Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, etc. all have more socialism and more general social trust (as I understand it) than most countries. Lots of people don't even lock their doors in Denmark; they leave strollers with children in them outside the store while they grab a gallon of milk. I'm not saying there are no criminals and no extreme downloaders, but in general there's more respect for others' property and more belief that everyone is in things together. It's not surprising that such people still spend a great deal of money on entertainment in addition to some downloading.
These countries still have the concept of society, as being a group of people, instead of everyone competing with everyone else on everything. What you call "socialism" is simply the government participating in being a good neighbour. When I've contributed to society for several decades with my work, and taxes, etc. then society can help me out a little when I fall on hard times.
Some countries have a basic distrust. In Germany, for example, the main job of the government agency in charge of handling unemployment seems to be to check for violations of the many rules that unemployed people must follow, and to cut the payments if they find any. In the scandinavian countries, the equivalent agency seems to be mostly in charge of handing out the unemployment benefits. One country assumes that everyone will cheat unless you check on them constantly, the other assumes that most people are honest and only checks if there's indications otherwise.
Funny thing is that several studies show that if you treat people with trust and honesty, the vast majority will reciprocate. And likewise if you don't.
doesn't prove a damn thing about intellectual property law or the state of entertainment businesses in the US,
No, but until there is a study on the same topic done in the US, this is the only data point you have. Simply discarding it is not any more honest or productive than blindly accepting it.
Why would someone pay for something they already got for free?
Almost nobody does. However, money is still being spent on entertainment. Just not the same one. In short: The same people who download illegal copies also buy music and movies and go to the cinema. But they download movie A and go see movie B at the cinema.
If they couldn't download movie A, they would still go see movie B at the cinema, and not watch movie A (that's the part about the budget for entertainment being largely stable).
End result: With downloads: More people watch more movies. Hollywood: +/- 0 Without downloads: People watch fewer movies. Hollywood: +/- 0
Lots of people have known this for many years. Nice to see an actual study confirming it.
or a strike against the RIAA, or whatever. I've never respected that mindset.
But it is. Keep in mind that the RIAA does not produce a single piece of music, just like the MPAA has never made or published a single movie. These are industry lobby organisations. That's why they yell so much - it's their business. The movie studios and music labels whine a little, but they still spend most of their time and effort actually creating stuff. Which, among other things, means that it's still profitable to do so.
The lengths some people go to try to establish themselves as freedom fighters, setting up a "Pirate Party" or ranting about the evils of copyright (but don't you dare steal copyrighted GPL code!) signifies a level of denial I can't even begin to imagine suffering under.
Neither the pirate party nor the GPL are about making copyright obsolete. On the contrary, the GPL could not exist without copyright. The pirate party simply took a name and ran with it. They are as much about piracy as the democrats are about democracy. It's a label showing a rough direction, that's all.
With Apple's history of tracking, that statement is laughable. Google sought user permissions before collecting data.
As does iOS. Your point?
Having access to the code does not guarantee security nor provide absolute security, but it does give you greater security by being able to interrogate the code and find out what it's doing.
Theoretically. You still don't know if that's the code that is actually running. You still don't know if there isn't other code embedded on the device. You still don't know if the CPU works the way you expect it to. If I control the hardware, you can have all the source code access you like, I can still do to you whatever I want.
Fixed that for you.
That's getting old. No, you didn't.
I've already pointed out that having good laws is the issue. You don't see companies going around shooting people, or taking their money on the street at gunpoint. I wonder if that is because there's no profit in it, or because it's illegal.
Yes, companies see if they can get away with borderline legal behaviour. There have been studies showing that companies satisfy the criteria for schizophrenia. If our politicians weren't incompetent, corrupt bastards, they'd long ago have realized that law enforcement needs to be stricter on corporations than on humans, because they lack morality.
I still think they ought to have to pay any and all fines in shares going into a "dissolve me" fond, and once that fond has enough votes, the corporation gets dissolved for having broken too many laws too often. Allow them to buy shares back after a time equivalent to the maximum jail sentence a human could have received for the same offense.
Further more, US carriers are more effective at influencing lawmakers then US citizens. Any further laws would only serve to help the telco's collecting information.
