Since 99% of home users don't understand what is going on, all it would mean is more computers would be going to the shop for simple cleanings.
You say that like it is the users fault, however, poor documentation and complex UI design (although completely off topic) is equally, if not more at fault..... Does a pilot ridicule you when you fly on his plane but don't understand the aerodynamics?
It is their fault.
Users can always decide that compromised security is absolutely unacceptable. Deciding that means they'll do whatever they have to do to prevent it. With that mindset, poor documentation and UI problems are merely inconvenient obstacles to be overcome and are not showstoppers. There is more than one well-maintained, reasonably secure computer on the Internet and only one is needed to prove that this can be done. It's just a matter of whether the user is going to passively wait around for somebody else to do this for them, or whether perhaps there are things that are more important than that and worthy of some effort. The information needed to stop the vast, vast majority of automated malware attacks is quite easily obtained via Google and much of it is quite well-documented. Maintaining a computer is far, far easier than programming one and well within the reach of any literate adult. This is a matter of decision-making and priorities, not capability.
Or, to answer the question as you posed it: perhaps a pilot would not ridicule me because I don't know how to compute aerodynamics equations, especially if I am merely a passenger. I would certainly expect to catch flak from a pilot, however, if I tried to fly (not merely "fly on") his plane with no basic understanding of how to do so. Anyone who buys a computer and puts it on the public Internet is flying their own plane, by your analogy, and is not merely a passenger. It's just that when a pilot makes a serious mistake it's a matter of life and limb so we don't try to deny the need to know what you're doing and we don't try to make excuses for incompetence. If someone with absolutely no aviation knowledge tries to fly a plane and crashes it, no one suggests that he's a victim of poor documentation or that the real problem is that airplanes are too hard for the average person to fly. When computers are compromised, it practically never endangers life and limb so there arises the idea that this changes the dynamics of the situation or removes the need for personal responsibility and the excuses soon follow.
What you are saying boils down to a victim mentality. I'm not arguing against you so much as I am rejecting the victim mentality that you propound. To that I'll add that you appear to be hypersensitive to this issue. In a way you have to be, because the victim mentality is a message of hopelessness that does not stand up to examination. I say that because the GP did not assign blame at all. He said "Since 99% of home users don't understand what is going on..." but he did not attempt to explain why this is the case. Maybe he thinks that's the users' fault, or maybe he agrees with you that they are merely victims of things like poor UI and poor documentation with no hope of taking some initiative and improving their situation. He did not specify. That means that how he would explain it is open to speculation and therefore you chose to interpret that the way that you did. He may later explain his reasoning and maybe it'll turn out that your assumption was right and maybe it won't; either way, at the time of your reply you had no way of knowing.
If people would RTFA, they would see that this is NOT the same as what has been going on regarding Amazon and other e-tailers to collect NY state tax. That tax is "use tax" that you as a private citizen are required to pay regardless of whether the retailer collects it.
This article is about charging for digital downloads. It is about the medium. With exceptions, current tax codes only require the payment of tax for tangible goods. iTunes downloads fall outside the scope of the definition of "tangible goods."
See: http://www.tax.state.ny.us/pdf/publications/multi/pub20_1007.pdf
The particulars are different, in that what was going on before concerned tangible goods and this concerns what you could call intangible goods. This is otherwise a rose by any other name and the principles involved are exactly the same. If whether you would term it a "sales tax" or a "use tax" somehow changes the nature of what NY is trying to do or somehow affects the desirability of this proposal, please tell me how.
I'm sick of the attitude "we've got stuff to pay for and we need to figure out how to raise revenue to do it" regardless of how they choose to raise it. Here's a novel approach to government: we've got X dollars, how can we spend it to maximize the quality of life of our citizens? I don't get to randomly pull in more money from secondary sources if I decide I want a bigger TV this year, so why should the government?
That's easy. There's this common misconception that politicians don't understand things like balanced budgets. They do. They're power-hungry liars but otherwise they are not stupid. They know how to play this game and they know that the average person is far too trusting and naive.
The reason why they don't carefully spend our money and otherwise respect and honor the citizens is because there is no political power to be had by doing that. That is the nature of political power. I wish we'd be more open and honest about that instead of beating the drum of patriotism and claiming that the expansion of government is "for the children" or "for our safety". A minimal government that is fiscally responsible and leaves the citizens alone as much as possible just doesn't satisfy the sort of fevered egos who are attracted to positions of political power.
As a side note, to get a better idea of the sort of manipulation that goes on, just research "problem, reaction, solution" which is also known as Hegel's "thesis, antithesis, synthesis". If you can notice that pattern just one time you'll start seeing it everywhere. See that and patterns like it and perhaps then you, too can experience the joy of predicting the outcome of political "debates" in the media (it's easy -- whichever prefabricated solution does the most to expand government is the one that will probably "win") for people who neither believe you nor question the high success rate of your predictions. There's just not a lot of understanding of the idea that our politicians have been going down the same path for quite some time and that they intend to travel further down that same path.
That might make torrents a lot more dangerous for NY residents. Now, instead of being the civil tort of copyright infringement, it could be criminal tax evasion. I'm definitely not a lawyer so this is just my unqualified opinion, but this is exactly the sort of thing I've come to expect from government.
Most online retailers hate New York because we have horrible taxes, I believe NewEgg stopped requiring users to pay the tax in NY which caused them some issues. This will only exacerbate the intertube hatred of NY
You wouldn't think that a state could tax interstate trade, but if NewEgg (which appears to operate out of California) really did experience "issues" then I have a solution to that. Nothing would get the attention of the state of New York quite like every out-of-state online retailer refusing to sell to any NY resident or to ship items to a NY address. When customers complain, refer them to the problems NewEgg experienced and encourage them to take it up with the NY state legislature. The point is to make this an utter failure. That's definitely in our interests because if NY does this successfully, you can count on other states following suit.
If this happened, I doubt it would have to happen more than once to put an end to this sort of BS. Just imagine the precedent it would set.
The GP did indicate that he was in a small minority and that most other students involved did experience these illusions. I'm not sure what more you want.
The supervising lecturer said it was likely because I, and at least one other person (I didn't hear him talk to everyone), had sight defects, My left eye looks minutelly to the left when I look straight forward. Its enough to disrupt distance judgement, but otherwise pretty trivial.
Apparently that, or other minor sight defects are enough to nix some optical illusions.
I wonder if maybe having such a visual defect has caused you to practice how to compensate for it. Maybe not consciously or deliberately compensate for it, but just by living your life and using your eyes during your day-to-day activities. You mention distance judgment as one thing that this can disrupt. If you can still drive a car or play sports or things like that which do require distance judgment, that might confirm my little hypothesis.
Slight defects may possibly be to blame, but since there is a wide variation of illusions, only a few are likely to be impacted, barring catastrophic failure of your sight (i.e. blindness).
My idea is that if your visual defect has caused you (i.e. your brain) to compensate by processing the raw data from your eyes in a different way, I'd expect it to do so all of the time as a sort of default mode rather than have one mode for perceptions that the defect influences and a second mode for everything else. This may impact illusions of all sorts and not just the ones that bear any relation to the defect. Of course, I am definitely not an optometrist so this is just speculation based on inductive reasoning, but I think it's interesting all the same.
But in China, Joe Francis wouldn't just go to jail. They'd put a bullet in his head and charge his family for the bullet.
Sure. Most people lose whatever courage they had in the face of cruelty, which is why bullies everywhere love to use it. The kind of people who would like to see a nation become a police state most definitely understand this, even if only instinctively.
No, you're seeing totalitarianism gone wild. All of the shitty labor in China is backstopped by the government and its willingness to create political prisoners.
What really sucked about the Olympics wasn't the smog or anything else, it was the media broadcasting the fake news that China is just another free country. And the west sucked it down.
