Depends. Do you think Beijing is going to be an improvement on Washington? Or that they would show more moral restraint than the US did and not mess with a weak nation with great natural resources for their benefit?
The thing is, the time when small countries could survive is coming to an end. They've always had a hard time when located near powerful empires, and the world is so small nowadays that every country is located next to every other one. That's the real reason why European countries tolerate the Union: they're going to lose their independence anyway, so all that can be done is do so on their own terms, rather than be straight-up conquered. And the US states are individually far too small and weak to stand up to the likes of China or Russia.
Also, the more technology advances, the more important infrastructure becomes, which means it costs more to maintain it. You are going to be paying more taxes in a society that has proper sanitation than in one where everyone just shits on streets, there's no way around that.
I'd like to see Obama critics actually think before they blame him for every action undertaken by the government.
Obama gets blamed for every action undertaken by the US government because he is the head of US government. He is personally responsible for it, that's what being the President of the United States means : you're The Boss so it's your fault when the US screws up.
With great power comes great responsibility. And unlike Spider-Man, Obama wanted and worked hard to get his - twice - so he can bloody well deal with it.
Setting the bar early with enjoying murder and torture for fun at ten years old does what to a person? Do you have a shred of proof that it does nothing?
According to yourself, the older generations turned out fine, but they played cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, and little army men in their youth, all of which are basically simulated murder.
I dunno what kind of childhood you had, but the typical kid has a high virtual body count by the time he turns teenager, even without a computer.
Of course Slashdot is a debate club. It's whole function is to give a subject in the form of a story and then let people comment the story and other comments while it keeps a record.
Part of the problem is that that the majority of adults can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality either.
Indeed. And a particularly common fantasy is the idea that people who disagree with you are evil or stupid or both. Look at US politics to get an idea where that road will lead, and ask yourself if you really want to go there.
One of the ironies is that the bulk of the 'religious indoctrination in school' complaints that make it into the court system come from christians unhappy that their children are being pushed by some other christian sect, either in specific wording or beliefs about how worship is handled.
Nothing ironic about that, it's how the whole "freedom of religion" thing got started.
What you call "stupid" for the utility is of some benefit to the workers, and when it comes down to it, I care a lot more about them.
It's actually smart for the utility too, since it still has other workers who undoubtedly have taken notice, and thus are worrying a bit less about being backstabbed out of the blue, making them more able to focus on doing their job.
On the other hand, the "human resources" of OperationsInc now know exactly what to expect from Mr Lewis, and will draw their own conclusions about what level of loyalty is appropriate in return.
Same goes for democracy; you can't suddenly change your mind when the majority agrees with something you don't. You can act to change it, but the will of the people has spoken. To say otherwise, is to denounce a basic tenet of democracy: majority agreement. If you do, then all you're doing is attempting to enforce your minority-opinion over the rest of us.
Democracy is not mob rule and mob rule is not democracy. The concept has been refined since ancient Athens and adopted more tenets, precisely to keep a democracy from degenerating into a game of Survivors. So no, as a matter of fact denouncing a action, no matter how popular, that solely exists in order to harm a minority is not denouncing democracy, it's denouncing a perversion of it.
Compare and contrast civil rights, which weren't exactly popular in certain places (and still aren't).
But smartphones are very expensive, very high end, and the data plans combined make this much less affordable than a basic computer and ISP (especially ISP with dialup).
A basic computer with a dialup requires an electric and phone sockets and can't be carried around.
Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. and yet... and yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some... some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged. - Death
Of course, if you grind the universe to the finest powder you don't find any atoms or molecules of anything, since they are not fundamental particles but made of smaller things. The conclusion "atoms don't exist" is a non-sequiter, though.
And of course there's no life to be found either, therefore no death, therefore it's one of those deep philosophical arguments that end up proving the speaker doesn't exist. Also known as epic fail.
I start with an observation: "Our hips seem non-optimal to our environment."
In what way are they non-optimal? Because I have observed mine working just fine day after day. What specific problems do you claim could be solved with what kind of improved design (because "optimal", after all, doesn't mean "without problems", just "best possible")?
We could pay one group of people to dig holes and another group of people to fill up holes. That money also goes "back into the economy." The problem of course is that we then have two groups of people doing nothing productive when they could have been doing something productive.