There's your problem. Yes, of course. I can't repeat it often enough: We are being sold out by the very people we elected to represent our interests. If you're sick and tired of that as I am, do your share in changing the system. The first thing you need to do is stop deluding yourself into thinking it's important you vote for the lesser of the two evils and don't vote for people you don't support, just because you think the others are worse. They aren't. You are being scammed.
But the question is, would Carrier IQ have been found if it wasn't for Android being open and how long before Apple decided that they wanted to collect more data?
That's two questions and they are entirely seperate.
Yes, Carrier IQ would've been "found". It's been found on iOS and BlackBerry, too, you know? iOS, despite being closed source, has been taken apart ever since it was first released.
The "enough eyes" assumption is an assumption. We have seen time and time again that it doesn't hold true, because on the very specific parts of some obscure code, there simply aren't that many eyes that take a look.
I'm pretty sure there are already some _good_ laws to prevent these kind of privacy invasions, how are those working out in this case? These big companies only respect the laws that they think can't get away with. When they get busted and a class action is started, they go through the motions and hand out a few vouchers stating "Sorry, we messed up", then continuing doing what they can get away with.
Then the laws aren't good, or are not enforced well. Simple as that.
We have a few good laws on the books over here in Germany. Enforcement, however, is not so stellar. In theory, something like Carrier IQ (with the keystroke logging) could carry a fine of up to â25,000 per case, which means per customer that was spied upon. Yes, we're talking about sums that would bancrupt a carrier. That's how it needs to be, otherwise they could shrug it off.
But the district attorneys are part of the political machine and won't risk the bad press of having a few thousand jobs lost. Basically, when you're a company you can get away with anything, simply by making sure that if they harm you many "innocents" would suffer.
If anything, this demonstrates why Free Software alone is not the answer. In this case, the closed-source iOS is actually respecting your privacy more than the Open Source Android.
You still think that code is the answer, but it isn't. Dennis Richie demonstrated long ago how even access to the full source doesn't make you safe. As long as there is a part in the chain that you don't control, you can be fucked over.
This is a place where actually the legal solution is simpler, easier and more reliable than the technical one. Pass a couple good laws (the "good" part is where our current incompetend corrupt breed of wannabe-politicians are challenged) and enforce them. Sure, it doesn't give you the same 100% security that an EAL7 solution with explicit privacy specifications would - but it's not SciFi and it will work good enough for practical purposes the same way that making murder illegal doesn't prevent it completely, but well enough that in most of the civilized world where the rule of law works, people don't give the extremely remote possibility of being murdered a thought.
What a trip down memory lane... I still remember that I wanted an Archimedes back then, but couldn't afford it. For its time, it was an incredible machine... *sigh*
Uplink is actually a lot closer to the old C64 game Hacker than to Neuromancer. Especially given that Uplink has a really cool beginning where for a second you are not sure if it's a game.
You have an old view of information there, outdated by a couple centuries.
The problem today is not that we don't have information. It is sorting and spin. Usually, we have too much information for any given decision. Finding the important parts in there is one challenge. If you are really good with search engines, it doesn't take long until people in the company come to you with random questions (been there, done that).
But in anything where there's money or other interests involved, people will also spin the available information. There's a lot of good info out there on how you can interpret the same statistical data in various ways. See above, use a search engine and find it. It's revealing. I had the fortune of having a statistics lecture by a professor who included a "how to lie with statistics" two-hour segment.
Good scammers these days don't lie. They simply select and spin the information in such a way that it all seems very convincing and true, and will check out on surface inspection - but it is still totally bogus. It is a lot easier to do that then you'd think. I can easily proof that the sun doesn't exist if you allow me to choose my data points, for example. You would, of course, not belief that because it runs contrary to your every-day perception of reality. But what if it weren't about the sun, but about something you can not falsify by your own observation? Like cancer treatment?
A parable is a type of analogy, not allegory. Most importantly, it is on a much lower level of abstraction and less symbolic. While, like the allegory, it uses replacements instead of the literal subjects, they are less symbolic - like a story about a father and his son which doesn't literally mean that specific father but makes a general point about father-son relationships. An allegory is a lot more abstract and symbolic - the probably most famous allegory, Plato's cave, is not making a general point about caves. Its point has nothing to do with actual caves.
There's no symbolism in the Bible? It's all literal?
*sigh*
The world outside your computer is not binary. There isn't just black and white, false or true, this or that.
