Human beings are not like that. I wish you could just go up to someone, present a convincing argument that they're wrong about something, and have them say, "you know what, buddy? You're right. I'm going to abandon the position I've held for the last 25 years now that you've shown me my only justifications for this belief are fallacious." Hell, I strive to be that person, I strive to be that open-minded and I know I'm not. I've actually changed my mind on issues I used to strongly believed in, so I'm proud of the fact that at least I can do it. The thing is, it took years before I gradually reversed my position.

When you first make a joke, somebody's going to feel like the victim and be offended. However, if you really are making a good point, ten years down the road and hundreds of similar jokes later they may agree and laugh with you.

It's not that nobody should ever be offended by a joke. It's that people don't get to have a right to not be offended. If you're not offending someone, you didn't say anything of value. The point of free speech is to cause people to question their deeply held beliefs, which invariably will leads to taking offense, or they wouldn't be deeply held beliefs.

As an example, I'm offended by your attitude. It violates my deeply held belief in the value of free speech and the nature of good jokes. Despite my offense, I don't wish you to get you fired, nor think you deserve to be. I just think you're an idiot, and move on with my life.

Maybe you're right. I have a great respect for anyone who lived in the world he lived in and still managed to put aside all the anger he accumulated from the injustices he saw to promote change through non-violent means. That could certainly only be done by those who were able to rationally consider what it takes to achieve the long-term goals of ending the nonsense of judging a human being by the color of their skin. So maybe it follows that he'd be able to see past his own approval of the ten commandments to the long-term consequences of having the state courthouse endorse the values of any one particular religion, even if it's his own.

I only guessed he probably wouldn't see it that way because placing a monument of the ten commandments at the a State Capitol isn't quite the same as adopting the rules in said monument officially. I would certainly argue it's a step toward officially sanctioning the religion, but if I were to play devil's advocate, I could say it's no more an endorsement of Christianity than a monument to Lady Justice at a courthouse is an endorsement of the old Roman religion and worship of the goddess Iustitia. It may just mean, "we generally approve of these values represented here, but are not legally bound by them." A simple artistic expression of, in the case of Iustitia, the idea of impartiality in the justice system; in the case of the ten commandments, of the value of a codified system of laws, which is the job of the legislature.

Honestly, the only reason I don't actually make that argument in favor of leaving the ten commandments there is because the people who generally want to place the ten commandments everywhere aren't really hiding their true intentions, and will joyfully tell everyone of the benefits of a government that attempts to be true to the Bible. I can't really abide by that attitude.

True, but another aspect of the movie involved the reason for their obsession with genetic perfection. They believed a person's worth could be accurately measured by their genetic makeup, and therefore wouldn't trust somebody like Vincent to be able to complete the mission. He might be cheap in the sense of how much they would have to pay him, but that would be dwarfed by the cost of a failed mission if they send an incompetent person up.

I think the ignorance you're talking about was demonstrated, at least twice. There was an arrogance, a cognitive dissonance in the conversation director Josef had with detective Freeman:

Director Josef: "Bodies, with minds to match. Essential as we push out farther and farther."
Detective Freeman: "Yet, you still constantly monitor performance.
Director Josef: "You have to ensure the people are meeting their potential."
Detective Freeman: "And exceeding it?"
Director Josef: "No one exceeds his potential."
Detective Freeman:"If he did?"
Director Josef: "It would mean we did not accurately gauge his potential in the first place."

Here director Josef admits that it's possible to inaccurately gauge someone's potential. The problem with their society isn't that the genetic tests aren't correct, it's that they can't account for everything. Physically and mentally Jerome was superior to Vincent, and would have made a better Gattaca astronaut. However, Jerome had no motivation, no drive. He couldn't put in the work that's necessary to prepare yourself for the mission. He got his swimming silver medal because he train hard enough, didn't push himself to his limits. And when he realized his genes weren't sufficient to make him the best, he didn't care enough to do the work necessary to improve, instead he chose to try to kill himself. Vincent didn't have the advantages, but he was willing to do what others weren't. Maybe Jerome would have had to put in half as many hours studying as Vincent did, but Vincent wasn't afraid of putting in the time. Jerome would have breezed through the physical training requirements at Gattaca, but Vincent didn't mind pushing himself so hard that he'd collapse in the end. But while their society, and director Josef in particular, admitted that lack of drive was enough to cause a gifted individual to not achieve his full potential, they failed to recognize that an abundance of drive could make up for the lack of genetic advantages in another individual. They refused to test whether they had inaccurately measured someone's potential.

