Not all us youngin's are that stupid, you know. Some of us actually understand ideas of "common good" or of being a part of a country. That's why so many of us voted Obama.
Just don't expect to see those sane young folk on the Internet, this lovely hellhole of libertarian "I-don't-need-you-I-don't-need-anyone" rage.
Good for you guys on launching your first satellite. It marks your entry into an elite club of nations that coincidentally also consists of most of your enemies. Perhaps we could solve some of these diplomatic situations with a good, old-fashioned trade in technology?
Actually I think individualism is great and people should be proud to pursue their values simply for their own enjoyment.
"Nice" is different from "good", especially in heroic stories.
By that definition every single mentat is a psychopath!
Wah? I specifically remember Lady Jessica noting Piter as a "twisted Mentat" precisely because he'd been left with no moral conscience.
The Space Guild and the Bene Gesserit are borderline - they are more "differently conscienced".
Actually, I would say that by the time of "Heretics of Dune" the Bene Gesserit really had become somewhat psychopathic, a mere secret society that existed only to maintain itself. But they didn't start out that way, and surely the Spacing Guild saw its actions (rare as they be) as taken to preserve human interstellar civilization.
Whilst I wouldn't say every character was a psychopath - the nature of the situation that these people find themselves in certainly pushes them in that direction.
And I would counter that your range of moral understanding is unfortunately narrow.
If Americans don't want to work at those wages, then they don't get the job, there are always people who want to work whether you import them or not.
Not true in a free market. In a free labor market, if only a tiny fraction of the market will work for a certain low wage, then wages go up until enough people are willing to work. In America, however, companies just get the government to flood their labor market with immigrants until American workers get desperate enough that the equilibrium wage goes down. At no point, of course, does the cost-of-living go down.
No, he's right. H1-B visas aren't a free or freeing of the market, they're the government reaching in to subsidize certain companies (those they award visas to) by flooding their labor markets, thus decreasing overall wages. H1-Bs are interference in the free market.
Dune is a fantasy book with a very thin veil of scifi on top of it.
Your definition of sci-fi is way, way, way too hard if it excludes "Dune". Remember, at the time Dune was written, science had not yet ruled things like genetic memory entirely out.
So let's examine the science content.
The Bene Gesserit? They gain their powers through using conscious control over body chemistry to change a poison into an awareness-expanding drug. Science rules out the drugs but rules in the body's ability to chemically process harmful substances into harmless ones (see: "alcohol").
The "undead", aka gholas? Clones. Once one accepts the possibility of genetic memory the ability to reawaken a clone's original memories makes total sense. Real science is already cloning things.
Mentats and Guild Navigators? Autistic savants have shown abilities for near-computer-speed mathematical computation, who says this capability couldn't be unleashed in the brains of select individuals close enough to neurotypicality to work within an organization?
Prescience? OK, that clearly violates current physics by transmitting information faster than speed-of-light (ie: through time). However, if one accepts FTL information transmission (the basis of most scifi that takes place in space anyway) the mechanics of prescience make logical sense and the book's faster-than-light travel is actually through "space-folding", aka wormholes. Science says that wormholes are entirely possible through huge amounts of energy and mass, and the entire point of the Holtzman Effect was that people had developed a technology to alter the gravitational inertia (aka: "mass") of things. Such a device could easily allow bending space in ways that would nullify gravity or allow for wormholes.
It even has the "technology has not advanced for ten thousand years" cliche - no, the "no computers" rule wouldn't really stop people from building them.
You completely misunderstand one of the book's main themes. The entire bloody point of the Butlerian Jihad and the relatively un-technological civilization portrayed was that society had chosen to advance humans instead of technology. As seen in the book, human capability appears to develop at least as fast as it does in the real world. Nobody builds computers in the far future not only because of the religious prohibition but because Mentats are better, and plenty of technology exists that works entirely without Turing-complete computation devices.
But sadly, that veneer nonetheless gives it a mild case of bastard syndrome - making every character a more or less nasty psychopath in an attempt to make them "realistic".
