I don't remember my philosophy classes in that detail (too long ago), but I think your argument went largely out of fashion about a hundred years ago.
In a fanatical interpretation of the word, we do not "know" anything. But that is a trivial argument. The vital difference is not that only 255-255-255 is really the real white (knowledge), but that 250-250-250 (science) is not the same as 25-25-25 (faith).
It is true that both faith and science require you to stop asking at some point and say "I don't know everything, but I think what I have so far is correct". But in science this step comes very, very late, when simply current technology can't yet offer the answers or the amount of time and effort you want to spend is exhausted. In faith, on the other hand, it is pretty much item #3 or so on the list.
So, to your example: In the fanatical interpretation, I do not "know" that Columbus sailed to America. However, I can collect pretty much as much historical evidence that he did as I care to. I can likewise try to find evidence to the contrary. I can then compare them and make a judgement call. If the evidence is something like 99-1 for, then the argument the we don't "know" becomes a pure semantic.
nothing secular has the same pull as Religion and the prospect of eternal life, the prospect of seeing the deceased again, the prospect of a place without pain or suffering.
5000+ years of refining the lie does, of course, result in a highly addictive toxin. There are a couple secular advances in these directions, like the cryo stuff. But, it's not 2 AD anymore, so today we see the stuff as the blatant lies they are. What if they had had 2000 years of history, the same massive institutionalized brainwashing effort? Don't you think we would fall for any secular crap just as much if it had been hammered into our collective brains for a hundred generations?
With all this in mind, I think it is hard to say there would be "No loss" if we did away with Religion.
True. Think of all the crusades, inquisitions, jihads, suicide bombers, etc. etc. that we wouldn't have. That's a "loss" in a certain sense.
Science says the truth exists, whatever that truth is.
Actually, truth is a philosophical term. Modern science, AFAIK, does not aspire to truth in the philosophical sense. Its premise is to find theories that describe and allow to predict the real world.
The idea that "postulations on those truths is useless" shows no understanding of similar discussions in the areas of the philosophy of science, metaphysics, and theoretical branches of certain areas.
My argument isn't that postulations on those truths are useless. It is that the word "truth" is meaningless in the context of theology.
You wouldn't research theological truth if you were interested in truth. Why qualify it before you start? That already puts a spin on it right there. If you are interested in truth, then research truth and not "theological truth".
However, a number of scientists decided they didn't really want anything to do with religion
You make it sound like a personal preference. But what do you do when you go looking for the creator, and everywhere you look, he is nowhere to be found? Sooner or later, if you are a scientist, or even if you are just a truth-seeker, you have to question whether your initial assumption holds up to the evidence you've uncovered.
And the evidence regarding how the world works fills libraries. But there is not a single page about the imaginary friend in there.
And that's why faith doesn't have anything in common with truth.
Someone gives you a complement and you still insult them.
Did you get lost in the threading? I don't see how the GP that I replied to gave me a compliment. He was talking about how the church did such a great job at researching "theological truth".
I used to think about art (which includes literature) that way as well, many years ago.
Then I realized that art has a place in this world, and a purpose. Religion, on the other hand, you could do away and there'd be no loss. Sure people need to believe in something - but there's no reason that something needs to be a religion. For many people, a political view, a philosophy or even their local sports club serves just as well.
But art gives us beauty. Art gives us something that speaks to us in ways we can not describe. It may be that science has not yet progressed that far, or it may be that beauty exists only if you do not cut it into small, researchable and well-defined pieces.
And our minds want beauty. It is different for each of us. For me, for example, despite all the coding, and cryptography and analytical stuff I do in my life, a forest is something I long for every once in a while. So pictures that capture that tranquility "speak" to me in a way that a line of code, no matter how beautiful in its own way, never can.
I am quite familiar with truth that can only be verified internally. Your entire internal mindscape belongs into that category. You can tell someone else what you dream, or fear, or like, but the real thing is always inside of you and only inside of you. Right now, we can't even measure it (and measuring electronic patterns in the brain is not the same as measuring an emotion).
But we don't even have to go that far. We don't even have to decide if theology as a whole is hogwash or not. We only need to pose the question what if?.
The question that believers really don't like to have asked. What if you're wrong? Not in the details, but in the basic assumption?
