In the home invasion scenario, how would police (who arrive after the incident) know the difference between a burglar shot dead after he broke into the house, and a murdered innocent (invited into the house) where the home owner manufactured evidence of a break-in?
Personally I deal with that by not hanging out with shady people who have homocidal tendencies. I'm also going to guess that the forensics labs are a lot more clever than the average homeowner and can identify manufactured evidence effectively enough that it's still an incredibly risky thing to try. That and.. believe it or not, most homeowners with regular jobs who are not career criminals have no desire to murder the innocent, nor to put their families through all of the trauma caused by doing it where they live.
If you really think you have a point here, reserach states like Texas which have Castle Doctrine. See if they have rates of in-home shootings far higher than states which throw homeowners in prison for not trying hard enough to turn tail when an armed assailant threatens their families.
If you make arms available on both sides, the pirates could just show up on a better armed/armored/powered cargo vessel and go about their business.
Things like capable vessels and military hardware cost money. That would certainly destroy the currently accepted theory that the Somalis are resorting to piracy because they are destitute and desperate. If that theory is found invalid, it would be grounds for using more of a military solution against a hostile nation that targets our vessels. I'm guessing that their improved cargo vessels wouldn't stand a chance against the U.S. Navy. Think about it: it's in the pirates' interests not to escalate this conflict.
If the navy shows up, both involved ships point their finger at the other one... The navy is forced to board both vessels, arrest everyone and go through all the paperwork (verifying it with the port of origin) to see where the cargo is actually supposed to be.
Do you seriously think a USA ship in waters near Somalia has travelled all that distance in order to pirate a few ragtag Somalian skiffs? Do you know anything about Somalia? I doubt they'd find enough plunder to even recover the cost of going back home. You talk like this is a law-enforcement issue where we have no clue which side is likely to be the perpetrator. That just isn't the case.
That's assuming the two ships don't just sink each other.
To a pirate, it doesn't serve any purpose to risk sinking a ship before it can be plundered. It would mean they risked their lives in a firefight for absolutely nothing. Again I believe you haven't thought this through.
Arming the ships is inherently a bad idea. The main reason why these hijackings haven't turned deadly is that neither side really wants to start killing people. I realize that there's a large number of rather stubborn people that think that arming everybody is the solution, but it's not.
So I am "stubborn" when I believe people should have the ability to defend themselves against an unprovoked violent aggressor? Please elaborate. Tell me how else you deal with someone who, by initiating violence, has already demonstrated that they cannot be reasoned with. Do you intend to send them a strongly-worded letter?
You cite these facts, but it's pretty clear that you've got no clue what's going on beyond what some NRA lacky told you about it.
WIth that line you suggest that I am unable to think for myself and need an organization to tell me how I should feel about a subject. How nice. I get the idea you'd be disappointed to learn that I am a free-thinking individual who is unaffiliated with the NRA. My suspicion is that you'd be disappointed because that's a much tougher target for rhetoric than a list of talking points.
Speaking of facts, what I don't see you doing is telling me why my facts are mistaken. I don't suppose you're about to do that, are you? That should be easy since I've "got no clue what's going on" to borrow your words. Except it's not really so easy, is it, or you would have done it already.
The reality tends to be that without a lot of training the weapons end up causing far more trouble than they're worth.
There are literally millions of people who have had some kind of military, police, or private security training in the USA alone. Especially if you are talking about military experience, they have already faced far worse than a few rag-tag pirates with shoulder-mounted weapons and small arms. People with this kind of experience are not hard to find. Make the price right and they'll be quite easy to find.
I agree with you that the untrained should generally not be handling weaponry, except maybe as a last resort. Because you argue from emotion, you think that's a reason for no one on any of the ships to have weaponry. Because I argue from reason, I think that means we should recruit people who have the necessary training. See the difference?
Even with training it's common for soldiers to intentionally miss the people they're supposed to be killing during their early engagements.
We seem to have no problems killing many more Iraqis and Afghans than either have killed of ours. This is a non-issue.
For pirates, I say fire a couple of warning shots at them. Give them an opportunity to reconsider their attack. If they keep coming, give other would-be pirates something to think about. That would be more than fair.
"The religion says that conceal-carry would lead to the Wild West all over again, with gunfights in the streets everywhere. "
The "Wild West" beloved of writers wasn't constantly violent. People were busy working to survive and make money, not engaged in a perpetual Hollywood gunfight.
Well no. It was a heavily armed society and therefore it tended to be a polite society. Most people didn't want to end up in a duel, so most people minded their own business and didn't flagrantly disrespect others for no reason. Those who were belligerent assholes tended to eventually pick the wrong person to screw with, and so long as it was a fair fight, the law left that person alone. That is, in most places two men could fight a duel without the survivor being immediately arrested and imprisoned. If you didn't like that possibility then you didn't own/carry a gun, for it was dishonorable and illegal in the extreme to shoot an unarmed man.
Overall I'd say most people were kinder and more decent than they are now. What you didn't have back then were so many bleeding-heart types who think that all violence is always wrong even when it's against a bully or other aggressor. I don't think that's a coincidence.
In summary, you're nitpicking one metaphor I used while deciding not to respond to my overall point. We can talk about the good old days some more, or you could further tempt me to follow every single metaphor with a line saying "the previous sentence was just a saying, an expression, meant to illustrate a point and not intended as literal historical commentary about the Wild West or other object of metaphor, get over it". I find both to be unnecessary. That latter option definitely should be unnecessary.
While your point is a valid concern, I have no reservation about killing a group of armed men looking to take over a ship by force, and who will gladly kill you in order to get money. I don't like the idea of killing someone, but by the same token, if someone breaks into my house and is holding a weapon, I will shoot to kill.
No, this is what is called "defending yourself" and I would wholeheartedly support. Is there a non-pirate scenario whereby a small, fast boat would approach a cargo vessel, with a bunch of armed men, without radio contact? Didn't think so. Shoot first.
The idea of being able to effectively defend oneself against a violent, unprovoked aggressor really seems to bother the hell out of a lot of people. I can't be the only one to notice that. All kinds of people will come out of the woodwork with arguments amounting to "you should have sympathy for the devil" and/or "criminals somehow don't choose to disregard their own safety when they violently attack others". Both are bullshit.
If you're so worried about your own safety then don't become a criminal who violently attacks others. If you become a criminal who violently attacks others, understand that you have voluntarily chosen a dangerous lifestyle and will have to accept the consequences.
That's particularly true for the home-invasion scenario you bring up. I want breaking into the homes of strangers while they are at home to be as risky (to the perpetrator) as possible. The world is a better place that way. Why would you want to make that easier to do, or safer to do in the form of laws stating that a homeowner would ever face any kind of civil/criminal liability for anything that happens to those who do this? Anyone else notice that if you oppose things like warrantless wiretapping, then "you want the terrorists to win" but if you support bad laws no one accuses you of "wanting the home-invading criminals who threaten your family to win"?
Anyone see how one-sided that is, or how clear the message is? State power good; personal initiative and independence bad; know your role; submit. It extends to the point that they don't even want ships to be able to defend themselves but wouldn't dream of opposing the efforts of the Navy to rescue the hostages of said pirates.
I know it sounds crazy, but some people have moral hangups about killing people unnecessarily.
If by "unnecessarily" you mean "when they decide to become a violent, unprovoked aggressor" then sure.
Arming the target ships is the best way to deal with this problem. It's also the one we consistently refuse to try. This is as simple as it gets: 1) pirates leave the mainland and they don't come back 2) other would-be pirates decide that robbery isn't the best way to improve their situation 3) piracy declines.
Many people fail to understand that for the same reason they fail to understand that states which enact conceal-carry laws experience lower rates of violent crime. That is, it goes against their religion because certainly no contact with the facts would cause one to miss the point. The point is: criminals love helpless targets who can't effectively fight back. Criminals really hate facing targets that are as well armed as they are, or better armed, because at this point their instinct for self-preservation kicks in.
