No , you've got it all wrong, see? If you make the tax end when the whole country has broadband, you give the politicians a reason to never let you have broadband--if you get it, they lose revenues. And then how will they pay for things they actually care about? Better to have the tax not take effect until after you have your broadband. Make them work for your money.
Your comparison to cousin marriage is inaccurate. First cousin marriages have been common in most societies until the last couple centuries (and still very common for more than half of the world's population). They have only a marginally higher rate of birth defects.
Isn't the "it'll destroy America's economy" an argument based around fairness? Or does fairness only matter if it's applied to the US but not to other nations?
First, I'm not saying that 'it'll destroy America's economy.' I wasn't even saying that it would increase carbon emissions overall. I was just saying that was the GP's point--though I DO think it is an interesting point, but in the absence of meaningful data I cannot draw any conclusions about it.
The American public's ability to think that bad things happening any where else don't count is well documented, and there is no need to recount it. To any politician, this is something they have to consider if they want to keep their jobs. Is this despicable? Certainly, but it's still true. All that a good chunk of the American public sees are a bunch of foreigners telling them to have less stuff for no reason (their perception is wrong, but it is still their perception). Of course they are opposed to that. Who wouldn't be? One of the things that pisses me off about global warming (and all the other political shibboleths) is the tendency of each side to think the other is a bunch of Snidely Whiplashes, evil just because. People never think they are evil, even Hitler believed that he was the savior of the German people and that what he was doing was right.
As that argument indicates a system that is absurdly unfair will of course simply not be accepted and likely it'd be considered little more than an attempt by developed nations to establish a monopoly on industries. In the end no one will actually change anything and pollution will continue to be a problem. Any economic impact would need to be spread evenly based on future economic trends not based on current economic conditions. China, for example, with its massively growing economy would be economically crippled if it couldn't increase it's emissions to even close to the existing US levels (technically even that would be harsh for them in terms of future growth).
I assume you're referring to total levels, not per capita (otherwise your point makes no sense).
One random logical solution is to find an acceptable future level of emissions based around something other than arbitrary political divisions. In other words find some desired world level of emissions that is X/person and establish some requires future changes for these levels. So, for example, China may be allowed to triple it's emissions (but only at some slow rate that is balanced out in other areas) while the US would have to drop them 20%. Everyone's economy gets fucked but no one is forced to spend quality time with a sear's tower sized dildo.
The reality is that any meaningful system has to be global, not national. The 'make country X cut their emissions this much' is stupid. It is easy to understand, but stupid, because it assumes that change happens in a vacuum (protip: it doesn't).
It doesn't happen anyway. You're a fool if you think long-term IP monopolies foster innovation. What they foster is a legal industry that sucks millions out of actual productive uses of capital, thus lowering the overall standard of living.
America never would have become an industrial nation if we hadn't simply ignored British patent laws, exactly the way China is ignoring ours.
No he's arguing that the only thing that matters is total global emissions, and that under the current Kyoto rules, any decrease in the US would be more than offset by the increases from larger outsourcing to China.
Maybe you're confused, but reducing carbon emissions isn't about being FAIR so that everyone gets to do just as much environmental damage as everyone else, it's about reducing carbon emissions.
Wait , isn't the point of a democracy to give power to the majority ?
No. Not in a liberal democracy. The purpose of a liberal democracy (every democracy based on either the US or British model) is to protect the rights of citizens from transgression by the government. Constrained power to the majority is the means, not the end. And most importantly, that power is constrained.
I dislike the term congress critter, if only because "critter" in my mind conjures up images from Bambi. I think congressional cretins is more appropriate.
Standard legal doctrine. By arguing that the defendant's system was pwned directly by hackers you have to prove such a claim, which requires significant access to the machine and forensic investigation. Remember, these are NOT criminal trials, there is no 'beyond reasonable doubt' criteria. In a civil trial one party need only establish a preponderence of evidence. If you are going to claim that the machine was pwned, establishing this will require a lot of evidence, especially since the jury will likely be 12 technologically clueless senior citizens that will never believe that people in russia are using their computers too.
