I realize someone else mentioned this, but still: The things you mention are not mainstream, but extremist. The majority of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Mormons, etc... don't care to enforce their morality on you or society. You can sit and chat with people in any Church or Synagogue I have visited, and they will tell you as much. Now if you said "I'm getting an abortion" they may tell you why they think you shouldn't. But they won't pass a law forcing you to do it their way.
Lets look at two things: Christians are taught that what you do is between you and God. You are accountable for your actions in the end, not them. Their job is to tell you when they think you are doing something wrong. Nothing more, nothing less. Jesus' biggest teaching is "Do unto others as you would have them do to you.". If I don't want you to force me not to eat pork, why would I force you to do my thing?
Jewish is a bit more difficult since there are two sects, but similar enough for this. Jews don't give a shit what you do unless you are Jewish. In fact Jews often want you to do bad things, because to them you are either already going to hell or just a cow in the pasture (depending on whether the Jew is Talmud or Rabbinical).
Every "Religion" seems to have the extremists that make demands and yell really loud. The actual numbers are pretty small. A DJ from a big radio show in Detroit had a great talk on this a few years back. His show said something that offended them (but the majority of the audience was not offended). The FCC started receiving hundreds of thousands of complaints from some group. It turns out that this "group" was 6 people using robo mailers to make it look like more. Luckily for the DJs, things fizzled out after they released the group name to the public. The group got the same treatment from hundreds of thousands of fans. (Giving a conclusion to the story which is positive). The moral that should be looked at there should be this: Of the hundreds of thousands of listeners it would be fair to say at least a good percentage would be Judea Christian. Those regular Religious people defended the show against the extremists, they didn't advocate or defend the extremists.
Most Religious despise Fred Phelps and realize how much harm he does to their beliefs. I'd be willing to bet that a hefty number of Religious people pray for him to die in a very painful way every day.
Anyway, just like we tend to hear the most about the Islamic extremists we hear the most on media bout the Judea Christian extremists. That does not make it mainstream, but rather propaganda.
I had to come back to this since your wording kind of bothered me. I know, it's a personal issue... but I did finally figure out why.
Religion has become he Noble Lie for countless societies and civilizations. It's not really a symptom in that case, it's very well designed and very purposeful. However; Just like Socrates' Republic has been turned upside down, the purpose of The Noble Lie has been turned upside down.
The original concept, intended to maintain the hearts and devotion of the defenders of society, has been turned in to the tool to enslave the people in the cave. Those analogies should be simple for anyone that has read The Republic.
Dang, did a bunch of people read "Fallacy for Dummies" then come to/. to post?
Actually, we burned wood like crazy, to the point of deforesting most of Europe. Then we switched to coal and finally to oil.
We must have no choice today.. it's either wood or oil? Sarcasm aside, my point was that we adapt and survive. We have options now we did not have then, so don't lose very much. We learned a lot about the importance of sustainable foresting. We learned also "for profit" companies don't always do the right thing, so need to have regulations. A big problem today is that we don't enforce regulations. That is society's problem to resolve. Society must demand it so that we don't end up in the same position.
I have to break your next fallacies into parts.
Agrarian peasants don't get vacations. There is too much need for labour for that. For example, who look after your garden when you're away? Not your neighbour, since he's too busy tilling his own fields without a tractor.
Yeah, life is a bitch. We'd have to work a bit harder.. but if you had a choice of starvation or working extra.. what do you pick? I know, welfare is the obvious choice right? Personally I'd make arrangements with my neighbors to grow crops that were harvested at different times than theirs, and we could swap foods. You know, just like we did not very long ago. This way we can help each other instead of being self centered pricks.
and on top of that you probably get the return of religious tyranny too, since miserable people need some source of comfort. Which, of course, combines nicely with the close community of neighbour watchers.
Are you trying to claim that Religion is always a tyranny, or that there is no tyranny without Religion? Which is it? It's neither in reality, and if you believe either of those things to be true you should go read some history.
Basically, it'll be a future where life will be nothing but misery, but at least it'll be short due to malnutrition, hard labour and lack of medicine.
Yeah, because we obviously nearly starved to death and died out as a species like back in the stone age. A few lucky survivors never had any form of entertainment, and mostly died from malnutrition. Of the two that made it that far, each was stuck in their own piece of forest fending for themselves and trying not to get eaten by wild bears. Yeah, that's how it looks in history.
Sarcasm aside again, I get that some things would be more difficult. Instead of marathon games of WoW, you would have to work in a garden or help a neighbor for a couple hours. Instead of watching Youtube for 4 hours you may have to actually learn to play an instrument or go watch someone else play music for entertainment. It's different, but different is only misery if you make it miserable. That also assumes that all the oil vanishes overnight. Which we both know won't happen.
False dilemma and an appeal to emotion. You have no idea if anyone would die at all. Kind of interesting that even in poor 3rd world countries more people die from Wars than a lack of oil.
True, though it's hard to determine if were agreeing with them in sarcasm. Since it's seems like you are using sarcasm, I'll extrapolate a bit to show the morality.
Every society has requirements. If you have a town full of tailors, who makes the food? If you have a town full of bakers, who makes the shoes? Capitalism tries to balance those requirements within society. Too many tailors means that someone does not get paid, so they have to change jobs to remain functional in the society. If everyone want's to be a baker and refuses to do other jobs the society obviously dies out. It cannot support itself if everyone says "fuck you society, I do it my way." can it? The obvious and correct answer to that is "no".
