Because piracy begets piracy. It devalues things. If half the people on your block got their homes for free, how could you convince somebody to pay you $250k for YOURS?
If people are giving away houses in your area frequently, and over a long period of time, then there are simply more houses there than people want, and your house really isn't worth that much. What do you want to do - sue people that build new houses for devaluing your home? You made an investment, if it doesn't work out, that's your problem (with the exception of actual crime, like fraud).
You can't give something away free for those who "can't afford it" and charge the ones that can. Pretty soon the ones that can are going to feel swindled and they're going to at least be TEMPTED to think that if it's free for everyone else, it ought to be free for them, too.
You might think that, but most people are fairly tolerant of price discrimination, as long as it's for trivial items (5 cents less for a pack of gum) or for reasons that they understand (South Africans can't afford US-priced drugs).
There is a culture now that is very pervasive amongst those that are in the late 20's on down that music should be free as in beer. To many, it's almost outrageous to suggest that music should be paid for.
Why shouldn't music be free? You can't sue someone for singing "You Are My Sunshine" as a lullaby to their kid, or for retelling a "Seinfeld" joke to their friends - if it's that easy to make the copy, you can't control the right to do it. When music is so easy to copy that people are doing it for free, then it's time to stop limiting individual people's access through copyright. Go ahead and force people to pay for commercial use, but what they play on their ipod (or hum to themselves) shouldn't be an issue.
Aren't there some rather severe psychological effects of being circumcised as an adult? (as in, "severe enough that most doctors won't do it unless there's a pressing medical need")
Yes, but there are downsides for infant circumcision as well, and in most countries doctors don't circumcise anyone without a pressing medical need.
In Sweden they have a circumcision rate of about 6 in 100,000 because they treat it like other amputations (leg amputation, mastectomy, castration, etc) - it's a last resort when nothing less invasive will work. So if you're heading for the argument "better now than when he grows up", keep in mind that you'd have to preform thousands of circs on infants to prevent one adult from needing one.
Finally, most of the impulse behind anti-circumcision groups and books like The Joy of Uncircumcising comes from the psychological effects of being circed as an infant. A person wouldn't try growing new skin on their penis, wave a protest signs saying "Penis Mutilator", or attempt to ban something if it hadn't had a large impact on them.
I didn't even offer a physical explanation.... you're assuming I made an explanation in the previous post.
I don't know what to make of this then:
It will be verified that random fragments of future events get imprinted on the mind by some strange physical phenomena...
Just as an alternative, what if the layout of the room was 'received' in some way by many people at the same time? Then you ended up with a dream, and someone else ended up with a level design. In that case there's no prediction at all - it just all stems from the same source.
The rest of your post I'd agree with, with the caveat that the ideas you're expressing now seem quite different than the ones you first posted.
Exactly, a couple years back at vegas, the roulette wheel spun black 13 times in a row. Thats like 1/.48^13th.
Maybe I'm not understanding what you mean - if so please ignore.
Assuming non-American roulette, 18 of the 37 spots are black. (18/37)^13 is about 1/11697, which means that you should expect a busy wheel in Vegas to hit 13 black results in a row several times a year. But again, maybe that's not what you meant.
It's a poorly-worded way of saying that there is an abundance of philosophical research and arguments available for one, but not the other.
OK, I think I know what you're getting at. But it still doesn't make a good argument - there's still no evidence.
Popularity can be indirect evidence, because if most people believe it, in many cases, they have some direct evidence that you don't know about. But if you find out that they don't have that direct evidence, then the popularity of the idea ceases to be a good argument for the truth of that idea.
their are physics we don't understand that allow things that won't be discovered in before you and I are dead.
Which is fine. Maybe I don't have an explanation for you experience, that's fine, too.
You're too limited by not having enough knowledge of the difference sciences, and phenomena out there. So your thinking is very very narrow.
I'm open to new ideas, in fact the coolest thing imaginable to me would be to find some totally new realm to explore (ESP, ghosts, afterlife, etc). But I do want to make sure what I'm looking into is something real, rather than a side effect of my optimism.
It will be verified that...