The question has been asked to Dawkins, and he had a great answer to it. I've yet to hear an answer to that same question from a believer that is even in the same class, intellectually.
Yes, it does. But not half as much as institutionalised international child abuse discredits an organisation that claims a monopoly on right and wrong for itself.
True religion has absolutely nothing to fear from people who question things. Go ahead and wonder how Jesus did what he did, and try to imagine how you could copy it. Jesus' signs and works were given precisely so you would believe that he was really, truly God's son, because no one else could have done what he did.
Unfortunately to that POV, the reports in the bible have been extensively researched by many factions. And any of them who are not religiously motivated come to roughly the same conclusion: It's a badly cobbled together mixture of folk lores. Even the historic facts don't check out. Now tell me why I should "believe" in some miracle described in some book that can't even get birth and death dates of important historical people right?
You figure out how to do any of those, you let me know how that works out.
That was easy, I thought you'd come up with something challenging.
First, dump the presupposition that these things were magically accomplished, or miracles, because you can't claim them as evidence if your chain of reasoning starts out with what you want to prove, right?
So what I need to do is recreate that which reportedly happened, i.e. do something that will be reported in the same way. Or rather, would be if it were 2000 years ago and not today. I'm sure a single mobile phone with video recording back then and we wouldn't have a christian religion.
When you put it this way, any halfway competent stage magician can easily duplicate these feats and more.
"Wait!" I hear you say. "he didn't do any tricks, it was all real!" - but now you're back at step one, you are already assuming that which you want to prove.
I bet you'd find more child molesters among hackers than among priests. Just sayin'.
I doubt that, but even if it were true, you forget that priests have laid claim to the moral high ground and hackers have not. In fact, "hacker" and "pedophile" doesn't necessarily collide. One is disgusting, and it diminishes your worth as a human being, but not necessarily your capabilities or claims as a hacker. For a priest, preaching about the love of god, and teaching people how to behave and claiming that you know what is right and wrong and then raping a child does very much collide.
Or, in semantic terms, one set of attributes is within the same realm, the other is not.
Also, it takes a great deal of faith to be atheist. After all, there is no evidence that god doesn't exist. Agnostics FTW.
There is no faith in being an atheist. I do not "believe" in the non-existence of god in any sense that compares to religious faith. A-theism defines itself through the absence of a belief, not through having exchanged one god for another, or a concept. Depending on how strictly you define agnosticism, I may be an agnostic, because my view is "there is no god, that is something I am as certain about as I can reasonably be" which means there is, as with all things, a tiny, tiny, inconsequential off-chance that I'm wrong. Of roughly the same probability that gravity doesn't really exist or I'm a brain in a jar somewhere and all the world is fed into my nerves by a simulation program.
The Catholic Church as a religious organization has a long history of trying to find and understand the truth, theologically.
Which suffers from the presupposition that something like a theological truth exists in the first place. If it is all a made-up pile of crap, all that "truth-seeking" is simply mental masturbation.
I know the christian tradition likes to label the romans as the evil ones, but truth is that in matters of religion (as in many other things), the Roman Empire was very progressive. In fact, if anything can be compared to an "Open Source Religion", then it's definitely the roman gods prior to the corruption to christianity. There you had a religion where you could bring your own god and have it accepted in the next release of the upstream branch. Try doing that with christianity.
Except that the homeless dude doesn't have millions of idiots who not only believe in, but are willing to interfere with your life because of the crap he shouts.
And he probably doesn't have a few billions dedicated to inserting his crap into the laws and rules of society.
Hackers should make the church very, very afraid. We're the guys who don't accept the mantra from up high. We build our own stuff and we question things, including doctrine and even reality. We dream of a better world, but not necessarily your version of it. Most importantly, we know how to use our brains and aren't afraid of doing so.
Make a survey, and I'm sure you'll find atheism rampant among hackers, definitely at least twice the percentage as in the general public.
And our main thought regarding your gods and his son and his miracles isn't "wow, I believe!", but "I wonder how he did that and if I can copy it..."
You're definitely sucking up to the wrong people here, childfucker.
If government adjusting prices to manipulate demand is called a free market now, I wonder what the newspeak definition is for a planned economy.
