I suspect you'd find a positive correlation between those who use green energy and the uptime of their PC. I make this claim on the assumption that those who use green energy are also more likely to use Linux (compared to those who don't use green energy), and those who use Linux are more likely to have higher uptimes.
It's entirely possible that we might reproduce the phenomenon of conscious minds without understanding them. However, just like it's possible to create a quine or a self-replicating machine (which we're examples of), it's possible for our mind to understand itself without collapsing into paradox. (I completely respect the Buddhist way of thinking, but fundamentally I'm a reductionist, which is also at odds with dualism, but for different reasons.)
Although I don't disagree with most of what you're saying, I disagree with your tenet that we "can't understand mind with mind any more than a knife can cut itself." We're definitely not there yet, but I feel we're making significant progress. Before this century is out, we'll be able to recreate this phenomenon, complete with AIs that claim to feel "qualia" themselves, and who express a fear of dying. If you're looking for a good koan on the topic, consider quine. (Okay, so it's not exactly a koan, but I like the way those words play together.)
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
This precedes Genesis 2:7-20 which discusses the creation of Adam. Of course, Genesis 2:20 specifically states:
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
If one were inclined to believe Adam was the first human, this could be taken to mean that he was all alone. If one were inclined to believe that there were many humans already, it could just mean there was no woman worthy of him. Eve is created out of Adam in Genesis 2:21-22.
The problem with inferring too much of this is that most people familiar with the Bible do not take it to be necessarily in chronological order. In fact, if one were to take it that way, you've got a problem, because there are two creation stories in Genesis, and they unfold in different orders. (The first creation story starts at Genesis 1:1, and the second creation story starts at Genesis 2:4. The second creation story discusses Adam, whereas the first just refers to "them".) It's unlikely this is an oversight that "disproves" the Bible as surely those who used to recite the Torah from memory were quite aware that both stories were in there. They're in the first two chapters, after all.
(Disclaimer: I'm a strong atheist, but I was raised a Christian.)
I think it does indeed apply to trolls and prist fosters: evolution does not necessarily mean progress—it can simply indicate a species adapting to fill a niche.
It's my belief that it was more emotion than reasoning. However, the reasoning, such as it was, basically amounted to ''post hoc ergo propter hoc'' (i.e., the autism happened shortly after the inoculation, therefore, the inoculation caused the autism).
As for the second case, I think she just chalked it up to coincidence (which she couldn't do for the former one presumably because she had already emotionally invested herself in her previous explanation).
I believe she ''knows'' there's a genetic component, but that the autism wouldn't have happened to her first child if it hadn't been for the inoculation. (I.e., that it was a combination of factors.)
As far as I know, there's no news story. This is someone I've interacted with personally (really more of a friend of a friend, although I've been over to their place myself).
I know a mother who has 2 children. The first child got immunized, and shortly thereafter was diagnosed with autism. The second child was not immunized, and shortly after the time he would have been immunized, he was diagnosed with autism. She still insists that the first child's immunizations led to that child developing autism.
That supports the article; it doesn't nullify it. In fact, Bad Astronomy gave them credit for figuring it out. (The summary could have explained this a little better, but what's new?)
I'm no fan of Sharpton (quite the opposite), but he would exist regardless of the laws. That he can express his opinion is not a flaw in our system, of course. We've made enough progress that perhaps we could remove some of our old laws as "training wheels", but they were absolutely necessary when they were enacted in the 60s and 70s. Affirmative action is one set of laws that I think could go now (the ones you're referring to in your comment about Powell and Rice). The "right" to discriminate based on race, however, is not one I'm ready to return. There still is a "freedom to be a bigot", of course, it's just there are certain places where you can't (easily) act on that bigotry, such as in deciding who you want to hire and who you want to serve.
If you had grown up here, I think some of these things would be more obvious to you then they are. We have not made tremendous progress in the last 15 years, although we have made some progress. (15 years ago, a lot more people considered it taboo to marry outside your race, for example. Part of the change is no doubt due to older generations dying off.)
