Finding a case that leads to a statute is a bit different than simply interpreting a very well known law. But I grant your point that the body of law is so vast that it is not possible for someone to know everything, which makes it entirely possible to have an Aha moment. I just don't see this particular interpretation to be novel. It reminds me more of Eben Moglen's approach to fixing copyright by arguing that the current copyright system provides for essentially infinite copyright, which is unconstitutional. Pretty much everyone knew that that was the case in practicality, but he still got roundly shot down before the Supreme Court.
Or, to elaborate a little further: this isn't a puzzle, an Indiana Jones movie, or even science, where there's an Aha! moment, and suddenly a century of mystery is conclusively revealed. It's the law, open to interpretation by at least 3 people, if not 15 or even 200. There is no final truth in the law, there's only your own power to convince someone else that your words carry more weight. If what Lemley says is true, and even if he does win it, I can also guarantee you that the law will be changed to fix whatever loop hole he found.
I have zero faith that he can convince a judge or a jury that he's right, and I have even less faith that congress critters won't change the law to fix his interpretation.
You're falling into the trap. You can't argue with a shill, or with an OCD fanboy. They will move goalposts, cherry pick their data, flat-out lie, feign ignorance and just change topic if you finally cornered them on one subject. It's a complete waste of time to argue with them.
It's not that shills or OCD fanboys are wrong. They could very well be right on some points. The problem is that they're incapable of having an honest discussion that could be enlightening. As a result, it is best to point them out and just move along.
Oh, look: 1) Brand new user. 2) Posts within the same minute the story appears. 3) Post has more text in it than can be typed in one minute. 4) Is full of irrational Google hate.
Yep folks, the irrational Google hater is back. From the tone of the posts, I'm not even sure anymore that he is a paid shill (they tend to be a bit more even keeled and dispassionate), and instead think that someone has an obsession with Google and his panties in a wad over the fact that no one else agrees with his arguments.
Next, I expect a petulant crap flood of GNAA posts and other AC shenanigans.
These sounds are made by users.
No, they're made by a single, obsessive and whiny nutbag. Go away.
"As Syria War Roils, Unrest Among Sects Hits Turkey"
This is actually an argument for curtailing civil wars as quickly as possible. It's actually been my argument from the start: protests in the Middle East tend to progress towards sectarian violence spilling over into other countries if they last too long, and it's in everyone's best interest to have actual violence be as short as possible. If you want a comparison with the US, it's like drug violence spilling over into the US. It's not directly tied to how the US works, but it isn't immune to it.
And there are countless small stories of religious persecution, things that would be classed as hate crimes in America, e.g.
If that's the worst to worry about, we're in pretty good shape.
Malaysia has a two-tier justice system, one for Muslims one for others, with a history of discrimination against non-Muslims:
No argument. Not sure why you think though that that disqualifies Malaysia for being a working Islamic democracy. What it does mean is that it has a long way to go before it becomes an equal opportunity country. The good news is Malaysia knows it. Also, you might want to check your sources. Some of them (like prayway) definitely have a tendency to exaggerate developments. While there is a tension between the different groups in Malaysia (and it is much more than just between muslims and non-muslims), it is not nearly as bad as some stories make it sound like.
Indonesia... seriously... why would you even bring up Indonesia? Are you unaware of all the problems in Aceh? They've had tons of Islamic radicals, and in 2006 instituted sharia:
And you can do business there, government is pretty stable, and people can practice a different religion. The institution of Sharia law as a fully-formed body of law is more worrying - but so far, it hasn't had a huge impact on overall stability. Right now, there are no signs it will become another Afghanistan or descend into civil war, which is what the OP was claiming.
Do you honestly think they are working "quite nicely" in these Islamic strongholds? Your standards are too low.
My standards are indeed pretty low. But that's just because people keep forcing me to lower my standards. I mean, by your standards, the US isn't a functioning democracy. Not that I fully disagree with that - but at some point, you have to accept that people are stupid, stupid things happen, and look at small victories. Otherwise, you'll just have to move to an Island and hope no one else moves in.
By my definition, an Islamic democracy is a democracy where the supreme law of the land is Sharia
I'm not sure I would put up Afghanistan as an example of an Islamic democracy, for no other reason than that the rule of the central government barely extends out of Kabul. Furthermore, there's more to an Islamic state than Sharia. There are specific organizational structures that go into an Islamic government, and they all preclude the ability of a democratically elected chamber to do anything of significance. Which is actually nicely illustrated by Afghanistan: if the government can't make any laws that contradict Sharia, it becomes nothing but the executive of existing law. Kinda like the US, but without Congress and the SOC being a council of Imams. Not exactly democratic.
I never claimed the opposite.
But you claim that they don't exist. I claim that they are possible, because they do exist.
The whole country right now is basically a bunch of militias, organized largely around tribal affiliations, which are just itching to go at each other.
It could be worse. It could be Syria. Learn to differentiate.
No-one asking for it to become Turkey or Malaysia, but how about having at least as much stability as it had under Gaddafi?
As I mentioned earlier, you might have as well asked for it to become Turkey or Malaysia. Once the unrest started, and people started shooting, it was going to end only with every last potential rebel dead, or with Ghaddafi dead. Or with an occupation army, but.... we know how that is working out too.
A stable government, it ain't.
I didn't say that it was. I said that the action improved the odds of that happening.
America has a reputation as bloodthirsty and imperial in much of the world
And is it correct? Quite frankly, I find that reputation retarded. America is very much into realpolitik, and the last couple of years had a bunch of real idiots in power, but there is no American empire, and the objective death count is pretty far from falling into bloodthirsty territory. That's why generalizations are dangerous: they are generally wrong, and lead you to respond incorrectly to political situations.