Not being allegorical does not mean it is all literal. Metaphors are part of human language for as long as we can trace it back, for example. However, allegory is a fairly abstract symbolism that would be highly untypical of the time and place.
What I mean is: When the bible speaks about "40 days" repetitively, you can assume that it doesn't literally mean exactly 40 days, in the same way that we don't mean to pause for exactly 60 seconds when we say "wait a minute". However, it would be a big leap of faith to say that entire stories are meant purely symbolical.
Then why do fundies hop all over Revelation using the symbolism in it to predict when the Rapture is going to be here?
Because they're crazy and because you need to read the bible with a lot of interpretation and symbolism and ignoring-some-bits today. If you don't, it becomes a completely ridiculous collection of evil and folk-tales.
My original intent was to point out that the only things that can be considered hard fact are things that have already occurred.
Correct. But the opposite of "fact" is not "faith". In fact, "fact" doesn't have a direct opposite. You could argue that "lie" is an opposite of "fact", but "truth" is not the same as "lie". You could argue that "unknown" is an opposite of fact, but "known" is not the same as "fact", either.
That drawing my next breath is fact... well... if you think about it, that's is not fact. I could die in the middle of this sentence.
Again, correct. However, this is a common trap that faith-based (and rhetorically schooled) opponents often try to lure you into: They try to erode our foundation on predictions based on observation by falsely applying the same amount of uncertainty to every possible future. However, our studies of nature show clearly that this isn't how nature works. Some outcomes are more likely than others. And some are vastly more likely than others. Unless you live in an especially dangerous area, the chances of you drawing a next breath vs. dying in the middle of the sentence are not equally distributed, not even closely. They're more likely somewhere in the area of 0.999999:0.0000001
Dawkins calls this "teapotism" - yes, we do not know for certain that there is not a china teapot orbiting Jupiter. However, that is not a reason to say that it possibly could - the probability is so ridiculously low that the one making the claim needs to bring forth evidence.
The problem is that religion requires no facts to determine truth whereas science is truth based on fact.
I disagree. Religion lays a claim to truth, but that is not the same as actually knowing the truth. And if you want to avoid the religion vs. science argument, simply pit different religions against each other - they can not possibly both be correct, as they preach mutually exclusive "truths".
When someone speaks of moral absolutes, they (in my experience) are usually referring to some kind of outside force dictating what set of morals are and aren't 'correct'. You might not have been talking about that, but that is what I usually see.
Agreed. As an atheist, the concept of an outside force dictating a set of morals is alien to me. Or rather: It's a tyranny, and it means nothing regarding the correctness of those morals.
Go ahead, then. Taking into account the level of freedom that the people have would also help. Is absolute freedom advantageous? Is having no freedom disadvantageous? What level of freedom is preferred?
The freedom necessary to exchange ideas and discuss them freely. Let me pick the generic term "knowledge" to avoid any "science vs. everything else" debate.
Knowledge needs to be transferred and stored to generate what Korzybski calls "time-binding" - the unique human ability to stand on the shoulders of giants, to not start from scratch every generation, but build upon whatever knowledge prior generations had acquired.
In order to progress, knowledge needs to be available not only for consumption, but also for questioning and thus improvement. Any limit on the dissemination of knowledge, or on the discussion of it, potentially prevents an improvement.
In the real world, you also have to take into account that we are human beings with emotions, reason, misguided beliefs, failings, etc. - and that a balanced mental state is a requirement for the above. In a deeply religious society, it may be better for the progress of knowledge to respect the religion, because causing strive would upset the mental balance of the people and thus prevent constructive work rather than support it.
So there's your answer: Absolute freedom is only desired in a theoretical world. The optimal level of freedom is the one where both the well-being of the human beings now in existence and the environment for them improving the future of the race are at their optimal values. What exactly that means depends on the circumstances, time in history, culture, etc. etc.
Personally, I belong to the class of people who challenge the status quo and try to edge people out of the comfort zone into a more progressive thinking. There is an opposite class that wants to avoid progress and keep the status quo. It is for the best of the human race if neither side ever wins completely, but the progressive side keeps a slight advantage.
Insulting the king of Thailand interferes with the cultural identity of the Thai people, who identify with the king and truly adore him (that's not a political ploy, they really love their king).
It's a small harm, but it is done to many, many people. It's like spam in that regard.
I really want to say that there is nothing moral about politics anyways, but...
