That is like saying that there being no difference between individual liberty and liberal government, freedom for people to make their own choices about their own life and be responsible for them, versus freedom for the state to help or protect you in any way that it sees fit for your own good.

Total anarchy is not the only form or "true" freedom. I wouldn't even say that is much freedom in any sense.

It is also easy to avoid controversy by never doing anything interesting ever, but I will agree that "common sense" is a much more polite term, and probably more socially acceptable. Good call since people that boring typically have nothing better to do than to blog about how upset they got when they were accused of being boring.

Obligatory

Too bad I'll never know... not really.

this only proves that social construct theory is nature rather than nurture / environmental. People form social groups through the avoidance of annoying and hostile relationships. It does not seem far fetched at all to think that people would trend towards useful, interesting, non-hostile, non-living things. People, including babies seek stimulation for learning. A playful robot would hold my attention, and I might lose interest if I thought there was a good chance he robot was going to cause me harm.

This "study" would have been much more interesting if they had only released the video tape and not shared their opinions.

Thanks for pointing that out for all of us. All posts may be useless, but yours is clearly least useless of them all, second only to this one pointing out how less useless your post is.

Gaining an understanding of the way the network of friends morphs based on wants and needs is interesting. Using that insight to try and maintain a maximum number of friends is questionable at best. I would much rather use such information to let people know that they do not need to feel guilty about unfriending because it is normal, or if the results seem irrational we can know how "normal" people think so that we can be sure to avoid such behavior in the future, even if just for ourselves.

TL;DR Now you know if you are normal on FB. Yay?

But all bets are off if it gets them laid by the surveyor.

I have heard several versions of that "saying", and not only is it a bit different each time, but I am starting to notice a pattern. Are you trying to say that Ron Jeremy has really only been with about 350 women?

Who told you?

Why not quantity and quality?

Actually trying to imagine this. A hat trick is one thing, but sleeping with 10 different people you have never slept with before, but never want to sleep with again, I am thinking something is SERIOUSLY wrong here. You might think after maybe 5 or so you might reconsider your game plan; Either you need better partners, or you are in desperate need of some training. In my experience, people that like what they get come back for more.

I think what is often over looked is that corporatism != free market. A corporation is a blend of free choices within a structure defined by the government that trades certain economic freedom for protectionism most often in the way of liability. But government protection against risk is already a violation of free market principles. When people are allowed to take risks but do not need to bear the consequences the rules of the game have been radically altered implicitly changing (in to way that conforms to natural law) the optimal strategy for gain.

Congress continually operates on the notion that it can modify the risk gain relationship and expect people to keep doing things the same way they were doing them before.

For example, one big business has a big idea, and it will be really good for everybody. The problem is that certain tax liabilities make it difficult to do business in a particular way, so they create a tax break for companies doing thing a particular way. Sounds fine until other business look at their models and will restructure to take advantage of the new rules having consequences that the legislature never intended, or at last never expected. So now that the business environment has been screwed up by bad legislation after businesses have adapted to the new rules, they blame the corporations for exploiting loop holes.

It would be like if there were a welfare system that said that anybody wearing a burlap shirt (clearly somebody quite poor) was entitled to $1000 in assistance. Now all the poor people are going to be helped. But what happens after? Some people with enough money that they do not need to wear burlap shirts keep wearing them because they know that if they stop wearing the shirt then they won't get the $1000 next month. Maybe not so bad. But what if a large number of people start going out and buying burlap shirts that never wore one before because they want the money? OR someone starts of a new big business mass producing burlap shirts to meet the new demand?

This isn't people being evil, it is the way people survive in nature. Government has an amazing power to manipulate the rules that guide people. They have a weapon more powerful than anybody is able to control. People are terrible at looking at secondary consequences of their actions. This is a common argument for government to step in and take control. But when an individual acts, other people are able to react and create new opportunities. But it is proportional to their size. The way this WORKS is the principle of spontaneous order. When government changes something, it vast and sweeping. Rather than one or a few people reacting to the influence of an individuals decision, everybody is required to adapt to everybody else. The most immediate effect may have been predictable, but what was already an organic cascade of cause and effect is going to take on a radically new semi-unpredictable direction. While some might like to think that simply repealing the bad law would fix the problem, it may have an equally large effect, but it will not have an equal reverse effect because it is no longer the same environment.

Corporations are not just legal fictions, but "the corporation" as an idea and a law is a public institution.

In short, BAD copyright law has caused people to behave in extremely unnatural ways. People are forced to design their business around the law, but after that, it is laissez-faire (the pieces will fall where they will). Government continues to taint the landscape dictating where the pieces will fall. The unintended result (giving them the benefit of doubt) is three massive media corporations plus one big lobby. Primarily, copyright is so powerful that whoever owns the most can kill anybody with less with the real prize of being able to write the next copyright bill.

The idea that copyright exists to promote science and the useful arts is beyond a joke as it has really manipulated focus from content creation to content creation and distribution control as a primary focus revolving around suing consumers of information, and taking control of the law itself.

Hate the merger, but remember that this is the symptom of bad public policy, not something that calls for one.

'Democracy' is not, nor has it ever been the form of government of the United States.

What specifically are you referring to when you say this is just like any other infrastructure protection bill?

Good citizens should fear government as an evil, last resort, solution to problems that can not otherwise be solved. Simply asserting that if it gets bad that there will just be a revolution is intellectual sloth, if not at least a gross misunderstanding the Declaration of Independence and events leading up to the American Revolution.

Are you saying that flat earth theory is a conspiracy by Intel? Hmm... I see a good parody site in the future.

Why is Intel trying to convince people the world is flat? I am sure data mining enough information about Intel one could work up a pretty good argument. As Homor Simpsons once said: "Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true. Facts, schmacts."

I like to look at the positive side.

There is a direct link between the advancement of civilization and the ability to exchange information quickly. Spoken language, to writing, to mass print, to radio and telephones to the ever increasing bandwidth and connectedness of the internet; each have resulted in radical leaps in the advancement of civilization and brought about revolution. This is also why I argue that information freedom is vital to all progress. Civilization is one giant parallel information processing machine. What we know of AI has shown us that exposure to information is the core of intelligence and learning, and processing is far superior to filtering. And superior processing methods by humans will will evolve and spread in symbiosis with the technology that we create.

Sure, the large majority of people do not use the opportunity before them in the most effective way as determined by other people. On the other hand, it amuses me how much some people can be greatly concerned about the effectiveness of other people's time use.

I doubt I would have any interest in using an ipad even if I was given one for free, but gratz to anyone that finds one enjoyable. I know I enjoy all kinds of things few other people could give a crap about.