I have to agree with GOD_ALMIGHTY. The comparison between climate research and ID is legitimate. The desire to analyze facts with respect to positions rather than analyzing positions with respect to facts is an integral part of human nature and is highly prevalent in our society. Such behavior needs to be identified, scorned, and ultimately overcome with education.
Living with skepticism requires progressive abolition of social naïveté. I don't trust scientists because they're called "scientists." The only reason I make use of scientific consensus is because I've developed a knowledge of how the academic community functions and have come to understand its properties.
A lot of what people call stupidity is really social naïveté. You know that hoax letter going around, supposedly sent from the dean of whatever school to its students saying not to masturbate in public restrooms due to problems with pipes clogging and bursting? Someone once asked me if it was real. That's really not stupidity; it's just a severe lack of knowledge about the way things work.
Just because you aren't certain about information doesn't mean you can't make use of it. That's an important leap to make. Religion allows people to operate with a presumption of validity in the concept of absolute certainty. For some people, losing that certainty would imply a paralysis of motive. Fully comprehending that one can move beyond that point is a huge leap for some people.
At least you can know what's running on your box, and you can analyze and reuse clever algorithms or design approaches elsewhere. I suppose by your logic, all ROM on hardware should be flashable and have excess storage capacity for new features.
Consider an ATM with open-source software. That's great, because the community can make sure the ATM isn't flawed. The ATM contains the servicable capacity for firmware upgrades. Under your model, a private key for signing code would be inadequate - instead, you'd require the manufacturer to create physical locks. Here, the DRM provision of the GPL gives nothing, and it opens up more possibilities of tampering throughout the manufacturing chain.
Unless you want to create a very gray distinction between an appliance and a general purpose computer, you'll have a hard time justifying the DRM provision.
One could argue that if the government did not so frequently perform the service of consumer protection, the free market would create its own effective consumer protection group -- a consumer union.
One might argue that such a consumer union would be able to browbeat a supplier like Verizon into making more friendly terms. (A good example would be requiring phone suppliers to accept phone numbers from other carriers.)
The government, however, as an effective monopoly on consumer action. Consequently, a fair litmus test for government action is, "If a free market consumer union would succeed in making something happen, then it's fair game for government regulation."
I can understand personal shame when one recognizes that he or she personally fell short of their moral obligation to help prevent such atrocities. Pride or shame from group identity is the irrational cruft of an age gone by.
One thing I have never understood is national pride. Mike, I'm sure you've done some things in your life that you can be proud of, but how can you take pride in something of which you had little or no part? It's like people taking pride in local sports teams -- how is geography a valid basis for identity?
Sure, you can show support the American system of government, which is to varying degrees responsible for much of the innovation within America's borders, whether through direct funding or creating/not-stifling an environment amenable to research. Being proud of it, however, is the same as taking credit for it, which is entirely unfounded.
Maybe, maybe, you can be proud of specific boons brought to pass with the help of officials you voted for, but unless you're a king-maker, lobbyist, or you otherwise devoted a significant degree of time to rallying support for a candidate, your claim to pride (except personal pride in being able to recognize a good candidate) is pretty baseless.
On the other hand, I got my computer illiterate father an iPod plus a $25 gift card to the iTunes music store. He never used the card! By some strange miracle figured out how to fish through binary groups on usenet for music. From computer-illiterate to usenet trowler in 1.5 days - just goes to show that man is a problem solving animal.
It's true. You'd figure if anyone would get a nice discount for replacing scratched discs, it would be Blockbuster Video, but in reality those guys just eat the cost.
Libertarian pseudo-government would be a lot more like morality-by-extortion. Sure, you can have unsafe work conditions in your factories, but hundreds of millions of consumers have willfully signed away their rights to shop at those retail stores that would be willing to buy your goods by subscribing to the Happy Market Democracy. The beauty of such privatized "law" is that it would respect no national borders.
There's a lot more that could be said about that, but it's getting horrifically off-topic.
Modern society lacks the tools to allow citizens and consumers to collaborate in the free market to make things like basic research happen and to make things like poor working conditions stop happening. The Libertarian position is that if the government stopped acting like a crutch for society, then society would develop its own superior mechanisms for public benefit. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, it would not be a fast or easy transition. Calling for the end of public funding is an extremely irresponsible approach to making that transition. Thankfully, I think most people with Libertarian leanings realize that.