Oh, so now you want to argue by analogy. But you are using a wrong one. The number of racist households is, if anything, larger than the number of racist business-owners. In fact, the numbers are of the same magnitude, which alone makes your analogy (of one scree vs. hundreds) invalid.
That the number of racist households is larger than the number of racist business-owners is exactly the point behind the analogy. I'm not sure why you assumed I was making the reverse assertion. (We really seem to be talking past each other.) I do not believe they are of the same magnitude, and your first comment on this topic seemed (to me) to suggest that you felt the same way. I believe that the ratio of racist households to racist business-owners is similar to the ratio of households to business-owners. (One could also make the point that someone could choose to move not because they mind living near blacks but because enough other white people do that it will drive down property values, thus becoming a self-fulling prophecy. A similar point is not valid with most businesses, but it probably would have been when the ICC-twiddled laws first came into place, so the point is largely irrelevant.)
You better stick to the position, that there is nothing wrong with inconsistency... At least, that would be consistent:)
The two positions are not inconsistent with each other.:) My position is that I'm not being inconsistent, but even if you think I am, consistency for the sake of consistency isn't extraordinarily useful.
If you really got that [that the success of the non-discrimination laws is limited -mi] from what I said, then that partly explains your world-view.
Well, yes, I got it from what you said. Tell me, how the following could be interpreted any different by anyone -- even with a world-view you find agreeable. You wrote:
The vicious cycles still exist, but they have been mitigated somewhat.
Actually the "that" refers to your statement "its success is rather limited" [emphasis mine]. I believe that the non-discrimination laws have been quite successful, but that we still have a lot of progress to make as a species. Even if we completely eradicated racist behaviors, the fact that money begets money means that ethnic differences would remain for quite some time.
While immigrants of all races do rather well upon coming here, the Blacks born-and-raised in this country lag severely behind.
I think we're on the same page here (but I'm not 100% certain as I think we're both misunderstanding the other at times)—this is a symptom of the vicious cycles I was referring to.
A real right was sacrificed in the (vain) hope of achieving racial harmony... What was it about "losing both and deserving neither"?..
If we ever do achieve the racial harmony (a laudable goal, indeed), it will not be thanks to those non-discrimination laws.
The "losing both" refers to liberty and security, and I don't believe it applies here. Racial harmony has improved tremendously since the 60s, although I'll readily admit that we still have quite a way to go. No offense, but I'm guessing you're rather young (under 25). You're plenty smart, but it seems (to me) that you aren't aware of just how much progress has been made in the last 40-50 years. Try talking to a black person older than 70 to get a feel for things. One thing that shaped my opinion is hearing from older white people as well (90-100 year-olds) and their viewpoint on racial issues. (You'll find a lot more subconscious racism from the older generations. I'm talking about racism that would be obvious to you and me, but they're not even aware of.) For the record, I'm not that old (I'm 37), but I'm old enough to have seen improvement in my lifetime and to have known enough older people who have seen even more improvement in their lifetimes. (The older white people I'm referring to are now dead.)
What you think the average grade in your school is might be quite far off the mark. You're probably judging that off those students that you know, but there's a selection bias at work there. I taught for several years at the same high school that I graduated from. I realized that the impression I had of the school as a student was quite different from the impression I got as a teacher. If you attended a school with less than 500 students, that might not apply to you, but #1 definitely would.
I don't think, the problems are different at all -- there are simply fewer business-owners than house-owners, and so businesses are easier to coerce.
If that were the only difference, that would be reason enough to use a different tool. If you only had to screw in one screw, you might use a manual screwdriver. If you had to screw in hundreds of screws, you might use an electric screwdriver. That would not make you inconsistent. However, there is also the difference that one is dealing with you already selling in a particular location and just saying you can't refuse to sell to people just because they have a different skin color than yourself. In this case, it's the inconsistency of using a screwdriver for a screw and a hammer for a nail. You might not call that consistent, but you can hardly call it inconsistent, either.
