Correlation is a situation where two things happen with statistically significant coincidence. Simply said, if there are effect A and effect B, and if you have significantly more occurences of A and B happening together and of neither happening together, than occurences of A happening without B or B without A, then there is a correlation between A and B.
If A is "the person played violent videogames" and B is "the person murdered someone", then every case where someone played violent videogames and soon before or afterwards murdered someone is a statistical point in favor of the correlation between the two, but only if there also are cases where someone did not play violent videogames and did not murder someone soon before or after: unfortunately for Jack Thompson, the latter is becoming extremely rare, which reduces the significance of the former. Also, every case where someone plays violent videogames and does not murder someone is a statistical point against the correlation. Similarly, every case where someone did not play violent videogames yet did murder someone goes against the correlation. So far, evidence shows that any correlation between the two is extremely improbable.
Illusory correlation, like that inferred by Jack Thompson repeatedly between violent videogames and crime, is the situation where someone insists on considering two events to be related despite being not significantly correlated. Despite popular belief to the contrary, such illusory correlation behaviour is not correlated to schizophrenia (paranoid or non-paranoid, delusional disorder), nor with depression. So Jack Thompson is probably not technically insane on such grounds.
However, illusory causation, where the person infers causality between two supposedly correlated events, is a trait of paranoid disorders. Jack Thompson goes as far as making public claims (and suing according to those claims) that a causation exists between people playing violent videogames and murders despite the absence of even mild correlation between the two, and even interprets much of what happens to him in his professional life as having a causal link to this illusory causation in the first place (as evidenced by his claims of collusion between the Florida Bar or Supreme Court and the videogame industry). When his interpretations are rejected by the public (like when he unsuccessfully sued Janet Reno and RockStar), he rejects the result of the scrutiny instead of questioning those interpretations: that's a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia. At one point he even fantasized himself as being Batman, FFS ! It makes him a very dangerous man in my book, because the paranoids are often capable of nurturing delusory fantasies of persecution and injustice that can push them to commit serious crimes.
Given some of his more religious statements I certainly wouldn't be surprised to learn that he has auditory hallucinations which he attributes to God... The other symptoms (disorganized thinking, absent or inappropriate emotional behaviour, etc.) are easier to hide and less prominent in paranoid schizophrenia.
Even if the guy is disbarred for ten years, if he really has paranoid schizophrenia, I would only consider the general public to be safe when he is committed to a mental institution.
There are lots of comments using big words like "capitalism" and "communism" and "totalitarianism", and as expected on/. the actual economics knowledge is very poor.
Capitalism is not industrialism, nor is it corporatism. It is the inclusion of the passing of time in economic calculations, which means three things: connecting markets of different time periods as in connecting present offer with future demand (speculation), integrating time preferences (interest in loans), and anticipating risks in your costs (insurance). The first two features have been in extensive use since at least the 1st century B.C., as is evident in the Roman Empire's banking system. The last one was invented in the 13th century by a monk and has, too, been in extensive use from then on. Capitalism has been in full use ever since. It's not to be conflated with any political system in particular - no political system can abolish capitalism since they can't abolish the passing of time and its effects on people's trading habits, they can only suppress trade directly.
I think its open to debate if China is remarkable for its "efficiency". It mostly just has lots of cheap labor, no labor unions and very weak pollution and safety regulation which means its a cheap place to do things like manufacturing. There are quite a few things working against its economic efficiency.
You hit the nail on the head here. The very particular ownership regulations of China, which are still very communistic in both spirit and letter, prevent the integration of a great many costs in the economic calculations. For example the land is owned by the state and cannot be owned and traded by the people making use of it: the owners have no incentive to increase or protect its value, so instead they milk it off as fast as they can for immediate gains in influence, renting it out as cheap dumping ground for industries that employ the citizens. The value lost here is monumental, and it does not make it to the GNP because there is no market for it - no valuation, no losses recorded. Same goes for homes, which are still extremely regulated, and a million other things they Chinese are not permitted to have and trade on their own.
"It's rare indeed to find people that actually relinquish power they already have."
And they can be certain someone will be there to collect such power when they do. As long as people insist on believing in power, and giving it to someone (anyone at all), they'll suffer the consequences.
Blank Labels WebComics are hosted there, and this catastrophe could be the very first thing in over eight years straight to cause Howard Taylor to not update his daily comic Schlock Mercenary.