In 15 years, maybe we'll be growing kidneys and livers. Perhaps, by that token, we'll be growing cochleas. Perhaps we can wire up the blood supply, but if you think we'll be able to wire up all those nerves, you're completely off your gourd. Protect your hearing.
Stephen J. Gould/Niles Eldredge didn't think gradulism was correct.
Punctuated equilibrium is just a form of gradualism. It is thought to occur in small, isolated populations, as selective pressures are high and beneficial mutations do not have far to propagate. Then when the new population is reunited with the larger original population, the original population is rapidly outcompeted, resulting in a perceived discontinuity in the fossil record.
Legally, the utility companies in Boston aren't allowed to require your SSN. What happens, though, is that if you decline to give your SSN, they make you jump through hoops with paperwork and notarized documents, and you can't get your services turned on until they finish processing them.
I didn't, but it's a fair bet that any given Slashdot poster with a penchant for the free market would be at least familiar with the notion of Libertarianism.
Have you considered the possibility that consumer market forces are adequate, but that the consumer base hasn't been given the proper tools for the efficient and meaningful exercise of consumer power? Can you imagine the effect of consumer unions on the industry standards for consumer electronics? What do you think would happen to DRM?
It's the Libertarian ideal of a privatized FDA expanded to powerful dimensions -- self-organizing groups that take on or shed as much bureaucracy as they need. If they start behaving badly, consumers simply "unsubscribe." Such groups would need to be easy-to-form, legally effective, and widely accessible - a revolution in capitalism that could appease both the socialist and the free-market capitalist. Think Google.
"Because scientific evidence suggests that the presence and infectivity of abnormal prion proteins in vCJD share characteristics with abnormal prion proteins found in cattle with BSE, scientists have concluded that exposure to the BSE agent is the most plausible explanation for the occurrence of vCJD (Refs. 5 - 8). Monkeys (genetically the closest animal model to humans) inoculated with samples of brain from BSE-infected cattle have been found to develop a TSE that is histopathologically similar to vCJD (Ref. 9), as have mice inoculated or fed with BSE-infected tissue (Ref. 10)."
Any production-ready vector graphics program should be capable of producing postscript and/or PDF output that's good enough for a print shop. There is lot more print-essential functionality in PDF and postscript than just drawing vectors and sampled images.
As a libertarian, you might argue that if the Federal government weren't funding research, the private sector would do a terrific job. I don't agree, but for the sake of the discussion, let's say I conceed the point.
But as it stands, the existing infrastructure for getting funding is *not* privatized. The presence of such a public infrastructure inhibits the development of any such privatized infrastruture. Within the current, federally funded system, getting solid funding for fundamental stem cell research is a virtual impossibility. If you tried to convince any scientist otherwise, he'd fall on his ass laughing.
This is hilarious. Putting people in the Access unit is a great way of telling them that it's high time they started writing up their respective resumés.
Great points. Allow me to make some distinguishments.
Environmental {logging, killing certain animals[...], not recycling, driving your choice of car}
The problem here is that there's a great big disconnect between the price of these things and the actual environmental cost. I think Bush has the right idea with some of his market-based anti-pollution initiatives. The Kyoto protocol (flawed or not) also attempts to bring market forces to the environment. These limitations could be considered stop-gap measures in response to the immature environmental market model. I would imagine that you agree with the principle, even if it's implemented incorrectly.
Taxes {Paying low taxes, Estate tax} One can argue about the method of taxation, but ultimately when it comes to reducing taxes, the argument has to be framed from a line-item budget standpoint. "The government is forcing me to spend money on {foo}."
Moral Restrictions {owning or carrying a gun, racism (or any other politically incorrect free speech), excluding people from your business, smoking a cigarette, offering a job to children under 14, offering a job below "minimum wage"}
Unfortunately, I can't handle these in a broad stroke.
Regarding job regulations. In general, employers want to treat their employees right. To stay competitive, however, they may be required to treat employees badly. Collusion between employers to create a better work environment can be difficult to impossible, even if desirable. The government is in a unique position to correct for the game theory imperfections of free marketism incarnated in flesh. This is directly analogous to autonomy, in that, while desirable, it can't be properly implemented without government intervention.
