WTF? I said "some slashdotters" not "the parent". My only direct reaction to the parent was the fact that maybe doing "anything" wasn't what most parents wanted to do.
The rest was a reaction to a sentiment I've seen reflected across several other posts in this topic.
A final note: that blog post was from a pretty uninformed Mormon (if it was by a Mormon). I didn't read the entire thing, but in skimming it I found at least one glaring factual error. The blogger claimed Mormons deny evolution - and cited an article that is almost 100 years old. The Mormon church's official position on evolution is that it has no position. This has been the position for decades, and Mormonism's most prominent thinker (Hugh Nibley) was an obvious believer in the theory.
Oh yeah - another thing. When was the last time someone was actually prosecuted using that anti-sodomy standard? That law has been on the books in many, many states in the union. It's just a historical artificat, and doesn't really prove anything by itself.
This entire post is about how Mormons behave - and explicitly about how Mormons in Utah behave. Most of what has made this conversation rewarding has been the focus on Mormonism - as opposed to Mormons. I feel no motivation to defend the actions of large numbers of Mormons - especially not ones from Utah (I don't like Utah Mormons very much).
I think it's a bad idea to have so many Mormons in one place. I think it would be a bad idea to have so many Buddhists, Catholics, or Baptists in one place too. Or atheists for that matter. The behavior you see in Utah is a result of homogeneity - not theology. Even if Mormons are equally bad outside of homogenuous areas, the problem still remains: do you want to critcize what we believe, or the fact that we fail to live up to it? I'm telling you what we believe, I'm not telling you that were shining examples of all our principles. I never claimed that Mormons were better than the average person (and I never would) so I don't see why you want to claim they're worse.
Let's please keep this focussed on the theology/philosophy. I'm still waiting to hear back on several of our most hotly-debated issues. I especialy would like to see your response to my parallels between the Articles of Faith and the 10 Commandments and Parables. If all you want to do is criticize people then just let me know now so I don't waste time responding.
If the parent(s) cannot take care of their own child (or children) then they should not have been parents in the first place. Period.
Possibly the most assinine thing I've seen on slashdot. So if you have to take your kid to the MD you are a bad parent? Genius, sheer genius. Let's go find every kid who has seen a doctor and take them from their parents.
If you have a child with a mental disorder (and gaming is NOT A mental disorder), then there are tests that can determine that. Then take the appropriate action based on the results of those tests.
And according to you the "apropriate action" is to sterilize the parents and take the children away. It's shocking you don't have more support for this viewpoint.
Being addicted to gaming, golf, or anything besides drugs (alcohol and cigarettes fall into this group) is very easy to fix.
What, exactly, is the difference between being adicted to "drugs" and to an activity? What drugs are you including? Heroine? Pot? Morphine? Caffeine? Addiction is a complicated pscyho-physiological phenomena. I'm not going to claim to know exactly what is and what isn't addiction, but I don't think you should either. Especially not given your track record of irrational thought demonstrated so clearly in your post. You could have at least checked out wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction ) and read the first paragraph: There is a lack of consensus as to what may properly be termed 'addiction.' Clearly the only reason for a lack of consensus is that you haven't graced the argument with the presence of your lucid intellect.
You have it backwards. The "long tail sales" structure is a result of decreased cost of stocking items, not the other way around.
What I said was: The promise of profit from the tail is not based on increased revenue as much as it is on decreased cost.
How is that backwards? And in any case, the long tail is not a result in the cost of anything. The long tail is just an artifact of the fact that a few items are really popular and account for most of the purchases, while the majority of titles account for only a few sales each. This has been true for as long as there have been brick and mortar stores. You clearly don't understand what the long tail is at all.
The whole point is that the long tail has always been there. You go to Border and they have the NYT best sellers. (The hump). The rest of the store is the long tail - books that move slower and make less money per title.
The point is that now that inventory costs have decreased, the long tail will grow longer. It's not being created by low costs, it's merely growing in length and importance. If long-tail items got sold in higher quantities the curve would flatten out and it would no longer be a long tail. If it only makes sense to sell the top 20% of available CDs in a brick and mortar store (tail relatively short), it may make sense to sell the top 50% of available CDs from Amazon, and it may make sense to sell the top 90% if your iTunes. The tail grows in length as increasingly less-popular items become profitable as costs decrease.
I can't believe I spent this long replying to a 1-line AC. I must be trying really hard to avoid studying.
You're the parents, you make the rules. Pull the plug, take the computer away, do something, anything.
Maybe when someone is deciding how to handle a problem with their own child, doing anything isn't good enough? Maybe they want to do the right thing
It's odd to me that some Slashdotters take "the parents should be responsible" to mean "the parents should do all parenting alone". Parents are responsible for the behavior of their children, but if the behavior surpasses the parents ability to moderate/fix/heal, then why on earth should we mock the parents for seeking specialist help? Are we going to make fun of all youth counselors and child psychologists now because "You're the parent, you make the rule?" Part of holding parents responsible for their own children should be allowing them access to the tools they need to do that job right.
I'm not trying to be rude, but this is exactly the problem I'm talking about. Business decisions are about profit. One of the most prevalent reasons for making bad decisions about business is the failure to think in terms of profit.
In your case, you are talking about revenue. You point out that if they don't stock enough books, they will loose revenue because you won't by the book. But what you fail to acknowledge is cost. There are at least two types. First of all, they have to pay rent for every square inch of display. Every single book on a store shelf costs them money directly. Then there's opportunity cost. If one person a week wants to buy book X for $10, but 10 people a week want to buy book Y for $10 (and, for the sake of illustrating scarcity, they have only 1 display space left) then which should they display? If they display X, they are making $10/week from selling book X and LOSING $100/wk for not selling book Y (that's opportunity cost).
What you seem to fail to realize is that sometimes the right choice for a company is to lose revenue. In your example, the book store lost revenue because they didn't have your book. We don't have to worry abut probability. We can say "if they don't have Conventions of War there is probability 0 that I will buy another book". Fine. But if they make $8 selling the book and it cost them $4 to buy the book, and it has cost them another $6 to keep the book on the shelf until the moment you walked in then they LOST $2 by selling you the book. Get it? If passing on revenue means you save even more in cost - YOU SHOULD PASS ON REVENUE.
So this is where the Long Tail comes in. Using your example we could say that it costs Amazon $4 to buy the book, but it only costs them $2 to store it* until you buy it. The decrease in costs means it makes sense for Amazon to stock it (revenue - cost = profit --> 8 - (4+2) = 2) whereas it does not make sense for Borders to stock the same book (revenu - cost = profit --> 8 - (4+6) = -2). Even though you bought the book, that doesn't mean Border made money on it.
That's the whole point of the Long Tail. Books, CDs, etc that are unprofitable if you have to store them in retail space until they are sold can be profitable if you store them in a warehouse (e.g. Amazon, Overstock, etc.) and even more profitable if you store them digitally (e.g. iTunes). So niche items that could not be sold profitably in brick-and-mortar stores would simply go out of print and become rare collectors items in the 1970s, but now they have a chance to live a long and happy life thanks to the ability of the internet to reduce costs and thus increase the profitability of niche items.
I don't know how much more emphaticaly I can say this: it's all about profit. Revenue or cost - in exlusion of the other - are simply not intelligent ways to make business decisions.
-stormin
* the savings in cost can be comprised of both actual savings (e.g. it's cheaper to buy space in a warehouse than retail space) and opportunity cost (e.g. if you have restricted space you have to decide either/or, whereas if you have more space you can stock more stuff and thus pass on less stuff and thus reduce opportunity cost)
The curve represents sales of a type of commodity. Say CDs. The height of the curve is the volume of sales. The curve has a very high "hump" near the left - representing that a few select titles (the hits) make the majority of the sales. The "long tail" doesn't refer to shifting anything, it refers to the narrow part of the graph to the right of the hits. The "also rans". The sales for any given title in the long tail don't justify stocking them in brick-and-mortar stores. But the cost of inventory decreases for centralized distributors like Amazon or Overstock, and almost dissappears for digital media. As a result, these companies can eek profit out of the vast majority of titles that you would never find in a brick-and-mortar store.
The profit doesn't really enter into it.
This is nonsense. You don't run a business by saying "profit doesn't enter into it". No profit means not making money. Businesses, with rare exceptions, don't do things that don't make money. Profit may not always be the only or even the most important consideration, but it ALWAYS "enters into it".
The cost of that profit is actually not all that different from what it used to be, once you factor in the losers; there are a great many losers on the long tail.
This just doesn't make sense. The losers ARE the long tail, by definition. They are the things that appeal to only a few people. If there weren't losers, they would be part of the hump, and not part of the tail.
As far as redistributing revenue, this is purely speculative. The long tail may contain more than the hump, or less than the hump. But there's no bright line demarkation of what is in the hump and what is in the long tail, and so it doesn't make sense to compare them in this way. The point of the long tail is that based on lower costs companies can afford to offer a greater selection. In addition, some niche companies that don't have any hits at all can survive on just niche items becausee of lower operating costs.
It also doesn't make sense because the phrase "cost of profit" is nonsensical. Profit is what's left over AFTER the costs have already been deducted out. You really need to realize that revenue and cost mean NOTHING as disconnected entites. The only mean something in context. If you "raise revenus 100%" or "cut costs 200%" this means NOTHING. Thinking about cost or revnue leads to ridiculuous things. Want to reduce costs to 0? Shut your business down. Losing $100 on every unit of x you sell? Sell twice as many and you revenue goes up 100%.
Read the article on the long tail and keep profit fixed firmly in mind and you can avoid a lot of the weirdness. You may have some really good points. I can't tell because your terminology is too confused.
So you agree then that Mormon missionaries use the language in Articles #2 and #3 in full knowledge that their audience is going to interpret it differently from the way that they themselves interpret those articles?