Which is more likely - there's a mundane explanation that neither of us can come up with, or there's a super-fantastic rewrite-the-science-books explanation? I mean, the regular pulsed signals from space that were thought to come from 'little green men' turned out to just be pulsars, and the missing solar neutrinos were there, they just changed type so that they were harder to detect.
And even if it turns out to be a non-mundane phenomenon, what's the chances that it turns out to be something other than the explanation that appeals to you the most? When that you're certain of something and won't even consider other possibilities, without any objective evidence, that's what I would call "being narrow minded".
But our legal system *does* treat them as property, so claiming that property rights have nothing to do with IP is just wrong.
You're correct only within the legal system and only with respect to certain aspects. Actual property (AP) can only be taken under eminent domain, while IP can be granted or taken away at the whim of Congress. AP exists whether or not the legal system recognizes it as property, while IP literally doesn't exist at all without legal sanction. AP rights are eternal by default, while IP is always a temporary phenomenon.
I should point out that part of the reason I'm concerned about this is that there's a concerted effort to blur the distinction between AP and IP. Copyrights last longer and longer, fair use is harder to invoke, copyright violation is already called "theft" without a hint of irony, and legislators are pushed to make civil offenses criminal ones. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't be nitpicking so much.
I think you're interpreting my post in a different way than I meant it.
While "fact" and "opinion" makes a neat little false dichotomy, there are things that are ultimately facts (one way or the other), which are of a presently-indeterminate nature in terms of proof--and making an assertion regarding them is not merely purely-subjective "opinion".
Except for the fact that it isn't a false dichotomy, I agree with that. God's existence or non-existence is a matter of fact, not opinion.
I can validly assert that "Libertarianism is the best political system", as an assertion of how reality is, i.e., as fact, and provide evidence for that assertion, without being able to "prove" it.
No, you can't - "best" requires a relation - best for what or for whom. Plenty of slave owners, kings, despots, etc would disagree. And even if you mean to imply "best for most people", you still have to ask "what does 'best' mean" - plenty of liberals would say "best is what leads to the most equal society", conservatives would say "best is what preserves traditional society", and others would say "best is what allows the most freedom". All of those are opinions, and clearly aren't factual statements.
I can validly assert that "Capitalist countries will outperform communist ones over the next ten years", as an assertion of how reality is, and I need not "prove" it if the domain is not amenable to proof, as economics among many others is.
You can show that, on average, certain countries have a higher GDP than others - my only critique of this statement is that "outperform" is a bit vague.
You do realize that sometimes the parts of your brain that go "I've seen this before" or "this is important" go wonky? In fifth grade I thought I remembered that "vacuum" was spelled "vacume", and thought I was the victim of a far-reaching practical joke for a while. People on LSD often latch onto some mundane thing, like octagons or pencils, and believe that they represent the meaning of life. Why would it be absurd that something like that happened to you?
Thousands of philosophers support the existence of specific supernatural deities, and have debated these topics for thousands of years [but not the other idea].
How am I supposed to take that as anything other than argument via popularity?
I posted, more than once, about super weeds created by Roundup Ready seeds. And seeing as how TFA was A=about GMOs, it directly applies.
That's fine, but it's irrelevant to this side tangent you're on. You posted a bad example and tried a little fear-mongering, and then got called on it. That would be fine, but your reply to the person who called you on it was rather unfair, and I thought it would be nice if you could see how to make your argument in a better way next time (like use your better examples first, and don't mix multiple hypotheticals and expect your meaning to be clear).
However I didn't ask you just what is the need for ANY GMO? Answer is there is no need.
Don't be silly - we might not need it in the sense that civilization will end if they aren't created, but they do have a large number of beneficial effects. Vitamin A fortified rice and transfat-free soybean oil make people healthier, drought resistance keeps yields consistent, and insect-resistant crops don't have to be sprayed with insecticides as often. You might as well say that there's no reason for hybridized corn or even traditional breeding.
I've looked at the evidence and I'm sure a few people at slashdot MUST have experienced:
1) Precognition (see a random fragment of a future event in a dream before it happens, but not remember until the event occurs, but you have no control over it)
Well, I did have a dream that my father had a heart attack a bit before he had a pacemaker put in, and I didn't know about his heart-rate problem at the time. On the other hand, I have vague dreams every night and usually don't remember much detail unless I deliberately try to remember, or something prompts me to remember. Plus, I can't be sure that the detail came from the dream, or was added later from the real event.