Pit bulls are dangerous.
I know where you're going, but this isn't logic class. If the argument is "All pit bulls are dangerous", then yes, it means that a harmless pitbull is actually not a pitbull. And this is what people are going for when they say "Islam is a violent religion, and muslims are dangerous.
It's a given in some Muslim countries that the US hates Islam and wants to wipe out Islam and that anybody (politically especially) who doesn't denounce the US is actually an agent of the US.
And you don't see the danger of running with incorrect generalizations? Opinions like that get shot down very quickly here, but the reverse is actually supported. And it is just as dangerous to incorrectly generalize about Muslims as it is about Americans.
Yeah, all the actors are just puppets of the hidden powers.
You misunderstand. People who argue that all Muslims are dangerous are puppets not of hidden powers, but of the very open rhetoric of muslim extremists. Not only that, but they do so thinking that they came to that conclusion on their own. Furthermore, it's not a conspiracy. It's just a large mass of people doing what they do best: being stupid.
It's no different than a white supremacist who purposely reads stories about black-on-white crime to get that rush of feeling just and righteous and angry. Well it's different -- I'm sure you'd have no problem seeing that a white supremacist is bad, whereas Muslim supremacists get a free pass from you for some reason.
I'd like you to actually point out where I give white supremacists a pass. And please contrast whatever statement you find with my opening about white christian supremacists. You should get my drift right now: incorrect generalizations are always bad. And in this case, they will lead to a global culture war. I'd rather not go down this path again.
Turkey is not an Islamic democracy. It's a secular democracy which has a Muslim majority. Not the same thing at all.
The good news: by your definition of an islamic democracy, Turkey isn't one. The bad news: by your definition, it's a contradiction in terms. If you run strictly by the rules of hardline muslims, the only proper Islamic state is a caliphate. And the further bad news is that there is not a single functioning caliphate in the world. Then again, there also isn't a functioning theocratic government anywhere in the world, regardless of what religion it purports to be.
The reality is that there are well-functioning governments out there where a majority of the population is muslim. As a result, it is absolutely possible for muslims to have functional government that doesn't try to kill everyone else. Anything else is just the true Scotsman argument. Except in a weird reverse way.
But where is that positive ROI in all the other places I've mentioned? Starting with Soviet-Afghan war and American support for mujahideen there?
Afghanistan turned into an expensive quagmire for the Russians, and became its Vietnam. There's all kinds of positive ROI in there. The fact that it also bred the people who orchestrated 9/11 is more a problem because some people failed to act on the intelligence that was provided to them. Finally, 9/11 was less costly to us than Afghanistan was to the Russians.
As for positive ROI in other places: the only other one you mentioned is Libya. And the cost there was minimal, with the upshot being that the war was fairly short, which reduced the ability of muslim extremists to infiltrate the place. It also reduced tribal killings, which reduces the revenge killings. So yes, it was a pretty dirt cheap way to stack the odds in favor of a more stable government emerging rather quickly. Did it succeed? I don't think anyone thought - or should have thought - that Libya was going to turn overnight into Turkey. Or even Malaysia. But again, we can now see what happens when you let a civil war stagnate in an area that has long memories and a habit of revenge killings. I'm pretty sure Syria is going to end up significantly worse than Libya.
"Islamic democracies" work quite nicely. Ask Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia. Those are actually the only Islamic countries I can think of that have an actual functioning democracy. Not sure why you think that they are some backward shithole. Again, the differentiating factor here really seems to be governance, and not religion.
But that's imperialism, and hence not politically correct. Not to mention, insanely expensive - more so than buying AKs for jihadi "freedom fighters" and dropping an occasional JDAM to support their advance.
And that's why it's not done anymore - not because it's not PC, but because it's just so fucking expensive and long. Not to mention that it requires an actual exit strategy with a proper handover. In short, every thing the US as a country doesn't want to do anymore. So we have three options: do the right thing and pay for it, do nothing, or do the cheapest thing that still has a positive ROI. And do remember that doing nothing has always costs associated with it as well.
What exactly was wrong about what I said about Kosovo?
That it was worse now than what would have happened with non-intervention. I'm fully aware of the sorry state of Kosovo right now - and I'm ecstatic that the entire region isn't like that, which is what would have happened with a full-on war.
The best thing that could be the outcome of the Libyan civil war as it actually went was Gaddafi staying in power but having to negotiate with other factions, and therefore the regime becoming less oppressive.
And that would have never happened. That's right up there with Unicorns farting rainbows.
"Hired goons from Africa" was mostly rebel propaganda they've used to justify their genocide against black Libyans.
Actually, Ghaddafi did employ hired goons from Africa. The problem was that black Libyans were regularly assumed to be just hired goons. And since there were far more black Libyans than hired goons.... well, you do the math. And yes, persecution of black Libyans is a problem. I'm not arguing that Libya isn't a significant basket case right now. However, it's a better start than we're getting with Syria, and at least there's the opportunity there for something positive to happen. Syria basically is going to be a basket case for the next decades.
Because instability breeds more instability. And the crazies are already killing unrelated people. Unless, of course, you mean that everyone east of the US is crazy, and should just annihilate themselves.
I see - the argument is of the type "better the devil we know than the angel we don't". There's some merit to it, but quite frankly, blind application of this leads to.... blindness. As a result, I don't put much faith into that. At some point, you have to do what is right, because the alternative is not doing anything at all - and I quite frankly find that repulsive.
There was no such threat in Libya without foreign involvement.