I think this further highlights the vast gulf between what you think about Mormons, and the truth about Mormons. Mormon missionaries are overwhelmingly 19 - 21 year old kids. Kids. For American missions they have 3 weeks of training. For foreign-speaking missions they have 8 or 11, and it's almost all spent on learning the language.
Furthermore, there are no official Mormon theologians, there is no official canon of Mormon theology, and there is no professional clergy. The type of intentional misleading you speak of is institutionally impossible. The educational wing of the church is called CES (Church Educational Services, I think) and they specialize in getting the basics down. There has been no official attempt to capture Mormon theology definitively, and there never will be. There is no authoritative voice to say "this is what the scripture means, this is what it doesn't" except perhaps the Prophet. And the sad truth is that we haven't had a truly theological prophet since Joseph. Brigham was a colonizer, and since then they have been administrators first, and theologians second. I just want you to understand that your characterization I started this post with is not only false, it is impossible.
Also, once you understand that there is no such thing as a closed or definitive Mormon canon, you will realize that your assertions that the Articles of Faith and their meaning in ordinary language is what defines Mormon theology is equally impossible. Mormon theology can not be contained because we believe in an open canon and on-going revelation.
Now let me get to your remarks regarding "teaching devices". What you say about these are accurate, but the articles of faith are not teaching devices in this sense. I don't know how much you know about math, but one extremely tricky problem is whether you can take a limit from inside an integral and move it outside an integral. The short answer is: you can. And so in early calculus assuming the limit of the derivative is the same as the derivative of the limit is fine. But when you get to Real Analysis for the first time they tell you "guess what, this actually needs to be proven" And the proof that it is OK to do so is very difficult. So what I'm telling you is that there are teaching devices that are incomplete and there are teaching devices that are false. Both can be very useful. Chemistry, for example, is taught almost entirely with falsehoods in high school, and then you find out that everything they taught you was an oversimplification that was not technically true when you get to college-level chemistry and you have to start over again. The final picture is relatively similar, but the high school stuff is false. In contrast, when you tell your students "it's ok to move the limit outside of the integral" this is true, but you're neglecting to mention that this isn't obvious, it's actually a consequence of some extremely in-depth theoretical mathematics. Mathematic knowledge is rife with examples like these.
So your characterization Mormon missionaries are deliberately not telling the truth to their audience without the consent of their audience is not correct. First of all because missionaries never deliberately withhold the truth. You're extremely lucky if you get a missionary that actually has thought about this seriously at all. And secondly, the Articles of Faith are TRUE, they are just incomplete.
One difference we may also have, is that you think it is possible to express theology definitively. I think it is not. You believe it's possible for a human to comprehend and state the complete truth of religion. But I believe that God's thoughts are not as our thoughts. The best we can ever do is approximate the moral truths of
If you don't understand profit, you probably shouldn't write at the Wall Street Journal. Profit = revenue - cost.
It seems that Mr. Anderson's book (I RTFA, but not the book) claims that higher sales in the tail will increase the profit of the tail and this will change the economics of the web. This doesn't make much sense to me, and the article rightly points out that there is not that much interest in the tail.
But that's not the point. The point is that to stock "tail items" (niche items) in a brick-and-mortar store COSTS a lot of money. It costs money in terms of the hit-items you can't stock because you've got limited inventory space (opportunity cost at work). But the cost of stocking niche items digitally is far, far less. The promise of profit from the tail is not based on increased revenue as much as it is on decreased cost.
Take the example of Apple's iTunes sales. Even if they do closely track Billboard sales, this doesn't change the fact that Apple is profiting MORE from their tail items than a brick-and-mortar store would be.
It seems as though both of these guys are missing the point: the promise of the tail is not in increased revenue, but in decreased cost.
Do you really think the porn industry wants moneyless kids who can't buy any of their stuff as a target audience?
This is kind of a stupid question. Of course they want to get moneyless kids into their porn. For the same reason the MS is happy to give huge discounts on software to schools: to get kids "hooked" on it. It's not like you lose money showing stuff to kids (they can't buy anyway) but if they develop a taste for what you're selling then it's money in the bank down the road.
You will not stop an adolescent boy from seeing boobies. What we need is some fscking responsibility from parents, we need them to teach their kids about sex and explain things to them so they don't get screwed up by what they find. Stop expecting Uncle Sam to parent for you, because if he starts, he won't stop and you've lost control as a parent. I'm no fan of a nanny state
I'm not a fan of the nanny state either, and in general I think parents should do the parenting. But if you have sites out there that are intentionally trying to disguise their sites in order to lure kids there or (more likely) at least seem innocuous at the first, then you've got people actively working against parents trying to be good parents.
I agree that if a kid really wants to see boobies, he will probably get the chance. But it doesn't follow from that that we should make it easy for them. If a kid really wants to score some meth, they can probably do that too. It doesn't follow that we should hand out instructions on school about how to build a meth lab just because the kids could get some anyway. Sure, they can probably find it on the internet if they look - so make them look! Don't make it easier for kids to get into stuff that they shouldn't be getting into. Don't make parenting harder for parents.
All the law says is this: you can't lie about having porno on your site. What, in principle, is so wrong with this statue, really? We label video games and movies to allow parents to do their job. We require labels on food so people know what they are seeing. When someone links to goatse on slashdot, someone is usually kind enough to point it out so unsuspecting readers don't melt their eyeballs out. So what is so controversial about saying you can't metatag something "seaseme street" if it's hard core porn?
Now speaking practically I'm not sure if it's a good idea in terms of enforceability and defining what breaks the statute, but in principle this should be about as non-controversial as it gets. The real issue is that a hefty proprotion of slashdotters are sensitive about anything that endangers, threatens, criticizes, or even just casts in a bad light their precious porno.
For the sake of full-disclosure, here is where I draw the distinction. You don't legislate morality directly, you legislate pragmatically to get to morality.
Let me paraphrase that. You're saying "One ought to legislate pragmatically in order to promote behaviors which conform to the Mormon view of what constitutes moral behavior."
OK, I completely failed to make my point. Let me try again, with a fresh start.
Actually, there is another way: you legislate pragmatically to maximize the ability of people to make their own moral choices.
This is what I believe. I agree 100% with this statement. The point I was trying to make was that this standpoint is a moral one. It makes no sense to me when people pride themselves in refraining from applying their morality to other people. This means you have, by definition, a double standard. This is hypocritical. The exact same morality should be consistently applied.
But my morality, and Mormon morality, does specify that the freedom to choose is essential. And so your position does conform with Mormon principles. As I stated, Mormons believe there are some things we should not do that are not appropriate for legislation because to legislate them would remove choice. I offered smoking and drinking as two examples. Other examples would be paying tithing, believing anything, etc.
So I'm not advocating laws to "get morality", just laws to allow morality.
Even though we agree on principle, and you phrased it much, much better than I did, I'm not going to claim that we agree on all actual applications of this principle. For example, you seem to think it's a bad idea to have adultery be against the law. This isn't obvious to me. Marriage is a contract, one of the conditions of that contract is fidelity, adultery breaks that contract. Marriage is not a contract between two people, it is a contract between two people and the gov't (otherwise it would be absurd for the gov't to hand out marriage licenses). So if you break a contract with the gov't, should it be criminalized? Possibly. I don't know that it would be a good idea to actually have cops investigate fidelity for reasons of privacy, personal rights, and practicality, but in terms of principle alone, I don't have an issue with it.
But on most issues, we actually probably agree. Mormonism wouldn't really change very many laws at all. As far as homosexuality goes, I've already stated that Mormons refuse to make thought-laws. So that would never be illegal. As for homosexual acts, consensual acts between people that don't impinge on human freedom can't be illegal. I'm comfortable with that. Masturbation? Same thing. You could argue that it's addictive, I suppose, but even if that's true, it's just an unenforceable law. And as for lying, it's not even universally immoral, how could we possibly make it illegal?
I hope I've clarified my point. Just that it's impossible not to have a moral basis for laws, and that having two moralities (one for you and yours, one for everyone else) is hypocritical. There should be one morality. But we should only legislate in order to maximize morality - and that means allowing people to do all the evil, wrong, stupid things possible up to the point where freedom to choose is curtailed. This makes sense to me.
Article #2: We believe that God in His mercy gives each man the kind of afterlife that he feels most comfortable with.
Article #3: We believe that, just like a connoisseur appreciates better wine and food through experience, men appreciate and will obtain a better afterlife through the practice of charity and purity.
If I understand you, you're saying those two articles are what the actual Articles #2 and #3 amount to; so, why don't they say that? Why do they use language that obviously would be misinterpreted by the kind of converts Mormon missionaries would like to reach?
As a brief aside, what do you think are "the kinds of converts Mormon missionaries would like to reach?". I'll add this to my list of questions I'd still like to get answers to. The other two are "what have Mormons done that's harmful against the 3rd world" and "what aspects of Mormonism are coercive". These aren't the main thrust of our discussion, so I don't mind them getting deferred for now.
In brief, I think your rephrasing of the Articles of Faith (2 and 3) is valid. I think you are understanding me pretty well. So the question is, why didn't Joseph Smith give something similar to that in response to Editor Long's question about what Mormons believe in 1842.
The main reason is what I referred to earlier as the milk before meat principle. The most superficial, and therefore the most readily accessible, interpretation of human morality starts with action. The most crude understanding of morality starts with things that should or should not be done. Therefore, to cast as wide a net as possible, it makes sense to start with actions and build from there. This is not somehow isolated to Mormonism, or utilitarian religions. Just take a look at the 10 Commandments. Most of them are explicitly action-based: don't make other idols, don't use the name of God in vain, don't work on Sabbath, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't lie, don't steal. Others are less explicitly action based: honor thy mother and father, don't covet. Arguably, those are also behaviors. Do you find the criticism of Articles of Faith 2 and 3 equally applicable to the 10 Commandments? Another example of this milk before meat principle is the way in which Christ taught people in parables. At times it seems the parables were designed to encode the meaning to keep unbelievers from understanding, but the majority of parables are simply ways to wrap moral concepts up in plain-language. It seems like they too would be vulnerable to your criticism. Why tell a story about building on sand or on rock? Why not just state in plain language the point?
