Intent to kill is much easier to demonstrate than 'intent to kill because the victim was black.' All that is required to establish the former is to show that a reasonable person would have expected those actions to result in death, and that the actions could not have been accidental.
To prove that it was because the victim was black requires disproving every other possible motivation--it is epistemologically impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, except in cases such as where a witness heard him say 'Kill that nigger' just before the act.
I'm not arguing anything about that case. I'm aware that he has a well known history of anti-semitism--that isn't proof that it's the reason he did it.
I fully believe that the shooting was a hate crime, committed as an act of prejudicially motivated violence. The problem I have is that hate crime laws fail the standard to which we are supposed to hold criminal prosecution in this country (not that we really hold it to that standard anyway, but that is a separate issue).
Actually from what you presented in your post, there is no evidence whatsoever that the museum shooting was a hate crime. A white man goes and shoots a black man at the holocaust museum. There is nothing in the act itself that suggests a hate crime (any more than someone knocking over a 7-11 with a sikh cashier is likely to be a hate crime against sikhs).
The problem with hate crime laws is that it is near impossible to actually prove that the crime was motivated by racial or other prejudice (except for particular cases where say, the culprit specifically told someone that's why he was going to do it). Even if a person is publicly known to hate members of another group, and he murders a member of that group, that is not proof that his prejudice was the motivator, but it will very likely get him convicted under the hate crime law.
In effect, the burden of proof is so low on the 'hate motive' that it becomes no different from the UK's law. It makes certain thoughts illegal, just in the US case you only get charged if you commit an actual crime as well--then the prosecutor says, "Not only did he murder John Doe, but he hates people like John Doe, so that must have been why," with no evidence that this was actually a factor.
There's a nice little strawman since I was talking about the OP's idea that 55% of scientists identifying themselves as Democrats vindicates his own liberalism.
In point of fact, I support cutting CO2 emissions, and all pollution, on the basis of the principle of 'not shitting where one eats.'
Not only is the exact opposite of the OSS mindset, I'd be willing to be that it is motivated by exactly what you describe. These are not people concerned about security, these are people who want exploits kept secret so they can sell them and use them--the morons posting here in support of this don't get it. These people are not your friends.
There are a number of well-documented cases of vendors being notified well in advance of publication, and those vendors doing nothing until after publication (in some cases the publication was only made because the vendor refused to do anything). Full disclosure forces lazy, cost-cutting corporations to improve their products when they would otherwise have no motivation to do so. The only people who benefit from non-disclosure are black hat criminals.
So you progress to belittling. Right down the checklist of pseudo-think. And very mature.
You're right to criticize the predominant view of "critical thinking," since most of what goes by that name is not critical thinking, but pattern matching.
Setting that aside however (as it is a side-issue I have no desire to spend twenty posts digressing on) there is no valid DEDUCTIVE logical argument which goes from: Smart person says A, to: A must be true.
There is an INDUCTIVE argument which states that: Person A is often correct, so I may presume him to be so now.
However, inductive arguments are not proof (all arguments from correlation are inherently inductive--hence the claim correlation!=causation, because arguments from correlation cannot PROVE anything). Moreover in this case, claiming person A to often be correct is assuming facts not in evidence. On the contrary, I would assert that a scientist is NEVER absolutely correct (by the definition of scientific theories which are only falsifiable--and almost always falsified eventually in one aspect or another, never provable), except by blind luck.
The nature of science is such that it is an epistemology, and in that epistemology the only things that are regarded as true are those which can be concluded a posteriori without doubt from a set of assumptions and facts (the only things which qualify as facts are reproducible observations, and not the interpretations of those observations). EVERYTHING else is tentative.
Treating the results of any inductive argument as definitive (rather than tentative) is inherently unscientific. So, back to my original point: If you see this as a comforting sort of validation that you are right, then you aren't one of the most highly educated men and women.
The epistemology of science is a sort of radical skeptical empiricism--nothing is known to be true except what can be conclusively shown a posteriori from facts (reproducible observations). Everything else is tentative, and subject to skepticism. Your attitude childishly belittles that very epistemology, while trying to cite it as a vindication of your own beliefs. It'd be amusing if it wasn't so sad that this is exactly how most of the population approaches science.