The parallels of the war in Syria are much closer than you think. The rebels were initially getting rolled everywhere as well. At some point, the government's logistics started to break down, the rebels started to get more defections and more support from surrounding states, and the civil war was one. There is no reason to think that Ghaddafi would have just crushed the rebels as easily as you make it sound. Note that the only thing that happened was a no-fly zone and the destruction of heavy weaponry; the only real advantage that Ghaddafi had. With that gone, the rebels were basically guaranteed to win. With that in place - which is what is happening in Syria - it comes down to how hated the ruler is, how many defections from the army occur, and whether someone is willing to feed weapons into the country. All three of which were happening.
Syria is different because, on one hand, the pro-government side is much more of a minority
And Ghaddafi relied almost exclusively on support from his tribe and hired goons from Africa to protect his rule. I don't think they're as different as you make it sound.
It is, at best, different, and usually worse, especially when you look at it from western perspective.
I'm not sure you realize just how short-sighted and self-congratulatingly cynical your view is. The best thing that can happen is that you get another dictator like Ghaddafi in place? Really? As for whether it is worse in the three situations you cited, Kosovo is flat out wrong (you really wanted a full on Balkan war in Europe?), and Libya and Syria are more a function of msulim extremists infecting every unstable government in Africa and the near East than a fundamental problem with revolutions.
If anything, it shows that the threat of muslim extremists is far worse than just an occasional bombing in Europe and the US: it can lead to the long-term failure of an entire geographical region to establish proper governance. That alone should warrant the involvement of Europe and the US in the region to make sure that conflicts are as short as possible.
So what you're saying is that about 1 billion muslims are not really muslims at all because they don't kill all the infidels? Really? Do you want to go to the local mosques and educate them on that? Or is it just that you didn't actually read the Hadith, didn't read the Quoran, and just go by what some flamebait site like religionofpeace.com says?
I wonder if you love those "peace loving christians" when they plant bombs and shoot up a summer camp . Or do you make really weak generalizations just when it comes to muslims? The reality is that the muslim terrorists are a tiny minority of the billion+ muslims in the world. To label every muslim a terrorist on par with Al-Qaeda merely does three things: 1) It legitimizes the terrorists as the only real muslims. 2) It legitimizes and fuels their calls for a culture war by calling for a culture war yourself. 3) It pisses off every muslim who just wants to get on with their lives, and turns them against you. Which, incidentally, is again what the terrorists are hoping for.
So congratulations for doing exactly what the muslim terrorists want you to do. What a good little puppet you are.
Of course, none of the real-world stuff is as simple as you portray it. Libya started as a very real effort by the general population to overthrow a pretty scummy dictator. There were three options: support the government (thank god we learned our lesson on supporting dictators for some very fuzzy "strategic" goal), do nothing, or support the people fighting the government. We did pretty much the best thing we could have: even the fight by taking out heavy armor and artillery, remove the threat of aerial assault, and let the Libyans sort out the rest. We're seeing the results of the do-nothing approach in Syria: a prolonged war that is getting more violent as time goes on, with more extremist elements joining the fight on both sides.
Libya is a pip-squeak compared to what we're getting in Syria.
I hate to break it to you, but sometimes the best we can do results in a situation that is only somewhat of an improvement over a total catastrophe. And yet, it is still better than to just sit on your ass. What is it with people who think that if something's not perfect, nothing should be done?
Which is why Russia is busy both rewriting definitions of words in the treat (what exactly is the continental shelf), rewriting underwater maps (exactly where does the Russian shelf end, and where does the Canadian start), and doing plain old landgrabs (hooray for random rocky outcroppings suddenly becoming important national territories).
Russia won't invade Canada; it's not that dumb. But it certainly can play the legal game all day long.
Yes, Mr Anal-Retentive, someone did say that child exploitation is not necessarily bad. Sometimes, "everyone" is used as a short-hand for "everyone except persons X, Y, Z, group 1, cults 1234-5757 and my dog, Bob". And that's not a bad thing.
There could still be laws against profiting from child abuse, but the drug market has proved that where there is money to be made there will be supply.
Though to be entirely clear, the money in the CP trade isn't actually money - it is more CP. It's a quid-pro-quo that ensures that cops have a harder time infiltrating the ring, and makes sure that everyone involved gets more material.
I empathize with you, I truly do. I have some fairly graphic second-hand knowledge of child rape, and I see the scars daily. I know as much about the impact of child rape as anyone can know without having actually experienced it.
That said, I'm noticing with you the same problem as with my source: an inability to rationally go over the consequences of what you propose. Number one in the list is the inability to work through the real-life implications of your proposed laws. Here's an example:
Plus who the heck would be possession of it if they were not pleasuring themselves to it.
Argument from ignorance. Just because you can't imagine such a scenario doesn't mean such a scenario exists. A few people have given examples already, and unfortunately, the only retort I've seen is "that's ridiculous". That's not a retort, that's an unwillingness to seriously consider real-world examples of how laws went horribly wrong. That's the ostrich approach to the problem. And I do subscribe to the theory that it's better for a 100 guilty men to go free than for a single innocent man to be jailed: because without laws, the first scenario already holds true. We don't need government to make things worse than anarchy. Here's another example:
So possession of child pornography laws do help to catch child molesters.
Just because a law has some positive effects doesn't mean it is actually a good law. When deciding when something is good or bad, you HAVE to look at the entire set of consequences, not just the ones that work for you. Otherwise, you're just cherry-picking your data, and are guilty of misrepresentation of facts.
To reiterate my opening statement: I empathize with you. But I found that in too many situations, people directly affected by a crime - or something that should be a crime - are completely unable to come up with a law that protects the innocent as much as it punishes - or rehabilitates - the guilty. You're just another data point confirming that. From my perspective, I think that victims should never be involved in changes to laws - they're unable to approach the problem objectively.