I don't see why you call the Dune characters "nasty psychopaths". Sure, Baron Harkonnen is a nasty psychopath, and so are most of his family. But they're the villains. Who else in the book is a nasty psychopath?
I nowadays simply avoid scifi. Fantasy is not ashamed to entertain, while scifi tries to be "high literature" and fails miserably at it, or a parody which, while entertaining, is the equivalent of ice cream cone: you can't live on those alone. There are exceptions on either side, of course; but they are few and far between, so it's just not worth the bother.
The government is not "giving visa" you moron, it is refreigning from deporting a subset of people. Laissez-faire, laissez-passer.
Back in the real world, the government is handing out visas that let people come into the country. There is not, neither in theory nor practice nor any other place but your libertarian fantasies, free ("libre") passage into or out of any nation on Earth.
I liken this to the situation of two brothers fighting (even if that is not an accurate depiction); the elder, bigger, ostensibly smarter, stronger, and more mature has more responsibility to NOT fight with his brother than the younger, who is acting like a child. Unlike some parents who would only punish one; they both need punished. However, the punishment and standard for conduct is higher for the elder than it is the younger. Ever hear the line "you should know better"? If you're going to be considered a 1st world country, a civilized bastion in a world of barbarism, then you have to act like it, always. If you don't, that's fine too, but there are repercussions for your decision.
It's quite like two brothers fighting. I and my own brother used to fight in this exact way. But you want to know what? He always started it, and whenever I tried to act the bigger man it just meant that he ended it too and I got hurt worse. And then our parents would punish us both equally, but would never actually punish my brother hard enough to make him stop fighting me -- because he was younger and supposedly didn't know better.
Nowadays my brother is a bitter teenager and many adults who meet him call him spoiled. He still hasn't given up on the ideas that I am always wrong, he is always right, and he is a superior person to me. He still goads me to fight with him for the sheer hell of it, and he still makes no distinction between my things that I've left alone (usually because I'm at college) and unowned things he can take for himself. The only thing that eventually ended the fighting was physical separation and the fact that as he grew into a teenager my parents stopped taking his shit just because he was "younger and less mature".
To apply this to the MidEast, punishing the Israelis because they should act like the "more civilized" people does nothing to change the fact that Palestinian society has chosen to walk away from the peace process in favor of acting like spoiled, violent children. The world's constant cooing, sympathies, aid, and promises of land have given them an entitlement complex rather like that of my bitchy, spoiled little brother.
The funny thing is that, overall, I was the much worse child, and I suffered for it. My brother was the only person I didn't deliberately start fights with at some point, but so far I've turned out the good one because nobody took my shit. When I pitched a fit people disciplined me, and even when they were wrong the bad example taught me to value independent thought and morality. On the other hand, if a child or a society composed mostly of young people receives nothing but approval and sympathy no matter how horrible they act, they will learn that they deserve everything and can justly seek that goal by any means they please. Nobody can make peace with such people, because such people value getting their own way over peace, equity, or justice with others.
There is not a goddamn propaganda war. The Palestinians think there is a propaganda war, and so do some very stupid Diaspora Jews who like to think that "fighting the propaganda war" makes them Good Zionists while allowing them to not make aliyah and actually contribute to Israeli society. In real life, there is a military and diplomatic situation.
OK, maybe there is a propaganda war and I just refuse to "fight" it on grounds that it's stupid.
MODS: Mod this "off-topic" if you like. I have years of good karma to take the hit, and this genuinely is off-topic.
Shopping around the world for labor and materials ultimately lowers the price of goods.
No it doesn't; it increases the profit margin of the people providing the goods. Why on Earth would they lower prices when they're making good money? Demand is not perfectly elastic in the real world (especially for necessities like food, housing, health care, etc.), so lowering the price won't necessarily make a seller more money by increasing the amount demanded. Therefore, it's in their best interests to just pocket the money, and that's exactly what they do.
