> Tibet before the Chinese invasion was one of the most tyrannical, oppressive > theocracies in history. Whilst the Chinese haven't improved the situation > much, those who contend that Tibet used to be a peaceful mountain kingdom > inhabited by gentle mystics are deluded woo-woos.
Yeah that's probably true to a large extent. Buddhists are really good at fighting each other (they're doing it at the moment, over who is the true lama of something), and they were running a feudal country with appaling treatment meted out to the serfs.
But china hasn't done much better on the peace and freedom front, and they did burn a shed load of monasteries. Not that you get many of those in a shed.
So you're all right and you're all wrong and I'm just pointlessly wibbling into my keyboard.
A stream of complaints as to this site's orientation, taste, relevance, point etc, but this site appears to have been slashdotted nonetheless.
C'mon fess up to your secret slashdot knitting parties: "hey look I've made retro green on black screen. remeber them?", "yeah? well I'm designing a slick new UI with 4,294,967,296 different colours." etc.
And make damn sure that your code isn't vulnerbale to "e-mail injection" exploits; these will result in spammers using your simple form to spam others AND you getting your hosting revoked.
> True, the continuity deal was too restrictive. The Laffer Curve holds in > *more* instances. Thanks!
You can keep trying to redefine what you think the laffer curve is supposed to indicate, but you'll continue to be wrong. Partly because the theory itself is wrong, and partly because you lack the ability to think and argue coherently.
> The Laffer Curve is not a model of the economy.
*uses LeonGeeste anime school of arguing trick* So you agree with me that the laffer curve is not a viable economic model. Thanks.
> It does not purport to describe an array of economic activity, just that at > some point, revenues diminish despite tax increases.
Pathetic backpedalling on your part. Most people agrees that "at some point, revenues diminish despite tax increases". "At some point" is the crucial part of that phrase that you're not dealing with.
> And claiming that raising tax rates eventually diminishes revenues is not > pseudoscience.
I'm calling the laffer model in its entirity pseudoscience. Here's a hint, boy, the laffer curve does not state that "raising tax rates eventually diminishes revenues", that's one of the assumptions used in the laffer model. The two are not the same thing. Try and work this out.
I surely agree with two if the assumptions, that 0% of x is 0 and that 100% of 0 is 0. All that stuff in the middle: wrong. To then proclaim that decreasing taxes *will* increase revenue without a further assumption (hopefully backed up with some empirical data) as to where you are on the curve: double wrong with wrong sprinklings and lashings of wrong sauce.
Mmmmm. What a big feast of wrong you're trying to jam down that throat of yours. As before, here's hoping you choke.
Now, if you're trying to rewrite the laffer model so that all it is saying is that "at some point [...] raising tax rates eventually diminishes revenues", let's call that the lesser-laffer model, then almost no-one will disagree with you.
> I said it will do one thing, not change one thing.
So what is this "one thing" that changing tax rates will "do"? And don't say increase revenue, because it depends on where you are on the curve. Is it that it will change total revenues? Wow, big news.
> Sure, raising taxes could raise revenues, increase unemployment, lower > interest rates, and so on. But the person was claiming that the same change in > tax rate (with all else held equal as per the curve's ceteris parib > assumptions) could BOTH increase AND decrease revenues and is thus irrelevant > to revenues. This is false.
Nope they didn't say that. They were probably slightly misled by one of the sideways-drawn economists' graphs; they most certainly didn't say that if something can increase and decrease revenue then it is irrelevant to revenue, as it is obviously affecting revenue how can it be irrelevant?
They did say that it's shit economics. Even for economics. And I heartily concur.
> And there are economists that dismiss conclusions grounded in empirical data > for the precise reasons you gave: you could never control enough variables to > get a good result.
Which is why it is pseudoscience. It oftend pretends to be science but doesn't follow any of its strictures, such as falsifiabilty or empirical data. And then it's used as a reason to fuck with people's lives.
Thanks for proving us right. Again.
> Okay, fine, if you raise taxes, revenues will JUMP down, rather than decline > smoothly. Happy now?
No: "will". It depends, according to the theory, on where you are on the curve. You keep trying to ignore that one rather salient fact. What the curve in its entirity does show, is that if you adjust the tax rate, then tax revenues will either increase or decrease. Wow, that's big news to everyone here I'm sure.