The real irony is that Josef, above all, should understand this. When he was being questioned by the police regarding the murder he proudly explained, "take another look at my profile. You won't find a violent bone in my body." Yet, his drive to ensure the mission he was planning would go ahead was sufficient to overcome that predisposition to non-violence and he was able to commit murder. It shouldn't surprise him that some people, like Vincent, would have the drive to compensate for something they were missing in their genetic profile.

I interpreted that scene as showing he was exercising beyond his ability. Remember, his "borrowed ladder", Jerome, was a swimming athlete before the accident. Vincent had to make himself not only meet the physical requirements, but also had to look like he had the conditioning of an athlete. So if I figured he always ran far in excess of what he had to, while making it seem like it was easy, using Jerome's recorded heat beats.

I don't think their intended message was that you could heal yourself from heart attacks if you had willpower. The way I interpret that scene wasn't Vincent with a heart condition, it was Vincent exhausted after far exceeding his actual conditioning. It fits with how he approached the swimming competitions with his brother. Save nothing. If he's not collapsing, he's going to keep running.

That's a misunderstanding of the story. Vincent likely didn't have a heart condition. He got discriminated his entire life because his genetic profile said his DNA indicated he had a 99% probability of developing a fatal heart condition. He could be the 1 person in 100 with that DNA marker who never develops said heart condition, but in their society nobody was willing to give him a chance.

What he did was legitimately endure GATTACA's physical tests, spend an entire childhood swimming out farther and farther away from shore with his brother, and beat his life expectancy of 30.2 years. Everything indicating he had no health problems.

I think it's also important to compare apples to apples. Before navigation systems, what did I use to get someplace I don't know where to get to? A map and/or written directions. Sure, I went over it before I ever got in a car to drive, but as I progress in the route, you often have to double check stuff. Then you find yourself glancing over the map and the piece of paper, grabbing everything when you come to a stop sign or red light, etc. Basically, you're just as distracted.

Navigation is distracting. Navigation now is less distracting. Both in the past and now, if you have a passenger you should let them navigate / be in charge of messing with the gps.

As someone who has no religious beliefs, I salute you. I would join you in said picnic, and shake your hand.

These guys are just making a point about the value of separation between Church and State. If anyone ever tried to actually take your religious freedoms away, I would protest at your side and help you to defend it.

The purpose isn't to change their mind on religious issues. I don't care what they believe in, and nobody should. That's a personal decision. The purpose is to change their mind on the wisdom of laws that allow the mixing of religion and government. I do think this will change their mind on that issue, because they're going to prevent a satanic monument from erected. Then they can continue worshiping in their homes, their churches, and other private property. I fully support and defend their right to do so.

Actually, I think that's exactly the type of thing they would have done if they believed in the cause (and I'm pretty sure Martin Luther King wouldn't believe in the cause, considering he was the son of a Baptist minister and a minister himself). The method, however, is right up their alley. It's a non-violent protest against an unjust law.

Fascinating.

Why did you go to college? Why were you in class? A lot of people answer that question by saying, "to get a degree." That's not right though, because there are cheaper ways of getting "a degree." You can buy one for much cheaper than college tuition, and for much less work.

So the next justification is that you can't use the degree you buy from a non-accredited university to get a job. Why not? Because employers expect that the degree means you have learned a minimum set of per-requisites they require in their employees. In fact, you're often asked to provide an official transcript, which shows the grades you got in specific classes they may deem relevant for the position you're applying for. With this in mind, would someone who was told how they were being graded really have a clear success criteria?

They'd have a way to achieve a high grade in the course, but that's not success. If I achieve a high grade in the course, but the grade does not correlate to my understanding of the material the class is supposed to cover, the professor failed my success criteria, by giving me a transcript that means nothing to the employers. When I go to an interview fresh out of college I'm being judged by degree, by my grades, and by comparison from other candidates who may have come to the same school, and taken the same classes. If an idiot classmate I had interviews first for a job I'm interested in demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the subject matter in an interview, despite having a despite having a degree in the field and a high gpa, then he may have cost me the ability to even get an interview at that location. Now the employer is thinking, "that university sucks for that degree, that guy's grades didn't mean shit. I'm not going to waste my time with this next guy."

