Actually most philosophy before the 21st century was done by people who took vows of poverty and sat in caves or monasteries and thought about these problems.
Most philosophy? Let's set aside the pre-Socratics. Socrates' level of wealth is largely unknown. Plato had many distinguished relatives and can be surmised to come from an upper-class background. Aristotle was an aristocrat. Among the Stoics were Roman senators and emperors. Descartes, Locke, Hume, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche (as well as almost all of their contemporaries) were all born into the upper class (which was a prerequisite to go to university and study philosophy, as opposed to working in the coal mines or farming or whatever). The philosophers of the 19th and 20th century were primarily university professors, which has become at least a middle-class living, if not better at certain points. So who does that leave? A few of the Stoics and Epicureans, and many of the Medievals? And most of their work is (to put it bluntly) vague advice about how to live your life, completely-made-up (and yet very dramatic) cosmology, and bad proofs for the existence of God. Whereas the philosophy done primarily by people who DIDN'T live in caves and monestaries included: the foundations of modern science, almost all of logic, the entire tradition of analytic philosophy, almost all political philosophy...
People who think that 21st century science is the be-all and end-all of all knowledge display staggering amounts of hubris, especially since they are familiar with overzealous predictions like "everything that can be patented has been patented" and "there's a world market for maybe 5 computers".
True, but it's the best we have. It doesn't mean you can pass something off as "science fiction" when it has no basis in any sort of scientific knowledge or speculation. That's like saying, "Oh, in the future, we can genetically engineer orcs, and reanimate the dead with quantum mechanics, and use as-yet-unknown properties of energy as weapons, so that my mishmash of Romero zombie movies, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars is actually science fiction!"
Yeah, and I can spend days and weeks drinking booze and not feel the slightest twinge the next week when I have to be a responsible human being. That doesn't mean alcoholism doesn't exist.
You know, I think that's the one sign that it's gone to a truly dangerous addiction. Catheters really fucking hurt!! Why they don't just seal a tube AROUND the penis, I'll never know.
Investigating people where no crime has been committed? That is wrong.
Espionage and terrorism are the type of crimes where you either want to investigate them before they happen, or if you don't investigate, you don't know if they did happen. And if you believe these crimes don't exist, you're stupid.
I just don't think "the bigger picture" exists in this particular way. The people who camp out for movies and iPhones are not necessarily the same people with unsustainable amounts of consumer debt, and I don't know why you would link the two unless you're one of these ascetics who thinks commerce is somehow wrong and people are irrational for liking (and enthusiastically wanting to purchase) innovative products and new technologies. People just plain like getting excited about things, why do you think there's a Super Bowl every year? And this is especially true when something new is invented that people want to try out. I'd be pretty thrilled about the Model T or the Apple II if they were invented during my lifetime--and I don't see the need to indict people for being enthusiastic about new products that can enhance their lives, in whatever small way.
Re:A level of bullshit I can barely comprehend...
on
The Perfect Phone Storm?
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· Score: 3, Informative
He issues a hand-waving argument about how the bugs weren't really in Safari (just in the shared libraries, which, *technically* isn't in Safari.exe. Yeah, let's try that argument for IE, shall we?).
The point was that these bugs won't affect iPhone because they arose in the process of porting to Windows, and don't exist on the OS X version.
Over the last ten years there's been the steady commoditization of Apple hardware (PCI, IDE, Intel)
Apple changed from NuBus to PCI in 1995, and from SCSI to IDE around 1996. Steve Jobs didn't return to Apple until 1997.
the switch from free OS upgrades to charging for them
Now this is just bullshit. You had to pay for System 7, System 7.5, Mac OS 7.6, Mac OS 8, Mac OS 8.5, and Mac OS 9. Jobs started at Apple about the same time Mac OS 8 came out. The differences between Mac OS 8, Mac OS 8.5 and Mac OS 9 are comparable (probably less) than the differences between Mac OS 10.1, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, and Leopard. The difference between System 7.5 and Mac OS 7.6 was fairly trivial compared to any of the new Mac OS X versions. The free OS upgrades (i.e. from 9.0 to 9.1, from 8.0 to 8.1, and from 7.0 to 7.1, 7.1P; 7.5 to 7.5.3 to 7.5.5; 8.5 to 8.6) were comparable to the free point updates available from Software Update for Mac OS X.