The anonymous reader is wrong. A supernova would be accompanied by a large amount of shockwaves through the star, and a large amount of pressure waves. There would be no sound, in the sense that there would be no neurological interpretations of these phenomena, but they would still happen.
The ignorance of other people is not my problem and I will not change my language because of it. If they don't understand that niggardly isn't a racist term, fuck them.
I think in your rush to insult me, you missed something. What was the result of my thought experiment again? Is one of them you, or both, or neither?
I didn't miss it, I ignored it because it wasn't germane to the question of whether or not a molecularly reconstituted clone of you is you. But if you wanted my answer, it would be neither.
I'm trying to have a discussion about what you would expect to happen in a particular physical system. Your spurious argument against *your straw man of my philosophy* is the only self-indulgent, intellectually vapid point in this discussion.
Insulting you isn't a straw man, it's an ad hominem attack.
"I know you are, but what am I," is not a valid retort.
And I believe you are subscribing to a self-indulgent, intellectually vapid conception of identity embraced by people greedy to live forever. We'll agree to disagree.
If I clone myself and backup my memory into the clone, so that the clone is (in your conception of identity as string of memories) me, and I'm still alive standing next to it, it is plainly NOT me. I am still experiencing my life and it is experiencing its own life, with my memories. We are separate organisms, and separate entities.
Whether or not I die before the cloning and memory download process cannot possibly affect the ontology of it--the answer to whether the clone is me, or not me, must be the same in both cases. In the case where I am sitting next to it, it is plainly not me. So in the other case it must also not be me.
If you think journalism has anything to do with truth you're an idiot. I'm not even accusing them of bias. Pure incompetence is more than enough to keep the truth from ever showing up in the news. *COUGH*Dan Rather*COUGH*
Slashdot Mirror
You hate your mother that much?
The plural of anecdote is NOT data.
No , you've got it all wrong, see? If you make the tax end when the whole country has broadband, you give the politicians a reason to never let you have broadband--if you get it, they lose revenues. And then how will they pay for things they actually care about? Better to have the tax not take effect until after you have your broadband. Make them work for your money.
Or my GP is a meta-troll. Or you're a meta-meta-troll. Dear God, we've gone into infinite recursion!
Like every other nation in history?
Your comparison to cousin marriage is inaccurate. First cousin marriages have been common in most societies until the last couple centuries (and still very common for more than half of the world's population). They have only a marginally higher rate of birth defects.
Sibling marriages OTOH....
Isn't the "it'll destroy America's economy" an argument based around fairness? Or does fairness only matter if it's applied to the US but not to other nations?
First, I'm not saying that 'it'll destroy America's economy.' I wasn't even saying that it would increase carbon emissions overall. I was just saying that was the GP's point--though I DO think it is an interesting point, but in the absence of meaningful data I cannot draw any conclusions about it.
The American public's ability to think that bad things happening any where else don't count is well documented, and there is no need to recount it. To any politician, this is something they have to consider if they want to keep their jobs. Is this despicable? Certainly, but it's still true. All that a good chunk of the American public sees are a bunch of foreigners telling them to have less stuff for no reason (their perception is wrong, but it is still their perception). Of course they are opposed to that. Who wouldn't be? One of the things that pisses me off about global warming (and all the other political shibboleths) is the tendency of each side to think the other is a bunch of Snidely Whiplashes, evil just because. People never think they are evil, even Hitler believed that he was the savior of the German people and that what he was doing was right.
As that argument indicates a system that is absurdly unfair will of course simply not be accepted and likely it'd be considered little more than an attempt by developed nations to establish a monopoly on industries. In the end no one will actually change anything and pollution will continue to be a problem. Any economic impact would need to be spread evenly based on future economic trends not based on current economic conditions. China, for example, with its massively growing economy would be economically crippled if it couldn't increase it's emissions to even close to the existing US levels (technically even that would be harsh for them in terms of future growth).
I assume you're referring to total levels, not per capita (otherwise your point makes no sense).