You're correct. It is nothing less than a dehumanizing force. You can't treat human beings this way; however, you can treat cogs in a machine this way. Our worship of and servitude towards systems and institutions is making the USA head in the same direction. What contributes to this is the way obedience and conformity have become our highest virtues; long ago, they were dissent and independence. Systems and institutions are there to serve people; when people serve them, they eventually become a cancer. You know what cancer is? It's when a subservient and useful part of the body oversteps its boundaries and tries to take over the host. Government becomes such a cancer when it becomes too large and too powerful. That this will happen if we don't change is inevitable and there are no exceptions. It's like we think that we are special, that it couldn't possibly happen here or that this somehow does not apply to us.
A relatively weak government that might leave some things undone (most of which are social programs that encourage us to depend on government) is far, far better than an overly powerful one that has even the slightest chance of becoming a totalitarian police state. Maybe someone who disagrees with that and shares the media-governmental wet dream of utopia at the point of a gun could ask the average Chinese citizen which scenario they would prefer. Hmm, having to find a way to pay for my own healthcare and save up for my own retirement, or living under a regime that would make Stalin proud... gee that's a tough one, wait, no it isn't. Yet anytime I watch the news, what do I see? I see that all of the arguing is about which proposal to expand government is the best. The leftists want to expand government for X reason while the right-wingers want to expand government for Y reason and that's their shoddy excuse for real debate. It's like being asked to choose from which bucket of vulture puke you would like to drink. No one who's tasted real food would care about which bucket is the more appetizing. That is how debates are framed and how public opinion is controlled. Government is controlled by public opinion and public opinion is controlled by the media. That some of you seem to think that any institution with even half of this kind of power would have any qualms or hesitations about wielding it really amazes me. That's the difference between how most of the world actually works and how you would like for it to work and you need to get over that if you want to see anything change.
No one with any sort of clout wants to reduce government's size and power or even reduce the rate of growth. This is not sustainable, trying harder won't change that, and there is only one possible outcome if we continue down this path. This is so easy to understand that I must conclude that anyone who doesn't get it doesn't want to, though I say that tempered with the knowledge that most people don't seem to know how to think critically. As I've said before, history has provided enough examples of how "democratic" nations become totalitarian states that we know what the early stages look like, there is no need to guess.
If you don't notice the illusions, you are either a liar or dull-witted.
The illusions are closely tied to how your brain is wired. If you really don't see them, your brain isn't functioning normally.
Granted, there are some poorly presented illusions, but these generally don't propagate because they don't work well for anyone, or they require a lot of special conditions and work to notice. (e.g. The Magic Eye posters).
Many of them are strongly influenced by stress (eustress and distress) or the lack thereof. There's also a significant component of vision that is "learned" or interpretive, as evidenced by people who were blind for a long period of time and later had their sight restored only to find that it was confusing and amorphous because they had to "re-learn" how to see. To the degree that illusions depend on reaching the limitations of perception, I would not be the least bit surprised if it turned out that some people manage those limitations and learn to overcome them or compensate for them better than others.
Either way, I think the knee-jerk urge to accuse someone of being a liar or of being dull-witted because their experience is not like yours is unnecessary. It seems to arise out of a lack of appreciation for the complexity and variability of this issue. The GP did indicate that he was in a small minority and that most other students involved did experience these illusions. I'm not sure what more you want.
You think that's the world, you're seeing? No, you're seeing a representation of it constructed by your mind.
This reminds me of a section from The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley (of all people):
A red rose absorbs all colours but red; red is therefore
the one colour that it is not.
This Law, Reason, Time, Space, all Limitation blinds
us to the Truth.
All that we know of Man, Nature, God, is just that
which they are not; it is that which they throw off
as repungnant.
I can't say I subscribe to much of anything that the man believed, but I found the parallel to be interesting.
As an undergrad I had to sit through tests involving optical illusions for the psychology students, and in my case lots of the illusions didn't work. That got me excused from further tests, because they didn't want to make their precious stats go funny by including cases like mine (and about three other people in the class I recall).
That sounds like they are not very concerned about the accuracy of their stats. You mentioned that this was a type of test. What's the point of running a test if you have pre-determined the outcome? That is more properly called (by them, not you) a demonstration.
While the optical illusion tests you describe are probably not terribly important in the scheme of things, I mention this because it's surprising how many important things are handled this way. It's to the point that whenever I see a purportedly scientific study, my first question is "who funded it?"
Ditto - but back in the 70's. What next - wide ties and lapels, bell-bottoms and flood pants, nehru jackets and peasant skirts, platform shoes and disco?
Well, what the heck, if you can't get bail-out money, at least get research grant money.
You forgot the leisure suit. No grant money for you!
Early experiments were performed using a grain-of-wheat bulb literally glued to the eyeball.
Am I the only one who shuddered a bit when I read this and thought about how it would feel to have a small object glued to the eyeball? I'm sure it was benign and performed by competent people who knew what they were doing... but damn, that just sounds like a form of torture.
there is almost nothing I know of that is more powerful than a pure motive. That's simply doing a thing for the sake of seeing it done and for absolutely no other reason, and enjoying it. This completely frees you of any concern for the outcome which greatly increases your effectiveness by removing any ulterior motives (usually control-based or the need to feel right). It also makes you undeterred by unexpected difficulties. For what the unsolicited advice of this stranger is worth, I'd recommend debating your family members in this spirit and seeing for yourself how powerful it is. If you do see that, know that it's not at all limited to debates and can be applied to anything.
I think your advice is very useful to someone interested in improving their ability to debate anything. But can you explain this part a little further? I can't tell if you're suggesting that the motive "I want this to happen, not just for me to be right all the time" is useful, or if "I want this to happen but have no principled reason why I do" is useful.
Because I think the first is insightful and I agree, but the second seems destructive and like a roll of the dice. If you could explain, that would help.
It's a childishly simple thing to understand and an incredibly tough thing to try to explain. In fact, I think that getting caught up in explanations is why it took me as long as it did to understand this. That can really catch you off-guard, too, because we always think of explanations as devices that simplify but this is not always the case. There are things far beyond the mundane logical level of what the intellect alone can grasp. So, I will try but I may not do a very good job. You may need to overlook a repetitive explanation to see what I am describing. This is not a thing that's so complex that most people are not capable of grasping it. It is a thing which is so incredibly simple that most people constantly overlook it.
The applicability to constructive debate is only a very tiny part of this. If you really do find what I'm talking about, it will completely blow away your ideas of what you thought was possible. You'll feel amazed that you were doing everything the hard way. It is nothing less than life becoming simple and easy and intuitive and free of needless conflict (and even when there must be "conflict", you yourself have none internally) and all it will cost you is this idea that "you yourself" can do much of anything except become frustrated when you try to exert your will. This is equally true no matter how great or how small your achievements are, for in both cases you will always know what to do and it will be exactly what was needed and no more. This is a spiritual matter and no guidelines or lists of "dos and dont's" are going to get you there.
So, the best way I can clarify is to say: do a thing for the pure joy of doing it. Let the mere participation in it be your privilege. Be truly grateful that you can do what you do and enjoy doing it so thoroughly that you do not care about a particular outcome. When dealing with other people, the outcome is often beyond your control; knowing that you did what was right and said what was true is entirely within your control and knowing that should be enough, no matter what they do. To do that, you must first find real joy, understand for yourself why it does not depend on circumstance, and then let the things that you say and do be an expression of it. The idea of trying to control circumstances in the hopes that you can engineer them to produce real joy is an abomination that is better known as egotism. What I describe here is more of an act of letting go.
Another way to say that is to do what you know is right because you love what is right and not because it accomplishes some goal of yours (in fact, it may be counterproductive to your goals if your goals involve controlling others). To give a concrete example, it's the difference between wanting t
What I am not doing is endorsing any alternative proposals or anything like that. I think we already have enough presented problems and prefabricated solutions; philosophical understanding or at least a grasping of some simple principles are what I'd like to see more of.