So I actually believe that the Articles of Faith, as stated, are more clear for people who have no philosophical or theological training. For example, I'm not sure about "most comfortable". I think "We believe God in His mercy gives each man exactly what he chooses, with the only exception being that through the miracle of the atonement, you can repent of choosing bad things." That's basically exactly what Mormons believe, but I'm not sure it's as clear, and you need to develop a framework (that you and I both share) about the intrinsic value of morality first. Any theology that requires a philosophical groundwork first, and then gets to the point second is less optimal for getting to the most people. I find the Articles of Faith, as stated, dovetail with the methods of teaching found in the Bible - both Old and New Testaments. I believe this is because Christ and His prophets followed the same principle of milk before meat for the same general reasons.
A lesser reasons may (or may not) include the following consideration: The Articles of Faith - as you stated them - would have been hard to swallow in 1842. If the Mormons faced the persecution they did based on the Articles of Faith as written, how much worse may it have been if they'd come out with deeper philosophy out
First let me just reiterate that I'm impressed with your position in general. I have really enjoyed this discussion so far. Not because it's been "fun", but because I respect your determination to stick to moral principle.
You asked a direcct quesiton and it deserves a direct answer. I promise I'm not trying to evade what you're saying, so please just do me the favor of reading my entire (direct) response to your question.
The question: Will God actually reward me for charity, punish me for sin, and assign me to one of the three Kingdoms after death according to my behavior in the world?
There are at least two dificult issues in this sentence. I'm not sure if you meant to question one or both (andn there may be others). The first is the nature of the evaluation and the second is the nature of the punishment/reward. Given the fact that this is actually a complicated question the best and most honest answer I can give you is that in general it's a "yes", but if I'm going to be really specific, it's a "no". Hear me out.
Regarding the Nature of Evaluation
You draw a distinction between behavior/action and character/being. You're claiming that what someone does is not the same as what someone is. But I'm claiming that what a person does given perfect knowledge about all factors in their environment IS EQUIVALENT to what a person is. So I think one thing you object to is the nature of judging people based on what they do as opposed to what they are. I believe this distinction ceases to exist when the one doing the judging is God. In that case, what you do IS who you are because God knows all of the circumstances involved. Circumstances + action = character.
Regarding the Nature of Punishment/Reward
Another issue you may have is the idea that God stands ready to mete out rewards to some and punishments to others. I'm not sure if this is a problem for you, but it's a problem for me. If God has the option to punish some and reward others, why not just leave out the punishment? Positive reinforcement seems so much better than negaitve, so why would our Eternal Father resort to negative punishment - especially after the fact? What good can it do? It makes no sense to me.
After a careful study of Mormon theology, however, I've come to the conclusion that God does not, in fact, mete out punishment or rewards. The punishment or reward are direct and inevitable consequences of the people that we've become (which is the same as the actions we've made). The highest reward is to dwell with God. This is not granted as a gold star for people God likes, however (or for those who've followed the most rules). The Book of Mormon explicitly states that those who do not end up in God's presence are only those people who would suffer more from being in his presence than from being wherever they do end up. God IS the reward, not the reward-giver. The same analog works for punishment.
The critical role of Christ in Mormon theology is not to judge people, but to provide a means whereby we may change who we are If it's true that your actions determine your character, than what happens when you make a bad choice? Your character has been corrupted. You can't go back in time and re-make the decision. To me, this is the true miracle of Christ and the function of his atonement. I don't claim to understand why it works, but the idea is that because Christ has suffered for our sins we have the opportunity to expunge the sins we've committed. And this means we have an opportunity to become the kinds of people we would have been had we made the right decision at the time. That is the salvation Christ offers: a salvation to effect our character retroactively. We are made perfect through the blood of Christ.
I would urge you to not take my word for this Mormon theology stuff. Go read just a chapter of the Book of Mormon and see for yourself if I'm making this stuff up or if it's what Mormons really believe. Try 2nd Nephi chapter 2 here:
You keep supplying evidence for the statement "many Mormons are good and the Mormon church does good". I agree with that statement
What I was responding to was your contention that Mormon charity was derived from self-interest. But I'm happy to set that aside to concentrate on the issues around Mormon theology.
No, it is a fundamental flaw of Mormon theology (as well as of many other religions). The Mormon Articles of Faith specifically tell people that they will be rewarded or punished, and therefore utilitarian considerations are a built-in part of the theology. If Mormonism didn't want its adherents to make this confusion, it could simply eliminate rewards and punishments from its teachings; everything else would remain unchanged: practices, laws, teachings, theology, etc.
This is where I really disagree with you. The Articles of Faith you are referring to are 2 and 3:
2 We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression. 3 We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.
This statement is explicitly what you don't like: rewards/punishment based on actions. Not on character. But your reading of Mormon theology based on these two verses is piecemeal. You should at least read all 13 of the Articles of Faith. If you did, you'd end up with this:
13 We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul--We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.
Note the emphasis (added by me) on being In 2 and 3 it's all about what you do, in 13 it's all about what you are. We've already agreed that there is at least one strong connection between action and character. Those who do the right action (may) end up with improved character. So 2 and 3 can be seen as saying "you'll get into an accident if you drive without going to driving school" while 13 is stating "you'll get into an accident because you'll be a bad driver". There's no direct connection between going to driving school and crashing your car. But going to driving school will make you a better driver (assuming you're someone who's never driven before, has no idea about driving) and so it will make you a better driver.
The thing you're missing is the principle of milk before meat. The utilitarian aspect of Mormonism is something you see as an end in itself, but is explicitly a means to an end. It is the simplistic level of theology that is a lot more meaningful to many people than the more philosophical aspects.
I truly believe in what you are saying. Being is more important than acting. That is why I have so much respect for the atheist existential philosophers (especially Simone de'Beauvoir). Without any belief in God or an afterlife their morality is derived existentially. They skip the childish punishment/reward phase. Although I'm a Christian, I tend to get along much, much better with your average humanist than other strict Christians because of exactly the things we're discussing now. But, as Christ taught, His Church is a net that brings in a lot of different kinds of fishes. In order to speak to more people there are many facets of His theology - all of which lead to higher levels of understanding. As Isaiah write, the Lord teaches "line upon line, precept upon precept". The punishment/reward phase is a phase that - like ignoring wind resistance in high school physics - is fundamentally flawed but also fundamentally necessary to teach all people the true principles at work.
No, I'm not referring to it specifically. I don't care whether gay marriage is legalized or
There are a number of glaring mistakes in what you write, but also much that I believe to be true. I'll start out with your assertion that charity is self-less. I agree both in particular (with regards to charity) and in general (with regards to morality as a means in itself as opposed to a "gold star" system).
But the real problem here is that you're attacking a straw man.
1. The Mormon church exemplifies charity according to your definition. I know of many, many examples of charity from the Mormon chuch (because I was involved in them) that I could not find in the press The true scope of Mormon charitable giving is staggering, but we do it as quietly as possible. Sure, you can say I'm bragging about it now, but I'm trying to actually tell you something that is true. I don't know how to do this in a way that is not bragging. I either say "no really, we don't want credit!" (and you accuse me of bragging) or I just leave you with the false impresion that Mormons don't do charity, or only do it for our own sake. Mormons also, as I stated, have no problem donating a lot of money and goods to other aids organizations and then asking for no recognition in return. Many times charity is handed out by the Red Cross, Salvation Army, etc. to people who never know the money/goods actually came from the Mormon church.
As a final example of how this works on a local level: Each Mormon congregation is a "ward". Together the wards form a "stake". Several stakes may share a bishop's store house. This is the repository for goods (mostly groceries) intended for welfare relief in the area. The money is donated by local members, and it's distributed locally. What I like about the system the most (I've volunteered a few times) is the utter care taken to preserve the dignity of people receiving the goods. You can either "shop" yourself or get a delivery. The front of the storehouse is set up like a supermarket. There are no signs to advertise, but once you enter you take a shopping card and you shop. The only difference is you don't pay befre you leave. If you get a delivery the groceries are brought to your house in plain, unmarked paper bags. There's nothing at all to indicate to anyone else that you're getting charity. There's no reason to do that other than to simpy be as far from self-aggrandizing as possible.
2. Your attacks on Mormon theology as reward based are well-taken, but misguided. It's not a flaw of Mormon theology, but of many Christian cultures to see the rules as a series of checklists. If you do what's right - you get a gold star and you get goodies in the after life. If you do badly, you are threatened with various really scary punishments. Thus it is possible to see Christians as incentivized to do good for some ulterior motive while - for example - the humanist would be doing good for it's own sake. And I will admit that in Mormon culture this mistake (sometimes seen as works vs. grace) can be unusually prevelant. But it's a mistake people make, and not a mistake of the theology of Mormonism. Christ preached against the scribes and pharisees on exactly this topic, and the Book of Mormon also contains remonstrances against it. What Mormons actually believe, however, is that the purpose of the rules and commandments is not to gain reward in the afterlife, but to become better people. If you are not generous, then (Mormons believe) what you need to do is practice generosity. Through practice the action - which may at first be done reluctantly - may be engrained in your character. I could find exact quotes from modern Mormon leaders, but it comes down to this: Mormon theology is not concerned with what you do, it is concerned with who you are. So you see, while it may be true that Mormons (like many other people) do "confuse good deeds and good character" this is a result of Mormons failing to live up to their own religion. It is an indictment (and a valid one) of Mormons, but not of Mormonism.
Really - what? I thought we'd established that being a grammar nazi for the sake of grammar - with no regard to communcation whatsoever - was of no interest to me. Your post highlights my point precisely. You can either have no regard for communication and end up with writing so gramatically compromised as to be unreadable or (on the other extrem) you can have no regard for communication and be such a grammar nazi that the meaning is lost in a mire of self-important editing.