You have an assumption hidden there that you haven't proven. You assume that there is a "just because" reason. But there isn't. They actually have a reason: The king and his image are important to the Thai people.
Exactly. That is the "easily verifiable" fact that introduces you to the lie. This one is a ton simpler, it basically goes "Thailand is known for sex tourism (easily verifiable fact), therefore someone going there is a sex tourist (lie)."
Maybe because they're wrong and can't spot allegory (Genesis) if it came up and slapped them in the face.
Genesis - and everything else in the bible - very, very likely is not allegorical. From what we know about writing and story-telling at the time, people did not write allegories. It isn't until the early classical period that we find allegorical texts.
Because their friends and family and loved ones have still lost someone very dear to them.
But they will meet them again shortly, right? And he's in a better place now. They should have a ceremony where they all kill themselves, so they can follow as quickly as possible.
To me, that's the achilles heel of most religions: If paradise is a better place, suicide should be the rational and obvious option. The cop-out is, of course, that paradise has DRM and real life is the FBI copyright warning that you're forced to sit through before you get to enjoy it.
It requires faith on my part to believe that the 1001st time I drop the rock it will also drop to the ground.
You are abusing the word "faith" here.
You think you are going for b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust (see m-w for full listing), but you aren't.
Using the word "faith" in this context is dishonest. The word you want to use is "prediction". There is no faith in any meaningful sense of the word involved. In the extremely general over-broad meaning that you are aiming for, everything would require "faith" - drawing breath and "believing" that you will again be inhaling air and not suddenly a toxic gas, gravity not turning upsides-down, everything.
But that isn't what the word "faith" implies. Rather, consistency of experience is a base assumption about reality that we learn to make very, very early on. You are abusing the word "faith" and trying to extend its meaning well beyond what it really means.
What do those things have to do with moral absolutes? I don't see how any of those things indicate that there is a 'correct' set of morals.
That is because you cling to "correct" as having to be some kind of moral superiority. Which is, of course, nonsense. You need an external measurement, because internally, all morals are equal (and usually assume they are the best).
Advancement of the species seems to me to be a good measurement. It is free of morality, objective and (theoretically) measurable.
Is it better? Yes. We can prove that freedom is advantageous to progress.
The declaration of human rights was ratified by Thailand, which includes the freedom of speech.
As said before: Freedom of Speech is not an absolute. Every country on earth, including the USA, puts limits on it. It is an ideal, and I'm all for it. But no rights are absolute, because there's always a point where it interferes with other rights, and you have to decide which one is more important.
Again: You said you believe in constitutional limits to government powers. I'm asking if that means the constitution can say whatever it darn pleases, do you see a yet higher layer that puts limits on what can be in the constitution?
I'm fishing for what you consider to be the highest authority on the matter.
I totally have an opinion. I think that jail time is way excessive, but knowing Thai society a little, a fine would be most appropriate.
My point is not that I support the legislation. My point is exposing the arrogance of outsiders insisting that whatever their particular culture thinks should be the way for every other culture as well.
I do believe there are moral absolutes - evolution isn't relative. Some things are better for physical survival, and some things are better for the advancement of society. But you need to prove that your standards actually are superior, not just blankly state them as the only right way.
I am certain that secular western society is objectively better in many regards than, say, oppressive Sharia rule under the Taliban in Afghanistan. But I also believe that we are doing ourselves a great disservice by not focussing on why our way is better, and by doing so failing to see the many ways in which it isn't.
Pretty simple actually. Yelling fire in a crowded theater puts people in danger. What damage is done by making fun of a person?
That depends on whether you subscribe to a belief that puts the individual above the group, or in a belief that puts the group above the individual.
Americans tend to fall into the first category, while asians tend to fall into the second. So if you fall into the first, you will have to step out of your frame of reference for a moment to follow the argument:
The king is important to the group (the country). He unifies the Thai people through changes of government, coups, whatever happens - there is always the king. His image is important to the self-image of the Thai people. Damaging his image is damaging the identity of the Thai.
For the average Thai, an insult to the king is not directed towards the human being that is the king, but at the entity of the king as the representation of the Thai nation - in other words, an insult on every Thai.