I'm curious as to which part of that was ambiguous. When I ask that, I am not your adversary here. I am trying to show you something.
You see, I knew people would assume that they know what my solution would be, so I put those two sentences in my post. How are you so predictable? That's easy, and when I explain it all I ask is that you consider how I could have so easily predicted that outcome, out of all the possible outcomes, if what I am about to tell you is not true. Either it's quite true or I have some incredible luck, and you'll have to decide which is the case. The media always suffers from an extreme form of debate framing and a lesser form of the fallacy of the excluded middle, so everything is proposed in terms of "this solution or that solution or a mixture-compromise of the two". This is what passes for real debate and real dissent and makes a mockery of both while looking nice and official. It goes on because the media is not your friend and has abdicated its proper role in the name of profit and political expediency. So naturally when I discuss what is wrong with one solution the less free-thinking among you will automatically assume that I must be advocating the "other solution." I'm not , and I don't know how I could have made that more clear. You're so thoroughly programmed to think in terms of a one-dimensional linear continuum (this extreme or that extreme or somewhere in the middle) that you did this even though I directly told you that this was not the case. Your thinking can be much more advanced and less prone to undue influence than this sort of one-dimensional thinking.
By revealing to you the exent to which this conditioning through repetition has shaped and limited your thinking, I am actually doing you a favor. You're free to take it in a negative way and remove any value it could have had if you wish, however, and many people in similar situations take that path. No one really wants to believe that they're being lied to and manipulated and conditioned on such a massive scale by such a large machine (even though it happens to be true) and In fact, I have seen layers upon layers of denial surrounding this very issue that would probably put to shame anything you are likely to come up with. If you do want to remove all potential value from what I am trying to show you, probably the most efficient way is to think that I am in any way looking down on you because of the damage that has been done by the most efficient and effective propaganda machine known to man. Making such a choice would let you believe that I'm the kind of dastardly man who would look down on you for that, which would give you (a rather flimsy and all too convenient) license to dismiss what I say without putting it to the test and seeing for yourself whether there is truth to it.
If you do decide to investigate this matter, I'd encourage you to do it for yourself only, for I have no need of any particular outcome. While I gladly express what I know to be true in the hope that something good will become of it, I gave up my need to successfully convince or to be seen as "right" in the eyes of others quite some time ago. It was an impure motive and an insecurity that I was all too happy to shed. You know what's funny? Doing so has made me more convincing overall because people can often tell whether you honestly believe what you are saying or whether you have a need for them to agree with you. The former is much more powerful than the latter.
I'd say that almost everyone behaves that way. Even I do, and I'm 100% aware at all times other than pressure-time that I do it. Even afterwards, I think, "Argh, why did I start acting with a maximum amount of bullshit there?" But I still do it.
I suspect it's hardwired into the human brain, and it takes a very extreme degree of control to overcome it, similar to how (most) priests overcome the sex drive to be celibate.
It's something few people understand and even fewer can explain; meanwhile you're surrounded by bad influences and a general lack of understanding and introspection. I believe that's why it's so common.
I'm trying to learn a new style of debate against some of my family members who disagree with me politically: When debating, just respond to their assertions with a "Why do you think that?" Eventually, I hope to get to a no-reason response or a controversial/inflammatory response that will reveal them as foolish axioms (thus making the C-observer aware of the foolishness), intelligent axioms I might support (thus I find Truth), or no-axioms (which weakens a C-observer's support).
This is the best thing I can tell you: there is almost nothing I know of that is more powerful than a pure motive. That's simply doing a thing for the sake of seeing it done and for absolutely no other reason, and enjoying it. This completely frees you of any concern for the outcome which greatly increases your effectiveness by removing any ulterior motives (usually control-based or the need to feel right). It also makes you undeterred by unexpected difficulties. For what the unsolicited advice of this stranger is worth, I'd recommend debating your family members in this spirit and seeing for yourself how powerful it is. If you do see that, know that it's not at all limited to debates and can be applied to anything.
I'd also recommend learning how to never get upset by what people say and do. Do something about it or don't do something about it, but there's no need to get upset. Most of the absurd and abusive things people do are designed to make you upset because that is how such people get their power or make you look like the bad guy. When you don't go along with it by remaining calm (and you cannot fake this), you are refusing to play along their petty power games. It's quite simple, really. Call things what they are without attaching (moral) judgment to them.
It's the difference between calling someone's action a mistake because you believe this is true (observation), and calling them an idiot or a bad person for making a mistake (judgment). That example sounds obvious but there are many subtle variations. People will do this to you because they understand instinctively that most people don't know how to face injustice without either cowering or becoming compromised by it and doing injustice themselves. If you can look their foolishness dead in the eye without doing either of those, it backfires on them and their desperation to control and get under your skin, which started out subtle, starts to come out into the open as they try harder. You can't fake this either; wanting to be upset with them and deciding not to act it out will not cut it. If you can do this, it will greatly enhance your effectiveness because you will avoid most of the traps that can rob you of it. Just don't fall into the trap of trying to do it for that reason because only a pure motive will give you what it takes to never get upset.
It's already happened friend, not fascism but corporatism.
The 1976 movie Network has a great explanation of this fact. That movie is also a good way to introduce someone to these ideas who otherwise may not entertain them.
No insult intended, just being blunt.
Well, I should have phrased that differently because you're right. You were not insulting and I should not have suggested that you were. I just appreciate a higher level, less mundane discussion of the forces involved and with this post you've provided that in abundance. Really, this is one of the finest replies I've received. Your kind of understanding is one of the most priceless things I know of, though it is also its own reward so this is not praise.
I have independently come to the same conclusions that you express here. There's not much I would say that your post did not cover, but I'll selectively comment on some of it.
I wish that were the case but were are already beyond that point.
I think if people started expecting something different, they just might get it. Their meek acceptance of the way things are done is part of the problem. Without different expectations, though, we are indeed beyond that point. I just don't think we're frog soup, yet.
Dissent used to be the seed of excellence, today freedom is a euphemism for 'you are free to agree' or 'you are free to conform'.
To me, that just means that dissent requires some courage.
I must admit I thought I was going to get a dogmatic rant from you but I see that you have actually made most of the journey to understanding western societies predicament yourself, I commend you.
There certainly are a lot of people making dogmatic rants so that's easy to understand. I can add that few things would harm my well-being as efficiently as becoming close-minded and dogmatic. I suspect the journey you mention is one that you always have to make yourself. Even if we had an ideal educational system that taught people these things, I'm not so sure that the kind of objectivity required is something you could ever give to another person. We certainly have enough rote memorization of facts and lists of do's and don'ts; what we need more of is real understanding.
1. Political issues.
Basically the political process is owned by whoever has enough money to pay for their interests. It is this mechanism that is in place that prevents our politicians from doing anything meaningful and prevents our society from moving forward. Issues from the electorate no longer have any voice. This structure, that exists, reduces the selection of your president down to who will be the CEO of America Pty. Ltd. A sad fate for such a great country. The political process must draw it purpose and funding from the electorate. This is the linchpin issue. Proposed solution: Make donations from corporations to political entities illegal.
It does amuse me that Obama and many politicians before him have talked a good game about "change". The general population does not understand that presidents are not elected to change much of anything; they are elected to maintain the status quo. The only idea of change that the monied interests want is of the "becoming more so" variety.
I've thought of just giving the candidates all the public money they need, a very abundant supply, to run their campaigns. Then make it a severe criminal offense for a politician to ever accept money from anyone for any reason. Even if we gave them a nearly infinite amount of public money, this would still be quite a bit cheaper than what we're doing now.
It's not a matter of left or right side of politics any more, which in some cases is used as an illusion to distract the general populace into a false sense of control.
A related note, though, on why debate is still important despite what you said. Suppose A and B are debating, and C agrees with B.
If A says something B disagrees with, B may feel too personally attacked to change, but C does not, and C may change his mind accordingly.