Or, you can actually care about meaning. Sure, some people care about meaning AND have great grammar. Kudos to them. But that's like a bonus. Icing on the cake. The point is to convey meaning. Everythign else is superflous. (yes - even spelling sometimes)
I think I like expandable message-boards better. It's hard to keep things in context when "reply" makes everything but the one msg you're responding to disappear. I like the tree-based message boards where you can expand or contract messages.
If this were that type of msg board, the DBC in the title of my post would actually have meaning.
There's a Penny-Arcade comic (my favorite of all time) that says it all - but of course their site is crippled beyond any use so I can't find it to link it. Anyone else know which one I'm talking about?
specifically, its practices in third world nations
What on earth are you talking about? Ordinarily when someone critcizes my church I don't take them very seriously because I've almost always heard it before. I have to admit, though, that you sound like you've got some fascinating new spin I've never heard of. I'm shocked that anyone that knows anything about the Mormons would claim they have a troubled past in their dealings with third world nations. There are a lot of things to criticize in the history of the Mormon religion: but I have no idea why you'd pick this as your target from all the others.
This is from a semi-recent Times article about LDS finances:
And as long as corporate rankings are being bandied about, the church would make any list of the most admired: for straight dealing, company spirit, contributions to charity (even the non-Mormon kind) and a fiscal probity among its powerful leaders that would satisfy any shareholder group, if there were one
and then there's this (from the same article):
Huntsman resumed building the $5 billion, 10,000-employee Huntsman Chemical Corp., which he owns outright. Ten years ago, Huntsman shifted his company's mission from pure profit to a three-part priority: pay off debt, be a responsible corporate citizen and relieve human suffering. Thus far, his company has donated $100 million of its profit to a cancer center at the University of Utah. It has also built a concrete plant in Armenia to house those rendered homeless by the 1988 earthquake, and it is active in smaller charities ranging from children's hospitals to food banks.
The Mormons - with their vast financial and capital resources and strict hierarchal organization - are frequenty fist-responders to international crises. We either go in their ourselves or just as frequently donate the funds and materials to the organizations placed to get things done. Charitable work is the one thing that Mormons are just plain really good at it. A lot of people don't like our theology, but I've never met anyone that didn't like our welfare efforts.
We've got a vested interest in long-term financial growth in these nations too. Although currently limited to Mormon members, the Perpetual Education Fund is one such example. In the 19th century Mormon converts making the long journey to Utah from Europe could borrow from Perpetual Emigration Fund, make the travel, set up a new home, and then pay back the loan for others to use. The idea has been restarted for poorer countries where eduction may help life people form poverty to (relative) middle class lifestyles. Mormons can get loans for education or to start businesses in South and Central America (as well as African and Asian nations, I believe) and use the education to move from the poorest classes to the middle classes. The education is usually for learning a trade or skilled labor as opposed to a liberal arts education. Then they repay the money into the fund for the next person to use. The intial funds for the program were derived from contributions from members in 1st world nations (like the US). Mormons care very passionately about charity and education. You don't start the donation level at 10% if this isn't something that really matters to you in your life.
I'm just really not sure where you are coming from. I'm not offended at all that you called my religion immoral. I think it's best to be honest and to call it like you see it (although for the sake of full disclosure, nothing you've said indicates to me that you or your religion or faith are immoral. Mistaken, perhaps, but certainly not immoral.)
And you jibe about "redefining" discrimination is unwarranted. From wikipedia: To discriminate is to make a distinction. There are several meanings of the word, including sta
But if you equate a discriminatory attitude with discrimination
I don't. I never did. You took something I wrote the wrong way and haven't listened to me since. No one here is talking about discriminatory viewpoints being the same as discriminatory action. I can't state this any more clearly than I already have.
(I find it ironic that a Mormon would want to "oppose discrimination", given the discrimination that the Mormon church actually practices against all sorts of groups. Of course, you have the legal right to choose to practice whatever religion you like, but I consider your choice immoral.)
What do you hope to gain with snide comments like this? The Mormon church believes:
For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile. - 2 Nephi 26:33
You've also got:
they did not send away any who were bnaked, or that were hungry, or that were athirst, or that were sick, or that had not been nourished; and they did not set their hearts upon criches; therefore they were dliberal to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, whether out of the church or in the church, having no erespect to persons as to those who stood in need. - Alma 1:30
There are those who say the Mormon faith oppresses women, that it oppresses gays, or that it oppresses blacks. These things are not true. We believe that men and women have different roles. Historically, we've allowed social prejudices to bleed into our church - that is true. But Utah was also at the forefront of the suffrage movement:
With no dissenting votes, the territorial legislature passed an act giving the vote (but not the right to hold office) to women on 10 February 1869. The act was signed two days later by the acting governor, S. A. Mann, and on 14 February, the first woman voter in the municipal election reportedly was Sarah Young, grandniece of Brigham Young. Utah thus became the second territory to give the vote to women; Wyoming had passed a women's suffrage act in 1869. No states permitted women to vote at the time.http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/statehoo d_and_the_progressive_era/womenssuffrageinutah.htm l
There's nothing sexist about Mormon theology. We're one of the only Christian religions to view Eve not as a screw-up, but as the instrument for putting God's plan into action. (That's not just a minor theological scrap - that's the source of most Christan misogony throughout history.) The theology is often misunderstood by those who see only that men hold the priesthood and women do not, but that is because they do not understand that according to Mormon theology the priesthood is to serve - and never to command - and that men are not given the priesthood because they are superior (if anything - because they are inferior). As my mother put it: "If Christ had suffered and died for our sins as a woman - no one would have noticed! Women are always putting others ahead of themselves. That Christ - a man - was willing to do so was what made the story so remarkable".
Regarding blacks, I'm sure you're referencing the fact that until 1978 the priesthood was given only to white men. This does look very damning. Either the leadership was tainted with genuine racism, or the church was merely enacting God's will: for which there is precedent. When Christ was on earth, he restricted his teachings by race at first, and
I should have been more careful with my words. I suppose we can talk of three general drugs: a "cure" (which makes the condition go away), a vaccine (which prevents the condition) and treatments that mitigate the symptoms. We've made great strides with treatments, and it's possible (I think) that with time our treatments could reach the point of allowing people with HIV/AIDS to surive and live as healthy people. This is the type of "cure" I was referring to.
The only realistic response to the HIV epidemic is in patient, long-term development efforts.
I'm not sure about only. If it was the only response, we'd give up our drug and vaccine research, wouldn't we? Are you suggesting we do so?
In any case, my main point (stop having pre/extra-marital sex) would be a long-term development effort, would it not? In any case, I'm really not sure what types of long-term development efforts you are referring to. Not that I'm arguing you're wrong, but you're being excessively vague. HIV/AIDS requires (I would think) a different response in America vs. in Italy vs. Senegal vs. South Africa vs. Cambodia vs. India vs. China. The cultures and socio-economic standards of these countries vary dramatically. Africa has the largest number of AIDS cases, but the disease is growing more rapidly in South and South-East Asia ( http://www.growthhouse.org/asianhiv.html ). Even if you are saying the exact same "long-term development efforts" are needed in both locations, I'm still not sure exactly what you mean by that phrase.
People may say things that are uninformed or prejudiced, but that's not discrimination or imperialism.
This is incorrect. A sentiment can be discriminatory and/or imperialist w/out having any impact whatsoever. If you make the statement: "Mormons women are rude, mean, thieving, superstitious, perverted, abused, abandoned, verminal subhuman" ( http://www.signaturebooks.com/reviews/audaciou.htm text search for "subhuman") then you've made (in my opinion) a disciminatory remark. But if person A holds this opinion than they have a discriminatory viewpoint without necessarily have actually discriminated. It's the difference between intent to murder and murder.
So the distinction you derive is a false one. It is possible to hold disciminatory or imperialist atitudes without "real mistreatment". You conclusion regarding "equating the two" is inapt, because the one equivicating here is you. I've pointed out that discriminatory and/or imperialist viewpoints are sometimes present, you're the one that tried to conflate these with discriminatory and/or imperialist actions. It is my position that those pernicious viewpoints - even if they have not yet resulted in the discriminatory/imperialist action - should nonetheless be opposed. Or would you have me - and others like me - stand by and listen to discriminatory rhetoric without opposing it because the rhetoric - until it is acted out - is merelely "uninformed" and not yet actually "discriminatory"? Must we wait for hate-speech to turn into hate-action before we are allowed to fight back - even if just with words?
The only difference is that in addition to harmful hate-action (outright discriminatory viewpoints) I see that we also have a problem with benevolent discrimination. This discrimination - like helping a chick out of it's shell http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=10060529188 07 - can be just as pernicious in the long run - and should be opposed as such.
if everyone did the same this problem would not exist
vs.
I don't expect to change any behavior
So, in other words "if people changed their behavior..." but "I don't expect them to". You're saying "If X then Y", and also saying "not X". That's the logical equivalent of saying nothing at all.
Also - you're saying the infidelity rate was 1/2 todays rate 50 years ago? And that doesn't mean anything? Seems like doubling the rate is pretty significant to me.
Look man, I don't know any statistics that contradict your fidelity statistics. What I do know is that sex before marriage and especially cohabitation lead to higher divorce rates (I can find references to studies if you don't want to trust me). What i do know is that it's not really impossible to have a healthy social life and hold sex off until marriage. What I do know is that the vast majority of my close friends who didn't do this (hold off until marriage) regret doing so (not holding out) - although they'd probably deny it if called out in group situations (I'm not enough of an ass to actually experiment on that hypothesis).