I wrote a whole Slashdot Journal bit on this issue. Basically, most H1-B visas don't actually go to American companies; they go to outsourcing firms. The remainder that do find their way into the hands of American companies actually go to hiring highly-paid scientists and engineers who can't be found in America.
If you think the green card process treats you like disposable toilet paper, try being a scientific researcher compared to the other professions in the United States. That's why more Americans don't go into science and research: the pay-per-hour sucks, the hours are long, and you get little-to-no job security.
The gut reaction of many slashdotters to migrant workers is simply disgusting. It combines basic misguided tribalism ("Yeah we're in the same group of 300M people") with a rent seeking behavior ("I want a higher wage at the expense of the consumers")
And here we have another free-marketroid who for some reason thinks that restriction of immigrant labor or preference for hiring citizens constitutes interfering with the Free Market(TM)(C), whereas somehow the government giving people visas to come take American jobs does not.
Please learn to understand concepts like "national borders" and "arbitrage". Borders exist because the people inside them have a right to maintain a state and culture of their own, and to maintain their standard of living by keeping the entire rest of the world from flooding their markets (which would reduce the price of labor to near-nothing and make everyone dirt poor).
And a damn good thing. Last thing we need is racially hating robots out to exterminate us that can climb staiNOCARRIEREXTERMINATEEXTERMINATEEXTERMINATE
There are no good people, only bad ones that compensate, and that includes me.
Here in the real world, some of us actually are good people. I don't know what world you live in, but in this one people with failings can still be good people.
The steps to prevent it are education -- if we truly believe these truths to be self-evident, then a well-educated person should be likely to agree with them.
This is a fallacy. Reasoning agents who start from different postulates than yours will arrive at different conclusions when presented with the same factual data. Also, some people don't even use reason -- they just think what they're told or what they want to think. You can't educate such people out of their delusions.
I don't think Egypt or any other country should censor extremist activism, but I also don't think they should let those parties stand for election. That's like allowing the Nazi Party to win office in Germany again. Let people have any democratic movement they like that doesn't exterminate minorities or start wars.
If a people want to go to war, then let them go to war. If they are ultimately destroyed, it will be their own fault. We place far to much blame on leaders and are far too forgiving of the followers that enabled them. It is a form of scapegoating that ironically keeps those leaders in power. It is to their advantage that a population be considered blameless, because it enables their personal wars to be made in much the same way that corporate liability emboldens unethical business practices. The rank and file have no fear of reprisal if they believe they aren't personally responsible.
OK, I'm posting where I had modded for this, so damn well pay attention.
LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GAZA WAR. The people wanted war, and they made war upon Israel. So Israel came back and beat them the hell up. Then the "international community" blamed, and is blaming, Israel.
Fuck letting people go to war; I'd rather see my country have a healthy reputation and economy unhindered by boycotts or trade sanctions that some damned hippies in Europe decided it deserves for fighting a war against people who wanted a war.
Even better, how about not going to walmart and not buying it at all. repositories in Linux means that all the software is a click away.
Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers. You can't sell an operating system except by selling applications. You can't sell applications for free -- if you make no money you might have damn fine software (most open source is damn fine software), but you'll have no marketing budget.
Thus, Linux will not become a real competitor until ISVs see some way of packaging up their closed-source software and selling it, in a shrink-wrapped package or over the internet, for Linux. Something like Steam for closed-source Linux apps could work wonders.
The palistinians agreed to split the land, then turned around and tried to kill every last jew in the region. They got what they deserved, and given the recent history before their disgusting betrayal, I think its amazing self-restraint that israel doesn't simply wipe out palistinians with neutron bombs.
Self-restraint my ass, the whole combined territory is the size of New Jersey. Anyone there using nuclear weapons would kill everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Well mostly that they define "their country" to include the bits that everyone else agrees are Israeli.
Not all us youngin's are that stupid, you know. Some of us actually understand ideas of "common good" or of being a part of a country. That's why so many of us voted Obama.
Just don't expect to see those sane young folk on the Internet, this lovely hellhole of libertarian "I-don't-need-you-I-don't-need-anyone" rage.
