Comment Re:Underwhelming (Score 1) 65
See the sibling response to your post. I think I win.
See the sibling response to your post. I think I win.
on the issue of racism, no
i do not know many things about many topics. all of us are ignorant of many things
but i know enough about racism to understand that racists are not intelligent people. i am absolutely certain of that
oh i am certain you can find some mathematician who can do complex topological analysis in his head who is a fervent racist. there's also mathematicians who can't balance their checkbooks or know how to talk to girls. much like autism, extreme intelligence in a small domain does not often extend to basic social intelligence. on a site like slashdot, i am certain there are minds brilliant in small esoteric areas that are social morons, aspergers syndrome types
but anyone of average social development and of ordinary iq can easily spot the logical fallacies with racist "thinking"
and so you must be socially retarded to be a racist. i am certain of that to an absolute degree
there are certain beliefs, like creationism, antivaccine, racism, that to believe in those things *requires* you to be mentally deficient and socially stunted
if you are racist, you are a low intelligence individual. truth
Of course he's correct - that's practically a tautology and may indicate lack of sleep and/or concentration on his part
I was actually going for the "this should be all but self evident to anybody" with that particular line. And the poster above you STILL managed to mis-characterize what I said.
we're dealing with racists here
to believe in racism is to be a stupid person because to believe in it requires falling for a logical fallacy
if you don't understand that you are indeed a stupid person. objectively true. to hold a belief that requires low iq is to be a stupid person. objectively determined truth of low intelligence
i don't really give a shit what you think of me. because i am 100% correct here. racists are stupid people. you have to be a genuinely dumb, low iq, moron to believe the borken "if... then..." bullshit reasoning behind racist beliefs
, I don't want to have any Microsoft trash in my phone, much less when it is delivered with a name fit for a cheap stripper.
Um... Cortana is a cheap stripper?
Of the 3 personal assistants -- Apple has the cheap stripper name with Siri. Siri is a Scandinavian girls name.
Sure, plenty of kids and teens would not get educated, but they're probably not get anything now either. You can't make a student that won't learn educated anymore than you can make a morbidly obese person who refuses to eat right healthy. Sometimes society is better off with such people being allowed to make themselves into warnings for others.
Setting aside the sheer depravity of this argument, we have ample historical context for what happens when society cuts off the neediest. France, Haiti, Cuba, China, Russia, Algeria, Egypt, India, Scotland, The Phillipines, Mexico--just to name a few places where social and political inequality have driven massive, bloody revolts.
Wealth and political power calcify with the already wealthy and powerful. The middle and working classes slowly lose what wealth they have through attrition. Poverty becomes a virtually inescapable sink of destitution. Eventually, enough people end up having quite literally nothing to lose that you get vicious, deadly, destructive revolutions that take generations to recover from.
If you insist on taking a "pragmatic" view of not even bothering to -try- to improve the lives of the impoverished, try to at least understand the historical ramifications of what you're arguing for.
So, it would be universally bad for humanity if those died out?
Even virii are valuable, as we learn a lot from them. And yes, total eradication, while it makes for some short term happiness may ultimately lead to a long term problem. In the case of a harmful virus; I have no objection to active infections being purged, especially when the virus is disfiguring, painful, or lethal - I consistently put the welfare of humanity out front.
However we should probably keep some around in jars or whatever for study. Good to have samples of a "contained" virus to help us compare to new wild strain in the future; to help research new treatments.
Or did you mean that "Cute things going extinct is universally bad for humanity"?
Nope. That's just you projecting what you think my argument is.
Competition in government granted monopolies (ahem "Franchise Agreements"). Good one!
That's why we must preserve what little is left, for its rarity makes it finite and precious.
I like that better than adopting a defeatist attitude and assuming all is lost.
That it got this far without being summarily rejected is problematic all by itself.
The FTC does not, and should not, do summary rejections. Even evil corporations have a right to due process.
In general I would agree with you, but not in this case. That they are natural monopolies would be grounds for a summary rejection. There's no reason that cannot be a special exception.
