If it were possible for anyone and everyone to avoid paying taxes, I don't think anyone would mind.
Actually, if it were possible for everyone, the powers-that-be would close or change the tax loopholes. The rich and powerful cannot be so without poorer/weaker people to support them.
Central governments and taxation are the only things that make our modern society viable at all. Drop that and we're back in the stone ages.
Tell that to the majority of the world population who's lives and resources we have been exploiting for hundreds of years to get to where we are. People with no redress to any form of legal protection, political representation, education or any means of getting out of the situation they are in. F*ck you buddy. You are a prime example of what is wrong with this planet: selfish, ignorant, misinformed, intellectually lazy and morally corrupt.
I've noticed that Timothy has been banning me for days, even weeks, at a time; because I exposed him as a Jew years ago. See the last article and other Israel-related articles on his watch as proof. Years ago, he made the mistake of posting in a discussion his trip to Israel.
See you all in a month. It's been good knowing you.
Let me clarify to you why you get banned:
I've noticed that Peter has been banning me for days, even weeks, at a time; because I exposed him as a Physicist years ago. See the last article and other Physics-related articles on his watch as proof. Years ago, he made the mistake of posting in a discussion his trip to the Tevatron.
If santa is our parents is that through immaculate conception or self pollination? Also, where can one become a formal initiate of this interesting new religion? Does it involve hot chocolate baptisms? If it does I'm seriously considering converting from Pastafarianism
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An astrological website gives you an appropriate and to the point piece of advice designed to help you out with a very specific problem you actually have and still you complain? Time to take your winnings and leave the table, I'd say.
When you are a reading a straightforward sentence, or a paragraph full of tropes and cliches, you’re almost certainly relying on this ventral neural highway. As a result, the act of reading seems effortless and easy. We don’t have to think about the words on the page.
But the ventral route is not the only way to read. The second reading pathway – it’s known as the dorsal stream – is turned on whenever we’re forced to pay conscious attention to a sentence, perhaps because of an obscure word, or an awkward subclause, or bad handwriting.
Well that says it all, doesn't it. If you want people to remember what you wrote, write something interesting that doesn't consist of tropes and cliches and therefore motivates the reader to pay conscious attention. If you insist on writing something inane full of tropes and cliches, publish in Bad Handwriting Sans, throw in an obscure word or two and several awkward subclauses or maybe you could translate the entire thing into linear B.
There are good reasons for activating conscious attention and bad ones. A good one is that the information presented has intrinsic value (presents new information in the broadest sense). A bad one is presenting information in a way that fools the brain into thinking there is intrinsic value while all there actually is is a messy way of presenting information that does not warrant that kind of attention.
You can imagine what people will do outside of a laboratory when confronted with the second type. They will pay conscious attention for two paragraphs, notice that what they're reading is a badly written text full of tropes and cliches and stop reading it altogether.
I think the sad thing is that when you look at American polls this seems to be a pretty accurate description of a major percentage of public opinion regarding Wikileaks in the US.
So black-and-white ? Sure, if liberals stop being so black-and-white about socialism
So basically you say you will start being reasonable once everyone else who has an unreasonable view opposed to yours does so as well? Sounds like a promising approach.
I agree that there is no hard proof that the US or US interests are involved in the Swedish handling of the case (doesn't mean it's not a factor though).
There is however proof that the case is politically motivated and used for political purposes in Sweden itself since the case was revived by a Swedish politician through a prosecutor in Gothenburg after the case was dismissed by the previous senior prosecutor in Stockholm. This politician who is also currently the lawyer representing the women has a definite political agenda:
Borgstrom has often attracted attention with a series of controversial proposals and moves. He claims that all men carry a collective guilt for violence against women, and has in this context supported Gudrun Schyman's "Tax on Men".
More selective reading and reporting by the press: I think it's important to realize that this reading of the defense outline of Assange lawyers as if the argument about a possible extradition to the US is somehow major or even central point of the defense is completely false. The argument of the risk of torture or execution resulting from possible extradition to the US from Sweden is merely partial support for an auxiliary argument his lawyers are reserving the right to make.
Feyerabend never expressed any opposition to science in principle, he expressed opposition to the poverty of philosophical accounts of how science is supposed to work and against claims to some kind of absolute scientific authority: you cannot argue that the results, practices and consequences of science should be accepted simply because they are "scientific" and produce "truth" or "objective facts". They should be judged like any other human activity on their relative merits and consequences. Those merits and consequences for Feyerabend are weighed against the idea of liberty, the maximum individual freedom for all given that the exercise of that liberty may not cause harm to others.
