Here is one example in which genetic modification backfired. It doesn't prove that GM is bad, but it does demonstrate that we need to exercise caution and it shows the danger of your approach (assuming that GM is safe and asking for evidence otherwise).
But those scenarios require the assumption that all double-votes (which can only be counted as being for a given candidate if you claim to be able to read the voter's mind) were really votes for Gore.
No. From the article I linked: "Gore picked up 885 more votes than Bush from the examination of overvote ballots, 662 of those from optical scan ballots.
The study did not credit Gore with the thousands of votes lost as a result of the infamous butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County... The Post study did not award those overvotes to Gore because no clear voter intent could be determined on a ballot where two candidates were marked... The overvotes that could have provided the margin for Gore were on ballots where voters tried to be extra-clear in their choice and ended up nullifying the vote. They filled in the oval next to a candidate and then filled in the oval for "write-in" and wrote the same candidate's name again."
In other words, in order for Gore to have won, they would have had to count the overvotes. They would not, however, have needed to count the "double votes", the overvotes in which votes for two different candidates were provided. Your misconception probably stems from this distinction. For what it's worth, there were more than 8000 double votes and no scenario had a margin of more than 600 votes, so Gore would have needed far less than all of them to come out on top.
Not that I think it matters at all now, but I think it's worth being accurate.
And of course, you're surely aware that in the weeks following the ruling, every vote was recounted by several teams of people, using every standard advocated by either candidate, and several others, as well. In each recount, regardless of the technique used, Gore lost in Florida. Not to bother you with the facts or anything.
Sorry to drag the conversation even farther from the topic, but your claim is demonstrably false (and as such I can't bear to let it stand uncontradicted). In the study commissioned by the Washington Post and other media organizations, Gore won some of the scenarios (including all of the scenarios involving a full, statewide recount) while Bush won others. Wikipedia has a nice table of the results. You are correct, however, in that Bush won in all of the recount scenarios put forward by Gore.
How do you expect people to understand probability theory without understanding integration? And you can't do analytic number theory without contour integration, which requires complex analysis, which requires calculus in 2 dimensions. The interdependencies among mathematical disciplines being what they are, lacking basic knowledge of calculus would severely restrict your possibilities.
Your post made sense (although it was somewhat oversimplified -- the pharmaceutical market is strongly inelastic so Econ 101-style supply and demand arguments are a bit misleading) up until this part:
If you are near capacity for production though you can calculate how many you will sell in each location and set prices in free markets as to make up for prices in government controlled areas.
If you are near capacity for production, you optimize your profits by selling in free markets and not selling at all in price-controlled markets until the price in free markets drops below the controlled price, in which case you are selling at the same price everywhere anyway. So I still don't believe that price controls in other markets would drive up US prices.
Drug companies do not make particularly high profits.
According to this report (which I found by searching google for "drug company profits"), the median profits of Fortune 500 drug companies in 2002 were 17% of revenue. The median profits of all Fortune 500 companies were 3.1% of revenue. I'm not sure that this particularly matters, though, when discussing the ethics of price controls.
These figures do have some weight, however, when discussing the practicalities of price controls. You claim that price controls would discourage drug companies from developing new drugs. I have heard this argument a few times before and I am yet to be convinced by it. If drug companies stand to make a profit by developing new drugs, they will develop new drugs. If government were to cut their profits in half, say, by imposing price controls then the drug companies would still have lots of incentive to develop new drugs. The drug industry has a large enough profit margin that I cannot see it collapsing due to government intervention.
Of course, the ethics of price controls are more interesting than the practicalities. Even if it had no negative effects on the development of new drugs, would it be ethical for government to pass legislation to harm drug companies? Personally, I would be OK with that. Drug companies currently benefit from government intervention in the form of patent law and publicly funded scientific research. Allowing them unrestricted profits seems like a case of privatizing the profits and socializing the losses.
While I don't dispute the facts in your post, you still haven't convinced me that price controls in other countries push up prices in the US. To make up a silly example, if Pfizer's profits in Canada were to quadruple tomorrow, do you really believe that their board would get together and decide to reduce American prices to compensate? I don't; I believe that drug companies set their prices according to what they think will bring them the most profit (in some (most?) countries, a publicly traded drug company would be required to set their prices in order to maximize profit). I believe that Pfizer would gratefully accept the extra profits and would continue to charge Americans whatever the market would bear.
This is how other countries suck off the US economy to fund their social medicine programs. By artificially lowering the market value of the drugs in their country it requires drug companies to artificially raise the price in others to make up the difference.
Do you have any evidence that drug companies sell their products at a loss in other countries? It seems much more likely to me that the reason for high drug prices in the US is because the market is willing to bear high prices. Blaming other countries seems like unjustified finger-pointing.