True. I had something a bit like that in mind when I said that an informed audience can help the situation (though I recognize this is for mostly the wrong reasons).
You highlighted what I identify as part of the problem. In your example, B should determine the need to change based on whether the new idea is worth adopting, not based on whether B feels pressure from A and C. What you describe there is a basic ego motive, a desire to save face. This has no place in the life of anyone who really wants to find truth. Its influence is always a counterproductive one.
That's what many people do, isn't it? They apply or expect various forms of pressure (the varieties of which are legion) because they don't seem to believe in the power of their own message. That's what I'd like to see more people overcome. They have to fix that on their own, of course; all I can do is show why it doesn't work.
you accept the notion of having a government. good. now you say your problem is that it is too large or too small according to some sort of standard. you don't tell me what that standard is, you just allude to a nebulous kinship with the founding fathers
It sure is difficult for some people to say "wow I completely misrepresented your position".
who defines those limiting terms? who sets those limits? who measures affinity with those limits?
For this we have the Constitution. The idea here is that the government doesn't have any powers at all except for those given to it by the Constitution. The War on (some) Drugs and the War on Terror (war on this, war on that) have done tremendous damage to the principles of this document. Those are two material examples of what I consider to be part of the problem, but the problem is by no means limited to just those two.
and even more importantly, who ENFORCES that?
We do (did you miss what I said of vigiliance above? because it kinda covered this...). If we're not too busy with the celebrity-of-the-week or the third mall from the sun. If we have time. If we get around to it and happen to feel like it, if maybe nothing else is going on that day. And that's just the problem.
1. if we elect a government that massively bloats the bureaucracy, we get angry, some politician senses that anger, and gets elected on that platform, and shrinks the government
That fails as soon as bread-and-circus techniques, problem-reaction-solution (aka the "thesis antithesis synthesis" of Hegel), and government-operated education work in concert to produce a populace that doesn't get angry when they see abuses of power. Your idea there isn't working for the same reason that laissez-faire free-market theories don't work -- they assume that everyone involved will always act rationally.
Most people really don't seem to understand what's happening here and how simple it really is or how many examples of this process (of free nations becoming totalitarian states) history has already provided. It's not like we don't know what the early stages look like. What's going on right now with the War on Terror, warrantless wiretaps, the practice of detaining anyone indefinitely without bringing charges, the economic crisis, etc. is not random. This is not just "politics as usual"; it is going somewhere, these events are headed in a direction, and it's an incredibly ugly one.
its called DEMOCRACY
Actually it's called a constitutional republic. Should I put that in all capital letters for you? Maybe you'd take me more seriously if everything I wrote were just dripping with angry why-don't-you-agree-with-me-yet-damn-you contempt? No? I agree, that would be rather silly. Or do you not think so?
It is an important difference though. The trend in politics now is to vote for whomever will give you the most of some form of handout or welfare or benefit. Social programs are one of the favorite methods of expanding government so this is generally encouraged and capitalized upon by those running for office. I can't remember the attribution of the quote but there is a saying that our system will fail as soon as the people realize that they can sell their vote. I believe this is part of what has happened to this country. Why do I mention this? Because the Founders did not trust democracy (I refer to what you might call "direct democracy" -- you would call it that to make up for using the word incorrectly when you refer to a republic as a "democracy") and they had some good reasons for that. This is speculation, but I suspect that the difference between a constitutional republic and a democracy could be why this type of failure didn't happen sooner.
for all of your criticisms of government, having no government is even worse
your negative observations of government occur in a vacuum, free of any context. when examined in context, the context of realizing the good governments do and the context of realizing the much worse evils that occur without any government at all, means that your prosecution of the very idea of government itself is just a form of insanity on your part
Not once in anything I've written will you see me say that "having no government is ideal". I am not an anarchist. Putting words in my mouth won't change that; it will only reveal the weakness of your position. Be assured that I do not need to recruit your assistance in order to express my position. If what you offer were well-founded dissent, you would not need to resort to such a tactic. I know you probably aren't doing this on purpose but that doesn't change what happened here and that is what I must address.
Further, you are exhibiting the false dichotomy or the fallacy of the excluded middle by presenting this in terms of government vs. "having no government". What I advocate is limited government and in that fashion my beliefs are very much like those of the USA's Founding Fathers. Government is the only entity that is authorized to use force or the threat of force to achieve its goals. I believe that government is a necessary evil, that it is a dangerous thing capable of perpetrating some of the worst atrocities in human history when it fails. As such it needs to operate within clearly-defined limits and vigilence on the part of the citizenry is necessary to ensure that these limits are respected. When I look around, I don't see that sort of vigilence. What I see are a bunch of people who are going to be very surprised when they find themselves living in an openly fascist state even though the signs that we are headed in that direction have been evident for at least the last 50-75 years. "Frog soup" indeed.
I think it is my referring to government as a "necessary evil" that was a stumbling block for you. That was what made you feel like putting words in my mouth was in any way appropriate or useful. So, why do I call it a necessary evil? Because perfect people wouldn't need to be told what to do. Perfect people don't need a law to tell them not to harm or defraud others because perfect people inherently have no desire to do these things. We don't have perfect people, thus we have government to keep order and civility among imperfect people and to protect them from both each other and from outside threats. That does not mean that government is an inherently good or desirable thing, just that we don't currently have a better solution to these problems and are unlikely to come up with one in the foreseeable future. In that fashion, it's something we're "stuck with" and care must be taken to avoid its dangers.
Now that I've further explained my position and freed it from your assumptions, I'd be interested in some solid reasons explaining why you believe it's "just a form of insanity on my part". That's not really a challenge -- if you no longer feel that way, that would be welcome news, though I'd be naive to count on it.
You're condemning government in general because of the actions of a few despotic regimes?
No, I'm saying that those despotic regimes all have one thing in common: the people of the nation never seriously thought that it would happen to them. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a few of them saw it coming and were ridiculed by most others. There is one more thing that all despotic regimes have in common: the time to prepare for them and prevent them is much earlier than the time when it's obvious that something has gone terribly wrong.
Your argument that we should examine the deaths caused by government vs those caused by terrorism is pretty weak. More people die in car accidents than from terrorists. Perhaps the problem is the propaganda being spread by those pro-car people (driving instructors)?
That's not a valid comparison and I'll explain why. Automobile accidents are... accidents. Sure, a tiny percentage of car crashes are malicious acts of injury or murder but we generally don't refer to those as accidents; we call them by names like "murder" or "vehicular manslaughter". By contrast, terrorism is most certainly a malicious and deliberate act and so is a fascist state. There is nothing accidental about either one of them. So we are comparing a like thing to a like thing and determing which set of malicious threats is more effective at causing human suffering. Excessive governmental power wins this contest without question. The current trend of fearing terrorism and expanding governmental power on the basis of that fear amounts to replacing a danger with an extreme danger. It doesn't make sense. Only a coward who buys into all of the fear-mongering would think that this is a good idea and only a coward would think that the near-certainty of regimented existence is better than the tiny risk of dying in a terrorist attack. There was a time when Americans were not such cowards and I think that most of us have forgotten that.
Analogies aside, government is just a tool of the people. Government itself doesn't hurt anyone.
If it's kept within its proper role, yes government is "just a tool of the people." The totalitarian state (be it communist or fascist or otherwise) arises when it's no longer a tool of the people but begins to take on a life of its own. Then it demands that its goals are more important than those of the people and that people are therefore expendable tools to be used in furthering those goals. It's bass-ackwards because the tool becomes the master and that reversed order is exactly what this aberration is about.
The subject/title of your post seems designed to refute a claim I did not make. I didn't make a moral judgment about schoolteachers, only that they must necessarily believe in the aims of government schooling and that government schooling can achieve those aims or else they would not do what they do. Of course, to some of them it's "just a job" so they don't consider these things but I suspect that the selfless elements of teaching means that those folks are a small minority. Most people with enough formal education to be a teacher could make more money in another job if money were their primary concern. The staunchest critics of governmental excesses and abuses tend not to come from this group, that's all. Despite the fact that many individual teachers may not support its purposes, I do not think it's a coincidence that the teacher's union is one of the single most powerful lobbying influences in Washington.