Society is not restricted to limiting jobs, but also the amount of people that the society can support. If society says "we can not support our society if people have 3 children" how does this differ from my example of jobs? You could be self centered and say "fuck you society, I'm having 9 kids". If you do so, society has the right to remove you since you jeopardize their ability to survive.
The welfare state was initially intended to facilitate the changing of jobs in our capitalist economy. Our economy remember is just a piece of society, and not nearly the whole. Society could easily have a mechanism similar for maintaining a healthy population. However if you choose to break your bonds with society, why should society allow you to remain?
Lamps were not heat, and the amount of houses that could afford to burn whale oil for heat was almost zero. Kerosine and Coal, okay I'll give you that however: Coal was usually burned in addition to wood in the same stoves at least early on. Kerosene was a bit more affordable later, but the majority of housing went from wood/coal burning stoves to Gas/Diesel/Electric furnaces.
As I previously mentioned, transportation did change. To imply we have to move from gasoline cars to horses is not realistic though is it? Not that this was your point, but it is implied.
As to the horse crisis, it was not exponential growth. It was a problem I admit, but London was able to manage with more horses than NYC. Remember that manure was sold off, and often used as heating fuel by the poorer areas. The issue with horses was not just with the manure (which as as mentioned mostly recycled) but the space required to stable them and the farmland required to feed them. This article sums up the problem rather well in my opinion
Detroit is a sprawl. How did New Baltimore and Mt. Clemens and Clinton Township get so large? People moved out of the city and businesses followed. In the early 70s, numerous businesses tried to purchase the empty stores downtown. Colman Young told them all that they had to pay all of the back taxes and penalties for the previous owners in order to move in. They also threatened to condemn property after it was purchased. The city would provide no assistance with waste removal and in many cases not allow waste removal.
The same exact thing started happening with housing. No police assistance in bad areas means that nobody will buy. Even when those houses are going for less than 10,000 the back taxes the city tries to whack people with were insane. Go take a drive in Dearborn or Hamtramck for example. That is a ton of vacant houses that nobody wants.
I spent over 40 years living in Detroit and the Suburbs.
Society makes rules, and the members of the society must follow those rules. If they do not follow the rules, society must remove them. The concept is not new at all. Read Plato's "The Republic". What a society must do is not weigh the "want's" of an individual, but the necessary conditions for a successful society to remain a successful society.
Live in the US? We have much of the same mentality built in to our founding. Individuals had to fight and die to gain freedom. Did you ever read about the civil war? People had to give up their lives in order to advance society then also.
Reality is not always fluffy bunnies and sunshine. No matter how bad we want it to be, it's not. In order to be a member of society, you must live within the means and rules of the society.
Excrement was a problem because populations lacked proper sewage systems. Sewer systems don't require petroleum to function, they are gravity fed systems. Petroleum had little to do with making sewage systems outside of having petroleum powered vehicles to haul the plumbing and other building materials around around anyway. Petroleum may have reduced the cost of making them, but certainly was not required.
If you have any doubts, the Ancient Greece had no petroleum and some pretty fantastic sewage and water systems.
If you were implying that manure was a problem.. well that is still the same problem today as it was at any other time in history. Manure is mostly used for fertilizer today, no different than it was in the past.
Grass? Did you mean to say "wood"? I get that most people until rather recently burned wood for heat. Grass was used as compost mostly, the same thing we do today with grass clippings. Burning wood on scale is not that much better than Oil I agree. But electric heat would not require Oil or Coal and would be much cleaner.
One more quick point since I did not fully address what you stated. I agree that the population is much higher than it was 100 years ago. Urban sprawl is a problem, and we are too sprawled out. Look at Detroit for example. There are thousands of acres of city which is abandoned. Instead of being re-used, this land has been ignored and left to rot. People moved to suburbia, and many of those have been abandoned as well. So there is crap everywhere, and it could have been easily contained as communities (contained is perhaps an uncomfortable word, but necessary for the point I believe).
Much of this land was left because of unreasonable demands by the Government to re-use the land (I'm trying to be fair, it was not all the citizen's fault). If there was a more educated society, it would have been petitioned for that land to be used at affordable rates. A more educated society would have won that case, and we would not see the abandoned lots all over Detroit. The city would be more modern, more robust, cleaner, and the people would have been in a much smaller footprint.
While that does not imply, or at least should not imply, that we all have a house next to water it should imply that we could have managed things better. If we start to re-use and clean up some of that land, it would not a bad thing.
Your question is making an absolutely false assertion. Population can scale down naturally. It already is in Japan, and the US (which had negative growth last year for the first time in history). Many other countries have seen negative growth recently as well.
Simply educating people should be enough. Society has done a pretty decent job of governance in the passed, without any single person making a "you live and you die" type list.
When John has 9 kids and the town makes him move away (shunning him and his family) the next guy will think pretty hard before having even 3 children. They will think even harder when John can't move in to any other town and has to support every aspect of his life. Extreme perhaps, but this is reality in a functional society.
Socrates wisely stated that in order for any society to be successful the citizens must be highly educated. Obviously this statement did not mean that they have to be good at Math or Language, but rather educated about Societies and how they operate. The same education he inferred is what we have neglected very heavily for the last 40 years in the USA.
