Comment Re:Transparency for the good (Score 1) 591
This is exactly the post I have been looking for. I think it's a net positive actually. It makes the world a global village, and most people to realize how pointless the war actually is.
This is exactly the post I have been looking for. I think it's a net positive actually. It makes the world a global village, and most people to realize how pointless the war actually is.
Simple (in ideal world): FDA is employed and controlled by the citizens, so it cannot be paid by the producers it can control. So it's not operating on a free market basis - if it would, then it could sell its services to anyone, and would come into conflict of interest.
Some of us have been saying it for 30 years, going back to "copy protected" cassette tapes... and our voices are hoarse by now.
FTFY
I am not sure how hashing log entries in sequence is going to help. If you were to tamper the logs, you could still recalculate the hashes since the first entry you modified.
However, if you would add a hardware device, through which all the log entries would be filtered, and this hardware device would have a read-only register containing the last (chained) hash, then it could be made secure.
If you're worried about the long term effects of global warming you'd be better spending your money on researching and developing Geo-engineering mega-projects because that is the only cost effective way you are going to prevent the worst effects. Yeah, the risks are large and the costs are non-trivial, but they are tiny compared to the costs of moving away from a fossil fuel economy at the rate that averting global warming would take.
I think you are very wrong. You have to consider the energy costs, not monetary costs. Adaptation costs energy. You can take this energy from fossil fuels, but here you are assuming that the energy cost of adaptation for extra carbon from these fuels (for its whole lifetime) will be less than the actual energy that you will get from them. If not, then it's just cheaper to switch to carbon-neutral energy source. And I think this is a very strong assumption, and in fact economic analyses show that the trying to adapt to global warming is more costly than trying to mitigate it. Also, considering that eventually you will have to adapt to carbon-neutral sources anyway, why not do it now and avoid waste of energy?
Yeah, the risks are large and the costs are non-trivial, but they are tiny compared to the costs of moving away from a fossil fuel economy at the rate that averting global warming would take.
I think you are very wrong. You have to consider the energy costs, not monetary costs. Adaptation costs energy. You can take this energy from fossil fuels, but here you are assuming that the energy cost of adaptation for extra carbon from these fuels (for its whole lifetime) will be less than the actual energy that you will get from them. If not, then it's just cheaper to switch to carbon-neutral energy source. And I think this is a very strong assumption, and in fact economic analyses show that the trying to adapt to global warming is more costly than trying to mitigate it.
Non-dictatorship criterion is an artifact of the theorem's assumptions that preferences are ordered sets. There are voting methods (range voting) that do not use ordered preferences, but numerical values, and they don't suffer from "dictatorship" problem. In these methods real preferences of a person can be arbitrarily distant (by any metric) from the voting result. By definition, there has to be a set of people most close to the result, but that doesn't mean that any of them is a "dictator".
In my opinion, the name of the criterion is wrong, and I suspect Arrow called it that way for political reasons.
The problem with crony capitalism (which is ultimately what OWS is about) is the fault of corrupt politicians in DC, who listen to the voices of corporations instead of the people.
So you believe that you can have high levels of social inequality, but low government corruption? In my opinion this is very naive, but I would like to know how you justify that belief.
This sums up nicely what is wrong today. No actual work has to be done, market will solve all our problems.
No need to plan - the invisible hand will do that. No government interventions into economy neccessary - the markets will stabilize themselves. No need to innovate - the market will pay the qualified people if it feels there is not enough of them. No need to have any regulations about consumer products - the market competition will take care of that. No need to check the politicians - they are competing with each other.
In short, people don't want to do anything, and rely on markets to "solve" the problem. The speculative finance bubbles and really short-term thinking in economy managed by MBAs, this is where it got us.
I think you are confused. The Minecraft world actually *is* blocky, so it's rendered exactly as it should look like.
Ah, Switzerland... The population of New York City, spread across the area of Maryland, where social stratification is hidden by a stigma against looking too rich or looking too poor.