The religion says that conceal-carry would lead to the Wild West all over again, with gunfights in the streets everywhere. The facts say that conceal-carry leads to more timid, less aggressive criminals who'd rather not end up in a gunfight, have no idea which person is armed, and cannot effectively choose vulnerable targets. The religion says that arming targeted ships would result in many more armed conflicts at sea. I believe the facts will be the same as they've proven to be for conceal-carry, only more so, since we can arm every ship that goes through dangerous areas and not just a fraction of them.
Whether it's on foot in the streets or on ships in the sea, the basic predator-prey nature of violent criminals and their victims remains unchanged.
It doesn't bode well for us as a society that we have such a large population of adults who are in strong denial of anything they perceive as an ugly reality. Rather than work to change an ugly reality, they pretend that the facts are just someone's perspective, like an opinion. It's... disturbing when you really think about it.
An interesting thing I read a while ago suggested that some of the supposed symptoms of "hauntings" are actually mundane, infrasonic phenomena. To wit, if a location has a source of sound waves not far below the boundary of audible frequency (machinery, pipes, ducts or even just free flowing air through the right structure) people and animals will react to the noise with alarm, even though we can't hear it. This has been suggested as one possible mechanism whereby certain animal species react in advance to seismic phenomena. It's possible a person could enter a room with a sustained infrasonic hum and attribute their instinctive sense of alarm to a malevolent presence.
I consider that to be reasonable in a way that "they're all loonies so I won't even try to investigate anything" isn't.
Can you give an example of a chemical anomaly? Not trolling, just interested.
Say you reacted pure sodium and pure chlorine and somehow obtained elemental gold instead of good old table salt. That would be an anomaly, in the sense that it is a radical departure from what theory would predict.
The absence of such anomalies tells me that we have a rather firm handle on what to expect from chemical reactions.
How could I possibly "prove" that 'ghosts' don't exist to you, give me some scientific way to "prove" that 'ghosts' don't exist, and I will do my best.
It is nearly impossible for me to disprove make believe notions that exist only in the confines of your skull. If you thought that invisible undetectable purple elephants dance on every strand of hair on your head, this would also be very hard for me to disprove.
The weight of proof should rest on those making extraordinary claims, claiming there are invisible non-corporal humans running around is an extraordinary claim.
I never once said that anyone should prove a negative. Therefore, a better "how" question would be: how could you so thoroughly misunderstand my post?
I fully agree that the person claiming ghosts are a real phenomena is the person who need to provide evidence. The post to which you replied was an explanation of why I would be willing to examine such evidence.
When I explain why I would be willing to consider serious evidence, I am at a loss to explain how you could interpret that as a denial that claims need to be backed by evidence. Really, I have no idea how you'd get that from my post.
Maybe you just wanted to point out the obvious no matter what my post acually said, no matter how throroughly it acknowledged the obviousness of... well, the obvious. I really don't know what purpose you had there.
This has to be the most calm and rational response I've had yet in this entire thread. That's most refreshing.
Being willing to consider evidence which doesn't fit your world view is good.
Putting unusual effort and resource into investigating something that you have very good reason to suspect is complete nonsense, is not good.
I think *something* is going on that we don't yet know about. If there were only the occasional nutty person who claimed to see strange things, I'd say he/she is probably just a lunatic. The problem is when there are so many tens of thousands of reports. The problem is compounded when many of them come from respectable people who tend to be credible in other matters, show no signs of mental instability, and generally gain nothing but ridicule and ostracism from reporting such things.
So what am I to believe? Are they all liars? Do that many people enjoy getting scorned, ridiculed, or thought of as crazy by their neighbors because of some strange form of masochism? Do that many people have such a specific type of hallucination, and particularly when multiple people witness the same thing, are they somehow having a shared hallucination? I find the above to be improbable. I find it more probable to believe that humanity hasn't yet learned about and figured out every possible thing under the sun, that there is still a great deal we don't know about the universe, that sometimes people encounter unknown phenomena. It could very well turn out to be not a physical phenomena, but rather an artifact of human consciousness -- either possibility could expand our knowledge of ourselves and our world.
In a perfect world, a skeptic would be free to test absolutely everything, from the existence of ghosts, to periodically making sure that newtonian mechanics and basic chemistry still remain valid, and that science hasn't all changed over night. Out here in the real world, we have to prioritise our time onto things that have a better chance of being valid.
Agreed, except that if one person wants to conduct an experiment like this, without taking away grant money and personnel that could be used for projects more likely to bear fruit, using his own time and his own money, I see no harm in it. I don't think he "has to" do anything just because someone else thinks he is wasting his time; I regard it as his time to use as he pleases. He seems to accept the necessity of producing actual evidence prior to drawing any conclusions and that's about all I would ask.
And if everything I've said in the above applied to chemical anomalies then yes, I could understand why the occasional person might want to look into the matter. The fact is that I don't hear all the time about relatively credible people reporting chemical anomalies, or about chemical reactions yielding products wildly different from what theory predicts, so I don't consider it to be on the same footing.
Do you investigate the flat Earth theory? Do you investigate the geocentric theory? Do you investigate spontaneous generation? Do you investigate alchemy? ARROGANCE!
Ah, another person tries for the low-hanging fruit. Perhaps my response will demonstrate why this is what you are doing.
First I'll say that the word "ghost" isn't a terribly great word. It implies that any strange phenomena are caused by dead people who still retain some kind of non-corporeal existence. The actual cause of such phenomena could very well be some not-yet-discovered natural force that has nothing to do with people at all, living or dead. What I personally believe is that strange things do happen that we do not (yet) know how to explain and as such, we have no idea what might be causing them. Using loaded words like "ghost" is therefore inappropriate, not to mention it's fodder for belligerent narrow-minded people who just want to demagogue something instead of contributing anything useful because they knee-jerk upon hearing a loaded word.
Moving along... Do I personally investigate those things you mentioned? No. The first three have been thoroughly falsified. Regarding alchemy, if you conducted a scientifically-sound experiment that claims to have produced conclusive evidence, I'd be willing to entertain that evidence so long as it's understood that the burden of proof is entirely on you and your methodology needs to be both sound and available for examination. If you can meet those conditions then I say go for it.
This is the part you seem to have a hard time with. I have seen abundant evidence that the Earth is spherical. That's why I see no point in investigating a flat-Earth theory. It is falsified by the knowledge that the Earth is spherical combined with the knowledge that spheres are not flat. I have seen no compelling reason to believe that "ghosts" (to use the colloquial, loaded word) have been falsified. Therefore I consider it an open question and I am willing to entertain scientific evidence of such.
Your mistake is that you think the two ideas are on equal ground. You cannot recognize and appreciate the difference between a thoroughly falsified notion and the truly unknown. That's why what you call "skepticism" is just narrow-minded arrogance, not unlike religious zealotry. It makes a mockery of the healthy kind of skepticism that says "show me the evidence".
You can cower behind that narrow-mindedness if it helps you protect your worldview from the terrible (to you) risk of being altered to accept new possibilities if that pleases you. Just understand that others like me are perfectly comfortable saying "I really, truly don't know, therefore it doesn't make sense to form a passionate belief about this subject."
It seems like a mistake to go to some place and look for the absence of an anomaly. The burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim. You will never prove that ghosts don't exists in a house. Maybe they will be there tomorrow when you aren't around. Maybe you don't have the proper equipment to detect one.
Perhaps not, but if you really do detect anomalous activity that you are unable to explain, it would help falsify the notion that we are able to explain every possible activity that can take place in an empty house. Of course that wouldn't prove that there are ghosts, that people survive death in some kind of non-corporeal form, or anything like that. However, it would lend credibility to the notion that there may exist forces that science has not yet understood, that there are phenomena we may be no more aware of than people who lived a thousand years ago were aware of radio waves. As you say, finding nothing unusual wouldn't make it any easier to prove a negative, but if something were found that cannot easily be explained by known phenomena, that would be interesting.
