You seem to be of the opinion that anyone can competently lead. I do not believe this to be the case. Imagine your lottery picks some jobless guy with mental issues. How about racists or extremists that will make next four years hell for some people they don't like? How about selfish "screw everyone as long as I get rich" types?
OK, we need to now sort the people into electable/not electable. The criteria would already be a thorny issue. How do you judge competence for such a position? If you seek experience of leadership, this will effectively swing the balance to already rich and powerful.
Even if you get a good, intelligent, charismatic, altruistic leader: After four years the next one most likely will undo or heavily modify the policies set. After all each leader wants to leave a mark, especially if he/she cares about some specific issue. No controversial, but necessary public project will last longer than four years!
This four years thing is already an issue in this day: Why should the leader ever care about long term if he will be long gone by then.
I am sure there are other problems, but I do not have any answers or ideas. Social structure, fairness (both short and long term) and ethics are so complex. Especially since every single actor in the system is inherently selfish and greedy.
What if I suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder and that other fucker stole my wallet and hid it where only he knows where it is? Are you saying I can't sue the bastard?
Well the thread is completely shifted to religion now. Once again: It is not that simple. But it is an interesting topic.
Doing a google search on this is worthless: Every link is biased one way or another. It is either a religious preaching site or an atheism preaching site. Quite annoying how militant people are regarding this topic.
In my opinion a religious man would be much more scared of death, because then according to his beliefs he will be judged. And if his choices and behavior in life were not good enough, (At least in Christianity) he will be condemned to eternity of suffering.
Do you feel anxious before an exam or an interview? Now think about about life in the scope of following the religious teachings: It is impossible to follow it to perfection and no way to tell what will be held more harshly. So one is never sure if he/she would pass. Especially when you don't know when you actually die.
Now for atheist it is much simpler: Oblivion. After you are dead, there is nothing else. You just cease to exist. It is sometimes insightful to ponder non-existence before existential despair begins creeping in.
While this seems scary, the atheist is free from worrying about being stuck in a fate-worse-than-death. Death itself is scary on its own (Mostly because it is rarely clean and quick. By definition there is no pain afterwards, but quite a bit just before), but after that there is a guarantee of no more suffering.
Thats it? You look at the number of wars and based on that number you came up with such a far-reaching conclusion?! Don't you think that is just plain stretching it?
People who are afraid of dying generally avoid going to war.
Do you honestly think it is that simple?!
Everyone is afraid of death: No matter the nationality or social status. But you may not have a choice.
Majority of conflicts in Africa are civil wars. They are not fought because "They are not afraid to die, so they just go and kill each other". Every conflict is different and complex. Civil war in Darfur resulted from government segregating non-Arab population. Civil war in Somalia is so complex that I don't think anyone understands an exact cause.
To say that "Africans are not afraid of death" because they are suffering through internal conflicts is dismissive, ignorant and downright inhumane.
I have traveled to South Africa often and have friends and colleagues that were born and live there. Although the subject never came up, I do not believe they are any less afraid than myself.
This proprietary vendor lock-in is a crime against society
Could you please explain how propriety vendor lock in is a crime?
At the end of the day, you need to get stuff done. If the propriety vendor got a monopoly on the easiest/fastest/most convenient ways of doing things, then it would be wasteful to spend time/money on ways to resist it. This is a case for Microsoft Office before the triumph of various other office packages that came along. When majority of your correspondents use Office, why would you spend the extra time making your documents in something else? You will waste their time as well trying to read it. Worse, you are creating barriers to the communication.
Now you may have a point about information loss: Proprietary formats go obsolete and the old documents may be un-openable. However, I will argue that if you are ready to pay, there will always be someone that will take the job to reverse-engineer any format and write a converter to a more modern version.
Then the people in the US that were at some point responsible for that server will need to fly over to Dublin and get it. Otherwise they will be held liable.
The corollary here is that intelligence isn't always an advantage. Or else all chimps would have evolved human class intelligence.
In my opinion, intelligence is always an advantage and the more the better. It is just that the random changes of natural selection did not favour the chimps. They were lucky enough to get enough intelligence to be fairly high up on the food chain. Evolution is not guided and does not get the best result.
Intelligence does not increase your reproductive fitness past some baseline number, as a result we see regression to the mean.
I disagree.
Intelligence has improved out survival to such a degree, that you don't need to reproduce as much as an average bear to successfully pass on your genes.
Survival is not just about fucking more. As a matter of fact, having 5 children is counter-productive because they consume so much resources and require so much care. If your one child survives into adulthood, finds a mate and successfully breeds, then your evolutionary duty is done. Any more and you are introducing stress on to the environment to the detriment of your offspring. If you notice driven, successful people tend to not have any issues with passing on their genes.
Contrast it to your example of a bear: They need to breed more often, because that intelligent, top-of-the-foodchain predator might shoot and skin your offspring before he/she gets a chance to pass the genes further. No matter how successful the bear is, it is just a matter of pure luck whether it will come across a bloodthirsty hairless ape or not.