Doesn't sound much different from U.S. Anyway, I think there is evidence that small countries are more business friendly, because their only chance to be successful is to attract trade (or finance). Larger countries can't rely entirely on that, because they have too large population to be supported only by trade. So successful smaller countries generally do have lower taxes than successful large countries.
You're missing the other observed evidence of a direct democracy: ancient Athens, where playwrights swayed politics more easily than politicians did.
Comparing anything ancient to today is not meaningful. Even though this is commonly said, it should also be said the system that ancient Athens had was way superior to anything else of that era. Also, if someone needs to resort to manipulation, that's already a victory. To manipulate masses is always more expensive than having direct control (by force) over them. Maybe you don't see it that way, but that's because you never lived in totalitarian regime. I also take offense when someone talks about "ruling mob", completely ignoring the real problem, i.e. those who actually do the manipulation. They are the problem, not the people! You can manipulate almost anyone, high IQ or not, any magician can attest to that.
You're also assuming a requirement of absolute morality, where whatever you want is morally right. In your example, it depends entirely upon what expert visited your home and what your actions are in response to their suggestions are. If an interior decorator came and suggested you change the color scheme of your kitchen, you are certainly free to do so or not, as you like. If the expert is a serial killer suggesting good ways to torture victims, I don't believe you should be allowed to follow his suggestions.
No, that's wrong. I only assume there are subjective morals and the democracy is a good way to agree on common morality. It's you who imposes absolute morality onto others in saying that other people should not be allowed to listen to serial killers.
At the level of the United States government, every decision affects millions of people. The simple choice to reject an expert's opinion in favor of a celebrity's (for instance) has consequences far more serious than the color of your dishes. Yes, the expert opinions are wrong on occasion, but I believe that happens less often than the naive and easily-swayed opinions of the ruling mob.
Well, what evidence do you have, apart from "I believe"? There is for example a study from CATO institute that statistically shows that people are more able to limit politicians' spending that politicians do themselves. Similar studies have been done in Switzerland on cantonal level and confirm this finding. It's not a coincidence that the most successful countries in the world are usually also the most democratic (i.e. USA on local level and Switzerland).
I think you miss the point of (semi)direct democracy. The point is more power to the people who can keep politicians in democratic countries in check. In Switzerland, you can observe this directly - because people can decide things, politics is much less controversial. And as I said, if anything, there is evidence that the masses are actually more conservative than politicians.
And at last, there exist interesting proposals to solve the "expert" problem. My favorite is that you select a handful of people from population randomly (kinda like jury) and let this committee understand a particular problem for a few days (i.e. by inviting any experts on the matter and so on). This committee then makes a recommendation based on that, which other people may decide to follow in referendum. The random choice of people on committee ensures no conflict of interests. You can also have more than 1 such committee independently.
A direct democracy, swayed easily by the latest celebrity gossip and completely ignoring the general consensus of the relevant scientific communities?
Is it? Empirically, if anything, direct democracies are actually more conservative than representative democracies. You know, politicians tend to give money to their friends in business, but from time to time this actually produces useful results. I am a big fan of direct democracy, and the conservativism of general population is the biggest problem.
But maybe you were just swayed by the gossip, ignoring the evidence (i.e. Switzerland).
Anyway, your argument is also morally wrong. Would you argue that if I invite an expert to my home (for example an architect), I have to obey his suggestions? Or can I decide that myself? If the latter, why shouldn't the general public have this freedom? (But again, don't worry. People in democracy actually listen to the experts too much, that's part of the reason why we have economic crisis...)
No, I think he means we would have a distributed democratic authority to do that decision.
I question that there is a better system!
Is the argument then supposed to be that the abuse is intrinsically linked to the products? I have a hard time imagining you'll be able to pull that argument off.
Well, that argument does exist, it's called TINA - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Alternative.
To do nothing is to be nothing.
