>None is worse, actually. All of us come from extinct tribal societies, and we are better off for it. A society "going completely extinct" doesn't mean its members are killed, it means ending injustice and poverty if those are the hallmarks of the society that goes extinct

In the context of this research - and the discussion (I actually RTFA) it DOES not mean that, it means extinct as in dead. Every single member of those tribes - DEAD.
Corpses everywhere. No living members remain.

The research differentiates between cultural destruction (which you may or may not approve of) an extinction of the people and gives numbers for both -that 80% is the ones where EVERYBODY DIES.

>Even if we had a choice, it's unclear that not contacting them would be the right thing to do. First, you are depriving them of many of the benefits of modern civilization: immunizations, agriculture, education. Second, they are occupying and using land very inefficiently. Finally, their societies generally violate basic rights of their members; should we really let that go on?

Wait, hold on a second - from that long list of reasons - which one exactly is *worse* than GOING COMPLETELY EXTINCT ?

Because I can't find it.

>Any animations are a series of discrete steps, you *might* add blurring but they are damned well still discrete steps!
And this being on a monitor we can even guarantee the minimum length of each discrete step. They CAN'T be less than the width of one pixel.

>Disclaimer: I am a patent attorney

We found one ! You guys get the pitchforks - I'll light the flaming torches ! Burn the witch ! Burn the witch !

(Just kidding).

Aaah, he must be an American then.

>You can will yourself to take a different worldview, but you don't have a choice in what direction you end up in :)

I wouldn't go *that* far. One man drives past a shanty town and thinks "This is terrible - how can we change the world so people wouldn't have to live like this" - another thinks "This is terrible, just how stupid and lazy to people have to be to choose to live like this rather than earn a better life ?"

Exactly the same experience - two completely different judgements, and two completely different lessons learned.
All because one of them chose to be empathic and compassionate while the other was aloof and self-aggrandizing.

By analogy - we don't get to choose which classes we'll have to attend, but we get to choose *what* we learn from them.

>It is entirely possible for two intelligent, reasonable people to "learn" and come to different conclusions.

Yes. This does not contradict what I said. Somebody said it was difficult to impossible to change your worldview - I said it is an inevitable consequence of learning.
I said nothing about which worldview you start off with or which one you adopt as you learn or where on the line you happen to be when you finally die - that can be pretty unique - I just said that worldviews change when people learn. Anybody whose worldview has NOT had some pretty rapid changes during the course of their life has not been learning anything.
Me - I was a libertarian in my early 20's - today I would describe myself as an anarcho-socialist who, in the absence of a libertarian system of legislation to participate in vote liberal because I consider civil liberties far more important than economics and therefore I cannot vote for a party that panders to the religious right. I can't understand how libertarians can vote republican - they agree with neither party fully, but what they hate about the democrats is surely infinitely less important (economics) than what they dislike about the republicans (civil liberties erosion to please the religious right).

Today - I despise libertarians, 14 years ago I WAS one. A lot of people I know who were liberals then became conservatives later, a lot of conservatives became liberals.

The point stands: as people learn they change their world-views, often very radically. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, how it changes is determined by their experiences and what they personally value (I would rather be broke and starving than not be allowed to ... well do ALL the things the religious right want banned - many people would apparently rather lose freedom of speech than risk a drop in the value of their portfolio).
I never said they would conclude the same thing- you argued against it but I said nothing of the kind. All I said was: changing world views is easy, not hard.

>And love won't get you broadband.

Obviously you've been "loving" the wrong people...

>In some people's minds, lack of failure is a surer measure of success, than attempting success (and possibly failing, thereby).

The speaker of the house would agree with you - he pretty much said the same thing about congress passing laws not long ago...

>Using the IRS to target political speech they disagree with.
I agree with all your other examples but on this one - the blame belongs with the reps -it was *they* who started and still continue to push for "profiling".
Now the reps profile on race, religion and stuff like that - the dems were actually a notch less evil with their profiling. While the reps were profiling based on things which are either completely uncontrollable (like race) or specifically protected by the constitution (like religion) the dems merely profiled as "like to have cheated on taxes" people and organisations who have PUBLICLY declared their dislike for taxes and their support for ideologies that seeks the abolition of taxation (and frequently encourages tax-cheating to help bring that about).

That's akin to if the reps were arguing that when a rapper sings about his love for weed that's probably cause to get a search warrant (as opposed to "if you're black we get to search your car for weed and if you wear a hajib we get to assume you're a muslim and search you car for bombs because reasons".
It's still evil - but it's a lot LESS evil than what the reps continue to do and support in the same vein.

>I'm not sure being [insert political ideology] is a choice. It's not like you can simply will yourself to take a different worldview.

Of course you can ! The process is called "learning". You should try it sometime.

>No, but the Center for Disease Control thinks that vaccination rates (with the notable exception of Hib3 (whatever that is)) have been constant or increasing for the last two decades (as long as they've been keeping records).

You don't need a percentile change to have a problem - you just need a small decrease in vaccination (much less than one percent) to send herd immunity down the well.

>If what is wanted to be done is kicking sick troops out of their beds for new blankets every day or two

And why would they do that? By this point Europeans had largely discovered concepts like quarantine and it was standard practice in hospitals that when somebody died from smallpox the bedding they had used while ill should be burned (the germ theory of disease may not have taken hold much yet but even the old miasma theory supported this practise). Basic quarantine developed during the black death years and were extensively improved by the time of American colonization.

All the military had to do was use the blankets that would otherwise have been burned *anyway*.

"There is nothing, no act of cruelty and torture and maiming ever contemplated by the worst sociopaths that can't be gleefully repeated by an average family man just doing his job and following orders. He who knows this, knows all he needs to know to rule the world" - Terry Pratchett "Small gods".

And we see the truth of this around us all the time - we see it in business and we see it in politics and in the military (just go look at the personality profiles of the Abu Ghraib soldiers - just average, friendly well-liked family minded people, a run-of-the-mill girl with a happy smile whose friends spoke of her incredible generosity - now remembered for all time as a torturer and near-rapist).

When the number a decade ago was near-zero - 175 is massive, because it predicts that this years number will be much higher, it's the beginning of the breakdown of herd immunity.

Are you actually suggesting the the antivaxer (sorry, that's not politically correct - I mean the "pro-disease") movement has had zero impact on vaccination rates ? This should be news to the medical fraternity - you better inform them !