If a child chooses to go to the same line every day it is not because of a lack of options.
So basically you're saying we should expect children to choose long-term benefits over instant gratification, rather than require the school to only serve healthy food?
No, to lose weight I have to eat fewer calories than I burn.
Then why do you blame your behaviour on it? Shouldn't you be in a gym rather than posting on Slashdot?
And I take full responsibility for being on the internet in the meantime while I'm irritable.
Really? Because you posted:
If this comes across as somewhat snippy it's because I didn't have lunch today because I'm cutting back a couple of kilos.
How very noble of you to take responsibility for things that aren't your fault. Truly, you set an example to us all. It would be even more educational if you told us what "taking responsibility" entails, besides saying you do, but you inspire us nonetheless.
Stating "I have a thyroid condition" is not an explanation of an obesity. In the very end you are still eating that mass and getting those calory from food.
The problem is, you have to get calories to stay alive. Your heartbeat requires energy, after all. So what controls where those calories go? Your hormone system does. In a healthy human, it directs them towards life support first, optional activity second, and building a reasonable amount of fat tissue third. What if the hormone system is broken, for example in a way that it only starts sending calories towards heartbeat after you have enough fat tissue to qualify as obese? You'll stay fat or die, that's what.
This is why all this fat-shaming is just plain idiotic. Some fat people are literally unable to lose fat - their bodies will give up breathing before fat. The rest can lose weight, for the price of suffering the effects of starvation for at least years, or possibly the rest of their life. And why? To fit someone else's aestetic ideal?
But even if all this was untrue, and being fat or thin was literally just a matter of adjusting a metabolic setting with a dial, as it might well be in the future, the idea that people need to justify their body shape would still be wrong. If you look like a Greek god, good for you; but you aren't one, so settle for admiring your abs in the mirror, rather than give other people grief over their lack of them.
What incentive do I as an end user have to use this slow, doesn't use the features of my platform of choice, need to jump though the hoops of opening my web browser and navigating to the site to use, web app?
What incentive do end users have to use DRM-infested games which try to circumvent the Doctrine of First Sale by tying the damn thing to an "online account"? None. It hasn't stopped them from becoming the norm.
It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.
I don't really buy the argument that less populous states get disenfranchised in a proportional system. Each man still gets one vote. In the less-populated states each square mile of land might get fewer votes, but is that really what matters? And just why should the people of California get only 18x more say in the operation of the government than the people of Rhode Island, when there are 38x as many of them?
Yes, it really matters because people living in a particular area tend to have common interests and culture and thus there's a pattern to their votes. Consequently politicians don't court individual voters, they court districts. Thus an average Californian voter is worth more than an average Rhode Island voter, despite both having one vote, and this will only get more so if current compensations are removed.
If you want everyone's interests properly represented, you have to take the internal structure of the country into account. Otherwise you end up in a situation where only people living in the most populous areas get their voice heard, and the rest get screwed constantly. Exactly as has happened in the political system with D&R being the only parties that really matter. The results also show: when frustration reaches a boiling point, various extreme movements begin to rapidly gain ground and threaten the stability of the entire system.
Dyson Sphere's COULD be detected, but are quite unlikely because they don't tend to maintain a designated center. (Yeah, RingWorlds are a lot worse. But that doesn't make Dyson Spehere's stable.
Are Ringworlds necessarily unstable? If only gravity is concerned, then yes - but the star is also putting out radiation and solar wind, both of which exert more outward pressure on the part of the ring that's closer the the star. It would seem to me that acceleration from radiation pressure would dominate acceleration from gravity in a light enough ring, which would then tend to keep the source of that radiation - the star - at the center.
Ok Captain Pedantic, are you really that stupid that you cannot figure out that the word "legally" was implied?
Historically, Captain Ignorant, "cannot legally" and "cannot" have been sometimes confused with unfortunate results. Such delusions do seem to become accepted truths if repeated often enough. Also, I cannot know if you're an authoritarian, now can I?
Since that was too difficult, "I cannot LEGALLY walk into Walmart and steal something...". Happy now?
I cannot walk into Walmart and steal something just because I intend to give it away to someone needy.
Of course you can. It breaks the law and makes you a criminal, but you can make that choice. It may or may not be a good choice, but pretending it isn't a possible course of action is self-delusion.
He appropriated a taxpayer resource to line his pockets.
So basically, he's the very model of a good capitalist, sharing the costs and keeping the profits. Why should he be punished for his entrepreneurship? Why do you hate freedom so much?
