He didn't use violence. He didn't threaten anyone. He's guilty of using a video camera in the wrong room. The worst you can accuse him of is that he was going to cause economic harm to a corporation... They didn't find a massive stash of recorded films and a dedicated shadowy organization ready to run off millions of DVDs and sell them across the far east, with him as the head making millions in profit. they found an unemployed builder on what appears to be his first offence. They didn't convict him of distribution or even copying.
This is a real gem of left-wing logic. The theft itself isn't the serious crime... it's making a large profit that would be a serious crime.
That is always good advice, but remember, at that age it is difficult to see the value of science. It is difficult to understand, even for college seniors in technical majors (math, natural sciences, comp.sci..etc), the immense benefit of being someone who understands how the world works. It usually takes a little sit-back and thinking to come to grips with the fact that you are proving things about the very nature of logic itself, or modelling the universe at levels the human mind did not really evolve to deal with. Anybody capable of doing science(esp at a high level), and enjoying this incredible meaningfulness and understanding (read:enlightenment) that comes as a result.. those people should be at least encouraged to pursue it. No harm could come from an honest suggestion. She may owe him so much for it later.
Someone who doesn't love and value math or science in high will never do so. Hoping to induce such feelings later is pointless and futile. I suspect that anyone who is destined to really contribute to those fields are already functioning as miniature mathematicians and scientists by age 6.
And a separate point, being good at math and science != understanding how the world works, any more than being good at finance, history, art, music, philosophy, or other fields of study. And the product science is the accumulation of factual knowledge (for the experimentalists), and the formulation of models to organize and rationalize the factual knowledge (for the theorists). It is not enlightenment.
The harm in telling a young person that they should become something that they already know they don't want to be lies in the possibility that they might believe you.
The idea that humans are "special", that in some way the rules of life on Earth do not apply to them, is attractive, and it probably has some merit. But in order to counter the actual evidence of Earth's history, all you really have is a sort of narrative about what humans are like and would do.
I think humans are indeed special for a number of reasons. So lets just look at humans: There are about 13 known species of humans; 12 have become extinct so far. We don't know how, but it happened. And one of the last to part company with us, the Neanderthals, were superior to us in every measurable biological way: larger brains, stronger muscles, denser bones.
Finally, as another posted pointed out, the lower the population the less likely it is to go extinct? That makes no sense whatsoever. The only way it makes any sense if you think extinction will come in the form of an illness, in which case its not so much the number, but the separation of the population that will ensure its survival.
With every dramatic illness, populations start very quickly to isolate and quarantine themselves. Even in the dark ages, they apparently understood contagion well enough to do that. Here's a possible solution... the population gets so high, that the mass of the earth increases to the point... wait, no... conservation of mass. Oh, I've got it, divine judgment... no... he's the one who said "go be fruitful and multiply." Okay, I guess you're right, it makes no sense whatsoever.
in all other species, the idea is optimization of genes expressed for maximum survival. it's a feedback loop that has worked very well for billions of years.
ORLY? What was the poor creature that was "very well optimized for maximum survival" into the Dodo bird? For that matter, if you start with the Dodo bird, that end product of 4 billion years of very effective survival optimization, what was the thing 4-billion-years-worth WORSE at survival that the Dodo bird? A large immobile florescent creature made of cheese with exploding genitalia? No, it evolved from a bacteria... bacteria being already the most successful kind of survivor and reproducer on the planet. So you take a bacteria, you "optimize it for survival" for 4 billion years, until it is big, meaty, tasty, and can't run or fly. Then a big cloud of trillions of bacteria come along (transported in a few hundred human super-organisms) and eat them all. On the surface, one might be more inclined to call that a farming operation than a survival optimization operation.
You can cyber-tar and feather me all you want for high heresy; but given the modern data, the simple survival-optimization theory of evolution is an embarrassment to rational thought. It is only given a pass because it gets the massive "not-creationism" vote. Obviously adaptation to environment is a ubiquitous part of evolution; but it is equally obvious that that is just a very small part of the story.
Establishing the genus Bacillus as an upper limit on humanity's robustness does not assert any meaningful constraint humanity's survival prospects. You can't point to any species (or taxonomic category you choose to name) that is demonstrably more adaptable than humanity and shows extinction is a meaningful concern over anything less than geological time scales.
Well, as mass extinction events are often the markers of geological time scales, yes, we probably don't have to worry about extinction until the next mass extinction event. And yes, that's "probably" at least hundreds of thousands of years away. And it will continue to be "probably" at least hundreds of thousands of years away until the day it actually starts.