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Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, etc. all have more socialism and more general social trust (as I understand it) than most countries. Lots of people don't even lock their doors in Denmark; they leave strollers with children in them outside the store while they grab a gallon of milk. I'm not saying there are no criminals and no extreme downloaders, but in general there's more respect for others' property and more belief that everyone is in things together. It's not surprising that such people still spend a great deal of money on entertainment in addition to some downloading.
These countries still have the concept of society, as being a group of people, instead of everyone competing with everyone else on everything. What you call "socialism" is simply the government participating in being a good neighbour. When I've contributed to society for several decades with my work, and taxes, etc. then society can help me out a little when I fall on hard times.
Some countries have a basic distrust. In Germany, for example, the main job of the government agency in charge of handling unemployment seems to be to check for violations of the many rules that unemployed people must follow, and to cut the payments if they find any. In the scandinavian countries, the equivalent agency seems to be mostly in charge of handing out the unemployment benefits. One country assumes that everyone will cheat unless you check on them constantly, the other assumes that most people are honest and only checks if there's indications otherwise.
Funny thing is that several studies show that if you treat people with trust and honesty, the vast majority will reciprocate. And likewise if you don't.
doesn't prove a damn thing about intellectual property law or the state of entertainment businesses in the US,
No, but until there is a study on the same topic done in the US, this is the only data point you have. Simply discarding it is not any more honest or productive than blindly accepting it.
Why would someone pay for something they already got for free?
Almost nobody does. However, money is still being spent on entertainment. Just not the same one. In short: The same people who download illegal copies also buy music and movies and go to the cinema. But they download movie A and go see movie B at the cinema.
If they couldn't download movie A, they would still go see movie B at the cinema, and not watch movie A (that's the part about the budget for entertainment being largely stable).
End result:
With downloads: More people watch more movies. Hollywood: +/- 0
Without downloads: People watch fewer movies. Hollywood: +/- 0
Lots of people have known this for many years. Nice to see an actual study confirming it.
or a strike against the RIAA, or whatever. I've never respected that mindset.
But it is. Keep in mind that the RIAA does not produce a single piece of music, just like the MPAA has never made or published a single movie. These are industry lobby organisations. That's why they yell so much - it's their business. The movie studios and music labels whine a little, but they still spend most of their time and effort actually creating stuff. Which, among other things, means that it's still profitable to do so.
The lengths some people go to try to establish themselves as freedom fighters, setting up a "Pirate Party" or ranting about the evils of copyright (but don't you dare steal copyrighted GPL code!) signifies a level of denial I can't even begin to imagine suffering under.
Neither the pirate party nor the GPL are about making copyright obsolete. On the contrary, the GPL could not exist without copyright. The pirate party simply took a name and ran with it. They are as much about piracy as the democrats are about democracy. It's a label showing a rough direction, that's all.
With Apple's history of tracking, that statement is laughable. Google sought user permissions before collecting data.
As does iOS. Your point?
Having access to the code does not guarantee security nor provide absolute security, but it does give you greater security by being able to interrogate the code and find out what it's doing.
Theoretically. You still don't know if that's the code that is actually running. You still don't know if there isn't other code embedded on the device. You still don't know if the CPU works the way you expect it to. If I control the hardware, you can have all the source code access you like, I can still do to you whatever I want.
Fixed that for you.
That's getting old. No, you didn't.
I've already pointed out that having good laws is the issue. You don't see companies going around shooting people, or taking their money on the street at gunpoint. I wonder if that is because there's no profit in it, or because it's illegal.
Yes, companies see if they can get away with borderline legal behaviour. There have been studies showing that companies satisfy the criteria for schizophrenia. If our politicians weren't incompetent, corrupt bastards, they'd long ago have realized that law enforcement needs to be stricter on corporations than on humans, because they lack morality.
I still think they ought to have to pay any and all fines in shares going into a "dissolve me" fond, and once that fond has enough votes, the corporation gets dissolved for having broken too many laws too often. Allow them to buy shares back after a time equivalent to the maximum jail sentence a human could have received for the same offense.
Further more, US carriers are more effective at influencing lawmakers then US citizens. Any further laws would only serve to help the telco's collecting information.
There's your problem. Yes, of course. I can't repeat it often enough: We are being sold out by the very people we elected to represent our interests. If you're sick and tired of that as I am, do your share in changing the system. The first thing you need to do is stop deluding yourself into thinking it's important you vote for the lesser of the two evils and don't vote for people you don't support, just because you think the others are worse. They aren't. You are being scammed.
