The notion that anyone can arbitrarily impose a "correct" way of doing something simply because they have power, influence and authority went out with the Victorians. Those of us living in the Age of Empricism require objective, measureable effects to distinguish the (usually mulitple) correct way(s) of doing something from the multitude of incorrect ways.

So imposing standards is incorrect, then?

Got any data to show that it's harmful?

It's not the same. The button pushers are deliberately tricking themselves. I have thought carefully and concluded that something is actually true. The fact that I find that truth satisfying is secondary.

If you experience the feeling of love, does it matter whether it's directed toward another human or toward a mannequin? I think so, and I have a system of values in which to frame that difference. If you think that we're only atoms, then a feeling is just a feeling.

What you just said PRESUMES that a feeling is just a feeling, then implies that believing otherwise is silly. That's not an argument; it's a snub.

My argument was that you can't have it both ways. If "the universe is all there is" as Carl Sagan has said, then the rest of his statements in the intro to Cosmos that spiritualize our discovery of it are rubbish. If you're going to be a strict materialist, you have to say that curiosity and censorship, love and rape, heroism and murder are all equal and irrational: just complex movements of some atoms that will one day be cold and motionless.

Of course, I don't believe that. But I have a framework of thought that allows for intrinsic value. Which is why I have reason to reject a "utopia" of perfect earthly happiness if it has no moral basis.

Or to pose a more interesting question: What is utopia if not happiness, and if you don't care how does an invasion of privacy (in and of itself) affect your happiness?

Your question actually exposes a very interesting difference between materialists and religious people. Let's put it another way: if you could push a button and feel deliriously happy the rest of your life, would you?

If the universe is meaningless and your only desire is to be happy until you die and rot, you should absolutely do it. If you object with statements about "justified happiness" and larger meaning, you'd better have a worldview that confers objective meaning.

A Christian like me, for example, would say that such happiness would be cheap, morally empty, and brief compared to eternity, and that you would have wasted your chance at doing anything significant during earthly life.

But when someone like Richard Dawkins talks about things like meaning, I say "pshaw. By your reckoning, meaning must be an illusion created by your genes to help you survive." You can't have it both ways.

If their trains are like the ones that go past our office, they could do a lot more aerodynamic good by making the train cars rounder, smoother and pointier than by coating their surfaces with something like glass. Why worry about microscopic roughness when you've got ridges an inch deep?

Too late. I already have holes in my roof from this irksome Chrome behavior, and the rain that came in shorted out my computer and ruined the delicious cake I was making.

I am not sure whether this indicates a lowering of level or just a change in the way the world works.

Good point. My question: how did we get all the English grammar rules we have now, considering that English itself evolved haphazardly? I suspect that it was like this: some people wrote things that were clear and easy to understand, and others imitated them. Still others observed and codified their practices into rules, then taught them to students.

If that's the case, every generation can do the same. Language is a means to an end. Writing that is confusing and unclear will tend to be less influential, and something like natural selection will do the rest.

Yeah. I think it's important to consider how a well-intentioned policy can hurt the economy and the people it's trying to help. But you are right about employers having way more power than employees, and it may be that the laws you've endorsed here are the best policies.

It is and should be illegal to fire an otherwise good employee because of their gender, race, religious beliefs or non performance affecting disabilities. While you have at will termination, you can't really protect against that fairly.

If a company shows a pattern of always firing people when it learns they are Muslim, you could draw some conclusions, but yes, this would be hard to prove, particularly for small employers.

The second is that when employees have a reasonable certainty that if they perform well they will have a job tomorrow, they are more likely to retain consumer confidence and put money back into the economy.

OK, but if companies have a reasonable certainty that if they hire someone, then later realize that they suck, it will be a huge hassle to fire them, maybe they just won't hire them in the first place, which hurts the economy.

I just heard a story on the radio about how hard it is to find a place to live in Paris. The reason? Tenant protection laws make it nearly impossible to evict someone. So landlords set ridiculous requirements for their renters, preferring to have an empty apartment than to have a deadbeat they can't evict. Some tenant protection is probably good (I want to have it, personally), but it's an example of how laws that sound good have unintended consequences for the people they aim to protect.

There's already a natural incentive for employers to keep GOOD employees. If Microsoft fires its best people when times get tough, Google or Apple will hire them and Microsoft will get out-competed as punishment for their shortsighted actions.

To a certain extent it also protects companies too. Your boss may or may not represent the best interests of the company he or she works for. The fact that they personally hate you might have nothing to do with your performance or value to the company.

So you're protecting companies against their own incompetent promotion practices? Again, if a company chooses bad managers, their profits will suffer. And red tape might not help anyway. If a manager hates you personally and wants to get rid of you, he/she can nitpick your performance and create a sufficient number of complaints, or else make you miserable while you try to ensure you're never 1 minute late, use your TPS report covers, etc, in order to avoid having enough marks to be legally fired. You can't make a bad manager good by passing laws.

I know, in the real world, there are lots of examples of bad managers, but there are also lots of examples of regulations that hurt good businesses. Given that nothing will be perfect, it seems that a simpler system is better.

I'm not saying all regulation is bad, but generally speaking, natural motivations are better than artificially imposed ones, because rules create unintended side effects and gaming of the system.

...frequent comments like "any monkey can make a web page" and "I can make a web page in Word"... like "making web pages" was what my job was actually about (and, yes, those are actual quotes from high-level professionals).

Yes, very annoying. But really, yes, you can make a web page in Word. What you can't make is a site that supports multiple languages, authenticates users, withstands hackers, processes orders, stores data in a database, scales to support heavy traffic, can run on multiple servers, uses AJAX to speed page loads and minimize bandwidth use, looks great in all browsers, is easy to navigate and accessible to the disabled, has a content-management system usable by non-coders, etc etc.

In short, you can't make a site that's suitable for a business in Word. You need a crapload of knowledge and skill.

What they're saying, effectively, is "I can build a doghouse in my backyard. How hard can skyscrapers be?"

Who cares? I want a planet with oceans of liquid chocolate, topped with icebergs of delicious candy.

Mmmmm, Candy Planet.

Being able to sack at any time without question seems to be a much more business oriented law than a people oriented law.

Seems reasonable to me. I can quit anytime I want; why can't they fire me anytime they want? I'm selling them my labor. They're free to buy labor from whomever they want, and I'm free to sell to whomever I want.

What complicates it is the weird parental relationship we've set up in the US where employers provide health insurance. That should change.

Free market folks would say that any entanglements - where I can't quit because I need the insurance, or the company can't fire me because the law or a contract prevents it - serve to keep people in sub-optimal jobs and drain productivity, which leads to fewer and lower-paying jobs overall.

I'm not an economist and I'm sure there are counterarguments, but it seems pretty straightforward to me. It sucks when you're the one who is fired. But that doesn't make it immoral.

Wow, this just takes MP3s to a whole new level!

Why MP3s are great:

1) They work on every device

Reasons to use these new MP3s:

1) They don't work on every device
2) They can do stuff that web sites and email already do better
3) They compromise your privacy and possibly your security
4) Like all DRM, they can misidentify you as a thief and disable your music

Wait, something is wrong with that second list...

If they fail, we don't have spammers anymore and if they win, well we have spam, but we also have strong AI! Win-win, I say.

Imagine you get lots of calls from clever con artists, along with your regular business calls. Imagine you've got a secretary who always has to deal with these people, distinguish social engineering attempts from legit calls, notify the cops, etc.

That's the spam wars with clever AI.