I can see how some people would consider it worthwhile to conduct these experiments. Honestly, I would be a bit disappointed if it turned out that we already know about every possible physical force and/or physical process that could exist in the universe. As long as such experiments are scientifically sound, I see nothing wrong with them.
I forgot that these days, skeptic means "don't ever investigate anything and for bonus points, display contempt for those who do".
The summary is a good example of what real, healthy skepticism is. It boils down to "I don't think I will find anything, but I don't actually know that until I look, so here is the experiment I want to conduct." Is it the lack of presumption and arrogance that offends you? Does the presence of open-minded people willing to look for evidence, even of things they don't actually believe in, make you feel uncomfortable with your narrow-minded worldview? I'm guessing that's where the contempt comes from.
That's true for someone who wants a serious relationship or a sexual relationship and will accept nothing else. It leaves little or no room though for deep, satisfying, rewarding friendships that you might have with someone who isn't attractive to you but has a big heart, a strong spirit, or a perspective on life that you truly appreciate.
Well, there's certainly room for sites to make new friends---maybe even for the same site to provide for that functionality and date searching---but at that point, you're clearly looking for a rather different function than a dating site was intended to provide.
I admit that this is true, but is it ultimately a good thing? It would be "a godsend" in the short term. In the long term, wouldn't it also provide a means to run away from confronting one's own fears, overcoming them through persistent effort, and becoming a stronger person? Don't we do enough of that already?
You're confronting those fears asking someone out no matter what. The point was that some people have a tendency to recede into themselves, and if they get turned down too many times, they don't ever really recover. This could allow those sorts of people to get back on the horse again, knowing that although there's a risk, at least the decked isn't stacked 10:1 against them.
The problem is that the patents on these systems make it less likely and more expensive for a single comprehensive service to offer both. It is one potential example of how the patent system actually retards progress.
Patents retard progress inherently. There is no such thing as a good software patent, and this one is no exception. It likely means that the sorts of dating sites I want to see won't happen until I'm too old to care about them. The very definition of hell is corporate ownership of ideas.
That's true for someone who wants a serious relationship or a sexual relationship and will accept nothing else. It leaves little or no room though for deep, satisfying, rewarding friendships that you might have with someone who isn't attractive to you but has a big heart, a strong spirit, or a perspective on life that you truly appreciate.
Well, there's certainly room for sites to make new friends---maybe even for the same site to provide for that functionality and date searching---but at that point, you're clearly looking for a rather different function than a dating site was intended to provide.
I admit that this is true, but is it ultimately a good thing? It would be "a godsend" in the short term. In the long term, wouldn't it also provide a means to run away from confronting one's own fears, overcoming them through persistent effort, and becoming a stronger person? Don't we do enough of that already?
You're confronting those fears asking someone out no matter what. The point was that some people have a tendency to recede into themselves, and if they get turned down too many times, they don't ever really recover. This could allow those sorts of people to get back on the horse again, knowing that although there's a risk, at least the decked isn't stacked 10:1 against them.
The problem is that the patents on these systems make it less likely and more expensive for a single comprehensive service to offer both. It is one potential example of how the patent system actually retards progress.
Patents retard progress inherently. There is no such thing as a good software patent, and this one is no exception. It likely means that the sorts of dating sites I want to see won't happen until I'm too old to care about them. The very definition of hell is corporate ownership of ideas.
I'll note upfront that I, for one, am completely against software patents for any reason. I believe the downsides greatly outweigh a
What's gong on at the Patent Office? I'm starting to think they all need to be drug tested.
They can't do it because a method for selecting patent office workers based on analysis of drug use has already been patented.
That reminds me of a really good quote:
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for
drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
"Hardly useful" because it discounts those individuals who really do strive to become something more than stupid, ignorant, greedy, and power-hungry. They really do exist. They just don't achieve dominance (power) or prominance (influence) because they'd rather live and let live, so there are few you've actually heard of unless you are privileged to know them personally.
Your algorithm there is a nice treatise on cynacism. Damn I used to be quite the cynic myself. Then I realized that if I don't like the way things tend to be, I need to represent personally the change I want to see (and should I fail, I need to learn why I failed and make progress towards correcting that). There's no other way, really.
Five years ago or so it wasn't so bad, but lately Slashdot is beginning to decay in terms of skill at handling argumentation. There's too many posts like that other one to which I responded. I find myself spending too much time responding not to a clever objection that makes me reconsider my position and think differently about the subject, nor to a helpful individual who shows me why I was wrong and corrects my errors, but instead to things like basic failures of reading comprehension or trivial logical fallacies or an inability to realize that if I stop short of making a claim, it's because I intended to not make that claim.
It represents a drastic reduction of the quality of discussion on this site. With no ego I say I am definitely schooling a few who really had it coming, yet I regret that this mostly concerns basic things for which they should not need my help or anyone else's. In other words I don't believe I am so clever. I just believe I am often confronted with individuals who so desperately need to feel like they told someone a thing or two that they won't let things like facts, easily inferred information, or basic inductive logic to get in their way. I'm setting that straight as best as I can, with what great or small skill I may possess, but it doesn't look good. Most of them are not so interested in helping me learn new information or to realize that I made a mistake; instead they want to feel better than someone and in my case, they chose someone who can see right through that.
Anyway, if you read through all of that, thanks for your support. It's encouraging that some folks can see what I am trying to cultivate. I am open to any honest criticism you may have and will gladly entertain it.
Not at all. Let's face it, looks might not be everything, but they are important. It's only shallow if that's your only criterion.
What looks mean to you can also be non-shallow. I'm likely to catch some flak for this but I'll give an example: obesity. That's a matter of looks, but it's also a matter of how the person got to be that way. It says something about their ability or willingness to take good care of themselves. If they do not wish to be obese but have failed to effectively do something about it, it says something about their level of discipline and commitment to goals that are important to them. If they do not accept personal responsibility for their own health, and instead have a million excuses for why their obesity is somehow not their fault, it tells you that they have a victim mentality and are unlikely to be honest about their own shortcomings within the framework of a relationship. That honesty about each other's shortcomings is the first necessary step towards accepting them and growing past them.
Anyone angry or upset by the above paragraph is failing to understand one thing: you can be objectively honest about such matters, ugly though they may be, while also having compassion for the person who struggles with them. Just because someone doesn't meet your criteria for what you want in a mate, just because there are good reasons for that, doesn't make them any less human or any less worthy of kindness and respect. The level of childishness that has infiltrated this site is the only reason I feel a need to explain that, as many of you are trigger-happy when it comes to "ZOMG, he said something that might be negative, hurry, demonize him and deny any point he made!" It's the very opposite of benevolent benefit of doubt when multiple interpretations are possible, in other words.
If a dating site has a prefilter that somehow magically figures out what you find physically attractive and only shows you those matches, that's tens of thousands of profiles you wouldn't have considered anyway that you no longer have to look through.
That's true for someone who wants a serious relationship or a sexual relationship and will accept nothing else. It leaves little or no room though for deep, satisfying, rewarding friendships that you might have with someone who isn't attractive to you but has a big heart, a strong spirit, or a perspective on life that you truly appreciate.
Also, it could be set up in such a way that you only see each other if you both are likely to find the other attractive. That would be a huge win because it would save an awful lot of awkwardness when one person likes the other but not vice-versa. For people who are intimidated by such social interaction, that would be a godsend.
I admit that this is true, but is it ultimately a good thing? It would be "a godsend" in the short term. In the long term, wouldn't it also provide a means to run away from confronting one's own fears, overcoming them through persistent effort, and becoming a stronger person? Don't we do enough of that already?
Combine that with something like eHarmony's matching scheme, and you could rapidly narrow down the choices to the dozen or so people that might actually work out, instead of having to manually weed out the million that wouldn't.