2) See a person or animal very clearly (can describe who what the object is in amazing detail) that is there for a second and then is gone in a blink.
Done that, too - mostly at night when I'm sleep-deprived and see movement out of the corner of my eye.
I really think these phenomena are tied to...
You have an interesting idea, but as long as know phenomena (fallible memory, confirmation bias, mild hallucinations) are enough to explain every aspect of it, it's an idea best left for science-fiction. If someone does find something that doesn't fit that model (like frequent predictive dreams (not postdictive), or "shadows" caught on camera), then you'll have actual evidence and you idea might become a decent hypothesis.
It may of been proactive in this case but businesses aren't proactive in others.
You're evading the point. All I'm saying is that if you want to demonstrate that corporations are bad or that GMOs are dangerous, choose an example that actually shows that, instead of trying to use deceptive phrasing to make good behavior look bad. The rest of your posts show that you could have found a decent example (if one exists) quite easily.
Thousands of philosophers support the existence of specific supernatural deities... The amount of scholarly research devoted to... is hardly comparable.... There is a huge difference between those two statements. To claim otherwise is simply a logical fallacy.
No, it's not. But argument by popularity is a fallacy.
Try, for instance, providing general proof of anything in the domain of aesthetics. Then, failing that, be consistent and personally avoid ever claiming something is "beautiful", "good", or "bad", or acting upon such an impression.
First, you're trying to mix facts and opinion. "Koalas are cute" is an opinion, so asking for evidence or proof to start with is misguided. "90% of people will agree that Koalas are cute when prompted for their opinion" is a factual statement, and in this case the burden of proof would be on the one making the claim.
Heard this many times recently, but sorry, metaphysics, and philosophy in general, isn't Judge Judy.
If it's an opinion, you can't really be wrong, so burden of proof is silly. But factual statements, even ones with little or no evidence available, do have burden of proof. I can claim that I'm an angel sent by God to help enlighten you, and you can't possibly disprove that. But it's unreasonable for you to believe that without some evidence of some kind, right? The same hold true for the existence of God, (the one who sent me;) ).
If your mind survives the death of your body, no matter by what killed you, that would mean that (at least some part) of you mind couldn't be physically harmed. Then why can almost every part of your mind be altered by brain damage? If memory, the ability to tell imagination from memory, the ability to love, the ability to tell if we're blind or not, and the concept that "things to our left exist" can be altered by mere physical events, and thus are likely destroyed upon death, what's left to survive death?
That's clearly not conclusive, but that is fairly good evidence.
Creationists (of which I'm not one) and anti-creationists (of which I'm also not one) are dogmatic. The fact that the beliefs come from a different world-view doesn't change the fact that it's dogma.
One belief comes straight from dogma, while the other developed from a philosophy that deliberately tries to avoid dogma. You don't gain moral superiority by sitting on the fence and saying "it's all the same thing" when they clearly aren't the same thing.
Faith that there is a supreme being is not much different from the faith that there isn't
Which has nothing at all to do with the debate. The development of life is clearly within the boundaries of science, and none of the current theories have anything say regarding the existence of God.
the faith in science to explain the fundamentally unexplainable (how and why *anything* exists).
an unrelated incident occurred. Thank you for admitting (by omission) that the Brazil Nut incident is a good example of being proactive and responsible.:)
Now I never did say the soy was released, only that it's possible something like it could happen.
But you did imply it when you said "Don't think it won't happen? It already has." People who know what's going on would know that "it" meant "a gene for an allergen was transfered into a GMO", but your use of multiple hypotheticals makes it look like "it" means "people have died because of GMOs". Either you just didn't think of that interpretation, or you were trying to make GMOs look scarier than they are - either way it's appropriate for someone to make sure that people get the correct story.
I'd rather be proactive than reactive...
Isn't this the perfect case of being proactive? A possible danger existed, was looked for, and when found was avoided without incident. This is no scarier than some Toyoda designers thinking about a modification to improve mileage and discarding it when simulations showed that it would lower passenger safety.
Someone got sick after eating at Taco Bell.