You are a dolt, I know you are anonymous but please never post such idiocy again. I'm not going to defend the Agenda 21 comment, but will attack your Capitalism comment. Go read a book and learn something about economics. Every economy works where no income = no purchases. There is not a single exception to the rule going back to the bartering days. And don't even start with the Welfare check bullshit that normally follows. Welfare would still be money in exchange for goods, but the source of money would change.
Funny that Karl Marx and the rest of the Communist bunch bickered about how bad Capitalism was.. and look how they operate? With currency in exchange for goods. The difference is that of course "The Party" controls what goods are available and who can get what goods. But the use of money works the same. It is a requirement for any economy. And be honest. Communism and Party control is way more unfair than "Capitalism" (assuming Capitalism is being used in it's true form, not the monopolistic leech fest we see called Capitalism today).
If you want to attack the conspiracy theory, that's fine and dandy. But if you do so in the future, at don't use false economic statements (easily debunked false economic statements).
Interesting statement, but I'll take your example a bit further. Until the last 100 years, we did not need to burn billions of gallons of petroleum products to have energy. We made due with wind and water for the most part. Even solar power was used, as houses and water were heated during the day to use "warm" at night.
The convenience of Oil in the 20th century made it the primary source of energy. It's was not the "only" source mind you, but it became the primary source. We used the convenience of Oil to move away from rivers and streams expanding our populations. We used the convenience of Oil to move further and further from our Neighbors. We used the convenience of Oil to travel where we want (assuming we could afford it) at crazy speeds.
So all the oil dries up. These people want you to believe that humanity would just die out. What slugs I say to myself. Humanity would not die out, we would do exactly what we did before Oil boomed. We move closer together, we use Solar Wind and Water power more. We grow our own gardens, and become closer communities again. It's really not that bad, and definitely not the doomsday scenario they are trying to paint. So I sail to England instead of Flying to England. I deserve a nice long vacation!
Since all the oil drying up won't happen in reality, we keep enough to make plastics where needed. Much of what we do in plastic today does not need to be done in plastic. Drinking Glasses for the longest time were made of.. Glass of all things. Okay, before that it was clay.. but we can still have some finery. Plates and eating utensils become.. Glass and Metal, and at fast food you use fingers or bread to pick things up and paper. Again, it's not even that deplorable. My Indian friends don't use plastic forks ever. But dang it, my coffee pot should be made of something other than plastic. And it should last more than 2 years after I purchase it too! See, things are looking up at this point! And yes! My water bottle becomes fur skin. Have you ever felt one of those? That's friggin awesome!
Perhaps I didn't explain clearly, but break that opening paragraph in to parts.
This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true:
Note the part I put in bold? Now the rest
(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;
(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);
(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.
Item 1 and Item 2 are both speculations. If you believe in fortune telling, goody for you. However, we can not claim knowledge of a future event. Both of those items are therefor false. If both of those two items are false, that only leaves item 3 as the possible truth. Remember, the author did state that at least one of those must be true.
The reason that I brought up Descartes is because for item 3 to be possible, you can not be sure that you exist. This means that item 3 is also false, so none of the 3 items listed are true. The work that follows, while interesting, is based on a fallacy.
As to limiting knowledge to Descartes, lets be realistic. Who learns something and never extrapolates beyond what the teachers teach? So the answer to the indirect question is "No.". The knowledge I hold is not limited to what Descartes did. In fact I have years of study, and numerous other Philosophers I have studied, to broaden my perspective. I have molded all of that into my own view, which is a culmination of all of those works.
To your last statement, that is absolutely false. I never made any claim to have the answers to those questions. In fact I went out of my way to tell the person I had no answers. Did you skip reading before the end of the post? I stated that the two subjects mentioned were not answered, and that anyone claiming to have the answers was a liar. While not particularly polite, the person posted anonymously. Most of the time I care, but occasionally cowards grate my last nerve.
There is no intentional bias in the question. That is the same question that predates known religion by thousands of years. It is the question that the Greeks discussed, and the question that Descartes and Aquinas tried to tackle. We know there was an initial event that started the Universe. That question is answered simply by our existence. Did a creator create the Universe or did it just happen is the question.
There is by definition a requirement for the creator (if you believe one exists) to be supernatural. Save the paradox and/or other subjects for a different thread. Go read the definition for supernatural. A creator does not have to fit a Theological definition, but must be within the definition of supernatural.
Finally, when it comes to assaulting the character of people that refuse to see what is plain to anyone that looks, I make no apologies. I'm well aware of numerous theologies and don't believe much of what they teach. I do however believe in a Creator, since the logic is easy to grasp.
I believe your biases supersede any rational thought, but fuck it I'll try.
You are also just so historically and scientifically illiterate. I'm sure you are religious and just masking it so I'll quote some ridiculous verses.
You have not provided any science to debunk, and provided no history. I pointed out history to debunk your false claim so believe I'm exceptionally qualified. I've got a good chunk of life under my belt, and a majority of that has been spent studying.
You mentioned slavery and claimed that Religions endorsed slavery. I gave the historical reason "why" slavery would be mentioned in the Bible. Jews _were_ slaves in Egypt. How you can twist that to believe that it was endorsed makes me question your sanity. If you say "So and so owned slaves" and Religion is at fault, then you are a idiot. Every single country at the time endorsed slavery, no matter what the state Religion was and it goes way back before the time when the Bible was written. The Sumarians had slaves, the Spartans had slaves, the Athenians had slaves, Egyptians had slaves, Romans had slaves, etc.. etc.. etc... Slavery was a very common thing through known history. It was only in the last couple hundred years it went out of style. So History does not back your stoopid fucking bias! The reason people had slaves in the Bible was not because of Religion. It was because everyone with cash did it, and the more cash you had the more slaves you owned. You do realize that the wealthiest in Rome owned Gladiators that were slaves right? It was the greatest show of wealth! Not only did you own slaves, but they were disposable slaves.