Bald eagles cry tears of blood, red like the flag of Soviet Union, over your post.
Re:An autist chat simulator duped 100% of people.
on
Turing Test Passed
·
· Score: 1
And a chair is not a chair. It seems you are not living in the real world. Except for high functioning autism, autism is a severe mental dysfunction.
Dysfunction and retardation are not the same set, if autism is a dysfunction then high-functioning autists are simply somewhat less dysfunctional than low-functional autists but dysfunctional notheless, and in any case the context makes it obvious that the grandparent was referring to Internet Autism rather than the real thing. So your post begins with a non-sequiter, continues with an appeal to intimidation and concludes with a nonsensical claim. And of course you get modded +5 Insightful. Well done, Slashdot.
Anarchy cannot _possibly_ be stable. This was illustrated very well in Larry Niven's story
I once read a story about the crew of a Soviet Union starship taking a shore leave on Earth at the year 3000 or so. Any idea when they'll be reforming? Will it happen under Putin or will Lenin's mummy come back to life, like the Egyptian ones apparently tend to do?
Ok, why is my statement nonsensical? Just because the law in a particular country might treat hammers as having agency doesn't mean that I do.
It does, however, mean that the legal system is capable of holding positions on various subjects, such as the agency of hammers, and acting according to them. So do companies, countries etc: they have goals they are trying to reach, an agenda they're pushing. Which is pretty much the definition of agency.
Your statement is nonsensical because if institutions have no agency, action cannot be ascribed to them, which you did.
I'm not US law. Examine your logic here.
Examine your own writing. You're ascribing actions to the US legal system, which implies it has agency. Indeed, an institution without agency would be completely pointless, since it couldn't do anything.
You're quite right about the definition of euthenasia. However, your final point is straight-up Reductio ad Hitlerum; Because Hitler did it, it must be wrong.
No, it's wrong because it's murder. Pointing out it was one of Nazi crimes against humanity - as the postwar court called it - was done for the benefit of the "pain is gain" crowd.
If, in the future, all medicine is exhausted and there are still those who cause needless damage to through mental illness, and incarceration is insufficient a protection for the population, what solution would you posit?
Please explain why incarceration would be insufficient? Do you think real-life prisons are Arkham Asylum?
Also, please understand that the archetypical psychopath is not an axe murderer or a serial killer but a lying jerk. Even those who acquire positions of power are more likely to engage in petty corruption - or even run a honest business - than unleash the Apocalypse. They simply don't value other people beyond their utility - which, as I already pointed out, seems to be your attitude too, at least in this conversation.
But alas, corporations, nations, etc don't have agency.
Then your statement "I realize that the US legal system is rather dumb in this regard and actually have sent a variety of household items and assets to jail" is nonsensical, as only things that have agency can take action (by definition). For that matter, a lot of your other posts are too, for the same reason.
Then again, you already ignored this once, so I suppose you'll do it again. It would be interesting to know what ulterior motives prompt making a claim that's at such odds with your actual demonstrated beliefs, though. Some kind of fear that agency might lead to demands of moral responsibility, perhaps?
By your idiotic drivel, hammers have more rights than people too. After all, when's the last time you saw a hammer sent to jail? (incidentally, this argument is chock full of irony since there probably have been hammers and corporations effectively "sent" to "jail" in the US - see below) The fundamental problem here is that corporations don't actually commit crimes any more than any other sort of property commits crimes.
Do hammers have agency? Would the sentence "A hammer builds a house" make sense? How about "Apple releases new iWhatever"? Or "US established a beachhead on D-Day"?
We think and treat corporations, nations and other institutions as living beings because they are. We treat hammers as inanimate objects because they are inert matter. Yes, a corporation requires a human to act on its behalf to do anything, but similarly you require your muscle and neural cells to act on yours, and they in turn rely on molecular machines. And the difference between the US and USSR was not that one was made of different kinds of people than the other, but rather about the structures and values and even more importantly what the structures and values embodied - the "national spirit", so to say.
Now, I realize that the US legal system is rather dumb in this regard and actually have sent a variety of household items and assets to jail
The US legal system is no less fictitious than corporations are. Either they have existence and agency - effective personhood - or they don't. Which one is it?
They should be given all the care and treatment we can offer, and only if that is totally exhausted would I consider euthenasia an option. Because it would be euthenasia; Ending the suffering of an individual incapable of functioning in civilised society, and unfortunately beyond our help.