As for bacteria, maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying, but bacteria live and thrive in conditions hotter, colder, more acidic, more alkali, dryer, higher pressure, etc., than humans can. They're a mile down inside the earth's crust, the floors of the oceans, the peaks of mountains. I don't see how human adaptability be compared to bacterial adaptability. We have a pretty tight niche to fill... it's either in an oxygen-rich atmosphere with lots of plants or animals to eat, or its nothing.
Also, bacteria, adaptable as they may be, do not (so far as we know) have the ability to plan ahead. We can predict that the sun will go supernova and that we need to get the hell off the earth, bacteria just hope to hitch a ride with us. I think this gives us the potential to be one of the most adaptable species (on an evolutionary time scale) ever.
If bacteria went extinct, humans would necessarily go extinct. We are entirely dependent on them. If humans went extinct, I don't think there's a single species of bacteria that would be the worse for it. Yes, we have the potential to perhaps leave the solar system before the sun goes red giant (not supernaova). If humans figure out a way to escape the solar system... or if chimps do... or if insects do... regardless, the vast majority of species who escape the solar system will be bacteria. No matter how you slice it, bacteria end up the champs. That it's our brains and muscles that would do the heavy lifting is irrelevant to the question of survivability. Bacteria are guaranteed to have a survivability equal to or greater than any complex animal organism.
Would that really be much different from the way things are now? I'm not trying to be a dick, but in my view we tend to deny the fact that while we are individuals, the greater whole of humanity tends to behave quite like a hive.
I agree... The idea of the individual is wonderful and alluring. I love the idea of living and thinking rationally and deliberately -- for example as expressed so eloquently by Thoreau. Yet, in all my life I don't believe I've ever met one of these mythological "individuals." I think the closest anyone can come to breaking free of the hive mind is through the extensive study of historical thought, philosophy and religions of the past versions of the hive mind. If one breaks free of the present prescribed thought modes, one can compare them to any number of previous versions of thought modes. Then one has at least the freedom to choose which versions of thought to manifest. One is still part of the hive, and by no means original, but has at least gained some measure of freedom to chose which kind of thinking he finds superior, and to manifest those kinds in his life. Then, at least relative to one who only knows the latest thinking, he is some kind of approximation of an individual.
Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect [than Columbus's voyage to the New World]. It will completely change the future of the human race -- and maybe determine whether we have any future at all.
Yeah, and just like the early settlers of the New World, we won't have to worry about finding food in our new space-homes. We'll just bring along a lot of bits of copper, which the space-Indians will happily trade for vast quantities of food.
Name another species that is humanity's equal in adaptability and fecundity, and you carry your argument. Otherwise, the 99.99% figure is irrelevant. Humans are far more adaptable than 99.99% or even 99.999% of species that ever lived.
First, humanity isn't a species, it's a genus (Homo). Nearly everything h. sapiens is, including culture and technology, it inherited from its human ancestors. And a genus that surpasses humanity in adaptability and fecundity is easy: Bacillus (bacteria).
You couldn't be more wrong. Mass extinction events happen approximately every 10 million years. Any one of these has an excellent chance of extinguishing the human race. I think that even events that don't wipe out all humans, but only 99.99%, have an excellent chance of leading fairly quickly to extinction. Humans no longer have a culture capable of providing survival apart from civilization. If you happen to be one of the sole survivors, and you're not a farmer or a hunter, what are you going to do after you eat through all the canned goods you can find? Even worse, if the disaster causes major ecological destruction, even if you are a farmer or hunter, there may be nothing to farm or hunt. Humanity has made it through a number of ice ages, and their resulting ecological changes, but that was only with cultures in which all members specialized in food and water procurement. The disaster that extinguishes the human race could be as simple as the (very predictable, and very inevitable) next ice age.
But more to the point, here are many disasters that could wipe us out completely, in one fell swoop, such as a high-energy asteroid collision.
These scammers will try anything for a buck. My favorite one is where one of these guys told the Nigerian scammer that what he really needed was Nigerian hand-carved wooden replicas of cartoon characters for an extremely high mark-up and profit. Then when the first hand-carved samples came in, he sent back a photoshopped picture of the shipment with the explanation that a rare African hampster had gotten loose in the cargo hold and eaten holes in the figures, and new ones would have to be sent. He got a bunch of real nice hand-carved souvenirs out of that one.
