Just because someone can mess up their life and yours in the process doesn't mean we should remove their ability to do it.
I stand corrected. You have convinced me sir, of the error of my ways, and I shall go forth from this day forward espousing the right of my fellow man to mess up my life.
Er, why are you trying to equate addictive narcotics that are produced, supplied, and distributed with the express intent of being addictive narcotics, with swimming pools? Are swimming pools designed to drown children? I mean, talk about comparing apples with oranges, you are comparing filing cabinets with a three ring circus.
And that you turned my point that your family failed to train you properly into a strawman about "willpower classes". The kind of government replacement for parenting you've demanded in every post in this thread.
Actually I had a bet with a co worker here that if I mentioned classes with your willpower shit, you'd say I was crying for more nanny government. Cheers, you just bought my lunch.
As to the rest of it, thanks for the education. I have gotten a great deal of insight into the lives of lonely survivalists squatting in their basements, more, indeed, than I ever really wanted to know. If you ever manage to wipe the foam off your chin and focus an original thought in that low sloping forehead, try to make it one about santa claus. HAPPY NEW YEAR!1!
Oh I see, you think that if someone isn't shackled in leg irons and being remote controlled through a brain chip, they still have equal choices. Your argument reminds me of the religious people that talk about abstention as being the perfect cure for all STDs. They are about as right and realistic as you are.
Haha, looks like someone got up on the wrong side of bed this morning. Alright, we can do it like that too...
tobacco studies showed the industry people need more exposures to get addicted
Link please? And wow, correct me if I am wrong here, but doesn't the tobacco industry have a vested interest in maintaining that their products are not instantly addictive?
I smoked a cigarette without getting addicted, as have many people I know who never smoked again.
Well done, I hope you take great pride in your good parents. This would be what I would call a personal anecdote, and has as much value in a reasonable debate as flapping arse cheeks breaking wind. And speaking of which...
she was drunk (sounds like underage), was trained (or not, apparently) by your parents.
Not that its any business of yours, but she was not underage. Here we see the debater making assumptions about the person he is debating, in an effort to undermine or cast doubt upon the character of said person. This is called an ad hominem, and is an effort to divert the discussion from what is being discussed (criminalisation of narcotics) to a different discussion, while strengthening ones own position to one of moral rectitude. It is tedious in the extreme.
I certainly do think media campaigns fare poorly against the good training from a loving parent
I take it you aren't familiar with modern marketing techniques then. They are aware that they need to overcome several difficulties, and among these there is the parental wisdom bond. These techniques are tailored specifically towards that end, and they are very good at it. I should know, I have been involved with marketing for quite some time (among other things). Methods are borrowed from sources as diverse as nazi propaganda and cult recruitment, as well as major religions and very well respected sociological studies. How many parents do you think have prepared their children to resist those influences? And don't waste your time talking about cigarettes, that is incidental, although you seem to have fastened upon it with all the lusty verve of a redneck on a pig. Tell me about alcohol.
You are making excuses left and right, and throwing in a strawman.
Straw man: To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent. You want to discuss my childhood and upbringing. I want to discuss criminalisation of narcotics. Who is throwing in straw men now?
What's obvious from everything you say is that your family didn't instill enough willpower in you or your sister.
Oh yes, those willpower classes I skipped. Willpower 101, the class everyone should take. WTF.
So you want the government to take over and say no for you. And for everyone else.
And here we come to the crux of the issue. This is the reason you are so upset, and this is the reason you are flailing about. Guess what, idiot? Your government is YOU. There aren't a bunch of alien monsters coming to rule your life, they aren't royalty, they are elected representatives that for the most part are trying to keep people safe from parasites that would fill their own coffers on the backs of the young and inexperienced, destroying many lives in the meantime. That the "war on drugs" has been hijacked for someones own agenda doesn't mean the underlying idea is bad. Fix your own fucking government.