Would you prefer regulation, criminalisation or government-issued cigaretes with registration and counted? Don't just compare reality to some far-out fantasy, compare it to alternative solutions.
And I don't get why some people here think that "government" is a synonym for "evil". Government is a 5000 year old invention that turns a group of people into a functioning unit. You can discuss the merits of various forms of government, and in fact that has been done pretty much ever since the concept was invented, but if you want to look at what a modern world without a functioning government looks like, look at Iraq, Ethopia or an ever-changing list of massacre-of-the-day african nations. You want a world without government? It's a flight away. Move there and stop whining.
You're right: our society says we don't want it, so that must be true, assuming you totally and completely ignore our behavior and continual attestations that we desperately want it.
That is why I use the term addition and not the terms choice, fashion or style. You can not seriously debate whether or not tobacco is addictive. One of the most expensive and high-profile court cases ever was not even fought over that fact but over whether or not it was illegally suppressed and falsely represented.
So, in essence, you are saying that the laws on child porn should be made by pedophiles, the laws on drunk driving by alcoholics and the laws on theft by kleptomanics?
But society's position on the matter, as well as its desire, is a totally different matter, and this is proven every day, when unlike the demand for buggy whips, the demand for tobacco remains.
Desire to engage in a behaviour is not the same as wanting that behaviour, as many, many addicts can attest. Do you think the crack whore wants to be a crack whore? The difference between her and the business man smoker is that smoking is legal and thus tobacco is very cheap compared to, say, heroin. And yes, I'm serious. If you think nobody would prostitute himself for a smoke, you've not read the studies that determined just how addictive nicotin is (hint: at least as badly as heroin, some say worse).
Yes, I know. This is/. we are by necessity shorter and more simplified than a full treatise of the subject should be. To be entirely correct, my chances are considerably lower (and would be even better if it weren't for passive smoking).
And that's the point.
And no, tobacco tax does not pay for that, unless in your country the healthcare system is tax funded.
One, we don't need to discuss the legality, that part is clear.
Two, "legality" is a social concept. Society defines what is legal and what isn't. Slavery is illegal today in (I think) every country on earth, but that wasn't always the case. Copyright was invented fairly recently, before that making a copy of a book was perfectly legal.
Three, as a society, we do not function according to legality - that is just the framework of rules we write down so we can resolved disputes. Ethics is not subject to legality, legality is subject to ethics. So let's discuss this from an ethical perspective:
Person A has something that is a benefit to society (precondition to getting a copyright on it, as the moral basis for copyright is the contribution to society). Person A decides to not provide this benefit to society in a way that society finds acceptable - cost, convenience, availability, etc.. Person B demonstrates that the benefit can be made available to society in an acceptable way. Large parts of society decides it prefers person Bs solution.
That's where we are right now. Legal or illegal, "right" or "wrong" aside, these are the facts.
Now person A has for a long time threatened that the benefits it produces would cease to be produced if society continues to do as it does. But so far, that threat has not come to pass. It has failed to be believable. It may be that some person A's have indeed gone away, but others have come and taken their place. The model continues to work for society as a whole.
I would be much in favor of a solution that is more fair - right now some people pay for others - those who pay cover the whole bill and those who download cover nothing. However, understanding piracy as competition shows you that large parts of society refuse the deal that is being offered. But that deal is based upon a right granted by society (copyright). That is where giving and taking is also out of balance on the supplier side.
Tobacco taxes don't pay for health insurance coverage.
What tobacco taxes are are three things: One, they pay for the externalized costs that smokers inflict on the rest of society. All those remains don't clean themselves up, for example, and if you've ever been to a train or bus station when the cleaning people have been on strike for two days, you have a rough idea of the unbelievable volume that accumulates. I never realized just how many used cigarettes get disposed there. Then there's the whole laws and regulations, someone has to pay for the lawyers and law-makers. I'm quite happy knowing that at least the anti-smoking laws pay for themselves via tobacco taxes.
Two, a high tobacco tax is one way in which society can regulate undesired behaviour. Every free market fanatic should be glowing over this "market solution" - you adjust the price and thus adjust demand. Basically, we as a society don't want smoking. I can outline in any length you want why smoking is a negative for society as a whole, or you can Google it. For this argument, simply assume that it is and see taxation as a way to regulate it because higher costs mean people smoke less.