Set theory does NOT depend on ZFC. Using natural numbers defined in some way within set theory does. But "just" set theory does not have a single axiom. It merely has a few notations.
Are you referring to naive set theory? That has its own set of problems (Russell's paradox being the most well-known). For what it's worth, Wikipedia says (and I had never heard this before) that Frege did write down an axiomatization of naive set theory.
First order logic is also a theory that does not have any axioms.
The way I learned it, first order logic had axioms (the quantification axioms; actually, if you want to be fussy, these are axiom schemata, implying that first order logic has infinitely many axioms). And if you want to build any non-trivial theory on top of first order logic, you need some extra axioms for that.
I'm unsure of what you are trying to say. Let's recall the conversation (paraphrased):
Thiez: Are there theories that do not rely on axioms? You: Yes. Set theory, for example. Me: That's not an example; set theory relies on axioms. You: Yeah, but ZFC might not be consistent, and it might require infinitely many axioms, and it can't be proved consistent from within itself (if it is consistent), etc, etc.
Admittedly, the incompleteness of axiomatic systems is philosophically difficult. Some people see it as proof that logic is insufficient. Personally, I see it as explaining the illogicality of God: any system that contains a proof of its own existence cannot be logical. In any case, it is not necessarily of any practical importance when constructing theories that explain reality.
As for the "problem" of infinitely many axioms, this is not really a problem at all. Indeed, the ZFC axiomatization contains an infinite number of axioms, but only a small number of axiom schemes. In particular, it is quite possible to humanly comprehend the infinity of axioms involved, because they follow a finite number of patterns.
Sure there are. Many in fact. Set theory for example.
Set theory certainly relies on axioms; the standard set of axioms used for set theory today are the ZFC axioms. Under the ZFC axioms, set theory can be used to define numbers without any inconsistencies.
Ask anyone if they would rather they purchase their home with the help of a convicted felon,(Tony Rezko)
I have heard this accusation a lot lately. Eventually, I went and actually looked up what happened. I have come to the conclusion that your accusation is dishonest. A simple google for "obama" and "rezko" turns up thousands of stories, but here is a representative one.
For those who, like me, tend not to follow all the political scandals, here is a summary. Rezko and Obama bought adjacent parcels of land. Obama's parcel had a house on it; Rezko's was undeveloped. These two parcels had previously belonged to the same person, who had decided to split their property and sell it in two parts. Some time later, Obama wanted to expand his property, so he bought a slice of Rezko's land. I have not seen any indications that Obama bought the land for anything less than a fair price; in fact, I read an article showing that Rezko made a decent profit on the land but I can't find that article right now.
Do you have a list somewhere of countries that banned DDT outright? I couldn't find one, but I did find this list, from a manufacturer's website, of some countries that have been using DDT in recent years: Madagascar, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Africa, Namibia, Solomon Island, Papua New Guinea, Algeria, Thailand, Myanmar. In many countries, furthermore, DDT has been eliminated because mosquitos have developed resistance. Wikipedia puts Sri Lanka, parts of India, Pakistan, Turkey and Central America in this category.
For what it's worth, wikipedia has a fairly even-handed (IMO) summary of the DDT debate.
"Environmental scientists" got DDT banned by waaaaaaaay overstating the risks to an all too willing media.
Over 30 million people die of mosquito borne Malaria in poor third world countries.
According to Wikipedia at least (and I don't have the energy to follow up their references), DDT was only banned for agricultural use and still enjoys "limited use in disease vector control." Furthermore, Wikipedia puts annual deaths due to malaria at between 1 and 3 million per year.
I am going to call you a Waaaambulance. Cry me a river Iran! It was Ayatollah Khomeini who overthrew the Shah!
I believe parent was talking about the prime minister, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, who was overthrown by the CIA and MI6 in 1953. I suggest you google "Operation Ajax".
Well, I've done my best to remain civil, but I see there's not much point. I have attempted to set out my position dispassionately and logically. Rather than respond in like fashion, you chose to make broad, sweeping pronouncements and to insult me personally.
Good day to you. I have no desire to carry on this conversation.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
It's quite clear that this only forbids arbitrary interference with privacy. It does not forbid justified, reasonable interference with privacy. Not that the law in question is necessarily justified or reasonable, but that is a matter for debate (note that 'debate' need not include sweeping statements and insulting remarks).
Oh, and article 30 doesn't seem remotely relevant, but I'll paste it here anyway so that others can judge for themselves:
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
Actually, it does infringe on Human Rights as defined by the United Nations.
Ok, so I read the charter you linked to, and I don't see how a national biometric database would infringe on any of the rights it mentions. The closest I found was the first phrase of article 12, but I think it is quite a stretch to say that a biometric database contradicts it somehow. Do you have any stronger or more specific evidence to support your claim?