One random logical solution is to find an acceptable future level of emissions based around something other than arbitrary political divisions. In other words find some desired world level of emissions that is X/person and establish some requires future changes for these levels. So, for example, China may be allowed to triple it's emissions (but only at some slow rate that is balanced out in other areas) while the US would have to drop them 20%. Everyone's economy gets fucked but no one is forced to spend quality time with a sear's tower sized dildo.
The reality is that any meaningful system has to be global, not national. The 'make country X cut their emissions this much' is stupid. It is easy to understand, but stupid, because it assumes that change happens in a vacuum (protip: it doesn't).
Congrats on clueless pedantry. In the words of Wolfgang Pauli, you're not even wrong.
While yes, the US has a republican form of government, it is also classed as a liberal democracy. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=liberal+democracy&l=1
But...But...KEY ISSUES!!!....like....uh....Terry Schiavo!
Yes.
It doesn't happen anyway. You're a fool if you think long-term IP monopolies foster innovation. What they foster is a legal industry that sucks millions out of actual productive uses of capital, thus lowering the overall standard of living.
America never would have become an industrial nation if we hadn't simply ignored British patent laws, exactly the way China is ignoring ours.
You'd be surprised at how few elected officials could pass high school civics.
No he's arguing that the only thing that matters is total global emissions, and that under the current Kyoto rules, any decrease in the US would be more than offset by the increases from larger outsourcing to China.
Maybe you're confused, but reducing carbon emissions isn't about being FAIR so that everyone gets to do just as much environmental damage as everyone else, it's about reducing carbon emissions.
Why is BadAnalogyGuy posting as an AC?
No, but I can think of more than a few congressional cretins who would.
No. Not in a liberal democracy. The purpose of a liberal democracy (every democracy based on either the US or British model) is to protect the rights of citizens from transgression by the government. Constrained power to the majority is the means, not the end. And most importantly, that power is constrained.
I dislike the term congress critter, if only because "critter" in my mind conjures up images from Bambi. I think congressional cretins is more appropriate.
Standard legal doctrine. By arguing that the defendant's system was pwned directly by hackers you have to prove such a claim, which requires significant access to the machine and forensic investigation. Remember, these are NOT criminal trials, there is no 'beyond reasonable doubt' criteria. In a civil trial one party need only establish a preponderence of evidence. If you are going to claim that the machine was pwned, establishing this will require a lot of evidence, especially since the jury will likely be 12 technologically clueless senior citizens that will never believe that people in russia are using their computers too.
The anonymous reader is wrong. A supernova would be accompanied by a large amount of shockwaves through the star, and a large amount of pressure waves. There would be no sound, in the sense that there would be no neurological interpretations of these phenomena, but they would still happen.
The ignorance of other people is not my problem and I will not change my language because of it. If they don't understand that niggardly isn't a racist term, fuck them.
I didn't miss it, I ignored it because it wasn't germane to the question of whether or not a molecularly reconstituted clone of you is you. But if you wanted my answer, it would be neither.
Insulting you isn't a straw man, it's an ad hominem attack.
"I know you are, but what am I," is not a valid retort.
And I believe you are subscribing to a self-indulgent, intellectually vapid conception of identity embraced by people greedy to live forever. We'll agree to disagree.
If I clone myself and backup my memory into the clone, so that the clone is (in your conception of identity as string of memories) me, and I'm still alive standing next to it, it is plainly NOT me. I am still experiencing my life and it is experiencing its own life, with my memories. We are separate organisms, and separate entities.
Whether or not I die before the cloning and memory download process cannot possibly affect the ontology of it--the answer to whether the clone is me, or not me, must be the same in both cases. In the case where I am sitting next to it, it is plainly not me. So in the other case it must also not be me.
If you think journalism has anything to do with truth you're an idiot. I'm not even accusing them of bias. Pure incompetence is more than enough to keep the truth from ever showing up in the news. *COUGH*Dan Rather*COUGH*
Yay for corrupt protectionism! We have to make it illegal to call things what they are to protect the industrialists who own Congress! Yay!
Well, he is the Doctor.