Three, that last isn't really true and everyone knows it. Smoking is an addiction and smokers would rather go hungry than smoke less, that's just how addictions work. Granted there are light and more severe cases, so that's a general statement and there is some effect of tax raises to tobacco consumption, but it is far from 1:1. That, however, means that tobacco taxes are one of those taxes that the state can levy without driving tax income down. Raise the tax on X and people consume less X so your tax income may actually fall, oops. But a few taxes are in what is called inelastic markets, where demand is not driven by price so much as by other factors - need or addiction. Bread and other basic food isn't subject to price/demand rules simply because people have to eat. Petrol is much the same, it has a large inelastic part because people have to drive to work. And smoking and other addictions are like that as well. People simply don't smoke less because it gets more expensive, they will save the money elsewhere.
Health insurance covers risks we are subject to and have little control over. However, just like car insurance premiums depend on the type of car you drive simply because some car types are statistically more likely to crash or get broken into, so do certain life choices affect your health costs.
I don't mind helping shoulder the burden for someone who's had bad luck and serious health troubles. That's what an insurance system is for, and that guy with the bad luck could be me. I do mind paying for someone's self-inflicted lung cancer. That guy could not be me.
Piracy is just the new socially acceptable temper tantrum.
No, it isn't. Piracy is the demonstration that the content could be available right there for download, and if the content owners don't compete, then they shouldn't complain they're losing. Piracy should be seen as competition. Sure it is illegal - because of a government granted monopoly, because that's what copyright is.
Or, why don't you write a check for a price you're willing to pay per episode and send it to the company as a donation?
Because they don't provide that option. Stupid them.
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I don't remember my philosophy classes in that detail (too long ago), but I think your argument went largely out of fashion about a hundred years ago.
In a fanatical interpretation of the word, we do not "know" anything. But that is a trivial argument. The vital difference is not that only 255-255-255 is really the real white (knowledge), but that 250-250-250 (science) is not the same as 25-25-25 (faith).
It is true that both faith and science require you to stop asking at some point and say "I don't know everything, but I think what I have so far is correct". But in science this step comes very, very late, when simply current technology can't yet offer the answers or the amount of time and effort you want to spend is exhausted. In faith, on the other hand, it is pretty much item #3 or so on the list.
So, to your example: In the fanatical interpretation, I do not "know" that Columbus sailed to America. However, I can collect pretty much as much historical evidence that he did as I care to. I can likewise try to find evidence to the contrary. I can then compare them and make a judgement call. If the evidence is something like 99-1 for, then the argument the we don't "know" becomes a pure semantic.
nothing secular has the same pull as Religion and the prospect of eternal life, the prospect of seeing the deceased again, the prospect of a place without pain or suffering.
5000+ years of refining the lie does, of course, result in a highly addictive toxin. There are a couple secular advances in these directions, like the cryo stuff. But, it's not 2 AD anymore, so today we see the stuff as the blatant lies they are. What if they had had 2000 years of history, the same massive institutionalized brainwashing effort? Don't you think we would fall for any secular crap just as much if it had been hammered into our collective brains for a hundred generations?
With all this in mind, I think it is hard to say there would be "No loss" if we did away with Religion.
True. Think of all the crusades, inquisitions, jihads, suicide bombers, etc. etc. that we wouldn't have. That's a "loss" in a certain sense.
No, it is not. At it's heart, theology is about the nature of man as much (likely more) than it is about the nature of God.
Tell that to the christians. I've been telling religious people for years that all their holy books are really the equivalent of stone age psychology.
So if your argument is that "theology" is really a mislabel for "primitive psychology", then we can talk.
Science says the truth exists, whatever that truth is.
Actually, truth is a philosophical term. Modern science, AFAIK, does not aspire to truth in the philosophical sense. Its premise is to find theories that describe and allow to predict the real world.
The idea that "postulations on those truths is useless" shows no understanding of similar discussions in the areas of the philosophy of science, metaphysics, and theoretical branches of certain areas.
My argument isn't that postulations on those truths are useless. It is that the word "truth" is meaningless in the context of theology.
No, just that truth itself exists.
You wouldn't research theological truth if you were interested in truth. Why qualify it before you start? That already puts a spin on it right there. If you are interested in truth, then research truth and not "theological truth".