Most of the time we pay people to do meaningless busywork is because no, they couldn't be doing something productive since there were no jobs to be had due to economy having gone belly-up once again. This, in turn, leaves the choice between giving them food, providing a busywork "job" or letting them to starve to death. Option one is blocked by jealousy, option three is blocked by evolutionary learning (dead tribe members have zero chance of contributing in the future), so that leave option two - digging and filling holes.
The German economies capacity for goods and services is less because of their inefficient energy strategy than it otherwise would be.
You are making the assumption that their energy strategy is, in fact, inefficient. This remains to be seen. But you cannot conclude it simply from the fact that investment costs money.
Most of the solar subsidy goes back to Chinese companies who make the kit - companies like BMW pay 100% more for power than does a similar company in the UK - thats not good for a country based around manufacturing like Germany.
But getting a large cache of rare earth elements is. Now matter whether solar is feasible, all those panels are mini-mines just sitting around within easy reach for future need...
That's nonsense, both from an economic point of view and from a political point of view. For example, Bill Gates is the richest man in America, and he isn't constraining my choices one bit through his wealth.
So... when did America become a "libertarian utopia"? Has Obama been executed already, or do you plan to merely exile him? Because I'm pretty sure I've heard a lot of libertarians whining about all the existing government regulations here on Slashdot.
Anyway, Bill Gates has definitely constrained your choices through his wealth. The Windows monopoly lasted for years, is the reason why other platforms still have a dearth of programs (especially games), and the situation only began to change when Microsoft began to lose power.
Libertarianism isn't about "idealism", it's about a pragmatic compromise between rights and liberties.
Speak for yourself, some of us aren't even judeo-christians/muslims.
But that doesn't mean you don't create gods. We don't call them such, but the characters of modern myth like Welfare Queen who spawned a thousand children to suck taxpayers dry or the Self-Made Man who rose himself above all by pulling his shoestrings really hard or the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace who decides who succeeds and who fails or, indeed, Texas with a tradition of technological and scientific achievement are not really all that different than Zeus or Mars. Refusing to name them just makes it harder to consciously develop them - and through them, culture - like the jews did (the Bible being more or less those attempts that stuck, which explains a lot about it).
Modern society has its myths, and it has its gods, and they are still treated like they were real people rather than abstract (and often very stupid or evil or both) concepts. Now the interesting question is: can we build a science around this - call it "mythonics" - and examine and perhaps even take conscious control of how these things develop? And would that actually be a good thing, should it succeed (would you want your political nemesis to control the cultural landscape)?
who puts child production/care next to waste treatement plants?
One that has no biological reason to have a "feces are gross" reflex and needs to get the newborn "infected" with healthy gut flora as soon after birth as possible?
You would write an OS that wouldn't let you kill a rogue process?
Depends: are the processes dumb servers like in today's computers, inferior even to the simplest of bacteria, or fully sapient beings like us? Because the substrate is less important than what's standing on it.
Besides, your attempt at belittling humans is, of course, completely incompatible with Bible itself, which have God himself declaring humans as kinda big deal:
5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.
6 âoeWhoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;br>
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.
When the user wants a processes terminated, it gets terminated. Who is the program to complain?
In this case, something the user himself declared as users "image" worthy of having anyone attempting such termination be held accountable ("terminated" themselves). Which might actually extend to the user himself, if one is willing to make such theological connections about certain famous events in New Testament...
However, whoever has most gold gets to choose what options are available and to whom. Which is why libertarian utopia is just another dictatorship. The last of 20th century's idealism-based evil empires. We shall see if it'll fool enough people to get this one fully implemented.
I'm not the OP but the logic is pretty straightforward. By definition, in any universe where omniscience exists, free will cannot also exist.
If anyone can know with absolute certainty that I will do something, I therefore cannot choose to do anything else.
But that logic falls apart when we examine the act of choice closer. Why did you make a particular choice? If determinism holds - if your actions are somehow preordained, for example by following logically from a complete description of some former or latter moment of time, such as "the beginning", or the combination of your personality and history, or anything else - and this means determinism coerces your will, then surely the alternative - that you simply choose randomly - means that the metaphorical dice coerces you just as much.