It's like this unspoken secret: everyone lies about how much sex they have (starting with like 12 to 14 year old boys), and then eventually do lose their virginity, and then they lie about liking it. I'm not saying they don't enjoy the experience (I've always enjoyed it myself), but most people regret the way in which it happened. It's this self-perpetuating social trauma. No one honestly likes it, but everyone keeps doing it. The only thing I can compare it to is binge drinking. I have a hard time believing that anybody really enoys drinking until they puke and pass out, but as a relatively recent college grad I know that most people don't even question it. It wasn't like they thought "why should I drink?" or "do I really enjoy this?" Some did - and they are the ones that quit drinking. The ones that didn't question it were the ones that got all hyped up about the prodiguous quantities of alcohol they couldn't wait to consume. (Note - I'm not against drinking alcohol, I'm talking about getting utterly and totally wasted multiple times a week.)
I'm not saying I dislike them for the choices they made - I'm saying it just didn't seem to actually make them happier. I feel the same is true with pre and extra-marital sex. Putting aside questions of how many people do it, I think the real point is that it doesn't actually seem to make most people's lives better. The other example I can think of is little kids and candy. They don't know how to say "no" to themselves - so if you leave them alone with relatively unlimited quantities of candy they end up eating until they feel sick (not to mention the toothaches that will come down the road). So it is with kids these days and sex and alcohol. I'm not against either sex or alcohol, but I feel like the vast majority of American kids are rushing into these things like kids stuffing candy into their faces until they puke.
Please don't bother to flame me for "imposing my morals" or whatever. I've expressed my opinion that it doesn't seem to make people happy. I'm sure you think it makes you happy, and I'm not about to try and argue with you that it doesn't. If you were my best friend and we were having a heart-to-heart, I might make that case. But you're not. So I'm not. I'm not imposing my morals on you or anyone else. It's possible to say "I don't think that doing X makes sense" without saying "becase you do X I think you are evil". I'm saying the former, not the latter. Kids are not very bright if they eat so much candy it makes them sick, but they're not necessarily evil for doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
WTF? I said "some slashdotters" not "the parent". My only direct reaction to the parent was the fact that maybe doing "anything" wasn't what most parents wanted to do.
The rest was a reaction to a sentiment I've seen reflected across several other posts in this topic.
-stormin
A final note: that blog post was from a pretty uninformed Mormon (if it was by a Mormon). I didn't read the entire thing, but in skimming it I found at least one glaring factual error. The blogger claimed Mormons deny evolution - and cited an article that is almost 100 years old. The Mormon church's official position on evolution is that it has no position. This has been the position for decades, and Mormonism's most prominent thinker (Hugh Nibley) was an obvious believer in the theory.
I myself, am not convinced one way or the other.
-stormin
Oh yeah - another thing. When was the last time someone was actually prosecuted using that anti-sodomy standard? That law has been on the books in many, many states in the union. It's just a historical artificat, and doesn't really prove anything by itself.
-stormin
This entire post is about how Mormons behave - and explicitly about how Mormons in Utah behave. Most of what has made this conversation rewarding has been the focus on Mormonism - as opposed to Mormons. I feel no motivation to defend the actions of large numbers of Mormons - especially not ones from Utah (I don't like Utah Mormons very much).
I think it's a bad idea to have so many Mormons in one place. I think it would be a bad idea to have so many Buddhists, Catholics, or Baptists in one place too. Or atheists for that matter. The behavior you see in Utah is a result of homogeneity - not theology. Even if Mormons are equally bad outside of homogenuous areas, the problem still remains: do you want to critcize what we believe, or the fact that we fail to live up to it? I'm telling you what we believe, I'm not telling you that were shining examples of all our principles. I never claimed that Mormons were better than the average person (and I never would) so I don't see why you want to claim they're worse.
Let's please keep this focussed on the theology/philosophy. I'm still waiting to hear back on several of our most hotly-debated issues. I especialy would like to see your response to my parallels between the Articles of Faith and the 10 Commandments and Parables. If all you want to do is criticize people then just let me know now so I don't waste time responding.
-stormin
If the parent(s) cannot take care of their own child (or children) then they should not have been parents in the first place. Period.
Possibly the most assinine thing I've seen on slashdot. So if you have to take your kid to the MD you are a bad parent? Genius, sheer genius. Let's go find every kid who has seen a doctor and take them from their parents.
If you have a child with a mental disorder (and gaming is NOT A mental disorder), then there are tests that can determine that. Then take the appropriate action based on the results of those tests.
And according to you the "apropriate action" is to sterilize the parents and take the children away. It's shocking you don't have more support for this viewpoint.
Being addicted to gaming, golf, or anything besides drugs (alcohol and cigarettes fall into this group) is very easy to fix.
What, exactly, is the difference between being adicted to "drugs" and to an activity? What drugs are you including? Heroine? Pot? Morphine? Caffeine? Addiction is a complicated pscyho-physiological phenomena. I'm not going to claim to know exactly what is and what isn't addiction, but I don't think you should either. Especially not given your track record of irrational thought demonstrated so clearly in your post. You could have at least checked out wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction ) and read the first paragraph: There is a lack of consensus as to what may properly be termed 'addiction.' Clearly the only reason for a lack of consensus is that you haven't graced the argument with the presence of your lucid intellect.
-stormin
You have it backwards. The "long tail sales" structure is a result of decreased cost of stocking items, not the other way around.
What I said was: The promise of profit from the tail is not based on increased revenue as much as it is on decreased cost.
How is that backwards? And in any case, the long tail is not a result in the cost of anything. The long tail is just an artifact of the fact that a few items are really popular and account for most of the purchases, while the majority of titles account for only a few sales each. This has been true for as long as there have been brick and mortar stores. You clearly don't understand what the long tail is at all.
The whole point is that the long tail has always been there. You go to Border and they have the NYT best sellers. (The hump). The rest of the store is the long tail - books that move slower and make less money per title.
The point is that now that inventory costs have decreased, the long tail will grow longer. It's not being created by low costs, it's merely growing in length and importance. If long-tail items got sold in higher quantities the curve would flatten out and it would no longer be a long tail. If it only makes sense to sell the top 20% of available CDs in a brick and mortar store (tail relatively short), it may make sense to sell the top 50% of available CDs from Amazon, and it may make sense to sell the top 90% if your iTunes. The tail grows in length as increasingly less-popular items become profitable as costs decrease.
I can't believe I spent this long replying to a 1-line AC. I must be trying really hard to avoid studying.
-stormin
You're the parents, you make the rules. Pull the plug, take the computer away, do something, anything.
Maybe when someone is deciding how to handle a problem with their own child, doing anything isn't good enough? Maybe they want to do the right thing
It's odd to me that some Slashdotters take "the parents should be responsible" to mean "the parents should do all parenting alone". Parents are responsible for the behavior of their children, but if the behavior surpasses the parents ability to moderate/fix/heal, then why on earth should we mock the parents for seeking specialist help? Are we going to make fun of all youth counselors and child psychologists now because "You're the parent, you make the rule?" Part of holding parents responsible for their own children should be allowing them access to the tools they need to do that job right.
-stormin
So... what was the point?
I'm not trying to be rude, but this is exactly the problem I'm talking about. Business decisions are about profit. One of the most prevalent reasons for making bad decisions about business is the failure to think in terms of profit.
In your case, you are talking about revenue. You point out that if they don't stock enough books, they will loose revenue because you won't by the book. But what you fail to acknowledge is cost. There are at least two types. First of all, they have to pay rent for every square inch of display. Every single book on a store shelf costs them money directly. Then there's opportunity cost. If one person a week wants to buy book X for $10, but 10 people a week want to buy book Y for $10 (and, for the sake of illustrating scarcity, they have only 1 display space left) then which should they display? If they display X, they are making $10/week from selling book X and LOSING $100/wk for not selling book Y (that's opportunity cost).
What you seem to fail to realize is that sometimes the right choice for a company is to lose revenue. In your example, the book store lost revenue because they didn't have your book. We don't have to worry abut probability. We can say "if they don't have Conventions of War there is probability 0 that I will buy another book". Fine. But if they make $8 selling the book and it cost them $4 to buy the book, and it has cost them another $6 to keep the book on the shelf until the moment you walked in then they LOST $2 by selling you the book. Get it? If passing on revenue means you save even more in cost - YOU SHOULD PASS ON REVENUE.
So this is where the Long Tail comes in. Using your example we could say that it costs Amazon $4 to buy the book, but it only costs them $2 to store it* until you buy it. The decrease in costs means it makes sense for Amazon to stock it (revenue - cost = profit --> 8 - (4+2) = 2) whereas it does not make sense for Borders to stock the same book (revenu - cost = profit --> 8 - (4+6) = -2). Even though you bought the book, that doesn't mean Border made money on it.
That's the whole point of the Long Tail. Books, CDs, etc that are unprofitable if you have to store them in retail space until they are sold can be profitable if you store them in a warehouse (e.g. Amazon, Overstock, etc.) and even more profitable if you store them digitally (e.g. iTunes). So niche items that could not be sold profitably in brick-and-mortar stores would simply go out of print and become rare collectors items in the 1970s, but now they have a chance to live a long and happy life thanks to the ability of the internet to reduce costs and thus increase the profitability of niche items.
I don't know how much more emphaticaly I can say this: it's all about profit. Revenue or cost - in exlusion of the other - are simply not intelligent ways to make business decisions.
-stormin
* the savings in cost can be comprised of both actual savings (e.g. it's cheaper to buy space in a warehouse than retail space) and opportunity cost (e.g. if you have restricted space you have to decide either/or, whereas if you have more space you can stock more stuff and thus pass on less stuff and thus reduce opportunity cost)
The long curve is about shifting the curve so that it's flatter.
This is incorrect. See the wikipedia article on the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail
The curve represents sales of a type of commodity. Say CDs. The height of the curve is the volume of sales. The curve has a very high "hump" near the left - representing that a few select titles (the hits) make the majority of the sales. The "long tail" doesn't refer to shifting anything, it refers to the narrow part of the graph to the right of the hits. The "also rans". The sales for any given title in the long tail don't justify stocking them in brick-and-mortar stores. But the cost of inventory decreases for centralized distributors like Amazon or Overstock, and almost dissappears for digital media. As a result, these companies can eek profit out of the vast majority of titles that you would never find in a brick-and-mortar store.