"From what I've seen, free markets allow greedy and selfish people to accumulate more money than cooperative people."
Prove it. From what I've seen the greedy and selfish cannot accumulate wealth in a free-market without having to first offer a good deal to the people whom they get the wealth from: they have no other alternative than cooperate. That's why they rush to alternatives like the use of power in all its forms, because then they can lord it over other people and take from them without their consent. In fact, all I've seen so far is that every single exception to free market leads to unfair wealth grabbing by te very same greedy, egotistic people.
Voluntary exchange means "I help you, and you help me back". This is the highest form of social cooperation. Free market is when there are only voluntary exchanges, therefore it is when the social cooperation reigns supreme.
Unvoluntary exchange is "I want something that I deny for you". This is the utmost opposite of the previous. It's the basis for the rule of the strongest or rule of the most numerous against all minorities (and the individual is the smallest minority there is), it's the opposite of the rule of law.
"I'd quite like to see George Bush fight a war on malnutrition, disease and lack of medical care rather than a war on 'terror'.."
Seeing how that would only ensure we never get rid of malnutrition, disease and lack of medical care AND increase the public debt even more, no, I certainly wouldn't.
If I have nothing to hide, then they have no reason to search in the first place. It's that simple, really.
This increasingly stupid (and dangerous !) security crap has deterred me from visiting the US. No Mars Society Convention for me, no vacation to the Costa Rica if I have to go through Miami first, no visiting friends in New York. It sucks, but I don't think I can afford the risks.
People who follow procedures just because they're procedures are the same as people who hear, and act upon, the voices in their head. They will do messed up things, they will cause massive unintended harm, they might get (and have, so far) innocent people killed for no reason, and there is no way to know when nor why.
"It is utterly unrealistic to claim that nothing good has come of expanding the vote to include people of every race, gender, and income group."
Yes it is realistic, because this expansion means a whole lot more people stand to lose all they have than just the rich white old men. Voting is a disservice to the voters.
"So the United States was serving a smaller group when women got the vote? When minorities got the vote? And when poll taxes were eliminated?"
As a matter of fact, yes, mainly because voting is a disservice to the voters.
Voting has a much longer history than what you call democracy. Kings used to be elected, and so is the Pope. In the USSR they used to vote all the time, too, over a mind-numbinlgy high number of otherwise mundane things - too bad voting and democracy actually have little relationship with each other.
Having the right to vote means you are forced to regularly pool your life, your liberty and your belongings with all other voters and choose a big winner who will then dispose of the lot as he sees fit. No wonder elected governments always evolve into mafias, the whole setup seems designed to attract them and gives them incentives to filter out the honest and idealistic from being candidates.
It is the falling revenue that hubris is set in motion. It is by the gook of management that self-destruction acquires speed, the product line acquires bloatware, the bloatware becomes a warning. IT is by falling revenue alone that hubris is set in motion.
And if you're still concerned about proliferation, just design the reactors to have an effective breeding ratio of exactly 1. This way you only need to keep an eye on Uranium, and can safely distribute the reactors around the world.
"Some people want to breed Th into U to keep using these reactor designs"
And some people want to substitute pressurized water reactors with solid bars of heavy metal fuel, for molten fluoride salts liquid fuel reactors : no need to stop the reactor to refuel, better control on the composition of the core because its volatile and potentially dangerous elements can be extracted from the stream continuously, and easier throttling. And it runs at atmospheric pressure.
"The main reason is that while thorium itself is not usable in nuclear weapons, the Uranium-233 which is breed from it would be quite suitable."
Oh please ! No one has ever given more than mere thought about designing weapons with U-233. There are no plans, no studies, no numbers, no details because no one even tried to get any, so far. It might not even be technically feasible, and even if it is, it would require another whole Manhattan Project.
Plus it requires a breeder reactor just to get the U-233 in the first place, as you remarked. As for using U-233 to breed Pu from U-238 ? It makes no sense, people would just use the U-238 directly in the fore-mentionned breeder reactor instead of adding such an impractical step.
Corporatium is the heavy element you described, while Capitalium is a catalytic metal also found in all naturally-occuring Governmentium and Corporatium alloys.