Good for you guys on launching your first satellite. It marks your entry into an elite club of nations that coincidentally also consists of most of your enemies. Perhaps we could solve some of these diplomatic situations with a good, old-fashioned trade in technology?
Actually I think individualism is great and people should be proud to pursue their values simply for their own enjoyment.
"Nice" is different from "good", especially in heroic stories.
By that definition every single mentat is a psychopath!
Wah? I specifically remember Lady Jessica noting Piter as a "twisted Mentat" precisely because he'd been left with no moral conscience.
The Space Guild and the Bene Gesserit are borderline - they are more "differently conscienced".
Actually, I would say that by the time of "Heretics of Dune" the Bene Gesserit really had become somewhat psychopathic, a mere secret society that existed only to maintain itself. But they didn't start out that way, and surely the Spacing Guild saw its actions (rare as they be) as taken to preserve human interstellar civilization.
Whilst I wouldn't say every character was a psychopath - the nature of the situation that these people find themselves in certainly pushes them in that direction.
And I would counter that your range of moral understanding is unfortunately narrow.
If Americans don't want to work at those wages, then they don't get the job, there are always people who want to work whether you import them or not.
Not true in a free market. In a free labor market, if only a tiny fraction of the market will work for a certain low wage, then wages go up until enough people are willing to work. In America, however, companies just get the government to flood their labor market with immigrants until American workers get desperate enough that the equilibrium wage goes down. At no point, of course, does the cost-of-living go down.
No, he's right. H1-B visas aren't a free or freeing of the market, they're the government reaching in to subsidize certain companies (those they award visas to) by flooding their labor markets, thus decreasing overall wages. H1-Bs are interference in the free market.
Dune is a fantasy book with a very thin veil of scifi on top of it.
Your definition of sci-fi is way, way, way too hard if it excludes "Dune". Remember, at the time Dune was written, science had not yet ruled things like genetic memory entirely out.
So let's examine the science content.
The Bene Gesserit? They gain their powers through using conscious control over body chemistry to change a poison into an awareness-expanding drug. Science rules out the drugs but rules in the body's ability to chemically process harmful substances into harmless ones (see: "alcohol").
The "undead", aka gholas? Clones. Once one accepts the possibility of genetic memory the ability to reawaken a clone's original memories makes total sense. Real science is already cloning things.
Mentats and Guild Navigators? Autistic savants have shown abilities for near-computer-speed mathematical computation, who says this capability couldn't be unleashed in the brains of select individuals close enough to neurotypicality to work within an organization?
Prescience? OK, that clearly violates current physics by transmitting information faster than speed-of-light (ie: through time). However, if one accepts FTL information transmission (the basis of most scifi that takes place in space anyway) the mechanics of prescience make logical sense and the book's faster-than-light travel is actually through "space-folding", aka wormholes. Science says that wormholes are entirely possible through huge amounts of energy and mass, and the entire point of the Holtzman Effect was that people had developed a technology to alter the gravitational inertia (aka: "mass") of things. Such a device could easily allow bending space in ways that would nullify gravity or allow for wormholes.
It even has the "technology has not advanced for ten thousand years" cliche - no, the "no computers" rule wouldn't really stop people from building them.
You completely misunderstand one of the book's main themes. The entire bloody point of the Butlerian Jihad and the relatively un-technological civilization portrayed was that society had chosen to advance humans instead of technology. As seen in the book, human capability appears to develop at least as fast as it does in the real world. Nobody builds computers in the far future not only because of the religious prohibition but because Mentats are better, and plenty of technology exists that works entirely without Turing-complete computation devices.
But sadly, that veneer nonetheless gives it a mild case of bastard syndrome - making every character a more or less nasty psychopath in an attempt to make them "realistic".
I don't see why you call the Dune characters "nasty psychopaths". Sure, Baron Harkonnen is a nasty psychopath, and so are most of his family. But they're the villains. Who else in the book is a nasty psychopath?