Euthanasia means granting death to someone who's asking for it. What you're describing is simple murder. And, ironically enough, something a psychopath would say. So I guess you aren't bothered by not being the first to have such brilliant ideas.
And this here is why this system can't possibly work: if you're a high-ranking Party member in a hypothetical non-collapsed modern-day Soviet Russia, and the sarcasm-detector starts flagging every post saying "communism is awesome", what will your reaction be? Do you tolerate a device that's basically exposing your own delusions as such, day in and day out, or will you order it to be "corrected"?
I suppose you could simply ignore all criticism and dig ever-deeper into your dreamworld, telling yourself that you're right and everyone who disagrees is an imperialist swine. But that didn't end well for the Soviet Union and it won't end well for the NSA.
A delusional system can't take self-awareness. That's why sarcam is such a threat to it, but so is accurate detection of sarcasm. The Emperor has no clothes, and everyone who admits it to themselves is his enemy, but sending agents to arrest everyone who thinks so without admitting someone might think so requires a level of wilful self-delusion a computer simply can't match. A delusional system is always on the brink of collapse, and the harder it fights the more damage it inflicts on itself. The USSR went that way, and so will the NSA - and possibly the US at this rate.
It also can seriously hinder innovation: look at the glacial speed of progress towards the oh so ambitious goal of "not killing crowdfunding sites".
Is the purpose of a crowdfunding site to fund a project or separate fools from their money? If it's the former, what's stopping someone from putting up another that does the latter? Given that the author of a project might simply hide the money and run rather than spend it on the project, what constitues due diligence on the part of the site to release them from responsibility? Perhaps "buyer beware", in which case won't the idea just die under the onslaught of scammers?
Yes, the goal of "not killing crowdfunding sites" is actually pretty ambitious. The regulation surrounding investment schemes is pretty much spam filter for the financial world, only the amounts of money involved are much higher.
If Truecrypt were secure in the first place, a National Security Letter would have been of no use: the developers would be no more help de-crypting something than anyone else. So in the usual context, a NSL has no point whatever.
TrueCrypt version n is secure. Version n + 1 stores your key in a location known to the NSA.
We can argue about what the law should be, but not what the law is.
Of course we can. Law is not absolute but subordinate to various checks, after all. And indeed, laws are struck down all the time, for example on the basis of being unconstitutional. You yourself mention jury nullification, which is basically the jury deciding that a law doesn't exist.
The way his trial is conducted would certainly teach us all about our government.
You lose all credibility when you act like facilitating crime isn't in and of itself a crime.
Does helping an old woman cross a street make you a criminal on the grounds that you are facilitating jaywalking?
Law exists to serve the people, not the other way around. Copyright law has long ago abandoned this mission, and in doing so lost moral authority. Thus people who break it are not criminals, and neither are people who facilitate this.
Antisemitism comes from feeling of oppression (I guess. I really don't understand this one).
That's usually a good indicator that it's bullshit.
I really have no idea why Jews have been victims so often that we have a separate term for that, but I do know it would be impossible to victimize them if the perpetrators wouldn't first manage to convince themselves that they are inferior.
Child abuse often justified as for their own good.
How many people who, say, spank their children "for their own good" will complain if the same punishment is applied to them?
As a side note, I find it disturbing how many discussions about whether corporal punishment of children should be allowed or not revolve entirely around whether it's useful, rather than whether it's right.
Honour killings come from need to maintain honour.
Because other people are less than you, and as such can be sacrificed for the sake of your honor.
I am quite sure this is not a complete list. Even if the end result you propose would solve everything, how do we get there? Because just believing everyone is just as important as everyone else doesn't solve the abuse I listed above.
Actually, it does. Are you willing to perform seppuku to restore your lost honor? No? Then you won't kill other people for it either, unless you think they're less important than you.
But sometimes people in these sort of debates are so oblivious of the issues, I can understand why every other word a swear word.
I can understand frustration too, but giving in to it in this context will simply make the problem worse.
Slashdot Mirror
So basically you're saying we should expect children to choose long-term benefits over instant gratification, rather than require the school to only serve healthy food?
Then why do you blame your behaviour on it? Shouldn't you be in a gym rather than posting on Slashdot?
Really? Because you posted:
How very noble of you to take responsibility for things that aren't your fault. Truly, you set an example to us all. It would be even more educational if you told us what "taking responsibility" entails, besides saying you do, but you inspire us nonetheless.