Someone else filed a lawsuit against a large company.
A product that isn't allowed to be used as food might make people sick.
I'm shocked that:
People manage to eat at Taco Hell and don't get sick.
More baseless lawsuits aren't filed against big companies with bad public images.
With more than 80% of the soy and corn currently grown in the US being genetically modified, people still think it's going to kill us all.
No, they don't. No only is the technology not available now, but Monsanto has pledged never to use it.
If you wanna grow another crop, you have to buy more Monsanto seeds.
No. Assuming this is ever sold, if you want to grow a different variety the next year, they can't stop you, and because the leftover seeds aren't viable, you won't get their genes mixed up with the rest of your crops. If you want to plant the same variety, you have to buy seeds anyway because of legal restrictions (patents, license agreements). Besides, most crops currently in use are hybridized, so you can't (effectively) use their seed for planting anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
If people are giving away houses in your area frequently, and over a long period of time, then there are simply more houses there than people want, and your house really isn't worth that much. What do you want to do - sue people that build new houses for devaluing your home? You made an investment, if it doesn't work out, that's your problem (with the exception of actual crime, like fraud).
You can't give something away free for those who "can't afford it" and charge the ones that can. Pretty soon the ones that can are going to feel swindled and they're going to at least be TEMPTED to think that if it's free for everyone else, it ought to be free for them, too.
You might think that, but most people are fairly tolerant of price discrimination, as long as it's for trivial items (5 cents less for a pack of gum) or for reasons that they understand (South Africans can't afford US-priced drugs).
There is a culture now that is very pervasive amongst those that are in the late 20's on down that music should be free as in beer. To many, it's almost outrageous to suggest that music should be paid for.
Why shouldn't music be free? You can't sue someone for singing "You Are My Sunshine" as a lullaby to their kid, or for retelling a "Seinfeld" joke to their friends - if it's that easy to make the copy, you can't control the right to do it. When music is so easy to copy that people are doing it for free, then it's time to stop limiting individual people's access through copyright. Go ahead and force people to pay for commercial use, but what they play on their ipod (or hum to themselves) shouldn't be an issue.
You're right. It was late, and I needed a third example to fill out the range of behaviors affected.
Yes, but there are downsides for infant circumcision as well, and in most countries doctors don't circumcise anyone without a pressing medical need.
In Sweden they have a circumcision rate of about 6 in 100,000 because they treat it like other amputations (leg amputation, mastectomy, castration, etc) - it's a last resort when nothing less invasive will work. So if you're heading for the argument "better now than when he grows up", keep in mind that you'd have to preform thousands of circs on infants to prevent one adult from needing one.
Finally, most of the impulse behind anti-circumcision groups and books like The Joy of Uncircumcising comes from the psychological effects of being circed as an infant. A person wouldn't try growing new skin on their penis, wave a protest signs saying "Penis Mutilator", or attempt to ban something if it hadn't had a large impact on them.
Keeps her from getting pregnant. I don't want to have to welcome our new half-Moon half-God overlords. Do you?
When I go to Netflix I see "Watch movies instantly on your PC". Did I miss something?
I don't know what to make of this then:
It will be verified that random fragments of future events get imprinted on the mind by some strange physical phenomena...
Just as an alternative, what if the layout of the room was 'received' in some way by many people at the same time? Then you ended up with a dream, and someone else ended up with a level design. In that case there's no prediction at all - it just all stems from the same source.
The rest of your post I'd agree with, with the caveat that the ideas you're expressing now seem quite different than the ones you first posted.
Maybe I'm not understanding what you mean - if so please ignore.
Assuming non-American roulette, 18 of the 37 spots are black. (18/37)^13 is about 1/11697, which means that you should expect a busy wheel in Vegas to hit 13 black results in a row several times a year. But again, maybe that's not what you meant.
OK, I think I know what you're getting at. But it still doesn't make a good argument - there's still no evidence.
Popularity can be indirect evidence, because if most people believe it, in many cases, they have some direct evidence that you don't know about. But if you find out that they don't have that direct evidence, then the popularity of the idea ceases to be a good argument for the truth of that idea.
Which is fine. Maybe I don't have an explanation for you experience, that's fine, too.
