Oh, ok, for a moment there I thought this was the "highest percentage of population in jail when they didn't do anything wrong other than speaking up against the government" contest. Apparently I was wrong. You were. There were no such rules outlined when the contest started, and changing the rules as you go so you're always right doesn't count.
Yes, China probably jails a lot of people for being government-critics. Then again, every country defines its own arbitrary crimes. In the US it's the "war on drugs" that has quite a massive opposition and several studies indicating that it is very strongly biased against certain demographic groups. Also lots of studies showing its net effect on drugs is close to zero.
And, quite frankly, when you have a considerable percentage of your population behind jail bars, does it really matter that much what they were jailed for? Something is wrong there.
You can criticise a lot of things about China, but if you're american then saying "they put so many people behind bars" is a dumb thing to say because your own country beats them at that game.
At the very least you need to be a lot more specific.
Excellent choice of words there. "childish" is perfectly adequate. "God" is of the same order of things as Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and the easter bunny.
Except I don't know anyone murdered or tortured in the name of the easter bunny, and I'm not aware of anyone blowing himself up to honour the tooth fairy.
having once believed, you start to have doubts, which eventually turn into disbelief. That's a very friendly way of putting it, on course with what the various religions bash into our heads: That not believing in their bullshit is a kind of "fall from grace", that it has to do with "doubt" and "disbelief".
I'm not sorry, and I'm not buying it. You don't call the sane people "dis-paranoid", or "un-shizophrenic".
We don't "doubt". I "doubt" the christian god about as much as I "doubt" the flying spagetti monster, invisible pink elephants and moon-cheese. It's not a matter of "doubt", which is a negatively-loaded word and implies that there is some truth that could be believed. But in fact there's only a load of made-up bullshit. Not believing every shit someone came up with while on drugs isn't properly expressed with the word "doubt", and using that word indicates a tendency already.
They still fall on the first test of science, even if they try to cover themselves in a science jacket the way a wolf hides in a sheep's skin: Their primary assumption ("there is a god according to our specifications") is not only un-tested, it's also non-falsifiable, and as such, unscientific.
Logic 101 tells us that if you start with a wrong assumption, every conclusion you derive from it is worse then false, it's meaningless.
Personally, I think these are just old men struggling to keep their empire up and running, like the RIAA or MPAA. They'll do anything to justify their faith, no matter what. And that's their second failure: They don't allow the option that they're completely wrong. Hitchins is right, the only question you need to ask anyone of any religious faith is: "What would it take for you to say 'I'm wrong, there is no god'?". If the answer is - as it usually will be - an elaborate wiggling around that ultimately ends in "nothing can convince me of that", just in more cautious words, you can stop discussing with that guy, because it's pointless.
You completely ignored my point on the first argument, that's not an honest way to have a discussion.
You are right on the second point, people don't alway put their money on what they value. If that was news to you, I feel sorry for you.
And I very much challenge your assumption that money is the better democracy. It isn't. The idea that markets can solve everything and a market mechanic always provides the best answer to everything has been refuted decades ago. If it were true, we would buy our friends, instead of making them, for example.
There are two kinds of "censorship", if you allow to take the term a little losely.
One is the government-forbids-publication kind. That's what we usually associate with the word. That's what the eastern european and russian communist countries tried.
But the other kind is the drown-in-the-noise kind. That kind is very active in the west. Unpopular political decisions are regularily scheduled to be just prior to some big media event (superbowl or whatever) so that they get drowned out. Some of the most successful politicians have extremely close ties to the media so they can request a specific amount of media coverage "between friends". An example: Germany's long-time chanellor Kohl had a huge problem years ago regarding illegal money he collected for his party. He probably should've gone to jail, though I don't know the legal details. Surprisingly little media coverage, even though it was the largest affair of its kind ever in western Germany's history. This week, he married again (his first wife died a couple years ago). It was a very small affair. Very small. He didn't even invite his sons. He did invite the two most influential figures of Germany's media industry.
Coincidence? Your call. But if you think that media in the west is entirely neutral, unbiased and reports everything they should, then I have a few bridges for sale.
-1, factually incorrect. People aren't being rounded up and sent to Gitmo because they disagree with American policy. Correct (as far as we know).