> > > What is most important is that you assume it doesn't behave like -1/x near >
> No, I claimed the relationship between tax revenues and tax rates is > continuous,
That's the first time you've said that. And in an argument with someone else I find:
him: " The trouble with the Laffer curve is that the income=f(tax ratio) is not a smooth function."
you: "Not necessary, just at at some point a higher tax rate will come with lower revenues."
So you state here that the function isn't necessarily continuous. I don't know why you think self-contradiction and pure invention are good arguing techniques.
> no that the entire economy can be described (predicted?) by a > continuous function (of what? and predicting what?)
You claimed that the Laffer curve is a good economic model. You also claimed that the Laffer curve is a continuous function.
Hence you claimed "economy is described by a continous function". It's still called logic, and it's still a correct use of the verb "to describe".
The problem most of us have with the laffer curve is that it's simplistic pseudoscience that ignores the many factors at play in a modern economy, as characterised by your king example. Yes, you are trying to distill a highly complex subject down to one formula.
You try to defend this with latin "ceteris paribus assumptions, so just changing the tax rate can only do one thing". Newsflash, changing the tax rate won't only change one thing. Scientists actually try to keep all other things equal through the use of control experiments, economists just talk shit.
> Of course, you're right I was imprecise, there can be jump discontinuities, > but if the number of actors is large, these are small enough to be ignored.
There are jump discontinuities in experimental data, but the laffer curve is a theoretcial abstract, and I've never seen it drawn with discontinuities by anyone (other than Martin Gardner). Do you understand the difference between theory and data?
> What is most important is that you assume it doesn't behave like -1/x near the > origin:
Your favourite trick: make all sorts of bizarre claims as to what other people think when they've never said any such thing. Quote me.
> increase to a vertical asymptote and then increase from negative > infinity back to the axis. But I think that's a safe asssumption.
Personally I follow the standard of plotting the independent variable along the horizontal axis.
> But go ahead, keep believing that you can increase taxes indefinitely while > increasing revenues.
Your favourite trick: make all sorts of bizarre claims as to what other people think when they've never said any such thing. Quote me.
The best I can offer is to use complex numbers to transform the equation, something like the Laplace Transform. I have totally forgotten how to do any of this stuff, but I'm fairly sure it's what you're looking for.
I did 3 or 4 rolls and decided to get all intelligent at it and do some pattern analysis, so I fired up excel and solved it whilst waiting. It was something about the wording of the version I saw just gave it away.
The moral is, anything you think you need excel for can almost certainly be done quicker without.
Either the Monty Hall problem which serves as a meditation on the idiocy of expertese, or the mayday mystery which isn't a logic problem, but is certainly a more amusing way to waste time than most puzzles.
> When the northern ice caps melt then the cold water starts to cool the ocean, > and there would be fewer hurricanes. That is what the environmentalists told > us all during the 80's and 90's. How come we have had the terrible hurricanes > this year and last...
I don't recall any such thing being said, but then I did smoke alot of pot during the 90s. Like a proper hippy should.
It's not as simple as the oceans cooling en masse. The melting of arctic ice affects the gulf stream, lessening the flow of warm water northwards. Thus tropical oceans are warmer causing more hurricanes.
You really shouldn't confuse trends with single instances. That article itself asks whether this reversal is a trend or a blip: " The big question is if the change marks the end of the retreat, or just a short-lived reversal."
Even if the antarctic ice sheet is expanding, you might have observed that the emphasis these days is not on global warming but climate change. And climate change will benefit nobody but speculators.
> They also said we created the hole in the ozone; however in 2004 the hole in > the ozone was recorded as getting smaller by up to 20%.
> Still think we are causing global warning? Remember the Ice Age?
I don't think you appreciate the sensitivity of complex systems. Yeah global climate changes. But a giga tonnage of atmospheric CO2 released over a much shorter period of time than the system is used to, could cause all sorts of changes to the system.
Spend a few hours studying chaotic systems and how minor changes in quasi periodic systems can cause a bifurcation into a completely new set of behaviours.
The idea anyway, as people keep trying to point out, is that we take care to value our environment and our effect on it over plastic crapola, fat cars and not giving a toss about anything but the here and now.
> I know I'm going to get slammed for this post, the same way I do when I defend > MS, but hey what can ya do?
Yes if you live in the EU. IF you were, then spam would be illegal under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive of 2003. Also you could opt out of junk mail, junk phone calls and junk faxes; I don't know how many fines have been levied, but we don't get any junk here anymore, and since dropping my hotmail account some years back I've not been hit by much spam.
