Oh really? Care to prove that someone who never smoked ever obtained lung cancer from second hand smoke? They have a hard enough time proving first hand smoking causes cancer because a decently large portion of people who smoke never get it. (As evident by those 80 year old ladies who still are smoking in nursing homes.)
I use MPUI on Windows.
It's just like Media Player Classic but with an Mplayer backend.
Just a note: Knowing how much of the planet is covered in water is *not* scientific literacy. That is trivia knowledge. If I need to know how much of the planet is covered in water (I'd guess 80%), I look it up, and decide if the definition matches my needs.
Scientific literacy would be understanding (1) how to research science you need (2) how to conduct a proper experiment (3) how to evaluate claims for obvious falsehood (4) how to check out non-obvious claims for falsehood, which is related to #1, (5) how to identify whether you are yourself competent in an area of science, or not, and (6) how to find someone who *is* competent, if necessary.
I hate it when people mistake factoids for science.
I hate it when people mistake popular blurbs for reason.
Best post ever, you are exactly right. Who wants to be a millionaire is not science.
I would say the people out there that actually really understand science is much worse than that.. all the people who believe in the crazy garbage we were all told growing up like "Don't go swimming after eating" Why did people believe that? Because they believed that the blood would pool in your stomach in order to help you digest food in the god damed dark ages.
I don't think we need more teachers.. most of the time they themselves are full of bias and even the books are wrong.. We need more people asking questions about what we all know is true like Penn and Teller.
.. but questions remain like.. can I operate this in a special type of environment like.. say... under the chair in the visitor room in.. you know.. a large government bureau of some kind?
Yes, but my first thought was: Am I going to have line voltage on the end of the Cat6 cable plugged in to that thing if something goes a little wrong inside?
Hmm, on fault become ether killer.. ya know.. perhaps you may want that if it was discovered under that chair.
It's not a cheep design.. it's a feature. lol
Good point, how likely is this thing to catch fire, what kind of environment can it operate in?
I'm fairly sure it's not going to to detonate when you plug it in.. but questions remain like.. can I operate this in a special type of environment like.. say... under the chair in the visitor room in.. you know.. a large government bureau of some kind?
These things would be good to have in the manual and product description.
A guy I worked with use to be like that. He's like "My guild is going on a raid, can you go check on this for me.."
Yeah.. really..
Anyhow, yeah it switch port security in Cisco, and you can allow a port a various amount of mac's before it will stop responding to new ones. I know one company in Redmond does this and it's a HUGE pain.
You take things to such extremes, lol
People always have to bring out the "baby's heads on pikes" and "shooting strangers in the street" arguments against freedom because they are only appealing to the fear factor.
You could simply require people on your property were NV. What about not on your property? Well do don't control that do you. It's possible for a free society to deal with cases like this, although I think it wouldn't matter to most.. unless there was something like the black death going around.
Most likely a private school would require it or not, case closed, nobody gets shot nobody gets forced to take anything.
Freedom is about choice. Mandatory is NOT freedom.
So, despite your rhetoric about just sharing opinions, you're going to belittle me for not sharing yours? And no, I do understand your concept. I just think its wrong. Its VERY clear that you don't understand mine, as you're shoehorning my argument into the standard libertarian rhetoric. Suffice to say, I am not an authoritarian, I'm not a republican, I don't think I'm your king, I do understand the libertarian philosophy very well, and I think that its a huge load of steaming bullshit because I *do* understand it very well.
Ok, except I'm not a libertarian. You are absolutely free to hold whatever view you like, no matter how illogical or inconsistent it is. Don't let me stop you from believing what you want. However.. to protect your world view and ideology from further danger.. you may not want to read past this point.
My position is that societies are based upon shared responsibility; a sort-of social contract if you will. It is from this contract that rights are derived. You can claim that rights just exist as much as you want, but short of a society to protect those rights, or compensate you when those rights are violated, any debate about whether they exist is academic.
