Do you generally make a point of walking into stores that sell things you don't like for the express purpose of complaining to the management that you don't like them?
Nobody is forcing you to be exposed to his inadequacy. It's perfectly possible for you to just toodle on by without ever having to set foot in this thread.
Your time was wasted not because of anything he did but because you chose to waste it.
I think that says more about your own sense of inadequacy than it says about any displayed inadequacy on the part of the original topic.
How about if I wanted to kill you (presumably you are perfectly healthy) in order to transfer your organs to eight different people, and thereby permit six of them to live and two of them to have increased standards of living for the rest of their lives?
Is that 'greater civil right' a sufficient excuse for me to kill you and harvest your organs?
So if atheism is a conscious decision to reject GOD (not religion), then what do you call someone who rejects God simply through not believing in it? One would imagine the term would be 'a+theist', i.e., 'non theist', but apparently that would be too simple?
That is also an atheist. But an atheist does NOT have to have thought about the problem, because atheism, or lack of belief in a deity, is the default state for any organism.
Not at all. An agnostic requires having thought about the problem. You must have a concept of something to admit you do not know whether it exists; this is a state requiring energy.
An atheist simply does not believe something exists. This state requires no energy and is therefore the default.
Regardless of how they will behave? Here's a thought experiment for you.
What if you were to go into a crowded theatre and falsely shout fire? Should you be held responsible for the ensuing chaotic panic, with possible fatal results?
The traditional wisdom says you should, because you are the cause of imminent lawless action. More specifically, your speech is specifically designed to enflame individuals beyond the point of rationality to take action.
Logically, of course, the individuals present should spend their time looking around, deciding if there is a fire, and then carefully evacuating in an orderly manner if one exists. But human nature dictates that they will not. By your argument, that is irrelevant- those individuals are responsible for their stampede, and you have no responsibility for the ensuing fatalities.
But the 'falsely shouting fire' argument extends into other domains as well. Imagine you were standing in front of a militant group of protesters (insert your favorite flavor here- militant ecoterrorists, Klu Klux Klansmen, muslims, whatever) and you decided to whip the crowd into a mob which descended upon an innocent person (guy driving an SUV, black man, woman not accompanied by her husband, whatever fits the flavor of militancy you desire) and kills them.
Are you responsible for that death? You incited imminent lawless action. In fact, your speech itself could have been relatively tame; in another context, it could be seen as mere criticism. In this context, however, it has fatal results.
Now, imagine an extension of that thought experiment. You drive up to these militant ecoterrorists in your SUV, get out, and start yelling criticisms at them. You are swarmed and savagely mauled. You again incited imminent lawless action. Now, you were also an idiot, because inciting a mob to kill you is not only illegal but stupid.
But it's quite clear that we don't treat incitement and criticism the same, despite the fact that they might be identical speech, simply in different contexts. The reason is because the result is very different.
So your chair does not believe in God. It cannot, because it has no ability to believe in anything. It is an atheist- it does not believe in God.
Essentially, disbelief is a state of neutrality. If you were required to actively disbelieve, you would need to expend an infinite amount of thought energy disbelieving an infinite amount of things that don't exist (Invisible black unicorns. Invisible dark grey unicorns. Invisible slightly lighter-grey unicorns. etc, etc, ad infinitum). This is in clear violation of the laws of thermodynamics. Since you are not expending an infinite amount of energy disbelieving things, clearly it does not take faith (or in fact, any effort or thought whatsoever) to disbelieve things.
Don't have much experience with western law, do you? English common law relies extremely heavily on precedent. The laws themselves may be codified, but the precedent interpreting them controls them, and can in fact totally reverse what one would consider to be the meaning of the plain law.
An atheist is just someone who has no belief in God. This is the default state for any entity. Therefore, atheism cannot require faith and is not a religion.
Ultimately, whether criticism is incitement really depends on who you're criticising. But so what?
It's like going up to a mentally deranged person with a knife and insulting them. it's stupid. It may not be as stupid to walk up to a random, sane person unarmed on the street and insulting them.
Incitement is not proscriptive, it's just descriptive. Don't be a moron and you'll be fine.
I would hardly consider Marx's ideas, on the whole, or the works in which they are presented to be 'wild'. Certainly, some of them are wildly impractical, and in more than a few places his theory is just plain wrong.
