I'm convinced that the "higher" animals have feelings too, and deserve to not be tortured or slaughtered or bred in brutal ways. But don't pretend that they're people, because they're just not.
Well, obviously not, since since "people" is a plural for "human beings". This is a red herring.
What better definition of person than "like us" do we have?
You aren't like me. Given any group of humans that doesn't include you, you are almost guaranteed to have some trait the people in the group don't have, or lack some which they have.
Your definition would let me declare bald people non-persons, which is clearly absurd.
If merely having a sense of self and a personality is enough to get the right to vote, then quite a lot of animals will fit that bill.
We aren't talking about right to vote, which is denied from quite a few humans too - all non-citizens, for example, making this another red herring. We're talking about things like not being kept in captivity against the individual being's will.
And yes, quite a lot of animals - at least all mammals - have a personality, most bigger ones to the point where it's easy to tell individuals apart from behaviour even if they belong to the same species or even the same herd.
Sure, dolphins are smart, but so are chimps and elephant. And whales, orang-utans and crows. But none of them come anywhere near any semblance of the kind of cultural ability that we have.
This is a thid red herring. The issue isn't whether dolphins might build a fishbowl-tank to explore the dry land, the issue is whether they're self-aware enough that they should be treated as retarded humans rather than mere sources of amusement/study.
Besides, getting a culture started requires more than intelligence, it requires hands. Elephants, whales and crows don't have those. Apes do, and, well, we are apes.
Certainly the system wants drones. "Want" != "need", but generally "want" == "what you get".
The system needs someone to clean the toilets, sweep the streets, flip the burgers, run the assembly line, and do all the other thousands of boring but necessary jobs. This has only recently began to chance thanks to automation; but in a cruel twist of irony our capitalistic society won't liberate people from menial work when said work is automated, but simply labels them unnecessary and shoves them aside to live in poverty.
Everyone can't be a winner, and a loser by any other name is still a drone.
And on the statistically rare occasion that the high roller actually wins something that, too, is good for business. Sure, it costs the casino some money (money which they make up in literally minutes thanks to everyone else in the casino who's losing) but it generates excitement and "That could be me!" attitudes from the other gamblers.
And yet this isn't the first story of a casino refusing to pay someone's winnings on Slashdot. I guess "Greedy Stupid" is the most common alignment of humanity...
Yes I know I'm taking the naive approach but too many people are jumping on the injustice bandwagon over a sensationalist article that has been misleadingly summed up and sensationalised some more. The top payout on the machine is 251,000 and she won 41,900,000.
Doesn't really matter. The way I've heard lately, they wouldn't pay 251,000 either. It's always glitch if you win.
Which rises an interesting question: how long until people decide to stop going to casinos altogether since there's not even a theoretical chance of victory, and how unpleasant conversation will the greedy people who caused this have as a result ?-)
Imagine you bid $20 on a pair of jeans on some auction site but a cat on keyboard malfunction caused you to bid 20 million instead. Now the seller is suing you for the 20 million you promised.
Or let's imagine you bid $20 on a pair of jeans, get them, then decide you don't like them after all and claim that you only meant to bid 20 cents. Now you're suing the seller to pay back your $19.80.
Hardly seems fair to be able to force you to somehow try and pay this off over the rest of your life now does it?
Won't someone please think of the poor wittle casinos? It's just as obvious that winning in a casino is a mistake than bidding $20 million for a pair of jeans!
Apologies I'm distorting your point but I don't understand your meaning on expectation. Are we talking about finding in the alleged "haunted house" some kind of space where the known laws of nature don't apply?
Yes, that's exactly correct. Try to figure out beforehand what the conditions inside the house should be - temperature, sounds, smells, etc. - and then look for any deviations from these.
Is the intention that they should be dropping something and making sure it's acquiring 9.81 m/s^2? Then shining a laser beam and measuring c? Then calculating the speed of sound? Then testing if water freezes at 0c and boils at 100c (and do we stop at H2O or test all elements and compounds)?
I was thinking more like "search for cold spots/rooms, weird sounds and shadows on the wall and then figure out what's causing them". In other words, search through the house systematically, mark down each and every piece of evidence for it being haunted, then look for natural explanations.