You can argue that science is useful, successful, interesting, inspiring, that it allows us to understand more about how the world functions, that it allows us to do things we deem to be in the human interest but you can not claim that the practices and results of science should be simply accepted because they produce "truth". The reason for that is that there is in fact no such thing as a "scientific method" there is the scientific process which does not allow itself to be captured in formulas or definitions, therefore there is no epistemological grounding for the claim that science leads to truth and since it cannot be shown to be a reliable source of "truth" it should not be allowed to outweigh considerations of human liberty.
First of all there is of course no objective measure of quality of life. Feyerabend argued for a version of Mills liberty in which there is maximum individual freedom given the provision no harm is done to others.
The argument is simply that there is no absolute justification for science. Since there isn't one there are two debates you can choose from:
The debate whether science leads to objective truth and should therefore be accepted over any other world view no matter what the consequences, or the debate of whether science is a better world view on other (contextual) grounds (utility, considerations of quality of life etc.).
There is disagreement on both and I think the second one is a more fruitful and less dangerous debate.
I should perhaps clarify I'm in no way favoring voodoo over science. I love science and I'm happy with a lot of things it has brought me personally and mankind in general. Regarding religion I'm either an atheist or an agnostic depending on how you define religion. Exactly because of that I'm not going to become a believer in some new absolute "religion" of science either, since there are no convincing arguments for judging science on anything other than it's contextual merits. You see the philosophical ideal of an absolute justification of science is simply a form of totalitarian thinking that has nothing to support it.
I never said we had an objective measure of quality of life. There isn't one. Everybody disagrees. Decisions are reached in many ways, discussion, dictatorship, democracy etc. Feyerabend's answer was a version of Mill's ideas on freedom in which there is the least possible interference in people's individual choices about their lives given the provision that they do not harm others.
I should clarify that I'm not at all opposed to science, on the contrary, I find much of it interesting, inspiring and I think it has brought us a lot of good on the whole. On the other hand a blind believe in science because it's supposed to lead to some kind of TRUTH with a capital T and should therefore be accepted no matter what the consequences for human lives can be a very dangerous thing. Science is a human endeavor that is not isolated from the rest of human endeavors, aspirations or desires, including the more nefarious ones. It is not isolated from the application of scientific knowledge for all kinds of different purposes, some good some bad, some mixed and it is not isolated from all kinds of influences in its functioning and the application of it's fruits. I'm also either an agnostic or an atheist depending on how you define religion. I do not propose we replace science with voodoo. I do however agree that the choice between science and voodoo is not one that should be based on arguments that one or the other is "true" or "false" but on arguments that are based on how they affect our lives.
You see the choice is to get into a discussion of whether science is more true or objective than some other world view, or a discussion of whether science leads to a better more desirable world than some other world view. There is no agreement about either and I think the second discussion is much more fruitful.
You simply take the claims about what defines "scientific method" and the examples used to illustrate that claim and show that the reality did in fact not conform to those definitions and that the claimed successes of that method were in fact made possible only by violating the terms of that definition. You are, I think, confusing the scientific method as used by what we tend to call scientists with the definitions of the "scientific method" and idealized examples used by philosophers of science.
And who says considerations of quality of life are objective? Feyerabend's thinking on quality of life is based loosely on the work of John Stuart Mill's which addresses the nature and limits of the power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. If science threatens that liberty by making totalitarian claims (i.e. science is absolutely justified because it has a method and/or epistemological foundation that leads to objective truth) they should be resisted because no such claim has been substantiated and they constitute a fundamental attack on human liberty.
Either science is justified or it isn't. Either an epistemological foundation is required for justification, or it isn't. Don't switch to an empirical observation model when you've just argued that epistemological form is the essential criterion.
That something is justified doesn't mean it's necessarily justified. Most things are in fact justified only within specific contexts.
Feyerabend's argument is that the fact that science has enabled us to think about and interact with the world in ways we enjoy or find useful in no way validates claims that science leads to objective truth and in fact no such claim can be substantiated because the "scientific method" can be historically refuted and satisfactory epistemological justifications simply do not exist (well you can try to come up with one but I wouldn't advise that undertaking, it has been shown to be historically most unfruitful).
In the absence of an absolute justification Science is contextually justified by the fact that we find it enjoyable, interesting, useful, inspiring, that it gives us useful ways to interact with the world, that it enhances our understanding of processes in that world etc. If the products or process of science do not provide those incentives you cannot argue it should be accepted anyway because it's "objectively true".