Even though the rest of us have willpower, and don't need the crutch that you do. Your arguments all boil down to your own need for external discipline that you lack internally, including your anecdotes that get the habits of the population wrong. We're not all as needy as you are. Find something that will keep you in line without putting straitjackets on the rest of us who are more sane.
More idiocy. Listen jackass (and thats not an ad hominem, thats an op
The thing is, he understood that our freedoms as Americans are more precious than safety from drugs.
Freedom implies choice. The first thing narcotics do is take away your choices, generally to line someones pocket. So yes, authorities are justified in helping you retain your freedom to choose. The manner in which it has been pursued in the states is badly wrong, but the underlying idea is good.
You did not get addicted to cigarettes the first time you smoked them
Er, how do you know that? Smoking that first cigarette is quite a rush, thats why they are so popular.
Your parents, though, were negligent in not educating you and your sister that her cigarette habit was addictive.
Or possibly she was half cut on beer herself and thought it would be funny. Blaming parents for everything is as much of a fallacy as trying to make society do all the parenting. There are a lot of influences on young people, some stronger than others at different stages of their lives. So tell me, do you think gargantuan well researched media marketing campaigns (MTV) have any chance against the love of a good parent?:D
Everything you said is evidence for keeping government out of the business of prohibiting adults from consuming any substance we want. No matter how damaging, so long as we pay the costs of our own bad choices.
Nah you got nothin here. First of all you are assuming it is directly the fault of parents and siblings, which I have already shown is incorrect. Every movie, the hero sits down with a shot of something in his hand, they make songs about tequila, awesomely powerful marketing is everywhere. And when you are drunk, your judgement is impaired. Now don't make too much of the cigarettes or alcohol, those are only two examples. The fact is you don't see thirty year old non smokers taking up smoking, or non drinkers taking up drinking. Why is that? Because the marketing is targeted towards the younger, less experienced members of society (which is not a zero sum game) and thats just evil.
Maybe it might be alright if drugs were legal for people over the age of 30 who don't partake in any drugs habitually. What, you mean drugs are legal for people who would never take them anyway? Thats right. The world would be a better place if people realised that booze, smack, whatever, don't take the pain away, its the advertising that makes them think so. Or douchebag friends. But mostly its people that stand to make a buck on your chemical impulses. Only standing up and doing something about your life takes the pain away.
We have (officially) had this open ended war on drugs for something like 25 years and drugs have been criminalized for much longer.
Yeah thats why I mentioned the mishandling.
Now start the drug education campaign. Show kids what meth will do to you. Show kids what PCP will do to you. Make kids watch Trainspotting. Make kids watch Requiem for a Dream. And then let them decide. Most will probably just stick with majiuana.
I agree completely with all of your points. Meantime however making them illegal makes perfect sense. The enforcement of these laws needs to be seriously changed, but the underlying fact is drugs don't make the pain go away, drugs make the pain worse in the long term. And I refer to alcohol (watch this comment get modded into hades), cigarettes, LSD, hash, crack, you name it. The world would be a far better place if people actually did something about what is making them miserable, rather than hiding inside a bottle, squandering their lives.
Cigarettes were only an exampli gratia. When people get it through their heads that drugs don't make the pain go away, only getting off your ass and doing something makes the pain go away, (except in the case of medical painkillers, for the hard of comprehension) then we can talk about legalising drugs. Until then, people really do need to be protected from their own stupidity, or from the stupidity of their peers. Because trying anything once can be a terminal philosophy.
And so what? Why is it any of their business what you choose to put in your body?
Aww Jeez, not this shit again. Listen baby, with a lot of these substances, the first time you put them into your body may indeed be your choice. The second and subsequent times generally are not. This is the nature of narcotic, addictive substances. My first cigarette was handed to me by my older sister. Anyone spouting "ah kin put wut ah like in muh body" crap has never been addicted to anything, and never had to have friends, family and loved ones suffer with the side effects of that addiction. So yes, there are good and excellent reasons to make substance abuse illegal, however it has been mishandled by US authorities.