Still, it would seem to me that just like a Disney shareholder can quite frequently have more impact on changing a company than, say, a strongly conservative religious group's decision to avoid buying from the company, so too, a teacher, or any other government employee, stands a greater chance at implementing significant change than someone on the outside yelling that we're doing it all wrong.
If your aim is to effect change from within the system, then I think you know that you are rather unique in this regard. Honestly I don't believe that government schooling is going to change because of activist teachers who wish to see this happen. Modern government-run schools foresaw this possibility and so they stopped trusting you with the content of the curriculum a long time ago. They are replacing it with SOLs on the state level and No Child Left Behind on the national level because faceless centralization is what they want, not individual determination.
If that changes, I believe it will be because parents start taking responsibility for their children's education instead of leaving this job to the government. I really don't care whether a parent feels guilty from that statement and wants to subject me to the depth of their denial that abandoning their responsibility to someone else is in fact what they are doing. Whether real change means homeschooling or private schools or some as-yet uninvented method is not material to the point I am making. The idea is that the current system only works because people decide to participate in it instead of doing whatever they have to do to use available alternatives. I believe parents will make these changes once they realize that government as it is currently implemented does not represent their interests (knowing on which side their bread is buttered is not the same thing) and is indifferent to the social costs of the current system. To get a better idea of how I feel about this issue, as well as an enlightening read concerning how the current system came about, I humbly recommend that you take the time to read The Underground History of American Education by Gatto.
After all, do you listen to strangers who tell you that you have it wrong or to people you know and work with on a daily basis? (of course, as someone disagreeing with your position who doesn't know you, I may have just sealed my fate:) )
Certainly. For strangers, friends, or whomever, I am not what is called a respecter of persons, that is, I do not generally play favorites unless it's strictly a matter of taste; therefore, my requirements are the same for everyone. All they have to do is demonstrate that they correctly understood what I said and show me why it is wrong or doesn't add up or doesn't work, without using any logical fallacies or contradicting themselves.
Putting words in my mouth, using straw-man tactics, or pretending that you know my intended meaning better than I do is an automatic disqual
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Since 99% of home users don't understand what is going on, all it would mean is more computers would be going to the shop for simple cleanings.
You say that like it is the users fault, however, poor documentation and complex UI design (although completely off topic) is equally, if not more at fault ..... Does a pilot ridicule you when you fly on his plane but don't understand the aerodynamics?
It is their fault.
..." but he did not attempt to explain why this is the case. Maybe he thinks that's the users' fault, or maybe he agrees with you that they are merely victims of things like poor UI and poor documentation with no hope of taking some initiative and improving their situation. He did not specify. That means that how he would explain it is open to speculation and therefore you chose to interpret that the way that you did. He may later explain his reasoning and maybe it'll turn out that your assumption was right and maybe it won't; either way, at the time of your reply you had no way of knowing.
Users can always decide that compromised security is absolutely unacceptable. Deciding that means they'll do whatever they have to do to prevent it. With that mindset, poor documentation and UI problems are merely inconvenient obstacles to be overcome and are not showstoppers. There is more than one well-maintained, reasonably secure computer on the Internet and only one is needed to prove that this can be done. It's just a matter of whether the user is going to passively wait around for somebody else to do this for them, or whether perhaps there are things that are more important than that and worthy of some effort. The information needed to stop the vast, vast majority of automated malware attacks is quite easily obtained via Google and much of it is quite well-documented. Maintaining a computer is far, far easier than programming one and well within the reach of any literate adult. This is a matter of decision-making and priorities, not capability.
Or, to answer the question as you posed it: perhaps a pilot would not ridicule me because I don't know how to compute aerodynamics equations, especially if I am merely a passenger. I would certainly expect to catch flak from a pilot, however, if I tried to fly (not merely "fly on") his plane with no basic understanding of how to do so. Anyone who buys a computer and puts it on the public Internet is flying their own plane, by your analogy, and is not merely a passenger. It's just that when a pilot makes a serious mistake it's a matter of life and limb so we don't try to deny the need to know what you're doing and we don't try to make excuses for incompetence. If someone with absolutely no aviation knowledge tries to fly a plane and crashes it, no one suggests that he's a victim of poor documentation or that the real problem is that airplanes are too hard for the average person to fly. When computers are compromised, it practically never endangers life and limb so there arises the idea that this changes the dynamics of the situation or removes the need for personal responsibility and the excuses soon follow.
What you are saying boils down to a victim mentality. I'm not arguing against you so much as I am rejecting the victim mentality that you propound. To that I'll add that you appear to be hypersensitive to this issue. In a way you have to be, because the victim mentality is a message of hopelessness that does not stand up to examination. I say that because the GP did not assign blame at all. He said "Since 99% of home users don't understand what is going on
If people would RTFA, they would see that this is NOT the same as what has been going on regarding Amazon and other e-tailers to collect NY state tax. That tax is "use tax" that you as a private citizen are required to pay regardless of whether the retailer collects it. This article is about charging for digital downloads. It is about the medium. With exceptions, current tax codes only require the payment of tax for tangible goods. iTunes downloads fall outside the scope of the definition of "tangible goods." See: http://www.tax.state.ny.us/pdf/publications/multi/pub20_1007.pdf
The particulars are different, in that what was going on before concerned tangible goods and this concerns what you could call intangible goods. This is otherwise a rose by any other name and the principles involved are exactly the same. If whether you would term it a "sales tax" or a "use tax" somehow changes the nature of what NY is trying to do or somehow affects the desirability of this proposal, please tell me how.
Y'know. Where ALL the money goes.
Hmmm. Lets tax internet downloads... Genius at work. Aren't you glad your representatives are as highly effective as they are?
They are highly, incredibly effective at what they do. Unfortunately, it's not what they claim that they do.
I'm sick of the attitude "we've got stuff to pay for and we need to figure out how to raise revenue to do it" regardless of how they choose to raise it. Here's a novel approach to government: we've got X dollars, how can we spend it to maximize the quality of life of our citizens? I don't get to randomly pull in more money from secondary sources if I decide I want a bigger TV this year, so why should the government?
That's easy. There's this common misconception that politicians don't understand things like balanced budgets. They do. They're power-hungry liars but otherwise they are not stupid. They know how to play this game and they know that the average person is far too trusting and naive.
The reason why they don't carefully spend our money and otherwise respect and honor the citizens is because there is no political power to be had by doing that. That is the nature of political power. I wish we'd be more open and honest about that instead of beating the drum of patriotism and claiming that the expansion of government is "for the children" or "for our safety". A minimal government that is fiscally responsible and leaves the citizens alone as much as possible just doesn't satisfy the sort of fevered egos who are attracted to positions of political power.
As a side note, to get a better idea of the sort of manipulation that goes on, just research "problem, reaction, solution" which is also known as Hegel's "thesis, antithesis, synthesis". If you can notice that pattern just one time you'll start seeing it everywhere. See that and patterns like it and perhaps then you, too can experience the joy of predicting the outcome of political "debates" in the media (it's easy -- whichever prefabricated solution does the most to expand government is the one that will probably "win") for people who neither believe you nor question the high success rate of your predictions. There's just not a lot of understanding of the idea that our politicians have been going down the same path for quite some time and that they intend to travel further down that same path.
No tax on torrents? Cool! Bye Bye iTunes.
That might make torrents a lot more dangerous for NY residents. Now, instead of being the civil tort of copyright infringement, it could be criminal tax evasion. I'm definitely not a lawyer so this is just my unqualified opinion, but this is exactly the sort of thing I've come to expect from government.