Catholicism is radically different from American Protestantism w/ regards to science. In Catholicism it is just short of heresy to claim that scripture contradicts evolution (as of 1996--this does not mean that evolution is religious doctrine, merely that Catholics believe scripture is mute on the subject). They do teach a sort of 'theistic evolution,' but this amounts to 'God chose natural selection and evolution as the tool by which He would create the various species,' and not any meaningful deviation from the prevailing modern evolutionary synthesis.
American protestants on the other hand, especially the Calvinist and pseudo-Calvinist branches, object rather vehemently to the very possibility of entertaining such an idea.
Ideology is the elevation of conditional conclusion to the status of axiom--free markets are always better (they're not, only under certain conditions are they better--and under all others they aren't even free markets, regardless of the level of government involvement), unions are good (UAW, SEIU, became blood-sucking parasites destroying their hosts and acting ultimately against the interests of their members), regulation is good, regulation is bad, etc.
All (well, maybe not all, but most) of both parties' platform points are correct under circumstances, but not under all circumstances. Both parties commit a total unthinking, unscientific dogmatism in believing that their platforms are always right, always the solution, when this is simply (and demonstrably) not true.
While I think you're right about the 'knowing what you don't know' reaction against the Republicans, both platforms are equally illogical (being the result of conglomerated agendas from devil's alliances of various factions).
I do not think that it is reason which drives most educated people to the Democrats--it is a disposition towards Humanism that does so. Reason disposes one to Humanism, Humanism to social liberalism. But reason cannot dispose one to ideology--because ideology is inherently the abandonment of reason in favor of dogma.
Fiscal liberalism may not correlate with analytical skills, but I'm willing to bet that humanism does. And Humanists tend to be socially liberal.
The problem is that the morons of the Democratic party (read:everyone who thinks that because 55% of scientists call themselves Democrats mean Democrats MUST be onto something) conflate being liberal with being a humanist. It is NOT the same. Humanism can logically lead to a (albeit restricted) range of political philosophies, among them social liberalism.
Demonstrably false. First, no educated person in approximately 3,000 years has believed the earth to be flat--that's how long it's been since the Greeks calculated the circumference of the earth (to within 10% of the actual number IIRC). Second, while there were philosophers and theologians who believed the earth to be at the center of the universe, none of them could be called scientists. Science is a coupling of an epistemology and a methodology derived from that epistemology. The idea that the earth was at the center of the universe predates the science's existence, and the idea met its demise with the rise of science during the Enlightenment period.
If you see this as a comforting sort of validation that you are right, then you aren't one of the most highly educated men and women. Argument from authority is a logical fallacy.
Do you know what 19th century means? Here's a hint: 1800-1899. That would be public domain.
As for the photos, presumably the museum owns the copyright (although, the whole question is whether they can even claim a copyright at all--in the US probably not, in the UK maybe).
Well no shit the uploader is not the photographer. Did you need a degree in formal logic to figure that out?
The TFS doesn't skirt over any of this, you're just being intentionally dense (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt on this one).
"The plural of anecdote is not data" is more succinct, and doesn't require knowing the joke (and making a leap through a murky analogy--unless you are calling non-skinny women cows, in which case it's an allegory).
On the upside though, your way has the bonus that you can make fun of the GP for being too dumb to get it.
Nice load of strawmen there. No one was ever talking about undercover cops or Valerie Plame.
Every case referred to above have been "Rodney-King" type incidents. The officers in question know what happened in the Rodney King case, and so took it upon themselves to decide it was illegal to photograph/video tape them. That is wrong. Period.
Interestingly, the stretch of the 14 freeway that runs through Lancaster has a "speed monitored by aircraft." Being close to Edwards AFB there are always aircraft in the sky--except over the freeway.
Slashdot Mirror
You gotta stop saying it while holding the cleaver.
Is that a Firefly joke, or am I missing something?
I have. But you're wrong.
Intent to kill is much easier to demonstrate than 'intent to kill because the victim was black.' All that is required to establish the former is to show that a reasonable person would have expected those actions to result in death, and that the actions could not have been accidental.
