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At 3/2/11 08:04 PM, DP36 wrote: I'd probably press the button, is that abnormal?

Supposedly it is because you don't respect the person's right to life if they do exist. Sorry, but you're a monster.

Consider all situations with two possibilities in mind. The first you go of your own free choice. The second you are abducted against your will.

You are placed into a room. Through a one way window you see a box. An announcement tells you that there may or may not be a person in the box, but that above the box is a weight sufficient enough to crush the box regardless of your choice. There is a button in your room. If you push it, the weight will fall. There is a 99% chance no one is in the box.

What do you do?

Changes to the situation:

1) You will be given $200 if you push the button.

2) You will be given 80% of your yearly income if you push the button. If you don't have a yearly income or make less than $22,000 in a year, then you will be given $22,000.

3) You can't leave the room for a period of nine months and you will be injected with hormones. You can end this at at any time by pushing the button and you'll be given the money as described above.

4) Everything above applies, but if you don't push the button $5000 will be extracted from your bank account and you don't get any money. If you don't have $5000 you will have to take out a loan to pay anyways.

I was, in all seriousness, asked this recently and told that I had an abnormal response. I'm curious how everyone else feels. Yes, there were other things going on in our conversation, you'll probably pick up on them if you look at the details close enough, but for purposes the options above are all that really matter and you are just you.

At 3/2/11 10:45 AM, KemCab wrote:

At 3/2/11 07:41 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: It is impossible to inherently have the right to life, simply because it is possible to die.

A faster route to the same conclusion would be, "it is impossible to have any inherent right at all, therefore it is impossible to inherently have the right to life."

Its easier to express in the form of a single example, but I agree.

At 3/2/11 08:05 AM, lapis wrote: A right is a social norm that prescribes what other people must or cannot do to you.

Exactly.

Which makes me wonder why we have things like the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" -- when these "human rights," i.e. social norms, are not the same throughout all societies. The modern ideas of "protecting universal human rights" or prosecuting "crimes against humanity" stem from a liberal political ideology which aims to dominate the world, not necessarily purely from genuine altruism.

Atruism, in practice, is often exactly that need to dominate the world with one's ideology, especially when one considers their ideology altruistic.

Please understand that I'm not saying that morals don't exist or have their place, and rights as well. its just that rights, which are based on the fundamental morals or axioms of a society are social constructs. They have their uses, and they may lead to a more enjoyable life for all, but they are established in order to enable certain utility based goals.

The right to life exists in a society where everyone believes everyone has the right to live their life infringement free. But it is not a natural life. All arguments involving a right should ultimately try to justify those rights by utility and by understanding that it is a piece of the culture from which the right was first birthed.

We can all easily imagine a society that does not believe a fetus has a right to life. And we can all easily imagine a society that does believe a fetus has a right to life. Nature isn't going to do anything to stop either one of these societies from believing this. It is the belief that establishes the right, not nature.

So, it is not true that abortion is absolutely wrong. The same goes for killing or murdering another individual or individuals. Arguments over the utility of such actions in certain situations makes more sense.

At 3/2/11 04:23 PM, Ericho wrote:

At 3/2/11 07:41 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: This should be a fun one. I'm talking about it somewhere else with someone else. This is how the argument goes:

It is impossible to inherently have the right to life, simply because it is possible to die.

How is the possibility of something being denied in any way make something inherent? There is a possible way for anybody to be denied of their rights unless it is physically impossible to have them denied. By your argument, what exactly would be an inherent right? If it is natural to die, then it is also natural to live so it seems to be hard to go either way with this argument.

My argument boils down to, as above, that there is no such thing as an inherent right. I'm not sure you completely understood what I said, because your response prior to your last sentence doesn't make much sense to me. Just thought you might want to proofread before I respond to something you didn't mean to say.

At 3/2/11 01:39 PM, Leeloo-Minai wrote:

At 3/2/11 07:41 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: This should be a fun one. I'm talking about it somewhere else with someone else. This is how the argument goes:

It is impossible to inherently have the right to life, simply because it is possible to die.