I consider a country to be stronger that has more private enterprise, more productive output
By those measures, the US of today is vastly - orders of magnitude - stronger than that of 1913.
and stronger money,
Only someone who looks at exchange rates as an olympic sport sees a high exchange rate and thinks "Jackpot!". Everyone else looks at it in horror and tries to figure out how to reduce the exchange rate. Higher exchange rates mean exports suffer, because international prices are higher. Tourism suffers, investment suffers, and all kinds of other things go down. The only thing that thrives is external investment and tourism to other countries: in other words, money is leaving the country.
I also find it sadly hilarious that the only two data points you consider valid are the US and the USSR, and all other government comparisons are invalid. Somalia is funny, because you don't understand that the warlords are a direct consequence of a weak central government, and Scandinavia is funny because you just moved the goalposts from "small governments" to "shrinking governments". Your analysis is sad because as someone else succinctly said, you're just lying right and left: lying about what the data is, what the data means, what data is valid and what others are saying about your data. The worst part: you're lying to yourself just to preserve your ideology. You're nothing but a cult member trying to preserve their world. Sad.
Not only that, but Amazon is also a service company: a lot of its revenue is tied up in recurring payments for recurring services (see Amazon cloud, etc). Those revenues are recognized in an entirely different fashion, and heavily skew the P/E ratio downwards. It's one of the reason why you see a lot of companies play stupid games in how they make you pay for such services: those games allow them to recognize revenue earlier, and have a better P/E ratio.
So when you look at service companies, P/E ratios mean very little when compared to manufacturing or advertising companies. But overall revenue still matters.
Nice strawman, but I have my own website. And not a crappy LiveJournal blog, but a real, live, actual website. Costs me a whopping $10 a year.
Yeah, I know quite a few people too who run their own website. Some even have their own actual business website. You know why it costs you $10 a year? Because no one visits it. A popular website can easily run a grand in monthly hosting costs. At that point, you either make sure your business can support the site as a marketing expense, or you make money off of each person visiting the site.
People will provide content. But they will provide it only for as long as doing so doesn't bankrupt them.
Let's face it, if the uber-hard-core folks had their way, we would be living a lifestyle from the 1700s. No electricity, no cars, no burning massive amount of fossil fuels. There would be no global economy because there would be no global transportation network.
And the ten or so people who are advocating that lifestyle couldn't have told you that because they're living somewhere in boonies in a cave.
No one (for reasonably close values of "no one") is advocating a return to lifestyle from the 1700s. Partially, because that lifestyle really wasn't sustainable to begin with, and partially because everyone (again, for reasonably close values of "everyone") realizes that a lot of technology is responsible for allowing us to live the way we do. As a result, most of the options discussed lie in the vast area between "back to the stone age" and "full speed ahead". And that vast area has a lot of options for lots of more people than exist now. The two options at the extremes though.... yeah, those will be ugly.
There's a dissertation behind me full of the philosophy of mathematics, and my supervisor's name would be recognisable if you have any interest in the history of mathematics
Ah - now things are coming together. It explains this sentence quite nicely:
I'm not playing academic top trumps - I'm trying to stimulate thought from a bunch of intellectual teenagers.
I met a few people like you while working on papers myself. Super smart, super knowledgeable, but quite insufferable. Their contributions to the field were often good, but not nearly as good as their attitude indicated.
Some AC in this thread, evidently with more clue than every other poster combined, immediately identified this early on.
Yes, that AC identified what you were going on about. He and about 1-2 others thought you were actually interested in a discussion, rather than provide you with entertainment. About half of the other posters identified what you were going on about, and also identified the complete lack of discussion that was going to be had. The rest hadn't heard about it, but implicitly arrived at the same conclusion.
Yep. Hell of a thread. Without your guiding hand, we'd all be stumbling around in the philosophical dark, futilely raising our pitch forks against our own ignorance. Congratulations.
And yet it's brought out a good 80+ wrong answers and the chance for people to think again about their premises.
I saw very little thinking about premises, and very little results from your attempt at socratic teaching. All in all, I rate your attempt a flat zero.
I hope for the world's sake that you're no teacher.
From the feedback I've gotten, I'm pretty sure I'm a better one than you.
All questions can be answered like that. Like I said somewhere else in this thread, why aren't we all out playing football on this sunny day?
The trick is knowing when it is a good answer, and when it is a bad answer. As for your follow-up question... stop trying so hard, and you might actually become interesting.
As for which texts we read in "middle school", Plato's cave analogy was a nice starting point.
OK, so you remember reading about Plato's Cave at school and you think that this answers all the elementary philosophical questions.
No, I remember that Plato's cave was a nice starting point about this idea in middle school. Did you read what you quoted? Not sure why you think that it was supposed to answer all questions. Extrapolating much from your own experience?
Nope. The question has not been "rejected" ever, just deemed unanswerable. But it's formed part of "sterile debate" on the power and limitations of philosophical induction per Hume, leading to Popper's falsifiability, and all the other Philosophy 101 names you could have dropped if you hadn't engaged bullshit mode.
It's been rejected as the basis of any form of reasoning about the physical world, as well as reasoning about moral imperatives or the limits of logic. The answers it produces are either trivial, useless or contradictory. For what it's worth - you should be able to tell by now with which philosophers I'm throwing in my lot.
I'm not sure what speeding being a summary offence (E+W) has to do with this discussion, but OK.
I figured as much. The similarity still amused me.
I thought air quotes were an illustration of incredulity. But your nick was just as middle-school as your argument. Not that it matters - you'd have been equally wrong without the silly name.
Yes, because we all need to pick obscure names out of little known short stories in order to be taken seriously. You would have loved my nick that I used on some gaming boards. It was a great way to pick out posers, know-nothings and kids who thought they were hot shit. As for your incredulity about learning about Plato's cave in middle school, that says more about your education than about my knowledge of philosophy.