If you aren't into cheating with cloaked pages and doorway pages, the best way to get targeted traffic is to add value to visitors' experience. They come to your site, find its a good site, and spread the word. The more useful and relevant your site, the more visitors will return. In a nutshell, make a good site. Simple, really. I wouldn't be surprised to find that pagerank was a decoy set up to distract search engine marketers and let google go about its business.
Of course its an age old argument, who is most at fault. The person who shot the gun or the company that provided it?
More like the age old argument, is it illegal or not. Sadly the facts are that this event is not a criminal event, the police won't be getting involved, and no one really cares. Not the infected users, not myspace, and not the advertisers. This is just more roadkill on the information superhighway. Nothing to see here, please move along.
etc...Any honest researcher who doesn't admit that he has bias (and not even necessarily of the "I want it to work out this way" sort) is a liar or overly confident in himself.
Wow. So all scientists are biased towards their own beliefs? You have a fascinating perspective on what constitutes science.
The whole point of the scientific method is that you set up a protocol that can be executed by the most biased, illogical agent and still get the same results. It's about keeping everybody honest by laying out expectations in advance and ruling out confounding variables.
No, the whole point of scientific method is to test hypotheses and build new ones based on that. Its entirely useless discussing science in the context of jref however, since what they practise isn't it. This has been established, and no amount of revisionism or sophistry will change that. And in this case, its the biased illogical agents who are setting up the protocol.
Having both sides working to design the experiment should keep each party honest.
Only if both sides are equal. One side has a million dollars, and sets the rules.
Those claims should be verifiable by going through the JREF's records, but even a short list of claims that are not nutty on the face of them would be nice.
Which does exactly nothing to answer my concerns.
No, there are no consequences if a design turns out to be half-assed, but calling them opaque is simply nonsense.
Unless your name happens to be James Randi, you have no basis upon which to make that statement.
Watchdogs who keep frauds from eroding that body of knowledge are equally important. In a time when politicians pick away at science standards to promote religious agendas and fraudsters would gladly turn the public's understanding of physics on its head just to make a buck, people who fight back against against the second coming of the dark ages are nearly as valuable as those producing new knowledge.
I draw a distinction between watchdogs and witch hunters. And its this (false) perception of value that makes them their dollars.
Theres really no point in repeating myself over and over again, if it didn't sink in the first time, its unlikely that it ever will. James Randi and company are not adherents to scientific practices, have never and will never submit to an independent third party audit, do not conform to any standards except those which they set themselves, are not peer reviewed, unless those peers are the public or those who are already biased in favour of their perspective, have significant financial incentives never to reach their stated goals, and by their own (proud) admission are biased in whatever work they do, leaving their results to be worth exactly nothing. They are not something anyone can point to as "proof" of there not being any out-of-the-ordinary phenomena out there, and I will continue to enjoy a good chuckle at anyone that attempts to point to them in that manner.
1. I'm not fighting for anything, just commenting. 2. The lack of audits (are there none? would you to pay for them?) at JREF does not make not believing in paranormal phenomena non-rational.
Whoah now don't go confusing me with someone that "BELIEVES". My whole point was that James Randi and co are not something you can use as definitive evidence of any damn thing. And for someone who has a great deal to say about science, you really have a problem grasping that science is not what jref does.
Ya I wonder does Princeton realise some random website is accusing them of criminal fraud? Why, someone should email them, just to let them know! That might even fall under libel laws, whoda thunk it?
Hahah, I don't think I've ever seen so much bullshit in one post before. Man, you should be on TV. Or a politician, or something. For you. Haaaappy New Year!1!
Slashdot Mirror
Just because someone can mess up their life and yours in the process doesn't mean we should remove their ability to do it.
I stand corrected. You have convinced me sir, of the error of my ways, and I shall go forth from this day forward espousing the right of my fellow man to mess up my life.
Would you fuck off.
Blah. Marketing. Look it up. Even you admit that they need help. What does that tell you?
Er, why are you trying to equate addictive narcotics that are produced, supplied, and distributed with the express intent of being addictive narcotics, with swimming pools? Are swimming pools designed to drown children? I mean, talk about comparing apples with oranges, you are comparing filing cabinets with a three ring circus.