Camping out for a new product release (or for a movie, for that matter), is hardly a large contributor to consumer debt. Nor is it anything all that bad--unusual, yes, but if people really feel that enthusiastic about iPhone or Wii or Star Wars, and are up to the adventure, who are you to judge a night camping out in the city? Is it "difficult to understand" that people get enthusiastic about things?
First, America is a country founded by a diverse group of people who immigrated from other continents and displaced the local population within written history. Second, even after that happened, waves and waves of immigrants also came to America, continued speaking their own language, and worked for low wages, displacing native-born laborers who complained loudly about it. Oddly enough, a generation later, those very immigrants turned around and started complaining about the next wave. If you've read this country's history, the uproar about immigration from Latin America is nothing new, nor is the immigration itself, and the immigration itself is no long-term threat either.
It's also interesting how many people want to whine and pout about "But that's what EVERY OTHER country does!" when America is supposed to be so much different and better than the rest of the world. The point of America wasn't to be like every other country in the world. The point was to be a better, freer country, not only as an example to others but as an experience to be shared to anyone who wanted to come here and be a part of it. If we honestly want to stop immigration, though, let's become just like every other country in the world--xenophobic and racist, like Japan, or impoverished like Mexico, or even better, socialist, like Cuba or North Korea. Then our overpopulation will diminish, and we might even need to build fences along the border to keep people in.
When she finally took the test and was formally granted citizenship it was a BIG THING. And when she reads about various plans to grant "amnesty" or "citizenship" to people that just walked across the border, well... frankly, that just torques her into a pretzel. Rightfully so, because she had to prove herself and they don't.
So suddenly the United States is some sort of fraternity where in order to join you have to go through "hell week" just because that's what everyone else had to go through?
It's funny how the U.S. owes citizens from the rest of the world all these rights, but go to another country and see how things go.
When you go around calling yourself the greatest country in the world, you better own up.
I'm really sick of this holier than thou moral majority that gives themselves importance by supporting illegal activities. Laws are a set of rules accepted by people for the good of society.
Laws can be unjust, wrong, and corrupt. In these cases, the laws should be evaded and ignored until they are fixed or eliminated.
I agree with you to some degree, but certainly not 100%. The US is a nation of people who immigrated (largely from European countries) and assimilated. They learned the language, the culture, and were fiercely proud of their new homes.
Funny. There's more people here who speak European languages than North American languages. Odd how the Constitution isn't written in Iroquois.
My wife is an immigrant (and non-white, thank you, so don't even think of trying to pull a race card).
Because it's impossible to (for example) like Asians and not like Hispanics?
Would this result in higher food prices if growers had to pay Americans to do farm work? Probably. I'm fine with that. It's called taking care of our own.
I'm not fine with that. Food is too expensive and economically distorted as it is. We don't need protectionist policies to make things even worse. Actually, if you want to talk about farm labor, if we stopped letting the US food industry make national policy, we would import more food and there would be more jobs in the very countries people are immigrating from.
I'm sick of white people who complain about "illegal immigrants". Until "illegal immigrants" start waging biological warfare against you, forcibly relocating you from place to place in order to take your land, and putting you on reservations, you're just a bunch of hypocrites.
There are 10's of thousands of other troops on the front lines
in Iraq fighting insurgents. These brave men are putting their lives on the line every day so that we here in the states can maintain what freedoms we still have and assisting in securing our national interests.
Yeah, I'm sure our national interests and civil freedoms are really threatened by Iraqi insurgents who don't want a foreign military occupying their country. Not only are you wrong, you're a brainwashed idiot.
Laws that give prejudicial advantages to people based upon their ancestry and the circumstances of their birth are fundamentally unjust. That's a step beyond "foolish".
Don't put your GPA's on your school lines of your resumes. They're not needed.
I'm not sure this is true as a general rule. Your resume is an advertisement for you--thus, you only put things on there that you want to brag about. If you have a GPA worthy of bragging about, put it on there. If not, don't. But beware that employers will then know that your GPA is not worth bragging about.
I'm not saying the distinction doesn't exist. You're describing the distinction between constitutional law and statutory law. That distinction is irrelevant to my criticism, because a constitution (or an abstract specification) doesn't make, interpret, or enforce itself. Look at America, for instance. Just because we have a constitution doesn't mean it's obeyed or interpreted correctly. (The US Constitution was not developed democratically at all--it was written by a certain educated elite, and voted on by a certain elite subset of the population.) And you still haven't told me how a populace too "immature" to be trusted with free speech can somehow be trusted to establish a constitution. All you've done is handwaved and drawn irrelevant distinctions.