Yet, somehow she thinks that sharing HER story with the world will convince other people? If only someone had shared their story with her, she could have avoided this terrible mess, so she's going to make sure it doesn't happen to others? Please. Even in acknowledging her stupidity, she shows no sense.
I don't think this is true. It's true that she listened to no one after she got sucked into the scam. That's normal psychology. In investment it's called throwing good money after bad. Bottom line, she didn't want to accept that everything she sent away so far was a loss, so instead she did the only other alternative -- she sent in more money. However, if she had been familiar with the scam before she sent anything, she probably wouldn't have fallen for it. So I think her point is legitimate. By making the scam even well more well-known than it is, fewer people will get sucked into it in the first place.
If I carry out an action with well-known consequences then I am at fault for those consequences. This is true whether I'm parking illegally and getting a ticket, climbing a tree in a thunderstorm and getting struck by lightning, or giving a scammer money and getting ripped off.
Well-known to whom? If you do something well-known to you to have adverse consequences, then it is logical to assign to you the responsibility for the consequences. If a six-year-old is walking down the street with a $1 bill, and a scammer tells him that his mother said to give him the $1, and he falls for the "scam", is it his own fault, because it is "well-known" to 99.99% of us that his mother said no such thing? No, it wasn't well-known to the victim, so what the rest of us know is irrelevant. If the victim of the scam knows its a scam, and goes along with it anyway, then sure, assign all the blame you want to them.
Your fallacy is essentially in assuming that blame is a percentage which must be portioned out among the actors involved in the event. It is true that if I leave a stack of money out in plain view it is 100% the fault of the criminal for taking it. It is also 100% my fault for being a complete idiot.
If I take an action which I know, or should have very good reason to know, will cause me harm even if that harm is illegal, then it is my fault for taking that action and I bear the blame for the consequences. It is also the fault of whoever actually does it to me, but that doesn't change the first part.
So there was a total of 200% of blame to be distributed? That makes 0% of sense.
And clearly, the woman did NOT know that her actions would cause her harm. That she SHOULD have known, is just a subjective judgment by the 99% of us who WOULD have known. She didn't. It's not her fault that she's stupid. 100% of the blame (that's my funny way of saying "all of the blame") goes to the scammer.
So, if you meet a genius, and (s)he says the world is full of morons, you've got to realize that from their perspective, it's true. 98% of people they meet are as mentally slow or slower relative to them as a borderline mental retard of 70-79 IQ is to an average person
Yeah, but what if 98% of the people you meet say that the world is full of morons?
One cannot oppress his or herself. Anarchy may LEAD to oppression when one person or group begins forcing another to do something against their will, but Anarchy in its purist form is the exact opposite of oppression.
People are trying continuously to force others to do things against their will. They always have been. Therefore "anarchy in its purest form" is a fiction incompatible with human nature. Saying that anarchy merely LEADS to oppression implies there is some time lag between the institution of anarchy and the development of oppression. In practice, the oppression would precede any attempt at anarchy, such attempt would only give full license to oppression.
I'm convinced that 90% of America is incapable of critical thinking, and if you could get them to watch movies like Brazil or Dr. Strangelove or The Mist.. they would NOT get the irony. Another 5% would get it but pretend otherwise, knowing it would be dangerous to irritate a mob. I'm also convinced this explains the popularity of Fox News: catering to the lowest denominator... at least until the economic shit hit the fan.
I agree that 90% of America (along with the rest of the world) is incapable of critical thinking. However, I think this explains the popularity of CNN, MSNBC, and network news. Every consumer of "news" prefers a provider that shares his biases. However, those capable of critical thought are aware of their biases, and would therefore prefer to do without the condescension of the feigned objectivity of the established left-leaning providers, even if they prefer a left-leaning bias.
Use of "boxen" is actually really annoying to many people, including myself; and honestly, at least for me, when I see that it lowers my opinion of whoever wrote it. The impression it gives me is that the author is trying to sound cool to people who are computer geeks, but the kind of geek that mods their computer so it looks cool and runs the latest game quickly, not the kind that's actually interested in the inner workings of the system.
I always get a kick out of the word "boxen" and make a mental note to use the term myself (which I promptly lose). It never occurred to me the example of "oxen" in English; I've always though of it as the simulation of a native German speaker making a mistake on the pluralization... for the reason that it just sounds better than "boxes". (I suppose "ox" must have come to English via German.)
Slashdot Mirror
This is a real gem of left-wing logic. The theft itself isn't the serious crime... it's making a large profit that would be a serious crime.