I'm trying to decide, small penis, or hangover, small penis or hangover... Lets go with small penis AND a hangover! Congratulations, you win an entire internet!
And that you turned my point that your family failed to train you properly into a strawman about "willpower classes". The kind of government replacement for parenting you've demanded in every post in this thread.
Actually I had a bet with a co worker here that if I mentioned classes with your willpower shit, you'd say I was crying for more nanny government. Cheers, you just bought my lunch.
As to the rest of it, thanks for the education. I have gotten a great deal of insight into the lives of lonely survivalists squatting in their basements, more, indeed, than I ever really wanted to know. If you ever manage to wipe the foam off your chin and focus an original thought in that low sloping forehead, try to make it one about santa claus. HAPPY NEW YEAR!1!
Oh I see, you think that if someone isn't shackled in leg irons and being remote controlled through a brain chip, they still have equal choices. Your argument reminds me of the religious people that talk about abstention as being the perfect cure for all STDs. They are about as right and realistic as you are.
Haha, looks like someone got up on the wrong side of bed this morning. Alright, we can do it like that too...
tobacco studies showed the industry people need more exposures to get addicted
Link please? And wow, correct me if I am wrong here, but doesn't the tobacco industry have a vested interest in maintaining that their products are not instantly addictive?
I smoked a cigarette without getting addicted, as have many people I know who never smoked again.
Well done, I hope you take great pride in your good parents. This would be what I would call a personal anecdote, and has as much value in a reasonable debate as flapping arse cheeks breaking wind. And speaking of which...
she was drunk (sounds like underage), was trained (or not, apparently) by your parents.
Not that its any business of yours, but she was not underage. Here we see the debater making assumptions about the person he is debating, in an effort to undermine or cast doubt upon the character of said person. This is called an ad hominem, and is an effort to divert the discussion from what is being discussed (criminalisation of narcotics) to a different discussion, while strengthening ones own position to one of moral rectitude. It is tedious in the extreme.
I certainly do think media campaigns fare poorly against the good training from a loving parent
I take it you aren't familiar with modern marketing techniques then. They are aware that they need to overcome several difficulties, and among these there is the parental wisdom bond. These techniques are tailored specifically towards that end, and they are very good at it. I should know, I have been involved with marketing for quite some time (among other things). Methods are borrowed from sources as diverse as nazi propaganda and cult recruitment, as well as major religions and very well respected sociological studies. How many parents do you think have prepared their children to resist those influences? And don't waste your time talking about cigarettes, that is incidental, although you seem to have fastened upon it with all the lusty verve of a redneck on a pig. Tell me about alcohol.
You are making excuses left and right, and throwing in a strawman.
Straw man: To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent. You want to discuss my childhood and upbringing. I want to discuss criminalisation of narcotics. Who is throwing in straw men now?
What's obvious from everything you say is that your family didn't instill enough willpower in you or your sister.
Oh yes, those willpower classes I skipped. Willpower 101, the class everyone should take. WTF.
So you want the government to take over and say no for you. And for everyone else.
And here we come to the crux of the issue. This is the reason you are so upset, and this is the reason you are flailing about. Guess what, idiot? Your government is YOU. There aren't a bunch of alien monsters coming to rule your life, they aren't royalty, they are elected representatives that for the most part are trying to keep people safe from parasites that would fill their own coffers on the backs of the young and inexperienced, destroying many lives in the meantime. That the "war on drugs" has been hijacked for someones own agenda doesn't mean the underlying idea is bad. Fix your own fucking government.
Even though the rest of us have willpower, and don't need the crutch that you do. Your arguments all boil down to your own need for external discipline that you lack internally, including your anecdotes that get the habits of the population wrong. We're not all as needy as you are. Find something that will keep you in line without putting straitjackets on the rest of us who are more sane.
More idiocy. Listen jackass (and thats not an ad hominem, thats an op
The thing is, he understood that our freedoms as Americans are more precious than safety from drugs.