They are being sent there because they were captured as illegal combatants and/or provided support to a terrorist orginization. But here's the problem. "illegal combatants" is an arbitrarily defined term invented by the very government that does the jailing for it. Likewise, "terrorist organization" is an arbitrary term that doesn't even have an official definition. I'm pretty sure I know at least one reason why: It would be awfully hard to find a definition that would not include the CIA, Mossad or other "friendly services".
So in summary, arbitray foreign people are sent to Gitmo for arbitrary reasons. That's slightly better than for speaking out against the government, but only very slightly, and only because of the "foreign" in there.
Everyone someone makes jokes about China and jails, I feel this urge to point out that the USA actually has a higher percentage of its population in jail than any other country in the world, including China.
Also, very likely no other country has such a race-biased jail population.
I sincerely hope you're not american, otherwise that was the dumbest comment you ever made on/.
When people are raised in a certain way, they think a certain way. Often, children in abusive households become abusive themselves... You got any evidence for that claim? I know a couple of people who were beaten and abused in every way except the sexual one (and a few who were even in that), and none of them have become abusive. I've not read a single study that claims a strong correlation. There are correlations to other things such as depression, low self-esteem, eating disorders and lots and lots of other stuff, but from all I know, abused children are not any more or less likely to be abusive parents then everyone else.
Someone smart once said that every sentence that includes an all-quantor ("all", "everyone", "never", "nobody", etc.) is by definition false.
Your claim is one of those cases. You seriously claim that one billion(!) people's wishes don't matter as long as one(!) person wants it differently. In that general form, this probably qualifies you as an insane person, in the medical sense.
The discussion, in endless variations, is about as old as China, which means a few thousand years. We have extensive texts of greek philosophers trying to solve it, usually in the guise of the "murder of a tyrant" question. The end result is that the best thinkers of the world have tried themselves on the question for millenia, and failed to find an answer that satisfies everyone.
For some reason, I just don't think that long-awaited answer will be found in a three-line slashdot comment.
Interesting to read all the "this can't be true" comments. In painstaking detail every possible flaw of the study is pointed out.
But what if?
What if there is not flaw, not oppression, no faking?
Are you living in denial? Denial that other people elsewhere actually might believe different things? Can you allow other people to have different values and priorities? When the french value honesty over oil, america runs a huge campaign against them. But compared to many asian and african cultures, the differences between french and american culture is tiny.
It's not unbelievable that the study could simply - you know - true.
But the line isn't cut that clearly between black and white.
For example, my mother converted from catholicism to protestantism. That fact is dully noted in my birth certificate. Why? From what I heard, this will make it more difficult for me should I ever want to marry or get other service in a catholic church. In other words: While it's not the same as re-education, they certainly actively discourage you from leaving, even going through your children.
It's not really a problem, I didn't marry in a church at all and they can shove their whole god nonsense where the sun don't shine, but it does irk my mother and her entire arm of the family isn't too pleased. There is certainly some soft force at work.
The reason that it's called "gagging" is that while copyright might be the law applied here, the use of it is not what the law was intended for.
The problem the mor(m)ons have is not that someone else publishing the material somehow disturbs their sales, business model, or the compensation of the author. They just don't want the stuff published externally at all. So they use copyright in order to keep a secret. But copyright wasn't created to protect secrets, it was created to allow you to distribute something without everyone else making a copy for free or cheap.
Now there's a load of assumptions between the lines there.
One, you assume it's customers who decide which shops stay and which shops go. It isn't. A large enough company can sell for less than the small shop next door, while at the same time making more profit due to scale, better deals with suppliers, etc.
You assume that "like" is the same as "buy from". It doesn't have to be.
You assume that money is the only currency that matters, but on the scale of society, there are a whole lot of other things that matter, too. Otherwise we wouldn't have art, education, friendship or anything else that makes up culture.
You assume that low prices was what the small shops could not cope with, but do you have evidence? I don't know what exactly it was, but knowing the business a little bit I can imagine a whole lot of other reasons, such as the convenience of online shopping, the amount of books you have available right now (many potential customers do not come back if you don't have a book today, but can have it tomorrow), or simply the size of your store (there's more browsing going on in a bookstore than in virtually any other shop). And some of those factors may very well fall on the "like" side, while they fail on the "money" side.