Slashdot Mirror
Finding a case that leads to a statute is a bit different than simply interpreting a very well known law. But I grant your point that the body of law is so vast that it is not possible for someone to know everything, which makes it entirely possible to have an Aha moment. I just don't see this particular interpretation to be novel. It reminds me more of Eben Moglen's approach to fixing copyright by arguing that the current copyright system provides for essentially infinite copyright, which is unconstitutional. Pretty much everyone knew that that was the case in practicality, but he still got roundly shot down before the Supreme Court.
Or, to elaborate a little further: this isn't a puzzle, an Indiana Jones movie, or even science, where there's an Aha! moment, and suddenly a century of mystery is conclusively revealed. It's the law, open to interpretation by at least 3 people, if not 15 or even 200. There is no final truth in the law, there's only your own power to convince someone else that your words carry more weight. If what Lemley says is true, and even if he does win it, I can also guarantee you that the law will be changed to fix whatever loop hole he found.
I have zero faith that he can convince a judge or a jury that he's right, and I have even less faith that congress critters won't change the law to fix his interpretation.
You're falling into the trap. You can't argue with a shill, or with an OCD fanboy. They will move goalposts, cherry pick their data, flat-out lie, feign ignorance and just change topic if you finally cornered them on one subject. It's a complete waste of time to argue with them.
It's not that shills or OCD fanboys are wrong. They could very well be right on some points. The problem is that they're incapable of having an honest discussion that could be enlightening. As a result, it is best to point them out and just move along.
Oh, look:
1) Brand new user.
2) Posts within the same minute the story appears.
3) Post has more text in it than can be typed in one minute.
4) Is full of irrational Google hate.
Yep folks, the irrational Google hater is back. From the tone of the posts, I'm not even sure anymore that he is a paid shill (they tend to be a bit more even keeled and dispassionate), and instead think that someone has an obsession with Google and his panties in a wad over the fact that no one else agrees with his arguments.
Next, I expect a petulant crap flood of GNAA posts and other AC shenanigans.
These sounds are made by users.
No, they're made by a single, obsessive and whiny nutbag. Go away.
"As Syria War Roils, Unrest Among Sects Hits Turkey"
This is actually an argument for curtailing civil wars as quickly as possible. It's actually been my argument from the start: protests in the Middle East tend to progress towards sectarian violence spilling over into other countries if they last too long, and it's in everyone's best interest to have actual violence be as short as possible. If you want a comparison with the US, it's like drug violence spilling over into the US. It's not directly tied to how the US works, but it isn't immune to it.
And there are countless small stories of religious persecution, things that would be classed as hate crimes in America, e.g.
If that's the worst to worry about, we're in pretty good shape.
Malaysia has a two-tier justice system, one for Muslims one for others, with a history of discrimination against non-Muslims:
No argument. Not sure why you think though that that disqualifies Malaysia for being a working Islamic democracy. What it does mean is that it has a long way to go before it becomes an equal opportunity country. The good news is Malaysia knows it. Also, you might want to check your sources. Some of them (like prayway) definitely have a tendency to exaggerate developments. While there is a tension between the different groups in Malaysia (and it is much more than just between muslims and non-muslims), it is not nearly as bad as some stories make it sound like.
Indonesia... seriously... why would you even bring up Indonesia? Are you unaware of all the problems in Aceh? They've had tons of Islamic radicals, and in 2006 instituted sharia:
And you can do business there, government is pretty stable, and people can practice a different religion. The institution of Sharia law as a fully-formed body of law is more worrying - but so far, it hasn't had a huge impact on overall stability. Right now, there are no signs it will become another Afghanistan or descend into civil war, which is what the OP was claiming.
Do you honestly think they are working "quite nicely" in these Islamic strongholds? Your standards are too low.
My standards are indeed pretty low. But that's just because people keep forcing me to lower my standards. I mean, by your standards, the US isn't a functioning democracy. Not that I fully disagree with that - but at some point, you have to accept that people are stupid, stupid things happen, and look at small victories. Otherwise, you'll just have to move to an Island and hope no one else moves in.
By my definition, an Islamic democracy is a democracy where the supreme law of the land is Sharia
I'm not sure I would put up Afghanistan as an example of an Islamic democracy, for no other reason than that the rule of the central government barely extends out of Kabul. Furthermore, there's more to an Islamic state than Sharia. There are specific organizational structures that go into an Islamic government, and they all preclude the ability of a democratically elected chamber to do anything of significance. Which is actually nicely illustrated by Afghanistan: if the government can't make any laws that contradict Sharia, it becomes nothing but the executive of existing law. Kinda like the US, but without Congress and the SOC being a council of Imams. Not exactly democratic.
I never claimed the opposite.
But you claim that they don't exist. I claim that they are possible, because they do exist.
The whole country right now is basically a bunch of militias, organized largely around tribal affiliations, which are just itching to go at each other.
It could be worse. It could be Syria. Learn to differentiate.
No-one asking for it to become Turkey or Malaysia, but how about having at least as much stability as it had under Gaddafi?
As I mentioned earlier, you might have as well asked for it to become Turkey or Malaysia. Once the unrest started, and people started shooting, it was going to end only with every last potential rebel dead, or with Ghaddafi dead. Or with an occupation army, but.... we know how that is working out too.
A stable government, it ain't.
I didn't say that it was. I said that the action improved the odds of that happening.
America has a reputation as bloodthirsty and imperial in much of the world
And is it correct? Quite frankly, I find that reputation retarded. America is very much into realpolitik, and the last couple of years had a bunch of real idiots in power, but there is no American empire, and the objective death count is pretty far from falling into bloodthirsty territory. That's why generalizations are dangerous: they are generally wrong, and lead you to respond incorrectly to political situations.