Someone who doesn't love and value math or science in high will never do so. Hoping to induce such feelings later is pointless and futile. I suspect that anyone who is destined to really contribute to those fields are already functioning as miniature mathematicians and scientists by age 6.
And a separate point, being good at math and science != understanding how the world works, any more than being good at finance, history, art, music, philosophy, or other fields of study. And the product science is the accumulation of factual knowledge (for the experimentalists), and the formulation of models to organize and rationalize the factual knowledge (for the theorists). It is not enlightenment.
The harm in telling a young person that they should become something that they already know they don't want to be lies in the possibility that they might believe you.
A self-respecting president would have something a bit more functional than a laptop on his desk. It should also get sucked up into the oval office ceiling at a touch of a button.
I think humans are indeed special for a number of reasons. So lets just look at humans: There are about 13 known species of humans; 12 have become extinct so far. We don't know how, but it happened. And one of the last to part company with us, the Neanderthals, were superior to us in every measurable biological way: larger brains, stronger muscles, denser bones.
As opposed to anti-religious zealots, who are objective and reasonable... and who can be counted on to reproduce for the good of the species.
Well, we can hope, anyway.
With every dramatic illness, populations start very quickly to isolate and quarantine themselves. Even in the dark ages, they apparently understood contagion well enough to do that. Here's a possible solution... the population gets so high, that the mass of the earth increases to the point... wait, no... conservation of mass. Oh, I've got it, divine judgment... no... he's the one who said "go be fruitful and multiply." Okay, I guess you're right, it makes no sense whatsoever.
ORLY? What was the poor creature that was "very well optimized for maximum survival" into the Dodo bird? For that matter, if you start with the Dodo bird, that end product of 4 billion years of very effective survival optimization, what was the thing 4-billion-years-worth WORSE at survival that the Dodo bird? A large immobile florescent creature made of cheese with exploding genitalia? No, it evolved from a bacteria... bacteria being already the most successful kind of survivor and reproducer on the planet. So you take a bacteria, you "optimize it for survival" for 4 billion years, until it is big, meaty, tasty, and can't run or fly. Then a big cloud of trillions of bacteria come along (transported in a few hundred human super-organisms) and eat them all. On the surface, one might be more inclined to call that a farming operation than a survival optimization operation.
You can cyber-tar and feather me all you want for high heresy; but given the modern data, the simple survival-optimization theory of evolution is an embarrassment to rational thought. It is only given a pass because it gets the massive "not-creationism" vote. Obviously adaptation to environment is a ubiquitous part of evolution; but it is equally obvious that that is just a very small part of the story.
Well, as mass extinction events are often the markers of geological time scales, yes, we probably don't have to worry about extinction until the next mass extinction event. And yes, that's "probably" at least hundreds of thousands of years away. And it will continue to be "probably" at least hundreds of thousands of years away until the day it actually starts.
As for bacteria, maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying, but bacteria live and thrive in conditions hotter, colder, more acidic, more alkali, dryer, higher pressure, etc., than humans can. They're a mile down inside the earth's crust, the floors of the oceans, the peaks of mountains. I don't see how human adaptability be compared to bacterial adaptability. We have a pretty tight niche to fill... it's either in an oxygen-rich atmosphere with lots of plants or animals to eat, or its nothing.
If bacteria went extinct, humans would necessarily go extinct. We are entirely dependent on them. If humans went extinct, I don't think there's a single species of bacteria that would be the worse for it. Yes, we have the potential to perhaps leave the solar system before the sun goes red giant (not supernaova). If humans figure out a way to escape the solar system... or if chimps do... or if insects do... regardless, the vast majority of species who escape the solar system will be bacteria. No matter how you slice it, bacteria end up the champs. That it's our brains and muscles that would do the heavy lifting is irrelevant to the question of survivability. Bacteria are guaranteed to have a survivability equal to or greater than any complex animal organism.
I agree... The idea of the individual is wonderful and alluring. I love the idea of living and thinking rationally and deliberately -- for example as expressed so eloquently by Thoreau. Yet, in all my life I don't believe I've ever met one of these mythological "individuals." I think the closest anyone can come to breaking free of the hive mind is through the extensive study of historical thought, philosophy and religions of the past versions of the hive mind. If one breaks free of the present prescribed thought modes, one can compare them to any number of previous versions of thought modes. Then one has at least the freedom to choose which versions of thought to manifest. One is still part of the hive, and by no means original, but has at least gained some measure of freedom to chose which kind of thinking he finds superior, and to manifest those kinds in his life. Then, at least relative to one who only knows the latest thinking, he is some kind of approximation of an individual.