I nowadays simply avoid scifi. Fantasy is not ashamed to entertain, while scifi tries to be "high literature" and fails miserably at it, or a parody which, while entertaining, is the equivalent of ice cream cone: you can't live on those alone. There are exceptions on either side, of course; but they are few and far between, so it's just not worth the bother.
How dare you blaspheme against Muad'dib!
Non-Americans don't pay for Freddie or Fanny.
The government is not "giving visa" you moron, it is refreigning from deporting a subset of people. Laissez-faire, laissez-passer.
Back in the real world, the government is handing out visas that let people come into the country. There is not, neither in theory nor practice nor any other place but your libertarian fantasies, free ("libre") passage into or out of any nation on Earth.
I liken this to the situation of two brothers fighting (even if that is not an accurate depiction); the elder, bigger, ostensibly smarter, stronger, and more mature has more responsibility to NOT fight with his brother than the younger, who is acting like a child. Unlike some parents who would only punish one; they both need punished. However, the punishment and standard for conduct is higher for the elder than it is the younger. Ever hear the line "you should know better"? If you're going to be considered a 1st world country, a civilized bastion in a world of barbarism, then you have to act like it, always. If you don't, that's fine too, but there are repercussions for your decision.
It's quite like two brothers fighting. I and my own brother used to fight in this exact way. But you want to know what? He always started it, and whenever I tried to act the bigger man it just meant that he ended it too and I got hurt worse. And then our parents would punish us both equally, but would never actually punish my brother hard enough to make him stop fighting me -- because he was younger and supposedly didn't know better.
Nowadays my brother is a bitter teenager and many adults who meet him call him spoiled. He still hasn't given up on the ideas that I am always wrong, he is always right, and he is a superior person to me. He still goads me to fight with him for the sheer hell of it, and he still makes no distinction between my things that I've left alone (usually because I'm at college) and unowned things he can take for himself. The only thing that eventually ended the fighting was physical separation and the fact that as he grew into a teenager my parents stopped taking his shit just because he was "younger and less mature".
To apply this to the MidEast, punishing the Israelis because they should act like the "more civilized" people does nothing to change the fact that Palestinian society has chosen to walk away from the peace process in favor of acting like spoiled, violent children. The world's constant cooing, sympathies, aid, and promises of land have given them an entitlement complex rather like that of my bitchy, spoiled little brother.
The funny thing is that, overall, I was the much worse child, and I suffered for it. My brother was the only person I didn't deliberately start fights with at some point, but so far I've turned out the good one because nobody took my shit. When I pitched a fit people disciplined me, and even when they were wrong the bad example taught me to value independent thought and morality. On the other hand, if a child or a society composed mostly of young people receives nothing but approval and sympathy no matter how horrible they act, they will learn that they deserve everything and can justly seek that goal by any means they please. Nobody can make peace with such people, because such people value getting their own way over peace, equity, or justice with others.
There is not a goddamn propaganda war. The Palestinians think there is a propaganda war, and so do some very stupid Diaspora Jews who like to think that "fighting the propaganda war" makes them Good Zionists while allowing them to not make aliyah and actually contribute to Israeli society. In real life, there is a military and diplomatic situation.
OK, maybe there is a propaganda war and I just refuse to "fight" it on grounds that it's stupid.
MODS: Mod this "off-topic" if you like. I have years of good karma to take the hit, and this genuinely is off-topic.
Shopping around the world for labor and materials ultimately lowers the price of goods.
No it doesn't; it increases the profit margin of the people providing the goods. Why on Earth would they lower prices when they're making good money? Demand is not perfectly elastic in the real world (especially for necessities like food, housing, health care, etc.), so lowering the price won't necessarily make a seller more money by increasing the amount demanded. Therefore, it's in their best interests to just pocket the money, and that's exactly what they do.
I wrote a whole Slashdot Journal bit on this issue. Basically, most H1-B visas don't actually go to American companies; they go to outsourcing firms. The remainder that do find their way into the hands of American companies actually go to hiring highly-paid scientists and engineers who can't be found in America.