The problem is, you have to get calories to stay alive. Your heartbeat requires energy, after all. So what controls where those calories go? Your hormone system does. In a healthy human, it directs them towards life support first, optional activity second, and building a reasonable amount of fat tissue third. What if the hormone system is broken, for example in a way that it only starts sending calories towards heartbeat after you have enough fat tissue to qualify as obese? You'll stay fat or die, that's what.
This is why all this fat-shaming is just plain idiotic. Some fat people are literally unable to lose fat - their bodies will give up breathing before fat. The rest can lose weight, for the price of suffering the effects of starvation for at least years, or possibly the rest of their life. And why? To fit someone else's aestetic ideal?
But even if all this was untrue, and being fat or thin was literally just a matter of adjusting a metabolic setting with a dial, as it might well be in the future, the idea that people need to justify their body shape would still be wrong. If you look like a Greek god, good for you; but you aren't one, so settle for admiring your abs in the mirror, rather than give other people grief over their lack of them.
What incentive do end users have to use DRM-infested games which try to circumvent the Doctrine of First Sale by tying the damn thing to an "online account"? None. It hasn't stopped them from becoming the norm.
It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.
Yes, it really matters because people living in a particular area tend to have common interests and culture and thus there's a pattern to their votes. Consequently politicians don't court individual voters, they court districts. Thus an average Californian voter is worth more than an average Rhode Island voter, despite both having one vote, and this will only get more so if current compensations are removed.
If you want everyone's interests properly represented, you have to take the internal structure of the country into account. Otherwise you end up in a situation where only people living in the most populous areas get their voice heard, and the rest get screwed constantly. Exactly as has happened in the political system with D&R being the only parties that really matter. The results also show: when frustration reaches a boiling point, various extreme movements begin to rapidly gain ground and threaten the stability of the entire system.
Then what accounts for the rest of ours? Intelligence Design?
Are Ringworlds necessarily unstable? If only gravity is concerned, then yes - but the star is also putting out radiation and solar wind, both of which exert more outward pressure on the part of the ring that's closer the the star. It would seem to me that acceleration from radiation pressure would dominate acceleration from gravity in a light enough ring, which would then tend to keep the source of that radiation - the star - at the center.
Historically, Captain Ignorant, "cannot legally" and "cannot" have been sometimes confused with unfortunate results. Such delusions do seem to become accepted truths if repeated often enough. Also, I cannot know if you're an authoritarian, now can I?
Ecstatic. I knew you could do it!
Of course you can. It breaks the law and makes you a criminal, but you can make that choice. It may or may not be a good choice, but pretending it isn't a possible course of action is self-delusion.
He appropriated a taxpayer resource to line his pockets.
So basically, he's the very model of a good capitalist, sharing the costs and keeping the profits. Why should he be punished for his entrepreneurship? Why do you hate freedom so much?
Bald eagles cry tears of blood, red like the flag of Soviet Union, over your post.
Dysfunction and retardation are not the same set, if autism is a dysfunction then high-functioning autists are simply somewhat less dysfunctional than low-functional autists but dysfunctional notheless, and in any case the context makes it obvious that the grandparent was referring to Internet Autism rather than the real thing. So your post begins with a non-sequiter, continues with an appeal to intimidation and concludes with a nonsensical claim. And of course you get modded +5 Insightful. Well done, Slashdot.
I once read a story about the crew of a Soviet Union starship taking a shore leave on Earth at the year 3000 or so. Any idea when they'll be reforming? Will it happen under Putin or will Lenin's mummy come back to life, like the Egyptian ones apparently tend to do?
You know, I just got a great idea for a movie...
It does, however, mean that the legal system is capable of holding positions on various subjects, such as the agency of hammers, and acting according to them. So do companies, countries etc: they have goals they are trying to reach, an agenda they're pushing. Which is pretty much the definition of agency.
Your statement is nonsensical because if institutions have no agency, action cannot be ascribed to them, which you did.
Examine your own writing. You're ascribing actions to the US legal system, which implies it has agency. Indeed, an institution without agency would be completely pointless, since it couldn't do anything.
No, it's wrong because it's murder. Pointing out it was one of Nazi crimes against humanity - as the postwar court called it - was done for the benefit of the "pain is gain" crowd.
Please explain why incarceration would be insufficient? Do you think real-life prisons are Arkham Asylum?
Also, please understand that the archetypical psychopath is not an axe murderer or a serial killer but a lying jerk. Even those who acquire positions of power are more likely to engage in petty corruption - or even run a honest business - than unleash the Apocalypse. They simply don't value other people beyond their utility - which, as I already pointed out, seems to be your attitude too, at least in this conversation.