I would sooner expect a minor deviation be more likely caused by experimental inaccuracy, where your average ghost hunter would point to it as further proof of the "supernatural."
Probably, but that's where repeatability comes in.
We can't simply run around testing for "everything" - that's not science. That's what physicians do when there's something obviously and dangerously wrong but they can't figure out what. It's a last resort, not the modus operendi of physicists.
Actually, that's exactly the modus operandi of science: make a hypothesis, make predictions based on that hypothesis, run tests against those predictions.
You do know that people are still testing the Theory of Relativity, right? And for the existence of ether? And even the famous "feather and steel ball hit the ground at the same time in vacuum" thing?
Further, all these assumptions that "ghosts" or anything for that matter is "supernatural" is unwarranted. There is no proof of anything supernatural but only speculation, myth and superstition.
The subject here is about how to run a ghost hunt, not whether it's reasonable to do that. People have weird hobbies.
I say there's a quarter on Venus. Unless you search every square inch of Venus, you can't say that it's impossible, just based on your knowledge it seems highly unlikely.
And even if you do search them, you still can't say for sure it's not there, since a quarter is less than an inch across so it could happen to lay between your sampling points. And of course it could be standing on its edge, or be buried - in fact it would have to be buried to remain on Venus for long, considering the conditions there.
The problem with ghosts and the like is scientific plausibility. There isn't any. Their existance would violate known physical laws. We have extraordinary proof of those laws. So you would need more than that to prove ghosts. Good luck with that.
The problem with ghosts is complete lack of evidence for their existence. This is completely different than saying the existence of ghosts would violate laws of physics, which is a positive claim and thus requires more than an offhand assertion. So, what laws of physics do ghosts violate and how? Please pay special care not to confuse complications ("what would preform the function of the brain") with actual physical law violations ("this would require that signals move faster than light").
For extra credit, consider science fiction concept of "mind uploading", which would also allow your mind - or a copy of it - to continue existing and interacting with the physical world after the death of your body. Would whatever physical law violation prevents "other" kind of ghosts also prevent this? Just what do you mean by "ghost" in your argument?
Even a proton pack prop, as suggested above, is as good an idea as you can get for a test for "ghosts." This because no qualia are actually specified by use of the word "ghost." This leaves you with no idea what you are looking for when you happily ignore the fact that there's actually something causing the air to vibrate which should be the real focus of inquiry. Choosing night vision goggles like all those idiotic shows on television is no better a choice than a seismograph, scales, or Geiger counter. They all share equally unreasonable expectations of detecting whatever it is your think a "ghost" might be.
If you are looking for ghosts - or any other supernatural phenomenom - then the obvious procedure is to first figure out what you expect to observe at the place of the experiment based on natural laws, then look for any deviations from it. In other words, use the same procedure you would use to test the laws of physics any other time.
That's where the narcissism comment comes from. It takes a pretty huge ego to believe that you should be able to say anything you want without there being any repercussions.
So why didn't you tell me your real name, "gothzilla"? Are you a narcissist? Put your money where your mouth is.
No idea what that has to do with soviet russia and authoritarianism either. It's called common sense most places.
It is the version of "free speech" that existed in Soviet Russia and still exist in every dictatorship to this day: speak your mind and suffer your punishment.
Presumably because the target device supports no higher-level language? I suppose that can be excused, these being nothing but glorified telephones after all...
An ancient piece of wisdom...
"If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all."
Let me introduce you to a fancy new concept called freedom of speech. It has arguably done more than all other political changes combined to make the world a better place.
Unfortunately we live in an age where narcissism abounds and people actually believe they should be immune to the consequences of their actions.
Indeed, comrade. Here in Soviet Russia we have absolute and perfect freedom of speech. And any who uses theirs to say anything of comrade Stalin that comrade Stalin disagrees with will pay the full price for their insubordination. This is proof of our superior morality, for with us, speech has consequences.
In fact, comrade gothzilla, why don't you "put your money where your mouth is", as those imperialistic pigs say? Tell us your real name, so that we may attribute your authoritarianism to you. You wouldn't want to be a narcissist and hide behind a pseudonym, now would you?
"When phones are on, they are ALWAYS connected to the cell phone tower. The phones and cell phone towers exchange little packets worth of information back and forth so when ever a call comes it, they can find you straight away. Can anyone guess how big the packets are? If you guess 160 characters, you are right." In other words they are charging for a service that should be free, because the phone and tower are *already sending* Texts to one another.