The right to life is inherent to those who live, not to those who are now dead. It is impossible to preserve life where none exists. Violating the preservation of life is not a victimless crime, nor is it acceptable to argue that since we all die, hastening the process is all-natural and A-okay.

You're missing the point. The point is not that it should be accessible in a society to kill something, but that the society establishes what is right and just, and hence what is and is not allowed to be killed without repercussions. Until such a society exists, the rights do not exist.

The privilege to stay alive and basically the invisible aura that says "you should not kill me" is a moral juxtaposition based on you're society's views.

You could say that. Or you could say that actions have consequences, and the more dire the action, the more critical the consequences will be. The actual judgement of those actions falls upon society, and then upon the knowledge itself of those actions.

What does that mean exactly? Of course actions have consequences. And of course society can choose to establish consequences. But not all societies will do this in the same way, and not all societies will value life in the same way or to the same degree. That last part after the last comma doesn't make any sense to me. You're welcome to elaborate, though.

An example could be "innocent until proven guilty"; two people could commit the same crime, but one covers their tracks better and escapes penalty. Is there an invisible aura or moral juxtaposition that protected him, or something else?

It doesn't matter if there's something else. The only real point to this topic is that "innocent until proven guilty" is a social construct. Of course the man who committed the crime is really the guilty one regardless of what society thinks, bereft of all the facts.

What? Natural right, or natural law? I'm not getting your segue into asserting nothing is punishable, therefore everything is without value. It's really a disconnected view with reality, but I don't see how you connect the dots in a manner that is in any way convincing, at all. Sorry.

I never said nothing was punishable. I said nature doesn't care. Nature's a blank canvas upon which society paints.

Using moral judgements doesn't negate the value of the subject at hand.

Using moral judgement means that everything is going to be subjective to your views or your society's views. If an Amazonian kills your brother because he insulted the Amazonian's honor, in one society this is viewed as acceptable and in the other apprehensible. Society is the only thing that makes this judgement call.

At 3/2/11 08:34 AM, lapis wrote: Oh, is this going to be another abortion or religion topic? :D

Its about abortion and really killing of all kinds, but I do expect it to gravitate towards abortion, because that's the biggest hot spot with "right to life" in our current society. But I'd extend it to any individual person regardless of whether they are a fetus or not. No man has a right to life given unto him by nature.

I think that if a right is "natural" then natives in the deep Amazon river region should also have come up with them. I would find it... weird if whatever divine lawgiver(s) there is/are out there would just reveal his/their law to some small subset of the human population and let them figure out how they dispense it --- letting other parts of the world rot away in ignorance upon their failure.

Pretty much agree.

At 3/2/11 08:05 AM, lapis wrote:

At 3/2/11 07:41 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: It is impossible to inherently have the right to life, simply because it is possible to die.

?
A right is a social norm that prescribes what other people must or cannot do to you.

I agree.

A right is innate simply if you earn it just by being born, so you don't have to pay or sleep with the right people for it.

That's fine, but its a social right, not a natural one.

The problem is that a bunch of people believe in devine rights or natural rights where these things are just apparent. And the way a natural right is defined it can't technically exist. You've said it yourself, rights can't exist without the social construct. Because of this, its impossible to just have a right to life. Its entirely dependent on the society you live in.

That's why "Right To Life" as an argument against abortion doesn't make much sense. In a society where abortion is legal, a fetus doesn't have the "Right To Life"

At 3/1/11 10:22 PM, Leeloo-Minai wrote: Stuff on abortion...

I humbly suggest we redirect this here. I think we're going a bit off topic in this thread, but we can certainly discuss it with you.

This should be a fun one. I'm talking about it somewhere else with someone else. This is how the argument goes:

It is impossible to inherently have the right to life, simply because it is possible to die. The privilege to stay alive and basically the invisible aura that says "you should not kill me" is a moral juxtaposition based on you're society's views. This is not natural and so the Right To Life is not inherent. This means there is no such thing as a natural right concerning life or natural privilege granting you life that should not be infringed. The Declaration of Independence got it wrong.