Then your statement "I realize that the US legal system is rather dumb in this regard and actually have sent a variety of household items and assets to jail" is nonsensical, as only things that have agency can take action (by definition). For that matter, a lot of your other posts are too, for the same reason.
Then again, you already ignored this once, so I suppose you'll do it again. It would be interesting to know what ulterior motives prompt making a claim that's at such odds with your actual demonstrated beliefs, though. Some kind of fear that agency might lead to demands of moral responsibility, perhaps?
Do hammers have agency? Would the sentence "A hammer builds a house" make sense? How about "Apple releases new iWhatever"? Or "US established a beachhead on D-Day"?
We think and treat corporations, nations and other institutions as living beings because they are. We treat hammers as inanimate objects because they are inert matter. Yes, a corporation requires a human to act on its behalf to do anything, but similarly you require your muscle and neural cells to act on yours, and they in turn rely on molecular machines. And the difference between the US and USSR was not that one was made of different kinds of people than the other, but rather about the structures and values and even more importantly what the structures and values embodied - the "national spirit", so to say.
The US legal system is no less fictitious than corporations are. Either they have existence and agency - effective personhood - or they don't. Which one is it?
The difference being that the Leeroy Jenkins of the financial world use your life savings as hit points.
Euthanasia means granting death to someone who's asking for it. What you're describing is simple murder. And, ironically enough, something a psychopath would say. So I guess you aren't bothered by not being the first to have such brilliant ideas.
And this here is why this system can't possibly work: if you're a high-ranking Party member in a hypothetical non-collapsed modern-day Soviet Russia, and the sarcasm-detector starts flagging every post saying "communism is awesome", what will your reaction be? Do you tolerate a device that's basically exposing your own delusions as such, day in and day out, or will you order it to be "corrected"?
I suppose you could simply ignore all criticism and dig ever-deeper into your dreamworld, telling yourself that you're right and everyone who disagrees is an imperialist swine. But that didn't end well for the Soviet Union and it won't end well for the NSA.
A delusional system can't take self-awareness. That's why sarcam is such a threat to it, but so is accurate detection of sarcasm. The Emperor has no clothes, and everyone who admits it to themselves is his enemy, but sending agents to arrest everyone who thinks so without admitting someone might think so requires a level of wilful self-delusion a computer simply can't match. A delusional system is always on the brink of collapse, and the harder it fights the more damage it inflicts on itself. The USSR went that way, and so will the NSA - and possibly the US at this rate.
Is the purpose of a crowdfunding site to fund a project or separate fools from their money? If it's the former, what's stopping someone from putting up another that does the latter? Given that the author of a project might simply hide the money and run rather than spend it on the project, what constitues due diligence on the part of the site to release them from responsibility? Perhaps "buyer beware", in which case won't the idea just die under the onslaught of scammers?
Yes, the goal of "not killing crowdfunding sites" is actually pretty ambitious. The regulation surrounding investment schemes is pretty much spam filter for the financial world, only the amounts of money involved are much higher.
TrueCrypt version n is secure. Version n + 1 stores your key in a location known to the NSA.
Of course we can. Law is not absolute but subordinate to various checks, after all. And indeed, laws are struck down all the time, for example on the basis of being unconstitutional. You yourself mention jury nullification, which is basically the jury deciding that a law doesn't exist.
Is the issue honestly in doubt anymore?
Does helping an old woman cross a street make you a criminal on the grounds that you are facilitating jaywalking?
Law exists to serve the people, not the other way around. Copyright law has long ago abandoned this mission, and in doing so lost moral authority. Thus people who break it are not criminals, and neither are people who facilitate this.
Or anywhere, really.
That's usually a good indicator that it's bullshit.
I really have no idea why Jews have been victims so often that we have a separate term for that, but I do know it would be impossible to victimize them if the perpetrators wouldn't first manage to convince themselves that they are inferior.
How many people who, say, spank their children "for their own good" will complain if the same punishment is applied to them?
As a side note, I find it disturbing how many discussions about whether corporal punishment of children should be allowed or not revolve entirely around whether it's useful, rather than whether it's right.
Because other people are less than you, and as such can be sacrificed for the sake of your honor.
Actually, it does. Are you willing to perform seppuku to restore your lost honor? No? Then you won't kill other people for it either, unless you think they're less important than you.
I can understand frustration too, but giving in to it in this context will simply make the problem worse.