TeX was finished in 1989. PostScript shipped with the Apple LaserWriter in 1985 (source: Wikipedia). Not to mention the fact that you would have to be utterly insane to try to write a book (or even a mathematical formula) in straight PostScript.
You aren't actually supposed to read the code that he pointed to. You're supposed to run it through a processor that will generate a beautifully typeset pdf file with the documentation laid out logically and code examples embedded. The workflow is somewhat different from the workflow that many programmers are used to, but it is similar to working in (La)TeX, if you have done that.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is one example in which genetic modification backfired. It doesn't prove that GM is bad, but it does demonstrate that we need to exercise caution and it shows the danger of your approach (assuming that GM is safe and asking for evidence otherwise).
What about half of pi minus the inverse tan function? It's strictly decreasing but it converges to zero and infinity and to pi at negative infinity
Where do you live? Everywhere I've lived, it's legal for cyclists to ride on the road.
No. From the article I linked: "Gore picked up 885 more votes than Bush from the examination of overvote ballots, 662 of those from optical scan ballots. The study did not credit Gore with the thousands of votes lost as a result of the infamous butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County... The Post study did not award those overvotes to Gore because no clear voter intent could be determined on a ballot where two candidates were marked... The overvotes that could have provided the margin for Gore were on ballots where voters tried to be extra-clear in their choice and ended up nullifying the vote. They filled in the oval next to a candidate and then filled in the oval for "write-in" and wrote the same candidate's name again."
In other words, in order for Gore to have won, they would have had to count the overvotes. They would not, however, have needed to count the "double votes", the overvotes in which votes for two different candidates were provided. Your misconception probably stems from this distinction. For what it's worth, there were more than 8000 double votes and no scenario had a margin of more than 600 votes, so Gore would have needed far less than all of them to come out on top.
Not that I think it matters at all now, but I think it's worth being accurate.
Sorry to drag the conversation even farther from the topic, but your claim is demonstrably false (and as such I can't bear to let it stand uncontradicted). In the study commissioned by the Washington Post and other media organizations, Gore won some of the scenarios (including all of the scenarios involving a full, statewide recount) while Bush won others. Wikipedia has a nice table of the results. You are correct, however, in that Bush won in all of the recount scenarios put forward by Gore.
How do you expect people to understand probability theory without understanding integration? And you can't do analytic number theory without contour integration, which requires complex analysis, which requires calculus in 2 dimensions. The interdependencies among mathematical disciplines being what they are, lacking basic knowledge of calculus would severely restrict your possibilities.
We'll take the ones that know who Don Bradman is.
If you are near capacity for production, you optimize your profits by selling in free markets and not selling at all in price-controlled markets until the price in free markets drops below the controlled price, in which case you are selling at the same price everywhere anyway. So I still don't believe that price controls in other markets would drive up US prices.
According to this report (which I found by searching google for "drug company profits"), the median profits of Fortune 500 drug companies in 2002 were 17% of revenue. The median profits of all Fortune 500 companies were 3.1% of revenue. I'm not sure that this particularly matters, though, when discussing the ethics of price controls.
These figures do have some weight, however, when discussing the practicalities of price controls. You claim that price controls would discourage drug companies from developing new drugs. I have heard this argument a few times before and I am yet to be convinced by it. If drug companies stand to make a profit by developing new drugs, they will develop new drugs. If government were to cut their profits in half, say, by imposing price controls then the drug companies would still have lots of incentive to develop new drugs. The drug industry has a large enough profit margin that I cannot see it collapsing due to government intervention.
Of course, the ethics of price controls are more interesting than the practicalities. Even if it had no negative effects on the development of new drugs, would it be ethical for government to pass legislation to harm drug companies? Personally, I would be OK with that. Drug companies currently benefit from government intervention in the form of patent law and publicly funded scientific research. Allowing them unrestricted profits seems like a case of privatizing the profits and socializing the losses.
While I don't dispute the facts in your post, you still haven't convinced me that price controls in other countries push up prices in the US. To make up a silly example, if Pfizer's profits in Canada were to quadruple tomorrow, do you really believe that their board would get together and decide to reduce American prices to compensate? I don't; I believe that drug companies set their prices according to what they think will bring them the most profit (in some (most?) countries, a publicly traded drug company would be required to set their prices in order to maximize profit). I believe that Pfizer would gratefully accept the extra profits and would continue to charge Americans whatever the market would bear.
Do you have any evidence that drug companies sell their products at a loss in other countries? It seems much more likely to me that the reason for high drug prices in the US is because the market is willing to bear high prices. Blaming other countries seems like unjustified finger-pointing.