There is a fundamental problem with your argument, and it is the same, fundamental paradox behind restricting individual rights within a democracy--how can common people be trusted to govern if they cannot be trusted to exercise their own individual freedoms? If you were intellectually honest enough to support an oligarchy or benevolent dictatorship along with restricting individual rights, the contradiction would be resolved--but you would be revealed as being in opposition to some basic, foundational principles that seem to be somewhat popular in modern society. On the other hand, if you wanted to be intellectually honest AND continue adhering to these very popular basic principles, you would be forced to admit that free speech--so far as the expressing of opinions, absent any direct incitements to violence, is concerned--is necessary in a democratic system. Of course, I fully expect that you will do neither of these things, rather continuing to quibble about meaningless distinctions and trying to handwave the issue away entirely.
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Most philosophy? Let's set aside the pre-Socratics. Socrates' level of wealth is largely unknown. Plato had many distinguished relatives and can be surmised to come from an upper-class background. Aristotle was an aristocrat. Among the Stoics were Roman senators and emperors. Descartes, Locke, Hume, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche (as well as almost all of their contemporaries) were all born into the upper class (which was a prerequisite to go to university and study philosophy, as opposed to working in the coal mines or farming or whatever). The philosophers of the 19th and 20th century were primarily university professors, which has become at least a middle-class living, if not better at certain points. So who does that leave? A few of the Stoics and Epicureans, and many of the Medievals? And most of their work is (to put it bluntly) vague advice about how to live your life, completely-made-up (and yet very dramatic) cosmology, and bad proofs for the existence of God. Whereas the philosophy done primarily by people who DIDN'T live in caves and monestaries included: the foundations of modern science, almost all of logic, the entire tradition of analytic philosophy, almost all political philosophy...
I get plenty of that whenever I study astrology.
By your standard, addictive drugs don't exist because there are some people who don't get addicted to drugs. That's crazy talk.
Imagine two different situations:
If only you'd learned the first rule of empire--never piss off a group of colonists with a shorter supply line than your own :)
Science fiction isn't mutually exclusive to these genres. It is mutually exclusive to fantasy. I guess that makes me the bad analogy police.
True, but it's the best we have. It doesn't mean you can pass something off as "science fiction" when it has no basis in any sort of scientific knowledge or speculation. That's like saying, "Oh, in the future, we can genetically engineer orcs, and reanimate the dead with quantum mechanics, and use as-yet-unknown properties of energy as weapons, so that my mishmash of Romero zombie movies, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars is actually science fiction!"
Yeah, and I can spend days and weeks drinking booze and not feel the slightest twinge the next week when I have to be a responsible human being. That doesn't mean alcoholism doesn't exist.
You know, I think that's the one sign that it's gone to a truly dangerous addiction. Catheters really fucking hurt!! Why they don't just seal a tube AROUND the penis, I'll never know.
Espionage and terrorism are the type of crimes where you either want to investigate them before they happen, or if you don't investigate, you don't know if they did happen. And if you believe these crimes don't exist, you're stupid.
I just don't think "the bigger picture" exists in this particular way. The people who camp out for movies and iPhones are not necessarily the same people with unsustainable amounts of consumer debt, and I don't know why you would link the two unless you're one of these ascetics who thinks commerce is somehow wrong and people are irrational for liking (and enthusiastically wanting to purchase) innovative products and new technologies. People just plain like getting excited about things, why do you think there's a Super Bowl every year? And this is especially true when something new is invented that people want to try out. I'd be pretty thrilled about the Model T or the Apple II if they were invented during my lifetime--and I don't see the need to indict people for being enthusiastic about new products that can enhance their lives, in whatever small way.
I put on my robe and wizard's hat.
The point was that these bugs won't affect iPhone because they arose in the process of porting to Windows, and don't exist on the OS X version.
Apple changed from NuBus to PCI in 1995, and from SCSI to IDE around 1996. Steve Jobs didn't return to Apple until 1997.
Now this is just bullshit. You had to pay for System 7, System 7.5, Mac OS 7.6, Mac OS 8, Mac OS 8.5, and Mac OS 9. Jobs started at Apple about the same time Mac OS 8 came out. The differences between Mac OS 8, Mac OS 8.5 and Mac OS 9 are comparable (probably less) than the differences between Mac OS 10.1, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, and Leopard. The difference between System 7.5 and Mac OS 7.6 was fairly trivial compared to any of the new Mac OS X versions. The free OS upgrades (i.e. from 9.0 to 9.1, from 8.0 to 8.1, and from 7.0 to 7.1, 7.1P; 7.5 to 7.5.3 to 7.5.5; 8.5 to 8.6) were comparable to the free point updates available from Software Update for Mac OS X.