But the question is, would Carrier IQ have been found if it wasn't for Android being open and how long before Apple decided that they wanted to collect more data?
That's two questions and they are entirely seperate.
Yes, Carrier IQ would've been "found". It's been found on iOS and BlackBerry, too, you know? iOS, despite being closed source, has been taken apart ever since it was first released.
The "enough eyes" assumption is an assumption. We have seen time and time again that it doesn't hold true, because on the very specific parts of some obscure code, there simply aren't that many eyes that take a look.
I'm pretty sure there are already some _good_ laws to prevent these kind of privacy invasions, how are those working out in this case? These big companies only respect the laws that they think can't get away with. When they get busted and a class action is started, they go through the motions and hand out a few vouchers stating "Sorry, we messed up", then continuing doing what they can get away with.
Then the laws aren't good, or are not enforced well. Simple as that.
We have a few good laws on the books over here in Germany. Enforcement, however, is not so stellar. In theory, something like Carrier IQ (with the keystroke logging) could carry a fine of up to â25,000 per case, which means per customer that was spied upon. Yes, we're talking about sums that would bancrupt a carrier. That's how it needs to be, otherwise they could shrug it off.
But the district attorneys are part of the political machine and won't risk the bad press of having a few thousand jobs lost. Basically, when you're a company you can get away with anything, simply by making sure that if they harm you many "innocents" would suffer.
That it's only some Android devices is true. But it doesn't change the point. Open Source doesn't protect you against crap like this.
If anything, this demonstrates why Free Software alone is not the answer. In this case, the closed-source iOS is actually respecting your privacy more than the Open Source Android.
You still think that code is the answer, but it isn't. Dennis Richie demonstrated long ago how even access to the full source doesn't make you safe. As long as there is a part in the chain that you don't control, you can be fucked over.
This is a place where actually the legal solution is simpler, easier and more reliable than the technical one. Pass a couple good laws (the "good" part is where our current incompetend corrupt breed of wannabe-politicians are challenged) and enforce them. Sure, it doesn't give you the same 100% security that an EAL7 solution with explicit privacy specifications would - but it's not SciFi and it will work good enough for practical purposes the same way that making murder illegal doesn't prevent it completely, but well enough that in most of the civilized world where the rule of law works, people don't give the extremely remote possibility of being murdered a thought.
What a trip down memory lane... I still remember that I wanted an Archimedes back then, but couldn't afford it. For its time, it was an incredible machine... *sigh*
Uplink is actually a lot closer to the old C64 game Hacker than to Neuromancer. Especially given that Uplink has a really cool beginning where for a second you are not sure if it's a game.
You have an old view of information there, outdated by a couple centuries.
The problem today is not that we don't have information. It is sorting and spin. Usually, we have too much information for any given decision. Finding the important parts in there is one challenge. If you are really good with search engines, it doesn't take long until people in the company come to you with random questions (been there, done that).
But in anything where there's money or other interests involved, people will also spin the available information. There's a lot of good info out there on how you can interpret the same statistical data in various ways. See above, use a search engine and find it. It's revealing. I had the fortune of having a statistics lecture by a professor who included a "how to lie with statistics" two-hour segment.
Good scammers these days don't lie. They simply select and spin the information in such a way that it all seems very convincing and true, and will check out on surface inspection - but it is still totally bogus. It is a lot easier to do that then you'd think. I can easily proof that the sun doesn't exist if you allow me to choose my data points, for example. You would, of course, not belief that because it runs contrary to your every-day perception of reality. But what if it weren't about the sun, but about something you can not falsify by your own observation? Like cancer treatment?
A parable is a type of analogy, not allegory. Most importantly, it is on a much lower level of abstraction and less symbolic. While, like the allegory, it uses replacements instead of the literal subjects, they are less symbolic - like a story about a father and his son which doesn't literally mean that specific father but makes a general point about father-son relationships.
An allegory is a lot more abstract and symbolic - the probably most famous allegory, Plato's cave, is not making a general point about caves. Its point has nothing to do with actual caves.
There's no symbolism in the Bible? It's all literal?
*sigh*
The world outside your computer is not binary. There isn't just black and white, false or true, this or that.
