From what I've seen in the news, universities and colleges have become places where whiny little kids demand they only be shown a fair and just world which conforms to their worldview. Too damned bad.
Excellent, actually. You're describing the rebirth of student activism. The West has been adrift since the Cold War ended. We've been sitting on our metaphorical asses, getting fat and weak while basking on our past accomplishments. It's high time we began trying to improve again, rather than just mindlessly hoard stuff. Stagnant societies die.
The residential street is 100m from a 35mph four lane avenue. No fence, no limits. What stops the same careless kid to step onto the avenue to the left, instead of the street in front?
The fact that it's a four lane avenue rather than a residential street. Kids aren't generally stupid, just inexperienced about entitled assholes who think they're above the law.
Following the "think of the careless children!" reasoning, we'd either have to:
No, we don't "have to". We also have the option of simply enforcing existing speed limits with a special emphasis on residential streets and other low-limit areas. Just make the fine proportional to ((speed - limit) / limit) and unwillingness to enforce shouldn't be an issue anymore.
The neuro-"scientists" have this little problem that consciousness does not fit their models at all.
What specific neurological models does consciousness contradict and how?
They assume physicalism as ground truth and that is a religious approach, not a scientific one. Actual scientists would realize that the question is still open at this time (but the more we know, the more it goes towards "some kind of dualism", although certainly not a religious one) and would search in both directions.
What non-physical entity do you propose is paired to the physical brain, why do you think it's there, and why should it be considered non-physical?
Interestingly, quantum-physics has the concept of an "observer", but the observer seems to be extra-physical as it can do "magic" and drag superposed quantum-states into a definite state. No purely physical object should be able to do that and yet it seems human beings can.
Any kind of interaction between two particles that allows a particular property of one of them to be measured changes (if needed) the particle's state so that that property becomes well-defined and the complementary property becomes undefined. There is nothing extra-physical about it.
Socialism is worse than crony capitalism because crony capitalists only do evil things that they can make money from.
Such as slavery, polluting the environment, building a dangerous factories in the middle of a city, locking your employees inside so they'll perish in a fire...
Also, I really don't see why you assume a capitalist - crony or otherwise - wouldn't be just as hungry for power in all its non-financial forms as everyone else.
Socialists will do any evil, and money is no object. In fact, they'll happily run their own national economies into the ground with their schemes. It's sad.
Evil schemes such as universal healthcare, free education up to and including university level, social security...
The sad thing is that the conservatives were right about the fall of communism. Marx said that the state would wither away, conservatives argued that this would never happen because people are basically selfish and lazy, and Marx was essentially predicting that human nature would change. It didn't, and communism failed as an economic system.
The irony is that the state is withering away under globalization. Modern nation-states are bound together with ever stronger economic and cultural ties while the cost of war and rebuilding continues to rise. As a result, they're slowly but surely integrating through various international arrangements. Just look at Europe: even if the EU were to fall apart, that would simply start again European wars, which would grow until they forced a new attempt at unifying Europe.
Also, while the first attempt at communism failed, that failure did nothing to resolve the problems - exploitation and uneven distribution of power - that cause dit. As the generation that fought the Cold War dies off, capitalism will either evolve into a less oppressive form or gives birth to a new generation of revolutionaries.
This almost sounds like Flo is plugging that Progressive tracking chip straight in your head...and charging you based on your risk behaviors and travels for each day.
Really, now? Because last I checked, it was the Conservatives who go into conniptions over the thought of subsidizing someone else's suboptimal behaviour. It's your side which insists on everyone carrying their own risk and nothing more, and thus needs to track it on an individual basis. The Progressive approach is to tax everyone, give help to whoever needs it, and simply accept that this means some people end up costing more than they pay.
google( and other big techs ) seems to think throwing money(= people and resources) at all kinds of frontiers ( and even non frontiers) will result in success( that will keep the company relevant) . so far it has precious little to show in way of successes.