What's actually happening here is that reality has been reduced to the point where free will lies in peaces, and since none of these pieces is will by itself it can't be found. But of course in reality people are highly predictable; sure. they can choose something else than what someone who knows them very well predicts, they just don't want to. In a 100% deterministic system, this predictability tops at 100% certainty, while in a system with a random dice added to process it's that dice, not the person, who is "free" to take unexpected pics (because if the dice is the person or his "will", we've just pushed the problem one step back and recurse right back to it).
tl;dr If you compare a philosophical and juridical concept with a concept in physics, you'll get "sounds like purple" as an answer.
But can anyone from Finland confirm to me what the feelings are about this in Finland?
Outrage. Even the local right wing seems to think it's absurd to reward a leader who's either totally inept or a trojan horse with such gigantic sums, especially in this economic situation.
I'm willing to wager that if a comet were projected to slam into the Earth in 5 years, Congress would quickly spend 100x that sum, just to put as many people on Mars (and Moon, and orbital colonies, etc) as they humanly could.
Some people would want to spend money to find a way to stop the comet, some comet sceptics would oppose them because the chance that it'll miss can't be ruled out and spending money affects them, and some would come up with plans like spending the money to send people to die on lifeless rocks, not understanding that even after the impact Earth would be a paradise of easy living compared to every other known place, so just build a bunker right here and wait there until the ecosystem recovers.
OTOH, Manned exploration is preferable in other situations/parameters, for many of the reasons stated repeatedly on/. and in other forums.
The question is not so much whether it's preferable but whether it's currently possible. Our current technology allows us to keep a few people alive on Earth orbit for months if they are being constantly resupplied from below. That's not possible for an interplanetary mission. The Moon missions pushed the limit, and still would, and Mars and beyond are just fantasy right now.
Once we get a self-sufficient Moon base going, and a few on Earth orbits, then we can ponder about putting engines on one and going to a tour. But the current situation isn't anologous to Columbus or even the vikings and Vinland, but someone having just noticed that trees tend to float and you can sit on them and kinda paddle.
I'd hazard to say that most people would make a distinction between standing up to a massive power imbalance and being successful compared to "ur m0m sux d0nk3y c0x!"
And most would also consider the latter sad rather than enraging or even annoying. If trolls sting people with barbs then that one is using a wet noodle.
Even pretending to compare someone like Ghandi to your average internet troll is just a troll in itself I'm guessing!
Well, it did elicit a response now didn't it ?-)
But it's more based on something I've noticed on a number of forums: any post that doesn't agree with the viewpoint of the site (when one exists) gets labeled a troll (and quite rightly; no one posts praises to social democracy on Freerepublic.org and not expect to get shit for that unless they're an idiot). It's become the standard way to defend your worldview from the thought that you could actually be wrong, or even that someone might honestly disagree with you. But any kind of change requires just that - people need to change the way they look at the world - so the archetype of a leader in a revolutionary change in thinking (a prophet, if you will) and the archetype of a troll are by definition the same.
The "you momma" troll you quoted above fails at precisely this: he doesn't challenge anyone's worldview in any way, so he's just background noise. But the intermittant articles about atheists that or evangelists what do, thus they generate absurd shitstorms of people yelling insults and threats to random strangers they've never met and likely never will. That is what a succesful troll is like, not a sad copypasta. And it's what Ghandi did to the British.
So no, the average Internet troll is not Ghandi, any more than the average emo teen writing terrible fanfiction is Homeros. But the difference is in their ability in their chosen activity, not its category. Even Tara Gillesbie herself is still a writer, just a very bad one (or a very succesful troll, making this a very meta example).
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Depends. Do you think Beijing is going to be an improvement on Washington? Or that they would show more moral restraint than the US did and not mess with a weak nation with great natural resources for their benefit?
The thing is, the time when small countries could survive is coming to an end. They've always had a hard time when located near powerful empires, and the world is so small nowadays that every country is located next to every other one. That's the real reason why European countries tolerate the Union: they're going to lose their independence anyway, so all that can be done is do so on their own terms, rather than be straight-up conquered. And the US states are individually far too small and weak to stand up to the likes of China or Russia.
Also, the more technology advances, the more important infrastructure becomes, which means it costs more to maintain it. You are going to be paying more taxes in a society that has proper sanitation than in one where everyone just shits on streets, there's no way around that.
Obama gets blamed for every action undertaken by the US government because he is the head of US government. He is personally responsible for it, that's what being the President of the United States means : you're The Boss so it's your fault when the US screws up.