Instead of addressing my point, you go back and quote something that had nothing to do with slavery. That itself is not rational. You claimed that Religion advocated slavery and were (and still are) wrong! Jewish and Christian Religions are bound by the 10 commandments, not by the histories written in the books. History is the biggest portion of the Bible, followed by Genealogy. The actual tenants people are supposed to live by are pretty small in comparison. If you don't understand that the Bible is history and genealogy, you have never read it. You took someones word for it and quote the pieces you want to fill in your ignorant bias.
And to be very clear, there is history there which may not be accurate. Most "Religious" people will tell you that. Attempts to write the books of the old testament came at least a thousand years after the oral translations started (and a thousand is not being very generous).
I also know people who have taken their lives because of religion. So please when someone takes their own life because of their worldview given them by religion then one cannot escape the conclusion that it creates these kind of people through having been mislead by their parents and communities.
That is ludicrous, and you probably know it. It's just another bullshit excuse to maintain your bias and not see what the world really is. Suicide is ugly and painful, and never caused by one thing. There are always causes (plural). Yes, I know and have a two family members that succeeded in suicide and another that tried and failed. Pull your head out of your ass and stop believing in fallacy. Critical thinking is hard, but possible.
I would suggest you find stuff by Christopher hitches on youtube and look at the debates and remarks he brings up, you are obviously in need of being pointed out the horrors and absurdities of religion.
Youtube is not history or science, and perhaps that is why you have difficulty critically thinking and maintaining a subject between two simple threads of text. Learn what Religions teach and not the rumors someone want's you to believe. It's really easy to go into a church, parish, synagogue, mosque, or temple and just listen. They will even let you sit and read their books and materials. With the exception of COS you won't even have to pay for the materials as long as you read them in on their site. It only takes your time to learn. Take notes, and go read history books and do comparisons. The world starts to look pretty different when you lose your ignorant bias.
This reads much differently than your original post. What you originally posted matches the futility rhetoric being passed around to make people complacent. I still don't discourage what I stated since in order to make the change we must get more people woken up.
It would do wonders to remove the fallacy from what you said since there is some truth in it. I'd not be so quick to blame China. China uses the country just like the US uses the country. Both of us use NK to prop up our military industries. Putting China in as the only spoke in the wheel is rather disingenuous. Lots of countries prey on NK. Those same Governments benefit from turmoil in any smaller country *cough Afghanistan* *caugh Congo* *caugh Kenya*, and the list of coughs could obviously get rather long rather quickly so I'll stop there. I'm sure you get the point, or need to do a bit of homework.
You are correct, the UN could feed them with change. Many nations have sent food in to NK just to have it rot before it found a peasant's mouth. It's not like NK lets you open up food stands or drop food where you want. NK has to distribute the food for political reasons. Lets be candid here: If the UN was allowed to distribute they would have to have access to all of NK. This would obviously open up Pandora's box. No Government, even the UN, want's that to happen. People like you might, sure.. but you are not in a representative government. Don't bullshit yourself about that statement either.
Not even a good straw man. Also, did it dawn you you that perhaps he was referring to the wording in the US Constitution and not paying homage to any theology? That's how I read it, and I didn't have to invent words not mentioned to get my interpretation.
Fucking government shills, I'm sure you get paid well to take it up the ass.. but damn it's not worth it. They don't care when you are dying of aids man, just look around!
Similar line of thought: My comment was going to be 'too bad that prick didn't read "1984" or "Brave New World"'. Then again, I'm sure he did read them.
That's not that exceptional of a compression rate. It's not like companies pack binaries any more, and haven't for some time. Getting 50% compression on a binary is not that that rare (but is uncommon). Add to that text compression which usually exceeds 90%, and getting 40GB out of a 8GB compressed file is not that difficult.
Duh, it's bloatware, spyware, and trial-ware. McAfee and Symantec most likely pay MS to install their trials, probably EA and Steam trial packages. I'd guess also that many of the "help" files now require videos, because you know that internet just doesn't work. MS told everyone back in the 90s that the internet would fail and they must have been correct! It's un-possible to go find how-to videos!. Especially the "how-to make windows 8 function" and "how-to do basic shit in windows 8".
Sadly a lot of what I said seems like sarcasm, but probably is not sarcasm at all...
I smell a shill spreading FUD! Drafting and printing letters in OO, Libre, Symphony, Star, etc.. has no retraining costs and is just as easy to do as in Word. For the average user, there is no retraining required for _any_ of the Open source or Free office products. Okay, Presenter does not have as many built in backdrops as Powerpoint. Most users don't use those defaults since businesses build their own templates and mandate the use of those templates. So guess where you can stick your FUD?
If you were to talk about translating macros you would have at least been partially accurate. However if you do talk about macros, make sure you discuss all of the language changes MS has put out that forced people to recode their macros which have the same cost as recoding macros into a free product. Any time there is good code to translate MS macros to Open products MS changes the language and breaks the compatibility. That is their business model and has been for over 20 years.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize someone else mentioned this, but still: The things you mention are not mainstream, but extremist. The majority of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Mormons, etc... don't care to enforce their morality on you or society. You can sit and chat with people in any Church or Synagogue I have visited, and they will tell you as much. Now if you said "I'm getting an abortion" they may tell you why they think you shouldn't. But they won't pass a law forcing you to do it their way.