The towers are owned by a private entity. Said entity doesn't exist to benefit the public, it exists to generate as much profit as possible for its owners. Thus, if it can extract more money from you buy charging for text messages, it will.
Only nonprofits are likely to offer services at the price it costs to produce them, and that very fact hinders their growth. As a result, only the Government is likely to be an efficient (cheap) service provider from the customers point of view. Reflect on that irony for a while:).
It costs nothing for the company to append that Text to the outgoing packet.
That simply makes the entire text message pure profit. And since most American cellphones are vendor-locked, there's none of that pesky competition getting in the way.
To summarize: Phones are "texting" towers constantly as part of the cellular standard.
The appending of a personal message costs nothing extra for the company.
The rates are outrageously high for the minuscule data passed.
To summarize even further: Awesome business plan from master capitalists.
Not due to the high level of violent crime, but due to the perception that Muslims carry out a lot of violent crime.
When the same perception is repeated over and over again all over Europe, and outside of it too for that matter, it might eventually occur to the observer that the common factor of all of these perceptions is Islam. This is further reinforced by noting that Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccas, etc. haven't gotten this kind of reputation.
And let's be honest here: if you draw a cartoon caricature of Christ, will someone try to kill you? Or Buddha? Or Amaterasu? Yet draw one of Mohammed and you need police protection. Islam is not a nice religion, and totally incompatible with Western values, at least in its current form. We Finns refused to surrender our freedom to Stalin, we refuse to surrender it to Muhammed's fanclub either.
The two are not the same thing at all. How much of this is actually caused by crime rates? How much is down to far-right politicians and news organisations kicking up more fuss about crimes carried out by Muslims, and to people only associating crimes with the criminals' race when they're not white?
As it happens, it's become somewhat of a running joke that the ethnicity of the criminal is only mentioned when it's Finnish. That's a large part of the problem: there's a (likely correct) perception that our leaders and media are siding with foreigners against Finns. And it doesn't help either that the average Finn is getting poorer each year while the government keeps on bringing in more immigrants and giving them priority in everything, from financial aid to apartment queues. Any attempt to bring up any of these problems gets shot down with cries of "racism!", with the consequence that people are slowly being weaned off of feeling any shame over such identification, even when it's actually justified.
As you can imagine, this is pretty much the ideal conditions for the growth of extremely nasty movements. If we're lucky, Finland will turn to a more nationalistic direction and fixes its problems; if we're unlucky, the powers-that-be will keep the lid on the mounting pressure until it explodes violently. Things could get pretty nasty.
And the same is happening all over Europe. I wonder if the muslims mistake niceness as weakness or imagine that Allah will bail them out once shit hits the fan; or maybe they really are just a bunch of idiotic rabble doing things for shits and giggles and not thinking of consequences; but no matter what the reason is, if something isn't done soon, people will start pushing back. They already are, but haven't yet crossed into violence; but when they will... it will be ugly.
Here are the ideas that are considered heretical by the true believers in global warming:
I suppose your attempt to paint anyone disagreeing with you as religious fanatics could be considered as violating pretty much every scientific principle and thus "heretical".
1) The sun is the biggest driver of the Earth's Climate
Of course it is, and currently experiencing a cyclical minimum in energy production, which refutes your own point number 3.
2) There is already more than enough CO2 for a 'full' greenhouse effect so more will not make it 'worse.'
There is no "full" greenhouse effect. The more CO2 you have in the atmosphere, the stronger the effect becomes.
3) The Earth has been cooling since 2007.
Which, as you noted yourself, is due to Sun.
4) Current computer models of the Earth's long-term climate are not necessarily correct.
No model is necessarily correct. Yours is a complete nonstatement.
There are others, of course, but you get the idea. Never say any of the above in the presence of believers.
Indeed, you will be corrected and perhaps considered slightly slow.
It is better that the smarter folks exploit the system and rule the mass of cattle.
Don't worry, they do. Enjoy your grass, at least until slaughter. And when the time comes for you to become a hamburger, remember: you wanted this system.
Sure we have two parties, but they're much more diverse than any party you find under a parliamentary system.