I maintain, that being able to not deal with anyone you dislike for whatever reason is a basic human right and that the government's coercion, intended to eliminate the "bad" reasons, violates that right.
First of all, I'd like to say that from a Constitutional point-of-view, I agree that the federal government overstepped its bounds with its interpretation of the interstate commerce clause. That said, I think that these laws would make perfect sense (and be Constitutional) if implemented at the state level. The tenth amendment ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.") makes it clear that your "right" can belong to either the states or the people. There are hundreds of other rights that people will champion (many which fly in the face of your idealized free market) that fall into the same camp. Some of these rights are in conflict with this right that you declare to be a "basic human right". Of all of these rights, the right to discriminate based on skin-color is one I'm willing to sacrifice, especially when it comes into conflict with the more fundamental human right not to be discriminated on based on skin-color.
Whether this coercion actually achieves its goal or not (is it, in fact, "practically" useful?) is a lesser point, although we both agree, that its success is rather limited...
If you really got that from what I said, then that partly explains your world-view. Selective perception can be a very seductive opiate. Just say "no" to it.
First of all, thanks for accepting, that your stance is, in fact, self-inconsistent.
Actually, I did no such thing. I merely stated that consistency for the sake of consistency is counter-productive. I don't find advocating two different solutions for two different problems to be inconsistent. I find it to be wise. Using the same tool for every problem might be consistent, but it's hardly wise. You might find my solutions to be inconsistent, but I suspect that's because you don't recognize the differences in the problems. My main point with the quote is that even if it were inconsistent, that wouldn't make it a bad solution.
Do you understand how the two problems are different enough to merit different solutions?
Not "would be", but "could be". Perhaps, my sentence was too convoluted for this point to be clear, but I'm glad you derived it from the rest of my arguments anyway.
This cuts to the center of our disagreement. In theory, it merely "could be". In practice, it definitely "would be". Just like communism, completely free markets are untenable in the real world. They both require faulty assumptions of human nature.
Well, right here your stance is inconsistent and thus wrong.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Consistency for the sake of consistency is ridiculous. There are places for it, of course, and barring reasons not to be consistent one should strive to be consistent, but it should be one of the first things to go when there are good reasons to get rid of it.
presumably if you want to allow people to choose who they sell to depending on race, you also want to allow people to choose who they buy from depending on race
No, your presumption is wrong. For a transaction to be non-coercive it must be voluntary for both sides. Just as the sellers shouldn't be allowed to force (would be) customers to buy, the buyers can not force the sellers to sell.
It seems like your second sentence contradicts your first. Allowing people to not buy from someone based off their race (or to not hire someone based off their race) means that you're allowing the transaction to be voluntary for the other side as well. Note the word "allow" in my original sentence. Racist hiring practices would be part of a truly free-market system. If you don't see that, then I'm surprised.
Before the civil rights era, this system was maintained mainly without violence (there may have been some, but I'm not aware of any)--simple market forces sufficed.
And this (non-violent) system was worse than the current one because?..
Because blacks were made to feel inferior, they were denied jobs based off their race (presumably if you want to allow people to choose who they sell to depending on race, you also want to allow people to choose who they buy from depending on race), and vicious cycles were aggravated. The vicious cycles still exist, but they have been mitigated somewhat. You are partially a product of the environment that you are born into. If your parents have money, you're more likely to have money. The more money you have, the easier it is to make more money. Yes, there are people who are exceptions to the rule, but they are the exceptions.
The same market forces are at work today behind the phenomenon known as "white flight"--and no smashing windows or lynchings are required.
And? Are you going to prohibit people from moving between neighborhoods as they see fit, just as your predecessors prohibited people from rejecting certain customers?
I wouldn't prohibit them, but I would try to find a way to alter the market forces to encourage them not to flee. Part of the problem is the self-fulfilling prophecy of reduced home prices. I honestly don't know the solution, but I think there is a market-based solution that can help mitigate this problem as well. In case it's not clear, I respect the market, but I don't idealize it. It has flaws, and well-placed regulations (such as testing for lead in children's products) can help it to function better than it would without those regulations.