Pit bulls are dangerous.
I know where you're going, but this isn't logic class. If the argument is "All pit bulls are dangerous", then yes, it means that a harmless pitbull is actually not a pitbull. And this is what people are going for when they say "Islam is a violent religion, and muslims are dangerous.
It's a given in some Muslim countries that the US hates Islam and wants to wipe out Islam and that anybody (politically especially) who doesn't denounce the US is actually an agent of the US.
And you don't see the danger of running with incorrect generalizations? Opinions like that get shot down very quickly here, but the reverse is actually supported. And it is just as dangerous to incorrectly generalize about Muslims as it is about Americans.
Yeah, all the actors are just puppets of the hidden powers.
You misunderstand. People who argue that all Muslims are dangerous are puppets not of hidden powers, but of the very open rhetoric of muslim extremists. Not only that, but they do so thinking that they came to that conclusion on their own. Furthermore, it's not a conspiracy. It's just a large mass of people doing what they do best: being stupid.
It's no different than a white supremacist who purposely reads stories about black-on-white crime to get that rush of feeling just and righteous and angry. Well it's different -- I'm sure you'd have no problem seeing that a white supremacist is bad, whereas Muslim supremacists get a free pass from you for some reason.
I'd like you to actually point out where I give white supremacists a pass. And please contrast whatever statement you find with my opening about white christian supremacists. You should get my drift right now: incorrect generalizations are always bad. And in this case, they will lead to a global culture war. I'd rather not go down this path again.
Turkey is not an Islamic democracy. It's a secular democracy which has a Muslim majority. Not the same thing at all.
The good news: by your definition of an islamic democracy, Turkey isn't one. The bad news: by your definition, it's a contradiction in terms. If you run strictly by the rules of hardline muslims, the only proper Islamic state is a caliphate. And the further bad news is that there is not a single functioning caliphate in the world. Then again, there also isn't a functioning theocratic government anywhere in the world, regardless of what religion it purports to be.
The reality is that there are well-functioning governments out there where a majority of the population is muslim. As a result, it is absolutely possible for muslims to have functional government that doesn't try to kill everyone else. Anything else is just the true Scotsman argument. Except in a weird reverse way.
But where is that positive ROI in all the other places I've mentioned? Starting with Soviet-Afghan war and American support for mujahideen there?
Afghanistan turned into an expensive quagmire for the Russians, and became its Vietnam. There's all kinds of positive ROI in there. The fact that it also bred the people who orchestrated 9/11 is more a problem because some people failed to act on the intelligence that was provided to them. Finally, 9/11 was less costly to us than Afghanistan was to the Russians.
As for positive ROI in other places: the only other one you mentioned is Libya. And the cost there was minimal, with the upshot being that the war was fairly short, which reduced the ability of muslim extremists to infiltrate the place. It also reduced tribal killings, which reduces the revenge killings. So yes, it was a pretty dirt cheap way to stack the odds in favor of a more stable government emerging rather quickly. Did it succeed? I don't think anyone thought - or should have thought - that Libya was going to turn overnight into Turkey. Or even Malaysia. But again, we can now see what happens when you let a civil war stagnate in an area that has long memories and a habit of revenge killings. I'm pretty sure Syria is going to end up significantly worse than Libya.
"Islamic democracies" work quite nicely. Ask Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia. Those are actually the only Islamic countries I can think of that have an actual functioning democracy. Not sure why you think that they are some backward shithole. Again, the differentiating factor here really seems to be governance, and not religion.
But that's imperialism, and hence not politically correct. Not to mention, insanely expensive - more so than buying AKs for jihadi "freedom fighters" and dropping an occasional JDAM to support their advance.
And that's why it's not done anymore - not because it's not PC, but because it's just so fucking expensive and long. Not to mention that it requires an actual exit strategy with a proper handover. In short, every thing the US as a country doesn't want to do anymore. So we have three options: do the right thing and pay for it, do nothing, or do the cheapest thing that still has a positive ROI. And do remember that doing nothing has always costs associated with it as well.
What exactly was wrong about what I said about Kosovo?
That it was worse now than what would have happened with non-intervention. I'm fully aware of the sorry state of Kosovo right now - and I'm ecstatic that the entire region isn't like that, which is what would have happened with a full-on war.
The best thing that could be the outcome of the Libyan civil war as it actually went was Gaddafi staying in power but having to negotiate with other factions, and therefore the regime becoming less oppressive.
And that would have never happened. That's right up there with Unicorns farting rainbows.
"Hired goons from Africa" was mostly rebel propaganda they've used to justify their genocide against black Libyans.
Actually, Ghaddafi did employ hired goons from Africa. The problem was that black Libyans were regularly assumed to be just hired goons. And since there were far more black Libyans than hired goons.... well, you do the math. And yes, persecution of black Libyans is a problem. I'm not arguing that Libya isn't a significant basket case right now. However, it's a better start than we're getting with Syria, and at least there's the opportunity there for something positive to happen. Syria basically is going to be a basket case for the next decades.
Because instability breeds more instability. And the crazies are already killing unrelated people. Unless, of course, you mean that everyone east of the US is crazy, and should just annihilate themselves.
I see - the argument is of the type "better the devil we know than the angel we don't". There's some merit to it, but quite frankly, blind application of this leads to.... blindness. As a result, I don't put much faith into that. At some point, you have to do what is right, because the alternative is not doing anything at all - and I quite frankly find that repulsive.
There was no such threat in Libya without foreign involvement.
