Unfortunately, though, we now have far too many laws, including contradictory laws. Even if somebody had their own legal library, every year some things change. A hypothetical typical, reasonable citizen could not possibly know them all, much less be reasonably expected to. They wouldn't have time to do anything else.

So here's my question: since our common law system is supposed to be based on the reasonable man principle, and it is provably not reasonable to expect the average citizen to know most laws, much less all, how could ignorance of the law NOT be a valid excuse?

Have you been living under a rock the last 5 years?

Yes, prosecutors have tried to use the TOS thing as an excuse to prosecute. But that is being actively fought by EFF, EPIC, and a whole alphabet soup of other organizations acting as amici to the courts, and with actual legal defense as well.

It is pretty clear that Congress never meant the law to apply to situations like Aaron Swartz, for example. Government prosecutors have been fighting actually getting that one to court though because they know they'll lose, and they want to retain the ability to threaten people with it.

No.

Police are not allowed to break the law in order to enforce the law.

I'm not saying they never do it, but if they do, they're just as much criminals as anyone else. There is no law or principle that gives police a pass for breaking laws.

Lying, by itself, is not a crime. So why should they not be able to lie?

Generally speaking, they may not commit a crime in their pursuit to solve or prevent crimes. Police don't have diplomatic immunity. Again generally speaking, the same laws that apply to you also apply to them too.

What they are NOT allowed to do is commit crimes. They might be able to lie, but not commit fraud or "entrap", which basically means to talk or fool someone into doing something illegal they would not normally do.

In one state I know of, the police were trying to have it both ways. They claimed they were "always on duty", even though of course they were only being paid for 8-hour shifts. They wanted to be able to do whatever they wanted when not on shift, yet still carry their guns and make arrests, and act like police, any time of the day or night, whenever they wanted.

The State said no, if they were "always on duty" they'd have to be job-insured 24 hours a day, and get "on-call" pay in addition to their regular wages. Since the State wasn't about to do that, it declared officially that police were only "really" police when they were on their paid shift. Any other time, they can only make citizen's arrests, just like everybody else. Also, as a result, the few exemptions the police got for firearms carry are only in effect when they're on paid duty. All firearms laws in the state apply to off-duty police in exactly the same way they do to everyone else. The police really howled about that one.

Prior to the State "cleaning house", the police were also busting prostitutes by paying them and having sex with them, then arresting them and taking the money back. The state said "no way". No more hands-on for the police. They howled about that one too.

No, it isn't. It says

[emphasis added]

It is very clear that the cameras showed yellow lights under 3 seconds, this year.

This is "it stands to reason" logic, not empirical evidence. Other studies have concluded that the number of injury accidents and ALSO their average severity increased at camera intersections.

The value of Google passed the value of Russia (remember, these are just the publically traded companies - in the US that about half our economy, dunno for Russia). Russia has almost nothing going for it beyond oil, and the Saudis are using oil prices to fuck Iran sideways right now. The current governmental structure of both Russia and Iran are likely to collapse (Putin is pretty savvy - he may emerge as El Presidente for Life without the pretense of democracy he has now, but chaos one way or another). The ruble is almost certain to collapse, so no one's buying ruble-valued anything, (especially debt) and the risk of public companies in Russia getting either nationalized or simply destroyed by unrest is real.

I predict that tomorrow, there will be weather! Yeah, that's not what people mean by predicting the weather. Sure: the 24-hour weather forecast is better than random guessing, but it's still not much better than looking at the sky, and a barometer. And the 5-day forecast? Accuracy isn't in it.

You make and play the kind of game you like, and we'll make an play the kind of games we like, OK? There's room on Steam for lots of games.

I'd prefer a job instead, but hey: to each his own!

Well, let me know when we actually get to the weather-predicting stage. I look forward to that. But I think we'll get fusion first, and maybe spelling and calendar reform.

Oh ho! A moderate. Are you sure you're on the right site? Surely you meant to say "global warming is a hoax!" or "repent your sins of carbon emission, no economic sacrifice is too great!"

I'm sorry, your answer must be in the form of a car analogy.

Exactly. And aether made a lot of sense. And Freud had to start somewhere. None of that was bad science, that's just what early science looks like. We've just since the late 90s had the technology to seriously contemplate climate modeling, and only really in the past 5-8 years has the vast parallelism needed to do it well been available from more than a couple of research computers.

Again, just as it's a mistake to call it "pseudoscience", it's a mistake to believe than any of these early models in the first generation of a new science are particularly worthwhile. Certainly Climate Science is a field that needs more funding and research for decades to come. But just as certainly, it's not a fucking unfallible font of religious truth, and people who act as if it is are as annoying as the SJWs.

Look at the historical data.

It should jump out at you that the past 10k years of relative climate stability is an anomaly, and that rapid (on geological scales) swings in temperature and CO2 are the norm. That whole system is not well understood, though I believe solar variation is the leading hypothesis right now. On a scale beyond a century, there's just no reason to expect climate stability in the first place.

On a decade by decade scale, there's no evidence of warming in the 17 years of reliable satellite temperature data. The null hypothesis - that average temperatures aren't changing - has actually been the best predictor of climate data since the late 90s, odd as that may sound.

The simple fact is: the atmosphere and oceans are chaotic systems, with a variety of positive and negative feedback loops, quite difficult to model, and you can't talk about climate change in a scientific way without doing so. There are no obvious conclusions to draw, as the system we live in is simply too complex for hand-wavy, back-of-the-envelope calculations to be interesting. We may simply lack the technology today to do this science properly. That's not a reason to stop - we built the LHC, proof we can do some fucking impressive technological advancement to achieve a scientific goal. But it is a reason to avoid arrogance.

Climate science is at the phlogiston / aether / Freud stage right now. That's fine, every science must start that way, and the scientific method works given time. But for goodness sake the lay believers are very much like a religion right now, complete with a list of sins and a Hell to roast in, and that's taking it too far!

It's easy to be self-righteous. I used to see it all the time from member of the Christian religion- most of whom weren't really that familiar with scripture. It's no more appealing seeing the same attitude from members of the new Global Warming religion, most of whom aren't really that familiar with the science.

Climate models may one day mature to something beyond the basket of hypotheses they are now, but none of them have yet been successful in predicting climate data, except where the null hypothesis also predicted that data. The science doesn't justify your arrogance. I wouldn't call it "pseudoscientific", but it's far from certain as well, and the actual predictive models (as opposed to hand-wavey claims) aren't yet well supported by actual data.