Once you accept that humans tend toward rational selfishness, you can assume that whatever they are doing is designed to benefit them
Right, so a guy who pimps out his girlfriend so he can buy heroin which he then injects with a syringe he found on the street... he's designing his action to help himself. And the drunk jackass who cuts off a leg while juggling a chainsaw, also trying to help himself. Oh, and we can't forget the thousands of people who commit suicide every day - they are, of course, designing their actions to benefit themselves.
You know, even if I agree with your statement 100%, it's still completely irrelevant. I said "Given the choice between incompetence and malice, always assume incompetence". How in the world do peoples intentions have anything to do with their competence?
we assume that rational humans...
... exist in significant numbers? Well there's your problem, right there.
Oh, I don't remember the exact rationale. I'm pretty sure it involved the accessibility/complexity issue, the lack of material that most people would find interesting, etc. You gotta realize the internet of 1994 was a far different creature than what we have today. Even having gotten to see video-conferencing with a school in a different country, I was intrigued and impressed, but didn't expect it to have any impact on most people. I think part of my rationale must have been something along the lines of "BBS's have been around for more than 15 years, and most people have never even heard of them". I guess I didn't see the potential for what it could become.
It does not follow from the reasonable assumption that everyone tries to do things for his own gain (a consequence of free will) that "reptilians in the US government flew remote-controlled planes into the WTC".
That's absolutely correct. I fail to see the relevance, though.
I've heard that so often, but I've never understood: why?
Because otherwise you'll turn into a paranoid maniac?
If you assume that everything that occurs is being masterminded by someone in order to fool, manipulate, or otherwise take advantage of people, you'll be the crazy guy at the party whom everyone avoids because he won't shut up about how the reptilians in the US government flew remote-controlled planes into the WTC. If you go with the "assume incompetence" approach you'll not only be correct more often, you'll also have a much more active social life.
'After the Iroquoian-speaking peoples coalesced as distinct tribes, based mostly in present-day central and upstate New York, in the 16th century or earlier they came together in an association known today as the Iroquois League, or the "League of Peace and Power".'
So, a mere 100 years after our ancestors got to the continent, some Indians in one part of one state managed to put together an almost-democratic pseudo government. Nice. Thanks for documenting my claims for me.
and the role they played in shaping our nation...
... has been heavily contested, and the link/book you provided is high on rhetoric and quote-mining, while being very low on details. In all honesty, I read the first page, and skimmed the next 3. There may be some actual information later on, but I don't have a huge interest in the subject, and the first few pages didn't exactly give me the impression that I'd learn something by reading it. If there's a part of it that you find particularly informative, please let me know. I'll gladly review it and re-consider my opinion in light of the new data.
Please, go check it out. It's quite informative. Then, after you wipe the sheepish grin off your face, we can talk about the Canadian education system.
Why bother. Just know they're evil, and save like hell to pay it off.
I prefer the "don't spend more than your next paycheck will cover - otherwise, get a line of interest" approach. Haven't paid a penny in interest on any of my CC's in roughly 7 years now.
It's interesting to contemplate how much things have changed since then. In 1994 I was a junior in high school and had to give a presentation on some sort of computer-related topic to my CS class. I chose the Internet, which I had been on for about 5 years by then, and nobody else in the class had even heard of it.
Funny, I did the same thing in 1994. Except the topic of my presentation was "why the internet will never catch on".
If the DOJ, or Immigration, or who ever needs to track folks, is having a problem tracking folks it wants to track, then why not hire folks to track them?
That's stupid. We introduced the idea of "country" to them. Nomadic tribes don't generally hold land, and non-nomadic tribes hold very small pieces of land. To pretend there was one "Native American People" who owned all of North America is ridiculous. It like some guy from Republic of Seychelles telling you to get the hell out of Sudan.
"when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
How do they expect these shorter lived males to outcompete their wild bretheren? If the trait is to become sufficiently distributed in the population for this to make a difference then they would have to have some method of making them superior breeders to offset the shortened window in which to breed.
AFAIK, female mosquito only mate once, and aggressively fend off further attempts by males (insert joke about marriage here). So I'm not sure that the length of the males lifespan would be all that critical to whether or not he gets to mate. The length of the female lifespan, on other hand, would be a bit more important, since they tend to lay at least 2 or 3 batches of eggs.
Long story short, I don't actually have a solid answer for ya, but it's wrong to assume that length of life is directly proportional to ability to breed. For instance, a human stops being reproductively viable after 40-60 years of life, but live to be 70+ years old. Decreasing the average human lifespan for a sub-group by a decade or two probably wouldn't do anything at all to limit their ability to compete/procreate.
I understand what you're saying, but the problem is that it IS a question of definitions. A deranged person is someone who does deranged things. If you accept that blowing up a crowded market is deranged, then you have to accept that the people who do it are deranged. There's no wiggle room there.