You're too limited by not having enough knowledge of the difference sciences, and phenomena out there. So your thinking is very very narrow.
I'm open to new ideas, in fact the coolest thing imaginable to me would be to find some totally new realm to explore (ESP, ghosts, afterlife, etc). But I do want to make sure what I'm looking into is something real, rather than a side effect of my optimism.
It will be verified that...
Which is more likely - there's a mundane explanation that neither of us can come up with, or there's a super-fantastic rewrite-the-science-books explanation? I mean, the regular pulsed signals from space that were thought to come from 'little green men' turned out to just be pulsars, and the missing solar neutrinos were there, they just changed type so that they were harder to detect.
And even if it turns out to be a non-mundane phenomenon, what's the chances that it turns out to be something other than the explanation that appeals to you the most? When that you're certain of something and won't even consider other possibilities, without any objective evidence, that's what I would call "being narrow minded".
You're correct only within the legal system and only with respect to certain aspects. Actual property (AP) can only be taken under eminent domain, while IP can be granted or taken away at the whim of Congress. AP exists whether or not the legal system recognizes it as property, while IP literally doesn't exist at all without legal sanction. AP rights are eternal by default, while IP is always a temporary phenomenon.
I should point out that part of the reason I'm concerned about this is that there's a concerted effort to blur the distinction between AP and IP. Copyrights last longer and longer, fair use is harder to invoke, copyright violation is already called "theft" without a hint of irony, and legislators are pushed to make civil offenses criminal ones. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't be nitpicking so much.
While "fact" and "opinion" makes a neat little false dichotomy, there are things that are ultimately facts (one way or the other), which are of a presently-indeterminate nature in terms of proof--and making an assertion regarding them is not merely purely-subjective "opinion".
Except for the fact that it isn't a false dichotomy, I agree with that. God's existence or non-existence is a matter of fact, not opinion.
I can validly assert that "Libertarianism is the best political system", as an assertion of how reality is, i.e., as fact, and provide evidence for that assertion, without being able to "prove" it.
No, you can't - "best" requires a relation - best for what or for whom. Plenty of slave owners, kings, despots, etc would disagree. And even if you mean to imply "best for most people", you still have to ask "what does 'best' mean" - plenty of liberals would say "best is what leads to the most equal society", conservatives would say "best is what preserves traditional society", and others would say "best is what allows the most freedom". All of those are opinions, and clearly aren't factual statements.
I can validly assert that "Capitalist countries will outperform communist ones over the next ten years", as an assertion of how reality is, and I need not "prove" it if the domain is not amenable to proof, as economics among many others is.
You can show that, on average, certain countries have a higher GDP than others - my only critique of this statement is that "outperform" is a bit vague.
You do realize that sometimes the parts of your brain that go "I've seen this before" or "this is important" go wonky? In fifth grade I thought I remembered that "vacuum" was spelled "vacume", and thought I was the victim of a far-reaching practical joke for a while. People on LSD often latch onto some mundane thing, like octagons or pencils, and believe that they represent the meaning of life. Why would it be absurd that something like that happened to you?
Thousands of philosophers support the existence of specific supernatural deities, and have debated these topics for thousands of years [but not the other idea].
How am I supposed to take that as anything other than argument via popularity?
That's fine, but it's irrelevant to this side tangent you're on. You posted a bad example and tried a little fear-mongering, and then got called on it. That would be fine, but your reply to the person who called you on it was rather unfair, and I thought it would be nice if you could see how to make your argument in a better way next time (like use your better examples first, and don't mix multiple hypotheticals and expect your meaning to be clear).
However I didn't ask you just what is the need for ANY GMO? Answer is there is no need.
Don't be silly - we might not need it in the sense that civilization will end if they aren't created, but they do have a large number of beneficial effects. Vitamin A fortified rice and transfat-free soybean oil make people healthier, drought resistance keeps yields consistent, and insect-resistant crops don't have to be sprayed with insecticides as often. You might as well say that there's no reason for hybridized corn or even traditional breeding.