Or better yet: don't waste your time voting and instead start acting like the original Constitution still applied, everyday. Take measures not to be caught at it of course, but encourage your friends and family to stop giving the law and the gov'n'ment credit where it deserves none. Start building the world you wish to live in, by living as if it was there already and inviting other people to join in. You don't have any rights if you don't use them, but the corollary is true too.
My point is that actual, existing laws, particularly civil law, is quite sufficient to uphold net neutrality. Legal definition of commerce alone should suffice: once you sold something, you can't take it back and sell it again to someone else.
"But our interests are not mutually compatible." Some are, some ain't. In any case, it's whatever actions we do that count, and not the interests that may or may not be pursued through these actions. The bottom line is not doing harm.
Here we're hitting on the core definition of good and evil: descriptive/prescriptive ethics, objective/subjective welfare/utility/happiness/whatever. Even purely altruistic actions are enterprised according to individually-determined values. To do good we follow the course of actions that pursue those individual interests without hampering the individual interests of others, as tangibly expressed through their own actions upon the world. I do have a clear cut, compact definition that extensively covers all such good actions and leaves out all the bad actions, but I doubt you're interested in hearing it, and would most probably reject it. And its formal proof does not fit in here anyway.
"We kill animals for profit and individual survival. No one shoots a deer to save the human race."
Just great. And how do you think one is supposed to save the human race as a whole ? By saving individual humans, that's how. Our species' interest is the sum of our individual mutually compatible interests.
"The problem with GM plants is that they still throw out a bunch of pollen, and pollute existing seed lines"
Err, no.
Not only are most GM plants sterile hybrids to start with, but even for the very few that aren't, their pollen (say, from from GM corn) isn't going to "pollute" the non-same-species plants all around them in any way.
And lastly, you could as well worry that the natural plants are going to pollute the GM plants and ruin the scientists' efforts.
Slashdot Mirror
So, it's to be released on 21st of December 2012 ? Preorder your copy today !
Correlation is a situation where two things happen with statistically significant coincidence. Simply said, if there are effect A and effect B, and if you have significantly more occurences of A and B happening together and of neither happening together, than occurences of A happening without B or B without A, then there is a correlation between A and B.
If A is "the person played violent videogames" and B is "the person murdered someone", then every case where someone played violent videogames and soon before or afterwards murdered someone is a statistical point in favor of the correlation between the two, but only if there also are cases where someone did not play violent videogames and did not murder someone soon before or after: unfortunately for Jack Thompson, the latter is becoming extremely rare, which reduces the significance of the former. Also, every case where someone plays violent videogames and does not murder someone is a statistical point against the correlation. Similarly, every case where someone did not play violent videogames yet did murder someone goes against the correlation. So far, evidence shows that any correlation between the two is extremely improbable.
Illusory correlation, like that inferred by Jack Thompson repeatedly between violent videogames and crime, is the situation where someone insists on considering two events to be related despite being not significantly correlated. Despite popular belief to the contrary, such illusory correlation behaviour is not correlated to schizophrenia (paranoid or non-paranoid, delusional disorder), nor with depression. So Jack Thompson is probably not technically insane on such grounds.
However, illusory causation, where the person infers causality between two supposedly correlated events, is a trait of paranoid disorders. Jack Thompson goes as far as making public claims (and suing according to those claims) that a causation exists between people playing violent videogames and murders despite the absence of even mild correlation between the two, and even interprets much of what happens to him in his professional life as having a causal link to this illusory causation in the first place (as evidenced by his claims of collusion between the Florida Bar or Supreme Court and the videogame industry). When his interpretations are rejected by the public (like when he unsuccessfully sued Janet Reno and RockStar), he rejects the result of the scrutiny instead of questioning those interpretations: that's a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia. At one point he even fantasized himself as being Batman, FFS ! It makes him a very dangerous man in my book, because the paranoids are often capable of nurturing delusory fantasies of persecution and injustice that can push them to commit serious crimes.
Given some of his more religious statements I certainly wouldn't be surprised to learn that he has auditory hallucinations which he attributes to God... The other symptoms (disorganized thinking, absent or inappropriate emotional behaviour, etc.) are easier to hide and less prominent in paranoid schizophrenia.
Even if the guy is disbarred for ten years, if he really has paranoid schizophrenia, I would only consider the general public to be safe when he is committed to a mental institution.
There are lots of comments using big words like "capitalism" and "communism" and "totalitarianism", and as expected on /. the actual economics knowledge is very poor.