Are you referring to naive set theory? That has its own set of problems (Russell's paradox being the most well-known). For what it's worth, Wikipedia says (and I had never heard this before) that Frege did write down an axiomatization of naive set theory.
The way I learned it, first order logic had axioms (the quantification axioms; actually, if you want to be fussy, these are axiom schemata, implying that first order logic has infinitely many axioms). And if you want to build any non-trivial theory on top of first order logic, you need some extra axioms for that.
I'm unsure of what you are trying to say. Let's recall the conversation (paraphrased):
Thiez: Are there theories that do not rely on axioms?
You: Yes. Set theory, for example.
Me: That's not an example; set theory relies on axioms.
You: Yeah, but ZFC might not be consistent, and it might require infinitely many axioms, and it can't be proved consistent from within itself (if it is consistent), etc, etc.
Admittedly, the incompleteness of axiomatic systems is philosophically difficult. Some people see it as proof that logic is insufficient. Personally, I see it as explaining the illogicality of God: any system that contains a proof of its own existence cannot be logical. In any case, it is not necessarily of any practical importance when constructing theories that explain reality.
As for the "problem" of infinitely many axioms, this is not really a problem at all. Indeed, the ZFC axiomatization contains an infinite number of axioms, but only a small number of axiom schemes. In particular, it is quite possible to humanly comprehend the infinity of axioms involved, because they follow a finite number of patterns.
Set theory certainly relies on axioms; the standard set of axioms used for set theory today are the ZFC axioms. Under the ZFC axioms, set theory can be used to define numbers without any inconsistencies.
I have heard this accusation a lot lately. Eventually, I went and actually looked up what happened. I have come to the conclusion that your accusation is dishonest. A simple google for "obama" and "rezko" turns up thousands of stories, but here is a representative one.
For those who, like me, tend not to follow all the political scandals, here is a summary. Rezko and Obama bought adjacent parcels of land. Obama's parcel had a house on it; Rezko's was undeveloped. These two parcels had previously belonged to the same person, who had decided to split their property and sell it in two parts. Some time later, Obama wanted to expand his property, so he bought a slice of Rezko's land. I have not seen any indications that Obama bought the land for anything less than a fair price; in fact, I read an article showing that Rezko made a decent profit on the land but I can't find that article right now.
Do you have a list somewhere of countries that banned DDT outright? I couldn't find one, but I did find this list, from a manufacturer's website, of some countries that have been using DDT in recent years: Madagascar, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Africa, Namibia, Solomon Island, Papua New Guinea, Algeria, Thailand, Myanmar. In many countries, furthermore, DDT has been eliminated because mosquitos have developed resistance. Wikipedia puts Sri Lanka, parts of India, Pakistan, Turkey and Central America in this category.
For what it's worth, wikipedia has a fairly even-handed (IMO) summary of the DDT debate.
According to Wikipedia at least (and I don't have the energy to follow up their references), DDT was only banned for agricultural use and still enjoys "limited use in disease vector control." Furthermore, Wikipedia puts annual deaths due to malaria at between 1 and 3 million per year.
Really?
I believe parent was talking about the prime minister, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, who was overthrown by the CIA and MI6 in 1953. I suggest you google "Operation Ajax".
Well, I've done my best to remain civil, but I see there's not much point. I have attempted to set out my position dispassionately and logically. Rather than respond in like fashion, you chose to make broad, sweeping pronouncements and to insult me personally.
Good day to you. I have no desire to carry on this conversation.
It's quite clear that this only forbids arbitrary interference with privacy. It does not forbid justified, reasonable interference with privacy. Not that the law in question is necessarily justified or reasonable, but that is a matter for debate (note that 'debate' need not include sweeping statements and insulting remarks).
Oh, and article 30 doesn't seem remotely relevant, but I'll paste it here anyway so that others can judge for themselves:
Actually, it does infringe on Human Rights as defined by the United Nations.
Ok, so I read the charter you linked to, and I don't see how a national biometric database would infringe on any of the rights it mentions. The closest I found was the first phrase of article 12, but I think it is quite a stretch to say that a biometric database contradicts it somehow. Do you have any stronger or more specific evidence to support your claim?
What we really need is some slashdot troll that goes around awarding UUOC awards.
TeX was finished in 1989. PostScript shipped with the Apple LaserWriter in 1985 (source: Wikipedia). Not to mention the fact that you would have to be utterly insane to try to write a book (or even a mathematical formula) in straight PostScript.
You aren't actually supposed to read the code that he pointed to. You're supposed to run it through a processor that will generate a beautifully typeset pdf file with the documentation laid out logically and code examples embedded. The workflow is somewhat different from the workflow that many programmers are used to, but it is similar to working in (La)TeX, if you have done that.