Although to be honest wasting sales people's time over the phone is fun.
> The majority of this guys arguments are refuted in this post.
Refuted by some links? Did we follow the links? To irrelevant books about modern-day chicago and how native americans weren't very good at ecology and started killing each other off long before the Europeans turned up?
Did we follow the links to books on Amazon which contain such gems as:
Reviewers with scientific training have no kind words for The Murderer Next Door. The author's investiture in the controversial field of evolutionary psychology--which posits that human behavior is the product of evolution--leads him to assert that homicidal fantasies are more common than the reader might believe, and smacks of self promotion. While Buss's argument is internally consistent, his premise runs counter to established anthropological and biological studies. Readers unversed in those sciences might receive Buss's claims about homicide's roots more openly, and find them both credible and disturbing.
And:
The problems come with LeBlanc's exaggeration and sometimes shaky scholarship (on which see exchange of letters in ARCHAEOLOGY for Sept.-Oct 2003)... All this would be trivial if it weren't for the very strong possibility that LeBlanc's book will be misunderstood, by superficial readers, as a claim that "savages" are the treacherous, destructive bloodthirsty, violent, cruel, endlessly-warring beasts that they were said to be in all the earlier literature--from Thomas Hobbes to Hollywood cowboys-and-Indians movies.
> Especially the points on other species use of violence.
One species: chimps. In one location: Gombe. High levels of violence only observed some years after humans started interfering with their lives on a grand scale. The environmental peculiarites of the situation notwithstanding.
Have we considered the criticisms of the "Demonic Males": anthropomorphizing animal behaviour; inductive reasoning; dismissal of evidence that doesn't fit their thesis; interference with the subject. Bad science throught and through.
> He says "Most violence committed throughout history has been in the name of > king and country." Throughout what history? The tiny bit of civilized recorded > history? There is more to the history of violence than that.
Compare the world's human population now to 2000 years ago to 50,000 years ago.
I stated that I believe violence in self-defence is justified, so what's your beef? Others believe that it isn't, so take it up with them.
> I sure hope you had that on your mind when you used the term "arguably".
No. What I had on my mind was all the people who aruge about it.
> Violence employed in self-defense is ALWAYS moral, becuase human nature made > it so.
Violence is never moral, it is amoral. To call it moral or immoral is to invite the mass violence that humans seem so capable of.
> I have every moral right to break both his knees and put him in a wheelchair > for the rest of his life and I DAMN WELL should have no remorse about doing > so.
And when it transpires your wife was having a bit on the side whilst you slept, and only cried rape when you woke up?
Yeah, despite all my careful qualifications of "usually" and "largely" and "less prone" that managed to slip out. D'Oh. I think my mind was already rushing ahead thinking about orgies.
> As opposed to the majority of your rebuttals which are value judgements
Life is probably all value judgments, despite most of us proclaiming truths at every possible moment (that's me and you included, boy). Just don't like an attempt to pretend that accounts of history represent truth in some way. It's usually a precursor to invading a country.
> troll
So why feed it?
> BTW, can you do HTML?
Yes. Can you type "by the way"?
> Since the majority of argument was value judgements and the outlining of your > argument was atrocious allow me to rip but one of your rebuttals apart:
Yeah the outlining was awful, but I don't like italics and I don't like bold. Value judgements. And what happens when it get's batted backwards and forwards a couple of times? What's italic and what isn't?
I apologise for upsetting your eyes, and your delicate sensibilities and rules.
> Ever read any Evolutionary Psychology? Humans are a social species whose
Ever read an arguments against evolutionary psychology? Didn't get that far? We don't know what happened in the past, we're theorising. The idea of man being steeped in violence is largely lacking in evidence prior to the city states and predicated on the view that we must be violemt because other primates (and therefore occur primate ancestors) are violent. Which they largely aren't.
> networks are built on status and reputation.
Mine aren't. I tend to make value judgements on people that aren't based on how high up in the pecking order they are nor on what other people tell me. And there's alot of people on this planet who don't stoop to violence when their honour is impugned.
Also, you misunderstand the use of violence in animal status. Real physical harm for many, probably most, animals is a last resort. If you lose a contest to a superior male, you don't feel dissed and come back with a pair of nines, you walk away. You do, however fight the next male that tries to capitalise on it. Or lose out big time as you indeed state. But often it never comes to a fight. It's called posturing.
