, in the latter, the courts should be enough. Like it or not, people don't get paid because it's "the right thing to do", but rather so that they would continue to do the work they are doing. If a CEO isn't worth his salary, those who pay it should stop paying (and, no, he doesn't pay his own salary unless he owns 50% of the company + 1 share).
agreed. terrorism is the act of spreading fear and intimidation. unfortunately, nowadays this word is being used for anything the gov't doesn't like.
Pretty sure you dropped "via random acts of violence" from your definition of "terrorism". And I am not sure why anyone would link to Wikipedia for a definition... Wikipedia is a moderated collection of opinions -- not facts.
Ok, I probably have to take that back. There is a single profession more indicative of anti-social behavior. Approximately 10% of all Catholic priests in the US at molested a child. The rate of recidivism among police officers is lower.
That anyone wearing a police uniform and a badge is likely to exhibit violent and anti-social behavior. A police officer is much more likely to attack, insult or otherwise harm and unarmed civilian than a person of any single ethnic group, any single religious affiliation or any person involved in any other profession.
I'm going to personally inundate the world of warcraft forums with links to that website.
Oh, c'mon. Sure, insulting him will land you in jail, but is that really as bad as having to listen to WoW players' comments?
Find a way to get him addicted to WoW, that would be a punishment indeed. WoW's best service to humanity is keeping the worst of humanity locked up in a Sisyphean task.
can now officially welcome it's new internet-friendly overlords
Trade and the Internet have both done far more to render the traditional (pre WWII) strategies of war obsolete then have nuclear weapons.
This is blatantly not true. There was more international trade per capita in 1900 than there is today.
But if he was accusing police officers of breaking the law, then it is his duty as a citizen
We don't have "Good Samaritan" duties. So, no.
Bloggers aren't journalists.
They are. They report what they observe to whoever would read it and offer their opinions to whomever would read them. That's journalism. If you attempt to define it any more narrowly, then none of the press of the time of the writing of the Constitution will meet your standard.
They don't have to live up to any standards of ethical journalism, and so they don't get protection for their sources.
Possibly true, except for the "so" part. It just doesn't follow. Traditional ("orthodox" is probably a better term) media is often unscrupulous about their fact checking. It doesn't mean their informants lose protection. Both bloggers and traditional media have exactly the same reasons for providing accurate information: possibility of being sued for libel if they lie intentionally and egregiously and/or loss of readership if the quality of their content doesn't meet the demands of their readers.
So the all or none dichotomy was implied in the comment I replied to.
I see what your counter-argument says. But I think your original post would have been more accurate if you asked if the post to which you replied was arguing for making all subjects elective. I realize that you probably were being colloquial in your choice of words. But, I guess, that's always the problem with being colloquial. The most straight-forward reading of what you said was that you accused the original poster of arguing for no-education rather than a system of having no requirements (ie, the system of making all courses elective).
The "all" vs "none" quantity in the argument is the number of people that are to be taught a particular $X. The original author did not insist that no one should be taught $X if it can be shown that some people have no interest in $X. He did, however, imply that "not all" should be taught $X given that some have not interest in $X. Your question (as to whether the original author's assertion, when extended to subjects other than $X, must mean that kids should not be "taught any such $X") implied that the only alternative to teaching $X to ALL was to teach them to NONE. This implication is guilty of the above-mentioned flaw. I, too, am a professional mathematician. I am only aware of formal logic on informal level, however. Thanks for reminding me what a universal quantifier is.
Actually, "Not everyone is interested in $X" is a true statement for all values of X. Are you proposing not to teach kids anything?
You are guilty of a common logical flaw. The logical opposite of "everyone" (ie, "not everyone") does not happen to be equal to "no one". To be more precise (or more arcane if it's outside of your background), you asserted that "not all" is equal to an empty set. Logically that's not true. For example, if one sheep is black and ninety nine are white, then not all sheep are white. But it doesn't mean that all sheep are not white (99 of them are).
But I'll say it just a reminder of where the actual statutory damages point of view comes from.
Penalty payments are not meant to compensate for the damage done. They are meant to be compensation for the damage adjusted for the probability of getting caught. That's why they are penalties rather than simple compensations. For example, how much does a municipality lose when someone doesn't put coins in a parking meter? About $1. How much is the ticket for not putting the coins? I would say (the hypothetical national average is) around $50. This would mean that the municipalities are assuming that only 1 in 50 offenders get caught. The same goes for the penalties (fines, statutory damages, or whatever else you want to call them) for copyright infringement. If the penalty is $150,000 for 1 instance of infringement (that is tantamount to stealing $0.99), then we (as a nation) are going on the assumption that only 1 in 150,000 copyright violators get caught.
Please, don't try to correct me on this assumption. I don't care if it's right or wrong. I am only trying to explain here what is the logic behind this point of view. I am not supporting or condemning the view itself.
If you disagree with the assumption that 1 in 150,000 violators get caught (as I suspect most people here do), the correct venue to express thit disagreement is to inform your elected legislators (senator and congressman). Legislature's primary mandate is to turn the collective wisdom of the people into law. I am sure, you'll find a myriad of different ways to poke fun at that statement. But read it again. The statement was about the primary mandate of the legislature -- not about its actual performance. As for the question "what's the point of contacting your senator?", it's all you can do.
I feel the need (on which I'll currently act) to point out that "whatcouldpossiblygowrong"=definitionofFUD.