Yeah, and just like the early settlers of the New World, we won't have to worry about finding food in our new space-homes. We'll just bring along a lot of bits of copper, which the space-Indians will happily trade for vast quantities of food.
First, humanity isn't a species, it's a genus (Homo). Nearly everything h. sapiens is, including culture and technology, it inherited from its human ancestors. And a genus that surpasses humanity in adaptability and fecundity is easy: Bacillus (bacteria).
You couldn't be more wrong. Mass extinction events happen approximately every 10 million years. Any one of these has an excellent chance of extinguishing the human race. I think that even events that don't wipe out all humans, but only 99.99%, have an excellent chance of leading fairly quickly to extinction. Humans no longer have a culture capable of providing survival apart from civilization. If you happen to be one of the sole survivors, and you're not a farmer or a hunter, what are you going to do after you eat through all the canned goods you can find? Even worse, if the disaster causes major ecological destruction, even if you are a farmer or hunter, there may be nothing to farm or hunt. Humanity has made it through a number of ice ages, and their resulting ecological changes, but that was only with cultures in which all members specialized in food and water procurement. The disaster that extinguishes the human race could be as simple as the (very predictable, and very inevitable) next ice age.
But more to the point, here are many disasters that could wipe us out completely, in one fell swoop, such as a high-energy asteroid collision.
Please. 20 more years has been the 'optimistic position' for 40 years.
Here's a nice little story on the scam-baiters.
See ebolamonkeyman.com and 419eater.com.
These scammers will try anything for a buck. My favorite one is where one of these guys told the Nigerian scammer that what he really needed was Nigerian hand-carved wooden replicas of cartoon characters for an extremely high mark-up and profit. Then when the first hand-carved samples came in, he sent back a photoshopped picture of the shipment with the explanation that a rare African hampster had gotten loose in the cargo hold and eaten holes in the figures, and new ones would have to be sent. He got a bunch of real nice hand-carved souvenirs out of that one.
That's the morality of a thief anyway. In these Nigerian operations they keep repeating such things to one another.
I don't think this is true. It's true that she listened to no one after she got sucked into the scam. That's normal psychology. In investment it's called throwing good money after bad. Bottom line, she didn't want to accept that everything she sent away so far was a loss, so instead she did the only other alternative -- she sent in more money. However, if she had been familiar with the scam before she sent anything, she probably wouldn't have fallen for it. So I think her point is legitimate. By making the scam even well more well-known than it is, fewer people will get sucked into it in the first place.
Well-known to whom? If you do something well-known to you to have adverse consequences, then it is logical to assign to you the responsibility for the consequences. If a six-year-old is walking down the street with a $1 bill, and a scammer tells him that his mother said to give him the $1, and he falls for the "scam", is it his own fault, because it is "well-known" to 99.99% of us that his mother said no such thing? No, it wasn't well-known to the victim, so what the rest of us know is irrelevant. If the victim of the scam knows its a scam, and goes along with it anyway, then sure, assign all the blame you want to them.
So there was a total of 200% of blame to be distributed? That makes 0% of sense.
And clearly, the woman did NOT know that her actions would cause her harm. That she SHOULD have known, is just a subjective judgment by the 99% of us who WOULD have known. She didn't. It's not her fault that she's stupid. 100% of the blame (that's my funny way of saying "all of the blame") goes to the scammer.
Yeah, but what if 98% of the people you meet say that the world is full of morons?
People are trying continuously to force others to do things against their will. They always have been. Therefore "anarchy in its purest form" is a fiction incompatible with human nature. Saying that anarchy merely LEADS to oppression implies there is some time lag between the institution of anarchy and the development of oppression. In practice, the oppression would precede any attempt at anarchy, such attempt would only give full license to oppression.
I agree that 90% of America (along with the rest of the world) is incapable of critical thinking. However, I think this explains the popularity of CNN, MSNBC, and network news. Every consumer of "news" prefers a provider that shares his biases. However, those capable of critical thought are aware of their biases, and would therefore prefer to do without the condescension of the feigned objectivity of the established left-leaning providers, even if they prefer a left-leaning bias.
I always get a kick out of the word "boxen" and make a mental note to use the term myself (which I promptly lose). It never occurred to me the example of "oxen" in English; I've always though of it as the simulation of a native German speaker making a mistake on the pluralization... for the reason that it just sounds better than "boxes". (I suppose "ox" must have come to English via German.)