See my other comments to you as to how we know from history that this is not a good idea. However, more fundamentally, freedoms are not black and white. By denying a store owner the right to discriminate based on race, we grant the consumer the right to eat where he or she wants regardless of race. That doesn't mean that all regulations are good, of course. It just means that some regulations allow more rights than they restrict. There's no such thing as this "free market" that many libertarians seem to worship. Just like idealized Marxism, it's pure mythology. Both presume certain characteristics of the average human that just don't exist. We're not rational beings, even when averaged out.
I guess, I did not emphasize the "and worse" part enough for you to notice. Yes, boycotts are fine. Smashing the store's windows and lynching the proprietor is not -- and that was what kept people from selling to "undesirables".
Unless, of course, the proprietors were bigots themselves. Unfortunately, the law would not address this idiocy anyway...
Most proprietors were bigots (although they wouldn't have considered themselves bigots at the time), and smashing store windows and lynching the proprietor was not at all required to maintain segregated restaurants. Even the "boycotts" were just de facto as no organization was actually behind them. Any proprietor had two choices: (1) serve blacks, or (2) refuse service to blacks. If they served blacks, then the de facto boycott from whites meant that you served almost exclusively blacks, and if you didn't serve blacks then you served only whites. (Although I'm using the more modern term "blacks", back then they used the word "coloreds" which almost always included people of other ethnic backgrounds.)
Before the civil rights era, this system was maintained mainly without violence (there may have been some, but I'm not aware of any)—simple market forces sufficed. When things started changing, then there was some violence, but until laws were passed requiring you to serve blacks, the system worked mainly as before and mainly without any violence being necessary. The same market forces are at work today behind the phenomenon known as "white flight"—and no smashing windows or lynchings are required.
My knowledge of history tells me, people, who would deal with people, whom their neighbors considered "undesirable" were punished by boycotts and worse. The market was not free of such forces...
The freer the market the better.
So, would you create a law to prohibit boycotts in an effort to create a freer market? I don't think we're working from the same set of definitions. A free market is exactly one where boycotts are allowed. I challenge you to find a single libertarian who would argue for creating laws outlawing boycotts. Free markets are markets free from government intervention, not personal intervention. Otherwise, you might as well outlaw such things as raising prices or competition or other market forces.
It's one thing for an idiot to open a "whites only" shop in a town and compete with a "no-restrictions" shop down the street when both can work unhindered and equally protected by the authorities, in a pure free market set up. It's another one completely different when the "no-restrictions" shop is raided and destroyed by white supremacists all the while the racist sheriff doesn't give a damn (and is friends with the supremacists), racist politicians approve laws forcing segregation even upon those who aren't racists, and racist judges condemn blacks who do 'x' to 20 years in prison while a white who did the same gets just a $100 fine and a slap in the wrist.
In the first case, anti-discrimination laws don't make much sense, since all thing being equal, the market itself ends up correcting the situation. In the second case, though, I guess that anti-discrimination laws are a necessity, as the lack of equanimity in the distribution of the law makes it impossible for the free market to solve anything.
It's not that simple. In the Southern United States, shops in the 1960s strongly resisted being forced to serve blacks. Other shops served blacks, and whites were allowed to visit these locations as well. These shops were not "raided and destroyed by white supremacists". The market dictated that most whites didn't want to visit a shop that served blacks. It was a self-reinforcing system. (It arguably still is in some places.) This is a much more complicated example of the prisoner's dilemma. Other problems with the free market include the tragedy of the commons and the tragedy of the anticommons
"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not." What I'm saying is that your argument sounds reasonable, but does not stand up to what has actually happened in such situations.
And if McDonald's don't want to serve a black person they don't have to, and you can take your business elsewhere.
Discrimination on the basis of race (and some other traits) is illegal in the US. All other, unprotected, kinds of discriminations are legal, although the list of the protected ones is growing.