Here in Finland we have Vasemmistoliitto - the heir to the old Communist Party - on the left and Kokoomus - representing authoritarian libertarianism (yes, they manage that, by combining the worst aspects of both) - on the right. Top that.
It quite puzzles me... Bush was almost everything "conservatives" claim to despise: A blue-blood, trust-fund baby, born to aristocrats, who was given everything he had. Obama is almost everything they claim to adore: A bootstrappy young boy who found Jesus, got married, had kids and got rich. Yet, here we are...
Conservatism, in the general sense, means rooting for the status quo. Conservatism, in American politics, seems to meant rooting for the money. Both cases would find a rich aristocrat becoming a president admirable and an upstart becoming one despisable. What's so puzzling about it?
Palin/Wilders of the 1920's laid the foundation on which Hitler rose up. BUT ALSO the Obama's/Cohen's (dutch political figure who is blamed for the coddling of immigrants) they too helped, or failed to stop, the sentiment that lead to the growth of the extreme parties.
This is true. It's also something those in power have sadly missed. For example, here in Finland we have a growing anti-muslim sentiment due to the high rate of violent crime they perform, and Stockholm's attempted terrorist attack didn't exactly help. There's also a (probably true) perception that immigrants are favoured over native finns in getting financial aid. At the same time, our politicians are crying "racism!" every time these issues are brought up. The result is that, since reasoned discussion is apparently impossible, the population is turning towards nationalist parties and extreme reactions. And even more sadly, I can't really fault my countrymen - what are they supposed to do, roll over and die?
Hitler rose to power amongst misery, and was voted into office by a desperate population. And, no matter how evil he might have been, at first he did improve things. People know this, and are more and more willing to turn towards a desperate gambit: vote for Hitler and hope you can get rid of him after he's fixed the economic and social problems with socialism and nationalism but before the shit hits the fan.
In short, as far as the people are concerned, we are very close to crossing the Godzilla Treshold.
I have a feeling Obama would do the same as well if the same thing didn't happen with him getting knocked stupid.
Yes, it truly is surprising how power-hungry people who have dedicated their entire life to ruling over others can be:).
Am shocked Congress hasn't tried this with Wikileaks making plenty of foreign service jerks look as stupid as they were.
Just why do you think these claims about Assange being a rapist originate? Especially since the Pirate Bay raids already proved Sweden being US's bitch?
Debs was a Marxist who supported the destruction of private property rights in the means of production, which has unfailingly led to terror, enslavement and mass-murder.
Of course, in many case the terror, enslavement and mass murder only happened after CIA ousted the democratically elected left-wing government and installed a right-wing dictator.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, obviously not, since since "people" is a plural for "human beings". This is a red herring.
You aren't like me. Given any group of humans that doesn't include you, you are almost guaranteed to have some trait the people in the group don't have, or lack some which they have.
Your definition would let me declare bald people non-persons, which is clearly absurd.
We aren't talking about right to vote, which is denied from quite a few humans too - all non-citizens, for example, making this another red herring. We're talking about things like not being kept in captivity against the individual being's will.
And yes, quite a lot of animals - at least all mammals - have a personality, most bigger ones to the point where it's easy to tell individuals apart from behaviour even if they belong to the same species or even the same herd.
This is a thid red herring. The issue isn't whether dolphins might build a fishbowl-tank to explore the dry land, the issue is whether they're self-aware enough that they should be treated as retarded humans rather than mere sources of amusement/study.
Besides, getting a culture started requires more than intelligence, it requires hands. Elephants, whales and crows don't have those. Apes do, and, well, we are apes.
The system needs someone to clean the toilets, sweep the streets, flip the burgers, run the assembly line, and do all the other thousands of boring but necessary jobs. This has only recently began to chance thanks to automation; but in a cruel twist of irony our capitalistic society won't liberate people from menial work when said work is automated, but simply labels them unnecessary and shoves them aside to live in poverty.
Everyone can't be a winner, and a loser by any other name is still a drone.
If you lose, you go home happy, if you win, you'll be arrested.
It seems that the only winning move is not to play. What a strange game.
And yet this isn't the first story of a casino refusing to pay someone's winnings on Slashdot. I guess "Greedy Stupid" is the most common alignment of humanity...