I'd like to hear your arguments on this one. :D

Plus, we can save KemCab's topic from certain doom.

At 3/1/11 10:13 AM, adrshepard wrote:

At 3/1/11 08:26 AM, Zendra wrote: Wouldn't applying the basic social (political) systems improve that? Invest in that, which ensures that people can live longer, which improves the quality of life. By that, people will be able to work longer and more...

You would think that, but extending the average lifespan has limited returns to scale. Whether people live to be 80 or 90 doesn't change the fact that they will still retire at about the same age. I suppose you could increase lifespan and raise the average retirement age if people were more physically fit, but that's not something that can be done through medicine or science.

I'm having trouble finding the article, but I will post it if I can. There's a new compound that they've been injecting rats with that reverses the aging process. Not halts, reverses. Of course, I'm having a hard time finding it, but its bit off topic anyway.

I was really just curious if people thought that poor people might be like Pavlovian dogs. You give them just enough and their mouth waters every time. They don't call for further reform because they aren't dying in a gutter. And those that are dying in a gutter are busying dying in a gutter.

Then again, it could also be that the middle class now lives in the suburbs away from the poor and just doesn't care anymore.

Suggestions on where to start?

It uses C# if I've figured everything out correctly so far... just having trouble finding resources.

In order to have change, do the poor have to suffer?

Will they otherwise be apathetic, as they are in America now? Could the great social programs of yesterday that didn't go quite far enough, but did just enough to make people stop caring be the reason we haven't seen dramatic change in the last 30 years?

And if so, could the Republican victory today ruin them tomorrow?

Yeah, but the U.N. didn't hire terrorist thugs to shoot protesting Libyans.

Tom, not a PS3 owner, but as a promoter of all things fringe, I can't say I'd be sad to see either one win.

I get the promotion of the NG/Behemoth brand, but Scott Pilgrim probably has just as much cred...

I know how you feel. I was just on another forum. It was fairly right wing in comparison to what I'm used to. Not like Memorize & company, I mean actually right wing with liberals in the minority. A couple of these individuals wanted to talk about the point at which a life form can be considered a person and given rights; all under the umbrella of trying to prove fetuses had the right to life (but by the way we weren't allowed to talk about abortion, because it would be a "distraction").

When I tried to tell them that their entire debate was based on a moral judgement, and hence irrelevant. After 60 back and forth posts about why I didn't think it was necessarily true that a fetus deserved to be protected, it came down to me trying to get them to identify which definitions they were using and realizing that they were assuming all "persons" had a "right to life." Bringing up the death penalty and such couldn't get them past that the fact that this was a moral judgement that assumed all people deserved to be alive that were alive.

What the hell?

Also, their forum sucks, you're not allowed to say fuck. The level of profanity allowed in a debate gives you a pretty good judgement about how tight people are.

At 2/20/11 01:56 AM, KemCab wrote: I watched his show a few times. I never really thought of him as a propagandist, at least in the sense that his overly ridiculous nonsense really just made me laugh. His audience doesn't even seem like they're being unwittingly deluded -- they KNOW what he preaches and they love it.

He's not doing a great job to convince a lot of people to believe what he does, but its propaganda all the same. It energizes whatever his "base" is, and they go out and do the propagation. He's feeding people what they want to here, but he's doing it to promote a cause(s): anti-government, anti-liberal, anti-communism (though he needs to work on his definitions and distinctions).

It's delightfully detached from reality. His fans keep saying that "he shares my values" or something, but what they are really saying is, "he tells me what I want to hear." But isn't that what CNN/MSNBC viewers do, too? The only difference is that they engage in much less distortion of the facts simply because that is what the audience that they cater to wants.