The under 14 laws stem directly from a subjective interpretation of autonomy. Naturally, infants aren't truly autonomous, nor can they really be properly thought of as just another piece of property, so the system gets to subjectively waffle and fudge as to when what level autonomy occurs. There are a lot of perceptions on autonomy, and they aren't cleanly divided down the political wings. In idealized autonomy, the need to defend oneself isn't even relevant, so in its implementation, there's also room for gray. Ultimately, it is the Congress' proper role to decide where reckless disregard for other's safety begins and ends.
You're right that liberals have a fundamental moral principle -- that people should be evaluated on their actions, not their genes. There has always been bipartisan support for laws that enforce this. Affirmative action, however, takes the additional step of taking non-ideal pragmatic measures to ensure equal protections that would otherwise be hard to regulate. It's a gray line.
What's my point? Subjectively debating as to the location of the thin red line in the implementation of key governmental responsibilities is the what Congress is supposed to do. The only really morally assertive things you mentioned here were 1) being prevented from smoking, 2) being forced to pay for abortions, and 3) being prevented from excluding people from your business. (Oh, and not discriminating based purely on color, but that's not a partisan issue, nor is #3, really.)
Republicans come down much harder on the [morally assertive]/[lifestyle enforcement] side of things. Don't you agree?
Now if you want to start arguing about the ridiculous crap your money is spent on, that's a far better way to critique the Democratic party.
Your approach is perfectly consistent and reasonable.
I don't like it, however. I prefer having standard terms for goods that are sold. No special shrink wrap agreements for mass-produced hammers. No special shrink wrap agreements for software. No unusual "metaphysically ethereal" constraints following around something I've, ostensibly, purchased.
I like that special terms need to be deliberate and targeted, rather than mass produced.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to agree with GOD_ALMIGHTY. The comparison between climate research and ID is legitimate. The desire to analyze facts with respect to positions rather than analyzing positions with respect to facts is an integral part of human nature and is highly prevalent in our society. Such behavior needs to be identified, scorned, and ultimately overcome with education.
Living with skepticism requires progressive abolition of social naïveté. I don't trust scientists because they're called "scientists." The only reason I make use of scientific consensus is because I've developed a knowledge of how the academic community functions and have come to understand its properties.
A lot of what people call stupidity is really social naïveté. You know that hoax letter going around, supposedly sent from the dean of whatever school to its students saying not to masturbate in public restrooms due to problems with pipes clogging and bursting? Someone once asked me if it was real. That's really not stupidity; it's just a severe lack of knowledge about the way things work.
Just because you aren't certain about information doesn't mean you can't make use of it. That's an important leap to make. Religion allows people to operate with a presumption of validity in the concept of absolute certainty. For some people, losing that certainty would imply a paralysis of motive. Fully comprehending that one can move beyond that point is a huge leap for some people.
Yeah, let each branch office manager flash the software on his ATM. Brilliant. I'll bet the FDIC would insure that in a heartbeat.
At least you can know what's running on your box, and you can analyze and reuse clever algorithms or design approaches elsewhere. I suppose by your logic, all ROM on hardware should be flashable and have excess storage capacity for new features.
Consider an ATM with open-source software. That's great, because the community can make sure the ATM isn't flawed. The ATM contains the servicable capacity for firmware upgrades. Under your model, a private key for signing code would be inadequate - instead, you'd require the manufacturer to create physical locks. Here, the DRM provision of the GPL gives nothing, and it opens up more possibilities of tampering throughout the manufacturing chain.
Unless you want to create a very gray distinction between an appliance and a general purpose computer, you'll have a hard time justifying the DRM provision.
Of course you can use the software, just not on that particular hardware design. I think the separation of domains is pretty clear here.
One could argue that if the government did not so frequently perform the service of consumer protection, the free market would create its own effective consumer protection group -- a consumer union.
One might argue that such a consumer union would be able to browbeat a supplier like Verizon into making more friendly terms. (A good example would be requiring phone suppliers to accept phone numbers from other carriers.)
The government, however, as an effective monopoly on consumer action. Consequently, a fair litmus test for government action is, "If a free market consumer union would succeed in making something happen, then it's fair game for government regulation."