The problem is that the patents on these systems make it less likely and more expensive for a single comprehensive service to offer both. It is one potential example of how the patent system actually retards progress.
What's gong on at the Patent Office? I'm starting to think they all need to be drug tested.
They can't do it because a method for selecting patent office workers based on analysis of drug use has already been patented.
That reminds me of a really good quote:
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for
drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
I'd say those four things provide a coherent explanation of the current patent system.
You can't look at data, notice something, make a hypothesis, and then run a hypothesis on that data.
Unless you're an astronomer or an astrophysicist. Then a new finding can falsify your theory by producing results completely different from what it predicted, and that's okay! You just retrofit your theory to match the new data and you never question its fundamental premises. C.F. inflationary theory and how it came about.
Apparently this discipline really hates Karl Popper but doesn't want to explain why they disagree with him.
The pharmaceutical industry is easily one of the most corrupt industries known to man. Perhaps some defense contractors are worse, but if so, then just barely. It's got just the right combination of billions of dollars at play, strong dependency on the part of many of its customers, a basis on intellectual property, financial leverage over most of the rest of the medical industry, and a strong disincentive against actually ever curing anything since it cannot make a profit from healthy people.
But it also takes a regulator more interesting in politics and appearances that fact to complete the arena. How many useful drugs used for decades all around the world are still banned in the US? And how many drugs were approved because they seemed harmless enough, not because a significant positive effect has been demonstrated? And how many drugs are still approved, even if independent studies have found no beneficial effects whatsoever?
The pharmaceutical industry has one goal, and one goal only: playing the regulator to their advantage. They are good at this game, and the regulator is not.
They also have so much money and so much clout in Washington that it would be (nearly) politically impossible to get a shrewd regulator who refused to put up with that status quo.
Let's see now... zero-point energy, ESP... you've quite the talent there for arguing with me against two things I never once mentioned. That makes me the "twit", right. That's quite the victory you made there. Do you feel better now?
Perhaps when you live in your own little bubble out of touch with objective reality, maybe then you can put words in someone else's mouth, respond to things they never claimed, and then pat yourself on the back for how clever you are when this oddly results in you being "right". To me, that feels too much like lying, cheating, or just plain ol' making shit up. When it pretends to be debate, t's the refuge of the dishonest or the desperate. So, it doesn't appeal to me and I feel no temptation to do it. If I ever felt the urge to do that, it would get my attention like a bucket of ice water to the face and make me say "damn, why the hell is my position so weak that I would ever get that desperate to win?" and I'd fix that without making it someone else's problem. In other words, the thing you've failed to do here.
Anyway, I'll further explain what you could have grasped on your own were you not blinded by the need to make a contest of it. Those familiar with the history of science would know that at one time, heliocentrism was a "fringe" theory. So was special relativity. Does this mean we should stop finding good ways to test our theories to make sure they hold water? No, of course not, and only a moron would respond to the history of science that way. What it does mean is maybe we (collectively) shouldn't be so quick to jump on our high horses and declare something to be absurd without first putting it to the test merely because it is not mainstream and does not have a consensus behind it. To put that even more simply, objectivity isn't a popularity contest.
The pharmaceutical industry is easily one of the most corrupt industries known to man.
Well, thank goodness that those thieving bastards discovered a drug that controls the seizures that 70 years ago would have seen me shunted to a sanitarium.
As it is, for US$100/month, I've got a well-paying job, wife, 2 kids and an "above water" mortgage.
You cannot have a viable industry at all if you never produce a useful product that people need or want. If they never produced useful drugs/treatments then there wouldn't be a pharmaceutical industry for us to talk about.
So, having met the bare-minimum requirement for having a viable industry at all, it is then possible to consider whether or not this industry is corrupt and whether it is more or less corrupt than other industries.
For example, I also mentioned defense contractors. I assume the firearms they produce will indeed shoot bullets and the bombs they produce will explode and the fighter jets they produce will fly. None of that is relevant to a discussion about the corruption in that industry. Such a discussion could start with considerations like how those contracts are awarded for those working munitions.
I'm not sure why so many Slashdotters think that you cannot criticize a thing without totally demonizing it and denying any and all use it may have. It's classic either-or, black-and-white thinking that implies something is either perfect and utterly flawless or absolutely no good at all. In short, you responded to a claim I never made: that no one ever benefits from any drug produced by this industry. This is not useful and fails to recognize that there are deliberate reasons I never made that claim.
poor use of statistics in science. What was really the point of implying that truth can change?
There is also an implication that some "sciences" are in fact nothing more than pseudosciences, i.e. little removed from voodoo.
Hey, I'll have you know... I've been wearing my Martian repellant charm for years now and I've never once seen a Martian.
Maybe it's just the the truths being presented in the article are the sort of 'truths' that are hard to measure 100% objectively. Whenever results have a human element there's always the possibility of experimental bias.
Triply so when the phrase "one of the fastest-growing and most profitable pharmaceutical classes" appears in the business plan.
The pharmaceutical industry is easily one of the most corrupt industries known to man. Perhaps some defense contractors are worse, but if so, then just barely. It's got just the right combination of billions of dollars at play, strong dependency on the part of many of its customers, a basis on intellectual property, financial leverage over most of the rest of the medical industry, and a strong disincentive against actually ever curing anything since it cannot make a profit from healthy people. Many of the tests and trials for new drugs are also funded by the very same companies trying to market those drugs.
Fortunately for science, the *real* truth usually rears it's [sic] head in the end.
Sure, after the person suggesting that all is not as it appears to be is laughed at, ridiculed, cursed, given the old standby of "I doubt you know more than the other thousands of real scientists, mmmkay?" for daring to question the holy sacred authority of the Scientific Establishment and daring to suggest that it could ever steer us wrong or that this, too is unworthy of 100% blind faith or that it may have the same problems that plague other large institutions. The rest of us who have been willing to entertain less mainstream, more "fringe" theories that are easy to demagogue by people who have never investigated them already knew that the whole endeavor is pretty good but not nearly as good as it is made out to be by people who really want to believe in it.
its not going to be enough residual alcohol to impress a reading.
and if you didnt drink at all, *buzzed driving is drunk driving* then your CLEAN breath + the last guys millidrop of alcohol will not register 0.08 so what do you care? and yes, i support the crap out of safe flying associated x-rays. if x-raying some guy to check him for explosives guarantees me a safe flight, i say ZAP AWAY!
Do you find it odd that Israel and other places that have far bigger terrorism problems than the USA has ever experienced don't use such scanners and consider them to be not worthwhile? Or did you even know that?
The difference is that in the USA, the screeners are looking for weapons. In Israel, the screeners are looking for terrorists. They collect intelligence on the people who purchase tickets. They ask questions. If necessary they interrogate and perform psychological evaluations. They know who you are, where you're going, whether you plan to return, and maybe also why you're going there. They look for inconsistent or conflicting stories. What they do is more like old-fashioned police work. Israel has many enemies and those enemies tend to use terrorism tactics rather than conventional warfare.
The last hijacking that happened anywhere in Israel was on July 23, 1969. The Ben Gurion Airport just outside Tel Aviv has never had a single hijacking. I'm thinking we should listen to the Israelis on this matter.
if x-raying some guy to check him for explosives guarantees me a safe flight, i say ZAP AWAY!
And if intrusive groping of 80-year-old grandmas and terrified, screaming three-year-old girls becomes government-sponsored, I say the terrorists have been handed more of a victory than they ever could have hoped for.
"What's next?" is not an argument. If we require drivers licenses, what's next -- permits to walk on the sidewalk? No.
When there is a continuum and this represents a movement towards one extreme end of that continuum, it is reasonable to ask what is next. American history is all about the gradual expansion of government intrusion and the gradual erosion of what were once sacrosanct civil rights. No official ultimate goal has been set, as in "once we reach this point we'll back off" so those of us who don't want to live in a police state quite legitimately wonder when the "for your safety" justifications will end.