The parallels of the war in Syria are much closer than you think. The rebels were initially getting rolled everywhere as well. At some point, the government's logistics started to break down, the rebels started to get more defections and more support from surrounding states, and the civil war was one. There is no reason to think that Ghaddafi would have just crushed the rebels as easily as you make it sound. Note that the only thing that happened was a no-fly zone and the destruction of heavy weaponry; the only real advantage that Ghaddafi had. With that gone, the rebels were basically guaranteed to win. With that in place - which is what is happening in Syria - it comes down to how hated the ruler is, how many defections from the army occur, and whether someone is willing to feed weapons into the country. All three of which were happening.
Syria is different because, on one hand, the pro-government side is much more of a minority
And Ghaddafi relied almost exclusively on support from his tribe and hired goons from Africa to protect his rule. I don't think they're as different as you make it sound.
It is, at best, different, and usually worse, especially when you look at it from western perspective.
I'm not sure you realize just how short-sighted and self-congratulatingly cynical your view is. The best thing that can happen is that you get another dictator like Ghaddafi in place? Really? As for whether it is worse in the three situations you cited, Kosovo is flat out wrong (you really wanted a full on Balkan war in Europe?), and Libya and Syria are more a function of msulim extremists infecting every unstable government in Africa and the near East than a fundamental problem with revolutions.
If anything, it shows that the threat of muslim extremists is far worse than just an occasional bombing in Europe and the US: it can lead to the long-term failure of an entire geographical region to establish proper governance. That alone should warrant the involvement of Europe and the US in the region to make sure that conflicts are as short as possible.
So what you're saying is that about 1 billion muslims are not really muslims at all because they don't kill all the infidels? Really? Do you want to go to the local mosques and educate them on that? Or is it just that you didn't actually read the Hadith, didn't read the Quoran, and just go by what some flamebait site like religionofpeace.com says?
I wonder if you love those "peace loving christians" when they plant bombs and shoot up a summer camp . Or do you make really weak generalizations just when it comes to muslims? The reality is that the muslim terrorists are a tiny minority of the billion+ muslims in the world. To label every muslim a terrorist on par with Al-Qaeda merely does three things:
1) It legitimizes the terrorists as the only real muslims.
2) It legitimizes and fuels their calls for a culture war by calling for a culture war yourself.
3) It pisses off every muslim who just wants to get on with their lives, and turns them against you. Which, incidentally, is again what the terrorists are hoping for.
So congratulations for doing exactly what the muslim terrorists want you to do. What a good little puppet you are.
Of course, none of the real-world stuff is as simple as you portray it. Libya started as a very real effort by the general population to overthrow a pretty scummy dictator. There were three options: support the government (thank god we learned our lesson on supporting dictators for some very fuzzy "strategic" goal), do nothing, or support the people fighting the government. We did pretty much the best thing we could have: even the fight by taking out heavy armor and artillery, remove the threat of aerial assault, and let the Libyans sort out the rest. We're seeing the results of the do-nothing approach in Syria: a prolonged war that is getting more violent as time goes on, with more extremist elements joining the fight on both sides.
Libya is a pip-squeak compared to what we're getting in Syria.
I hate to break it to you, but sometimes the best we can do results in a situation that is only somewhat of an improvement over a total catastrophe. And yet, it is still better than to just sit on your ass. What is it with people who think that if something's not perfect, nothing should be done?
Which is why Russia is busy both rewriting definitions of words in the treat (what exactly is the continental shelf), rewriting underwater maps (exactly where does the Russian shelf end, and where does the Canadian start), and doing plain old landgrabs (hooray for random rocky outcroppings suddenly becoming important national territories).
Russia won't invade Canada; it's not that dumb. But it certainly can play the legal game all day long.
Yes, Mr Anal-Retentive, someone did say that child exploitation is not necessarily bad. Sometimes, "everyone" is used as a short-hand for "everyone except persons X, Y, Z, group 1, cults 1234-5757 and my dog, Bob". And that's not a bad thing.
There could still be laws against profiting from child abuse, but the drug market has proved that where there is money to be made there will be supply.
Though to be entirely clear, the money in the CP trade isn't actually money - it is more CP. It's a quid-pro-quo that ensures that cops have a harder time infiltrating the ring, and makes sure that everyone involved gets more material.
I empathize with you, I truly do. I have some fairly graphic second-hand knowledge of child rape, and I see the scars daily. I know as much about the impact of child rape as anyone can know without having actually experienced it.
That said, I'm noticing with you the same problem as with my source: an inability to rationally go over the consequences of what you propose. Number one in the list is the inability to work through the real-life implications of your proposed laws. Here's an example:
Plus who the heck would be possession of it if they were not pleasuring themselves to it.
Argument from ignorance. Just because you can't imagine such a scenario doesn't mean such a scenario exists. A few people have given examples already, and unfortunately, the only retort I've seen is "that's ridiculous". That's not a retort, that's an unwillingness to seriously consider real-world examples of how laws went horribly wrong. That's the ostrich approach to the problem. And I do subscribe to the theory that it's better for a 100 guilty men to go free than for a single innocent man to be jailed: because without laws, the first scenario already holds true. We don't need government to make things worse than anarchy. Here's another example:
So possession of child pornography laws do help to catch child molesters.
Just because a law has some positive effects doesn't mean it is actually a good law. When deciding when something is good or bad, you HAVE to look at the entire set of consequences, not just the ones that work for you. Otherwise, you're just cherry-picking your data, and are guilty of misrepresentation of facts.
To reiterate my opening statement: I empathize with you. But I found that in too many situations, people directly affected by a crime - or something that should be a crime - are completely unable to come up with a law that protects the innocent as much as it punishes - or rehabilitates - the guilty. You're just another data point confirming that. From my perspective, I think that victims should never be involved in changes to laws - they're unable to approach the problem objectively.