Lets look at two things: Christians are taught that what you do is between you and God. You are accountable for your actions in the end, not them. Their job is to tell you when they think you are doing something wrong. Nothing more, nothing less. Jesus' biggest teaching is "Do unto others as you would have them do to you.". If I don't want you to force me not to eat pork, why would I force you to do my thing?
Jewish is a bit more difficult since there are two sects, but similar enough for this. Jews don't give a shit what you do unless you are Jewish. In fact Jews often want you to do bad things, because to them you are either already going to hell or just a cow in the pasture (depending on whether the Jew is Talmud or Rabbinical).
Every "Religion" seems to have the extremists that make demands and yell really loud. The actual numbers are pretty small. A DJ from a big radio show in Detroit had a great talk on this a few years back. His show said something that offended them (but the majority of the audience was not offended). The FCC started receiving hundreds of thousands of complaints from some group. It turns out that this "group" was 6 people using robo mailers to make it look like more. Luckily for the DJs, things fizzled out after they released the group name to the public. The group got the same treatment from hundreds of thousands of fans. (Giving a conclusion to the story which is positive). The moral that should be looked at there should be this: Of the hundreds of thousands of listeners it would be fair to say at least a good percentage would be Judea Christian. Those regular Religious people defended the show against the extremists, they didn't advocate or defend the extremists.
Most Religious despise Fred Phelps and realize how much harm he does to their beliefs. I'd be willing to bet that a hefty number of Religious people pray for him to die in a very painful way every day.
Anyway, just like we tend to hear the most about the Islamic extremists we hear the most on media bout the Judea Christian extremists. That does not make it mainstream, but rather propaganda.
I had to come back to this since your wording kind of bothered me. I know, it's a personal issue... but I did finally figure out why.
Religion has become he Noble Lie for countless societies and civilizations. It's not really a symptom in that case, it's very well designed and very purposeful. However; Just like Socrates' Republic has been turned upside down, the purpose of The Noble Lie has been turned upside down.
The original concept, intended to maintain the hearts and devotion of the defenders of society, has been turned in to the tool to enslave the people in the cave. Those analogies should be simple for anyone that has read The Republic.
Dang, did a bunch of people read "Fallacy for Dummies" then come to /. to post?
Actually, we burned wood like crazy, to the point of deforesting most of Europe. Then we switched to coal and finally to oil.
We must have no choice today.. it's either wood or oil? Sarcasm aside, my point was that we adapt and survive. We have options now we did not have then, so don't lose very much. We learned a lot about the importance of sustainable foresting. We learned also "for profit" companies don't always do the right thing, so need to have regulations. A big problem today is that we don't enforce regulations. That is society's problem to resolve. Society must demand it so that we don't end up in the same position.
I have to break your next fallacies into parts.
Agrarian peasants don't get vacations. There is too much need for labour for that. For example, who look after your garden when you're away? Not your neighbour, since he's too busy tilling his own fields without a tractor.
Yeah, life is a bitch. We'd have to work a bit harder.. but if you had a choice of starvation or working extra.. what do you pick? I know, welfare is the obvious choice right? Personally I'd make arrangements with my neighbors to grow crops that were harvested at different times than theirs, and we could swap foods. You know, just like we did not very long ago. This way we can help each other instead of being self centered pricks.
and on top of that you probably get the return of religious tyranny too, since miserable people need some source of comfort. Which, of course, combines nicely with the close community of neighbour watchers.
Are you trying to claim that Religion is always a tyranny, or that there is no tyranny without Religion? Which is it? It's neither in reality, and if you believe either of those things to be true you should go read some history.
Basically, it'll be a future where life will be nothing but misery, but at least it'll be short due to malnutrition, hard labour and lack of medicine.
Yeah, because we obviously nearly starved to death and died out as a species like back in the stone age. A few lucky survivors never had any form of entertainment, and mostly died from malnutrition. Of the two that made it that far, each was stuck in their own piece of forest fending for themselves and trying not to get eaten by wild bears. Yeah, that's how it looks in history.
Sarcasm aside again, I get that some things would be more difficult. Instead of marathon games of WoW, you would have to work in a garden or help a neighbor for a couple hours. Instead of watching Youtube for 4 hours you may have to actually learn to play an instrument or go watch someone else play music for entertainment. It's different, but different is only misery if you make it miserable. That also assumes that all the oil vanishes overnight. Which we both know won't happen.
False dilemma and an appeal to emotion. You have no idea if anyone would die at all. Kind of interesting that even in poor 3rd world countries more people die from Wars than a lack of oil.
True, though it's hard to determine if were agreeing with them in sarcasm. Since it's seems like you are using sarcasm, I'll extrapolate a bit to show the morality.
Every society has requirements. If you have a town full of tailors, who makes the food? If you have a town full of bakers, who makes the shoes? Capitalism tries to balance those requirements within society. Too many tailors means that someone does not get paid, so they have to change jobs to remain functional in the society. If everyone want's to be a baker and refuses to do other jobs the society obviously dies out. It cannot support itself if everyone says "fuck you society, I do it my way." can it? The obvious and correct answer to that is "no".