Which is deceptive to me, because I pay the university with the understanding they will train me in the field of my choice, and evaluate me fairly with regards to the knowledge that i've gained. Anything else, and I'm just throwing money away.

Similarly, a professor who is capable of writing a few quality papers is far more valuable than one who can write hundreds of low quality ones. The universities make their standards clear, but they're not selecting for what they're supposed to, and it's leading to lower quality of education.

Hah. I don't know if that's true, but wouldn't surprise me that much. Every time I put my seat belt on the way up I make the realization that if something were to happen to the plane in the first 1,000 ft, not only would I not be able to jump out, but I wouldn't exactly be secured in place for that emergency landing. I'd be getting thrown around in a ~1 ft radius.

I'll gladly include those deaths among skydiving risks. Skydivers are badly strapped in, the entire time they're on the plane is essentially the take-off, which is the most dangerous part of air travel, and there are things like the previous accident in which two planes with skydivers collided. You wouldn't be likely to see planes in close formation most times you fly, but if you're skydiving you might, if you're involved in big formations where not everybody fits in a single plane. So the type of flying increases the risk. Even including all of that, deaths are proportionally pretty rare.

Is that supposed to be a disparaging remark? It just comes across as, "I have poor attention span."

At least one paragraph was relevant to the very next point you're trying to make:

As I tried to explain in my "wall of text", I do many, many things wrong multiple times while skydiving every time I dive. Students are even worse. Like I said, there's only way to learn skydiving, and that's to dive. And nobody is going to be perfect without lots and lots of practice. Mistakes happen, and they happen often.

The most common skydiving injury is a sprained ankle. There's lots of technology and lots of safety features built in to our rigs to help reduce and prevent injury as well. Things like the three-ring system to help you get rid of a malfunctioning canopy, the RSL to help automatically deploy your reserve if you can't locate the handle after you do a cutaway, the AAD to deploy your reserve if you're still in freefall at a low enough altitude, in case you're unconscious or otherwise can't get to your handles...

There are also things likes helmets, which lots of people joke aren't helpful to skydivers, but the truth it, it's actually been helpful to me. Most injuries are going to happen under a good canopy, lots of them due to mistakes while landing. I've personally had a landing in which, after my feet hit the ground, I didn't exactly do a good PLF, and ended up with my head on the ground. I could have gotten hurt had I not been wearing it. Also made a really bad mistake exiting a Cessna 172 once, and saw the wheel come within an inch of my face. I didn't hit my head or helmet, but if I had, helmet would have been nice.

The point is, people like me make tons of mistakes all the time, and they don't all end in us becoming "pretty much toast."

Chances of dying per dive vs. chances of dying per mile driven is a perfectly good comparison. You just don't want facts to get in the way of your perception of the sport. You don't know anything about it, but you want to claim the first mistake you make once is going to get you killed. Buddy, if that were the case I'd be seeing so many deaths at the dropzone every weekend, it's not even funny. Instead I see people with scraped knees, sprained ankles, or completely fine and getting chewed out by the DZ personnel for doing something stupid that placed them and/or others in danger. You know, kind of like I hear people telling me all the stories of how the other moron driver cut them off on the way to work today and they barely avoided an accident.

Well, the implication I took from the way you worded it was, "this guy chooses to do this inherently dangerous activity, so we can assume he brought the same attitude of disregard to danger to every aspect of his life." I meant to point out that skydiving isn't as risky as most people assume, and therefore some very cautious people participate in the activity. I count myself in that group, I am in no way an adrenaline junkie. If that's not what you meant by it, I apologize for the misunderstanding.