If you think the green card process treats you like disposable toilet paper, try being a scientific researcher compared to the other professions in the United States. That's why more Americans don't go into science and research: the pay-per-hour sucks, the hours are long, and you get little-to-no job security.
The gut reaction of many slashdotters to migrant workers is simply disgusting. It combines basic misguided tribalism ("Yeah we're in the same group of 300M people") with a rent seeking behavior ("I want a higher wage at the expense of the consumers")
And here we have another free-marketroid who for some reason thinks that restriction of immigrant labor or preference for hiring citizens constitutes interfering with the Free Market(TM)(C), whereas somehow the government giving people visas to come take American jobs does not.
Please learn to understand concepts like "national borders" and "arbitrage". Borders exist because the people inside them have a right to maintain a state and culture of their own, and to maintain their standard of living by keeping the entire rest of the world from flooding their markets (which would reduce the price of labor to near-nothing and make everyone dirt poor).
And a damn good thing. Last thing we need is racially hating robots out to exterminate us that can climb staiNOCARRIEREXTERMINATEEXTERMINATEEXTERMINATE
It wasn't that long ago that the US started a war. Are you saying the Republicans (and many of the Democrats) should be excluded, for that reason?
Sounds like a great idea to me.
There are no good people, only bad ones that compensate, and that includes me.
Here in the real world, some of us actually are good people. I don't know what world you live in, but in this one people with failings can still be good people.
If they sweep tyrants into power, they deserve it when they get them.
Yeah, but their neighbors and unfortunate ethnic or religious minorities don't deserve it.
The steps to prevent it are education -- if we truly believe these truths to be self-evident, then a well-educated person should be likely to agree with them.
This is a fallacy. Reasoning agents who start from different postulates than yours will arrive at different conclusions when presented with the same factual data. Also, some people don't even use reason -- they just think what they're told or what they want to think. You can't educate such people out of their delusions.
I don't think Egypt or any other country should censor extremist activism, but I also don't think they should let those parties stand for election. That's like allowing the Nazi Party to win office in Germany again. Let people have any democratic movement they like that doesn't exterminate minorities or start wars.
Perhaps if we required everyone to wear shock collars which stunned them whenever they had a violent impulse...
Or when they lie, or when their thoughts turn to perversions of a sexual nature.
If a people want to go to war, then let them go to war. If they are ultimately destroyed, it will be their own fault. We place far to much blame on leaders and are far too forgiving of the followers that enabled them. It is a form of scapegoating that ironically keeps those leaders in power. It is to their advantage that a population be considered blameless, because it enables their personal wars to be made in much the same way that corporate liability emboldens unethical business practices. The rank and file have no fear of reprisal if they believe they aren't personally responsible.
OK, I'm posting where I had modded for this, so damn well pay attention.
LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GAZA WAR. The people wanted war, and they made war upon Israel. So Israel came back and beat them the hell up. Then the "international community" blamed, and is blaming, Israel.
Fuck letting people go to war; I'd rather see my country have a healthy reputation and economy unhindered by boycotts or trade sanctions that some damned hippies in Europe decided it deserves for fighting a war against people who wanted a war.
Even better, how about not going to walmart and not buying it at all. repositories in Linux means that all the software is a click away.
Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers. You can't sell an operating system except by selling applications. You can't sell applications for free -- if you make no money you might have damn fine software (most open source is damn fine software), but you'll have no marketing budget.
Thus, Linux will not become a real competitor until ISVs see some way of packaging up their closed-source software and selling it, in a shrink-wrapped package or over the internet, for Linux. Something like Steam for closed-source Linux apps could work wonders.
Wait a minute...
The palistinians agreed to split the land, then turned around and tried to kill every last jew in the region. They got what they deserved, and given the recent history before their disgusting betrayal, I think its amazing self-restraint that israel doesn't simply wipe out palistinians with neutron bombs.
Self-restraint my ass, the whole combined territory is the size of New Jersey. Anyone there using nuclear weapons would kill everyone.