Moreover, your desire to look at their "motivations" is understandable, but largely irrelevant. If you go and firebomb an orphanage, and then tell me you did it because the fuchsia-lizards in your living-room told you to do it, it doesn't really matter what you think your reasons are - you did it because you're deranged. Finding the root cause would be nice, but that root cause isn't going to be present in the world as separate from you; it will be found either as a chemical imbalance in your cranium, or in the 'information" stored therein. Knowing what you think your motivations are doesn't help me, but finding a way to treat your condition might.
As for this bit:
because the bombing is given as the reason for the diagnosis of instability, the diagnosis of instability can not also be given as the reason for the suicide bombing
While this holds true for individual motivations, it doesn't hold true when we're discussing a label which is implicit in the action itself. When whats-his-nuts shot that governor a little while ago, plenty of people jumped to the conclusion that he was a tea-party zealot. And, in that case, your argument would hold true. You don't get to say "He shot the governor, so he must be a tea-party nut. And he must be a tea-party nut 'cos he shot the governor". The unstated premise there is that any time a governor is shot, it must be done by a tea-party member, which is downright silly. However, when you state that "He must have shot her because he was deranged, and I know he was deranged because he shot her", the unstated premise is that when a governor is shot, the person doing the shooting is deranged, which is certainly true in the colloquial sense of the word. If you want to get into clinical diagnosis, then we'd have to define the terms ahead of the time and have a different kind of discussion, but you'd just be splitting hairs.
Oh, I agree completely; I just don't think budgetary decisions should be based on made-up statistics:) Yeah, some cuts could be made to the military budget without creating a serious problem, but it can't be anywhere near what you'd assume when you hear that the budget is "more than everything else put together". It's asinine to create those kinds of expectations in people by misleading them, and then express your mock-outrage when the government doesn't comply.
Besides the circular nature of the argument, what evidence do you have that I'm begging the question? Because, if circularity is all you have, then you are basically saying:
You're begging the question because you're making a circular argument. You're making a circular argument because you're begging the question.
With those poor logic skills, you're not likely to get paid much. You obviously don't understand what "begging the question" means. Since you didn't like the car analogy, here's another:
The building is tall because it's a skyscraper. The building is a skyscraper because it is tall.
Definitions are inherently circular. If you can't understand that, you've got no business talking about logic.
Of course, if you don't think that committing suicide while murdering innocent people would classify someone as "unstable", then you can challenge the definition. But, in that case, you'd be a complete fool. As it is, I'm guessing you're just being a pedant.
defense spending that now accounts for more of the budget than everything else combined.
You know, no matter how often you repeat a lie, it doesn't actually become true. $680 billions is NOT more than half of $3.5 trillion. Even if you include non-military defense spending, the number doesn't reach half, and most of the increase is due to interest on past debts. So since you can't exactly "cut" debt-payments, you're talking about slashing a budget which takes up about a quarter of the federal budget, and includes not only the military but also neat programs like NASA, various energy infrastructure requirements, and law-enforcement counter-terrorism operations.
But, of course, if you're a sandal-wearing perma-fried hippie, it's much easier to just yell "MORE THAN HALF!" and ignore the actual numbers. It's kinda hard to get the anti-war crowd frothing at the mouth when you just stick to the facts.
It's because I have to waste time on a regular basis explaining to religious idiots that "if you didn't believe in god, you wouldn't bother to argue about it" isn't a valid response in any shape or form. Your response seemed to be based on the same kind of "logic". Now that you've clarified things a bit, I see it's mostly a question of semantics.
Thanks for the reasoned response. I won't accept your apology, because you have nothing to apologize for - I overreacted. I'm regularly disappointed by how often other people make snap-judgments based on personal biases; I do my best to try and avoid making the same mistake, but obviously don't succeed all the time.
Your attempt to psychoanalyze me, on the other hand, was a total fail:) I don't hate fundies; I mostly feel sorry for them. I think that when they get involved in politics they usually need to be opposed every step of the way, and it's a good idea to oppose their policies in general. But hate them? Naw. There'd be more reason for me to hate muslim extremists, especially since they've been responsible for the deaths of my friends, but I don't even think I hate them, really. What hatred I may feel is generally aimed at ideologies and leaders rather than large groups.
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This "god did it" stuff is getting ridiculous ...
Once you accept that humans tend toward rational selfishness, you can assume that whatever they are doing is designed to benefit them
Right, so a guy who pimps out his girlfriend so he can buy heroin which he then injects with a syringe he found on the street ... he's designing his action to help himself. And the drunk jackass who cuts off a leg while juggling a chainsaw, also trying to help himself. Oh, and we can't forget the thousands of people who commit suicide every day - they are, of course, designing their actions to benefit themselves.