Not being allegorical does not mean it is all literal. Metaphors are part of human language for as long as we can trace it back, for example. However, allegory is a fairly abstract symbolism that would be highly untypical of the time and place.
What I mean is: When the bible speaks about "40 days" repetitively, you can assume that it doesn't literally mean exactly 40 days, in the same way that we don't mean to pause for exactly 60 seconds when we say "wait a minute".
However, it would be a big leap of faith to say that entire stories are meant purely symbolical.
Then why do fundies hop all over Revelation using the symbolism in it to predict when the Rapture is going to be here?
Because they're crazy and because you need to read the bible with a lot of interpretation and symbolism and ignoring-some-bits today. If you don't, it becomes a completely ridiculous collection of evil and folk-tales.
but "truth" is not the same as "lie".
should of course read:
but "truth" is not the same as "fact".
My original intent was to point out that the only things that can be considered hard fact are things that have already occurred.
Correct. But the opposite of "fact" is not "faith". In fact, "fact" doesn't have a direct opposite. You could argue that "lie" is an opposite of "fact", but "truth" is not the same as "lie". You could argue that "unknown" is an opposite of fact, but "known" is not the same as "fact", either.
That drawing my next breath is fact... well... if you think about it, that's is not fact. I could die in the middle of this sentence.
Again, correct. However, this is a common trap that faith-based (and rhetorically schooled) opponents often try to lure you into: They try to erode our foundation on predictions based on observation by falsely applying the same amount of uncertainty to every possible future. However, our studies of nature show clearly that this isn't how nature works. Some outcomes are more likely than others. And some are vastly more likely than others. Unless you live in an especially dangerous area, the chances of you drawing a next breath vs. dying in the middle of the sentence are not equally distributed, not even closely. They're more likely somewhere in the area of 0.999999:0.0000001
Dawkins calls this "teapotism" - yes, we do not know for certain that there is not a china teapot orbiting Jupiter. However, that is not a reason to say that it possibly could - the probability is so ridiculously low that the one making the claim needs to bring forth evidence.
The problem is that religion requires no facts to determine truth whereas science is truth based on fact.
I disagree. Religion lays a claim to truth, but that is not the same as actually knowing the truth. And if you want to avoid the religion vs. science argument, simply pit different religions against each other - they can not possibly both be correct, as they preach mutually exclusive "truths".
When someone speaks of moral absolutes, they (in my experience) are usually referring to some kind of outside force dictating what set of morals are and aren't 'correct'. You might not have been talking about that, but that is what I usually see.
Agreed. As an atheist, the concept of an outside force dictating a set of morals is alien to me. Or rather: It's a tyranny, and it means nothing regarding the correctness of those morals.
Go ahead, then. Taking into account the level of freedom that the people have would also help. Is absolute freedom advantageous? Is having no freedom disadvantageous? What level of freedom is preferred?
The freedom necessary to exchange ideas and discuss them freely. Let me pick the generic term "knowledge" to avoid any "science vs. everything else" debate.
Knowledge needs to be transferred and stored to generate what Korzybski calls "time-binding" - the unique human ability to stand on the shoulders of giants, to not start from scratch every generation, but build upon whatever knowledge prior generations had acquired.
In order to progress, knowledge needs to be available not only for consumption, but also for questioning and thus improvement. Any limit on the dissemination of knowledge, or on the discussion of it, potentially prevents an improvement.
In the real world, you also have to take into account that we are human beings with emotions, reason, misguided beliefs, failings, etc. - and that a balanced mental state is a requirement for the above. In a deeply religious society, it may be better for the progress of knowledge to respect the religion, because causing strive would upset the mental balance of the people and thus prevent constructive work rather than support it.
So there's your answer: Absolute freedom is only desired in a theoretical world. The optimal level of freedom is the one where both the well-being of the human beings now in existence and the environment for them improving the future of the race are at their optimal values. What exactly that means depends on the circumstances, time in history, culture, etc. etc.
Personally, I belong to the class of people who challenge the status quo and try to edge people out of the comfort zone into a more progressive thinking. There is an opposite class that wants to avoid progress and keep the status quo. It is for the best of the human race if neither side ever wins completely, but the progressive side keeps a slight advantage.
Insulting the king of Thailand interferes with the cultural identity of the Thai people, who identify with the king and truly adore him (that's not a political ploy, they really love their king).
It's a small harm, but it is done to many, many people. It's like spam in that regard.