In my philosophy of science course, on the other hand, I was taught by a world-renowned professor (Paul Feyerabend) that there is no such thing as scientific method and that physicists have no better claim to knowledge than voodoo priests
I'd say he's a bit of a silly goose who needs to study the things he is dismantling before making claims against them.
Actually unlike most philosophers of science Feyerabend did very extensive historical studies showing that the nicely streamlined philosophical schemes of how the scientific process was supposed to work did not actually occur in reality and that the rules of "scientific method" were broken at every turn even for those scientific discoveries that are always held up as the shining examples of the scientific method at work. What he showed was that if scientists had adhered to this philosophical fiction (pleonasm) of a scientific method many of the great discoveries and revolutions in science would not have taken place. The two deepest conclusions from Feyerabends work are:
1. That you can't let philosophers legislate for science because they will end up destroying it. and
2. That science, since it has no real epistemological foundation is no more justified in claiming to be discovering objective truth than, say, a voodoo priest and that therefore the authority of science should only be accepted in as far as it improves our quality of life.
Feyerabend was in fact a pretty subtle philosopher but because of a combination of irreverence towards the great names and myths of science (mainly Popper and The Scientific Method), a polemic style of writing, a deeply humanistic view of the world and it's affairs and the fact that he was attacking the philosopher's misguided dreams of an epistemological foundation of science he has been consistently misread by whole generations of scientists and philosophers. In my book he is one of the great philosophers of the 20th century and one of the great humanist thinkers in the history of philosophy. Coincidentally almost everyone I have read on Feyerabend seems to completely miss the point that he was in essence a humanist thinker who's main aim was protecting humans against totalitarian, authoritarian and absolutist claims of science and scientific progress.
So, with the publication of Logical Leap, has the age-old "problem of induction" now been solved?
Slashdot Mirror
You wouldn't hate the RIAA's plumber, their lawyer should really be no different.
Ha ha HA. Very funny.
only one, but they told him it was speed.
Sure. Talk to you later when you have arrived back in reality.
It supposed to be a fair way to raise the funds to provide the things required for a cvilised society.
And there I was, thinking that a fair distribution of wealth was part of the idea of a civilised society. Oh well.
Actually, if it were possible for everyone, the powers-that-be would close or change the tax loopholes. The rich and powerful cannot be so without poorer/weaker people to support them.
Central governments and taxation are the only things that make our modern society viable at all. Drop that and we're back in the stone ages.
Stupid question.
You don't steal bread because you don't want to be arrested.
You steal services you use because you don't want to be arrested.
It's like saying "I want to use the train but forcing me to pay for a train ticket is theft".
Tell that to the majority of the world population who's lives and resources we have been exploiting for hundreds of years to get to where we are. People with no redress to any form of legal protection, political representation, education or any means of getting out of the situation they are in. F*ck you buddy. You are a prime example of what is wrong with this planet: selfish, ignorant, misinformed, intellectually lazy and morally corrupt.
If I had modpoints I'd give you a "Funny" for that.
If I may I would suggest plasma to be the more appropriate medium for punishing visits to a particle accelerator.
I've noticed that Timothy has been banning me for days, even weeks, at a time; because I exposed him as a Jew years ago. See the last article and other Israel-related articles on his watch as proof. Years ago, he made the mistake of posting in a discussion his trip to Israel.
See you all in a month. It's been good knowing you.
Let me clarify to you why you get banned:
I've noticed that Peter has been banning me for days, even weeks, at a time; because I exposed him as a Physicist years ago. See the last article and other Physics-related articles on his watch as proof. Years ago, he made the mistake of posting in a discussion his trip to the Tevatron.
also, santa is your parents. You're welcome.
If santa is our parents is that through immaculate conception or self pollination? Also, where can one become a formal initiate of this interesting new religion? Does it involve hot chocolate baptisms? If it does I'm seriously considering converting from Pastafarianism
I checked and saw:
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An astrological website gives you an appropriate and to the point piece of advice designed to help you out with a very specific problem you actually have and still you complain? Time to take your winnings and leave the table, I'd say.
From TFA:
When you are a reading a straightforward sentence, or a paragraph full of tropes and cliches, you’re almost certainly relying on this ventral neural highway. As a result, the act of reading seems effortless and easy. We don’t have to think about the words on the page.
But the ventral route is not the only way to read. The second reading pathway – it’s known as the dorsal stream – is turned on whenever we’re forced to pay conscious attention to a sentence, perhaps because of an obscure word, or an awkward subclause, or bad handwriting.