The idea that violence as a retort to loss of status has some historical basis is bilge.
> A loss of status could mean more attacks on ones on physical being and
Evidence? Like I said, apes and other simians are less prone to intra-species violence than we currently are, and the emphasis in a contest is often not on actual violence. You're following old science.
> reputation itself. So yes, at one stage in the past, loss of status was > considered a pretty important thing in the mind of humans.
A valid point. In the past. Doesn't justify anything these days. Progress, etc.
> And now that I've proved you wrong how does it justify you smashing the parent > or anyone else's face in with a brick?
It doesn't (even if you had) which is my argument exactly. Parent said that an attack on status justifies violence, qualified with "most important". I equated being proven wrong publicly to losing status. You're welcome to argue with that, I don't know that it's particularly true. See Einstein, for example.
> The only way it would be justified in your twisted reality is if you were > perceived as having lost status. Which would mean you are an insecure little > man if you take such things to heart.
Erm... not my twisted reality. I'm not advocating justifying violence based on loss of status. Parent did, and you appear to be trying to justify it. Please pay attention. And don't post anonymously you insecure little man.
Slashdot Mirror
>The name of the game is the conquest of space and unmanned just doesn't get it done.
Yeah you're right, we need big burly space marines to beat all that vacuum into submission.
> Tibet before the Chinese invasion was one of the most tyrannical, oppressive
> theocracies in history. Whilst the Chinese haven't improved the situation
> much, those who contend that Tibet used to be a peaceful mountain kingdom
> inhabited by gentle mystics are deluded woo-woos.
Yeah that's probably true to a large extent. Buddhists are really good at fighting each other (they're doing it at the moment, over who is the true lama of something), and they were running a feudal country with appaling treatment meted out to the serfs.
But china hasn't done much better on the peace and freedom front, and they did burn a shed load of monasteries. Not that you get many of those in a shed.
So you're all right and you're all wrong and I'm just pointlessly wibbling into my keyboard.
Three and a half players. Don't forget us Europeans.
A stream of complaints as to this site's orientation, taste, relevance, point etc, but this site appears to have been slashdotted nonetheless.
C'mon fess up to your secret slashdot knitting parties: "hey look I've made retro green on black screen. remeber them?", "yeah? well I'm designing a slick new UI with 4,294,967,296 different colours." etc.
> or you can always do stuff like: foo AT gmail DOT com
> or you can always use the html encoding for the characters in the email
These are no protection against a number of more advanced bots, and that number will increase over time.
Also, in many situations, like signing up for stuff online, an encoded email address won't be seen as valid input and will be rejected out of hand.
> or you can always just put the words inside an image.
This might work on your personal website, but is useless in most situations.
> or you can always use a real email for friends, and a spam email for
> everything else.
By far the best method in my opinion, coupled with educating your friends so that they don't fall pray to malware.
And make damn sure that your code isn't vulnerbale to "e-mail injection" exploits; these will result in spammers using your simple form to spam others AND you getting your hosting revoked.
n jection.php
See, eg, here: http://www.nyphp.org/phundamentals/email_header_i
Damn. Busted. ...
I've got this "really good"(tm) software for sale if you're interested.
> True, the continuity deal was too restrictive. The Laffer Curve holds in
> *more* instances. Thanks!
You can keep trying to redefine what you think the laffer curve is supposed to indicate, but you'll continue to be wrong. Partly because the theory itself is wrong, and partly because you lack the ability to think and argue coherently.
> The Laffer Curve is not a model of the economy.
*uses LeonGeeste anime school of arguing trick* So you agree with me that the laffer curve is not a viable economic model. Thanks.
> It does not purport to describe an array of economic activity, just that at
> some point, revenues diminish despite tax increases.
Pathetic backpedalling on your part. Most people agrees that "at some point, revenues diminish despite tax increases". "At some point" is the crucial part of that phrase that you're not dealing with.
> And claiming that raising tax rates eventually diminishes revenues is not
> pseudoscience.
I'm calling the laffer model in its entirity pseudoscience. Here's a hint, boy, the laffer curve does not state that "raising tax rates eventually diminishes revenues", that's one of the assumptions used in the laffer model. The two are not the same thing. Try and work this out.