Finally, you assume that the government does something for no reason. I haven't heard of protests, maybe the government did exactly what the people wanted?
I'd rather suggest that it's a selection bias. Among young people, TV is a lot less common than among older people, who often use it instead of social contacts (who are either dead or old and not very mobile themselves).
Lots of young people don't even have a TV anymore. It's definitely a pattern. Far from a majority, but while in our parents generation a TV simply was part of every home, in our generation you're not looked at funny anymore when you say you don't have a TV. It's not a big deal, because it's fairly common.
So, the study group self-selects. Those who have a DVR have a TV as well. First link. Those who have a TV aren't simply "everyone", but those who more or less decided to have a TV. Second link. Why do you decide to get a TV in an age where half of the program is ads? Because you don't care much about that. Third link. If you don't care much about ads, you don't expend much energy to skip them. And that's what the study has shown. Any correlation to age probably goes more through this self-selection than through any other age-related attribute.
Next to you is the body of one of your children, below you is your other child, who is suffering yet refuses to die. This is China. They've had a "one child" policy for decades, your scenario is unlikely. Yeah, human misery and all that. But beyond all the soft and jesus-loves-you-all bullshit you can deny, but not undo the facts. One fact is that 10,000 people simply don't matter, globally. We are over 6.5 billion. 10,000 is about 0.00015% of us.
And yes, I realize that 10,000 is still 10,000 times me alone.
Yes, we have ideals of freedom and sharing and all. It is still stupid to allow someone in who you know is hostile and who has a long track record of fucking over former business partners. It is just dumb.
Probably. However, some of that land that is not currently a field is still not sustainably arable.
For example, you need forests, marchlands, etc. to sustain the overal ecological system. Taking down all the forests to convert the land into fields will result in massive changes all around. From winds (= erosion) to the animals living in the area. Which in turn affects the crops. For example, the forest might be necessary for some predators who protect your field from rodents which would otherwise eat everything.
Other parts look arable at first glance, but aren't in the long run. The rain forest is a great example - if you cut it down you sure get fields. But after just a few years the ground has lost most of its fertility.
Do people realize just how much arable land is not in use? Do you realize that using all the arable land will also mean that within a few generations they won't be arable anymore? We are already overfishing all the oceans, and burning the rain forest. All three of these have in common that while they can help us sustain more people, they aren't long-term options.
On the other hand, most people are sloppy with backups for their personal machines. Which is why Apple did a great thing with Time Machine. That's exactly the kind of stuff you need for home users: A total nobrainer, invisible, transparent, automatic. And it allows you to restore only the one file you need, not do a full rollback.
The problem is that MS has stopped thinking about "advantage for the user" at least 10 years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, China probably jails a lot of people for being government-critics.
Then again, every country defines its own arbitrary crimes. In the US it's the "war on drugs" that has quite a massive opposition and several studies indicating that it is very strongly biased against certain demographic groups. Also lots of studies showing its net effect on drugs is close to zero.
And, quite frankly, when you have a considerable percentage of your population behind jail bars, does it really matter that much what they were jailed for? Something is wrong there.
You can criticise a lot of things about China, but if you're american then saying "they put so many people behind bars" is a dumb thing to say because your own country beats them at that game.
At the very least you need to be a lot more specific.
One, I'm not amerian, but we can ignore that for this argument.
No, you can't have my diary or private pictures. But the reason I'd give for that is privacy, not copyright.
Excellent choice of words there. "childish" is perfectly adequate. "God" is of the same order of things as Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and the easter bunny.
Except I don't know anyone murdered or tortured in the name of the easter bunny, and I'm not aware of anyone blowing himself up to honour the tooth fairy.
I'm not sorry, and I'm not buying it. You don't call the sane people "dis-paranoid", or "un-shizophrenic".
We don't "doubt". I "doubt" the christian god about as much as I "doubt" the flying spagetti monster, invisible pink elephants and moon-cheese. It's not a matter of "doubt", which is a negatively-loaded word and implies that there is some truth that could be believed. But in fact there's only a load of made-up bullshit. Not believing every shit someone came up with while on drugs isn't properly expressed with the word "doubt", and using that word indicates a tendency already.