That said, however, in the Communist Manifesto Marx outlines a ten-point starting plan: 1. Abolition of property in land (Obviously not.) 2. A heavy progressive income tax (Done) 3. Abolition of all right of inheritance (partially: we have an inheritance tax) 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels (Emigrants, no: criminals, sometimes). 5. Centralization of credit by means of a national bank (Partially, but by no means totally). 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state (Again, partially: transport more than communications). 7. Extension of factories, cultivation of wastelands, and other environmental improvements (Again, partially.) 8. Equal liabity of all to labour, establishment of industrial armies (No.) 9. Combination of agriculture and industry, etc. (No.) 10. Free education, abolition of child labor. (Done).
Out of Marx's ten points, three have been totally ignored, two have been implemented, and the other five are implemented to various degrees. That's pretty successful, isn't it?
Re:Seriously.. has no one read Atlas Shrugged
on
Toward the Open Company
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Atlas Shrugged is not actually a history book. It's not even a good piece of fiction, and the economics and politics therein are laughable.
My answer to this is simply that fine, nobody will judge you- but you will go to prison.
Do you think an adequate excuse for theft is that you 'couldn't afford it'? That 'you gotta do what you gotta do'?
That might make you sleep better at night. But the justice system is still perfectly happy to throw you in prison.
I notice you haven't provided any solutions to the problem. You want a car, and with that car comes an appreciable risk. Society has decided the best way to compensate for that risk is by requiring insurance (or in some places a bond). You can't afford that insurance or bond- fine. How do you ameliorate that risk? Risk to yourself is irrelevant here- it's risk to others.
Your argument is basically that because you're poor, risk to other people doesn't matter.
That might be your opinion- and society has a perfect right to throw you in prison for being a selfish, negligent asshole.
Your argument does not make much sense, I do not think: Why should a kid who does not understand and is not good at respect for others and society be taught it?
Well, the obvious answer is because it's necessary, regardless of whether or not they're good at it. And, to a very large extent, it's true.
But the same thing applies to team sports. The same things applies to mathematics, and science, and reading and writing.
The truth of it is, there is really no part of schooling that should be skipped in principle. In practice, often that is not the case.
When I was in elementary school, there were two streams. Both my brother and I qualified to enter the higher stream; both of us left the program after less than a year. The material was not presented any more cogently, nor, in fact, was it any more 'advanced' in any reasonable sense of the term.
No. More usually, and in this case, there was simply more of it, thrown at a faster pace. Rather than having to do one worksheet per week as in the regular stream, the 'advanced' students had four worksheets per week. The difficulty, of course, was that if you were to separate students into a stream where they were taught faster than the others, there would be very limited mobility between the streams.
Once the streams divulged, there would be almost no way to jump 'up' a stream- you could jump down, because the level below you would be behind, but because the level above you would be getting further and further ahead as more time passes, it would be almost impossible to jump into the advanced stream.
And ultimately, learning to deal with boring and slow material is a good lesson as well. The argument that talented people will end up broken and resentful if they feel they are being 'held back' is silly. As a good friend of mine is fond of repeating:
'Your circumstances dictate your emotions, but you dictate your circumstances. If you don't enjoy what you are doing, change your circumstances. If you are unwilling to change your circumstances, stop whining.'
The only people who end up 'broken and resentful' because the system is 'holding them back' are the people who are essentially fragile. Their talents come at a significant price in mental stability, and on the whole those people are often not an asset, they are a liability. They don't need to be coddled; they need to be reforged and tempered.
World of Warcraft's failure, of course, is that it's idiotic Warden protection system would be totally useless unless it could supervise the entire system. If it was actually limited to only doing its own thing in its own area, it would be pointless.
Slashdot Mirror
No, but I think there is a strong argument to be made that anything with an enormously unbalanced kill ratio is a massacre.
Do you generally make a point of walking into stores that sell things you don't like for the express purpose of complaining to the management that you don't like them?
Nobody is forcing you to be exposed to his inadequacy. It's perfectly possible for you to just toodle on by without ever having to set foot in this thread.
Your time was wasted not because of anything he did but because you chose to waste it.
I think that says more about your own sense of inadequacy than it says about any displayed inadequacy on the part of the original topic.