I surely agree with two if the assumptions, that 0% of x is 0 and that 100% of 0 is 0. All that stuff in the middle: wrong. To then proclaim that decreasing taxes *will* increase revenue without a further assumption (hopefully backed up with some empirical data) as to where you are on the curve: double wrong with wrong sprinklings and lashings of wrong sauce.
Mmmmm. What a big feast of wrong you're trying to jam down that throat of yours. As before, here's hoping you choke.
Now, if you're trying to rewrite the laffer model so that all it is saying is that "at some point [...] raising tax rates eventually diminishes revenues", let's call that the lesser-laffer model, then almost no-one will disagree with you.
> I said it will do one thing, not change one thing.
So what is this "one thing" that changing tax rates will "do"? And don't say increase revenue, because it depends on where you are on the curve. Is it that it will change total revenues? Wow, big news.
> Sure, raising taxes could raise revenues, increase unemployment, lower
> interest rates, and so on. But the person was claiming that the same change in > tax rate (with all else held equal as per the curve's ceteris parib
> assumptions) could BOTH increase AND decrease revenues and is thus irrelevant
> to revenues. This is false.
Nope they didn't say that. They were probably slightly misled by one of the sideways-drawn economists' graphs; they most certainly didn't say that if something can increase and decrease revenue then it is irrelevant to revenue, as it is obviously affecting revenue how can it be irrelevant?
They did say that it's shit economics. Even for economics. And I heartily concur.
> And there are economists that dismiss conclusions grounded in empirical data
> for the precise reasons you gave: you could never control enough variables to > get a good result.
Which is why it is pseudoscience. It oftend pretends to be science but doesn't follow any of its strictures, such as falsifiabilty or empirical data. And then it's used as a reason to fuck with people's lives.
Thanks for proving us right. Again.
> Okay, fine, if you raise taxes, revenues will JUMP down, rather than decline
> smoothly. Happy now?
No: "will". It depends, according to the theory, on where you are on the curve. You keep trying to ignore that one rather salient fact. What the curve in its entirity does show, is that if you adjust the tax rate, then tax revenues will either increase or decrease. Wow, that's big news to everyone here I'm sure.
> > > What is most important is that you assume it doesn't behave like -1/x near
>
Or perhaps Indymedia:
c e_fbi_mlat_request/l
http://indymedia.org/en/2004/10/112239.shtml
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/11/home_offi
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BOW410A.htm
> No, I claimed the relationship between tax revenues and tax rates is
> continuous,
That's the first time you've said that. And in an argument with someone else I find:
him: " The trouble with the Laffer curve is that the income=f(tax ratio) is not a smooth function."
you: "Not necessary, just at at some point a higher tax rate will come with lower revenues."
So you state here that the function isn't necessarily continuous. I don't know why you think self-contradiction and pure invention are good arguing techniques.
> no that the entire economy can be described (predicted?) by a
> continuous function (of what? and predicting what?)
You claimed that the Laffer curve is a good economic model. You also claimed that the Laffer curve is a continuous function.
Hence you claimed "economy is described by a continous function". It's still called logic, and it's still a correct use of the verb "to describe".
The problem most of us have with the laffer curve is that it's simplistic pseudoscience that ignores the many factors at play in a modern economy, as characterised by your king example. Yes, you are trying to distill a highly complex subject down to one formula.
You try to defend this with latin "ceteris paribus assumptions, so just changing the tax rate can only do one thing". Newsflash, changing the tax rate won't only change one thing. Scientists actually try to keep all other things equal through the use of control experiments, economists just talk shit.
> Of course, you're right I was imprecise, there can be jump discontinuities,
> but if the number of actors is large, these are small enough to be ignored.
There are jump discontinuities in experimental data, but the laffer curve is a theoretcial abstract, and I've never seen it drawn with discontinuities by anyone (other than Martin Gardner). Do you understand the difference between theory and data?
> What is most important is that you assume it doesn't behave like -1/x near the
> origin:
Your favourite trick: make all sorts of bizarre claims as to what other people think when they've never said any such thing. Quote me.
> increase to a vertical asymptote and then increase from negative
> infinity back to the axis. But I think that's a safe asssumption.
Personally I follow the standard of plotting the independent variable along the horizontal axis.
> But go ahead, keep believing that you can increase taxes indefinitely while
> increasing revenues.
Your favourite trick: make all sorts of bizarre claims as to what other people think when they've never said any such thing. Quote me.