Well that says it all, doesn't it. If you want people to remember what you wrote, write something interesting that doesn't consist of tropes and cliches and therefore motivates the reader to pay conscious attention. If you insist on writing something inane full of tropes and cliches, publish in Bad Handwriting Sans, throw in an obscure word or two and several awkward subclauses or maybe you could translate the entire thing into linear B.
There are good reasons for activating conscious attention and bad ones. A good one is that the information presented has intrinsic value (presents new information in the broadest sense). A bad one is presenting information in a way that fools the brain into thinking there is intrinsic value while all there actually is is a messy way of presenting information that does not warrant that kind of attention.
You can imagine what people will do outside of a laboratory when confronted with the second type. They will pay conscious attention for two paragraphs, notice that what they're reading is a badly written text full of tropes and cliches and stop reading it altogether.
I think the sad thing is that when you look at American polls this seems to be a pretty accurate description of a major percentage of public opinion regarding Wikileaks in the US.
So black-and-white ? Sure, if liberals stop being so black-and-white about socialism
So basically you say you will start being reasonable once everyone else who has an unreasonable view opposed to yours does so as well? Sounds like a promising approach.
I agree that there is no hard proof that the US or US interests are involved in the Swedish handling of the case (doesn't mean it's not a factor though).
There is however proof that the case is politically motivated and used for political purposes in Sweden itself since the case was revived by a Swedish politician through a prosecutor in Gothenburg after the case was dismissed by the previous senior prosecutor in Stockholm.
This politician who is also currently the lawyer representing the women has a definite political agenda:
Borgstrom has often attracted attention with a series of controversial proposals and moves. He claims that all men carry a collective guilt for violence against women, and has in this context supported Gudrun Schyman's "Tax on Men".
http://tinyurl.com/6cclg2r (Wikipedia)
so what's the justification?
I'm afraid you already cited that justification and then discarded it:
"We don't like him"
More selective reading and reporting by the press: I think it's important to realize that this reading of the defense outline of Assange lawyers as if the argument about a possible extradition to the US is somehow major or even central point of the defense is completely false.
The argument of the risk of torture or execution resulting from possible extradition to the US from Sweden is merely partial support for an auxiliary argument his lawyers are reserving the right to make.
In fact most of the defense focuses on showing that the Swedish issued European extradition warrant was unlawful and constitutes an abuse of process:
You can read the full outline of the defense here (PDF): http://www.fsilaw.com/~/media/Files/Assange%20Skeleton%20Argument%2011_01_2011.ashx
Essentially, yes.
Feyerabend never expressed any opposition to science in principle, he expressed opposition to the poverty of philosophical accounts of how science is supposed to work and against claims to some kind of absolute scientific authority: you cannot argue that the results, practices and consequences of science should be accepted simply because they are "scientific" and produce "truth" or "objective facts". They should be judged like any other human activity on their relative merits and consequences. Those merits and consequences for Feyerabend are weighed against the idea of liberty, the maximum individual freedom for all given that the exercise of that liberty may not cause harm to others.
You can argue that science is useful, successful, interesting, inspiring, that it allows us to understand more about how the world functions, that it allows us to do things we deem to be in the human interest but you can not claim that the practices and results of science should be simply accepted because they produce "truth". The reason for that is that there is in fact no such thing as a "scientific method" there is the scientific process which does not allow itself to be captured in formulas or definitions, therefore there is no epistemological grounding for the claim that science leads to truth and since it cannot be shown to be a reliable source of "truth" it should not be allowed to outweigh considerations of human liberty.
First of all there is of course no objective measure of quality of life. Feyerabend argued for a version of Mills liberty in which there is maximum individual freedom given the provision no harm is done to others.
The argument is simply that there is no absolute justification for science. Since there isn't one there are two debates you can choose from:
The debate whether science leads to objective truth and should therefore be accepted over any other world view no matter what the consequences, or the debate of whether science is a better world view on other (contextual) grounds (utility, considerations of quality of life etc.).
There is disagreement on both and I think the second one is a more fruitful and less dangerous debate.
I should perhaps clarify I'm in no way favoring voodoo over science. I love science and I'm happy with a lot of things it has brought me personally and mankind in general. Regarding religion I'm either an atheist or an agnostic depending on how you define religion. Exactly because of that I'm not going to become a believer in some new absolute "religion" of science either, since there are no convincing arguments for judging science on anything other than it's contextual merits. You see the philosophical ideal of an absolute justification of science is simply a form of totalitarian thinking that has nothing to support it.
I never said we had an objective measure of quality of life. There isn't one. Everybody disagrees. Decisions are reached in many ways, discussion, dictatorship, democracy etc.
Feyerabend's answer was a version of Mill's ideas on freedom in which there is the least possible interference in people's individual choices about their lives given the provision that they do not harm others.