1) Precognition (see a random fragment of a future event in a dream before it happens, but not remember until the event occurs, but you have no control over it)
Well, I did have a dream that my father had a heart attack a bit before he had a pacemaker put in, and I didn't know about his heart-rate problem at the time. On the other hand, I have vague dreams every night and usually don't remember much detail unless I deliberately try to remember, or something prompts me to remember. Plus, I can't be sure that the detail came from the dream, or was added later from the real event.
2) See a person or animal very clearly (can describe who what the object is in amazing detail) that is there for a second and then is gone in a blink.
Done that, too - mostly at night when I'm sleep-deprived and see movement out of the corner of my eye.
I really think these phenomena are tied to...
You have an interesting idea, but as long as know phenomena (fallible memory, confirmation bias, mild hallucinations) are enough to explain every aspect of it, it's an idea best left for science-fiction. If someone does find something that doesn't fit that model (like frequent predictive dreams (not postdictive), or "shadows" caught on camera), then you'll have actual evidence and you idea might become a decent hypothesis.
You're evading the point. All I'm saying is that if you want to demonstrate that corporations are bad or that GMOs are dangerous, choose an example that actually shows that, instead of trying to use deceptive phrasing to make good behavior look bad. The rest of your posts show that you could have found a decent example (if one exists) quite easily.
No, it's not. But argument by popularity is a fallacy.
First, you're trying to mix facts and opinion. "Koalas are cute" is an opinion, so asking for evidence or proof to start with is misguided. "90% of people will agree that Koalas are cute when prompted for their opinion" is a factual statement, and in this case the burden of proof would be on the one making the claim.
Heard this many times recently, but sorry, metaphysics, and philosophy in general, isn't Judge Judy.
If it's an opinion, you can't really be wrong, so burden of proof is silly. But factual statements, even ones with little or no evidence available, do have burden of proof. I can claim that I'm an angel sent by God to help enlighten you, and you can't possibly disprove that. But it's unreasonable for you to believe that without some evidence of some kind, right? The same hold true for the existence of God, (the one who sent me ;) ).
That's clearly not conclusive, but that is fairly good evidence.
One belief comes straight from dogma, while the other developed from a philosophy that deliberately tries to avoid dogma. You don't gain moral superiority by sitting on the fence and saying "it's all the same thing" when they clearly aren't the same thing.
Faith that there is a supreme being is not much different from the faith that there isn't
Which has nothing at all to do with the debate. The development of life is clearly within the boundaries of science, and none of the current theories have anything say regarding the existence of God.
the faith in science to explain the fundamentally unexplainable (how and why *anything* exists).
Where did you get this from?
an unrelated incident occurred. Thank you for admitting (by omission) that the Brazil Nut incident is a good example of being proactive and responsible. :)
But you did imply it when you said "Don't think it won't happen? It already has." People who know what's going on would know that "it" meant "a gene for an allergen was transfered into a GMO", but your use of multiple hypotheticals makes it look like "it" means "people have died because of GMOs". Either you just didn't think of that interpretation, or you were trying to make GMOs look scarier than they are - either way it's appropriate for someone to make sure that people get the correct story.
I'd rather be proactive than reactive...
Isn't this the perfect case of being proactive? A possible danger existed, was looked for, and when found was avoided without incident. This is no scarier than some Toyoda designers thinking about a modification to improve mileage and discarding it when simulations showed that it would lower passenger safety.
There is no way that physical changes to the brain could alter behavior.
Filed under junk philosophy.
Someone got sick after eating at Taco Bell.
Someone else filed a lawsuit against a large company.
A product that isn't allowed to be used as food might make people sick.
I'm shocked that:
People manage to eat at Taco Hell and don't get sick.
More baseless lawsuits aren't filed against big companies with bad public images.
With more than 80% of the soy and corn currently grown in the US being genetically modified, people still think it's going to kill us all.
No, they don't. No only is the technology not available now, but Monsanto has pledged never to use it.
If you wanna grow another crop, you have to buy more Monsanto seeds.
No. Assuming this is ever sold, if you want to grow a different variety the next year, they can't stop you, and because the leftover seeds aren't viable, you won't get their genes mixed up with the rest of your crops. If you want to plant the same variety, you have to buy seeds anyway because of legal restrictions (patents, license agreements). Besides, most crops currently in use are hybridized, so you can't (effectively) use their seed for planting anyway.