And calculus isn't esoteric knowledge? Haha. No you're absolutely right.
A pound of gold or a pound of feathers?
And, no, the answer isn't that they weigh the same.
You claim that the Laffer curve is a good economic model. You also claim that the Laffer curve is a continuous function.
Hence you claim "economy is described by a continous function".
It's called logic.
And who would be foolish enough to suggest that the economy is described by a continuous function?
Ah ... the joy of being far too slow and wrong to boot.
The best I can offer is to use complex numbers to transform the equation, something like the Laplace Transform. I have totally forgotten how to do any of this stuff, but I'm fairly sure it's what you're looking for.
I did 3 or 4 rolls and decided to get all intelligent at it and do some pattern analysis, so I fired up excel and solved it whilst waiting. It was something about the wording of the version I saw just gave it away.
The moral is, anything you think you need excel for can almost certainly be done quicker without.
Either the Monty Hall problem which serves as a meditation on the idiocy of expertese, or the mayday mystery which isn't a logic problem, but is certainly a more amusing way to waste time than most puzzles.
> When the northern ice caps melt then the cold water starts to cool the ocean, > and there would be fewer hurricanes. That is what the environmentalists told
o le+size for graphs of ozone hole trends.
> us all during the 80's and 90's. How come we have had the terrible hurricanes
> this year and last...
I don't recall any such thing being said, but then I did smoke alot of pot during the 90s. Like a proper hippy should.
It's not as simple as the oceans cooling en masse. The melting of arctic ice affects the gulf stream, lessening the flow of warm water northwards. Thus tropical oceans are warmer causing more hurricanes.
> Why is it happening if the ice caps are melting? How about explaining
> Antarctica's glaciers getting larger?
> http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1806
You really shouldn't confuse trends with single instances. That article itself asks whether this reversal is a trend or a blip: " The big question is if the change marks the end of the retreat, or just a short-lived reversal."
Even if the antarctic ice sheet is expanding, you might have observed that the emphasis these days is not on global warming but climate change. And climate change will benefit nobody but speculators.
> They also said we created the hole in the ozone; however in 2004 the hole in
> the ozone was recorded as getting smaller by up to 20%.
That's one year. See http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=graph+ozone+h
> Still think we are causing global warning? Remember the Ice Age?
I don't think you appreciate the sensitivity of complex systems. Yeah global climate changes. But a giga tonnage of atmospheric CO2 released over a much shorter period of time than the system is used to, could cause all sorts of changes to the system.
Spend a few hours studying chaotic systems and how minor changes in quasi periodic systems can cause a bifurcation into a completely new set of behaviours.
The idea anyway, as people keep trying to point out, is that we take care to value our environment and our effect on it over plastic crapola, fat cars and not giving a toss about anything but the here and now.
> I know I'm going to get slammed for this post, the same way I do when I defend
> MS, but hey what can ya do?
Not try to play devil's advocate.
Do you mean this?
Yes if you live in the EU. IF you were, then spam would be illegal under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive of 2003. Also you could opt out of junk mail, junk phone calls and junk faxes; I don't know how many fines have been levied, but we don't get any junk here anymore, and since dropping my hotmail account some years back I've not been hit by much spam.
Although to be honest wasting sales people's time over the phone is fun.
> The majority of this guys arguments are refuted in this post.
... All this would be trivial if it weren't for the very strong possibility that LeBlanc's book will be misunderstood, by superficial readers, as a claim that "savages" are the treacherous, destructive bloodthirsty, violent, cruel, endlessly-warring beasts that they were said to be in all the earlier literature--from Thomas Hobbes to Hollywood cowboys-and-Indians movies.
Refuted by some links? Did we follow the links? To irrelevant books about modern-day chicago and how native americans weren't very good at ecology and started killing each other off long before the Europeans turned up?
Did we follow the links to books on Amazon which contain such gems as:
Reviewers with scientific training have no kind words for The Murderer Next Door. The author's investiture in the controversial field of evolutionary psychology--which posits that human behavior is the product of evolution--leads him to assert that homicidal fantasies are more common than the reader might believe, and smacks of self promotion. While Buss's argument is internally consistent, his premise runs counter to established anthropological and biological studies. Readers unversed in those sciences might receive Buss's claims about homicide's roots more openly, and find them both credible and disturbing.