Society is not restricted to limiting jobs, but also the amount of people that the society can support. If society says "we can not support our society if people have 3 children" how does this differ from my example of jobs? You could be self centered and say "fuck you society, I'm having 9 kids". If you do so, society has the right to remove you since you jeopardize their ability to survive.
The welfare state was initially intended to facilitate the changing of jobs in our capitalist economy. Our economy remember is just a piece of society, and not nearly the whole. Society could easily have a mechanism similar for maintaining a healthy population. However if you choose to break your bonds with society, why should society allow you to remain?
Lamps were not heat, and the amount of houses that could afford to burn whale oil for heat was almost zero. Kerosine and Coal, okay I'll give you that however: Coal was usually burned in addition to wood in the same stoves at least early on. Kerosene was a bit more affordable later, but the majority of housing went from wood/coal burning stoves to Gas/Diesel/Electric furnaces.
As I previously mentioned, transportation did change. To imply we have to move from gasoline cars to horses is not realistic though is it? Not that this was your point, but it is implied.
As to the horse crisis, it was not exponential growth. It was a problem I admit, but London was able to manage with more horses than NYC. Remember that manure was sold off, and often used as heating fuel by the poorer areas. The issue with horses was not just with the manure (which as as mentioned mostly recycled) but the space required to stable them and the farmland required to feed them. This article sums up the problem rather well in my opinion
Detroit is a sprawl. How did New Baltimore and Mt. Clemens and Clinton Township get so large? People moved out of the city and businesses followed. In the early 70s, numerous businesses tried to purchase the empty stores downtown. Colman Young told them all that they had to pay all of the back taxes and penalties for the previous owners in order to move in. They also threatened to condemn property after it was purchased. The city would provide no assistance with waste removal and in many cases not allow waste removal.
The same exact thing started happening with housing. No police assistance in bad areas means that nobody will buy. Even when those houses are going for less than 10,000 the back taxes the city tries to whack people with were insane. Go take a drive in Dearborn or Hamtramck for example. That is a ton of vacant houses that nobody wants.
I spent over 40 years living in Detroit and the Suburbs.
Society makes rules, and the members of the society must follow those rules. If they do not follow the rules, society must remove them. The concept is not new at all. Read Plato's "The Republic". What a society must do is not weigh the "want's" of an individual, but the necessary conditions for a successful society to remain a successful society.
Live in the US? We have much of the same mentality built in to our founding. Individuals had to fight and die to gain freedom. Did you ever read about the civil war? People had to give up their lives in order to advance society then also.
Reality is not always fluffy bunnies and sunshine. No matter how bad we want it to be, it's not. In order to be a member of society, you must live within the means and rules of the society.
I'm not sure what history you have read...
Excrement was a problem because populations lacked proper sewage systems. Sewer systems don't require petroleum to function, they are gravity fed systems. Petroleum had little to do with making sewage systems outside of having petroleum powered vehicles to haul the plumbing and other building materials around around anyway. Petroleum may have reduced the cost of making them, but certainly was not required.
If you have any doubts, the Ancient Greece had no petroleum and some pretty fantastic sewage and water systems.
If you were implying that manure was a problem.. well that is still the same problem today as it was at any other time in history. Manure is mostly used for fertilizer today, no different than it was in the past.
Grass? Did you mean to say "wood"? I get that most people until rather recently burned wood for heat. Grass was used as compost mostly, the same thing we do today with grass clippings. Burning wood on scale is not that much better than Oil I agree. But electric heat would not require Oil or Coal and would be much cleaner.
One more quick point since I did not fully address what you stated. I agree that the population is much higher than it was 100 years ago. Urban sprawl is a problem, and we are too sprawled out. Look at Detroit for example. There are thousands of acres of city which is abandoned. Instead of being re-used, this land has been ignored and left to rot. People moved to suburbia, and many of those have been abandoned as well. So there is crap everywhere, and it could have been easily contained as communities (contained is perhaps an uncomfortable word, but necessary for the point I believe).
Much of this land was left because of unreasonable demands by the Government to re-use the land (I'm trying to be fair, it was not all the citizen's fault). If there was a more educated society, it would have been petitioned for that land to be used at affordable rates. A more educated society would have won that case, and we would not see the abandoned lots all over Detroit. The city would be more modern, more robust, cleaner, and the people would have been in a much smaller footprint.
While that does not imply, or at least should not imply, that we all have a house next to water it should imply that we could have managed things better. If we start to re-use and clean up some of that land, it would not a bad thing.
Your question is making an absolutely false assertion. Population can scale down naturally. It already is in Japan, and the US (which had negative growth last year for the first time in history). Many other countries have seen negative growth recently as well.
Simply educating people should be enough. Society has done a pretty decent job of governance in the passed, without any single person making a "you live and you die" type list.
When John has 9 kids and the town makes him move away (shunning him and his family) the next guy will think pretty hard before having even 3 children. They will think even harder when John can't move in to any other town and has to support every aspect of his life. Extreme perhaps, but this is reality in a functional society.
Socrates wisely stated that in order for any society to be successful the citizens must be highly educated. Obviously this statement did not mean that they have to be good at Math or Language, but rather educated about Societies and how they operate. The same education he inferred is what we have neglected very heavily for the last 40 years in the USA.
You are a dolt, I know you are anonymous but please never post such idiocy again. I'm not going to defend the Agenda 21 comment, but will attack your Capitalism comment. Go read a book and learn something about economics. Every economy works where no income = no purchases. There is not a single exception to the rule going back to the bartering days. And don't even start with the Welfare check bullshit that normally follows. Welfare would still be money in exchange for goods, but the source of money would change.