Very little except, you know, Google and the other big techs.
google should do what it is doing well (and perhaps expand on edge of those things) . but not go after things it know nothing about as an institution.
Going after new things is what being a tech company is all about. A large company can simply hire expertize in any desired area. What the company brings to the table is an institutionalized process of turning research into products which will fund further research, and the sheer size needed to absorb failures for the chance to invent the Next Big Thing.
E.g. in elevators that don't work on days where the building is supposed to be shut down. (Oh, sunday: who needs an elevator? No one, so if one hits the button it must be a burglar, switch of the elevator.
That's an error alright, but it's not a computer bug, it's someone playing a vigilante. What the elevator should do is call the cops.
You could make equipment unconnected, but then it requires on-site support personnel to handle any problems, so you'll be "wasting taxpayer money".
Or you could make it remotely connected via a dedicated channel, but then you'd need to pay for that channel, and it's not necessarily secure.
Or you could just put the controls on the Internet, fire most of your staff, be hailed as a business genius and earn a huge bonus. And, if you're so inclined, make yourself feel important by micromanaging everything from the comfort of your own home.
Is this why the Proserpina dam, built by the Romans in the first century AD, is still in use today?
The dam is a huge pile of earth and stones with basically static load pushing on it. There's a lot of material to remove and relatively little erosion doing so. Of course it's going to last a while. By contrast, the aqueduct it was built to supply didn't.
Or do people who work on public works intentionally do a crappy job so that they will have continued work in the future in the form of maintenance?
Most public projects either have high dynamic stresses (roads), require chemically unstable substances (steel) and are engineered to be cost-effective (which means damage from wear and tear reaches the point of structural instability faster).
It always helps to put some good, healthy fear into the enemy.
Any enemy intimidated by a drawing of a cartoon octopus is unlikely to be dangerous to begin with. Meanwhile, letting an organization - especially one that's by nature difficult to oversee - get used to mocking the idea that they might be the villains makes it easier to ignore any such accusations even when they're warranted, thus making it easier for them to go bad. So there's little if any benefit and a significant risk, thus this octopus does more to harm America than its enemies.
Unless, of course, you dream of discarding this freedom stuff and turning the US into a police state. Lots of people seem to. Dunno why, seeing how even from the perspective of pure amoral power politics police states tend to be weaker than liberal democracies. I guess a lot of people want collectivism but have been conditioned to reject socialism and thus end up supporting some variant of fascism - an authoritarian fatherland as opposed to a bleeding heart nanny state.
No, but judging an ancient nation's attempts religious liberty by modern standards is like saying the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph compares badly against the modern Internet: it's absolutely true but also meaningless.
If I don't have the money to pay the tax and I don't convert am I still killed?
It would take a historian to answer that, but presumably your taxes are based on your income.
It'd seem to me that the last thing a teenager needs is less motivation and less interest in doing things.
Seeing how the middle class is all but gone and most of those teens are destined for minimum wage jobs for the rest of their lives, anything that helps make that more bearable helps both them and the society at large.
There must be something better, but temporarily providing a better standard of living through ever-ballooning debt (e.g., European Socialism except Norway) or by massive exports of natural resources (e.g., Norway) ain't it - those just aren't sustainable plans.
Neither is hoping Joe Average continues blaming migrants for his economic insecurity yet fail to listen to any demagogue who promises to deliver him from them. As Trump, Le Pen and their ilk demonstrate, that plan is already failing. Even Putin's misdeeds are ultimately just a way to distract Russians from their troubles.
We either figure out how to shield average people from economic problems and fast, or we'll be facing another World War, which will almost certainly go nuclear.
If it's in my contract, fine. I signed that and it's now with my consent.
You sign the contract or you live on the streets. That kind of "consent" is utterly worthless. That's why it was the Human Rights court which decided the issue.
they were always told to keep their mailboxes in a condition that would allow other people to use them in their absence, yet without exception, they treated their mailboxes like personal property and cursed me to hell for letting other people access their emails.