They still fall on the first test of science, even if they try to cover themselves in a science jacket the way a wolf hides in a sheep's skin: Their primary assumption ("there is a god according to our specifications") is not only un-tested, it's also non-falsifiable, and as such, unscientific.
Logic 101 tells us that if you start with a wrong assumption, every conclusion you derive from it is worse then false, it's meaningless.
Personally, I think these are just old men struggling to keep their empire up and running, like the RIAA or MPAA. They'll do anything to justify their faith, no matter what. And that's their second failure: They don't allow the option that they're completely wrong. Hitchins is right, the only question you need to ask anyone of any religious faith is: "What would it take for you to say 'I'm wrong, there is no god'?". If the answer is - as it usually will be - an elaborate wiggling around that ultimately ends in "nothing can convince me of that", just in more cautious words, you can stop discussing with that guy, because it's pointless.
If you argue along that route, you're going 100mph down a dead end.
You quoted quite selectively. That sentence has an interesting beginning:
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts..."
Now I'm looking really forward to the argument that explains how Mormonism is either a science or a useful art...
You completely ignored my point on the first argument, that's not an honest way to have a discussion.
You are right on the second point, people don't alway put their money on what they value. If that was news to you, I feel sorry for you.
And I very much challenge your assumption that money is the better democracy. It isn't. The idea that markets can solve everything and a market mechanic always provides the best answer to everything has been refuted decades ago. If it were true, we would buy our friends, instead of making them, for example.
There are two kinds of "censorship", if you allow to take the term a little losely.
One is the government-forbids-publication kind. That's what we usually associate with the word. That's what the eastern european and russian communist countries tried.
But the other kind is the drown-in-the-noise kind. That kind is very active in the west. Unpopular political decisions are regularily scheduled to be just prior to some big media event (superbowl or whatever) so that they get drowned out. Some of the most successful politicians have extremely close ties to the media so they can request a specific amount of media coverage "between friends". An example: Germany's long-time chanellor Kohl had a huge problem years ago regarding illegal money he collected for his party. He probably should've gone to jail, though I don't know the legal details. Surprisingly little media coverage, even though it was the largest affair of its kind ever in western Germany's history. This week, he married again (his first wife died a couple years ago). It was a very small affair. Very small. He didn't even invite his sons. He did invite the two most influential figures of Germany's media industry.
Coincidence? Your call. But if you think that media in the west is entirely neutral, unbiased and reports everything they should, then I have a few bridges for sale.
"illegal combatants" is an arbitrarily defined term invented by the very government that does the jailing for it. Likewise, "terrorist organization" is an arbitrary term that doesn't even have an official definition. I'm pretty sure I know at least one reason why: It would be awfully hard to find a definition that would not include the CIA, Mossad or other "friendly services".
So in summary, arbitray foreign people are sent to Gitmo for arbitrary reasons. That's slightly better than for speaking out against the government, but only very slightly, and only because of the "foreign" in there.
Everyone someone makes jokes about China and jails, I feel this urge to point out that the USA actually has a higher percentage of its population in jail than any other country in the world, including China.
/.
Also, very likely no other country has such a race-biased jail population.
I sincerely hope you're not american, otherwise that was the dumbest comment you ever made on
Someone smart once said that every sentence that includes an all-quantor ("all", "everyone", "never", "nobody", etc.) is by definition false.
Your claim is one of those cases. You seriously claim that one billion(!) people's wishes don't matter as long as one(!) person wants it differently. In that general form, this probably qualifies you as an insane person, in the medical sense.
The discussion, in endless variations, is about as old as China, which means a few thousand years. We have extensive texts of greek philosophers trying to solve it, usually in the guise of the "murder of a tyrant" question. The end result is that the best thinkers of the world have tried themselves on the question for millenia, and failed to find an answer that satisfies everyone.
For some reason, I just don't think that long-awaited answer will be found in a three-line slashdot comment.
Interesting to read all the "this can't be true" comments. In painstaking detail every possible flaw of the study is pointed out.
But what if?
What if there is not flaw, not oppression, no faking?