Most online retailers hate New York because we have horrible taxes, I believe NewEgg stopped requiring users to pay the tax in NY which caused them some issues. This will only exacerbate the intertube hatred of NY
You wouldn't think that a state could tax interstate trade, but if NewEgg (which appears to operate out of California) really did experience "issues" then I have a solution to that. Nothing would get the attention of the state of New York quite like every out-of-state online retailer refusing to sell to any NY resident or to ship items to a NY address. When customers complain, refer them to the problems NewEgg experienced and encourage them to take it up with the NY state legislature. The point is to make this an utter failure. That's definitely in our interests because if NY does this successfully, you can count on other states following suit.
If this happened, I doubt it would have to happen more than once to put an end to this sort of BS. Just imagine the precedent it would set.
The GP did indicate that he was in a small minority and that most other students involved did experience these illusions. I'm not sure what more you want.
The supervising lecturer said it was likely because I, and at least one other person (I didn't hear him talk to everyone), had sight defects, My left eye looks minutelly to the left when I look straight forward. Its enough to disrupt distance judgement, but otherwise pretty trivial.
Apparently that, or other minor sight defects are enough to nix some optical illusions.
I wonder if maybe having such a visual defect has caused you to practice how to compensate for it. Maybe not consciously or deliberately compensate for it, but just by living your life and using your eyes during your day-to-day activities. You mention distance judgment as one thing that this can disrupt. If you can still drive a car or play sports or things like that which do require distance judgment, that might confirm my little hypothesis.
Another reply by an AC says this:
My idea is that if your visual defect has caused you (i.e. your brain) to compensate by processing the raw data from your eyes in a different way, I'd expect it to do so all of the time as a sort of default mode rather than have one mode for perceptions that the defect influences and a second mode for everything else. This may impact illusions of all sorts and not just the ones that bear any relation to the defect. Of course, I am definitely not an optometrist so this is just speculation based on inductive reasoning, but I think it's interesting all the same.
Sure. Most people lose whatever courage they had in the face of cruelty, which is why bullies everywhere love to use it. The kind of people who would like to see a nation become a police state most definitely understand this, even if only instinctively.
No, you're seeing totalitarianism gone wild. All of the shitty labor in China is backstopped by the government and its willingness to create political prisoners.
What really sucked about the Olympics wasn't the smog or anything else, it was the media broadcasting the fake news that China is just another free country. And the west sucked it down.
You're correct. It is nothing less than a dehumanizing force. You can't treat human beings this way; however, you can treat cogs in a machine this way. Our worship of and servitude towards systems and institutions is making the USA head in the same direction. What contributes to this is the way obedience and conformity have become our highest virtues; long ago, they were dissent and independence. Systems and institutions are there to serve people; when people serve them, they eventually become a cancer. You know what cancer is? It's when a subservient and useful part of the body oversteps its boundaries and tries to take over the host. Government becomes such a cancer when it becomes too large and too powerful. That this will happen if we don't change is inevitable and there are no exceptions. It's like we think that we are special, that it couldn't possibly happen here or that this somehow does not apply to us.
... gee that's a tough one, wait, no it isn't. Yet anytime I watch the news, what do I see? I see that all of the arguing is about which proposal to expand government is the best. The leftists want to expand government for X reason while the right-wingers want to expand government for Y reason and that's their shoddy excuse for real debate. It's like being asked to choose from which bucket of vulture puke you would like to drink. No one who's tasted real food would care about which bucket is the more appetizing. That is how debates are framed and how public opinion is controlled. Government is controlled by public opinion and public opinion is controlled by the media. That some of you seem to think that any institution with even half of this kind of power would have any qualms or hesitations about wielding it really amazes me. That's the difference between how most of the world actually works and how you would like for it to work and you need to get over that if you want to see anything change.
A relatively weak government that might leave some things undone (most of which are social programs that encourage us to depend on government) is far, far better than an overly powerful one that has even the slightest chance of becoming a totalitarian police state. Maybe someone who disagrees with that and shares the media-governmental wet dream of utopia at the point of a gun could ask the average Chinese citizen which scenario they would prefer. Hmm, having to find a way to pay for my own healthcare and save up for my own retirement, or living under a regime that would make Stalin proud
No one with any sort of clout wants to reduce government's size and power or even reduce the rate of growth. This is not sustainable, trying harder won't change that, and there is only one possible outcome if we continue down this path. This is so easy to understand that I must conclude that anyone who doesn't get it doesn't want to, though I say that tempered with the knowledge that most people don't seem to know how to think critically. As I've said before, history has provided enough examples of how "democratic" nations become totalitarian states that we know what the early stages look like, there is no need to guess.
I call BS.
If you don't notice the illusions, you are either a liar or dull-witted.
The illusions are closely tied to how your brain is wired. If you really don't see them, your brain isn't functioning normally.
Granted, there are some poorly presented illusions, but these generally don't propagate because they don't work well for anyone, or they require a lot of special conditions and work to notice. (e.g. The Magic Eye posters).
Many of them are strongly influenced by stress (eustress and distress) or the lack thereof. There's also a significant component of vision that is "learned" or interpretive, as evidenced by people who were blind for a long period of time and later had their sight restored only to find that it was confusing and amorphous because they had to "re-learn" how to see. To the degree that illusions depend on reaching the limitations of perception, I would not be the least bit surprised if it turned out that some people manage those limitations and learn to overcome them or compensate for them better than others.
Either way, I think the knee-jerk urge to accuse someone of being a liar or of being dull-witted because their experience is not like yours is unnecessary. It seems to arise out of a lack of appreciation for the complexity and variability of this issue. The GP did indicate that he was in a small minority and that most other students involved did experience these illusions. I'm not sure what more you want.
You may also find this post helpful, for this was inspired work and not the product of any sort of deductive process.
The entire thread contains yet more information. Please pay particular attention to the objections raised by users plasmacutter and Creepy Crawler.
This reminds me of a section from The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley (of all people):
I can't say I subscribe to much of anything that the man believed, but I found the parallel to be interesting.
By the way, nice sig.
That sounds like they are not very concerned about the accuracy of their stats. You mentioned that this was a type of test. What's the point of running a test if you have pre-determined the outcome? That is more properly called (by them, not you) a demonstration.
While the optical illusion tests you describe are probably not terribly important in the scheme of things, I mention this because it's surprising how many important things are handled this way. It's to the point that whenever I see a purportedly scientific study, my first question is "who funded it?"
Ditto - but back in the 70's. What next - wide ties and lapels, bell-bottoms and flood pants, nehru jackets and peasant skirts, platform shoes and disco?
Well, what the heck, if you can't get bail-out money, at least get research grant money.
You forgot the leisure suit. No grant money for you!
Am I the only one who shuddered a bit when I read this and thought about how it would feel to have a small object glued to the eyeball? I'm sure it was benign and performed by competent people who knew what they were doing ... but damn, that just sounds like a form of torture.
I think your advice is very useful to someone interested in improving their ability to debate anything. But can you explain this part a little further? I can't tell if you're suggesting that the motive "I want this to happen, not just for me to be right all the time" is useful, or if "I want this to happen but have no principled reason why I do" is useful.
Because I think the first is insightful and I agree, but the second seems destructive and like a roll of the dice. If you could explain, that would help.
It's a childishly simple thing to understand and an incredibly tough thing to try to explain. In fact, I think that getting caught up in explanations is why it took me as long as it did to understand this. That can really catch you off-guard, too, because we always think of explanations as devices that simplify but this is not always the case. There are things far beyond the mundane logical level of what the intellect alone can grasp. So, I will try but I may not do a very good job. You may need to overlook a repetitive explanation to see what I am describing. This is not a thing that's so complex that most people are not capable of grasping it. It is a thing which is so incredibly simple that most people constantly overlook it.