However, a number of scientists decided they didn't really want anything to do with religion
You make it sound like a personal preference. But what do you do when you go looking for the creator, and everywhere you look, he is nowhere to be found? Sooner or later, if you are a scientist, or even if you are just a truth-seeker, you have to question whether your initial assumption holds up to the evidence you've uncovered.
And the evidence regarding how the world works fills libraries. But there is not a single page about the imaginary friend in there.
And that's why faith doesn't have anything in common with truth.
Good point, yes.
Now demonstrate where theology provides a useful system for reasoning about real-world things. ;-)
Someone gives you a complement and you still insult them.
Did you get lost in the threading? I don't see how the GP that I replied to gave me a compliment. He was talking about how the church did such a great job at researching "theological truth".
I used to think about art (which includes literature) that way as well, many years ago.
Then I realized that art has a place in this world, and a purpose. Religion, on the other hand, you could do away and there'd be no loss. Sure people need to believe in something - but there's no reason that something needs to be a religion. For many people, a political view, a philosophy or even their local sports club serves just as well.
But art gives us beauty. Art gives us something that speaks to us in ways we can not describe. It may be that science has not yet progressed that far, or it may be that beauty exists only if you do not cut it into small, researchable and well-defined pieces.
And our minds want beauty. It is different for each of us. For me, for example, despite all the coding, and cryptography and analytical stuff I do in my life, a forest is something I long for every once in a while. So pictures that capture that tranquility "speak" to me in a way that a line of code, no matter how beautiful in its own way, never can.
The many worlds theory, however, does not stand on its own(*) and it does not want you to live your life according to its postulates.
(*) it's the philosophical attempt to explain massively proven mathematics
Haha, not at all.
I am quite familiar with truth that can only be verified internally. Your entire internal mindscape belongs into that category. You can tell someone else what you dream, or fear, or like, but the real thing is always inside of you and only inside of you. Right now, we can't even measure it (and measuring electronic patterns in the brain is not the same as measuring an emotion).
But we don't even have to go that far. We don't even have to decide if theology as a whole is hogwash or not. We only need to pose the question what if?.
The question that believers really don't like to have asked. What if you're wrong? Not in the details, but in the basic assumption?
The question has been asked to Dawkins, and he had a great answer to it. I've yet to hear an answer to that same question from a believer that is even in the same class, intellectually.
Yes, it does. But not half as much as institutionalised international child abuse discredits an organisation that claims a monopoly on right and wrong for itself.
True religion has absolutely nothing to fear from people who question things. Go ahead and wonder how Jesus did what he did, and try to imagine how you could copy it. Jesus' signs and works were given precisely so you would believe that he was really, truly God's son, because no one else could have done what he did.
Unfortunately to that POV, the reports in the bible have been extensively researched by many factions. And any of them who are not religiously motivated come to roughly the same conclusion: It's a badly cobbled together mixture of folk lores.
Even the historic facts don't check out. Now tell me why I should "believe" in some miracle described in some book that can't even get birth and death dates of important historical people right?
You figure out how to do any of those, you let me know how that works out.
That was easy, I thought you'd come up with something challenging.
First, dump the presupposition that these things were magically accomplished, or miracles, because you can't claim them as evidence if your chain of reasoning starts out with what you want to prove, right?
So what I need to do is recreate that which reportedly happened, i.e. do something that will be reported in the same way. Or rather, would be if it were 2000 years ago and not today. I'm sure a single mobile phone with video recording back then and we wouldn't have a christian religion.
When you put it this way, any halfway competent stage magician can easily duplicate these feats and more.
"Wait!" I hear you say. "he didn't do any tricks, it was all real!" - but now you're back at step one, you are already assuming that which you want to prove.
I bet you'd find more child molesters among hackers than among priests. Just sayin'.
I doubt that, but even if it were true, you forget that priests have laid claim to the moral high ground and hackers have not. In fact, "hacker" and "pedophile" doesn't necessarily collide. One is disgusting, and it diminishes your worth as a human being, but not necessarily your capabilities or claims as a hacker. For a priest, preaching about the love of god, and teaching people how to behave and claiming that you know what is right and wrong and then raping a child does very much collide.