You know, even if I agree with your statement 100%, it's still completely irrelevant. I said "Given the choice between incompetence and malice, always assume incompetence". How in the world do peoples intentions have anything to do with their competence?
we assume that rational humans ...
... exist in significant numbers? Well there's your problem, right there.
Oh, I don't remember the exact rationale. I'm pretty sure it involved the accessibility/complexity issue, the lack of material that most people would find interesting, etc. You gotta realize the internet of 1994 was a far different creature than what we have today. Even having gotten to see video-conferencing with a school in a different country, I was intrigued and impressed, but didn't expect it to have any impact on most people. I think part of my rationale must have been something along the lines of "BBS's have been around for more than 15 years, and most people have never even heard of them". I guess I didn't see the potential for what it could become.
It does not follow from the reasonable assumption that everyone tries to do things for his own gain (a consequence of free will) that "reptilians in the US government flew remote-controlled planes into the WTC".
That's absolutely correct. I fail to see the relevance, though.
I've heard that so often, but I've never understood: why?
Because otherwise you'll turn into a paranoid maniac?
If you assume that everything that occurs is being masterminded by someone in order to fool, manipulate, or otherwise take advantage of people, you'll be the crazy guy at the party whom everyone avoids because he won't shut up about how the reptilians in the US government flew remote-controlled planes into the WTC. If you go with the "assume incompetence" approach you'll not only be correct more often, you'll also have a much more active social life.
From your wikipedia link:
'After the Iroquoian-speaking peoples coalesced as distinct tribes, based mostly in present-day central and upstate New York, in the 16th century or earlier they came together in an association known today as the Iroquois League, or the "League of Peace and Power".'
So, a mere 100 years after our ancestors got to the continent, some Indians in one part of one state managed to put together an almost-democratic pseudo government. Nice. Thanks for documenting my claims for me.
and the role they played in shaping our nation...
... has been heavily contested, and the link/book you provided is high on rhetoric and quote-mining, while being very low on details. In all honesty, I read the first page, and skimmed the next 3. There may be some actual information later on, but I don't have a huge interest in the subject, and the first few pages didn't exactly give me the impression that I'd learn something by reading it. If there's a part of it that you find particularly informative, please let me know. I'll gladly review it and re-consider my opinion in light of the new data.
Uh. Did you actually READ that link?
Please, go check it out. It's quite informative. Then, after you wipe the sheepish grin off your face, we can talk about the Canadian education system.
Why bother. Just know they're evil, and save like hell to pay it off.
I prefer the "don't spend more than your next paycheck will cover - otherwise, get a line of interest" approach. Haven't paid a penny in interest on any of my CC's in roughly 7 years now.
It's interesting to contemplate how much things have changed since then. In 1994 I was a junior in high school and had to give a presentation on some sort of computer-related topic to my CS class. I chose the Internet, which I had been on for about 5 years by then, and nobody else in the class had even heard of it.
Funny, I did the same thing in 1994. Except the topic of my presentation was "why the internet will never catch on".
Whoops.
If the DOJ, or Immigration, or who ever needs to track folks, is having a problem tracking folks it wants to track, then why not hire folks to track them?
Hire some Mexicans to track the Indians?
That's stupid. We introduced the idea of "country" to them. Nomadic tribes don't generally hold land, and non-nomadic tribes hold very small pieces of land. To pretend there was one "Native American People" who owned all of North America is ridiculous. It like some guy from Republic of Seychelles telling you to get the hell out of Sudan.
please define "metric buttload"
3.28 Imperial butloads.
Given the choice between incompetence and malice, always assume incompetence.
Asimov said it best:
"when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
How do they expect these shorter lived males to outcompete their wild bretheren? If the trait is to become sufficiently distributed in the population for this to make a difference then they would have to have some method of making them superior breeders to offset the shortened window in which to breed.
AFAIK, female mosquito only mate once, and aggressively fend off further attempts by males (insert joke about marriage here). So I'm not sure that the length of the males lifespan would be all that critical to whether or not he gets to mate. The length of the female lifespan, on other hand, would be a bit more important, since they tend to lay at least 2 or 3 batches of eggs.
Long story short, I don't actually have a solid answer for ya, but it's wrong to assume that length of life is directly proportional to ability to breed. For instance, a human stops being reproductively viable after 40-60 years of life, but live to be 70+ years old. Decreasing the average human lifespan for a sub-group by a decade or two probably wouldn't do anything at all to limit their ability to compete/procreate.
I understand what you're saying, but the problem is that it IS a question of definitions. A deranged person is someone who does deranged things. If you accept that blowing up a crowded market is deranged, then you have to accept that the people who do it are deranged. There's no wiggle room there.