Isn't the free market wonderful!
Indeed, it is.
So, presumably, if the market were more free, it would be even more wonderful, right? E.g., repealing the law that prevents people from discriminating on the basis of race would make the market more free, so it must be a wonderful idea, right?
Umm..how do you know this guy is the original author and didn't himself lift it from another site?
In fact, the person posting it to the blog might have lifted it from this guy's lead programmer (either in the code in question or in a previous project). The best thing is to talk to the guy who originally wrote/copied the code and tell him that you found this code on-line. If he copied it and he's smart, he'll suggest rewriting it. If he's the original author, then he has the opportunity to apply/abuse his own copyright.
I'm writing my doctoral dissertation on the CA3 region of the hippocampus, although this is also true for the entire brain. In short, I've done a lot of reading on how the brain is wired in an attempt to reproduce it in silico. There's still a lot for us to learn about how the brain has accomplished certain feats.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I can't argue with that!
I suspect you'd find a positive correlation between those who use green energy and the uptime of their PC. I make this claim on the assumption that those who use green energy are also more likely to use Linux (compared to those who don't use green energy), and those who use Linux are more likely to have higher uptimes.
It's entirely possible that we might reproduce the phenomenon of conscious minds without understanding them. However, just like it's possible to create a quine or a self-replicating machine (which we're examples of), it's possible for our mind to understand itself without collapsing into paradox. (I completely respect the Buddhist way of thinking, but fundamentally I'm a reductionist, which is also at odds with dualism, but for different reasons.)
Although I don't disagree with most of what you're saying, I disagree with your tenet that we "can't understand mind with mind any more than a knife can cut itself." We're definitely not there yet, but I feel we're making significant progress. Before this century is out, we'll be able to recreate this phenomenon, complete with AIs that claim to feel "qualia" themselves, and who express a fear of dying. If you're looking for a good koan on the topic, consider quine. (Okay, so it's not exactly a koan, but I like the way those words play together.)
If one were inclined to believe Adam was the first human, this could be taken to mean that he was all alone. If one were inclined to believe that there were many humans already, it could just mean there was no woman worthy of him. Eve is created out of Adam in Genesis 2:21-22.
The problem with inferring too much of this is that most people familiar with the Bible do not take it to be necessarily in chronological order. In fact, if one were to take it that way, you've got a problem, because there are two creation stories in Genesis, and they unfold in different orders. (The first creation story starts at Genesis 1:1, and the second creation story starts at Genesis 2:4. The second creation story discusses Adam, whereas the first just refers to "them".) It's unlikely this is an oversight that "disproves" the Bible as surely those who used to recite the Torah from memory were quite aware that both stories were in there. They're in the first two chapters, after all.
(Disclaimer: I'm a strong atheist, but I was raised a Christian.)
I think it does indeed apply to trolls and prist fosters: evolution does not necessarily mean progress—it can simply indicate a species adapting to fill a niche.
It's my belief that it was more emotion than reasoning. However, the reasoning, such as it was, basically amounted to ''post hoc ergo propter hoc'' (i.e., the autism happened shortly after the inoculation, therefore, the inoculation caused the autism).
As for the second case, I think she just chalked it up to coincidence (which she couldn't do for the former one presumably because she had already emotionally invested herself in her previous explanation).
I believe she ''knows'' there's a genetic component, but that the autism wouldn't have happened to her first child if it hadn't been for the inoculation. (I.e., that it was a combination of factors.)
As far as I know, there's no news story. This is someone I've interacted with personally (really more of a friend of a friend, although I've been over to their place myself).
I know a mother who has 2 children. The first child got immunized, and shortly thereafter was diagnosed with autism. The second child was not immunized, and shortly after the time he would have been immunized, he was diagnosed with autism. She still insists that the first child's immunizations led to that child developing autism.
That supports the article; it doesn't nullify it. In fact, Bad Astronomy gave them credit for figuring it out. (The summary could have explained this a little better, but what's new?)