Capitalism is not industrialism, nor is it corporatism. It is the inclusion of the passing of time in economic calculations, which means three things: connecting markets of different time periods as in connecting present offer with future demand (speculation), integrating time preferences (interest in loans), and anticipating risks in your costs (insurance). The first two features have been in extensive use since at least the 1st century B.C., as is evident in the Roman Empire's banking system. The last one was invented in the 13th century by a monk and has, too, been in extensive use from then on. Capitalism has been in full use ever since. It's not to be conflated with any political system in particular - no political system can abolish capitalism since they can't abolish the passing of time and its effects on people's trading habits, they can only suppress trade directly.
I think its open to debate if China is remarkable for its "efficiency". It mostly just has lots of cheap labor, no labor unions and very weak pollution and safety regulation which means its a cheap place to do things like manufacturing. There are quite a few things working against its economic efficiency.
You hit the nail on the head here. The very particular ownership regulations of China, which are still very communistic in both spirit and letter, prevent the integration of a great many costs in the economic calculations. For example the land is owned by the state and cannot be owned and traded by the people making use of it: the owners have no incentive to increase or protect its value, so instead they milk it off as fast as they can for immediate gains in influence, renting it out as cheap dumping ground for industries that employ the citizens. The value lost here is monumental, and it does not make it to the GNP because there is no market for it - no valuation, no losses recorded. Same goes for homes, which are still extremely regulated, and a million other things they Chinese are not permitted to have and trade on their own.
"It's rare indeed to find people that actually relinquish power they already have."
And they can be certain someone will be there to collect such power when they do. As long as people insist on believing in power, and giving it to someone (anyone at all), they'll suffer the consequences.
Blank Labels WebComics are hosted there, and this catastrophe could be the very first thing in over eight years straight to cause Howard Taylor to not update his daily comic Schlock Mercenary.
"Direct democracy" is just a fancy word for Soviets. Learn your history lessons.
"From what I've seen, free markets allow greedy and selfish people to accumulate more money than cooperative people."
Prove it. From what I've seen the greedy and selfish cannot accumulate wealth in a free-market without having to first offer a good deal to the people whom they get the wealth from: they have no other alternative than cooperate. That's why they rush to alternatives like the use of power in all its forms, because then they can lord it over other people and take from them without their consent. In fact, all I've seen so far is that every single exception to free market leads to unfair wealth grabbing by te very same greedy, egotistic people.
Voluntary exchange means "I help you, and you help me back". This is the highest form of social cooperation. Free market is when there are only voluntary exchanges, therefore it is when the social cooperation reigns supreme.
Unvoluntary exchange is "I want something that I deny for you". This is the utmost opposite of the previous. It's the basis for the rule of the strongest or rule of the most numerous against all minorities (and the individual is the smallest minority there is), it's the opposite of the rule of law.
Dude, if "everyone agrees", then it is anarchistic by definition.
"I'd quite like to see George Bush fight a war on malnutrition, disease and lack of medical care rather than a war on 'terror'.."
Seeing how that would only ensure we never get rid of malnutrition, disease and lack of medical care AND increase the public debt even more, no, I certainly wouldn't.
If I have nothing to hide, then they have no reason to search in the first place. It's that simple, really.
This increasingly stupid (and dangerous !) security crap has deterred me from visiting the US. No Mars Society Convention for me, no vacation to the Costa Rica if I have to go through Miami first, no visiting friends in New York. It sucks, but I don't think I can afford the risks.
People who follow procedures just because they're procedures are the same as people who hear, and act upon, the voices in their head. They will do messed up things, they will cause massive unintended harm, they might get (and have, so far) innocent people killed for no reason, and there is no way to know when nor why.
You got the category mislabeled. It's not being wealthy that gives power, it's really power that leads to wealth.
"The creation of artificial supply limitations, as a means of maintaining wealth and power, is one of the oldest tricks in the book."
It is also, historically, a trick that always fails eventually.
"It is utterly unrealistic to claim that nothing good has come of expanding the vote to include people of every race, gender, and income group."
Yes it is realistic, because this expansion means a whole lot more people stand to lose all they have than just the rich white old men. Voting is a disservice to the voters.
"So what changes do we need to make to the constitution to make it work?"
Here's my suggestion, just fuse together all the amendments to the Constitution and simply it into:
Congress shall make no law.