A popular notion.. but proper understanding of these is more than academic, it's critical because the resulting framework you base you reasoning on is based on this concept.. to say it's trivial is rather astounding and shows your ignorance. If you can't figure out if rights are natural or not, everything else you build your reasoning upon will be flawed.
Stop, go figure that out, then get back to me.
To approach your "social contract" statement factually I would ask where *is* this contract? I didn't sign it. I don't agree to it. How can you be a party to a contract an agreement that you don't agree to? Although you would just respond to this by saying something to the effect that the contract is justly forced upon me for some reason or other.
I would must rather approach this from a philosophical angle then the factual one because I believe it is a better argument. It doesn't matter if it's legal, it matters if it's just. To rephrase your point.. what your saying is "society" creates "rights". Basically the populace collective allows each other liberty. This extends to the logic that rights flow from those that are governed. Do I correctly understand you? (I don't know what you mean by "sort-of" either it is or it isn't, make up your mind.)
This is also a very old argument.. it is a rehashed version of the "consent of the governed" VS. "divine right of kings" argument. People who believe as I do argue that men are born free, and derive their liberty from their humanity, on the other side of this argument are those such as yourself who believe that men are only granted their liberty from their government, be it a king or form of popularly elected body. They believe there needs to be an intermediary between nature and man that grants rights.
I don't know exactly where people get the idea that government grants them their rights but its pretty fallacious. I hear people make this argument then see that they get upset because of Chinese human rights violations. If you believe what you do, why get angry about that I would ask.. their government simply choose diffrent rights than your government did.. isn't that ok? The answer is NO It's not ok.. and the reason why is your rights do not come from a contract, a piece of paper, an elected body, a majority, a ruling communist party, a oligarchy, or a king. You have rights, because you and nobody else has ownership over your own body.
There is a good line in the movie The Patriot about there being no difference between 1 tyrant 3000 miles away and 3000 tyrants 1 mile away. Just because you vote does not mean the actions as a result are mortal, just, or right. Tyranny is tyranny it doesn't matter how you get there. Voting to have force used upon others is a form of violence.
If I come and enslave you, then all your sophistry about how you have a right to your body is moot: you really won't have time to think about it much while you're working in the coal mines. You can claim they exist even if they are violated, but if a hypothetical society does not "recognize your rights," then the end-result is the same as if they did not exist. Nor do they exist in nature: if I kill the bear and take its land, and no-one is around to stop me, then that bear's land is mine.
I see, so I must be enslaved in order to be free from enslavement? This is your logic? I say rather that I have a right to defend myself from you who would enslave me regardless of how you attempt to do it. If you come to enslave me you might end up dead. Be it with a gun or a law your effect is the same, your using force on me resulting in my right to defend myself. Today I slave away and pay half my wages in taxes (overall), in effect I work half the time as a slave and half the time for myself. The only reason they do not take all of peoples wages is because they would revolt. You need to keep your slaves happy and obedient, right?
Just because I have decided not to fight your goon's who would kill me if I did not pay taxes, doesn't make it right. It's still theft and stealing is still wrong.
Rights exist because we want them to exist, and we want them to exist because they are beneficial to our society. A lot of people would consider this heresy, but I consider it a sobering dose of reality: my rights are only mine if I work to keep them.
Your statements are so riddled with mis-think I really need to painfully de-construct your logic in order to understand you.. Let me try here.
You say that rights exist because they are for the betterment of society? You seem to show almost no understanding between the difference between a law and a right. Rights *are* a philosophical concept based upon the foundation of property; as I said before it's based on observations of various aspects of nature, but they exist for the betterment of the individual not the group. For instance the group may be "better off" if you or others were working in a coal mine, the reason you are not is because others do not have a right to force you to labor for them, no matter who it's better for.. you must choose to do that of your own volition. You and no other person, or group of other people present ownership over your body, and you are free with all the rights man has ever dreamed of, but you are still partly enslaved, thus part of those rights are infringed upon.