Moreover, your desire to look at their "motivations" is understandable, but largely irrelevant. If you go and firebomb an orphanage, and then tell me you did it because the fuchsia-lizards in your living-room told you to do it, it doesn't really matter what you think your reasons are - you did it because you're deranged. Finding the root cause would be nice, but that root cause isn't going to be present in the world as separate from you; it will be found either as a chemical imbalance in your cranium, or in the 'information" stored therein. Knowing what you think your motivations are doesn't help me, but finding a way to treat your condition might.
As for this bit:
because the bombing is given as the reason for the diagnosis of instability, the diagnosis of instability can not also be given as the reason for the suicide bombing
While this holds true for individual motivations, it doesn't hold true when we're discussing a label which is implicit in the action itself. When whats-his-nuts shot that governor a little while ago, plenty of people jumped to the conclusion that he was a tea-party zealot. And, in that case, your argument would hold true. You don't get to say "He shot the governor, so he must be a tea-party nut. And he must be a tea-party nut 'cos he shot the governor". The unstated premise there is that any time a governor is shot, it must be done by a tea-party member, which is downright silly. However, when you state that "He must have shot her because he was deranged, and I know he was deranged because he shot her", the unstated premise is that when a governor is shot, the person doing the shooting is deranged, which is certainly true in the colloquial sense of the word. If you want to get into clinical diagnosis, then we'd have to define the terms ahead of the time and have a different kind of discussion, but you'd just be splitting hairs.
Oh, I agree completely; I just don't think budgetary decisions should be based on made-up statistics :) Yeah, some cuts could be made to the military budget without creating a serious problem, but it can't be anywhere near what you'd assume when you hear that the budget is "more than everything else put together". It's asinine to create those kinds of expectations in people by misleading them, and then express your mock-outrage when the government doesn't comply.
Besides the circular nature of the argument, what evidence do you have that I'm begging the question? Because, if circularity is all you have, then you are basically saying:
You're begging the question because you're making a circular argument.
You're making a circular argument because you're begging the question.
Which is pretty clearly begging the question.
With those poor logic skills, you're not likely to get paid much. You obviously don't understand what "begging the question" means. Since you didn't like the car analogy, here's another:
The building is tall because it's a skyscraper.
The building is a skyscraper because it is tall.
Definitions are inherently circular. If you can't understand that, you've got no business talking about logic.
Of course, if you don't think that committing suicide while murdering innocent people would classify someone as "unstable", then you can challenge the definition. But, in that case, you'd be a complete fool. As it is, I'm guessing you're just being a pedant.
defense spending that now accounts for more of the budget than everything else combined.
You know, no matter how often you repeat a lie, it doesn't actually become true. $680 billions is NOT more than half of $3.5 trillion. Even if you include non-military defense spending, the number doesn't reach half, and most of the increase is due to interest on past debts. So since you can't exactly "cut" debt-payments, you're talking about slashing a budget which takes up about a quarter of the federal budget, and includes not only the military but also neat programs like NASA, various energy infrastructure requirements, and law-enforcement counter-terrorism operations.
But, of course, if you're a sandal-wearing perma-fried hippie, it's much easier to just yell "MORE THAN HALF!" and ignore the actual numbers. It's kinda hard to get the anti-war crowd frothing at the mouth when you just stick to the facts.
For all those claiming that it is funny because of the atrocities he tried to commit, do you also chuckle at the "darwin awards"?
Of course not!
I Laugh Out Loud. I mean, honestly, who really "chuckles" these days. Is there even an acronym for that?
Cars move because they have an engine.
Cars have an engine because they need to move.
Yah, poor logic, sure.
They might not necessarily be poor or ignorant, but they certainly are deranged.
It's because I have to waste time on a regular basis explaining to religious idiots that "if you didn't believe in god, you wouldn't bother to argue about it" isn't a valid response in any shape or form. Your response seemed to be based on the same kind of "logic". Now that you've clarified things a bit, I see it's mostly a question of semantics.
Thanks for the reasoned response. I won't accept your apology, because you have nothing to apologize for - I overreacted. I'm regularly disappointed by how often other people make snap-judgments based on personal biases; I do my best to try and avoid making the same mistake, but obviously don't succeed all the time.
Your attempt to psychoanalyze me, on the other hand, was a total fail :) I don't hate fundies; I mostly feel sorry for them. I think that when they get involved in politics they usually need to be opposed every step of the way, and it's a good idea to oppose their policies in general. But hate them? Naw. There'd be more reason for me to hate muslim extremists, especially since they've been responsible for the deaths of my friends, but I don't even think I hate them, really. What hatred I may feel is generally aimed at ideologies and leaders rather than large groups.
but a hologarphic tiyanak or aswang, now that will work.
maybe if you're into gay porn ....