Good catch, man.
I can understand personal shame when one recognizes that he or she personally fell short of their moral obligation to help prevent such atrocities. Pride or shame from group identity is the irrational cruft of an age gone by.
One thing I have never understood is national pride. Mike, I'm sure you've done some things in your life that you can be proud of, but how can you take pride in something of which you had little or no part? It's like people taking pride in local sports teams -- how is geography a valid basis for identity?
Sure, you can show support the American system of government, which is to varying degrees responsible for much of the innovation within America's borders, whether through direct funding or creating/not-stifling an environment amenable to research. Being proud of it, however, is the same as taking credit for it, which is entirely unfounded.
Maybe, maybe, you can be proud of specific boons brought to pass with the help of officials you voted for, but unless you're a king-maker, lobbyist, or you otherwise devoted a significant degree of time to rallying support for a candidate, your claim to pride (except personal pride in being able to recognize a good candidate) is pretty baseless.
On the other hand, I got my computer illiterate father an iPod plus a $25 gift card to the iTunes music store. He never used the card! By some strange miracle figured out how to fish through binary groups on usenet for music. From computer-illiterate to usenet trowler in 1.5 days - just goes to show that man is a problem solving animal.
It's true. You'd figure if anyone would get a nice discount for replacing scratched discs, it would be Blockbuster Video, but in reality those guys just eat the cost.
Libertarian pseudo-government would be a lot more like morality-by-extortion. Sure, you can have unsafe work conditions in your factories, but hundreds of millions of consumers have willfully signed away their rights to shop at those retail stores that would be willing to buy your goods by subscribing to the Happy Market Democracy. The beauty of such privatized "law" is that it would respect no national borders.
There's a lot more that could be said about that, but it's getting horrifically off-topic.
Modern society lacks the tools to allow citizens and consumers to collaborate in the free market to make things like basic research happen and to make things like poor working conditions stop happening. The Libertarian position is that if the government stopped acting like a crutch for society, then society would develop its own superior mechanisms for public benefit. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, it would not be a fast or easy transition. Calling for the end of public funding is an extremely irresponsible approach to making that transition. Thankfully, I think most people with Libertarian leanings realize that.
In 15 years, maybe we'll be growing kidneys and livers. Perhaps, by that token, we'll be growing cochleas. Perhaps we can wire up the blood supply, but if you think we'll be able to wire up all those nerves, you're completely off your gourd. Protect your hearing.
Stephen J. Gould/Niles Eldredge didn't think gradulism was correct.
Punctuated equilibrium is just a form of gradualism. It is thought to occur in small, isolated populations, as selective pressures are high and beneficial mutations do not have far to propagate. Then when the new population is reunited with the larger original population, the original population is rapidly outcompeted, resulting in a perceived discontinuity in the fossil record.
Legally, the utility companies in Boston aren't allowed to require your SSN. What happens, though, is that if you decline to give your SSN, they make you jump through hoops with paperwork and notarized documents, and you can't get your services turned on until they finish processing them.
Hear, hear. The potential of two-photon microscopy in the real-time detection of low-level neuronal physiology is, I dunno, exciting.
Thanks. :)
I didn't, but it's a fair bet that any given Slashdot poster with a penchant for the free market would be at least familiar with the notion of Libertarianism.
Have you considered the possibility that consumer market forces are adequate, but that the consumer base hasn't been given the proper tools for the efficient and meaningful exercise of consumer power? Can you imagine the effect of consumer unions on the industry standards for consumer electronics? What do you think would happen to DRM?
It's the Libertarian ideal of a privatized FDA expanded to powerful dimensions -- self-organizing groups that take on or shed as much bureaucracy as they need. If they start behaving badly, consumers simply "unsubscribe." Such groups would need to be easy-to-form, legally effective, and widely accessible - a revolution in capitalism that could appease both the socialist and the free-market capitalist. Think Google.
I don't consider myself well-informed on this issue, but take a look at this FDA report.