You're obviously against these DUI checks. Go ahead and make a coherent case for point of view.
Assuming you're willing to entertain such a case and accept it as valid so long as the reasoning is sound, even if you disagree with it (and around here that's a gigantic "if"), then sure. I'll explain this as well as I can.
The text of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
That's the text. Now for how the courts have generally interpreted it. American jurisprudence has long held that even for things like traffic stops on public roads, this means that an officer must have either a warrant or probable cause. That is reasonable, and takes into consideration that there are very, very good reasons why we don't just blindly trust cops to not abuse their power. The idea is, they don't go on fishing expeditions and they don't hassle citizens without a good, justifiable reason.
Now then: the fact that you happen to be driving down a particular street is emphatically NOT probable cause to believe that you have committed any crime. So the cops don't have probable cause, and they don't have a warrant either. Do you see the problem?
If someone is driving poorly, weaving in and out of lanes, or otherwise their actual road performance demonstrates that they might be intoxicated, not only do I think it's reasonable for the police to pull that person over, I would consider them negligent if they were aware of it and didn't take action. Driving like you might be intoxicated is probable cause to believe that you are intoxicated and that's simple enough.
What's happening here with DUI laws is the same thing that's happening on several other fronts, including terrorism or "protecting the children" et al. An emotional, usually fear-based appeal is made to excuse the suspension of Constitutionally-guaranteed civil liberties. In my opinion, the politicians pushing for it are driven by a desire for more power and the citizens accepting it and making excuses for it are driven by plain old cowardice. There was a case like this involving roadblocks that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and I wish I could remember the name/date of that case. The ruling basically stated "yeah, this is almost definitely unconstitutional, but we'll accept it anyway because [at that time] there are 25,000 alcohol-related road fatalities each year."
Honestly, I don't care if there are 800,000 alcohol-related road fatalities each year. That would be incredibly unfortunate but freedom is worth that and then some, even if I end up among those 800,000. I'd rather retain the freedoms that many great men have fought and died for. The cowards who will surrender liberty for promises of safety are not worthy to lick the boots of those who understood the value of freedom. I am willing to take my chances with a few more drunks on the road. I consider that far less of a threat than the unchecked police power of the state, and history backs me up on this one without question.
That's my coherent case. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally I deal with that by not hanging out with shady people who have homocidal tendencies. I'm also going to guess that the forensics labs are a lot more clever than the average homeowner and can identify manufactured evidence effectively enough that it's still an incredibly risky thing to try. That and .. believe it or not, most homeowners with regular jobs who are not career criminals have no desire to murder the innocent, nor to put their families through all of the trauma caused by doing it where they live.
If you really think you have a point here, reserach states like Texas which have Castle Doctrine. See if they have rates of in-home shootings far higher than states which throw homeowners in prison for not trying hard enough to turn tail when an armed assailant threatens their families.
Things like capable vessels and military hardware cost money. That would certainly destroy the currently accepted theory that the Somalis are resorting to piracy because they are destitute and desperate. If that theory is found invalid, it would be grounds for using more of a military solution against a hostile nation that targets our vessels. I'm guessing that their improved cargo vessels wouldn't stand a chance against the U.S. Navy. Think about it: it's in the pirates' interests not to escalate this conflict.
Do you seriously think a USA ship in waters near Somalia has travelled all that distance in order to pirate a few ragtag Somalian skiffs? Do you know anything about Somalia? I doubt they'd find enough plunder to even recover the cost of going back home. You talk like this is a law-enforcement issue where we have no clue which side is likely to be the perpetrator. That just isn't the case.
To a pirate, it doesn't serve any purpose to risk sinking a ship before it can be plundered. It would mean they risked their lives in a firefight for absolutely nothing. Again I believe you haven't thought this through.
So I am "stubborn" when I believe people should have the ability to defend themselves against an unprovoked violent aggressor? Please elaborate. Tell me how else you deal with someone who, by initiating violence, has already demonstrated that they cannot be reasoned with. Do you intend to send them a strongly-worded letter?
WIth that line you suggest that I am unable to think for myself and need an organization to tell me how I should feel about a subject. How nice. I get the idea you'd be disappointed to learn that I am a free-thinking individual who is unaffiliated with the NRA. My suspicion is that you'd be disappointed because that's a much tougher target for rhetoric than a list of talking points.
Speaking of facts, what I don't see you doing is telling me why my facts are mistaken. I don't suppose you're about to do that, are you? That should be easy since I've "got no clue what's going on" to borrow your words. Except it's not really so easy, is it, or you would have done it already.
There are literally millions of people who have had some kind of military, police, or private security training in the USA alone. Especially if you are talking about military experience, they have already faced far worse than a few rag-tag pirates with shoulder-mounted weapons and small arms. People with this kind of experience are not hard to find. Make the price right and they'll be quite easy to find.
I agree with you that the untrained should generally not be handling weaponry, except maybe as a last resort. Because you argue from emotion, you think that's a reason for no one on any of the ships to have weaponry. Because I argue from reason, I think that means we should recruit people who have the necessary training. See the difference?
We seem to have no problems killing many more Iraqis and Afghans than either have killed of ours. This is a non-issue.
For pirates, I say fire a couple of warning shots at them. Give them an opportunity to reconsider their attack. If they keep coming, give other would-be pirates something to think about. That would be more than fair.
"The religion says that conceal-carry would lead to the Wild West all over again, with gunfights in the streets everywhere. "
The "Wild West" beloved of writers wasn't constantly violent. People were busy working to survive and make money, not engaged in a perpetual Hollywood gunfight.
Well no. It was a heavily armed society and therefore it tended to be a polite society. Most people didn't want to end up in a duel, so most people minded their own business and didn't flagrantly disrespect others for no reason. Those who were belligerent assholes tended to eventually pick the wrong person to screw with, and so long as it was a fair fight, the law left that person alone. That is, in most places two men could fight a duel without the survivor being immediately arrested and imprisoned. If you didn't like that possibility then you didn't own/carry a gun, for it was dishonorable and illegal in the extreme to shoot an unarmed man.
Overall I'd say most people were kinder and more decent than they are now. What you didn't have back then were so many bleeding-heart types who think that all violence is always wrong even when it's against a bully or other aggressor. I don't think that's a coincidence.
In summary, you're nitpicking one metaphor I used while deciding not to respond to my overall point. We can talk about the good old days some more, or you could further tempt me to follow every single metaphor with a line saying "the previous sentence was just a saying, an expression, meant to illustrate a point and not intended as literal historical commentary about the Wild West or other object of metaphor, get over it". I find both to be unnecessary. That latter option definitely should be unnecessary.
While your point is a valid concern, I have no reservation about killing a group of armed men looking to take over a ship by force, and who will gladly kill you in order to get money. I don't like the idea of killing someone, but by the same token, if someone breaks into my house and is holding a weapon, I will shoot to kill.
No, this is what is called "defending yourself" and I would wholeheartedly support. Is there a non-pirate scenario whereby a small, fast boat would approach a cargo vessel, with a bunch of armed men, without radio contact? Didn't think so. Shoot first.
The idea of being able to effectively defend oneself against a violent, unprovoked aggressor really seems to bother the hell out of a lot of people. I can't be the only one to notice that. All kinds of people will come out of the woodwork with arguments amounting to "you should have sympathy for the devil" and/or "criminals somehow don't choose to disregard their own safety when they violently attack others". Both are bullshit.
If you're so worried about your own safety then don't become a criminal who violently attacks others. If you become a criminal who violently attacks others, understand that you have voluntarily chosen a dangerous lifestyle and will have to accept the consequences.
