No, he doesn't.

Way to completely miss TWX's point.

SWAT teams should be culpable for their actions, but that doesn't exonerate this guy in the least.

If there is a defective product on sale that, used in a particular way, explodes and kills the operator, and the manufacturer knew about this and kept selling it, they are guilty of something. If you know about it and trick another person into using the explody-product in the explody-way, you're a murderer too.

This is at least manslaughter and probably murder, in the same sense as pointing a gun in somebody's general direction and shooting is still murder if your eyes are closed and you honestly didn't expect to hit them based on your shitty aim.

I would say "hand me the red Lego". Possibly following it up with "all the red Lego" if they only give me some of it, which I could understand. If they gave me just one piece I'd think they were being a smart-ass. That's also how I would write it in general unless I had a legal reason to recognise the registered trademark.

I've only ever seen people say "Legos" on the Internet, starting with that Penny-Arcade comic. I've never actually heard somebody say that in person. Same with "Lego bricks", except I think I may have heard that on the Lego movie or written on a Lego box. I have used "Lego pieces" and "piece of Lego", which seems more accurate since they aren't all brick-like.

I've come to understand that there seem to be enclaves of people that treat Lego like it refers to an individual piece, but to me that's a weird synecdoche. It's like calling a single noodle spaghetti so a meal of those noodles would be spaghettis. I know spaghetti is an Italian plural already, but I suspect most people who have said the word "spaghetti" is not aware of that fact, in the same way most Lego consumers don't know it's a Danish abbreviation (I didn't know that before this thread), but we all know the meal is spaghetti and not spaghettis.

It has one very obvious thing to do with the turing test: failing to distinguish software from another human being.

They aren't exactly the same, but that's not the same as having nothing to do with each other. The Slashdot article title was poetic, which is very fitting. I expect the Slashdot title was written by a human.

I started in Kindergarten in Ontario.

A quick Internet search suggests that Texas standards have science at grade 1 -- don't know about Kindergarten.

I think it's pretty universal that science starts when school starts.

That's not a contradiction at all.

The fact of the matter is, just because somebody says they are adding a new onerous task for safety, doesn't mean it actually nets you safety, or that it's reasonable.

Remember, cars kill far more people than nuclear power, even if you take the most insane exaggerations as the deaths from nuclear power throughout history, which implies that cars are, in aggregate, much more dangerous than nuclear power is, in aggregate.

The safest thing we could do is outlaw cars and aggressively eliminate them. The next safest thing we could do is design them such that they are physically incapable of moving faster than a below-average human can walk away. Think that's unreasonable? WHY DO YOU LOVE IT WHEN PEOPLE DIE IN CAR ACCIDENTS??!?!? I can't think of a reason ANYONE would want the vehicular transport industry to be less safe than it could possibly be. Except that this is a strawman and real life is about considering issues in context.

I can also tell you that every power source -- every one of them -- has dangers involved. Yes, all of them. Eventually you hit a point where your best choice for safety still doesn't meet your wild standards, so to meet safety standards you have to use the *less safe* option which nevertheless has less strict safety standards.

So what would be neat to know is what is being softened here, so we could tell whether it's a good or a bad idea. It could be either way. Everyone assuming that softening the standards is a bad thing, based on literally no information, has demonstrated themselves to be unqualified to make judgements because they have presupposed the conclusion. What I do know is that nuclear safety is very highly regulated to begin with, and I like that there is such regulation, and my only problem is that some common sources that are beastly-dangers do not undergo similar rigour like the much-put-upon fossil fuels.

How many $1 bills do you carry in your pocket???

It took humans 3200 years. Why do you assume that the average species is *way better* than humans?

In any case though, I thought it was pretty clearly talking about nipping things in the bud, sterilizing all life at any point in the massive timeline between the first self-replicator to a civilization capable of avoiding or defending against gamma ray bursts. The amount of time it actually takes is probably some random variable, and all things considered, how long it took us is probably around average. Earth life existed about 3.5 billion years or more before we came along.

The It's not nearly close enough. The Milgram experiment showed that people preferred science to leaving each other alone. That's the opposite of proving that people prefer killing to science.

The Stanford Prison Experiment showed some dark things about humanity but it didn't prove anything close to the original claim.

A scientific experiment that shows circumstances in which humans are shitbags, does not show that all negative statements about humans are true. That's a total logical disconnect.

He was complimenting you. Ironically, it is you who needs to examine your biases and errors in interpretation.

He's saying that the person you were responding to was spewing self-loathing crap, as evidenced in lines like:

In other words, he was agreeing with you and you insulted him for it.

The Fermi paradox assumes no such thing. This guy's explanation of the Fermi paradox does -- and the fact is, that's a valid assumption *until* such life becomes sufficiently advanced. The idea is that maybe these things happen so frequently that no species can become sufficiently advanced between apocalyptic gamma ray bursts.

No, it says that what we know of the probability of intelligent life seems to be so shockingly high that we should be able to find it without even bothering to look for exotic life, life that's not located on a planet, etc.. Everything you have said about alternative habitats only strengthens the Fermi Paradox.

Nobody is trying to solve the Fermi paradox by looking for microbes on Mars, because we're pretty convinced there's no civilization there. At best, discovering a microbe there might modify one term of the Drake Equation in such a way as to make the Fermi Paradox *more* puzzling. Not finding any microbe is, frankly, the null hypothesis so it wouldn't move the needle.

What does the medium of the threat have to do with its credibility?

100k doesn't sound right at all for somebody making 140k a year in non-stock (base+bonus). I would have guessed more around the 30k-40k mark. Quick searches for some well-known Silicon Valley companies corroborate that. Can you support the claim that anybody making 140k should expect 100k of stock?

You don't think that deliberately causing a panic with the intent to hurt people is an action? I think you're being deliberately obstinate on this point. That's like saying it's not your fault for pulling the trigger, it's the bullet's fault for jumping out of the gun so quickly.

"This man murdered my son!", regarding a person who you know full well did no such thing, is an example of speech that is expressly intended to cause harm and has no real value. This is why when you're giving testimony in a courtroom your right to free speech is deliberately abrogated and perjury is criminalized.

Sometimes people can make good points in the process of making bad arguments. This historical context is interesting but ultimately irrelevant. Unless you intent to advance a slippery slope argument.

Does a real fire in a packed theater force people to act? Suppose you set such a fire, but you cleverly arranged it so that people were in no real danger, but had every reason to believe that they were in real danger. You are the theater owner and harmed no-one else's property. People predictably panic. Have you committed no crime? You are completely innocent?

If not, what is the essential difference? In both cases, there was the impression of danger from fire without actual danger from fire.

If so, then if a man literally holds a gun to your head (and, for that matter, the heads of those close to you) and said he will kill you unless you aid him in stealing all the jewellery from the jewellery store, are you fully responsible for your actions? Even if it turns out the gun wasn't loaded?

What about the guy goes around yelling "fire", or "sniper", or whatever, whenever he sees a gathering by members of a political party he opposes? Is he not now an agent restricting free speech?

Yelling fire in a crowded theater is a threat. Credible threats were never considered to be protected free speech by basically any society.

No, quantum mechanics is a thing humans invented. Newtonian mechanics is a thing humans invented.

Gravity (aka gravitational behaviours) and quantum behaviours existed previous to any human.

As for Einstein? Einstein "invented" quantum mechanics in about the same sense that Shakespeare "invented" English.