The profit doesn't really enter into it.
This is nonsense. You don't run a business by saying "profit doesn't enter into it". No profit means not making money. Businesses, with rare exceptions, don't do things that don't make money. Profit may not always be the only or even the most important consideration, but it ALWAYS "enters into it".
The cost of that profit is actually not all that different from what it used to be, once you factor in the losers; there are a great many losers on the long tail.
This just doesn't make sense. The losers ARE the long tail, by definition. They are the things that appeal to only a few people. If there weren't losers, they would be part of the hump, and not part of the tail.
As far as redistributing revenue, this is purely speculative. The long tail may contain more than the hump, or less than the hump. But there's no bright line demarkation of what is in the hump and what is in the long tail, and so it doesn't make sense to compare them in this way. The point of the long tail is that based on lower costs companies can afford to offer a greater selection. In addition, some niche companies that don't have any hits at all can survive on just niche items becausee of lower operating costs.
It also doesn't make sense because the phrase "cost of profit" is nonsensical. Profit is what's left over AFTER the costs have already been deducted out. You really need to realize that revenue and cost mean NOTHING as disconnected entites. The only mean something in context. If you "raise revenus 100%" or "cut costs 200%" this means NOTHING. Thinking about cost or revnue leads to ridiculuous things. Want to reduce costs to 0? Shut your business down. Losing $100 on every unit of x you sell? Sell twice as many and you revenue goes up 100%.
Read the article on the long tail and keep profit fixed firmly in mind and you can avoid a lot of the weirdness. You may have some really good points. I can't tell because your terminology is too confused.
-stormin
So you agree then that Mormon missionaries use the language in Articles #2 and #3 in full knowledge that their audience is going to interpret it differently from the way that they themselves interpret those articles?
I think this further highlights the vast gulf between what you think about Mormons, and the truth about Mormons. Mormon missionaries are overwhelmingly 19 - 21 year old kids. Kids. For American missions they have 3 weeks of training. For foreign-speaking missions they have 8 or 11, and it's almost all spent on learning the language.
Furthermore, there are no official Mormon theologians, there is no official canon of Mormon theology, and there is no professional clergy. The type of intentional misleading you speak of is institutionally impossible. The educational wing of the church is called CES (Church Educational Services, I think) and they specialize in getting the basics down. There has been no official attempt to capture Mormon theology definitively, and there never will be. There is no authoritative voice to say "this is what the scripture means, this is what it doesn't" except perhaps the Prophet. And the sad truth is that we haven't had a truly theological prophet since Joseph. Brigham was a colonizer, and since then they have been administrators first, and theologians second. I just want you to understand that your characterization I started this post with is not only false, it is impossible.
Also, once you understand that there is no such thing as a closed or definitive Mormon canon, you will realize that your assertions that the Articles of Faith and their meaning in ordinary language is what defines Mormon theology is equally impossible. Mormon theology can not be contained because we believe in an open canon and on-going revelation.
Now let me get to your remarks regarding "teaching devices". What you say about these are accurate, but the articles of faith are not teaching devices in this sense. I don't know how much you know about math, but one extremely tricky problem is whether you can take a limit from inside an integral and move it outside an integral. The short answer is: you can. And so in early calculus assuming the limit of the derivative is the same as the derivative of the limit is fine. But when you get to Real Analysis for the first time they tell you "guess what, this actually needs to be proven" And the proof that it is OK to do so is very difficult. So what I'm telling you is that there are teaching devices that are incomplete and there are teaching devices that are false. Both can be very useful. Chemistry, for example, is taught almost entirely with falsehoods in high school, and then you find out that everything they taught you was an oversimplification that was not technically true when you get to college-level chemistry and you have to start over again. The final picture is relatively similar, but the high school stuff is false. In contrast, when you tell your students "it's ok to move the limit outside of the integral" this is true, but you're neglecting to mention that this isn't obvious, it's actually a consequence of some extremely in-depth theoretical mathematics. Mathematic knowledge is rife with examples like these.
So your characterization Mormon missionaries are deliberately not telling the truth to their audience without the consent of their audience is not correct. First of all because missionaries never deliberately withhold the truth. You're extremely lucky if you get a missionary that actually has thought about this seriously at all. And secondly, the Articles of Faith are TRUE, they are just incomplete.
One difference we may also have, is that you think it is possible to express theology definitively. I think it is not. You believe it's possible for a human to comprehend and state the complete truth of religion. But I believe that God's thoughts are not as our thoughts. The best we can ever do is approximate the moral truths of
If you don't understand profit, you probably shouldn't write at the Wall Street Journal. Profit = revenue - cost.
It seems that Mr. Anderson's book (I RTFA, but not the book) claims that higher sales in the tail will increase the profit of the tail and this will change the economics of the web. This doesn't make much sense to me, and the article rightly points out that there is not that much interest in the tail.
But that's not the point. The point is that to stock "tail items" (niche items) in a brick-and-mortar store COSTS a lot of money. It costs money in terms of the hit-items you can't stock because you've got limited inventory space (opportunity cost at work). But the cost of stocking niche items digitally is far, far less. The promise of profit from the tail is not based on increased revenue as much as it is on decreased cost.
Take the example of Apple's iTunes sales. Even if they do closely track Billboard sales, this doesn't change the fact that Apple is profiting MORE from their tail items than a brick-and-mortar store would be.
It seems as though both of these guys are missing the point: the promise of the tail is not in increased revenue, but in decreased cost.
-stormin
Do you really think the porn industry wants moneyless kids who can't buy any of their stuff as a target audience?
This is kind of a stupid question. Of course they want to get moneyless kids into their porn. For the same reason the MS is happy to give huge discounts on software to schools: to get kids "hooked" on it. It's not like you lose money showing stuff to kids (they can't buy anyway) but if they develop a taste for what you're selling then it's money in the bank down the road.
You will not stop an adolescent boy from seeing boobies. What we need is some fscking responsibility from parents, we need them to teach their kids about sex and explain things to them so they don't get screwed up by what they find. Stop expecting Uncle Sam to parent for you, because if he starts, he won't stop and you've lost control as a parent. I'm no fan of a nanny state
I'm not a fan of the nanny state either, and in general I think parents should do the parenting. But if you have sites out there that are intentionally trying to disguise their sites in order to lure kids there or (more likely) at least seem innocuous at the first, then you've got people actively working against parents trying to be good parents.
I agree that if a kid really wants to see boobies, he will probably get the chance. But it doesn't follow from that that we should make it easy for them. If a kid really wants to score some meth, they can probably do that too. It doesn't follow that we should hand out instructions on school about how to build a meth lab just because the kids could get some anyway. Sure, they can probably find it on the internet if they look - so make them look! Don't make it easier for kids to get into stuff that they shouldn't be getting into. Don't make parenting harder for parents.
All the law says is this: you can't lie about having porno on your site. What, in principle, is so wrong with this statue, really? We label video games and movies to allow parents to do their job. We require labels on food so people know what they are seeing. When someone links to goatse on slashdot, someone is usually kind enough to point it out so unsuspecting readers don't melt their eyeballs out. So what is so controversial about saying you can't metatag something "seaseme street" if it's hard core porn?
Now speaking practically I'm not sure if it's a good idea in terms of enforceability and defining what breaks the statute, but in principle this should be about as non-controversial as it gets. The real issue is that a hefty proprotion of slashdotters are sensitive about anything that endangers, threatens, criticizes, or even just casts in a bad light their precious porno.
-stormin
OK, I completely failed to make my point. Let me try again, with a fresh start.
Actually, there is another way: you legislate pragmatically to maximize the ability of people to make their own moral choices.
This is what I believe. I agree 100% with this statement. The point I was trying to make was that this standpoint is a moral one. It makes no sense to me when people pride themselves in refraining from applying their morality to other people. This means you have, by definition, a double standard. This is hypocritical. The exact same morality should be consistently applied.
But my morality, and Mormon morality, does specify that the freedom to choose is essential. And so your position does conform with Mormon principles. As I stated, Mormons believe there are some things we should not do that are not appropriate for legislation because to legislate them would remove choice. I offered smoking and drinking as two examples. Other examples would be paying tithing, believing anything, etc.
So I'm not advocating laws to "get morality", just laws to allow morality.
Even though we agree on principle, and you phrased it much, much better than I did, I'm not going to claim that we agree on all actual applications of this principle. For example, you seem to think it's a bad idea to have adultery be against the law. This isn't obvious to me. Marriage is a contract, one of the conditions of that contract is fidelity, adultery breaks that contract. Marriage is not a contract between two people, it is a contract between two people and the gov't (otherwise it would be absurd for the gov't to hand out marriage licenses). So if you break a contract with the gov't, should it be criminalized? Possibly. I don't know that it would be a good idea to actually have cops investigate fidelity for reasons of privacy, personal rights, and practicality, but in terms of principle alone, I don't have an issue with it.
But on most issues, we actually probably agree. Mormonism wouldn't really change very many laws at all. As far as homosexuality goes, I've already stated that Mormons refuse to make thought-laws. So that would never be illegal. As for homosexual acts, consensual acts between people that don't impinge on human freedom can't be illegal. I'm comfortable with that. Masturbation? Same thing. You could argue that it's addictive, I suppose, but even if that's true, it's just an unenforceable law. And as for lying, it's not even universally immoral, how could we possibly make it illegal?
I hope I've clarified my point. Just that it's impossible not to have a moral basis for laws, and that having two moralities (one for you and yours, one for everyone else) is hypocritical. There should be one morality. But we should only legislate in order to maximize morality - and that means allowing people to do all the evil, wrong, stupid things possible up to the point where freedom to choose is curtailed. This makes sense to me.