That's particularly true for the home-invasion scenario you bring up. I want breaking into the homes of strangers while they are at home to be as risky (to the perpetrator) as possible. The world is a better place that way. Why would you want to make that easier to do, or safer to do in the form of laws stating that a homeowner would ever face any kind of civil/criminal liability for anything that happens to those who do this? Anyone else notice that if you oppose things like warrantless wiretapping, then "you want the terrorists to win" but if you support bad laws no one accuses you of "wanting the home-invading criminals who threaten your family to win"?
Anyone see how one-sided that is, or how clear the message is? State power good; personal initiative and independence bad; know your role; submit. It extends to the point that they don't even want ships to be able to defend themselves but wouldn't dream of opposing the efforts of the Navy to rescue the hostages of said pirates.
I know it sounds crazy, but some people have moral hangups about killing people unnecessarily.
If by "unnecessarily" you mean "when they decide to become a violent, unprovoked aggressor" then sure.
... disturbing when you really think about it.
Arming the target ships is the best way to deal with this problem. It's also the one we consistently refuse to try. This is as simple as it gets: 1) pirates leave the mainland and they don't come back 2) other would-be pirates decide that robbery isn't the best way to improve their situation 3) piracy declines.
Many people fail to understand that for the same reason they fail to understand that states which enact conceal-carry laws experience lower rates of violent crime. That is, it goes against their religion because certainly no contact with the facts would cause one to miss the point. The point is: criminals love helpless targets who can't effectively fight back. Criminals really hate facing targets that are as well armed as they are, or better armed, because at this point their instinct for self-preservation kicks in.
The religion says that conceal-carry would lead to the Wild West all over again, with gunfights in the streets everywhere. The facts say that conceal-carry leads to more timid, less aggressive criminals who'd rather not end up in a gunfight, have no idea which person is armed, and cannot effectively choose vulnerable targets. The religion says that arming targeted ships would result in many more armed conflicts at sea. I believe the facts will be the same as they've proven to be for conceal-carry, only more so, since we can arm every ship that goes through dangerous areas and not just a fraction of them.
Whether it's on foot in the streets or on ships in the sea, the basic predator-prey nature of violent criminals and their victims remains unchanged.
It doesn't bode well for us as a society that we have such a large population of adults who are in strong denial of anything they perceive as an ugly reality. Rather than work to change an ugly reality, they pretend that the facts are just someone's perspective, like an opinion. It's
I consider that to be reasonable in a way that "they're all loonies so I won't even try to investigate anything" isn't.
Can you give an example of a chemical anomaly? Not trolling, just interested.
Say you reacted pure sodium and pure chlorine and somehow obtained elemental gold instead of good old table salt. That would be an anomaly, in the sense that it is a radical departure from what theory would predict.
The absence of such anomalies tells me that we have a rather firm handle on what to expect from chemical reactions.
How could I possibly "prove" that 'ghosts' don't exist to you, give me some scientific way to "prove" that 'ghosts' don't exist, and I will do my best.
It is nearly impossible for me to disprove make believe notions that exist only in the confines of your skull. If you thought that invisible undetectable purple elephants dance on every strand of hair on your head, this would also be very hard for me to disprove.
The weight of proof should rest on those making extraordinary claims, claiming there are invisible non-corporal humans running around is an extraordinary claim.
I never once said that anyone should prove a negative. Therefore, a better "how" question would be: how could you so thoroughly misunderstand my post?
... well, the obvious. I really don't know what purpose you had there.
I fully agree that the person claiming ghosts are a real phenomena is the person who need to provide evidence. The post to which you replied was an explanation of why I would be willing to examine such evidence.
When I explain why I would be willing to consider serious evidence, I am at a loss to explain how you could interpret that as a denial that claims need to be backed by evidence. Really, I have no idea how you'd get that from my post.
Maybe you just wanted to point out the obvious no matter what my post acually said, no matter how throroughly it acknowledged the obviousness of
I think *something* is going on that we don't yet know about. If there were only the occasional nutty person who claimed to see strange things, I'd say he/she is probably just a lunatic. The problem is when there are so many tens of thousands of reports. The problem is compounded when many of them come from respectable people who tend to be credible in other matters, show no signs of mental instability, and generally gain nothing but ridicule and ostracism from reporting such things.
So what am I to believe? Are they all liars? Do that many people enjoy getting scorned, ridiculed, or thought of as crazy by their neighbors because of some strange form of masochism? Do that many people have such a specific type of hallucination, and particularly when multiple people witness the same thing, are they somehow having a shared hallucination? I find the above to be improbable. I find it more probable to believe that humanity hasn't yet learned about and figured out every possible thing under the sun, that there is still a great deal we don't know about the universe, that sometimes people encounter unknown phenomena. It could very well turn out to be not a physical phenomena, but rather an artifact of human consciousness -- either possibility could expand our knowledge of ourselves and our world.
Agreed, except that if one person wants to conduct an experiment like this, without taking away grant money and personnel that could be used for projects more likely to bear fruit, using his own time and his own money, I see no harm in it. I don't think he "has to" do anything just because someone else thinks he is wasting his time; I regard it as his time to use as he pleases. He seems to accept the necessity of producing actual evidence prior to drawing any conclusions and that's about all I would ask.
And if everything I've said in the above applied to chemical anomalies then yes, I could understand why the occasional person might want to look into the matter. The fact is that I don't hear all the time about relatively credible people reporting chemical anomalies, or about chemical reactions yielding products wildly different from what theory predicts, so I don't consider it to be on the same footing.
Do you investigate the flat Earth theory? Do you investigate the geocentric theory? Do you investigate spontaneous generation? Do you investigate alchemy? ARROGANCE!
Ah, another person tries for the low-hanging fruit. Perhaps my response will demonstrate why this is what you are doing.
First I'll say that the word "ghost" isn't a terribly great word. It implies that any strange phenomena are caused by dead people who still retain some kind of non-corporeal existence. The actual cause of such phenomena could very well be some not-yet-discovered natural force that has nothing to do with people at all, living or dead. What I personally believe is that strange things do happen that we do not (yet) know how to explain and as such, we have no idea what might be causing them. Using loaded words like "ghost" is therefore inappropriate, not to mention it's fodder for belligerent narrow-minded people who just want to demagogue something instead of contributing anything useful because they knee-jerk upon hearing a loaded word.
Moving along... Do I personally investigate those things you mentioned? No. The first three have been thoroughly falsified. Regarding alchemy, if you conducted a scientifically-sound experiment that claims to have produced conclusive evidence, I'd be willing to entertain that evidence so long as it's understood that the burden of proof is entirely on you and your methodology needs to be both sound and available for examination. If you can meet those conditions then I say go for it.
This is the part you seem to have a hard time with. I have seen abundant evidence that the Earth is spherical. That's why I see no point in investigating a flat-Earth theory. It is falsified by the knowledge that the Earth is spherical combined with the knowledge that spheres are not flat. I have seen no compelling reason to believe that "ghosts" (to use the colloquial, loaded word) have been falsified. Therefore I consider it an open question and I am willing to entertain scientific evidence of such.
Your mistake is that you think the two ideas are on equal ground. You cannot recognize and appreciate the difference between a thoroughly falsified notion and the truly unknown. That's why what you call "skepticism" is just narrow-minded arrogance, not unlike religious zealotry. It makes a mockery of the healthy kind of skepticism that says "show me the evidence".
You can cower behind that narrow-mindedness if it helps you protect your worldview from the terrible (to you) risk of being altered to accept new possibilities if that pleases you. Just understand that others like me are perfectly comfortable saying "I really, truly don't know, therefore it doesn't make sense to form a passionate belief about this subject."
It seems like a mistake to go to some place and look for the absence of an anomaly. The burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim. You will never prove that ghosts don't exists in a house. Maybe they will be there tomorrow when you aren't around. Maybe you don't have the proper equipment to detect one.