Jefferson once said that you only have the rights you are willing to fight and die for.. that may be true.. but if you don't fight, it doesn't make the actions of the person who is infringing upon those rights just. I wish people would fight.. just a little.. If every non-violent person arrested for drug usage (and other vice crimes) in this country demanded their absolute human right to a trial by jury instead of simply accepting the punishment the state offers them in a plea bargain the enforcement of these unjust laws would grind to a halt practically overnight. They would be overwhelmed and unable to enforce it, and that would lead to the abolishment of these laws.
No, I don't think majority rule is always good, which you'd know if you cared to read any of my posts. I don't think its always bad either. That's why I support forms of government which work on representative democracy, but have built-in forms of checks based on the social contract of rights. Nor do I think I have a right to dictate everything in your life, as you accused me of (via the word authoritarian). But being allowed in society carries responsibilities. If you don't uphold these, then you are removed from society. We call this "prison." One of those responsibilities is to respect the rights of others. In turn, society has a responsibility to you: to protect your rights from others. And that's what it boils down to: shared responsibility. And we engage in this because it increases our survival chance.
I am not part of your society because I choose not to be. The reason you are a authoritarian is because you believe you have a right to dictate something in my life. You allow me some freedom, by your grace, but you have no right, none, at all, zero, to decide what I may do with my life. The extent of your power to control others ends with your own body. You *can* defend yourself from an attacker, you can ask *others* to defend you.. but you can not attack others and you can not hire thugs to attack others. It doesn't matter if the people you hire wear a badge and a gun, if they are not acting in defense of self or defense of another it is wrong, immoral, and disgusting.
To what level your responsibility ends is a matter of debate. Libertarians believe in a very limited personal responsibility towards society, and a somewhat limited responsibility of society towards them. They pretty much believe in little-to-no responsibility towards society, but expect society to respect and protect certain rights. They hold property to be the ultimate "right." The right to life equates to the right to not be murdered.
Your crazy, I have no responsibility moral or otherwise to a concept you created in your mind.
I, on the other hand, believe in some personal responsibility towards society. I believe that its our responsibility to create a society in which people have some level of safety. I believe the right to life extends to expending at least some effort to protecting people who are sick, disadvantaged, and unlucky. I believe this should be limited. I also believe that its our responsibility to forgo some personal freedoms to achieve this: some property (taxes), some privacy (vaccines). In return, society's responsibility to protect you is greater; if you are poor and dying, then it has a responsibility to heal you.
No it doesn't. How did they get such a responsibility they did not agree to? Government can't make life fair, it's a fools dream.
So, to answer your question, no I don't think the doctor should work for free. I think we should all chip in a little. How much? That's up to debate, and I honestly don't know the answer. I think it should be the one that maximizes the benefit to society; not just along monetary means, but freedom, security, and other considerations. Its a hard optimization to make, because there's so many variables.
I understand, you want everyone to be part slave. It's pretty disgusting actually.. but worse is how prevalent this mindset is. You believe it's right and necessary, just others believed that war was necessary, or forced sterilizations necessary.. "we gotta save the planet after all".
And how exactly would this concept you created in your mind "society" know what is best for you? How could the ideological concept of society know know what an individuals actual needs are? Perhaps you believe government politicians and bureaucrats should know. How does this process happen in your little world?
In my world it happens with something called the market and the price index. In effect through no rule, or anarchy, the mass individual needs are met because the individuals themselves demand such.
If you believe governments *are* able to then perhaps you should read this article. http://mises.org/story/3105 To sum it up, the Soviets believed they could figure out the needs of the people too.. they failed at it so badly, it resulted with them obtaining copies of American catalogs because they were unable to figure out what price to set for items. They didn't know if a new coat cost more, than a box of toilet paper, than a barbecue grill, they had no real idea what was needed.
As far as being part of the majority, its not pompousness. I would gather that most people would not want to repeal the law that mandates emergency care. From your point of view, that would be enslaving the doctor. From my point of view, that's societal responsibility. The law was enacted because most people agree with me. Most people agree that the poor should not be left to die, and thus welfare came about. First-world countries almost uniformly agree with this level of responsibility.