"So the United States was serving a smaller group when women got the vote? When minorities got the vote? And when poll taxes were eliminated?"
As a matter of fact, yes, mainly because voting is a disservice to the voters.
Voting has a much longer history than what you call democracy. Kings used to be elected, and so is the Pope. In the USSR they used to vote all the time, too, over a mind-numbinlgy high number of otherwise mundane things - too bad voting and democracy actually have little relationship with each other.
Having the right to vote means you are forced to regularly pool your life, your liberty and your belongings with all other voters and choose a big winner who will then dispose of the lot as he sees fit. No wonder elected governments always evolve into mafias, the whole setup seems designed to attract them and gives them incentives to filter out the honest and idealistic from being candidates.
It is the falling revenue that hubris is set in motion. It is by the gook of management that self-destruction acquires speed, the product line acquires bloatware, the bloatware becomes a warning. IT is by falling revenue alone that hubris is set in motion.
And if you're still concerned about proliferation, just design the reactors to have an effective breeding ratio of exactly 1. This way you only need to keep an eye on Uranium, and can safely distribute the reactors around the world.
"Some people want to breed Th into U to keep using these reactor designs"
And some people want to substitute pressurized water reactors with solid bars of heavy metal fuel, for molten fluoride salts liquid fuel reactors : no need to stop the reactor to refuel, better control on the composition of the core because its volatile and potentially dangerous elements can be extracted from the stream continuously, and easier throttling. And it runs at atmospheric pressure.
"The main reason is that while thorium itself is not usable in nuclear weapons, the Uranium-233 which is breed from it would be quite suitable."
Oh please ! No one has ever given more than mere thought about designing weapons with U-233. There are no plans, no studies, no numbers, no details because no one even tried to get any, so far. It might not even be technically feasible, and even if it is, it would require another whole Manhattan Project.
Plus it requires a breeder reactor just to get the U-233 in the first place, as you remarked. As for using U-233 to breed Pu from U-238 ? It makes no sense, people would just use the U-238 directly in the fore-mentionned breeder reactor instead of adding such an impractical step.
You're confusing Capitalium with Corporatium.
Corporatium is the heavy element you described, while Capitalium is a catalytic metal also found in all naturally-occuring Governmentium and Corporatium alloys.
Or better yet: don't waste your time voting and instead start acting like the original Constitution still applied, everyday. Take measures not to be caught at it of course, but encourage your friends and family to stop giving the law and the gov'n'ment credit where it deserves none. Start building the world you wish to live in, by living as if it was there already and inviting other people to join in. You don't have any rights if you don't use them, but the corollary is true too.
My point is that actual, existing laws, particularly civil law, is quite sufficient to uphold net neutrality. Legal definition of commerce alone should suffice: once you sold something, you can't take it back and sell it again to someone else.
"But our interests are not mutually compatible."
Some are, some ain't. In any case, it's whatever actions we do that count, and not the interests that may or may not be pursued through these actions. The bottom line is not doing harm.
Here we're hitting on the core definition of good and evil: descriptive/prescriptive ethics, objective/subjective welfare/utility/happiness/whatever. Even purely altruistic actions are enterprised according to individually-determined values. To do good we follow the course of actions that pursue those individual interests without hampering the individual interests of others, as tangibly expressed through their own actions upon the world. I do have a clear cut, compact definition that extensively covers all such good actions and leaves out all the bad actions, but I doubt you're interested in hearing it, and would most probably reject it. And its formal proof does not fit in here anyway.
"We kill animals for profit and individual survival. No one shoots a deer to save the human race."
Just great. And how do you think one is supposed to save the human race as a whole ? By saving individual humans, that's how. Our species' interest is the sum of our individual mutually compatible interests.
"The problem with GM plants is that they still throw out a bunch of pollen, and pollute existing seed lines"
Err, no.
Not only are most GM plants sterile hybrids to start with, but even for the very few that aren't, their pollen (say, from from GM corn) isn't going to "pollute" the non-same-species plants all around them in any way.
And lastly, you could as well worry that the natural plants are going to pollute the GM plants and ruin the scientists' efforts.
"Not everything about the world is part of some gloriously designed master plan. Or if it is, the designer is one sick, twisted individual."
See ? That's why Discordianism is the more rational religion !
As for me, I only eat uncivilized creatures. Show at least some basic respect for Natural Law, or you're food.