To prove that it was because the victim was black requires disproving every other possible motivation--it is epistemologically impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, except in cases such as where a witness heard him say 'Kill that nigger' just before the act.
I'm not arguing anything about that case. I'm aware that he has a well known history of anti-semitism--that isn't proof that it's the reason he did it.
I fully believe that the shooting was a hate crime, committed as an act of prejudicially motivated violence. The problem I have is that hate crime laws fail the standard to which we are supposed to hold criminal prosecution in this country (not that we really hold it to that standard anyway, but that is a separate issue).
Actually from what you presented in your post, there is no evidence whatsoever that the museum shooting was a hate crime. A white man goes and shoots a black man at the holocaust museum. There is nothing in the act itself that suggests a hate crime (any more than someone knocking over a 7-11 with a sikh cashier is likely to be a hate crime against sikhs).
The problem with hate crime laws is that it is near impossible to actually prove that the crime was motivated by racial or other prejudice (except for particular cases where say, the culprit specifically told someone that's why he was going to do it). Even if a person is publicly known to hate members of another group, and he murders a member of that group, that is not proof that his prejudice was the motivator, but it will very likely get him convicted under the hate crime law.
In effect, the burden of proof is so low on the 'hate motive' that it becomes no different from the UK's law. It makes certain thoughts illegal, just in the US case you only get charged if you commit an actual crime as well--then the prosecutor says, "Not only did he murder John Doe, but he hates people like John Doe, so that must have been why," with no evidence that this was actually a factor.
There's a nice little strawman since I was talking about the OP's idea that 55% of scientists identifying themselves as Democrats vindicates his own liberalism.
In point of fact, I support cutting CO2 emissions, and all pollution, on the basis of the principle of 'not shitting where one eats.'
Not only is the exact opposite of the OSS mindset, I'd be willing to be that it is motivated by exactly what you describe. These are not people concerned about security, these are people who want exploits kept secret so they can sell them and use them--the morons posting here in support of this don't get it. These people are not your friends.
There are a number of well-documented cases of vendors being notified well in advance of publication, and those vendors doing nothing until after publication (in some cases the publication was only made because the vendor refused to do anything). Full disclosure forces lazy, cost-cutting corporations to improve their products when they would otherwise have no motivation to do so. The only people who benefit from non-disclosure are black hat criminals.
So you progress to belittling. Right down the checklist of pseudo-think. And very mature.
You're right to criticize the predominant view of "critical thinking," since most of what goes by that name is not critical thinking, but pattern matching.
Setting that aside however (as it is a side-issue I have no desire to spend twenty posts digressing on) there is no valid DEDUCTIVE logical argument which goes from: Smart person says A, to: A must be true.
There is an INDUCTIVE argument which states that: Person A is often correct, so I may presume him to be so now.
However, inductive arguments are not proof (all arguments from correlation are inherently inductive--hence the claim correlation!=causation, because arguments from correlation cannot PROVE anything). Moreover in this case, claiming person A to often be correct is assuming facts not in evidence. On the contrary, I would assert that a scientist is NEVER absolutely correct (by the definition of scientific theories which are only falsifiable--and almost always falsified eventually in one aspect or another, never provable), except by blind luck.
The nature of science is such that it is an epistemology, and in that epistemology the only things that are regarded as true are those which can be concluded a posteriori without doubt from a set of assumptions and facts (the only things which qualify as facts are reproducible observations, and not the interpretations of those observations). EVERYTHING else is tentative.
Treating the results of any inductive argument as definitive (rather than tentative) is inherently unscientific. So, back to my original point: If you see this as a comforting sort of validation that you are right, then you aren't one of the most highly educated men and women.
The epistemology of science is a sort of radical skeptical empiricism--nothing is known to be true except what can be conclusively shown a posteriori from facts (reproducible observations). Everything else is tentative, and subject to skepticism. Your attitude childishly belittles that very epistemology, while trying to cite it as a vindication of your own beliefs. It'd be amusing if it wasn't so sad that this is exactly how most of the population approaches science.