Freedom implies choice. The first thing narcotics do is take away your choices, generally to line someones pocket. So yes, authorities are justified in helping you retain your freedom to choose. The manner in which it has been pursued in the states is badly wrong, but the underlying idea is good.
You did not get addicted to cigarettes the first time you smoked them
:D
Er, how do you know that? Smoking that first cigarette is quite a rush, thats why they are so popular.
Your parents, though, were negligent in not educating you and your sister that her cigarette habit was addictive.
Or possibly she was half cut on beer herself and thought it would be funny. Blaming parents for everything is as much of a fallacy as trying to make society do all the parenting. There are a lot of influences on young people, some stronger than others at different stages of their lives. So tell me, do you think gargantuan well researched media marketing campaigns (MTV) have any chance against the love of a good parent?
Everything you said is evidence for keeping government out of the business of prohibiting adults from consuming any substance we want. No matter how damaging, so long as we pay the costs of our own bad choices.
Nah you got nothin here. First of all you are assuming it is directly the fault of parents and siblings, which I have already shown is incorrect. Every movie, the hero sits down with a shot of something in his hand, they make songs about tequila, awesomely powerful marketing is everywhere. And when you are drunk, your judgement is impaired. Now don't make too much of the cigarettes or alcohol, those are only two examples. The fact is you don't see thirty year old non smokers taking up smoking, or non drinkers taking up drinking. Why is that? Because the marketing is targeted towards the younger, less experienced members of society (which is not a zero sum game) and thats just evil.
Maybe it might be alright if drugs were legal for people over the age of 30 who don't partake in any drugs habitually. What, you mean drugs are legal for people who would never take them anyway? Thats right. The world would be a better place if people realised that booze, smack, whatever, don't take the pain away, its the advertising that makes them think so. Or douchebag friends. But mostly its people that stand to make a buck on your chemical impulses. Only standing up and doing something about your life takes the pain away.
No drugs of any sort, thanks.
We have (officially) had this open ended war on drugs for something like 25 years and drugs have been criminalized for much longer.
Yeah thats why I mentioned the mishandling.
Now start the drug education campaign. Show kids what meth will do to you. Show kids what PCP will do to you. Make kids watch Trainspotting. Make kids watch Requiem for a Dream. And then let them decide. Most will probably just stick with majiuana.
I agree completely with all of your points. Meantime however making them illegal makes perfect sense. The enforcement of these laws needs to be seriously changed, but the underlying fact is drugs don't make the pain go away, drugs make the pain worse in the long term. And I refer to alcohol (watch this comment get modded into hades), cigarettes, LSD, hash, crack, you name it. The world would be a far better place if people actually did something about what is making them miserable, rather than hiding inside a bottle, squandering their lives.
Cigarettes were only an exampli gratia. When people get it through their heads that drugs don't make the pain go away, only getting off your ass and doing something makes the pain go away, (except in the case of medical painkillers, for the hard of comprehension) then we can talk about legalising drugs. Until then, people really do need to be protected from their own stupidity, or from the stupidity of their peers. Because trying anything once can be a terminal philosophy.
And so what? Why is it any of their business what you choose to put in your body?
Aww Jeez, not this shit again. Listen baby, with a lot of these substances, the first time you put them into your body may indeed be your choice. The second and subsequent times generally are not. This is the nature of narcotic, addictive substances. My first cigarette was handed to me by my older sister. Anyone spouting "ah kin put wut ah like in muh body" crap has never been addicted to anything, and never had to have friends, family and loved ones suffer with the side effects of that addiction. So yes, there are good and excellent reasons to make substance abuse illegal, however it has been mishandled by US authorities.
Thats not a lawsuit... THIS is a lawsuit! If he starts making boots and hats out of MPAA lawyers, can I pre-order a set?
Error control mechanisms, at the very least, would very much run against the flow of blind Darwinian processes.
You mean like white blood cells?