With great power comes great responsibility. And unlike Spider-Man, Obama wanted and worked hard to get his - twice - so he can bloody well deal with it.
kWh is not an SI unit. Ws, also known as a joule, is; 1 kWh = 3.6 MJ.
According to yourself, the older generations turned out fine, but they played cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, and little army men in their youth, all of which are basically simulated murder.
I dunno what kind of childhood you had, but the typical kid has a high virtual body count by the time he turns teenager, even without a computer.
Of course Slashdot is a debate club. It's whole function is to give a subject in the form of a story and then let people comment the story and other comments while it keeps a record.
Indeed. And a particularly common fantasy is the idea that people who disagree with you are evil or stupid or both. Look at US politics to get an idea where that road will lead, and ask yourself if you really want to go there.
Nothing ironic about that, it's how the whole "freedom of religion" thing got started.
It's actually smart for the utility too, since it still has other workers who undoubtedly have taken notice, and thus are worrying a bit less about being backstabbed out of the blue, making them more able to focus on doing their job.
On the other hand, the "human resources" of OperationsInc now know exactly what to expect from Mr Lewis, and will draw their own conclusions about what level of loyalty is appropriate in return.
Democracy is not mob rule and mob rule is not democracy. The concept has been refined since ancient Athens and adopted more tenets, precisely to keep a democracy from degenerating into a game of Survivors. So no, as a matter of fact denouncing a action, no matter how popular, that solely exists in order to harm a minority is not denouncing democracy, it's denouncing a perversion of it.
Compare and contrast civil rights, which weren't exactly popular in certain places (and still aren't).
A basic computer with a dialup requires an electric and phone sockets and can't be carried around.
Of course, if you grind the universe to the finest powder you don't find any atoms or molecules of anything, since they are not fundamental particles but made of smaller things. The conclusion "atoms don't exist" is a non-sequiter, though.
And of course there's no life to be found either, therefore no death, therefore it's one of those deep philosophical arguments that end up proving the speaker doesn't exist. Also known as epic fail.
In what way are they non-optimal? Because I have observed mine working just fine day after day. What specific problems do you claim could be solved with what kind of improved design (because "optimal", after all, doesn't mean "without problems", just "best possible")?
So... it's trying to line up for a shot?
Most of the time we pay people to do meaningless busywork is because no, they couldn't be doing something productive since there were no jobs to be had due to economy having gone belly-up once again. This, in turn, leaves the choice between giving them food, providing a busywork "job" or letting them to starve to death. Option one is blocked by jealousy, option three is blocked by evolutionary learning (dead tribe members have zero chance of contributing in the future), so that leave option two - digging and filling holes.
You are making the assumption that their energy strategy is, in fact, inefficient. This remains to be seen. But you cannot conclude it simply from the fact that investment costs money.
But getting a large cache of rare earth elements is. Now matter whether solar is feasible, all those panels are mini-mines just sitting around within easy reach for future need...
So... when did America become a "libertarian utopia"? Has Obama been executed already, or do you plan to merely exile him? Because I'm pretty sure I've heard a lot of libertarians whining about all the existing government regulations here on Slashdot.
Anyway, Bill Gates has definitely constrained your choices through his wealth. The Windows monopoly lasted for years, is the reason why other platforms still have a dearth of programs (especially games), and the situation only began to change when Microsoft began to lose power.
Which would make it an ideology.
Start ranting about the evils of popular democracy. You know you want to.
But that doesn't mean you don't create gods. We don't call them such, but the characters of modern myth like Welfare Queen who spawned a thousand children to suck taxpayers dry or the Self-Made Man who rose himself above all by pulling his shoestrings really hard or the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace who decides who succeeds and who fails or, indeed, Texas with a tradition of technological and scientific achievement are not really all that different than Zeus or Mars. Refusing to name them just makes it harder to consciously develop them - and through them, culture - like the jews did (the Bible being more or less those attempts that stuck, which explains a lot about it).
Modern society has its myths, and it has its gods, and they are still treated like they were real people rather than abstract (and often very stupid or evil or both) concepts. Now the interesting question is: can we build a science around this - call it "mythonics" - and examine and perhaps even take conscious control of how these things develop? And would that actually be a good thing, should it succeed (would you want your political nemesis to control the cultural landscape)?