Perhaps not, but if you really do detect anomalous activity that you are unable to explain, it would help falsify the notion that we are able to explain every possible activity that can take place in an empty house. Of course that wouldn't prove that there are ghosts, that people survive death in some kind of non-corporeal form, or anything like that. However, it would lend credibility to the notion that there may exist forces that science has not yet understood, that there are phenomena we may be no more aware of than people who lived a thousand years ago were aware of radio waves. As you say, finding nothing unusual wouldn't make it any easier to prove a negative, but if something were found that cannot easily be explained by known phenomena, that would be interesting.
I can see how some people would consider it worthwhile to conduct these experiments. Honestly, I would be a bit disappointed if it turned out that we already know about every possible physical force and/or physical process that could exist in the universe. As long as such experiments are scientifically sound, I see nothing wrong with them.
not much of a skeptic are you.
I forgot that these days, skeptic means "don't ever investigate anything and for bonus points, display contempt for those who do".
The summary is a good example of what real, healthy skepticism is. It boils down to "I don't think I will find anything, but I don't actually know that until I look, so here is the experiment I want to conduct." Is it the lack of presumption and arrogance that offends you? Does the presence of open-minded people willing to look for evidence, even of things they don't actually believe in, make you feel uncomfortable with your narrow-minded worldview? I'm guessing that's where the contempt comes from.
Well, there's certainly room for sites to make new friends---maybe even for the same site to provide for that functionality and date searching---but at that point, you're clearly looking for a rather different function than a dating site was intended to provide.
You're confronting those fears asking someone out no matter what. The point was that some people have a tendency to recede into themselves, and if they get turned down too many times, they don't ever really recover. This could allow those sorts of people to get back on the horse again, knowing that although there's a risk, at least the decked isn't stacked 10:1 against them.
Patents retard progress inherently. There is no such thing as a good software patent, and this one is no exception. It likely means that the sorts of dating sites I want to see won't happen until I'm too old to care about them. The very definition of hell is corporate ownership of ideas.
Well, there's certainly room for sites to make new friends---maybe even for the same site to provide for that functionality and date searching---but at that point, you're clearly looking for a rather different function than a dating site was intended to provide.
You're confronting those fears asking someone out no matter what. The point was that some people have a tendency to recede into themselves, and if they get turned down too many times, they don't ever really recover. This could allow those sorts of people to get back on the horse again, knowing that although there's a risk, at least the decked isn't stacked 10:1 against them.
Patents retard progress inherently. There is no such thing as a good software patent, and this one is no exception. It likely means that the sorts of dating sites I want to see won't happen until I'm too old to care about them. The very definition of hell is corporate ownership of ideas.
I'll note upfront that I, for one, am completely against software patents for any reason. I believe the downsides greatly outweigh a
What's gong on at the Patent Office? I'm starting to think they all need to be drug tested.
They can't do it because a method for selecting patent office workers based on analysis of drug use has already been patented.
That reminds me of a really good quote: No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power. -- P. J. O'Rourke
I can implement that test in software:
Accurate, but hardly useful.
"Hardly useful" because it discounts those individuals who really do strive to become something more than stupid, ignorant, greedy, and power-hungry. They really do exist. They just don't achieve dominance (power) or prominance (influence) because they'd rather live and let live, so there are few you've actually heard of unless you are privileged to know them personally.
Your algorithm there is a nice treatise on cynacism. Damn I used to be quite the cynic myself. Then I realized that if I don't like the way things tend to be, I need to represent personally the change I want to see (and should I fail, I need to learn why I failed and make progress towards correcting that). There's no other way, really.
Damn, Slashdot needs a +1 Rational
Five years ago or so it wasn't so bad, but lately Slashdot is beginning to decay in terms of skill at handling argumentation. There's too many posts like that other one to which I responded. I find myself spending too much time responding not to a clever objection that makes me reconsider my position and think differently about the subject, nor to a helpful individual who shows me why I was wrong and corrects my errors, but instead to things like basic failures of reading comprehension or trivial logical fallacies or an inability to realize that if I stop short of making a claim, it's because I intended to not make that claim.
It represents a drastic reduction of the quality of discussion on this site. With no ego I say I am definitely schooling a few who really had it coming, yet I regret that this mostly concerns basic things for which they should not need my help or anyone else's. In other words I don't believe I am so clever. I just believe I am often confronted with individuals who so desperately need to feel like they told someone a thing or two that they won't let things like facts, easily inferred information, or basic inductive logic to get in their way. I'm setting that straight as best as I can, with what great or small skill I may possess, but it doesn't look good. Most of them are not so interested in helping me learn new information or to realize that I made a mistake; instead they want to feel better than someone and in my case, they chose someone who can see right through that.
Anyway, if you read through all of that, thanks for your support. It's encouraging that some folks can see what I am trying to cultivate. I am open to any honest criticism you may have and will gladly entertain it.
What looks mean to you can also be non-shallow. I'm likely to catch some flak for this but I'll give an example: obesity. That's a matter of looks, but it's also a matter of how the person got to be that way. It says something about their ability or willingness to take good care of themselves. If they do not wish to be obese but have failed to effectively do something about it, it says something about their level of discipline and commitment to goals that are important to them. If they do not accept personal responsibility for their own health, and instead have a million excuses for why their obesity is somehow not their fault, it tells you that they have a victim mentality and are unlikely to be honest about their own shortcomings within the framework of a relationship. That honesty about each other's shortcomings is the first necessary step towards accepting them and growing past them.
Anyone angry or upset by the above paragraph is failing to understand one thing: you can be objectively honest about such matters, ugly though they may be, while also having compassion for the person who struggles with them. Just because someone doesn't meet your criteria for what you want in a mate, just because there are good reasons for that, doesn't make them any less human or any less worthy of kindness and respect. The level of childishness that has infiltrated this site is the only reason I feel a need to explain that, as many of you are trigger-happy when it comes to "ZOMG, he said something that might be negative, hurry, demonize him and deny any point he made!" It's the very opposite of benevolent benefit of doubt when multiple interpretations are possible, in other words.
That's true for someone who wants a serious relationship or a sexual relationship and will accept nothing else. It leaves little or no room though for deep, satisfying, rewarding friendships that you might have with someone who isn't attractive to you but has a big heart, a strong spirit, or a perspective on life that you truly appreciate.
I admit that this is true, but is it ultimately a good thing? It would be "a godsend" in the short term. In the long term, wouldn't it also provide a means to run away from confronting one's own fears, overcoming them through persistent effort, and becoming a stronger person? Don't we do enough of that already?
The problem is that the patents on these systems make it less likely and more expensive for a single comprehensive service to offer both. It is one potential example of how the patent system actually retards progress.
What's gong on at the Patent Office? I'm starting to think they all need to be drug tested.
They can't do it because a method for selecting patent office workers based on analysis of drug use has already been patented.
That reminds me of a really good quote:
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
I'd say those four things provide a coherent explanation of the current patent system.
Unless you're an astronomer or an astrophysicist. Then a new finding can falsify your theory by producing results completely different from what it predicted, and that's okay! You just retrofit your theory to match the new data and you never question its fundamental premises. C.F. inflationary theory and how it came about.
Apparently this discipline really hates Karl Popper but doesn't want to explain why they disagree with him.
The pharmaceutical industry is easily one of the most corrupt industries known to man. Perhaps some defense contractors are worse, but if so, then just barely. It's got just the right combination of billions of dollars at play, strong dependency on the part of many of its customers, a basis on intellectual property, financial leverage over most of the rest of the medical industry, and a strong disincentive against actually ever curing anything since it cannot make a profit from healthy people.
But it also takes a regulator more interesting in politics and appearances that fact to complete the arena. How many useful drugs used for decades all around the world are still banned in the US? And how many drugs were approved because they seemed harmless enough, not because a significant positive effect has been demonstrated? And how many drugs are still approved, even if independent studies have found no beneficial effects whatsoever?
The pharmaceutical industry has one goal, and one goal only: playing the regulator to their advantage. They are good at this game, and the regulator is not.