Funny that Karl Marx and the rest of the Communist bunch bickered about how bad Capitalism was.. and look how they operate? With currency in exchange for goods. The difference is that of course "The Party" controls what goods are available and who can get what goods. But the use of money works the same. It is a requirement for any economy. And be honest. Communism and Party control is way more unfair than "Capitalism" (assuming Capitalism is being used in it's true form, not the monopolistic leech fest we see called Capitalism today).
If you want to attack the conspiracy theory, that's fine and dandy. But if you do so in the future, at don't use false economic statements (easily debunked false economic statements).
Interesting statement, but I'll take your example a bit further. Until the last 100 years, we did not need to burn billions of gallons of petroleum products to have energy. We made due with wind and water for the most part. Even solar power was used, as houses and water were heated during the day to use "warm" at night.
The convenience of Oil in the 20th century made it the primary source of energy. It's was not the "only" source mind you, but it became the primary source. We used the convenience of Oil to move away from rivers and streams expanding our populations. We used the convenience of Oil to move further and further from our Neighbors. We used the convenience of Oil to travel where we want (assuming we could afford it) at crazy speeds.
So all the oil dries up. These people want you to believe that humanity would just die out. What slugs I say to myself. Humanity would not die out, we would do exactly what we did before Oil boomed. We move closer together, we use Solar Wind and Water power more. We grow our own gardens, and become closer communities again. It's really not that bad, and definitely not the doomsday scenario they are trying to paint. So I sail to England instead of Flying to England. I deserve a nice long vacation!
Since all the oil drying up won't happen in reality, we keep enough to make plastics where needed. Much of what we do in plastic today does not need to be done in plastic. Drinking Glasses for the longest time were made of.. Glass of all things. Okay, before that it was clay.. but we can still have some finery. Plates and eating utensils become.. Glass and Metal, and at fast food you use fingers or bread to pick things up and paper. Again, it's not even that deplorable. My Indian friends don't use plastic forks ever. But dang it, my coffee pot should be made of something other than plastic. And it should last more than 2 years after I purchase it too! See, things are looking up at this point! And yes! My water bottle becomes fur skin. Have you ever felt one of those? That's friggin awesome!
Perhaps I didn't explain clearly, but break that opening paragraph in to parts.
This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true:
Note the part I put in bold? Now the rest
(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;
(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);
(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.
Item 1 and Item 2 are both speculations. If you believe in fortune telling, goody for you. However, we can not claim knowledge of a future event. Both of those items are therefor false. If both of those two items are false, that only leaves item 3 as the possible truth. Remember, the author did state that at least one of those must be true.
The reason that I brought up Descartes is because for item 3 to be possible, you can not be sure that you exist. This means that item 3 is also false, so none of the 3 items listed are true. The work that follows, while interesting, is based on a fallacy.
As to limiting knowledge to Descartes, lets be realistic. Who learns something and never extrapolates beyond what the teachers teach? So the answer to the indirect question is "No.". The knowledge I hold is not limited to what Descartes did. In fact I have years of study, and numerous other Philosophers I have studied, to broaden my perspective. I have molded all of that into my own view, which is a culmination of all of those works.
To your last statement, that is absolutely false. I never made any claim to have the answers to those questions. In fact I went out of my way to tell the person I had no answers. Did you skip reading before the end of the post? I stated that the two subjects mentioned were not answered, and that anyone claiming to have the answers was a liar. While not particularly polite, the person posted anonymously. Most of the time I care, but occasionally cowards grate my last nerve.
There is no intentional bias in the question. That is the same question that predates known religion by thousands of years. It is the question that the Greeks discussed, and the question that Descartes and Aquinas tried to tackle. We know there was an initial event that started the Universe. That question is answered simply by our existence. Did a creator create the Universe or did it just happen is the question.
There is by definition a requirement for the creator (if you believe one exists) to be supernatural. Save the paradox and/or other subjects for a different thread. Go read the definition for supernatural. A creator does not have to fit a Theological definition, but must be within the definition of supernatural.
Finally, when it comes to assaulting the character of people that refuse to see what is plain to anyone that looks, I make no apologies. I'm well aware of numerous theologies and don't believe much of what they teach. I do however believe in a Creator, since the logic is easy to grasp.
I believe your biases supersede any rational thought, but fuck it I'll try.
You are also just so historically and scientifically illiterate. I'm sure you are religious and just masking it so I'll quote some ridiculous verses.
You have not provided any science to debunk, and provided no history. I pointed out history to debunk your false claim so believe I'm exceptionally qualified. I've got a good chunk of life under my belt, and a majority of that has been spent studying.
You mentioned slavery and claimed that Religions endorsed slavery. I gave the historical reason "why" slavery would be mentioned in the Bible. Jews _were_ slaves in Egypt. How you can twist that to believe that it was endorsed makes me question your sanity. If you say "So and so owned slaves" and Religion is at fault, then you are a idiot. Every single country at the time endorsed slavery, no matter what the state Religion was and it goes way back before the time when the Bible was written. The Sumarians had slaves, the Spartans had slaves, the Athenians had slaves, Egyptians had slaves, Romans had slaves, etc.. etc.. etc... Slavery was a very common thing through known history. It was only in the last couple hundred years it went out of style. So History does not back your stoopid fucking bias! The reason people had slaves in the Bible was not because of Religion. It was because everyone with cash did it, and the more cash you had the more slaves you owned. You do realize that the wealthiest in Rome owned Gladiators that were slaves right? It was the greatest show of wealth! Not only did you own slaves, but they were disposable slaves.