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/bse-ra.html
"Because scientific evidence suggests that the presence and infectivity of abnormal prion proteins in vCJD share characteristics with abnormal prion proteins found in cattle with BSE, scientists have concluded that exposure to the BSE agent is the most plausible explanation for the occurrence of vCJD (Refs. 5 - 8). Monkeys (genetically the closest animal model to humans) inoculated with samples of brain from BSE-infected cattle have been found to develop a TSE that is histopathologically similar to vCJD (Ref. 9), as have mice inoculated or fed with BSE-infected tissue (Ref. 10)."
Any production-ready vector graphics program should be capable of producing postscript and/or PDF output that's good enough for a print shop. There is lot more print-essential functionality in PDF and postscript than just drawing vectors and sampled images.
As a libertarian, you might argue that if the Federal government weren't funding research, the private sector would do a terrific job. I don't agree, but for the sake of the discussion, let's say I conceed the point.
But as it stands, the existing infrastructure for getting funding is *not* privatized. The presence of such a public infrastructure inhibits the development of any such privatized infrastruture. Within the current, federally funded system, getting solid funding for fundamental stem cell research is a virtual impossibility. If you tried to convince any scientist otherwise, he'd fall on his ass laughing.
This is hilarious. Putting people in the Access unit is a great way of telling them that it's high time they started writing up their respective resumés.
Great points. Allow me to make some distinguishments.
Environmental
{logging, killing certain animals[...], not recycling, driving your choice of car}
The problem here is that there's a great big disconnect between the price of these things and the actual environmental cost. I think Bush has the right idea with some of his market-based anti-pollution initiatives. The Kyoto protocol (flawed or not) also attempts to bring market forces to the environment. These limitations could be considered stop-gap measures in response to the immature environmental market model. I would imagine that you agree with the principle, even if it's implemented incorrectly.
Taxes
{Paying low taxes, Estate tax}
One can argue about the method of taxation, but ultimately when it comes to reducing taxes, the argument has to be framed from a line-item budget standpoint. "The government is forcing me to spend money on {foo}."
Moral Restrictions
{owning or carrying a gun, racism (or any other politically incorrect free speech), excluding people from your business, smoking a cigarette, offering a job to children under 14, offering a job below "minimum wage"}
Unfortunately, I can't handle these in a broad stroke.
Regarding job regulations. In general, employers want to treat their employees right. To stay competitive, however, they may be required to treat employees badly. Collusion between employers to create a better work environment can be difficult to impossible, even if desirable. The government is in a unique position to correct for the game theory imperfections of free marketism incarnated in flesh. This is directly analogous to autonomy, in that, while desirable, it can't be properly implemented without government intervention.
The under 14 laws stem directly from a subjective interpretation of autonomy. Naturally, infants aren't truly autonomous, nor can they really be properly thought of as just another piece of property, so the system gets to subjectively waffle and fudge as to when what level autonomy occurs. There are a lot of perceptions on autonomy, and they aren't cleanly divided down the political wings. In idealized autonomy, the need to defend oneself isn't even relevant, so in its implementation, there's also room for gray. Ultimately, it is the Congress' proper role to decide where reckless disregard for other's safety begins and ends.
You're right that liberals have a fundamental moral principle -- that people should be evaluated on their actions, not their genes. There has always been bipartisan support for laws that enforce this. Affirmative action, however, takes the additional step of taking non-ideal pragmatic measures to ensure equal protections that would otherwise be hard to regulate. It's a gray line.
What's my point? Subjectively debating as to the location of the thin red line in the implementation of key governmental responsibilities is the what Congress is supposed to do. The only really morally assertive things you mentioned here were 1) being prevented from smoking, 2) being forced to pay for abortions, and 3) being prevented from excluding people from your business. (Oh, and not discriminating based purely on color, but that's not a partisan issue, nor is #3, really.)
Republicans come down much harder on the [morally assertive]/[lifestyle enforcement] side of things. Don't you agree?
Now if you want to start arguing about the ridiculous crap your money is spent on, that's a far better way to critique the Democratic party.
-Adam
Your approach is perfectly consistent and reasonable.
I don't like it, however. I prefer having standard terms for goods that are sold. No special shrink wrap agreements for mass-produced hammers. No special shrink wrap agreements for software. No unusual "metaphysically ethereal" constraints following around something I've, ostensibly, purchased.
I like that special terms need to be deliberate and targeted, rather than mass produced.