They also have so much money and so much clout in Washington that it would be (nearly) politically impossible to get a shrewd regulator who refused to put up with that status quo.
Let's see now... zero-point energy, ESP ... you've quite the talent there for arguing with me against two things I never once mentioned. That makes me the "twit", right. That's quite the victory you made there. Do you feel better now?
Perhaps when you live in your own little bubble out of touch with objective reality, maybe then you can put words in someone else's mouth, respond to things they never claimed, and then pat yourself on the back for how clever you are when this oddly results in you being "right". To me, that feels too much like lying, cheating, or just plain ol' making shit up. When it pretends to be debate, t's the refuge of the dishonest or the desperate. So, it doesn't appeal to me and I feel no temptation to do it. If I ever felt the urge to do that, it would get my attention like a bucket of ice water to the face and make me say "damn, why the hell is my position so weak that I would ever get that desperate to win?" and I'd fix that without making it someone else's problem. In other words, the thing you've failed to do here.
Anyway, I'll further explain what you could have grasped on your own were you not blinded by the need to make a contest of it. Those familiar with the history of science would know that at one time, heliocentrism was a "fringe" theory. So was special relativity. Does this mean we should stop finding good ways to test our theories to make sure they hold water? No, of course not, and only a moron would respond to the history of science that way. What it does mean is maybe we (collectively) shouldn't be so quick to jump on our high horses and declare something to be absurd without first putting it to the test merely because it is not mainstream and does not have a consensus behind it. To put that even more simply, objectivity isn't a popularity contest.
Well, thank goodness that those thieving bastards discovered a drug that controls the seizures that 70 years ago would have seen me shunted to a sanitarium.
As it is, for US$100/month, I've got a well-paying job, wife, 2 kids and an "above water" mortgage.
You cannot have a viable industry at all if you never produce a useful product that people need or want. If they never produced useful drugs/treatments then there wouldn't be a pharmaceutical industry for us to talk about.
So, having met the bare-minimum requirement for having a viable industry at all, it is then possible to consider whether or not this industry is corrupt and whether it is more or less corrupt than other industries.
For example, I also mentioned defense contractors. I assume the firearms they produce will indeed shoot bullets and the bombs they produce will explode and the fighter jets they produce will fly. None of that is relevant to a discussion about the corruption in that industry. Such a discussion could start with considerations like how those contracts are awarded for those working munitions.
I'm not sure why so many Slashdotters think that you cannot criticize a thing without totally demonizing it and denying any and all use it may have. It's classic either-or, black-and-white thinking that implies something is either perfect and utterly flawless or absolutely no good at all. In short, you responded to a claim I never made: that no one ever benefits from any drug produced by this industry. This is not useful and fails to recognize that there are deliberate reasons I never made that claim.
poor use of statistics in science. What was really the point of implying that truth can change? There is also an implication that some "sciences" are in fact nothing more than pseudosciences, i.e. little removed from voodoo.
Hey, I'll have you know ... I've been wearing my Martian repellant charm for years now and I've never once seen a Martian.
The pharmaceutical industry is easily one of the most corrupt industries known to man. Perhaps some defense contractors are worse, but if so, then just barely. It's got just the right combination of billions of dollars at play, strong dependency on the part of many of its customers, a basis on intellectual property, financial leverage over most of the rest of the medical industry, and a strong disincentive against actually ever curing anything since it cannot make a profit from healthy people. Many of the tests and trials for new drugs are also funded by the very same companies trying to market those drugs.
Sure, after the person suggesting that all is not as it appears to be is laughed at, ridiculed, cursed, given the old standby of "I doubt you know more than the other thousands of real scientists, mmmkay?" for daring to question the holy sacred authority of the Scientific Establishment and daring to suggest that it could ever steer us wrong or that this, too is unworthy of 100% blind faith or that it may have the same problems that plague other large institutions. The rest of us who have been willing to entertain less mainstream, more "fringe" theories that are easy to demagogue by people who have never investigated them already knew that the whole endeavor is pretty good but not nearly as good as it is made out to be by people who really want to believe in it.
its not going to be enough residual alcohol to impress a reading. and if you didnt drink at all, *buzzed driving is drunk driving* then your CLEAN breath + the last guys millidrop of alcohol will not register 0.08 so what do you care? and yes, i support the crap out of safe flying associated x-rays. if x-raying some guy to check him for explosives guarantees me a safe flight, i say ZAP AWAY!
Do you find it odd that Israel and other places that have far bigger terrorism problems than the USA has ever experienced don't use such scanners and consider them to be not worthwhile? Or did you even know that?
The difference is that in the USA, the screeners are looking for weapons. In Israel, the screeners are looking for terrorists. They collect intelligence on the people who purchase tickets. They ask questions. If necessary they interrogate and perform psychological evaluations. They know who you are, where you're going, whether you plan to return, and maybe also why you're going there. They look for inconsistent or conflicting stories. What they do is more like old-fashioned police work. Israel has many enemies and those enemies tend to use terrorism tactics rather than conventional warfare.
The last hijacking that happened anywhere in Israel was on July 23, 1969. The Ben Gurion Airport just outside Tel Aviv has never had a single hijacking. I'm thinking we should listen to the Israelis on this matter.
And if intrusive groping of 80-year-old grandmas and terrified, screaming three-year-old girls becomes government-sponsored, I say the terrorists have been handed more of a victory than they ever could have hoped for.
When there is a continuum and this represents a movement towards one extreme end of that continuum, it is reasonable to ask what is next. American history is all about the gradual expansion of government intrusion and the gradual erosion of what were once sacrosanct civil rights. No official ultimate goal has been set, as in "once we reach this point we'll back off" so those of us who don't want to live in a police state quite legitimately wonder when the "for your safety" justifications will end.
Assuming you're willing to entertain such a case and accept it as valid so long as the reasoning is sound, even if you disagree with it (and around here that's a gigantic "if"), then sure. I'll explain this as well as I can.
The text of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
That's the text. Now for how the courts have generally interpreted it. American jurisprudence has long held that even for things like traffic stops on public roads, this means that an officer must have either a warrant or probable cause. That is reasonable, and takes into consideration that there are very, very good reasons why we don't just blindly trust cops to not abuse their power. The idea is, they don't go on fishing expeditions and they don't hassle citizens without a good, justifiable reason.
Now then: the fact that you happen to be driving down a particular street is emphatically NOT probable cause to believe that you have committed any crime. So the cops don't have probable cause, and they don't have a warrant either. Do you see the problem?
If someone is driving poorly, weaving in and out of lanes, or otherwise their actual road performance demonstrates that they might be intoxicated, not only do I think it's reasonable for the police to pull that person over, I would consider them negligent if they were aware of it and didn't take action. Driving like you might be intoxicated is probable cause to believe that you are intoxicated and that's simple enough.
What's happening here with DUI laws is the same thing that's happening on several other fronts, including terrorism or "protecting the children" et al. An emotional, usually fear-based appeal is made to excuse the suspension of Constitutionally-guaranteed civil liberties. In my opinion, the politicians pushing for it are driven by a desire for more power and the citizens accepting it and making excuses for it are driven by plain old cowardice. There was a case like this involving roadblocks that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and I wish I could remember the name/date of that case. The ruling basically stated "yeah, this is almost definitely unconstitutional, but we'll accept it anyway because [at that time] there are 25,000 alcohol-related road fatalities each year."
Honestly, I don't care if there are 800,000 alcohol-related road fatalities each year. That would be incredibly unfortunate but freedom is worth that and then some, even if I end up among those 800,000. I'd rather retain the freedoms that many great men have fought and died for. The cowards who will surrender liberty for promises of safety are not worthy to lick the boots of those who understood the value of freedom. I am willing to take my chances with a few more drunks on the road. I consider that far less of a threat than the unchecked police power of the state, and history backs me up on this one without question.
That's my coherent case. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.