Who said this was approved? Answer: nobody.
That it got this far without being summarily rejected is problematic all by itself.
A summary rejection, now that would demonstrate the slightest concern for preserving competition.
Except that it's not. In the vast majority of cases it's neutral.
No. The total loss of a species to study and learn from is a loss. That's not neutral. Its not like one species is dying to be replaced by another; right now were are experiencing decreasing bio-diversity.
You have some kind of Greenpeace-like attitude that humanity == bad, every other species == good. That's not how the Universe works.
My entire argument is centered on what is to the ultimate benefit of humanity. And another respondent even (rightfully) called my position "anthropocentric". I'm not sure what to make of your comment; except to say: "swing and a miss".
That's a very anthropocentric way of looking at things.
I can't tell if your suggesting that's good or bad. I think its good.
It's really sad when even the people 'defending' the natural order feel the need to shape their argument in a way so that 'people' benefit.
That's not anthropocentric. That's personal / self-interested / ego-centric.
It's worst with Archaeologists, whose goal in life is to root up everything and use 'the most modern techniques possible' to tear apart the historical evidence, then deposit some of the 'good bits' in modern steel and glass buildings.
That's a strange way of looking at it. They are seeking to learn and recover that which is -lost-. I can't see how not finding that which is lost is somehow doing us any good.
Granted the longer we wait to find that which is lost the better our technology for preserving it is but that is offset by
- a how long do we wait? clearly if we wait forever we never benefit from finding it; and anything else is entirely arbitrary. Searching
- some of what is lost is often slowly and sometimes quickly deteriorating. waiting for the future to find it may not leave us anything to find.
I don't think you'd be here typing that if the dinosaurs didn't go extinct
Probably not. Perhaps I should have clarified that things going extinct is universally bad for humanity.
And yes, obviously prior extinctions leading to the evolution of humanity were not bad for humanity.
On the other hand, humanity going extinct would be exceedingly bad for humanity.
Other species co-existent with humanity now going extinct, in the sense that it represents a reduction in biodiversity to draw on and study is also bad for humanity.
Extinction is not bad, nor is it good, it simply is. It is evolution.
Right, it is not good or bad relative to the universe; its not "objectively" bad. Its not immoral. But it is still unversally bad from the subjective perspective of the species going extinct, or the species relying on it.
That, in this case, would be us. Granted we aren't dependent on the galapagos iguana the way we are dependent on chickens or corn, but we are dependent on the existing bio-diversity of earth to advance a wide variety of sciences, and the loss of that diversity is a loss to humanity. Particularly the Galapagos. Both due to its scientific value as a long isolated ecosystem; and culturally for its historic significance.
To move them is to promote the use of fossil fuel.
Is that a "for real" reason not to preserve a species, or are you just trolling? In a world where we use oil to make plastic McDonald's happy meal toys in china, and then more oil to ship to the united states, then more oil shipping them to a landfill after kids played with them for exactly 5 minutes once, the argument against using fossile fuels cost of preserving Galapagos species falls pretty flat.
What will moving them do to the food chain of the area that the iguanas now inhabit ?
Not moving them, and having them go extinct would have the same effect.
Is it better to move all of them or to split the colony ?
Have we identified anything else that is being threatened by the volcano ?
When did the next to last colony of pink iguana disappear ?
How is it determined if/when the iguana need to be moved ?
Do we understand enough about them to move them ?
How much support are we going to provide them if moved ?
I am not a biologist. Never mind a specialist in the Galapagos. Ask them.
But if a volcano is looking likely to wipe them out, and moving a number to a zoo to try and preserve them seems well worth it to me.
in the end, you can not have it both ways.
Can not have WHAT both ways?
1. Every species has value.
2. Every species does not have infinite value.
I'd argue the Galapagos species are priceless. But I would also agree, that even priceless doesn't mean they have infinite value. There must be a reasonable limit on what we'd spend to save them
Adding features does not necessarily increase functionality -- it just makes the manuals thicker.