The applicability to constructive debate is only a very tiny part of this. If you really do find what I'm talking about, it will completely blow away your ideas of what you thought was possible. You'll feel amazed that you were doing everything the hard way. It is nothing less than life becoming simple and easy and intuitive and free of needless conflict (and even when there must be "conflict", you yourself have none internally) and all it will cost you is this idea that "you yourself" can do much of anything except become frustrated when you try to exert your will. This is equally true no matter how great or how small your achievements are, for in both cases you will always know what to do and it will be exactly what was needed and no more. This is a spiritual matter and no guidelines or lists of "dos and dont's" are going to get you there.
So, the best way I can clarify is to say: do a thing for the pure joy of doing it. Let the mere participation in it be your privilege. Be truly grateful that you can do what you do and enjoy doing it so thoroughly that you do not care about a particular outcome. When dealing with other people, the outcome is often beyond your control; knowing that you did what was right and said what was true is entirely within your control and knowing that should be enough, no matter what they do. To do that, you must first find real joy, understand for yourself why it does not depend on circumstance, and then let the things that you say and do be an expression of it. The idea of trying to control circumstances in the hopes that you can engineer them to produce real joy is an abomination that is better known as egotism. What I describe here is more of an act of letting go.
Another way to say that is to do what you know is right because you love what is right and not because it accomplishes some goal of yours (in fact, it may be counterproductive to your goals if your goals involve controlling others). To give a concrete example, it's the difference between wanting t
I'm curious as to which part of that was ambiguous. When I ask that, I am not your adversary here. I am trying to show you something.
You see, I knew people would assume that they know what my solution would be, so I put those two sentences in my post. How are you so predictable? That's easy, and when I explain it all I ask is that you consider how I could have so easily predicted that outcome, out of all the possible outcomes, if what I am about to tell you is not true. Either it's quite true or I have some incredible luck, and you'll have to decide which is the case. The media always suffers from an extreme form of debate framing and a lesser form of the fallacy of the excluded middle, so everything is proposed in terms of "this solution or that solution or a mixture-compromise of the two". This is what passes for real debate and real dissent and makes a mockery of both while looking nice and official. It goes on because the media is not your friend and has abdicated its proper role in the name of profit and political expediency. So naturally when I discuss what is wrong with one solution the less free-thinking among you will automatically assume that I must be advocating the "other solution." I'm not , and I don't know how I could have made that more clear. You're so thoroughly programmed to think in terms of a one-dimensional linear continuum (this extreme or that extreme or somewhere in the middle) that you did this even though I directly told you that this was not the case. Your thinking can be much more advanced and less prone to undue influence than this sort of one-dimensional thinking.
By revealing to you the exent to which this conditioning through repetition has shaped and limited your thinking, I am actually doing you a favor. You're free to take it in a negative way and remove any value it could have had if you wish, however, and many people in similar situations take that path. No one really wants to believe that they're being lied to and manipulated and conditioned on such a massive scale by such a large machine (even though it happens to be true) and In fact, I have seen layers upon layers of denial surrounding this very issue that would probably put to shame anything you are likely to come up with. If you do want to remove all potential value from what I am trying to show you, probably the most efficient way is to think that I am in any way looking down on you because of the damage that has been done by the most efficient and effective propaganda machine known to man. Making such a choice would let you believe that I'm the kind of dastardly man who would look down on you for that, which would give you (a rather flimsy and all too convenient) license to dismiss what I say without putting it to the test and seeing for yourself whether there is truth to it.
If you do decide to investigate this matter, I'd encourage you to do it for yourself only, for I have no need of any particular outcome. While I gladly express what I know to be true in the hope that something good will become of it, I gave up my need to successfully convince or to be seen as "right" in the eyes of others quite some time ago. It was an impure motive and an insecurity that I was all too happy to shed. You know what's funny? Doing so has made me more convincing overall because people can often tell whether you honestly believe what you are saying or whether you have a need for them to agree with you. The former is much more powerful than the latter.
It's something few people understand and even fewer can explain; meanwhile you're surrounded by bad influences and a general lack of understanding and introspection. I believe that's why it's so common.
This is the best thing I can tell you: there is almost nothing I know of that is more powerful than a pure motive. That's simply doing a thing for the sake of seeing it done and for absolutely no other reason, and enjoying it. This completely frees you of any concern for the outcome which greatly increases your effectiveness by removing any ulterior motives (usually control-based or the need to feel right). It also makes you undeterred by unexpected difficulties. For what the unsolicited advice of this stranger is worth, I'd recommend debating your family members in this spirit and seeing for yourself how powerful it is. If you do see that, know that it's not at all limited to debates and can be applied to anything.
I'd also recommend learning how to never get upset by what people say and do. Do something about it or don't do something about it, but there's no need to get upset. Most of the absurd and abusive things people do are designed to make you upset because that is how such people get their power or make you look like the bad guy. When you don't go along with it by remaining calm (and you cannot fake this), you are refusing to play along their petty power games. It's quite simple, really. Call things what they are without attaching (moral) judgment to them.
It's the difference between calling someone's action a mistake because you believe this is true (observation), and calling them an idiot or a bad person for making a mistake (judgment). That example sounds obvious but there are many subtle variations. People will do this to you because they understand instinctively that most people don't know how to face injustice without either cowering or becoming compromised by it and doing injustice themselves. If you can look their foolishness dead in the eye without doing either of those, it backfires on them and their desperation to control and get under your skin, which started out subtle, starts to come out into the open as they try harder. You can't fake this either; wanting to be upset with them and deciding not to act it out will not cut it. If you can do this, it will greatly enhance your effectiveness because you will avoid most of the traps that can rob you of it. Just don't fall into the trap of trying to do it for that reason because only a pure motive will give you what it takes to never get upset.
The 1976 movie Network has a great explanation of this fact. That movie is also a good way to introduce someone to these ideas who otherwise may not entertain them.
Well, I should have phrased that differently because you're right. You were not insulting and I should not have suggested that you were. I just appreciate a higher level, less mundane discussion of the forces involved and with this post you've provided that in abundance. Really, this is one of the finest replies I've received. Your kind of understanding is one of the most priceless things I know of, though it is also its own reward so this is not praise.
I have independently come to the same conclusions that you express here. There's not much I would say that your post did not cover, but I'll selectively comment on some of it.
I think if people started expecting something different, they just might get it. Their meek acceptance of the way things are done is part of the problem. Without different expectations, though, we are indeed beyond that point. I just don't think we're frog soup, yet.
To me, that just means that dissent requires some courage.
There certainly are a lot of people making dogmatic rants so that's easy to understand. I can add that few things would harm my well-being as efficiently as becoming close-minded and dogmatic. I suspect the journey you mention is one that you always have to make yourself. Even if we had an ideal educational system that taught people these things, I'm not so sure that the kind of objectivity required is something you could ever give to another person. We certainly have enough rote memorization of facts and lists of do's and don'ts; what we need more of is real understanding.
It does amuse me that Obama and many politicians before him have talked a good game about "change". The general population does not understand that presidents are not elected to change much of anything; they are elected to maintain the status quo. The only idea of change that the monied interests want is of the "becoming more so" variety.
I've thought of just giving the candidates all the public money they need, a very abundant supply, to run their campaigns. Then make it a severe criminal offense for a politician to ever accept money from anyone for any reason. Even if we gave them a nearly infinite amount of public money, this would still be quite a bit cheaper than what we're doing now.
A related note, though, on why debate is still important despite what you said. Suppose A and B are debating, and C agrees with B.
If A says something B disagrees with, B may feel too personally attacked to change, but C does not, and C may change his mind accordingly.
True. I had something a bit like that in mind when I said that an informed audience can help the situation (though I recognize this is for mostly the wrong reasons).
You highlighted what I identify as part of the problem. In your example, B should determine the need to change based on whether the new idea is worth adopting, not based on whether B feels pressure from A and C. What you describe there is a basic ego motive, a desire to save face. This has no place in the life of anyone who really wants to find truth. Its influence is always a counterproductive one.
That's what many people do, isn't it? They apply or expect various forms of pressure (the varieties of which are legion) because they don't seem to believe in the power of their own message. That's what I'd like to see more people overcome. They have to fix that on their own, of course; all I can do is show why it doesn't work.