You see, ideas evolve too. Bad ones that result in negative impact to the "host" (that's you) typically die out. Ones that bring prosperity spread. Rights, as an idea, are spreading, because it brings net benefit to a society. Social safety nets also bring a net benefit to society. You see, the flip-side to the whole social responsibility thing is that people who feel that society is not upholding their end of the bargain likewise don't feel a need to uphold their end. That leads to crime, riots, and revolution. Very unpleasant things.
What do you mean by "Rights, as an idea, are spreading"? That's a pretty confusing statement, to whom? Where in the world is more liberty being created?
People through the ages always believed in tyranny. They believed in tribal and religious forms of control, they believed in civilized forms like the Republic of Rome. The use of force on others to control them is old news. The truly untested and novel idea is the idea of freedom not the idea of control. In the whole history of man there have been countless systems of control and force, yet less than 10 systems that could be considered truly free.
This makes my job difficult because I need to get you cavemen up to a particular level of reasoning so you will stop bashing in each others heads with clubs.. and to tell you the truth I'm not very smart.. the only thing I have is the ability to see the violence in the system and the morals to stand against it. Your philosophical views (if you even knew you had them before you started this conversation) are horribly flawed. In reading your writings I've come to believe you generally think that people are ignorant, immoral, and greedy.. and that force needs to be used against them because if it is not the concept of "society", the sole pillar of virtue you believe in, will topple over and we will have chaos with fire and brimstone rising from the country as the ignorant mobs loot and plunder each other. It's almost exactly like a view of religious laws and a hell afterlife for those that do not follow them. Your solution to your problem is absurd on its own. That is to place people who ignorant, immoral, and greedy in positions of power over others and somehow hope that they do not abuse those powers. That somehow people who have those traits by force if left alone, would not use them by force if placed in power that of a majority.
To be frank.. that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. No, despite your fears, your neighbors generally are not lying in wait to ambush and rape you, all except *dammit to hell*, that police car might drive by.. People get along, because they by in large they *want* to get along. It's in our interest to work together to achieve goals we want together and these goals can be accomplished without force.
You can have structure without force, you can have security without police. Just because your not creative enough to envision how people working together can bring this about without using force doesn't mean it can't happen. Private roads exists, private garbage collections exists, private emergency and medical services exist, private security exist, these things are not magic and you always remain in control of them because you can fire them if they become corrupt. They exist today, all of them in America. North Oaks, MN is one example that has private roads, peoples property ownership extends to the middle of the road and somehow amazingly the place is not ablaze with rampaging riots.
"My comment about you leaving was simply this: society has decided upon a certain contract."
There you go in referring again to your concept of society as a personal pronoun.
"You don't like this contract."
Doesn't matter if I like it or not. I did not consent to it. I'm not party to the terms.
"You can present your ideas and try to change this, but its not our responsibility to change it for you."
You can have whatever type of contract you want with others who agree. I don't care what kind of socialist commune you and others decide to live on voluntarily. I object when you force people who do not consent to your rules.
"The other option is to leave,"
Maybe I don't want to leave. Where do you get the right to force me to leave? Why can't you just leave me and others who wish to be so, alone?
"in which case you'd be hard pressed to find another country with our standard of living that's closer to the libertarian ideal."
Yes, we have the best prison around. Our cancer is the best cancer. Our slave farm is the best slave farm. I should just *accept* it right.. I should just *obey*.
"Regardless, if you are demanding that we accommodate your selfishness (and selfishness is not necessarily bad, as its an important survival trait, but that's what it is when you demand more responsibility from society than you put in), then I can't say that you're any less authoritarian than I am."
I agree to leave you alone. I want you to create whatever type of "society thing" you want and be wildly successful at it. I just want to be left out of it. Do you not see that you do not offer me the same level of freedom I offer you?
That is the reason I call you an authoritarian. Is stateist a term you like more? It's all the same.. you want your "society" to control others, I don't.
"You want me to change my behavior to suite your ideal world, so lets not throw stones when we're in glass houses eh?"
Ahh.. here you go again.. you must have incorrectly understood my position. No, when I say I don't believe force is just, it means I don't believe in using force on you.