Camping out for a new product release (or for a movie, for that matter), is hardly a large contributor to consumer debt. Nor is it anything all that bad--unusual, yes, but if people really feel that enthusiastic about iPhone or Wii or Star Wars, and are up to the adventure, who are you to judge a night camping out in the city? Is it "difficult to understand" that people get enthusiastic about things?
First, America is a country founded by a diverse group of people who immigrated from other continents and displaced the local population within written history. Second, even after that happened, waves and waves of immigrants also came to America, continued speaking their own language, and worked for low wages, displacing native-born laborers who complained loudly about it. Oddly enough, a generation later, those very immigrants turned around and started complaining about the next wave. If you've read this country's history, the uproar about immigration from Latin America is nothing new, nor is the immigration itself, and the immigration itself is no long-term threat either.
It's also interesting how many people want to whine and pout about "But that's what EVERY OTHER country does!" when America is supposed to be so much different and better than the rest of the world. The point of America wasn't to be like every other country in the world. The point was to be a better, freer country, not only as an example to others but as an experience to be shared to anyone who wanted to come here and be a part of it. If we honestly want to stop immigration, though, let's become just like every other country in the world--xenophobic and racist, like Japan, or impoverished like Mexico, or even better, socialist, like Cuba or North Korea. Then our overpopulation will diminish, and we might even need to build fences along the border to keep people in.
So suddenly the United States is some sort of fraternity where in order to join you have to go through "hell week" just because that's what everyone else had to go through?
When you go around calling yourself the greatest country in the world, you better own up.
Laws can be unjust, wrong, and corrupt. In these cases, the laws should be evaded and ignored until they are fixed or eliminated.
Funny. There's more people here who speak European languages than North American languages. Odd how the Constitution isn't written in Iroquois.
Because it's impossible to (for example) like Asians and not like Hispanics?
I'm not fine with that. Food is too expensive and economically distorted as it is. We don't need protectionist policies to make things even worse. Actually, if you want to talk about farm labor, if we stopped letting the US food industry make national policy, we would import more food and there would be more jobs in the very countries people are immigrating from.
I'm sick of white people who complain about "illegal immigrants". Until "illegal immigrants" start waging biological warfare against you, forcibly relocating you from place to place in order to take your land, and putting you on reservations, you're just a bunch of hypocrites.
Yeah, I'm sure our national interests and civil freedoms are really threatened by Iraqi insurgents who don't want a foreign military occupying their country. Not only are you wrong, you're a brainwashed idiot.
Laws that give prejudicial advantages to people based upon their ancestry and the circumstances of their birth are fundamentally unjust. That's a step beyond "foolish".
You know, I get almost-identical form letters whenever I email my senators.
I'm not sure this is true as a general rule. Your resume is an advertisement for you--thus, you only put things on there that you want to brag about. If you have a GPA worthy of bragging about, put it on there. If not, don't. But beware that employers will then know that your GPA is not worth bragging about.
I'm not saying the distinction doesn't exist. You're describing the distinction between constitutional law and statutory law. That distinction is irrelevant to my criticism, because a constitution (or an abstract specification) doesn't make, interpret, or enforce itself. Look at America, for instance. Just because we have a constitution doesn't mean it's obeyed or interpreted correctly. (The US Constitution was not developed democratically at all--it was written by a certain educated elite, and voted on by a certain elite subset of the population.) And you still haven't told me how a populace too "immature" to be trusted with free speech can somehow be trusted to establish a constitution. All you've done is handwaved and drawn irrelevant distinctions.
There is a fundamental problem with your argument, and it is the same, fundamental paradox behind restricting individual rights within a democracy--how can common people be trusted to govern if they cannot be trusted to exercise their own individual freedoms? If you were intellectually honest enough to support an oligarchy or benevolent dictatorship along with restricting individual rights, the contradiction would be resolved--but you would be revealed as being in opposition to some basic, foundational principles that seem to be somewhat popular in modern society. On the other hand, if you wanted to be intellectually honest AND continue adhering to these very popular basic principles, you would be forced to admit that free speech--so far as the expressing of opinions, absent any direct incitements to violence, is concerned--is necessary in a democratic system. Of course, I fully expect that you will do neither of these things, rather continuing to quibble about meaningless distinctions and trying to handwave the issue away entirely.