It sure is difficult for some people to say "wow I completely misrepresented your position".
For this we have the Constitution. The idea here is that the government doesn't have any powers at all except for those given to it by the Constitution. The War on (some) Drugs and the War on Terror (war on this, war on that) have done tremendous damage to the principles of this document. Those are two material examples of what I consider to be part of the problem, but the problem is by no means limited to just those two.
We do (did you miss what I said of vigiliance above? because it kinda covered this ...). If we're not too busy with the celebrity-of-the-week or the third mall from the sun. If we have time. If we get around to it and happen to feel like it, if maybe nothing else is going on that day. And that's just the problem.
That fails as soon as bread-and-circus techniques, problem-reaction-solution (aka the "thesis antithesis synthesis" of Hegel), and government-operated education work in concert to produce a populace that doesn't get angry when they see abuses of power. Your idea there isn't working for the same reason that laissez-faire free-market theories don't work -- they assume that everyone involved will always act rationally.
Most people really don't seem to understand what's happening here and how simple it really is or how many examples of this process (of free nations becoming totalitarian states) history has already provided. It's not like we don't know what the early stages look like. What's going on right now with the War on Terror, warrantless wiretaps, the practice of detaining anyone indefinitely without bringing charges, the economic crisis, etc. is not random. This is not just "politics as usual"; it is going somewhere, these events are headed in a direction, and it's an incredibly ugly one.
Actually it's called a constitutional republic. Should I put that in all capital letters for you? Maybe you'd take me more seriously if everything I wrote were just dripping with angry why-don't-you-agree-with-me-yet-damn-you contempt? No? I agree, that would be rather silly. Or do you not think so?
It is an important difference though. The trend in politics now is to vote for whomever will give you the most of some form of handout or welfare or benefit. Social programs are one of the favorite methods of expanding government so this is generally encouraged and capitalized upon by those running for office. I can't remember the attribution of the quote but there is a saying that our system will fail as soon as the people realize that they can sell their vote. I believe this is part of what has happened to this country. Why do I mention this? Because the Founders did not trust democracy (I refer to what you might call "direct democracy" -- you would call it that to make up for using the word incorrectly when you refer to a republic as a "democracy") and they had some good reasons for that. This is speculation, but I suspect that the difference between a constitutional republic and a democracy could be why this type of failure didn't happen sooner.
It's the best patent system money can buy.
Sort of like our politicians. We have the best politicians that money can buy, too.
for all of your criticisms of government, having no government is even worse
your negative observations of government occur in a vacuum, free of any context. when examined in context, the context of realizing the good governments do and the context of realizing the much worse evils that occur without any government at all, means that your prosecution of the very idea of government itself is just a form of insanity on your part
Not once in anything I've written will you see me say that "having no government is ideal". I am not an anarchist. Putting words in my mouth won't change that; it will only reveal the weakness of your position. Be assured that I do not need to recruit your assistance in order to express my position. If what you offer were well-founded dissent, you would not need to resort to such a tactic. I know you probably aren't doing this on purpose but that doesn't change what happened here and that is what I must address.
Further, you are exhibiting the false dichotomy or the fallacy of the excluded middle by presenting this in terms of government vs. "having no government". What I advocate is limited government and in that fashion my beliefs are very much like those of the USA's Founding Fathers. Government is the only entity that is authorized to use force or the threat of force to achieve its goals. I believe that government is a necessary evil, that it is a dangerous thing capable of perpetrating some of the worst atrocities in human history when it fails. As such it needs to operate within clearly-defined limits and vigilence on the part of the citizenry is necessary to ensure that these limits are respected. When I look around, I don't see that sort of vigilence. What I see are a bunch of people who are going to be very surprised when they find themselves living in an openly fascist state even though the signs that we are headed in that direction have been evident for at least the last 50-75 years. "Frog soup" indeed.
I think it is my referring to government as a "necessary evil" that was a stumbling block for you. That was what made you feel like putting words in my mouth was in any way appropriate or useful. So, why do I call it a necessary evil? Because perfect people wouldn't need to be told what to do. Perfect people don't need a law to tell them not to harm or defraud others because perfect people inherently have no desire to do these things. We don't have perfect people, thus we have government to keep order and civility among imperfect people and to protect them from both each other and from outside threats. That does not mean that government is an inherently good or desirable thing, just that we don't currently have a better solution to these problems and are unlikely to come up with one in the foreseeable future. In that fashion, it's something we're "stuck with" and care must be taken to avoid its dangers.
Now that I've further explained my position and freed it from your assumptions, I'd be interested in some solid reasons explaining why you believe it's "just a form of insanity on my part". That's not really a challenge -- if you no longer feel that way, that would be welcome news, though I'd be naive to count on it.
No, I'm saying that those despotic regimes all have one thing in common: the people of the nation never seriously thought that it would happen to them. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a few of them saw it coming and were ridiculed by most others. There is one more thing that all despotic regimes have in common: the time to prepare for them and prevent them is much earlier than the time when it's obvious that something has gone terribly wrong.
That's not a valid comparison and I'll explain why. Automobile accidents are ... accidents. Sure, a tiny percentage of car crashes are malicious acts of injury or murder but we generally don't refer to those as accidents; we call them by names like "murder" or "vehicular manslaughter". By contrast, terrorism is most certainly a malicious and deliberate act and so is a fascist state. There is nothing accidental about either one of them. So we are comparing a like thing to a like thing and determing which set of malicious threats is more effective at causing human suffering. Excessive governmental power wins this contest without question. The current trend of fearing terrorism and expanding governmental power on the basis of that fear amounts to replacing a danger with an extreme danger. It doesn't make sense. Only a coward who buys into all of the fear-mongering would think that this is a good idea and only a coward would think that the near-certainty of regimented existence is better than the tiny risk of dying in a terrorist attack. There was a time when Americans were not such cowards and I think that most of us have forgotten that.
If it's kept within its proper role, yes government is "just a tool of the people." The totalitarian state (be it communist or fascist or otherwise) arises when it's no longer a tool of the people but begins to take on a life of its own. Then it demands that its goals are more important than those of the people and that people are therefore expendable tools to be used in furthering those goals. It's bass-ackwards because the tool becomes the master and that reversed order is exactly what this aberration is about.
If your aim is to effect change from within the system, then I think you know that you are rather unique in this regard. Honestly I don't believe that government schooling is going to change because of activist teachers who wish to see this happen. Modern government-run schools foresaw this possibility and so they stopped trusting you with the content of the curriculum a long time ago. They are replacing it with SOLs on the state level and No Child Left Behind on the national level because faceless centralization is what they want, not individual determination.
If that changes, I believe it will be because parents start taking responsibility for their children's education instead of leaving this job to the government. I really don't care whether a parent feels guilty from that statement and wants to subject me to the depth of their denial that abandoning their responsibility to someone else is in fact what they are doing. Whether real change means homeschooling or private schools or some as-yet uninvented method is not material to the point I am making. The idea is that the current system only works because people decide to participate in it instead of doing whatever they have to do to use available alternatives. I believe parents will make these changes once they realize that government as it is currently implemented does not represent their interests (knowing on which side their bread is buttered is not the same thing) and is indifferent to the social costs of the current system. To get a better idea of how I feel about this issue, as well as an enlightening read concerning how the current system came about, I humbly recommend that you take the time to read The Underground History of American Education by Gatto.
Certainly. For strangers, friends, or whomever, I am not what is called a respecter of persons, that is, I do not generally play favorites unless it's strictly a matter of taste; therefore, my requirements are the same for everyone. All they have to do is demonstrate that they correctly understood what I said and show me why it is wrong or doesn't add up or doesn't work, without using any logical fallacies or contradicting themselves.
Putting words in my mouth, using straw-man tactics, or pretending that you know my intended meaning better than I do is an automatic disqual