So, in fact, you disagree with the grandparent comment which says:
"However, greater civil rights should be an excuse to violate civil rights".
Because that's what you seem to be saying.
How about if I wanted to kill you (presumably you are perfectly healthy) in order to transfer your organs to eight different people, and thereby permit six of them to live and two of them to have increased standards of living for the rest of their lives?
Is that 'greater civil right' a sufficient excuse for me to kill you and harvest your organs?
Who said they were masturbating with it? I didn't say that.
So if atheism is a conscious decision to reject GOD (not religion), then what do you call someone who rejects God simply through not believing in it? One would imagine the term would be 'a+theist', i.e., 'non theist', but apparently that would be too simple?
What if it's a child sitting around playing with a sex toy (sucking on it, licking it, caressing it)? There's no actual sex.
What if they're just holding it suggestively?
That is also an atheist. But an atheist does NOT have to have thought about the problem, because atheism, or lack of belief in a deity, is the default state for any organism.
Not at all. An agnostic requires having thought about the problem. You must have a concept of something to admit you do not know whether it exists; this is a state requiring energy.
An atheist simply does not believe something exists. This state requires no energy and is therefore the default.
Regardless of how they will behave? Here's a thought experiment for you.
What if you were to go into a crowded theatre and falsely shout fire? Should you be held responsible for the ensuing chaotic panic, with possible fatal results?
The traditional wisdom says you should, because you are the cause of imminent lawless action. More specifically, your speech is specifically designed to enflame individuals beyond the point of rationality to take action.
Logically, of course, the individuals present should spend their time looking around, deciding if there is a fire, and then carefully evacuating in an orderly manner if one exists. But human nature dictates that they will not. By your argument, that is irrelevant- those individuals are responsible for their stampede, and you have no responsibility for the ensuing fatalities.
But the 'falsely shouting fire' argument extends into other domains as well. Imagine you were standing in front of a militant group of protesters (insert your favorite flavor here- militant ecoterrorists, Klu Klux Klansmen, muslims, whatever) and you decided to whip the crowd into a mob which descended upon an innocent person (guy driving an SUV, black man, woman not accompanied by her husband, whatever fits the flavor of militancy you desire) and kills them.
Are you responsible for that death? You incited imminent lawless action. In fact, your speech itself could have been relatively tame; in another context, it could be seen as mere criticism. In this context, however, it has fatal results.
Now, imagine an extension of that thought experiment. You drive up to these militant ecoterrorists in your SUV, get out, and start yelling criticisms at them. You are swarmed and savagely mauled. You again incited imminent lawless action. Now, you were also an idiot, because inciting a mob to kill you is not only illegal but stupid.
But it's quite clear that we don't treat incitement and criticism the same, despite the fact that they might be identical speech, simply in different contexts. The reason is because the result is very different.
So your chair does not believe in God. It cannot, because it has no ability to believe in anything. It is an atheist- it does not believe in God.
Essentially, disbelief is a state of neutrality. If you were required to actively disbelieve, you would need to expend an infinite amount of thought energy disbelieving an infinite amount of things that don't exist (Invisible black unicorns. Invisible dark grey unicorns. Invisible slightly lighter-grey unicorns. etc, etc, ad infinitum). This is in clear violation of the laws of thermodynamics. Since you are not expending an infinite amount of energy disbelieving things, clearly it does not take faith (or in fact, any effort or thought whatsoever) to disbelieve things.
Which is the right part of the equation?
The greek 'a' meaning 'non' and 'theos' meaning god, godless.
The lack of belief in a God. You cannot disbelieve something. I actually have a logical proof of this somewhere, but I can't find out where I put it.
But until then, let's do a little thought experiment. The chair you're sitting on, does it believe in god?
But cartoons aren't ART!
For it to be art, it has to be old!
Don't have much experience with western law, do you? English common law relies extremely heavily on precedent. The laws themselves may be codified, but the precedent interpreting them controls them, and can in fact totally reverse what one would consider to be the meaning of the plain law.
An atheist is just someone who has no belief in God. This is the default state for any entity. Therefore, atheism cannot require faith and is not a religion.
Ultimately, whether criticism is incitement really depends on who you're criticising. But so what?
It's like going up to a mentally deranged person with a knife and insulting them. it's stupid. It may not be as stupid to walk up to a random, sane person unarmed on the street and insulting them.
Incitement is not proscriptive, it's just descriptive. Don't be a moron and you'll be fine.
I would hardly consider Marx's ideas, on the whole, or the works in which they are presented to be 'wild'. Certainly, some of them are wildly impractical, and in more than a few places his theory is just plain wrong.
That said, however, in the Communist Manifesto Marx outlines a ten-point starting plan:
1. Abolition of property in land (Obviously not.)
2. A heavy progressive income tax (Done)
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance (partially: we have an inheritance tax)
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels (Emigrants, no: criminals, sometimes).
5. Centralization of credit by means of a national bank (Partially, but by no means totally).
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state (Again, partially: transport more than communications).
7. Extension of factories, cultivation of wastelands, and other environmental improvements (Again, partially.)
8. Equal liabity of all to labour, establishment of industrial armies (No.)
9. Combination of agriculture and industry, etc. (No.)
10. Free education, abolition of child labor. (Done).
Out of Marx's ten points, three have been totally ignored, two have been implemented, and the other five are implemented to various degrees. That's pretty successful, isn't it?
Atlas Shrugged is not actually a history book. It's not even a good piece of fiction, and the economics and politics therein are laughable.
It only exists because it isn't allowed to punish jurors for the decision they arrived at.
However, if the Judge gets any inkling you believe in jury nullification, you'll be kicked out of the jury pool so fast your head will spin.
Jury nullification is a systemic abomination, merely a quirk of the way the system works.
My answer to this is simply that fine, nobody will judge you- but you will go to prison.
Do you think an adequate excuse for theft is that you 'couldn't afford it'? That 'you gotta do what you gotta do'?
That might make you sleep better at night. But the justice system is still perfectly happy to throw you in prison.
I notice you haven't provided any solutions to the problem. You want a car, and with that car comes an appreciable risk. Society has decided the best way to compensate for that risk is by requiring insurance (or in some places a bond). You can't afford that insurance or bond- fine. How do you ameliorate that risk? Risk to yourself is irrelevant here- it's risk to others.
Your argument is basically that because you're poor, risk to other people doesn't matter.
That might be your opinion- and society has a perfect right to throw you in prison for being a selfish, negligent asshole.
When was the last time a camera lied?
Your argument does not make much sense, I do not think: Why should a kid who does not understand and is not good at respect for others and society be taught it?
Well, the obvious answer is because it's necessary, regardless of whether or not they're good at it. And, to a very large extent, it's true.
But the same thing applies to team sports. The same things applies to mathematics, and science, and reading and writing.
The truth of it is, there is really no part of schooling that should be skipped in principle. In practice, often that is not the case.
When I was in elementary school, there were two streams. Both my brother and I qualified to enter the higher stream; both of us left the program after less than a year. The material was not presented any more cogently, nor, in fact, was it any more 'advanced' in any reasonable sense of the term.
No. More usually, and in this case, there was simply more of it, thrown at a faster pace. Rather than having to do one worksheet per week as in the regular stream, the 'advanced' students had four worksheets per week. The difficulty, of course, was that if you were to separate students into a stream where they were taught faster than the others, there would be very limited mobility between the streams.
Once the streams divulged, there would be almost no way to jump 'up' a stream- you could jump down, because the level below you would be behind, but because the level above you would be getting further and further ahead as more time passes, it would be almost impossible to jump into the advanced stream.
And ultimately, learning to deal with boring and slow material is a good lesson as well. The argument that talented people will end up broken and resentful if they feel they are being 'held back' is silly. As a good friend of mine is fond of repeating:
'Your circumstances dictate your emotions, but you dictate your circumstances. If you don't enjoy what you are doing, change your circumstances. If you are unwilling to change your circumstances, stop whining.'
The only people who end up 'broken and resentful' because the system is 'holding them back' are the people who are essentially fragile. Their talents come at a significant price in mental stability, and on the whole those people are often not an asset, they are a liability. They don't need to be coddled; they need to be reforged and tempered.
Those of us who are afraid of Uncle Sam spying on all our credit card transactions are called paranoid.
World of Warcraft's failure, of course, is that it's idiotic Warden protection system would be totally useless unless it could supervise the entire system. If it was actually limited to only doing its own thing in its own area, it would be pointless.