Instead of addressing my point, you go back and quote something that had nothing to do with slavery. That itself is not rational. You claimed that Religion advocated slavery and were (and still are) wrong! Jewish and Christian Religions are bound by the 10 commandments, not by the histories written in the books. History is the biggest portion of the Bible, followed by Genealogy. The actual tenants people are supposed to live by are pretty small in comparison. If you don't understand that the Bible is history and genealogy, you have never read it. You took someones word for it and quote the pieces you want to fill in your ignorant bias.
And to be very clear, there is history there which may not be accurate. Most "Religious" people will tell you that. Attempts to write the books of the old testament came at least a thousand years after the oral translations started (and a thousand is not being very generous).
I also know people who have taken their lives because of religion. So please when someone takes their own life because of their worldview given them by religion then one cannot escape the conclusion that it creates these kind of people through having been mislead by their parents and communities.
That is ludicrous, and you probably know it. It's just another bullshit excuse to maintain your bias and not see what the world really is. Suicide is ugly and painful, and never caused by one thing. There are always causes (plural). Yes, I know and have a two family members that succeeded in suicide and another that tried and failed. Pull your head out of your ass and stop believing in fallacy. Critical thinking is hard, but possible.
I would suggest you find stuff by Christopher hitches on youtube and look at the debates and remarks he brings up, you are obviously in need of being pointed out the horrors and absurdities of religion.
Youtube is not history or science, and perhaps that is why you have difficulty critically thinking and maintaining a subject between two simple threads of text. Learn what Religions teach and not the rumors someone want's you to believe. It's really easy to go into a church, parish, synagogue, mosque, or temple and just listen. They will even let you sit and read their books and materials. With the exception of COS you won't even have to pay for the materials as long as you read them in on their site. It only takes your time to learn. Take notes, and go read history books and do comparisons. The world starts to look pretty different when you lose your ignorant bias.
This reads much differently than your original post. What you originally posted matches the futility rhetoric being passed around to make people complacent. I still don't discourage what I stated since in order to make the change we must get more people woken up.
It would do wonders to remove the fallacy from what you said since there is some truth in it. I'd not be so quick to blame China. China uses the country just like the US uses the country. Both of us use NK to prop up our military industries. Putting China in as the only spoke in the wheel is rather disingenuous. Lots of countries prey on NK. Those same Governments benefit from turmoil in any smaller country *cough Afghanistan* *caugh Congo* *caugh Kenya*, and the list of coughs could obviously get rather long rather quickly so I'll stop there. I'm sure you get the point, or need to do a bit of homework.
You are correct, the UN could feed them with change. Many nations have sent food in to NK just to have it rot before it found a peasant's mouth. It's not like NK lets you open up food stands or drop food where you want. NK has to distribute the food for political reasons. Lets be candid here: If the UN was allowed to distribute they would have to have access to all of NK. This would obviously open up Pandora's box. No Government, even the UN, want's that to happen. People like you might, sure.. but you are not in a representative government. Don't bullshit yourself about that statement either.
Not even a good straw man. Also, did it dawn you you that perhaps he was referring to the wording in the US Constitution and not paying homage to any theology? That's how I read it, and I didn't have to invent words not mentioned to get my interpretation.
Fucking government shills, I'm sure you get paid well to take it up the ass.. but damn it's not worth it. They don't care when you are dying of aids man, just look around!
Similar line of thought: My comment was going to be 'too bad that prick didn't read "1984" or "Brave New World"'. Then again, I'm sure he did read them.
That's not that exceptional of a compression rate. It's not like companies pack binaries any more, and haven't for some time. Getting 50% compression on a binary is not that that rare (but is uncommon). Add to that text compression which usually exceeds 90%, and getting 40GB out of a 8GB compressed file is not that difficult.
Duh, it's bloatware, spyware, and trial-ware. McAfee and Symantec most likely pay MS to install their trials, probably EA and Steam trial packages. I'd guess also that many of the "help" files now require videos, because you know that internet just doesn't work. MS told everyone back in the 90s that the internet would fail and they must have been correct! It's un-possible to go find how-to videos!. Especially the "how-to make windows 8 function" and "how-to do basic shit in windows 8".
Sadly a lot of what I said seems like sarcasm, but probably is not sarcasm at all...
I smell a shill spreading FUD! Drafting and printing letters in OO, Libre, Symphony, Star, etc.. has no retraining costs and is just as easy to do as in Word. For the average user, there is no retraining required for _any_ of the Open source or Free office products. Okay, Presenter does not have as many built in backdrops as Powerpoint. Most users don't use those defaults since businesses build their own templates and mandate the use of those templates. So guess where you can stick your FUD?
If you were to talk about translating macros you would have at least been partially accurate. However if you do talk about macros, make sure you discuss all of the language changes MS has put out that forced people to recode their macros which have the same cost as recoding macros into a free product. Any time there is good code to translate MS macros to Open products MS changes the language and breaks the compatibility. That is their business model and has been for over 20 years.
Just so you don't look silly in future posts: It's a 50 caliber gun.. not a 50mm gun. 50mm is beyond a rifle or gun and puts you into canon.
And kills them!