I'm no fan of Sharpton (quite the opposite), but he would exist regardless of the laws. That he can express his opinion is not a flaw in our system, of course. We've made enough progress that perhaps we could remove some of our old laws as "training wheels", but they were absolutely necessary when they were enacted in the 60s and 70s. Affirmative action is one set of laws that I think could go now (the ones you're referring to in your comment about Powell and Rice). The "right" to discriminate based on race, however, is not one I'm ready to return. There still is a "freedom to be a bigot", of course, it's just there are certain places where you can't (easily) act on that bigotry, such as in deciding who you want to hire and who you want to serve.
If you had grown up here, I think some of these things would be more obvious to you then they are. We have not made tremendous progress in the last 15 years, although we have made some progress. (15 years ago, a lot more people considered it taboo to marry outside your race, for example. Part of the change is no doubt due to older generations dying off.)
Actually, I did no such thing. I merely stated that consistency for the sake of consistency is counter-productive. I don't find advocating two different solutions for two different problems to be inconsistent. I find it to be wise. Using the same tool for every problem might be consistent, but it's hardly wise. You might find my solutions to be inconsistent, but I suspect that's because you don't recognize the differences in the problems. My main point with the quote is that even if it were inconsistent, that wouldn't make it a bad solution.
Do you understand how the two problems are different enough to merit different solutions?
This cuts to the center of our disagreement. In theory, it merely "could be". In practice, it definitely "would be". Just like communism, completely free markets are untenable in the real world. They both require faulty assumptions of human nature."A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Consistency for the sake of consistency is ridiculous. There are places for it, of course, and barring reasons not to be consistent one should strive to be consistent, but it should be one of the first things to go when there are good reasons to get rid of it.
It seems like your second sentence contradicts your first. Allowing people to not buy from someone based off their race (or to not hire someone based off their race) means that you're allowing the transaction to be voluntary for the other side as well. Note the word "allow" in my original sentence. Racist hiring practices would be part of a truly free-market system. If you don't see that, then I'm surprised.See my other comments to you as to how we know from history that this is not a good idea. However, more fundamentally, freedoms are not black and white. By denying a store owner the right to discriminate based on race, we grant the consumer the right to eat where he or she wants regardless of race. That doesn't mean that all regulations are good, of course. It just means that some regulations allow more rights than they restrict. There's no such thing as this "free market" that many libertarians seem to worship. Just like idealized Marxism, it's pure mythology. Both presume certain characteristics of the average human that just don't exist. We're not rational beings, even when averaged out.
Most proprietors were bigots (although they wouldn't have considered themselves bigots at the time), and smashing store windows and lynching the proprietor was not at all required to maintain segregated restaurants. Even the "boycotts" were just de facto as no organization was actually behind them. Any proprietor had two choices: (1) serve blacks, or (2) refuse service to blacks. If they served blacks, then the de facto boycott from whites meant that you served almost exclusively blacks, and if you didn't serve blacks then you served only whites. (Although I'm using the more modern term "blacks", back then they used the word "coloreds" which almost always included people of other ethnic backgrounds.)
Before the civil rights era, this system was maintained mainly without violence (there may have been some, but I'm not aware of any)—simple market forces sufficed. When things started changing, then there was some violence, but until laws were passed requiring you to serve blacks, the system worked mainly as before and mainly without any violence being necessary. The same market forces are at work today behind the phenomenon known as "white flight"—and no smashing windows or lynchings are required.
Unless you're familiar with history. :)
"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not." What I'm saying is that your argument sounds reasonable, but does not stand up to what has actually happened in such situations.
Just like some people have a problem with drinking and driving, but I know how to handle my alcohol!
I'm writing my doctoral dissertation on the CA3 region of the hippocampus, although this is also true for the entire brain. In short, I've done a lot of reading on how the brain is wired in an attempt to reproduce it in silico. There's still a lot for us to learn about how the brain has accomplished certain feats.