I should clarify that I'm not at all opposed to science, on the contrary, I find much of it interesting, inspiring and I think it has brought us a lot of good on the whole. On the other hand a blind believe in science because it's supposed to lead to some kind of TRUTH with a capital T and should therefore be accepted no matter what the consequences for human lives can be a very dangerous thing. Science is a human endeavor that is not isolated from the rest of human endeavors, aspirations or desires, including the more nefarious ones. It is not isolated from the application of scientific knowledge for all kinds of different purposes, some good some bad, some mixed and it is not isolated from all kinds of influences in its functioning and the application of it's fruits.
I'm also either an agnostic or an atheist depending on how you define religion. I do not propose we replace science with voodoo. I do however agree that the choice between science and voodoo is not one that should be based on arguments that one or the other is "true" or "false" but on arguments that are based on how they affect our lives.
You see the choice is to get into a discussion of whether science is more true or objective than some other world view, or a discussion of whether science leads to a better more desirable world than some other world view. There is no agreement about either and I think the second discussion is much more fruitful.
You simply take the claims about what defines "scientific method" and the examples used to illustrate that claim and show that the reality did in fact not conform to those definitions and that the claimed successes of that method were in fact made possible only by violating the terms of that definition.
You are, I think, confusing the scientific method as used by what we tend to call scientists with the definitions of the "scientific method" and idealized examples used by philosophers of science.
And who says considerations of quality of life are objective? Feyerabend's thinking on quality of life is based loosely on the work of John Stuart Mill's which addresses the nature and limits of the power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. If science threatens that liberty by making totalitarian claims (i.e. science is absolutely justified because it has a method and/or epistemological foundation that leads to objective truth) they should be resisted because no such claim has been substantiated and they constitute a fundamental attack on human liberty.
Either science is justified or it isn't. Either an epistemological foundation is required for justification, or it isn't. Don't switch to an empirical observation model when you've just argued that epistemological form is the essential criterion.
That something is justified doesn't mean it's necessarily justified. Most things are in fact justified only within specific contexts.
Feyerabend's argument is that the fact that science has enabled us to think about and interact with the world in ways we enjoy or find useful in no way validates claims that science leads to objective truth and in fact no such claim can be substantiated because the "scientific method" can be historically refuted and satisfactory epistemological justifications simply do not exist (well you can try to come up with one but I wouldn't advise that undertaking, it has been shown to be historically most unfruitful).
In the absence of an absolute justification Science is contextually justified by the fact that we find it enjoyable, interesting, useful, inspiring, that it gives us useful ways to interact with the world, that it enhances our understanding of processes in that world etc. If the products or process of science do not provide those incentives you cannot argue it should be accepted anyway because it's "objectively true".
Yeah. I hear ya.
In my philosophy of science course, on the other hand, I was taught by a world-renowned professor (Paul Feyerabend) that there is no such thing as scientific method and that physicists have no better claim to knowledge than voodoo priests
I'd say he's a bit of a silly goose who needs to study the things he is dismantling before making claims against them.
Actually unlike most philosophers of science Feyerabend did very extensive historical studies showing that the nicely streamlined philosophical schemes of how the scientific process was supposed to work did not actually occur in reality and that the rules of "scientific method" were broken at every turn even for those scientific discoveries that are always held up as the shining examples of the scientific method at work. What he showed was that if scientists had adhered to this philosophical fiction (pleonasm) of a scientific method many of the great discoveries and revolutions in science would not have taken place. The two deepest conclusions from Feyerabends work are:
1. That you can't let philosophers legislate for science because they will end up destroying it.
and
2. That science, since it has no real epistemological foundation is no more justified in claiming to be discovering objective truth than, say, a voodoo priest and that therefore the authority of science should only be accepted in as far as it improves our quality of life.
Feyerabend was in fact a pretty subtle philosopher but because of a combination of irreverence towards the great names and myths of science (mainly Popper and The Scientific Method), a polemic style of writing, a deeply humanistic view of the world and it's affairs and the fact that he was attacking the philosopher's misguided dreams of an epistemological foundation of science he has been consistently misread by whole generations of scientists and philosophers. In my book he is one of the great philosophers of the 20th century and one of the great humanist thinkers in the history of philosophy. Coincidentally almost everyone I have read on Feyerabend seems to completely miss the point that he was in essence a humanist thinker who's main aim was protecting humans against totalitarian, authoritarian and absolutist claims of science and scientific progress.
So, with the publication of Logical Leap, has the age-old "problem of induction" now been solved?
Nope