So make everyone's "personal" work mailbox visible to everyone in the same team. Don't be subtle about it, make them show up as folders in the mail client. In other words, make public spaces public, not private-ish.
This could be integrated into - or be a primitive form of - the "workplace social networks" which are apparently becoming fashionable.
i hated that job. people... what a bunch of bastards.
Inability to accurately balance short-term convenience against distant future or rare events is a well known and near universal human cognitive shortcoming. A policy that fails to take it into account is irrational because it's not going to achieve its goal. The solution is to debug the policy, not get angry at the wetware running it.
Just read the comments about any summary that has to do with somebody being a psychopath, which is a mental illness. CEO's are frequently psychopaths, and people here love to name and shame them over it.
The problem is, our system is deficient in that it allows economic power to be wielded with little or any oversight, CEOs wield a lot of such power, and psychopathy's defining symptom is not caring about the consequences of your actions to other people. This means a psychopathic CEO is a danger to everyone, especially since the position drives even healthy people to actions they'd never otherwise do.
Also, CEOs are not typically "named and shamed" over clinical diagnosis of sociopathy, but for psychopathic behaviour, which is condemnable no matter its origin.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent, actually. You're describing the rebirth of student activism. The West has been adrift since the Cold War ended. We've been sitting on our metaphorical asses, getting fat and weak while basking on our past accomplishments. It's high time we began trying to improve again, rather than just mindlessly hoard stuff. Stagnant societies die.
So if I present arguments for my case they should be disregarded because I have an agenda (making my case)? Nice logic.
The fact that it's a four lane avenue rather than a residential street. Kids aren't generally stupid, just inexperienced about entitled assholes who think they're above the law.
No, we don't "have to". We also have the option of simply enforcing existing speed limits with a special emphasis on residential streets and other low-limit areas. Just make the fine proportional to ((speed - limit) / limit) and unwillingness to enforce shouldn't be an issue anymore.
Just out of curiosity, what specific features of a public facing website can't be implemented in standard HTML and CSS?
Absolutely. How could we know what kind of insane creep we're about to elect if you're not allowed to demonstrate?
Or are purposefully providing 24/7 live media coverage to shield them from the Fed's far superior firepower. Which, if true, is pretty clever.
What specific neurological models does consciousness contradict and how?
What non-physical entity do you propose is paired to the physical brain, why do you think it's there, and why should it be considered non-physical?
Any kind of interaction between two particles that allows a particular property of one of them to be measured changes (if needed) the particle's state so that that property becomes well-defined and the complementary property becomes undefined. There is nothing extra-physical about it.
Such as slavery, polluting the environment, building a dangerous factories in the middle of a city, locking your employees inside so they'll perish in a fire...
Also, I really don't see why you assume a capitalist - crony or otherwise - wouldn't be just as hungry for power in all its non-financial forms as everyone else.
Evil schemes such as universal healthcare, free education up to and including university level, social security...
Really, now? Because last I checked, it was the Conservatives who go into conniptions over the thought of subsidizing someone else's suboptimal behaviour. It's your side which insists on everyone carrying their own risk and nothing more, and thus needs to track it on an individual basis. The Progressive approach is to tax everyone, give help to whoever needs it, and simply accept that this means some people end up costing more than they pay.
Indeed.
Very little except, you know, Google and the other big techs.
Going after new things is what being a tech company is all about. A large company can simply hire expertize in any desired area. What the company brings to the table is an institutionalized process of turning research into products which will fund further research, and the sheer size needed to absorb failures for the chance to invent the Next Big Thing.
That's an error alright, but it's not a computer bug, it's someone playing a vigilante. What the elevator should do is call the cops.
You could make equipment unconnected, but then it requires on-site support personnel to handle any problems, so you'll be "wasting taxpayer money".