-stormin
As a brief aside, what do you think are "the kinds of converts Mormon missionaries would like to reach?". I'll add this to my list of questions I'd still like to get answers to. The other two are "what have Mormons done that's harmful against the 3rd world" and "what aspects of Mormonism are coercive". These aren't the main thrust of our discussion, so I don't mind them getting deferred for now.
In brief, I think your rephrasing of the Articles of Faith (2 and 3) is valid. I think you are understanding me pretty well. So the question is, why didn't Joseph Smith give something similar to that in response to Editor Long's question about what Mormons believe in 1842.
The main reason is what I referred to earlier as the milk before meat principle. The most superficial, and therefore the most readily accessible, interpretation of human morality starts with action. The most crude understanding of morality starts with things that should or should not be done. Therefore, to cast as wide a net as possible, it makes sense to start with actions and build from there. This is not somehow isolated to Mormonism, or utilitarian religions. Just take a look at the 10 Commandments. Most of them are explicitly action-based: don't make other idols, don't use the name of God in vain, don't work on Sabbath, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't lie, don't steal. Others are less explicitly action based: honor thy mother and father, don't covet. Arguably, those are also behaviors. Do you find the criticism of Articles of Faith 2 and 3 equally applicable to the 10 Commandments? Another example of this milk before meat principle is the way in which Christ taught people in parables. At times it seems the parables were designed to encode the meaning to keep unbelievers from understanding, but the majority of parables are simply ways to wrap moral concepts up in plain-language. It seems like they too would be vulnerable to your criticism. Why tell a story about building on sand or on rock? Why not just state in plain language the point?
So I actually believe that the Articles of Faith, as stated, are more clear for people who have no philosophical or theological training. For example, I'm not sure about "most comfortable". I think "We believe God in His mercy gives each man exactly what he chooses, with the only exception being that through the miracle of the atonement, you can repent of choosing bad things." That's basically exactly what Mormons believe, but I'm not sure it's as clear, and you need to develop a framework (that you and I both share) about the intrinsic value of morality first. Any theology that requires a philosophical groundwork first, and then gets to the point second is less optimal for getting to the most people. I find the Articles of Faith, as stated, dovetail with the methods of teaching found in the Bible - both Old and New Testaments. I believe this is because Christ and His prophets followed the same principle of milk before meat for the same general reasons.
A lesser reasons may (or may not) include the following consideration:
The Articles of Faith - as you stated them - would have been hard to swallow in 1842. If the Mormons faced the persecution they did based on the Articles of Faith as written, how much worse may it have been if they'd come out with deeper philosophy out
First let me just reiterate that I'm impressed with your position in general. I have really enjoyed this discussion so far. Not because it's been "fun", but because I respect your determination to stick to moral principle.
You asked a direcct quesiton and it deserves a direct answer. I promise I'm not trying to evade what you're saying, so please just do me the favor of reading my entire (direct) response to your question.
The question: Will God actually reward me for charity, punish me for sin, and assign me to one of the three Kingdoms after death according to my behavior in the world?
There are at least two dificult issues in this sentence. I'm not sure if you meant to question one or both (andn there may be others). The first is the nature of the evaluation and the second is the nature of the punishment/reward. Given the fact that this is actually a complicated question the best and most honest answer I can give you is that in general it's a "yes", but if I'm going to be really specific, it's a "no". Hear me out.
Regarding the Nature of Evaluation
You draw a distinction between behavior/action and character/being. You're claiming that what someone does is not the same as what someone is. But I'm claiming that what a person does given perfect knowledge about all factors in their environment IS EQUIVALENT to what a person is. So I think one thing you object to is the nature of judging people based on what they do as opposed to what they are. I believe this distinction ceases to exist when the one doing the judging is God. In that case, what you do IS who you are because God knows all of the circumstances involved. Circumstances + action = character.
Regarding the Nature of Punishment/Reward
Another issue you may have is the idea that God stands ready to mete out rewards to some and punishments to others. I'm not sure if this is a problem for you, but it's a problem for me. If God has the option to punish some and reward others, why not just leave out the punishment? Positive reinforcement seems so much better than negaitve, so why would our Eternal Father resort to negative punishment - especially after the fact? What good can it do? It makes no sense to me.
After a careful study of Mormon theology, however, I've come to the conclusion that God does not, in fact, mete out punishment or rewards. The punishment or reward are direct and inevitable consequences of the people that we've become (which is the same as the actions we've made). The highest reward is to dwell with God. This is not granted as a gold star for people God likes, however (or for those who've followed the most rules). The Book of Mormon explicitly states that those who do not end up in God's presence are only those people who would suffer more from being in his presence than from being wherever they do end up. God IS the reward, not the reward-giver. The same analog works for punishment.
The critical role of Christ in Mormon theology is not to judge people, but to provide a means whereby we may change who we are If it's true that your actions determine your character, than what happens when you make a bad choice? Your character has been corrupted. You can't go back in time and re-make the decision. To me, this is the true miracle of Christ and the function of his atonement. I don't claim to understand why it works, but the idea is that because Christ has suffered for our sins we have the opportunity to expunge the sins we've committed. And this means we have an opportunity to become the kinds of people we would have been had we made the right decision at the time. That is the salvation Christ offers: a salvation to effect our character retroactively. We are made perfect through the blood of Christ.
I would urge you to not take my word for this Mormon theology stuff. Go read just a chapter of the Book of Mormon and see for yourself if I'm making this stuff up or if it's what Mormons really believe. Try 2nd Nephi chapter 2 here:
What I was responding to was your contention that Mormon charity was derived from self-interest. But I'm happy to set that aside to concentrate on the issues around Mormon theology.
No, it is a fundamental flaw of Mormon theology (as well as of many other religions). The Mormon Articles of Faith specifically tell people that they will be rewarded or punished, and therefore utilitarian considerations are a built-in part of the theology. If Mormonism didn't want its adherents to make this confusion, it could simply eliminate rewards and punishments from its teachings; everything else would remain unchanged: practices, laws, teachings, theology, etc.
This is where I really disagree with you. The Articles of Faith you are referring to are 2 and 3:
There are a number of glaring mistakes in what you write, but also much that I believe to be true. I'll start out with your assertion that charity is self-less. I agree both in particular (with regards to charity) and in general (with regards to morality as a means in itself as opposed to a "gold star" system).
But the real problem here is that you're attacking a straw man.
1. The Mormon church exemplifies charity according to your definition. I know of many, many examples of charity from the Mormon chuch (because I was involved in them) that I could not find in the press The true scope of Mormon charitable giving is staggering, but we do it as quietly as possible. Sure, you can say I'm bragging about it now, but I'm trying to actually tell you something that is true. I don't know how to do this in a way that is not bragging. I either say "no really, we don't want credit!" (and you accuse me of bragging) or I just leave you with the false impresion that Mormons don't do charity, or only do it for our own sake. Mormons also, as I stated, have no problem donating a lot of money and goods to other aids organizations and then asking for no recognition in return. Many times charity is handed out by the Red Cross, Salvation Army, etc. to people who never know the money/goods actually came from the Mormon church.
As a final example of how this works on a local level: Each Mormon congregation is a "ward". Together the wards form a "stake". Several stakes may share a bishop's store house. This is the repository for goods (mostly groceries) intended for welfare relief in the area. The money is donated by local members, and it's distributed locally. What I like about the system the most (I've volunteered a few times) is the utter care taken to preserve the dignity of people receiving the goods. You can either "shop" yourself or get a delivery. The front of the storehouse is set up like a supermarket. There are no signs to advertise, but once you enter you take a shopping card and you shop. The only difference is you don't pay befre you leave. If you get a delivery the groceries are brought to your house in plain, unmarked paper bags. There's nothing at all to indicate to anyone else that you're getting charity. There's no reason to do that other than to simpy be as far from self-aggrandizing as possible.
2. Your attacks on Mormon theology as reward based are well-taken, but misguided. It's not a flaw of Mormon theology, but of many Christian cultures to see the rules as a series of checklists. If you do what's right - you get a gold star and you get goodies in the after life. If you do badly, you are threatened with various really scary punishments. Thus it is possible to see Christians as incentivized to do good for some ulterior motive while - for example - the humanist would be doing good for it's own sake. And I will admit that in Mormon culture this mistake (sometimes seen as works vs. grace) can be unusually prevelant. But it's a mistake people make, and not a mistake of the theology of Mormonism. Christ preached against the scribes and pharisees on exactly this topic, and the Book of Mormon also contains remonstrances against it. What Mormons actually believe, however, is that the purpose of the rules and commandments is not to gain reward in the afterlife, but to become better people. If you are not generous, then (Mormons believe) what you need to do is practice generosity. Through practice the action - which may at first be done reluctantly - may be engrained in your character. I could find exact quotes from modern Mormon leaders, but it comes down to this: Mormon theology is not concerned with what you do, it is concerned with who you are. So you see, while it may be true that Mormons (like many other people) do "confuse good deeds and good character" this is a result of Mormons failing to live up to their own religion. It is an indictment (and a valid one) of Mormons, but not of Mormonism.
3. "Mormon attempts to legis
Really - what? I thought we'd established that being a grammar nazi for the sake of grammar - with no regard to communcation whatsoever - was of no interest to me. Your post highlights my point precisely. You can either have no regard for communication and end up with writing so gramatically compromised as to be unreadable or (on the other extrem) you can have no regard for communication and be such a grammar nazi that the meaning is lost in a mire of self-important editing.
Or, you can actually care about meaning. Sure, some people care about meaning AND have great grammar. Kudos to them. But that's like a bonus. Icing on the cake. The point is to convey meaning. Everythign else is superflous. (yes - even spelling sometimes)
- stormin
I think I like expandable message-boards better. It's hard to keep things in context when "reply" makes everything but the one msg you're responding to disappear. I like the tree-based message boards where you can expand or contract messages.