And:
The problems come with LeBlanc's exaggeration and sometimes shaky scholarship (on which see exchange of letters in ARCHAEOLOGY for Sept.-Oct 2003)
> Especially the points on other species use of violence.
One species: chimps. In one location: Gombe. High levels of violence only observed some years after humans started interfering with their lives on a grand scale. The environmental peculiarites of the situation notwithstanding.
Have we considered the criticisms of the "Demonic Males": anthropomorphizing animal behaviour; inductive reasoning; dismissal of evidence that doesn't fit their thesis; interference with the subject. Bad science throught and through.
> He says "Most violence committed throughout history has been in the name of
> king and country." Throughout what history? The tiny bit of civilized recorded
> history? There is more to the history of violence than that.
Compare the world's human population now to 2000 years ago to 50,000 years ago.
I stated that I believe violence in self-defence is justified, so what's your beef? Others believe that it isn't, so take it up with them.
> I sure hope you had that on your mind when you used the term "arguably".
No. What I had on my mind was all the people who aruge about it.
> Violence employed in self-defense is ALWAYS moral, becuase human nature made
> it so.
Violence is never moral, it is amoral. To call it moral or immoral is to invite the mass violence that humans seem so capable of.
> I have every moral right to break both his knees and put him in a wheelchair
> for the rest of his life and I DAMN WELL should have no remorse about doing
> so.
And when it transpires your wife was having a bit on the side whilst you slept, and only cried rape when you woke up?
Nice example of SELF-defence by the way.
> And they don't kill each other
Yeah, despite all my careful qualifications of "usually" and "largely" and "less prone" that managed to slip out. D'Oh. I think my mind was already rushing ahead thinking about orgies.
> As opposed to the majority of your rebuttals which are value judgements
... not my twisted reality. I'm not advocating justifying violence based on loss of status. Parent did, and you appear to be trying to justify it. Please pay attention. And don't post anonymously you insecure little man.
Life is probably all value judgments, despite most of us proclaiming truths at every possible moment (that's me and you included, boy). Just don't like an attempt to pretend that accounts of history represent truth in some way. It's usually a precursor to invading a country.
> troll
So why feed it?
> BTW, can you do HTML?
Yes. Can you type "by the way"?
> Since the majority of argument was value judgements and the outlining of your > argument was atrocious allow me to rip but one of your rebuttals apart:
Yeah the outlining was awful, but I don't like italics and I don't like bold. Value judgements. And what happens when it get's batted backwards and forwards a couple of times? What's italic and what isn't?
I apologise for upsetting your eyes, and your delicate sensibilities and rules.
> Ever read any Evolutionary Psychology? Humans are a social species whose
Ever read an arguments against evolutionary psychology? Didn't get that far? We don't know what happened in the past, we're theorising. The idea of man being steeped in violence is largely lacking in evidence prior to the city states and predicated on the view that we must be violemt because other primates (and therefore occur primate ancestors) are violent. Which they largely aren't.
> networks are built on status and reputation.
Mine aren't. I tend to make value judgements on people that aren't based on how high up in the pecking order they are nor on what other people tell me. And there's alot of people on this planet who don't stoop to violence when their honour is impugned.
Also, you misunderstand the use of violence in animal status. Real physical harm for many, probably most, animals is a last resort. If you lose a contest to a superior male, you don't feel dissed and come back with a pair of nines, you walk away. You do, however fight the next male that tries to capitalise on it. Or lose out big time as you indeed state. But often it never comes to a fight. It's called posturing.
The idea that violence as a retort to loss of status has some historical basis is bilge.
> A loss of status could mean more attacks on ones on physical being and
Evidence? Like I said, apes and other simians are less prone to intra-species violence than we currently are, and the emphasis in a contest is often not on actual violence. You're following old science.
> reputation itself. So yes, at one stage in the past, loss of status was
> considered a pretty important thing in the mind of humans.
A valid point. In the past. Doesn't justify anything these days. Progress, etc.
> And now that I've proved you wrong how does it justify you smashing the parent > or anyone else's face in with a brick?
It doesn't (even if you had) which is my argument exactly. Parent said that an attack on status justifies violence, qualified with "most important". I equated being proven wrong publicly to losing status. You're welcome to argue with that, I don't know that it's particularly true. See Einstein, for example.
> The only way it would be justified in your twisted reality is if you were
> perceived as having lost status. Which would mean you are an insecure little
> man if you take such things to heart.
Erm