I consider a country to be stronger that has more private enterprise, more productive output
By those measures, the US of today is vastly - orders of magnitude - stronger than that of 1913.
and stronger money,
Only someone who looks at exchange rates as an olympic sport sees a high exchange rate and thinks "Jackpot!". Everyone else looks at it in horror and tries to figure out how to reduce the exchange rate. Higher exchange rates mean exports suffer, because international prices are higher. Tourism suffers, investment suffers, and all kinds of other things go down. The only thing that thrives is external investment and tourism to other countries: in other words, money is leaving the country.
I also find it sadly hilarious that the only two data points you consider valid are the US and the USSR, and all other government comparisons are invalid. Somalia is funny, because you don't understand that the warlords are a direct consequence of a weak central government, and Scandinavia is funny because you just moved the goalposts from "small governments" to "shrinking governments". Your analysis is sad because as someone else succinctly said, you're just lying right and left: lying about what the data is, what the data means, what data is valid and what others are saying about your data. The worst part: you're lying to yourself just to preserve your ideology. You're nothing but a cult member trying to preserve their world. Sad.
Not only that, but Amazon is also a service company: a lot of its revenue is tied up in recurring payments for recurring services (see Amazon cloud, etc). Those revenues are recognized in an entirely different fashion, and heavily skew the P/E ratio downwards. It's one of the reason why you see a lot of companies play stupid games in how they make you pay for such services: those games allow them to recognize revenue earlier, and have a better P/E ratio.
So when you look at service companies, P/E ratios mean very little when compared to manufacturing or advertising companies. But overall revenue still matters.
Nice strawman, but I have my own website. And not a crappy LiveJournal blog, but a real, live, actual website. Costs me a whopping $10 a year.
Yeah, I know quite a few people too who run their own website. Some even have their own actual business website. You know why it costs you $10 a year? Because no one visits it. A popular website can easily run a grand in monthly hosting costs. At that point, you either make sure your business can support the site as a marketing expense, or you make money off of each person visiting the site.
People will provide content. But they will provide it only for as long as doing so doesn't bankrupt them.
Let's face it, if the uber-hard-core folks had their way, we would be living a lifestyle from the 1700s. No electricity, no cars, no burning massive amount of fossil fuels. There would be no global economy because there would be no global transportation network.
And the ten or so people who are advocating that lifestyle couldn't have told you that because they're living somewhere in boonies in a cave.
No one (for reasonably close values of "no one") is advocating a return to lifestyle from the 1700s. Partially, because that lifestyle really wasn't sustainable to begin with, and partially because everyone (again, for reasonably close values of "everyone") realizes that a lot of technology is responsible for allowing us to live the way we do. As a result, most of the options discussed lie in the vast area between "back to the stone age" and "full speed ahead". And that vast area has a lot of options for lots of more people than exist now. The two options at the extremes though.... yeah, those will be ugly.
There's a dissertation behind me full of the philosophy of mathematics, and my supervisor's name would be recognisable if you have any interest in the history of mathematics
Ah - now things are coming together. It explains this sentence quite nicely:
I'm not playing academic top trumps - I'm trying to stimulate thought from a bunch of intellectual teenagers.
I met a few people like you while working on papers myself. Super smart, super knowledgeable, but quite insufferable. Their contributions to the field were often good, but not nearly as good as their attitude indicated.
Some AC in this thread, evidently with more clue than every other poster combined, immediately identified this early on.
Yes, that AC identified what you were going on about. He and about 1-2 others thought you were actually interested in a discussion, rather than provide you with entertainment. About half of the other posters identified what you were going on about, and also identified the complete lack of discussion that was going to be had. The rest hadn't heard about it, but implicitly arrived at the same conclusion.
Yep. Hell of a thread. Without your guiding hand, we'd all be stumbling around in the philosophical dark, futilely raising our pitch forks against our own ignorance. Congratulations.
And yet it's brought out a good 80+ wrong answers and the chance for people to think again about their premises.
I saw very little thinking about premises, and very little results from your attempt at socratic teaching. All in all, I rate your attempt a flat zero.
I hope for the world's sake that you're no teacher.
From the feedback I've gotten, I'm pretty sure I'm a better one than you.
All questions can be answered like that. Like I said somewhere else in this thread, why aren't we all out playing football on this sunny day?
The trick is knowing when it is a good answer, and when it is a bad answer. As for your follow-up question... stop trying so hard, and you might actually become interesting.
As for which texts we read in "middle school", Plato's cave analogy was a nice starting point.
OK, so you remember reading about Plato's Cave at school and you think that this answers all the elementary philosophical questions.
No, I remember that Plato's cave was a nice starting point about this idea in middle school. Did you read what you quoted? Not sure why you think that it was supposed to answer all questions. Extrapolating much from your own experience?
Nope. The question has not been "rejected" ever, just deemed unanswerable. But it's formed part of "sterile debate" on the power and limitations of philosophical induction per Hume, leading to Popper's falsifiability, and all the other Philosophy 101 names you could have dropped if you hadn't engaged bullshit mode.
It's been rejected as the basis of any form of reasoning about the physical world, as well as reasoning about moral imperatives or the limits of logic. The answers it produces are either trivial, useless or contradictory. For what it's worth - you should be able to tell by now with which philosophers I'm throwing in my lot.
I'm not sure what speeding being a summary offence (E+W) has to do with this discussion, but OK.
I figured as much. The similarity still amused me.
I thought air quotes were an illustration of incredulity. But your nick was just as middle-school as your argument. Not that it matters - you'd have been equally wrong without the silly name.
Yes, because we all need to pick obscure names out of little known short stories in order to be taken seriously. You would have loved my nick that I used on some gaming boards. It was a great way to pick out posers, know-nothings and kids who thought they were hot shit. As for your incredulity about learning about Plato's cave in middle school, that says more about your education than about my knowledge of philosophy.