Compare the numbers: There are much more humans in the world than bears.
If one of the results of autism is the ability to focus and think and solve problems and acquire a deeper understanding of things, then at least that aspect of autism would definitely be something to brag about.
That part is certainly good and you can brag about it. Problem is that it does not help much in the real world.
In the real corporate world you can get by with average solving capability, but good social competence will take you very far. Getting a job is all about being able to sell yourself. Finding a job is all about who you know. Keeping a job is all about image and keeping right people happy and informed. This is the office politics part in a nutshell. If you don't play, you lose.
Even without other debilitating symptoms of autism, this keeps the sufferer from having a successful career. It also has impact on finding a relationship. Overall the negatives outweigh the positives of extraordinary analytical and focus abilities.
However, I am sacrificing a goat every solstice to stop it from happening. Would be nice if you ungrateful louts would thank me now and again for preventing your fiery demise!
Had to switch to sheep recently since logistical problems were encountered. Guess Ra doesn't like sheep as much since global warming is happening. But what can you do? There is only so much costs I can cover...
it's because the US government is currently about $17,000,000,000,000 in debt
That is a very large number, yet the country seems to be doing fine. What is the downside of having debt when you got the power and influence of a superpower?
As far as I know there are no western-style country that is not in debt. Looks like it is the norm rather than an exception.
How do we know that what you say is not anti-Russian propaganda? Search enough I may find a post from an oppressed East Ukrainian begging Russia for help.
You missed the parent's point. He said gasoline. We don't run power plants on gasoline: We run cars on that.
Hydrocarbons is still the most efficient energy storage medium that we have for this purpose. You will need to have a process of converting Fusion-generated energy into fuel. I will hazard a guess that such a conversion process would be so inefficient that it would still be cheaper to wage war to get cheaper oil.
Slashdot Mirror
Really?! What about all the data and the configuration?
I suppose your *click*, *click* includes all the steps in a parallel deployment.
Not worth it. It is so expensive with the current technology that it would be cheaper and easier to refine similar amount here on Earth
You seem to be of the opinion that anyone can competently lead. I do not believe this to be the case. Imagine your lottery picks some jobless guy with mental issues. How about racists or extremists that will make next four years hell for some people they don't like? How about selfish "screw everyone as long as I get rich" types?
OK, we need to now sort the people into electable/not electable. The criteria would already be a thorny issue. How do you judge competence for such a position? If you seek experience of leadership, this will effectively swing the balance to already rich and powerful.
Even if you get a good, intelligent, charismatic, altruistic leader: After four years the next one most likely will undo or heavily modify the policies set. After all each leader wants to leave a mark, especially if he/she cares about some specific issue. No controversial, but necessary public project will last longer than four years!
This four years thing is already an issue in this day: Why should the leader ever care about long term if he will be long gone by then.
I am sure there are other problems, but I do not have any answers or ideas. Social structure, fairness (both short and long term) and ethics are so complex. Especially since every single actor in the system is inherently selfish and greedy.
What if I suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder and that other fucker stole my wallet and hid it where only he knows where it is? Are you saying I can't sue the bastard?
Hey, at least everyone shut up about everything being Bush's fault!
Well the thread is completely shifted to religion now. Once again: It is not that simple. But it is an interesting topic.
Doing a google search on this is worthless: Every link is biased one way or another. It is either a religious preaching site or an atheism preaching site. Quite annoying how militant people are regarding this topic.
In my opinion a religious man would be much more scared of death, because then according to his beliefs he will be judged. And if his choices and behavior in life were not good enough, (At least in Christianity) he will be condemned to eternity of suffering.
Do you feel anxious before an exam or an interview? Now think about about life in the scope of following the religious teachings: It is impossible to follow it to perfection and no way to tell what will be held more harshly. So one is never sure if he/she would pass. Especially when you don't know when you actually die.
Now for atheist it is much simpler: Oblivion. After you are dead, there is nothing else. You just cease to exist. It is sometimes insightful to ponder non-existence before existential despair begins creeping in.
While this seems scary, the atheist is free from worrying about being stuck in a fate-worse-than-death. Death itself is scary on its own (Mostly because it is rarely clean and quick. By definition there is no pain afterwards, but quite a bit just before), but after that there is a guarantee of no more suffering.
Thats it? You look at the number of wars and based on that number you came up with such a far-reaching conclusion?! Don't you think that is just plain stretching it?
People who are afraid of dying generally avoid going to war.
Do you honestly think it is that simple?!
Everyone is afraid of death: No matter the nationality or social status. But you may not have a choice.
Majority of conflicts in Africa are civil wars. They are not fought because "They are not afraid to die, so they just go and kill each other". Every conflict is different and complex. Civil war in Darfur resulted from government segregating non-Arab population. Civil war in Somalia is so complex that I don't think anyone understands an exact cause.
To say that "Africans are not afraid of death" because they are suffering through internal conflicts is dismissive, ignorant and downright inhumane.
Do you have a citation to this claim?