If this were that type of msg board, the DBC in the title of my post would actually have meaning.
-stormin
There's a Penny-Arcade comic (my favorite of all time) that says it all - but of course their site is crippled beyond any use so I can't find it to link it. Anyone else know which one I'm talking about?
-stormin
What on earth are you talking about? Ordinarily when someone critcizes my church I don't take them very seriously because I've almost always heard it before. I have to admit, though, that you sound like you've got some fascinating new spin I've never heard of. I'm shocked that anyone that knows anything about the Mormons would claim they have a troubled past in their dealings with third world nations. There are a lot of things to criticize in the history of the Mormon religion: but I have no idea why you'd pick this as your target from all the others.
This is from a semi-recent Times article about LDS finances:
and then there's this (from the same article):
(article found reprinted here: http://www.lds-mormon.com/time.shtml )
The Mormons - with their vast financial and capital resources and strict hierarchal organization - are frequenty fist-responders to international crises. We either go in their ourselves or just as frequently donate the funds and materials to the organizations placed to get things done. Charitable work is the one thing that Mormons are just plain really good at it. A lot of people don't like our theology, but I've never met anyone that didn't like our welfare efforts.
We've got a vested interest in long-term financial growth in these nations too. Although currently limited to Mormon members, the Perpetual Education Fund is one such example. In the 19th century Mormon converts making the long journey to Utah from Europe could borrow from Perpetual Emigration Fund, make the travel, set up a new home, and then pay back the loan for others to use. The idea has been restarted for poorer countries where eduction may help life people form poverty to (relative) middle class lifestyles. Mormons can get loans for education or to start businesses in South and Central America (as well as African and Asian nations, I believe) and use the education to move from the poorest classes to the middle classes. The education is usually for learning a trade or skilled labor as opposed to a liberal arts education. Then they repay the money into the fund for the next person to use. The intial funds for the program were derived from contributions from members in 1st world nations (like the US). Mormons care very passionately about charity and education. You don't start the donation level at 10% if this isn't something that really matters to you in your life.
I'm just really not sure where you are coming from. I'm not offended at all that you called my religion immoral. I think it's best to be honest and to call it like you see it (although for the sake of full disclosure, nothing you've said indicates to me that you or your religion or faith are immoral. Mistaken, perhaps, but certainly not immoral.)
And you jibe about "redefining" discrimination is unwarranted. From wikipedia: To discriminate is to make a distinction. There are several meanings of the word, including sta
I don't. I never did. You took something I wrote the wrong way and haven't listened to me since. No one here is talking about discriminatory viewpoints being the same as discriminatory action. I can't state this any more clearly than I already have.
(I find it ironic that a Mormon would want to "oppose discrimination", given the discrimination that the Mormon church actually practices against all sorts of groups. Of course, you have the legal right to choose to practice whatever religion you like, but I consider your choice immoral.)
What do you hope to gain with snide comments like this? The Mormon church believes:
You've also got:
There are those who say the Mormon faith oppresses women, that it oppresses gays, or that it oppresses blacks. These things are not true. We believe that men and women have different roles. Historically, we've allowed social prejudices to bleed into our church - that is true. But Utah was also at the forefront of the suffrage movement:
There's nothing sexist about Mormon theology. We're one of the only Christian religions to view Eve not as a screw-up, but as the instrument for putting God's plan into action. (That's not just a minor theological scrap - that's the source of most Christan misogony throughout history.) The theology is often misunderstood by those who see only that men hold the priesthood and women do not, but that is because they do not understand that according to Mormon theology the priesthood is to serve - and never to command - and that men are not given the priesthood because they are superior (if anything - because they are inferior). As my mother put it: "If Christ had suffered and died for our sins as a woman - no one would have noticed! Women are always putting others ahead of themselves. That Christ - a man - was willing to do so was what made the story so remarkable".
Regarding blacks, I'm sure you're referencing the fact that until 1978 the priesthood was given only to white men. This does look very damning. Either the leadership was tainted with genuine racism, or the church was merely enacting God's will: for which there is precedent. When Christ was on earth, he restricted his teachings by race at first, and
A cure is even less likely than a vaccine.
m text search for "subhuman") then you've made (in my opinion) a disciminatory remark. But if person A holds this opinion than they have a discriminatory viewpoint without necessarily have actually discriminated. It's the difference between intent to murder and murder.
8 07 - can be just as pernicious in the long run - and should be opposed as such.
I should have been more careful with my words. I suppose we can talk of three general drugs: a "cure" (which makes the condition go away), a vaccine (which prevents the condition) and treatments that mitigate the symptoms. We've made great strides with treatments, and it's possible (I think) that with time our treatments could reach the point of allowing people with HIV/AIDS to surive and live as healthy people. This is the type of "cure" I was referring to.
The only realistic response to the HIV epidemic is in patient, long-term development efforts.
I'm not sure about only. If it was the only response, we'd give up our drug and vaccine research, wouldn't we? Are you suggesting we do so?
In any case, my main point (stop having pre/extra-marital sex) would be a long-term development effort, would it not? In any case, I'm really not sure what types of long-term development efforts you are referring to. Not that I'm arguing you're wrong, but you're being excessively vague. HIV/AIDS requires (I would think) a different response in America vs. in Italy vs. Senegal vs. South Africa vs. Cambodia vs. India vs. China. The cultures and socio-economic standards of these countries vary dramatically. Africa has the largest number of AIDS cases, but the disease is growing more rapidly in South and South-East Asia ( http://www.growthhouse.org/asianhiv.html ). Even if you are saying the exact same "long-term development efforts" are needed in both locations, I'm still not sure exactly what you mean by that phrase.
People may say things that are uninformed or prejudiced, but that's not discrimination or imperialism.
This is incorrect. A sentiment can be discriminatory and/or imperialist w/out having any impact whatsoever. If you make the statement: "Mormons women are rude, mean, thieving, superstitious, perverted, abused, abandoned, verminal subhuman" ( http://www.signaturebooks.com/reviews/audaciou.ht
So the distinction you derive is a false one. It is possible to hold disciminatory or imperialist atitudes without "real mistreatment". You conclusion regarding "equating the two" is inapt, because the one equivicating here is you. I've pointed out that discriminatory and/or imperialist viewpoints are sometimes present, you're the one that tried to conflate these with discriminatory and/or imperialist actions. It is my position that those pernicious viewpoints - even if they have not yet resulted in the discriminatory/imperialist action - should nonetheless be opposed. Or would you have me - and others like me - stand by and listen to discriminatory rhetoric without opposing it because the rhetoric - until it is acted out - is merelely "uninformed" and not yet actually "discriminatory"? Must we wait for hate-speech to turn into hate-action before we are allowed to fight back - even if just with words?
The only difference is that in addition to harmful hate-action (outright discriminatory viewpoints) I see that we also have a problem with benevolent discrimination. This discrimination - like helping a chick out of it's shell http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=1006052918
-stormin
You're not making any sense at all.
if everyone did the same this problem would not exist
vs.
I don't expect to change any behavior
So, in other words "if people changed their behavior..." but "I don't expect them to". You're saying "If X then Y", and also saying "not X". That's the logical equivalent of saying nothing at all.
Also - you're saying the infidelity rate was 1/2 todays rate 50 years ago? And that doesn't mean anything? Seems like doubling the rate is pretty significant to me.
Look man, I don't know any statistics that contradict your fidelity statistics. What I do know is that sex before marriage and especially cohabitation lead to higher divorce rates (I can find references to studies if you don't want to trust me). What i do know is that it's not really impossible to have a healthy social life and hold sex off until marriage. What I do know is that the vast majority of my close friends who didn't do this (hold off until marriage) regret doing so (not holding out) - although they'd probably deny it if called out in group situations (I'm not enough of an ass to actually experiment on that hypothesis).
It's like this unspoken secret: everyone lies about how much sex they have (starting with like 12 to 14 year old boys), and then eventually do lose their virginity, and then they lie about liking it. I'm not saying they don't enjoy the experience (I've always enjoyed it myself), but most people regret the way in which it happened. It's this self-perpetuating social trauma. No one honestly likes it, but everyone keeps doing it. The only thing I can compare it to is binge drinking. I have a hard time believing that anybody really enoys drinking until they puke and pass out, but as a relatively recent college grad I know that most people don't even question it. It wasn't like they thought "why should I drink?" or "do I really enjoy this?" Some did - and they are the ones that quit drinking. The ones that didn't question it were the ones that got all hyped up about the prodiguous quantities of alcohol they couldn't wait to consume. (Note - I'm not against drinking alcohol, I'm talking about getting utterly and totally wasted multiple times a week.)
I'm not saying I dislike them for the choices they made - I'm saying it just didn't seem to actually make them happier. I feel the same is true with pre and extra-marital sex. Putting aside questions of how many people do it, I think the real point is that it doesn't actually seem to make most people's lives better. The other example I can think of is little kids and candy. They don't know how to say "no" to themselves - so if you leave them alone with relatively unlimited quantities of candy they end up eating until they feel sick (not to mention the toothaches that will come down the road). So it is with kids these days and sex and alcohol. I'm not against either sex or alcohol, but I feel like the vast majority of American kids are rushing into these things like kids stuffing candy into their faces until they puke.
Please don't bother to flame me for "imposing my morals" or whatever. I've expressed my opinion that it doesn't seem to make people happy. I'm sure you think it makes you happy, and I'm not about to try and argue with you that it doesn't. If you were my best friend and we were having a heart-to-heart, I might make that case. But you're not. So I'm not. I'm not imposing my morals on you or anyone else. It's possible to say "I don't think that doing X makes sense" without saying "becase you do X I think you are evil". I'm saying the former, not the latter. Kids are not very bright if they eat so much candy it makes them sick, but they're not necessarily evil for doing it.
And in any case, this is way OT by now.
-stormin