"To summarize, I'm not an authoritarian,"
You are the worst kind of brutish thug. Your the one who gets others to do your dirty work for you. Your the one who doesn't even understand the concept of using force on others isn't only wrong.. it's BARBARIC. You rationalize it away.. it's not "force" its for the "better good".. yeah right.
Sir.. governments acting in the "better good" has probbly murdered more men than all the diseases in history.
"I'm definitely not a Republican (I don't like any political party, Democrats and Libertarians included), I don't support slavery, I don't support the tyranny of the majority, and I do support rights, even though I think that you have to actively fight for them (and that the whole "you just have them" line is bullshit). I'm sure that makes me some sort of politically-disgusting creature to some, but oh well."
You can try to say you do not, but It's pretty clear you do. You can be peaceful you know.. it's not hard.. you just need to allow others freedom.. you need to allow them to do things you don't like..
I don't know what your issue is. It could be drug use, gay rights, or prayer in school.. but I do know what the answer is. The answer is more liberty, not more control.
You might want to take the slave test some day. The test is easy to take. Next time one of your masters orders you to do something, just kindly say no to them. If you succeed in saying no, then congratulations you are not a slave.. if you don't and are forced to comply, then you are a slave. Try this the next time your driving and someone pulls up behind you flashing red and blue lights.. just wave to them, tell them no and see how far you get.
You've insulted me, and said I needed more education because I don't agree with you. You failed to understand my argument. Since you called me pompous, I will rise to the occasion and fulfill your expectations: Given that you can't even understand blatantly simple subjects such as herd immunity and vaccination, I don't hold out much hope for you understanding this even after I clarified it. You've pretty much confirmed my theory that you're an asshole, and I think its you who needs some education. Maybe you'll pick up some reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. You might want to consider thinking about your own opinions rather than regurgitating other peoples', then treating other people like idiots when they don't agree with your re-processed arguments.
For all my faults, at least I think and change my beliefs as I get new evidence. Its why I stopped being a Libertarian.
I'd rather be an asshole than a thug. You never were a libertarian, because you don't understand even the very basics of it. The Libertarian party, and libertarians are not the same things. Libertarian with a capital L is a political party member, libertarian with a small l is someone who subscribes to the philosophy of liberty and the concept of self ownership. You may have been political a Libertarian, liking some of their stances and their political platform without being a libertarian, as in someone who actually understood *WHY* that was their platform.
Typically libertarians grasp the concept of liberty, these strange concepts I talk about would not be alien to a libertarian, but they often advocate for minimal government and work in the system..
I'm what you call a voluntarist, I believe that ALL interactions between people should be voluntary. It's related to anarchy but when you say anarchist people seem to think you wear a black mask and throw bombs, instead of someone who believes in no rule as what the word actually means.
[quote]Because deep down, a lot of people are stupid, ignorant and greedy animals that'll use any excuse they can find to further their own selfish needs and desires.[quote]
If you *really* believe that then why would you want to put them in positions of power over others? Do politicians not apply to this rule? hehe Perhaps they are the cream of the crop.. the upper echelon of human society.. right?
Get lost and take your society with you.
Let me guess, your a Marxist.
I agree with you. I don't know if vaccines work or not (not any more than they do). I *DO* however have a serious problem with them using force on people to get them to take them.
Yay for us +0's!
So what your saying is.. we need to absolve drug company's of legal liability?
I have a problem with that.
3 is illogical. (well all of it is but I've been there in the rest of it and it's an easy target.)
I *don't* pay to support other people, and I *won't*.
(and like everyone else on this thread, your probbly ready to have some cop shoot me in the face because you don't like that answer.)
Public health, like certain other things, cannot exist where we simply let people do whatever they want, hoping education is sufficient to the task. That's the harsh reality. In my town, we've had a serious TB outbreak among the homeless and drug-using community. Education is tried, but if they persist in behaviors that assure the spread of the disease, then they are forcibly quarantined.
What town is this? I find that action disgusting.
What if I say, you wont touch my children and by the way get the fuck off my yard.
What then?
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion
