You seem to be under the misapprehension that you are being called a moron because you believe in an afterlife. I doubt many posters actually subscribe to such a simplistic view and those that do are frankly, well, morons.
Your post seems to suggest leaving you to believe what you want to believe. This is a public forum in which people debate. That is what they do here. Preaching isn't unpopular because it is annoying, it is unpopular because it isn't actually a form of debate or persuasion. When you are called a moron it isn't preaching. It is mockery. It will often be preceded or followed by an argument whose purpose is the elucidate precisely why someone is wholly unimpressed with your assertion. This is a recognised, if admittedly unsophisticated, form of debate.
People tend to resort to mockery in debate when a position is so absurd that pointing out it's flaws becomes a ridiculously long exercise. For example I would guess you believe in an after life because it is somewhat cryptically mentioned in a self contradictory book which claims to describe a supremely divine being who for some reason seems to tolerate child sacrifice and who, after a really odd personality change, decides that his grand plan should include having himself killed by the occupying government of a bunch of rebellious illiterate desert peasants and then coming back to life wounds and all before ascending to heaven. Or some variant there of.
How are we supposed to treat such a belief in a serious manner? What level of respect is appropriate for such assertions? It may not be the best or most eloquent form of debate in the world, but seriously, what do you expect?
If you aren't interested in debate, that is fine, you don't have to be here. If you are attempting to change the prevailing viewpoint as to what is considered civilised discourse that is also okay. At present my understanding is that the social norms here extend to a degree of mockery. Personally I prefer long winded expositions of the faults in others positions even if following a snappy one liner with the suggestion that ones opponent is mentally deficient can be wholly more satisfying.
I would however suggest that there is no moral equivalence between believers who come and interrupt genuine debate with preaching and non-believers who add flavour to on going debate with colourful dialogue.
I'd suggest that the reason such a comparison seems so one sided is because one is comparing two things of very different character. One would not say that Citizen Cane was better than Fermat's last theorem or vice versa. The notion of comparing the two just seems odd.
Here to character of the comparison is akin to saying that "Automatic for the People" is superior to "Night Swimming". The notion of comparing an album to a song strikes me as very strange as well.
Furthermore a collection of sentient entities created the cultural, social and scientific achievements of human kind. If the universe itself is a mind, then what has it achieved? It cannot do anything because it is everything. I do not get credit for the blood flowing my veins or the growth of my hair. If the universe is everything then every one of its 'achievements' is nothing more impressive than the beating of it's heart or the digestion of it's food.
A god who created a universe would be impressive indeed. Yet I see no evidence to suggest such an entity exists and plenty of compelling reasons to think otherwise.
Corroborating evidence. I can trust my sense of smell because it agrees with my other senses. I am justified in asserting that in my kitchen a pot of chilli is on the hob because not only did I put it there, smell it and taste it as it was cooking, but other family members who wandered through went "Oh, chilli for dinner".
If I go into a lab and in controlled conditions present people with a bowl of chilli then they will report that I've given them a bowl of chilli. Even with strict controls the existence of bowls of chilli is demonstrable.
Furthermore we can build instruments to measure the bowl of chilli. These artificial senses agree with my own senses about the bowl of chilli.
Most of the time we don't need to do these checks because we have already verified that under a broad range of circumstances our various senses function well. However we know this is not always the case. Sensory illusions are a good example of this. One of the 5 senses disagrees with the others. Delusions are another. One person claims Elvis is in the room when this is manifestly not the case since no one else perceives Elvis.
We cant independently verify near death experiences (or gods and miracles for that matter). They don't appear to connect to anything real that we can measure or independently verify like the bowl of chilli. When one person has such an experience there is no one else present in that experience to corroborate their story.
In addition we know that under extreme stress our senses are prone to failure. I cannot imagine a more stressful event than nearly being dead.
So we cannot trust our senses while dying, and some of the rest of the time we cant trust them either.
If I didn't know better I would suggest you are making an argument for promoting natural law to social law. The idea that we should do that which gives us a survival advantage regardless of moral concerns is call Social Darwinism. The idea that we should do that which brings us the most pleasure regardless of moral considerations is called hedonism. I will engage in neither. I will instead remain commited to the ideals of the enlightenment, to the pursuit of truth, and to doing that which I believe to be in the best interest of those I have concern for regardless of survival advantages and short term contentment.
I'm trying to imagine what it is you are arguing for here. Should scientists play a more active role in government? Should 'rational people' do more to change religion for the better? How do you propose they do this?
Religion is not philosophy. It is not government. It is not social contract. It is left to the con artists and the parasites because it is a shell game. It is a leech. At times a benevolent one, often vile and putrid, on the odd occasion it is even a beneficial one, but it does not live in the place in society where structures are driven by what we can deduce about the world. That is philosophy. That is civics. That is government. That is science. In the past religion ruled this domain, in that era of European history we call the dark ages. I have no desire to return to that time.
I would prefer to live in a society free of religion when deductions about the world are made by philosophers, by scientists, by artists, artisans and statesmen. Priest is just another word for charlatan.
If we can generate chemically a state similar to near death experiences then we are not totally unreasonable in concluding that the mechanism which results in near death experiences is similar to the one we induce. There is no need to show that ketamine is produced in large quantities at death. The next question in the chain is now "why are near death experiences similar to those experiences induced by ketamine".
The research question here is 'Can we induce a mental state similar to near death experiences chemically'. If near death experiences are the result of a chemical state in the brain then we expect that through some suitable application of chemicals we can replicate it. This prediction is now confirmed. This is evidence for the aforementioned hypothesis. Nothing 'religiously challenged' about it. It certainly is science. It's just science that runs counter to that which certain religious individuals would like to believe since the hypothesis "near death experiences are a result of a chemical state of the brain" isn't something they want to be true.
Agreed. Why people believe heaven exists is a perfectly valid scientific question however (assuming we are prepared to agree on what belief is so we don't end up annoying the philosophers).
This was precisely my point. I concur completely. The big list of theories that follow my post would seem to suggest that there is a rather large collection of theories which need distinguishing from one another by experiment.
If the only evidence you had and could ever get for forests was people reporting bumping into trees you would be insane to conclude forests exist. Especially if every time you took one of these 'trees' into a lab it was impossible to get people to bump into them without first administering a drug which had the effect of causing people to report bumping into things that aren't there.
A person recording an experience X is not treated as evidence of X, it is treated as evidence for someone believing they experienced X. You conflate these two concepts when they are not the same thing. One explanation for a person thinking they experienced X is that they did in fact experience X. Another is that they were deluded.
How would one go about differentiating these two possibilities? Well one could ask if there is some way we can induce a delusion which is similar to the experience that was reported. If the conditions that lead to the circumstances of the delusion are similar to those under which the experience is reported then this is evidence for the hypothesis that these experiences are in fact delusions. You can never prove things one way or the other because that isn't how science works.
With this said earlier in this thread I point out that the afterlife is a meaningless concept scientifically speaking. The afterlife is an entity in the sense of Occam's razor. Any study which does not begin with the assumption it does not exist is, in my opinion, bad science.
"There is an unrealistic idolisation of humanity on the grounds of our "great scientific achievements", when we're still pretty much as feeble, week, and transient as we ever were, just with a few more gadgets around the place, and more of us surviving to our (still very brief) hundred-odd years of life."
What metric are you using to determine this? Human beings could exterminate all life on this planet if we wanted to. We can launch rockets into space. We can make fire. We can build methods of locomotion unseen in the natural world. We exterminated the scourge of small pox. We have effectively tripled our lifespan. We have built machines that burn with the power of the stars. Our computers rival those found in nature as does the beauty of our art forms. Our achievements make the Gods of the ancient world seem petty and pathetic.
We may be violent and cruel and at times evil beyond comparison, but damn are we marvellous by any of the standards we have devised. What are we to idolise if not that which is good in humankind? Should we pray to small sky daddies whose pathetic notions of grandeur seem to extend only to concern for our sexual conduct? For all it's faults the wonder that is the human race is more worthy of praise than and idolisation than any deity.
Proving a negative is generally held to be impossible. I could offer a challenge asking for proof unicorns do not exist and be reassured I would never have to pay out.
Nothing wrong with that if he finds that argument compelling. I'm thoroughly unconvinced by the notion that horse tranquilliser is a means to commune with the divine.
I meant zero scientific evidence. There is, to my knowledge, no scientific evidence for an afterlife. There are anecdotes. There are subjective experiences. There exists no scientific test that I know of that provides evidence for an afterlife.
I further doubt that one could design an experiment that would falsify the existence of an afterlife. Furthermore I would suggest that the concept is scientifically useless since it is indistinguishable (at least as far as I can tell) from the competing simpler theories (please tell me how you would design an experiment to differentiate chemical reactions in the brain from the existence of a real afterlife). Hence not only is there no (scientific) evidence for the afterlife, no such evidence could ever be obtained.
Keeping this in mind any study which begins with the premise that an afterlife is a legitimate scientific concept (and has not overcome these shortcomings) is bad science from the get go. The concept of an afterlife is, epistemologically speaking, no different to that of leprechauns. This is not to say I would be foolish enough to present a study in this light to my research subjects, that would be poor experimental design as you point out.
As a final note, the notion that a concept is scientifically meaningless does not reflect on it's value in another epistemology unless one is a fanatical scientific naturalist. Just because the afterlife is a meaningless notion for the purposes of conducting a scientific study does not mean that it does not refer to something which exists.
The widespread belief (well, perhaps better described as a delusion) that there exists an afterlife is a legitimate scientific phenomena.
"If there is precisely zero evidence for heaven, why do people believe it exists?" - This is a legitimate scientific question that isn't satisfyingly answered at present.
This kind of research strengthens the case for disbelief and I therefore consider it very valuable. Next time someone describes how their great aunt saw God just before she died I can now point out that their aunt was probably confusing God with special K.
The last CIA inspired coup in Venezuela was less than 10 years ago. Chavez is a douche bag but if you want people to stop saying "yeah but the usa..." the the USA is going to need to keep the hell out of the internal affairs of other countries. Heck Chavez has been looking for an excuse to close these guys down for years now in part because of the complicity of the media in the attempted coup against him. The CIA handed Chavez an excuse to restrict media freedom on a platter.
At no point did I claim that the judge made the wrong decision in interpreting the law. I'm miles away from being able to comment on that intelligently. I'm arguing for what I think the law should be and the reality it should reflect. I have no idea where you got the impression that I felt the judge made the wrong call from a legal standpoint since in another comment further up the page (not one replying to you) I specifically state that the judge may well have correctly interpreted the law.
They are not violating any confidentiality agreements themselves, ergo they have (as far as I'm concerned) done nothing wrong. If you want to go after the people who violated the confidentiality agreement be my guest. When it comes to the distribution of information, especially information about the stock market, we have the err on the side of caution and where ever possible allow the information to spread.
Just a general comment but this idea of patents as property is exactly the problem with the darn things. It should be mandatory to license a patent in an open way. If you need to license a patents then you go to the company and they have to provide you with a price which is public knowledge. The licence also should be sold at a price that the market can stand.
You assume that I propose sanctioning the person or organisation who were provided with the information (the innocent third party). If someone publishing aggregated stock tips did nothing illicit while obtaining the information then it is not them who should be prosecuted but rather whoever is responsible for leaking the information to them (almost certainly one of these tipsters clients or someone within the tipsters organisation).
It isn't the "figuring out something nobody else realised" that I'm calling manipulation. It's the creating stock tips, telling your clients the information then trying to keep the information you have given your clients secret by going after people who have done nothing wrong. It's the way they are publishing their results and the way in which they try to keep tha information secret that bothers me.
I have no problem with them restricting access to the information. If they do nothing which requires them to make the information public then they can keep it to themselves (and their clients who agree to sign a contract not to disclose the information).
The problem is they want to in effect manipulate the market by keeping the information secret initially, do their trading (or allow their clients to do their trading), then release the information which pumps up the stocks they just bought.
If I cant later sell a stock then the only value it has is the dividend. This is more restrictive than is necessary. The problem isn't that stocks can be traded, it's the time scales over which they can be traded. If I see a company that has issued shares to pay for some new project and at 6, 12 and 24 month milestones there will be some indication of the success of this strategy then buying the shares becomes an attractive prospect (if I think their plan will work). The systems existence therefore provides the means to raise capital. The problem is that by allowing trading over matters of hours and days or even weeks we incentivise short term thinking. 'Next quarter' thinking and the dangerous speculation that results from day trading which benefits no one. Since many types of share provide a measure of control to the share holder the big problem we need to fix is what we incentivise shareholders to do. There should be restrictions on how quickly you can sell a share after you have bought it so that shareholders have a big incentive to keep a company around for the foreseeable future. This would then be reflected in the selection of board members.
If they want to keep this information private then they can do so. Just don't tell anyone it, or only tell people with whom them have agreements not to disclose the information. If they also conduct no trades based on the information then no one will know it.
If they wish to keep the information secret they have a simple solution, do nothing with it which would require making the information public. Which is better, having less information available due to a reduction in 'research' of the market or enabling outright manipulation of the market using schemes like the one that was protected by this ruling?
The whole point of having a stock market is to get money to the people who can make the best use of it. What this ruling does, as far as I can tell, is impede that process by preventing the dissemination of useful information about who can make the best use of investment capital. In short, while this might or might not be a good ruling from the standpoint of enforcing the law as it exists today, it runs completely counter to the whole point of having a stock market. There should be absolutely no impediment to disseminating as widely as possible information about publicly traded stocks unless it is for an exceptionally good reason (like national security level good). Going even further, by restricting information like this they are essentially allowing the major players in the stock market to manipulate stock prices. I tell my clients that I will claim stock X will go up and the market listens to me. I do this in such a way that my clients can by their stocks first. Stock goes up because I say it will and I'm a major player. Then my clients sell their stock making a nice tidy profit, all the while I have less incentive to provide good advice because assuming I'm even vaguely plausible this scheme will work. The law is protecting this kind of thing when it should be prohibiting it!
The whole purpose of the stock market is to get money to the people who can make the best use of it. That is best served by having as much information available as rapidly as possible. How exactly does this ruling go anywhere near achieving this?
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You seem to be under the misapprehension that you are being called a moron because you believe in an afterlife. I doubt many posters actually subscribe to such a simplistic view and those that do are frankly, well, morons.
Your post seems to suggest leaving you to believe what you want to believe. This is a public forum in which people debate. That is what they do here. Preaching isn't unpopular because it is annoying, it is unpopular because it isn't actually a form of debate or persuasion. When you are called a moron it isn't preaching. It is mockery. It will often be preceded or followed by an argument whose purpose is the elucidate precisely why someone is wholly unimpressed with your assertion. This is a recognised, if admittedly unsophisticated, form of debate.
People tend to resort to mockery in debate when a position is so absurd that pointing out it's flaws becomes a ridiculously long exercise. For example I would guess you believe in an after life because it is somewhat cryptically mentioned in a self contradictory book which claims to describe a supremely divine being who for some reason seems to tolerate child sacrifice and who, after a really odd personality change, decides that his grand plan should include having himself killed by the occupying government of a bunch of rebellious illiterate desert peasants and then coming back to life wounds and all before ascending to heaven. Or some variant there of.
How are we supposed to treat such a belief in a serious manner? What level of respect is appropriate for such assertions? It may not be the best or most eloquent form of debate in the world, but seriously, what do you expect?
If you aren't interested in debate, that is fine, you don't have to be here. If you are attempting to change the prevailing viewpoint as to what is considered civilised discourse that is also okay. At present my understanding is that the social norms here extend to a degree of mockery. Personally I prefer long winded expositions of the faults in others positions even if following a snappy one liner with the suggestion that ones opponent is mentally deficient can be wholly more satisfying.
I would however suggest that there is no moral equivalence between believers who come and interrupt genuine debate with preaching and non-believers who add flavour to on going debate with colourful dialogue.
I'd suggest that the reason such a comparison seems so one sided is because one is comparing two things of very different character. One would not say that Citizen Cane was better than Fermat's last theorem or vice versa. The notion of comparing the two just seems odd.
Here to character of the comparison is akin to saying that "Automatic for the People" is superior to "Night Swimming". The notion of comparing an album to a song strikes me as very strange as well.
Furthermore a collection of sentient entities created the cultural, social and scientific achievements of human kind. If the universe itself is a mind, then what has it achieved? It cannot do anything because it is everything. I do not get credit for the blood flowing my veins or the growth of my hair. If the universe is everything then every one of its 'achievements' is nothing more impressive than the beating of it's heart or the digestion of it's food.
A god who created a universe would be impressive indeed. Yet I see no evidence to suggest such an entity exists and plenty of compelling reasons to think otherwise.
Corroborating evidence. I can trust my sense of smell because it agrees with my other senses. I am justified in asserting that in my kitchen a pot of chilli is on the hob because not only did I put it there, smell it and taste it as it was cooking, but other family members who wandered through went "Oh, chilli for dinner".
If I go into a lab and in controlled conditions present people with a bowl of chilli then they will report that I've given them a bowl of chilli. Even with strict controls the existence of bowls of chilli is demonstrable.
Furthermore we can build instruments to measure the bowl of chilli. These artificial senses agree with my own senses about the bowl of chilli.
Most of the time we don't need to do these checks because we have already verified that under a broad range of circumstances our various senses function well. However we know this is not always the case. Sensory illusions are a good example of this. One of the 5 senses disagrees with the others. Delusions are another. One person claims Elvis is in the room when this is manifestly not the case since no one else perceives Elvis.
We cant independently verify near death experiences (or gods and miracles for that matter). They don't appear to connect to anything real that we can measure or independently verify like the bowl of chilli. When one person has such an experience there is no one else present in that experience to corroborate their story.
In addition we know that under extreme stress our senses are prone to failure. I cannot imagine a more stressful event than nearly being dead.
So we cannot trust our senses while dying, and some of the rest of the time we cant trust them either.
Lol, indeed. Let me just make it clear that alcohol is just as absurd a substance to revere as ketamine.
If I didn't know better I would suggest you are making an argument for promoting natural law to social law. The idea that we should do that which gives us a survival advantage regardless of moral concerns is call Social Darwinism. The idea that we should do that which brings us the most pleasure regardless of moral considerations is called hedonism. I will engage in neither. I will instead remain commited to the ideals of the enlightenment, to the pursuit of truth, and to doing that which I believe to be in the best interest of those I have concern for regardless of survival advantages and short term contentment.
I'm trying to imagine what it is you are arguing for here. Should scientists play a more active role in government? Should 'rational people' do more to change religion for the better? How do you propose they do this?
Religion is not philosophy. It is not government. It is not social contract. It is left to the con artists and the parasites because it is a shell game. It is a leech. At times a benevolent one, often vile and putrid, on the odd occasion it is even a beneficial one, but it does not live in the place in society where structures are driven by what we can deduce about the world. That is philosophy. That is civics. That is government. That is science. In the past religion ruled this domain, in that era of European history we call the dark ages. I have no desire to return to that time.
I would prefer to live in a society free of religion when deductions about the world are made by philosophers, by scientists, by artists, artisans and statesmen. Priest is just another word for charlatan.
If we can generate chemically a state similar to near death experiences then we are not totally unreasonable in concluding that the mechanism which results in near death experiences is similar to the one we induce. There is no need to show that ketamine is produced in large quantities at death. The next question in the chain is now "why are near death experiences similar to those experiences induced by ketamine".
The research question here is 'Can we induce a mental state similar to near death experiences chemically'. If near death experiences are the result of a chemical state in the brain then we expect that through some suitable application of chemicals we can replicate it. This prediction is now confirmed. This is evidence for the aforementioned hypothesis. Nothing 'religiously challenged' about it. It certainly is science. It's just science that runs counter to that which certain religious individuals would like to believe since the hypothesis "near death experiences are a result of a chemical state of the brain" isn't something they want to be true.
Agreed. Why people believe heaven exists is a perfectly valid scientific question however (assuming we are prepared to agree on what belief is so we don't end up annoying the philosophers).
This was precisely my point. I concur completely. The big list of theories that follow my post would seem to suggest that there is a rather large collection of theories which need distinguishing from one another by experiment.
If the only evidence you had and could ever get for forests was people reporting bumping into trees you would be insane to conclude forests exist. Especially if every time you took one of these 'trees' into a lab it was impossible to get people to bump into them without first administering a drug which had the effect of causing people to report bumping into things that aren't there.
A person recording an experience X is not treated as evidence of X, it is treated as evidence for someone believing they experienced X. You conflate these two concepts when they are not the same thing. One explanation for a person thinking they experienced X is that they did in fact experience X. Another is that they were deluded.
How would one go about differentiating these two possibilities? Well one could ask if there is some way we can induce a delusion which is similar to the experience that was reported. If the conditions that lead to the circumstances of the delusion are similar to those under which the experience is reported then this is evidence for the hypothesis that these experiences are in fact delusions. You can never prove things one way or the other because that isn't how science works.
With this said earlier in this thread I point out that the afterlife is a meaningless concept scientifically speaking. The afterlife is an entity in the sense of Occam's razor. Any study which does not begin with the assumption it does not exist is, in my opinion, bad science.
"There is an unrealistic idolisation of humanity on the grounds of our "great scientific achievements", when we're still pretty much as feeble, week, and transient as we ever were, just with a few more gadgets around the place, and more of us surviving to our (still very brief) hundred-odd years of life."
What metric are you using to determine this? Human beings could exterminate all life on this planet if we wanted to. We can launch rockets into space. We can make fire. We can build methods of locomotion unseen in the natural world. We exterminated the scourge of small pox. We have effectively tripled our lifespan. We have built machines that burn with the power of the stars. Our computers rival those found in nature as does the beauty of our art forms. Our achievements make the Gods of the ancient world seem petty and pathetic.
We may be violent and cruel and at times evil beyond comparison, but damn are we marvellous by any of the standards we have devised. What are we to idolise if not that which is good in humankind? Should we pray to small sky daddies whose pathetic notions of grandeur seem to extend only to concern for our sexual conduct? For all it's faults the wonder that is the human race is more worthy of praise than and idolisation than any deity.
Proving a negative is generally held to be impossible. I could offer a challenge asking for proof unicorns do not exist and be reassured I would never have to pay out.
Nothing wrong with that if he finds that argument compelling. I'm thoroughly unconvinced by the notion that horse tranquilliser is a means to commune with the divine.
I meant zero scientific evidence. There is, to my knowledge, no scientific evidence for an afterlife. There are anecdotes. There are subjective experiences. There exists no scientific test that I know of that provides evidence for an afterlife.
I further doubt that one could design an experiment that would falsify the existence of an afterlife. Furthermore I would suggest that the concept is scientifically useless since it is indistinguishable (at least as far as I can tell) from the competing simpler theories (please tell me how you would design an experiment to differentiate chemical reactions in the brain from the existence of a real afterlife). Hence not only is there no (scientific) evidence for the afterlife, no such evidence could ever be obtained.
Keeping this in mind any study which begins with the premise that an afterlife is a legitimate scientific concept (and has not overcome these shortcomings) is bad science from the get go. The concept of an afterlife is, epistemologically speaking, no different to that of leprechauns. This is not to say I would be foolish enough to present a study in this light to my research subjects, that would be poor experimental design as you point out.
As a final note, the notion that a concept is scientifically meaningless does not reflect on it's value in another epistemology unless one is a fanatical scientific naturalist. Just because the afterlife is a meaningless notion for the purposes of conducting a scientific study does not mean that it does not refer to something which exists.
The widespread belief (well, perhaps better described as a delusion) that there exists an afterlife is a legitimate scientific phenomena.
"If there is precisely zero evidence for heaven, why do people believe it exists?" - This is a legitimate scientific question that isn't satisfyingly answered at present.
This kind of research strengthens the case for disbelief and I therefore consider it very valuable. Next time someone describes how their great aunt saw God just before she died I can now point out that their aunt was probably confusing God with special K.
The last CIA inspired coup in Venezuela was less than 10 years ago. Chavez is a douche bag but if you want people to stop saying "yeah but the usa..." the the USA is going to need to keep the hell out of the internal affairs of other countries. Heck Chavez has been looking for an excuse to close these guys down for years now in part because of the complicity of the media in the attempted coup against him. The CIA handed Chavez an excuse to restrict media freedom on a platter.
A true Englishman would describe the catastrophic failure of an oxygen tank as "a spot of bother".
At no point did I claim that the judge made the wrong decision in interpreting the law. I'm miles away from being able to comment on that intelligently. I'm arguing for what I think the law should be and the reality it should reflect. I have no idea where you got the impression that I felt the judge made the wrong call from a legal standpoint since in another comment further up the page (not one replying to you) I specifically state that the judge may well have correctly interpreted the law.
They are not violating any confidentiality agreements themselves, ergo they have (as far as I'm concerned) done nothing wrong. If you want to go after the people who violated the confidentiality agreement be my guest. When it comes to the distribution of information, especially information about the stock market, we have the err on the side of caution and where ever possible allow the information to spread.
Just a general comment but this idea of patents as property is exactly the problem with the darn things. It should be mandatory to license a patent in an open way. If you need to license a patents then you go to the company and they have to provide you with a price which is public knowledge. The licence also should be sold at a price that the market can stand.
You assume that I propose sanctioning the person or organisation who were provided with the information (the innocent third party). If someone publishing aggregated stock tips did nothing illicit while obtaining the information then it is not them who should be prosecuted but rather whoever is responsible for leaking the information to them (almost certainly one of these tipsters clients or someone within the tipsters organisation).
It isn't the "figuring out something nobody else realised" that I'm calling manipulation. It's the creating stock tips, telling your clients the information then trying to keep the information you have given your clients secret by going after people who have done nothing wrong. It's the way they are publishing their results and the way in which they try to keep tha information secret that bothers me.
I have no problem with them restricting access to the information. If they do nothing which requires them to make the information public then they can keep it to themselves (and their clients who agree to sign a contract not to disclose the information).
The problem is they want to in effect manipulate the market by keeping the information secret initially, do their trading (or allow their clients to do their trading), then release the information which pumps up the stocks they just bought.
If I cant later sell a stock then the only value it has is the dividend. This is more restrictive than is necessary. The problem isn't that stocks can be traded, it's the time scales over which they can be traded. If I see a company that has issued shares to pay for some new project and at 6, 12 and 24 month milestones there will be some indication of the success of this strategy then buying the shares becomes an attractive prospect (if I think their plan will work). The systems existence therefore provides the means to raise capital.
The problem is that by allowing trading over matters of hours and days or even weeks we incentivise short term thinking. 'Next quarter' thinking and the dangerous speculation that results from day trading which benefits no one.
Since many types of share provide a measure of control to the share holder the big problem we need to fix is what we incentivise shareholders to do. There should be restrictions on how quickly you can sell a share after you have bought it so that shareholders have a big incentive to keep a company around for the foreseeable future. This would then be reflected in the selection of board members.
If they want to keep this information private then they can do so. Just don't tell anyone it, or only tell people with whom them have agreements not to disclose the information. If they also conduct no trades based on the information then no one will know it.
If they wish to keep the information secret they have a simple solution, do nothing with it which would require making the information public. Which is better, having less information available due to a reduction in 'research' of the market or enabling outright manipulation of the market using schemes like the one that was protected by this ruling?
The whole point of having a stock market is to get money to the people who can make the best use of it. What this ruling does, as far as I can tell, is impede that process by preventing the dissemination of useful information about who can make the best use of investment capital. In short, while this might or might not be a good ruling from the standpoint of enforcing the law as it exists today, it runs completely counter to the whole point of having a stock market. There should be absolutely no impediment to disseminating as widely as possible information about publicly traded stocks unless it is for an exceptionally good reason (like national security level good).
Going even further, by restricting information like this they are essentially allowing the major players in the stock market to manipulate stock prices. I tell my clients that I will claim stock X will go up and the market listens to me. I do this in such a way that my clients can by their stocks first. Stock goes up because I say it will and I'm a major player. Then my clients sell their stock making a nice tidy profit, all the while I have less incentive to provide good advice because assuming I'm even vaguely plausible this scheme will work. The law is protecting this kind of thing when it should be prohibiting it!
The whole purpose of the stock market is to get money to the people who can make the best use of it. That is best served by having as much information available as rapidly as possible. How exactly does this ruling go anywhere near achieving this?