Are you living in denial? Denial that other people elsewhere actually might believe different things? Can you allow other people to have different values and priorities? When the french value honesty over oil, america runs a huge campaign against them. But compared to many asian and african cultures, the differences between french and american culture is tiny.
It's not unbelievable that the study could simply - you know - true.
But the line isn't cut that clearly between black and white.
For example, my mother converted from catholicism to protestantism. That fact is dully noted in my birth certificate. Why? From what I heard, this will make it more difficult for me should I ever want to marry or get other service in a catholic church. In other words: While it's not the same as re-education, they certainly actively discourage you from leaving, even going through your children.
It's not really a problem, I didn't marry in a church at all and they can shove their whole god nonsense where the sun don't shine, but it does irk my mother and her entire arm of the family isn't too pleased. There is certainly some soft force at work.
The reason that it's called "gagging" is that while copyright might be the law applied here, the use of it is not what the law was intended for.
The problem the mor(m)ons have is not that someone else publishing the material somehow disturbs their sales, business model, or the compensation of the author. They just don't want the stuff published externally at all. So they use copyright in order to keep a secret. But copyright wasn't created to protect secrets, it was created to allow you to distribute something without everyone else making a copy for free or cheap.
Now there's a load of assumptions between the lines there.
One, you assume it's customers who decide which shops stay and which shops go. It isn't. A large enough company can sell for less than the small shop next door, while at the same time making more profit due to scale, better deals with suppliers, etc.
You assume that "like" is the same as "buy from". It doesn't have to be.
You assume that money is the only currency that matters, but on the scale of society, there are a whole lot of other things that matter, too. Otherwise we wouldn't have art, education, friendship or anything else that makes up culture.
You assume that low prices was what the small shops could not cope with, but do you have evidence? I don't know what exactly it was, but knowing the business a little bit I can imagine a whole lot of other reasons, such as the convenience of online shopping, the amount of books you have available right now (many potential customers do not come back if you don't have a book today, but can have it tomorrow), or simply the size of your store (there's more browsing going on in a bookstore than in virtually any other shop).
And some of those factors may very well fall on the "like" side, while they fail on the "money" side.
Finally, you assume that the government does something for no reason. I haven't heard of protests, maybe the government did exactly what the people wanted?
Note that this is from 2004.
We have 2008.
Interest alone on that sum is somewhere around 200 million Euros.
I'd rather suggest that it's a selection bias. Among young people, TV is a lot less common than among older people, who often use it instead of social contacts (who are either dead or old and not very mobile themselves).
Lots of young people don't even have a TV anymore. It's definitely a pattern. Far from a majority, but while in our parents generation a TV simply was part of every home, in our generation you're not looked at funny anymore when you say you don't have a TV. It's not a big deal, because it's fairly common.
So, the study group self-selects. Those who have a DVR have a TV as well. First link. Those who have a TV aren't simply "everyone", but those who more or less decided to have a TV. Second link. Why do you decide to get a TV in an age where half of the program is ads? Because you don't care much about that. Third link. If you don't care much about ads, you don't expend much energy to skip them. And that's what the study has shown. Any correlation to age probably goes more through this self-selection than through any other age-related attribute.
Actually, it's more general than that. I'd phrase it roughly as "don't fucking mess with crypto if you aren't a cryptographer".
And yes, I realize that 10,000 is still 10,000 times me alone.
I've always considered it dumb to play with MS.
Yes, we have ideals of freedom and sharing and all. It is still stupid to allow someone in who you know is hostile and who has a long track record of fucking over former business partners. It is just dumb.
Probably. However, some of that land that is not currently a field is still not sustainably arable.
For example, you need forests, marchlands, etc. to sustain the overal ecological system. Taking down all the forests to convert the land into fields will result in massive changes all around. From winds (= erosion) to the animals living in the area. Which in turn affects the crops. For example, the forest might be necessary for some predators who protect your field from rodents which would otherwise eat everything.
Other parts look arable at first glance, but aren't in the long run. The rain forest is a great example - if you cut it down you sure get fields. But after just a few years the ground has lost most of its fertility.
One step in all those old rotation schemes is not using the land. The european method was two seasons of use, one season bare.
The problem is that MS has stopped thinking about "advantage for the user" at least 10 years ago.