Or you could make it remotely connected via a dedicated channel, but then you'd need to pay for that channel, and it's not necessarily secure.
Or you could just put the controls on the Internet, fire most of your staff, be hailed as a business genius and earn a huge bonus. And, if you're so inclined, make yourself feel important by micromanaging everything from the comfort of your own home.
Choices, choices...
The dam is a huge pile of earth and stones with basically static load pushing on it. There's a lot of material to remove and relatively little erosion doing so. Of course it's going to last a while. By contrast, the aqueduct it was built to supply didn't.
Most public projects either have high dynamic stresses (roads), require chemically unstable substances (steel) and are engineered to be cost-effective (which means damage from wear and tear reaches the point of structural instability faster).
Any enemy intimidated by a drawing of a cartoon octopus is unlikely to be dangerous to begin with. Meanwhile, letting an organization - especially one that's by nature difficult to oversee - get used to mocking the idea that they might be the villains makes it easier to ignore any such accusations even when they're warranted, thus making it easier for them to go bad. So there's little if any benefit and a significant risk, thus this octopus does more to harm America than its enemies.
Unless, of course, you dream of discarding this freedom stuff and turning the US into a police state. Lots of people seem to. Dunno why, seeing how even from the perspective of pure amoral power politics police states tend to be weaker than liberal democracies. I guess a lot of people want collectivism but have been conditioned to reject socialism and thus end up supporting some variant of fascism - an authoritarian fatherland as opposed to a bleeding heart nanny state.
Or they are patriots desperately trying to get some kind of reaction. How else do you explain using an angry dragon with red eyes gripping the world - and especially North America - in its talons as a logo? Even in a nation where Evangelical Christianity - and thus the Book of Revelation - wasn't a big deal that is a villain logo.
No, but judging an ancient nation's attempts religious liberty by modern standards is like saying the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph compares badly against the modern Internet: it's absolutely true but also meaningless.
It would take a historian to answer that, but presumably your taxes are based on your income.
And here I thought they did it to get high. Live and learn.
How many people have confessed their illegal habits to you? Because none have to me.
Why does this remind me of creationists?
Seeing how the middle class is all but gone and most of those teens are destined for minimum wage jobs for the rest of their lives, anything that helps make that more bearable helps both them and the society at large.
Neither is hoping Joe Average continues blaming migrants for his economic insecurity yet fail to listen to any demagogue who promises to deliver him from them. As Trump, Le Pen and their ilk demonstrate, that plan is already failing. Even Putin's misdeeds are ultimately just a way to distract Russians from their troubles.
We either figure out how to shield average people from economic problems and fast, or we'll be facing another World War, which will almost certainly go nuclear.
Paying a tax seems a rather large step up from being burned to death.
Hidden sexism originates from the same era where open sexism became unfashionable. Imagine that. But of course you did, which is why you posted AC.
You sign the contract or you live on the streets. That kind of "consent" is utterly worthless. That's why it was the Human Rights court which decided the issue.
So make everyone's "personal" work mailbox visible to everyone in the same team. Don't be subtle about it, make them show up as folders in the mail client. In other words, make public spaces public, not private-ish.
This could be integrated into - or be a primitive form of - the "workplace social networks" which are apparently becoming fashionable.
Inability to accurately balance short-term convenience against distant future or rare events is a well known and near universal human cognitive shortcoming. A policy that fails to take it into account is irrational because it's not going to achieve its goal. The solution is to debug the policy, not get angry at the wetware running it.
The problem is, our system is deficient in that it allows economic power to be wielded with little or any oversight, CEOs wield a lot of such power, and psychopathy's defining symptom is not caring about the consequences of your actions to other people. This means a psychopathic CEO is a danger to everyone, especially since the position drives even healthy people to actions they'd never otherwise do.
Also, CEOs are not typically "named and shamed" over clinical diagnosis of sociopathy, but for psychopathic behaviour, which is condemnable no matter its origin.