I have traveled to South Africa often and have friends and colleagues that were born and live there. Although the subject never came up, I do not believe they are any less afraid than myself.
set up publicly funded drug trials
Publicly funded = higher taxes.
In the US any mention of tax increase means that everyone is up in arms about it. All the screams of "socialism" start, etc...
I honestly do not believe this would ever work.
We use Visual Studio 2012 here, and not long ago somebody told me a neat little editor trick.
Well, don't hold it to yourself: Share it! We use VS2012 as well here, so I am curious.
Principles are rarely helpful. Mostly it results in stubbornness to accept change.
This proprietary vendor lock-in is a crime against society
Could you please explain how propriety vendor lock in is a crime?
At the end of the day, you need to get stuff done. If the propriety vendor got a monopoly on the easiest/fastest/most convenient ways of doing things, then it would be wasteful to spend time/money on ways to resist it. This is a case for Microsoft Office before the triumph of various other office packages that came along. When majority of your correspondents use Office, why would you spend the extra time making your documents in something else? You will waste their time as well trying to read it. Worse, you are creating barriers to the communication.
Now you may have a point about information loss: Proprietary formats go obsolete and the old documents may be un-openable. However, I will argue that if you are ready to pay, there will always be someone that will take the job to reverse-engineer any format and write a converter to a more modern version.
Then the people in the US that were at some point responsible for that server will need to fly over to Dublin and get it. Otherwise they will be held liable.
Unfortunately that is not the case. Swiss have ultimately bowed to the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act
When US says jump, the rest of the world jumps...
The corollary here is that intelligence isn't always an advantage. Or else all chimps would have evolved human class intelligence.
In my opinion, intelligence is always an advantage and the more the better. It is just that the random changes of natural selection did not favour the chimps. They were lucky enough to get enough intelligence to be fairly high up on the food chain. Evolution is not guided and does not get the best result.
But the following day, a bunch of pink, hairless apes wiped out the rest of the troop, because they were bored and chimps looked ugly to them.
However, Bob was spared because he kept clapping his hands and making kissing sounds, which the murderous homo sapiens found cute and adorable.
Intelligence does not increase your reproductive fitness past some baseline number, as a result we see regression to the mean.
I disagree.
Intelligence has improved out survival to such a degree, that you don't need to reproduce as much as an average bear to successfully pass on your genes.
Survival is not just about fucking more. As a matter of fact, having 5 children is counter-productive because they consume so much resources and require so much care. If your one child survives into adulthood, finds a mate and successfully breeds, then your evolutionary duty is done. Any more and you are introducing stress on to the environment to the detriment of your offspring. If you notice driven, successful people tend to not have any issues with passing on their genes.
Contrast it to your example of a bear: They need to breed more often, because that intelligent, top-of-the-foodchain predator might shoot and skin your offspring before he/she gets a chance to pass the genes further. No matter how successful the bear is, it is just a matter of pure luck whether it will come across a bloodthirsty hairless ape or not.
Compare the numbers: There are much more humans in the world than bears.
Yes it does need fresh water. Salt remains behind when you use salt water and causes quite a few issues.
If one of the results of autism is the ability to focus and think and solve problems and acquire a deeper understanding of things, then at least that aspect of autism would definitely be something to brag about.
That part is certainly good and you can brag about it. Problem is that it does not help much in the real world.
In the real corporate world you can get by with average solving capability, but good social competence will take you very far. Getting a job is all about being able to sell yourself. Finding a job is all about who you know. Keeping a job is all about image and keeping right people happy and informed. This is the office politics part in a nutshell. If you don't play, you lose.
Even without other debilitating symptoms of autism, this keeps the sufferer from having a successful career. It also has impact on finding a relationship. Overall the negatives outweigh the positives of extraordinary analytical and focus abilities.
Why not?
Because it will not help! Duh!
However, I am sacrificing a goat every solstice to stop it from happening. Would be nice if you ungrateful louts would thank me now and again for preventing your fiery demise!
Had to switch to sheep recently since logistical problems were encountered. Guess Ra doesn't like sheep as much since global warming is happening. But what can you do? There is only so much costs I can cover...
it's because the US government is currently about $17,000,000,000,000 in debt
That is a very large number, yet the country seems to be doing fine. What is the downside of having debt when you got the power and influence of a superpower?
As far as I know there are no western-style country that is not in debt. Looks like it is the norm rather than an exception.
How do we know that what you say is not anti-Russian propaganda? Search enough I may find a post from an oppressed East Ukrainian begging Russia for help.
You missed the parent's point. He said gasoline. We don't run power plants on gasoline: We run cars on that.
Hydrocarbons is still the most efficient energy storage medium that we have for this purpose. You will need to have a process of converting Fusion-generated energy into fuel. I will hazard a guess that such a conversion process would be so inefficient that it would still be cheaper to wage war to get cheaper oil.
Who doesn't? I always thought it was the norm to plot the overthrow of your wife/boss/unions/government. Just as long as you don't implement it.
But the beach is beautiful! Why should that selfish shark be the only one that use it?! The damn fish should share.