If you aren't into cheating with cloaked pages and doorway pages, the best way to get targeted traffic is to add value to visitors' experience. They come to your site, find its a good site, and spread the word. The more useful and relevant your site, the more visitors will return. In a nutshell, make a good site. Simple, really. I wouldn't be surprised to find that pagerank was a decoy set up to distract search engine marketers and let google go about its business.
Of course its an age old argument, who is most at fault. The person who shot the gun or the company that provided it?
More like the age old argument, is it illegal or not. Sadly the facts are that this event is not a criminal event, the police won't be getting involved, and no one really cares. Not the infected users, not myspace, and not the advertisers. This is just more roadkill on the information superhighway. Nothing to see here, please move along.
Its probably all the same experiment being reported multiple times. I know for a fact its the third time its been duped on slashdot. Triped?
Jesus, you're stupid.
And here was me thinking that the expectation was a part of the study... how silly of me...
etc...Any honest researcher who doesn't admit that he has bias (and not even necessarily of the "I want it to work out this way" sort) is a liar or overly confident in himself.
Wow. So all scientists are biased towards their own beliefs? You have a fascinating perspective on what constitutes science.
The whole point of the scientific method is that you set up a protocol that can be executed by the most biased, illogical agent and still get the same results. It's about keeping everybody honest by laying out expectations in advance and ruling out confounding variables.
No, the whole point of scientific method is to test hypotheses and build new ones based on that. Its entirely useless discussing science in the context of jref however, since what they practise isn't it. This has been established, and no amount of revisionism or sophistry will change that. And in this case, its the biased illogical agents who are setting up the protocol.
Having both sides working to design the experiment should keep each party honest.
Only if both sides are equal. One side has a million dollars, and sets the rules.
Those claims should be verifiable by going through the JREF's records, but even a short list of claims that are not nutty on the face of them would be nice.
Which does exactly nothing to answer my concerns.
No, there are no consequences if a design turns out to be half-assed, but calling them opaque is simply nonsense.
Unless your name happens to be James Randi, you have no basis upon which to make that statement.
Watchdogs who keep frauds from eroding that body of knowledge are equally important. In a time when politicians pick away at science standards to promote religious agendas and fraudsters would gladly turn the public's understanding of physics on its head just to make a buck, people who fight back against against the second coming of the dark ages are nearly as valuable as those producing new knowledge.
I draw a distinction between watchdogs and witch hunters. And its this (false) perception of value that makes them their dollars.
Theres really no point in repeating myself over and over again, if it didn't sink in the first time, its unlikely that it ever will. James Randi and company are not adherents to scientific practices, have never and will never submit to an independent third party audit, do not conform to any standards except those which they set themselves, are not peer reviewed, unless those peers are the public or those who are already biased in favour of their perspective, have significant financial incentives never to reach their stated goals, and by their own (proud) admission are biased in whatever work they do, leaving their results to be worth exactly nothing. They are not something anyone can point to as "proof" of there not being any out-of-the-ordinary phenomena out there, and I will continue to enjoy a good chuckle at anyone that attempts to point to them in that manner.
1. I'm not fighting for anything, just commenting. 2. The lack of audits (are there none? would you to pay for them?) at JREF does not make not believing in paranormal phenomena non-rational.
Fighting and kicking and squealing. I don't have to pay for an audit, since I am not the one claiming to be invincibly rational.
Whoah now don't go confusing me with someone that "BELIEVES". My whole point was that James Randi and co are not something you can use as definitive evidence of any damn thing. And for someone who has a great deal to say about science, you really have a problem grasping that science is not what jref does.
Wake me up when the amazing randi starts practising actual science.
Ya I wonder does Princeton realise some random website is accusing them of criminal fraud? Why, someone should email them, just to let them know! That might even fall under libel laws, whoda thunk it?
Indeed it hasn't yet happened. Funny that. Now stop splitting threads.
Hahah, I don't think I've ever seen so much bullshit in one post before. Man, you should be on TV. Or a politician, or something. For you. Haaaappy New Year!1!