Or, in semantic terms, one set of attributes is within the same realm, the other is not.
Also, it takes a great deal of faith to be atheist. After all, there is no evidence that god doesn't exist. Agnostics FTW.
There is no faith in being an atheist. I do not "believe" in the non-existence of god in any sense that compares to religious faith. A-theism defines itself through the absence of a belief, not through having exchanged one god for another, or a concept.
Depending on how strictly you define agnosticism, I may be an agnostic, because my view is "there is no god, that is something I am as certain about as I can reasonably be" which means there is, as with all things, a tiny, tiny, inconsequential off-chance that I'm wrong. Of roughly the same probability that gravity doesn't really exist or I'm a brain in a jar somewhere and all the world is fed into my nerves by a simulation program.
I don't know, you tell me - does everyone who supports something have to have the same reason to do so?
The Catholic Church as a religious organization has a long history of trying to find and understand the truth, theologically.
Which suffers from the presupposition that something like a theological truth exists in the first place. If it is all a made-up pile of crap, all that "truth-seeking" is simply mental masturbation.
I know the christian tradition likes to label the romans as the evil ones, but truth is that in matters of religion (as in many other things), the Roman Empire was very progressive. In fact, if anything can be compared to an "Open Source Religion", then it's definitely the roman gods prior to the corruption to christianity. There you had a religion where you could bring your own god and have it accepted in the next release of the upstream branch. Try doing that with christianity.
Except that the homeless dude doesn't have millions of idiots who not only believe in, but are willing to interfere with your life because of the crap he shouts.
And he probably doesn't have a few billions dedicated to inserting his crap into the laws and rules of society.
Still, I'm pleased to see that the Catholic Church is not virulently anti-Internet,
Of course not! After all, as our politicians tells us all the time, the Internet is great for finding child porn.
He has got no idea what he's saying there.
Hackers should make the church very, very afraid. We're the guys who don't accept the mantra from up high. We build our own stuff and we question things, including doctrine and even reality. We dream of a better world, but not necessarily your version of it. Most importantly, we know how to use our brains and aren't afraid of doing so.
Make a survey, and I'm sure you'll find atheism rampant among hackers, definitely at least twice the percentage as in the general public.
And our main thought regarding your gods and his son and his miracles isn't "wow, I believe!", but "I wonder how he did that and if I can copy it..."
You're definitely sucking up to the wrong people here, childfucker.
If government adjusting prices to manipulate demand is called a free market now, I wonder what the newspeak definition is for a planned economy.
Would you prefer regulation, criminalisation or government-issued cigaretes with registration and counted? Don't just compare reality to some far-out fantasy, compare it to alternative solutions.
And I don't get why some people here think that "government" is a synonym for "evil". Government is a 5000 year old invention that turns a group of people into a functioning unit. You can discuss the merits of various forms of government, and in fact that has been done pretty much ever since the concept was invented, but if you want to look at what a modern world without a functioning government looks like, look at Iraq, Ethopia or an ever-changing list of massacre-of-the-day african nations.
You want a world without government? It's a flight away. Move there and stop whining.
You're right: our society says we don't want it, so that must be true, assuming you totally and completely ignore our behavior and continual attestations that we desperately want it.
That is why I use the term addition and not the terms choice, fashion or style. You can not seriously debate whether or not tobacco is addictive. One of the most expensive and high-profile court cases ever was not even fought over that fact but over whether or not it was illegally suppressed and falsely represented.
So, in essence, you are saying that the laws on child porn should be made by pedophiles, the laws on drunk driving by alcoholics and the laws on theft by kleptomanics?
But society's position on the matter, as well as its desire, is a totally different matter, and this is proven every day, when unlike the demand for buggy whips, the demand for tobacco remains.
Desire to engage in a behaviour is not the same as wanting that behaviour, as many, many addicts can attest. Do you think the crack whore wants to be a crack whore? The difference between her and the business man smoker is that smoking is legal and thus tobacco is very cheap compared to, say, heroin. And yes, I'm serious. If you think nobody would prostitute himself for a smoke, you've not read the studies that determined just how addictive nicotin is (hint: at least as badly as heroin, some say worse).
sure it could.