Catholicism is radically different from American Protestantism w/ regards to science. In Catholicism it is just short of heresy to claim that scripture contradicts evolution (as of 1996--this does not mean that evolution is religious doctrine, merely that Catholics believe scripture is mute on the subject). They do teach a sort of 'theistic evolution,' but this amounts to 'God chose natural selection and evolution as the tool by which He would create the various species,' and not any meaningful deviation from the prevailing modern evolutionary synthesis.
American protestants on the other hand, especially the Calvinist and pseudo-Calvinist branches, object rather vehemently to the very possibility of entertaining such an idea.
Ideology is the elevation of conditional conclusion to the status of axiom--free markets are always better (they're not, only under certain conditions are they better--and under all others they aren't even free markets, regardless of the level of government involvement), unions are good (UAW, SEIU, became blood-sucking parasites destroying their hosts and acting ultimately against the interests of their members), regulation is good, regulation is bad, etc.
All (well, maybe not all, but most) of both parties' platform points are correct under circumstances, but not under all circumstances. Both parties commit a total unthinking, unscientific dogmatism in believing that their platforms are always right, always the solution, when this is simply (and demonstrably) not true.
While I think you're right about the 'knowing what you don't know' reaction against the Republicans, both platforms are equally illogical (being the result of conglomerated agendas from devil's alliances of various factions).
I do not think that it is reason which drives most educated people to the Democrats--it is a disposition towards Humanism that does so. Reason disposes one to Humanism, Humanism to social liberalism. But reason cannot dispose one to ideology--because ideology is inherently the abandonment of reason in favor of dogma.
Fiscal liberalism may not correlate with analytical skills, but I'm willing to bet that humanism does. And Humanists tend to be socially liberal.
The problem is that the morons of the Democratic party (read:everyone who thinks that because 55% of scientists call themselves Democrats mean Democrats MUST be onto something) conflate being liberal with being a humanist. It is NOT the same. Humanism can logically lead to a (albeit restricted) range of political philosophies, among them social liberalism.
Demonstrably false. First, no educated person in approximately 3,000 years has believed the earth to be flat--that's how long it's been since the Greeks calculated the circumference of the earth (to within 10% of the actual number IIRC). Second, while there were philosophers and theologians who believed the earth to be at the center of the universe, none of them could be called scientists. Science is a coupling of an epistemology and a methodology derived from that epistemology. The idea that the earth was at the center of the universe predates the science's existence, and the idea met its demise with the rise of science during the Enlightenment period.
If you see this as a comforting sort of validation that you are right, then you aren't one of the most highly educated men and women. Argument from authority is a logical fallacy.
Historical shift in popular terminology in the 1940s, blah, blah, blah. Blame FDR (and whoever his republican opponents were at the time).
Do you know what 19th century means? Here's a hint: 1800-1899. That would be public domain.
As for the photos, presumably the museum owns the copyright (although, the whole question is whether they can even claim a copyright at all--in the US probably not, in the UK maybe).
Well no shit the uploader is not the photographer. Did you need a degree in formal logic to figure that out?
The TFS doesn't skirt over any of this, you're just being intentionally dense (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt on this one).
To be fair, at least half of them are mail order degrees.
One where even the guy doesn't get off.
But the parts that are...oh....
"The plural of anecdote is not data" is more succinct, and doesn't require knowing the joke (and making a leap through a murky analogy--unless you are calling non-skinny women cows, in which case it's an allegory).
On the upside though, your way has the bonus that you can make fun of the GP for being too dumb to get it.
Too many weekends in Vegas?
The big idea was more to ensure that the publishers got an egregious cut of whatever profits were to be had
Fixed that for you.
Easy to do these days with facebook. Though now there's no age difference, so the point is moot.
Underage consumption is not a felony. I'm pretty sure that the extra-jurisdiction crime only applies to felonies (and probably not even all felonies).
Nice load of strawmen there. No one was ever talking about undercover cops or Valerie Plame.
Every case referred to above have been "Rodney-King" type incidents. The officers in question know what happened in the Rodney King case, and so took it upon themselves to decide it was illegal to photograph/video tape them. That is wrong. Period.
Interestingly, the stretch of the 14 freeway that runs through Lancaster has a "speed monitored by aircraft." Being close to Edwards AFB there are always aircraft in the sky--except over the freeway.