Doesn't really matter. The way I've heard lately, they wouldn't pay 251,000 either. It's always glitch if you win.
Which rises an interesting question: how long until people decide to stop going to casinos altogether since there's not even a theoretical chance of victory, and how unpleasant conversation will the greedy people who caused this have as a result ?-)
Or let's imagine you bid $20 on a pair of jeans, get them, then decide you don't like them after all and claim that you only meant to bid 20 cents. Now you're suing the seller to pay back your $19.80.
Won't someone please think of the poor wittle casinos? It's just as obvious that winning in a casino is a mistake than bidding $20 million for a pair of jeans!
Are you astroturfing or just plain dumb?
Yes, that's exactly correct. Try to figure out beforehand what the conditions inside the house should be - temperature, sounds, smells, etc. - and then look for any deviations from these.
I was thinking more like "search for cold spots/rooms, weird sounds and shadows on the wall and then figure out what's causing them". In other words, search through the house systematically, mark down each and every piece of evidence for it being haunted, then look for natural explanations.
Probably, but that's where repeatability comes in.
Actually, that's exactly the modus operandi of science: make a hypothesis, make predictions based on that hypothesis, run tests against those predictions.
You do know that people are still testing the Theory of Relativity, right? And for the existence of ether? And even the famous "feather and steel ball hit the ground at the same time in vacuum" thing?
The subject here is about how to run a ghost hunt, not whether it's reasonable to do that. People have weird hobbies.
And even if you do search them, you still can't say for sure it's not there, since a quarter is less than an inch across so it could happen to lay between your sampling points. And of course it could be standing on its edge, or be buried - in fact it would have to be buried to remain on Venus for long, considering the conditions there.
The problem with ghosts is complete lack of evidence for their existence. This is completely different than saying the existence of ghosts would violate laws of physics, which is a positive claim and thus requires more than an offhand assertion. So, what laws of physics do ghosts violate and how? Please pay special care not to confuse complications ("what would preform the function of the brain") with actual physical law violations ("this would require that signals move faster than light").
For extra credit, consider science fiction concept of "mind uploading", which would also allow your mind - or a copy of it - to continue existing and interacting with the physical world after the death of your body. Would whatever physical law violation prevents "other" kind of ghosts also prevent this? Just what do you mean by "ghost" in your argument?
If you are looking for ghosts - or any other supernatural phenomenom - then the obvious procedure is to first figure out what you expect to observe at the place of the experiment based on natural laws, then look for any deviations from it. In other words, use the same procedure you would use to test the laws of physics any other time.
So why didn't you tell me your real name, "gothzilla"? Are you a narcissist? Put your money where your mouth is.
It is the version of "free speech" that existed in Soviet Russia and still exist in every dictatorship to this day: speak your mind and suffer your punishment.
Presumably because the target device supports no higher-level language? I suppose that can be excused, these being nothing but glorified telephones after all...
What kind of idiot would conduct criminal proceedings over an unencrypted, very-likely-monitored, text based channel? Seriously?
Let me introduce you to a fancy new concept called freedom of speech. It has arguably done more than all other political changes combined to make the world a better place.
Indeed, comrade. Here in Soviet Russia we have absolute and perfect freedom of speech. And any who uses theirs to say anything of comrade Stalin that comrade Stalin disagrees with will pay the full price for their insubordination. This is proof of our superior morality, for with us, speech has consequences.
In fact, comrade gothzilla, why don't you "put your money where your mouth is", as those imperialistic pigs say? Tell us your real name, so that we may attribute your authoritarianism to you. You wouldn't want to be a narcissist and hide behind a pseudonym, now would you?
Well, "gothzilla"?
The towers are owned by a private entity. Said entity doesn't exist to benefit the public, it exists to generate as much profit as possible for its owners. Thus, if it can extract more money from you buy charging for text messages, it will.
Only nonprofits are likely to offer services at the price it costs to produce them, and that very fact hinders their growth. As a result, only the Government is likely to be an efficient (cheap) service provider from the customers point of view. Reflect on that irony for a while :).
That simply makes the entire text message pure profit. And since most American cellphones are vendor-locked, there's none of that pesky competition getting in the way.
To summarize even further: Awesome business plan from master capitalists.