Yes, I know. This is /. we are by necessity shorter and more simplified than a full treatise of the subject should be. To be entirely correct, my chances are considerably lower (and would be even better if it weren't for passive smoking).
And that's the point.
And no, tobacco tax does not pay for that, unless in your country the healthcare system is tax funded.
One, we don't need to discuss the legality, that part is clear.
Two, "legality" is a social concept. Society defines what is legal and what isn't. Slavery is illegal today in (I think) every country on earth, but that wasn't always the case. Copyright was invented fairly recently, before that making a copy of a book was perfectly legal.
Three, as a society, we do not function according to legality - that is just the framework of rules we write down so we can resolved disputes. Ethics is not subject to legality, legality is subject to ethics. So let's discuss this from an ethical perspective:
Person A has something that is a benefit to society (precondition to getting a copyright on it, as the moral basis for copyright is the contribution to society). Person A decides to not provide this benefit to society in a way that society finds acceptable - cost, convenience, availability, etc.. Person B demonstrates that the benefit can be made available to society in an acceptable way. Large parts of society decides it prefers person Bs solution.
That's where we are right now. Legal or illegal, "right" or "wrong" aside, these are the facts.
Now person A has for a long time threatened that the benefits it produces would cease to be produced if society continues to do as it does. But so far, that threat has not come to pass. It has failed to be believable. It may be that some person A's have indeed gone away, but others have come and taken their place. The model continues to work for society as a whole.
I would be much in favor of a solution that is more fair - right now some people pay for others - those who pay cover the whole bill and those who download cover nothing. However, understanding piracy as competition shows you that large parts of society refuse the deal that is being offered. But that deal is based upon a right granted by society (copyright). That is where giving and taking is also out of balance on the supplier side.
Tobacco taxes don't pay for health insurance coverage.
What tobacco taxes are are three things:
One, they pay for the externalized costs that smokers inflict on the rest of society. All those remains don't clean themselves up, for example, and if you've ever been to a train or bus station when the cleaning people have been on strike for two days, you have a rough idea of the unbelievable volume that accumulates. I never realized just how many used cigarettes get disposed there.
Then there's the whole laws and regulations, someone has to pay for the lawyers and law-makers. I'm quite happy knowing that at least the anti-smoking laws pay for themselves via tobacco taxes.
Two, a high tobacco tax is one way in which society can regulate undesired behaviour. Every free market fanatic should be glowing over this "market solution" - you adjust the price and thus adjust demand. Basically, we as a society don't want smoking. I can outline in any length you want why smoking is a negative for society as a whole, or you can Google it. For this argument, simply assume that it is and see taxation as a way to regulate it because higher costs mean people smoke less.
Three, that last isn't really true and everyone knows it. Smoking is an addiction and smokers would rather go hungry than smoke less, that's just how addictions work. Granted there are light and more severe cases, so that's a general statement and there is some effect of tax raises to tobacco consumption, but it is far from 1:1. That, however, means that tobacco taxes are one of those taxes that the state can levy without driving tax income down. Raise the tax on X and people consume less X so your tax income may actually fall, oops. But a few taxes are in what is called inelastic markets, where demand is not driven by price so much as by other factors - need or addiction. Bread and other basic food isn't subject to price/demand rules simply because people have to eat. Petrol is much the same, it has a large inelastic part because people have to drive to work. And smoking and other addictions are like that as well. People simply don't smoke less because it gets more expensive, they will save the money elsewhere.
count me as "in favor".
Health insurance covers risks we are subject to and have little control over. However, just like car insurance premiums depend on the type of car you drive simply because some car types are statistically more likely to crash or get broken into, so do certain life choices affect your health costs.
I don't mind helping shoulder the burden for someone who's had bad luck and serious health troubles. That's what an insurance system is for, and that guy with the bad luck could be me.
I do mind paying for someone's self-inflicted lung cancer. That guy could not be me.
Piracy is just the new socially acceptable temper tantrum.
No, it isn't. Piracy is the demonstration that the content could be available right there for download, and if the content owners don't compete, then they shouldn't complain they're losing. Piracy should be seen as competition.
Sure it is illegal - because of a government granted monopoly, because that's what copyright is.
Or, why don't you write a check for a price you're willing to pay per episode and send it to the company as a donation?
Because they don't provide that option. Stupid them.