One that has no biological reason to have a "feces are gross" reflex and needs to get the newborn "infected" with healthy gut flora as soon after birth as possible?
Depends: are the processes dumb servers like in today's computers, inferior even to the simplest of bacteria, or fully sapient beings like us? Because the substrate is less important than what's standing on it.
Besides, your attempt at belittling humans is, of course, completely incompatible with Bible itself, which have God himself declaring humans as kinda big deal:
5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.
6 âoeWhoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;br> for in the image of God
has God made mankind.
In this case, something the user himself declared as users "image" worthy of having anyone attempting such termination be held accountable ("terminated" themselves). Which might actually extend to the user himself, if one is willing to make such theological connections about certain famous events in New Testament...
However, whoever has most gold gets to choose what options are available and to whom. Which is why libertarian utopia is just another dictatorship. The last of 20th century's idealism-based evil empires. We shall see if it'll fool enough people to get this one fully implemented.
I'm not the OP but the logic is pretty straightforward. By definition, in any universe where omniscience exists, free will cannot also exist.
If anyone can know with absolute certainty that I will do something, I therefore cannot choose to do anything else.
But that logic falls apart when we examine the act of choice closer. Why did you make a particular choice? If determinism holds - if your actions are somehow preordained, for example by following logically from a complete description of some former or latter moment of time, such as "the beginning", or the combination of your personality and history, or anything else - and this means determinism coerces your will, then surely the alternative - that you simply choose randomly - means that the metaphorical dice coerces you just as much.
What's actually happening here is that reality has been reduced to the point where free will lies in peaces, and since none of these pieces is will by itself it can't be found. But of course in reality people are highly predictable; sure. they can choose something else than what someone who knows them very well predicts, they just don't want to. In a 100% deterministic system, this predictability tops at 100% certainty, while in a system with a random dice added to process it's that dice, not the person, who is "free" to take unexpected pics (because if the dice is the person or his "will", we've just pushed the problem one step back and recurse right back to it).
tl;dr If you compare a philosophical and juridical concept with a concept in physics, you'll get "sounds like purple" as an answer.
Some people would want to spend money to find a way to stop the comet, some comet sceptics would oppose them because the chance that it'll miss can't be ruled out and spending money affects them, and some would come up with plans like spending the money to send people to die on lifeless rocks, not understanding that even after the impact Earth would be a paradise of easy living compared to every other known place, so just build a bunker right here and wait there until the ecosystem recovers.
The question is not so much whether it's preferable but whether it's currently possible. Our current technology allows us to keep a few people alive on Earth orbit for months if they are being constantly resupplied from below. That's not possible for an interplanetary mission. The Moon missions pushed the limit, and still would, and Mars and beyond are just fantasy right now.
Once we get a self-sufficient Moon base going, and a few on Earth orbits, then we can ponder about putting engines on one and going to a tour. But the current situation isn't anologous to Columbus or even the vikings and Vinland, but someone having just noticed that trees tend to float and you can sit on them and kinda paddle.
And most would also consider the latter sad rather than enraging or even annoying. If trolls sting people with barbs then that one is using a wet noodle.
Well, it did elicit a response now didn't it ?-)
But it's more based on something I've noticed on a number of forums: any post that doesn't agree with the viewpoint of the site (when one exists) gets labeled a troll (and quite rightly; no one posts praises to social democracy on Freerepublic.org and not expect to get shit for that unless they're an idiot). It's become the standard way to defend your worldview from the thought that you could actually be wrong, or even that someone might honestly disagree with you. But any kind of change requires just that - people need to change the way they look at the world - so the archetype of a leader in a revolutionary change in thinking (a prophet, if you will) and the archetype of a troll are by definition the same.
The "you momma" troll you quoted above fails at precisely this: he doesn't challenge anyone's worldview in any way, so he's just background noise. But the intermittant articles about atheists that or evangelists what do, thus they generate absurd shitstorms of people yelling insults and threats to random strangers they've never met and likely never will. That is what a succesful troll is like, not a sad copypasta. And it's what Ghandi did to the British.
So no, the average Internet troll is not Ghandi, any more than the average emo teen writing terrible fanfiction is Homeros. But the difference is in their ability in their chosen activity, not its category. Even Tara Gillesbie herself is still a writer, just a very bad one (or a very succesful troll, making this a very meta example).