I really want to say that there is nothing moral about politics anyways, but...
You have an assumption hidden there that you haven't proven. You assume that there is a "just because" reason. But there isn't. They actually have a reason: The king and his image are important to the Thai people.
Exactly. That is the "easily verifiable" fact that introduces you to the lie. This one is a ton simpler, it basically goes "Thailand is known for sex tourism (easily verifiable fact), therefore someone going there is a sex tourist (lie)."
Maybe because they're wrong and can't spot allegory (Genesis) if it came up and slapped them in the face.
Genesis - and everything else in the bible - very, very likely is not allegorical. From what we know about writing and story-telling at the time, people did not write allegories. It isn't until the early classical period that we find allegorical texts.
Because their friends and family and loved ones have still lost someone very dear to them.
But they will meet them again shortly, right? And he's in a better place now. They should have a ceremony where they all kill themselves, so they can follow as quickly as possible.
To me, that's the achilles heel of most religions: If paradise is a better place, suicide should be the rational and obvious option. The cop-out is, of course, that paradise has DRM and real life is the FBI copyright warning that you're forced to sit through before you get to enjoy it.
It requires faith on my part to believe that the 1001st time I drop the rock it will also drop to the ground.
You are abusing the word "faith" here.
You think you are going for b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust (see m-w for full listing), but you aren't.
Using the word "faith" in this context is dishonest. The word you want to use is "prediction". There is no faith in any meaningful sense of the word involved. In the extremely general over-broad meaning that you are aiming for, everything would require "faith" - drawing breath and "believing" that you will again be inhaling air and not suddenly a toxic gas, gravity not turning upsides-down, everything.
But that isn't what the word "faith" implies. Rather, consistency of experience is a base assumption about reality that we learn to make very, very early on. You are abusing the word "faith" and trying to extend its meaning well beyond what it really means.
What do those things have to do with moral absolutes? I don't see how any of those things indicate that there is a 'correct' set of morals.
That is because you cling to "correct" as having to be some kind of moral superiority. Which is, of course, nonsense. You need an external measurement, because internally, all morals are equal (and usually assume they are the best).
Advancement of the species seems to me to be a good measurement. It is free of morality, objective and (theoretically) measurable.
Is it better? Yes. We can prove that freedom is advantageous to progress.
The declaration of human rights was ratified by Thailand, which includes the freedom of speech.
As said before: Freedom of Speech is not an absolute. Every country on earth, including the USA, puts limits on it. It is an ideal, and I'm all for it. But no rights are absolute, because there's always a point where it interferes with other rights, and you have to decide which one is more important.
You're avoiding the point and nitpicking.
Again: You said you believe in constitutional limits to government powers. I'm asking if that means the constitution can say whatever it darn pleases, do you see a yet higher layer that puts limits on what can be in the constitution?
I'm fishing for what you consider to be the highest authority on the matter.
Took a while until someone reached that point.
I totally have an opinion. I think that jail time is way excessive, but knowing Thai society a little, a fine would be most appropriate.
My point is not that I support the legislation. My point is exposing the arrogance of outsiders insisting that whatever their particular culture thinks should be the way for every other culture as well.
I do believe there are moral absolutes - evolution isn't relative. Some things are better for physical survival, and some things are better for the advancement of society. But you need to prove that your standards actually are superior, not just blankly state them as the only right way.
I am certain that secular western society is objectively better in many regards than, say, oppressive Sharia rule under the Taliban in Afghanistan. But I also believe that we are doing ourselves a great disservice by not focussing on why our way is better, and by doing so failing to see the many ways in which it isn't.
Pretty simple actually. Yelling fire in a crowded theater puts people in danger. What damage is done by making fun of a person?
That depends on whether you subscribe to a belief that puts the individual above the group, or in a belief that puts the group above the individual.
Americans tend to fall into the first category, while asians tend to fall into the second. So if you fall into the first, you will have to step out of your frame of reference for a moment to follow the argument:
The king is important to the group (the country). He unifies the Thai people through changes of government, coups, whatever happens - there is always the king. His image is important to the self-image of the Thai people. Damaging his image is damaging the identity of the Thai.
For the average Thai, an insult to the king is not directed towards the human being that is the king, but at the entity of the king as the representation of the Thai nation - in other words, an insult on every Thai.