When the same perception is repeated over and over again all over Europe, and outside of it too for that matter, it might eventually occur to the observer that the common factor of all of these perceptions is Islam. This is further reinforced by noting that Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccas, etc. haven't gotten this kind of reputation.
And let's be honest here: if you draw a cartoon caricature of Christ, will someone try to kill you? Or Buddha? Or Amaterasu? Yet draw one of Mohammed and you need police protection. Islam is not a nice religion, and totally incompatible with Western values, at least in its current form. We Finns refused to surrender our freedom to Stalin, we refuse to surrender it to Muhammed's fanclub either.
As it happens, it's become somewhat of a running joke that the ethnicity of the criminal is only mentioned when it's Finnish. That's a large part of the problem: there's a (likely correct) perception that our leaders and media are siding with foreigners against Finns. And it doesn't help either that the average Finn is getting poorer each year while the government keeps on bringing in more immigrants and giving them priority in everything, from financial aid to apartment queues. Any attempt to bring up any of these problems gets shot down with cries of "racism!", with the consequence that people are slowly being weaned off of feeling any shame over such identification, even when it's actually justified.
As you can imagine, this is pretty much the ideal conditions for the growth of extremely nasty movements. If we're lucky, Finland will turn to a more nationalistic direction and fixes its problems; if we're unlucky, the powers-that-be will keep the lid on the mounting pressure until it explodes violently. Things could get pretty nasty.
And the same is happening all over Europe. I wonder if the muslims mistake niceness as weakness or imagine that Allah will bail them out once shit hits the fan; or maybe they really are just a bunch of idiotic rabble doing things for shits and giggles and not thinking of consequences; but no matter what the reason is, if something isn't done soon, people will start pushing back. They already are, but haven't yet crossed into violence; but when they will... it will be ugly.
That they're doing it for the power trip. This is humans we're talking about.
I suppose your attempt to paint anyone disagreeing with you as religious fanatics could be considered as violating pretty much every scientific principle and thus "heretical".
Of course it is, and currently experiencing a cyclical minimum in energy production, which refutes your own point number 3.
There is no "full" greenhouse effect. The more CO2 you have in the atmosphere, the stronger the effect becomes.
Which, as you noted yourself, is due to Sun.
No model is necessarily correct. Yours is a complete nonstatement.
Indeed, you will be corrected and perhaps considered slightly slow.
I disagree. Watergate was about espionage. This is about outright sabotage.
Don't worry, they do. Enjoy your grass, at least until slaughter. And when the time comes for you to become a hamburger, remember: you wanted this system.
Here in Finland we have Vasemmistoliitto - the heir to the old Communist Party - on the left and Kokoomus - representing authoritarian libertarianism (yes, they manage that, by combining the worst aspects of both) - on the right. Top that.
I have to use this as a tag somewhere :).
Conservatism, in the general sense, means rooting for the status quo. Conservatism, in American politics, seems to meant rooting for the money. Both cases would find a rich aristocrat becoming a president admirable and an upstart becoming one despisable. What's so puzzling about it?
This is true. It's also something those in power have sadly missed. For example, here in Finland we have a growing anti-muslim sentiment due to the high rate of violent crime they perform, and Stockholm's attempted terrorist attack didn't exactly help. There's also a (probably true) perception that immigrants are favoured over native finns in getting financial aid. At the same time, our politicians are crying "racism!" every time these issues are brought up. The result is that, since reasoned discussion is apparently impossible, the population is turning towards nationalist parties and extreme reactions. And even more sadly, I can't really fault my countrymen - what are they supposed to do, roll over and die?
Hitler rose to power amongst misery, and was voted into office by a desperate population. And, no matter how evil he might have been, at first he did improve things. People know this, and are more and more willing to turn towards a desperate gambit: vote for Hitler and hope you can get rid of him after he's fixed the economic and social problems with socialism and nationalism but before the shit hits the fan.
In short, as far as the people are concerned, we are very close to crossing the Godzilla Treshold.
Yes, it truly is surprising how power-hungry people who have dedicated their entire life to ruling over others can be :).
Just why do you think these claims about Assange being a rapist originate? Especially since the Pirate Bay raids already proved Sweden being US's bitch?
Of course, in many case the terror, enslavement and mass murder only happened after CIA ousted the democratically elected left-wing government and installed a right-wing dictator.