Well, I would agree most jumps were performed by seasoned divers, but it's very far from all, even when you exclude the tandem dives which I assume is what you mean when you say "in the company of [seasoned professionals]". You've got to start somewhere. I described myself as a n00b licensed diver for a reason. I have 50 jumps under my belt, and I'm very far from a pro. My landings need a lot of work, both in terms of accuracy and ability to land softly. I've never been in an emergency situation, so I don't have the experience that would allow me to handle one as quickly and smoothly as the seasoned guys. When I encounter my first malfunction, I'll have to rely on the training that I've received on the ground, and hope I execute emergency procedures promptly and correctly. I'm having difficulties maintaining the same fall rate as other people in my diving group, and tend to sink in relation to them the moment I start performing maneuvers (which can increase risk of a collision if they lose track of my location, or I lose track of theirs). There are lots of little things I'm not particularly proficient at, and therefore I stay away from diving with large groups and really doing anything I believe is currently outside my skill level.

In fact, there's really no other way to learn how to skydive other than skydiving. Tandems are fun, but if you want to get licensed you go through ground training, then you get on a plane, and you jump with your own parachute. There are different training methods, but they all involve you landing your own parachute. Under static line, you get out of the plane by yourself, attached to a line that will automatically deploy your main. Then you land the chute by yourself with radio instructions. Under AFF, you get freefall time together with other instructors who are holding on to you, but not attached to you in any way. Once you open up, you're on your own, landing with radio assistance. There's also a chance you'll find yourself separated from your instructors and will have to deploy without them, and you're trained for that possibility. You'll also be trained for the possibility the radio doesn't work.

Even with all of that inexperience, student deaths make for a very small proportion of those ~20 deaths a year. Most deaths are actually from people with thousands of jumps, because they're jumping highly loaded, high-performance parachutes, performing higher risk maneuvers such as swoop landings. If we're going back to the driving analogy, it's like saying that your race car drivers are under more risk driving at a race than the average driver is driving to work. The race car driver is much more experienced, and more highly proficient at driving, but he's also doing more dangerous things and taking additional risks.

I'm not sure why you would assume there isn't a similar spectrum of people skydiving. There are some people who skip on gear checks before they go out to dive, others that rush through putting their gear on and get inside the plane before they're finished strapping up. There are tons of people who downsize to smaller parachutes before they have accumulated enough experience to fly them safely. The one death I'm aware of at my dropzone involved a relatively inexperienced guy (a few hundred jumps) that, during a canopy skills course, decided he would impress his instructor by swooping and ended up misjudging his altitude at the beginning and smacking straight into the ground at high speed. He was under a perfectly good canopy, but just decided to do something stupid, which he clearly wasn't ready to.

I would argue that the statistics are inflated due to deaths from people doing stupid things, as in the examples I've mentioned above, and that skydiving is actually safer than the stats imply.

Hello. Newly licensed n00b skydiver here.

Non-skydivers tend to overestimate the risks associated with skydiving. It's certainly an activity that deserves respect. You can't ignore procedures, and you must pay attention to what you're doing. The same thing can be said for lots of things people do every day, such as driving a car. Get distracted by something that places your attention somewhere other than the road, and you can get you and others killed.

Last year there were an estimated 3.1 million jumps in the US. Total number of fatalities was 19. I'm finding it kind of hard to get statistics on the number of deaths due to slipping jacks, but I wouldn't at all be surprised to find that the risk is comparable, if not higher. Or you can drive for ~1500 miles (not all at once), and you've just matched the death risk for one skydive.

Holy shit, did you really just ignore the entire point the GP made in an extremely well thought-out post?

We shouldn't be asking, "are gas cars just as risky or more under the same conditions?" Maybe they are, but who the hell cares? The point is that even if every single other car out there would have killed all occupants inside and exploded taking out dozens of bystanders given the same accident while all the Model S did was catch on fire...there's still an opportunity here to see if Tesla can make improvements that would also prevent it from catching on fire.

I own a Model S, and I'm not worried about driving it. The thing isn't spontaneously combusting, it's catching on fire given very specific high-speed accident conditions where debris actually pierces through a quarter-inch plate and into the battery. Also, every owner has had ample time to get out of the car, and nobody has been hurt. It's an exceedingly safe car. That said, I don't see anything wrong with an investigation into the matter which would lead to further safety improvements. Maybe the answer is that they need a half-inch plate, I don't know. There is, however, no question that completely independent from the safety of other cars, we shouldn't ignore the opportunity to make any car safer than it is currently.