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Comment Re:Zoning laws are tyranny (Score 4, Insightful) 611

What I always find fascinating is that the biggest libertarians invariably live in areas with very strong and expensive HOAs - if not outright gated communities.

Here's the thing: you don't live in your own universe. Where your activities impact and intersect with others, you need to come to agreements on how to behave with those others. Zoning laws are just one way to codify those agreements.

Comment Re:There is no vaccine for the worst diseases (Score 4, Informative) 1051

Our reasoning is that the vacine is highly likely to actually cause a case of Chicken Pox, while it does not provide an actual immunity worth the term.

What? ahref=http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/vaccination.htmlrel=url2html-1107http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/...> 98% immunity is pretty fucking good. From the same link: "However, the risk of getting shingles from vaccine-strain VZV after chickenpox vaccination is much lower than getting shingles after natural infection with wild-type VZV. " As far as I can tell, you're wrong on pretty much all counts.

Comment Re:Knowledge is the solution (Score 1) 1051

A democratic government isn't something separate from the population. The population gives legitimacy to the government through regular election. If you don't like the government, take it up with the population that elected it.

That said, this isn't even a case of tyranny of the majority. This is a case of the population codifying rules that are designed to prevent a few asshats from irreversibly harming many individuals and taxing society at large.

To put it in terms you understand: people got together and decided of their own accord that unvaccinated people present a massive and unwarranted risk to them, and they're setting up rules how the people who don't want to get vaccinated can interact with them. Furthermore, your personal freedoms end when they negatively impact my well-being.

Comment Re:Sexual Harassment shouldn't cost us knowledge (Score 1) 416

Deleting all of Cosby's TV shows and movies would still be wrong as they are a part of our cultural history.

No one is doing that though, there is a difference between no longer promoting something and erasing it from history.

To stretch the Cosby link further, you might (quite reasonably) think things Cosby did in the past are funny and even have value beyond pure humour, as social commentary etc. If that were the case and you know someone who had been abused by Cosby, would you choose to put a Cosby video on for them and expect them to find it an enjoyable experience?

That is the situation MIT is in. They aren't just dealing with 'theoretical' students who might somehow be deprived of some value that only those videos can impart. They are dealing with real students actually effected by the situation at hand.

If you wouldn't knowingly ask someone you care about to be entertained by someone who had abused them, why would you expect MIT to ask someone to be educated by someone who harassed them?

Comment Re:Just wondering... (Score 1) 416

If you can't separate presenter from content, that's your serious character flaw, leave the rest of us out of it.

If you were someone taking the course who had been harassed by him would you consider it a "serious character flaw" not to be able to "separate presenter from the content"?

I imagine a lot of people might find that difficult and wouldn't need to have a "serious character flaw" to struggle with it. I think it's entirely reasonable for MIT to ditch (and replace) the content if it means the effected people can continue on with their education without having the chap popping up in their courseware.

I don't think it makes sense to worry about the (theoretical) "students (...) punished by removing good lectures" and not consider the (evidently real) students actually effected by what has happened.

Comment Re:Just wondering... (Score 1) 416

Probably not much for the average person.

However I think that if there are people he harassed taking the courses (or who might like to take further courses in future) then it isn't a bad idea to cut him out of them rather than ask those people to interact with him further, even relatively passively on video.

Even if the lectures are high quality, they probably aren't irreplaceable.

Comment Re:the mysterious "us" (Score 4, Insightful) 178

Buildings don't decide anything, building owners do. The problem is that without building codes, building owners are incentivized to not make buildings earthquake safe: no one short of a civil engineer doing a tear-down analysis can figure out on their own if a building is earthquake-safe, which means that no one does, and everyone rolls the dice. Since earthquakes are rare, it's quite possible that the original builder will never be exposed to the results of shoddy building practices. However, it is guaranteed that someone will be. So we have a situation where the risk analysis is very difficult if not mandated ahead of time, the event is rare for a particular individual but guaranteed for a population, and the cost up-front for an individual is fairly large. The rational calculation for each individual builder is to not make it earthquake safe, and just claim it is ok. This shifts cost from individual builders onto the population at large.

Building codes are essentially the general population saying to individual builders "we made our risk-benefit analysis, and we're not going to subsidize you."

Comment Re:the mysterious "us" (Score 4, Insightful) 178

Shocking: building owners are supposed to pay others to maintain their buildings. What's the current world coming to? Wealthy owners should be able to have their work done for free, so that they can keep more of their hard-earned money.

The reason that the discussion isn't framed more to be about the safety of citizens is because it's assumed that people understand to have buildings not collapse in an earthquake is a generally good thing for everyone. Do you really have to have a discussion about how not having buildings collapse onto people inside them is a good thing or a bad thing? We even have some pretty good numbers of the costs associated with earthquakes, as they happen frequently enough in plenty of developed and undeveloped areas.

Comment Re:Another "taking" by the California government.. (Score 4, Insightful) 178

All they have to do is compile a list of buildings that the City deems to be unsafe, and the owners will be sufficiently encouraged to make the upgrades (or lose their present tenants.) No subsidies, no tax breaks, no cost to the city.

Ah yes, the magic of the free market. There's absolutely no cost associated with moving, and there is a ready supply of housing that offers everything that the unsafe housing does, minus the lack of earthquake readiness.

Folks: the U.S. government (or any part thereof) can't just march in and force property owners to change their property. Government has to compensate the owners for any taking of a property-owner's rights. If the City of L.A. wants to march in and say "you don't get to use your office building because it isn't earthquake-proof", then the City has to buy the property at fair market value.

Yes, because enforcing building codes constitutes a "taking". I'm sure you absolutely wouldn't do something like blame the government if buildings collapse in an earthquake due to lax building codes or lax enforcement.

The really sad part isn't that you actually believe this, it's that you're not the only one.

Comment Re:"Expected" to release methane (Score 2) 329

The Methane Clathrate gun is a pretty well known and understood situation. Methane Clathrates exist, the temperature at which they're released is understood, and the impact of all that methane on the atmosphere is also well understood. The only question that's still open is when exactly ocean temperatures will reach the range in which the gun will be triggered. Just hope you aren't around for it.

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