There's a difference between reporting exactly what happened, news. And expressing a viewpoint and trying to convince others of that viewpoint. If a news group is promoting an opinion they are a propaganda outlet. I'm not saying all propaganda is necessarily bad. We all produce varying degrees of propaganda. But Beck engages in untruthful propaganda. And that kind is much more harmful.

The only distasteful thing I find about him is that people actually enjoy his demagoguery. I mean, I could get why people found Hitler or Robespierre mesmerizing -- but Beck is this fat, obnoxious whiny guy with a history that sounds as whiny and pathetic as he does when he's on the air. I'm sure he could be a decent guy, just... not a terribly great public speaker.

Look at him again. He's got that 50's 60's good guy look. Not the thin masculine one, but he looks like the kid from A Christmas Story just a bit. He's whiny and pathetic, but he's white and "like what an american should be." Or at least, that's how I think he's regarded subconsciously by some people.

The whining is part of his act... as is he pathetic appearance.

The man is clearly an idiot if he thinks that reading Sagan or Nietzsche's work is the mark of a serial killer -- even more so considering that he went BACK to religion despite the fact. Everything about the man screams weak.

Yeah, I agree. It makes him a good propagandist. Because as he appears to be weak he slips mental viruses into his listeners' brains. Its like playing dead around a bear, and then when the bear gets close to sniffing you drawing out a Katana and chopping of the beasts head. Well, maybe not quite like that. :P

At 2/22/11 12:39 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: 1) Tax Cuts

This topic isn't much about tax cuts. Yes, it has to take them into consideration, but their effectiveness as a stimulative isn't really part of the debate. The only point I would make here is that who you cut taxes for largely determines the economic benefit. Cutting taxes on those who make less than 60,000k and specifically less than 30,000k will be more stimulative than raising taxes on anyone above those levels. And at those levels you actually net more stimulus $ than you put in (or cut). Our tax cuts didn't do that. We actually raised taxes on the poor while cutting taxes on the rich. Nothing about that is stimulative, and I agree it was a waste of money.

2 & 3) Too much debt to tax our way out of it.

$45,612.81 a citizen isn't impossible, especially if stretched over time with inflation and a robust economy; which I agree we don't have right now. With a progressive tax system (that does not have loop holes) its even easier to do.

Obviously we need to worry about defense spending and spending on medicade/medicair. But taxes also need ticced back up, especially on the wealthy.

I do not think declaring government bankruptcy would be as beneficial for the U.S. at this point as trying to stabilize the budget so that we aren't adding more debt (including interest) and then beginning to chip away at what debt exists.

There are consequences to tearing down systems. I frankly don't want to live in a war torn country.

My priorities right now, from a governing standpoint, would be:

1) Restore the job market; Make infrastructure more effective; etc
2) Fix taxes
3) Fix spending

At 2/19/11 07:19 AM, FurryDemon wrote: Everybody says making rich people play higher taxes is a good idea yet I don't think it's even been put into action yet (in the US for example)

I know shit all about politics so can someone explain why the government hasn't tried it yet

I like 2 lerning

Who here has time to run for office? The finances to run for office? Raise your hands please?

Oh, wait, people who run for office, by and large are either rich or have rich friends. When they get into a position of power who do they reward? Their friends and family, or the people who don't donate too much to their campaigns? The wealthy leaders of business who line their pockets, or the guys who do all the grunt work for those people but don't have enough at the end of the day?

Its pretty simple. The people who run for office are either part of large political families who have made a living out of always having someone in office or have a bunch of rich friends who pulled them up who they feel indebted to.

At 2/18/11 01:15 PM, sharpnova wrote: Wait so you think the middle class should be burdened more? Currently the wealthy get to be wealthy. The poor get to freeload. The middle class shoulder most of the detriment of the tax burden.

The middle class may be the most impacted by taxes, but don't be delusional. The rich are still paying more taxes right now than the middle class. Which says something about our country that a few people taxed a smaller percentage than a large majority of the people could still end up paying more.

Regardless, I said, and thanks for the emphasis above, mainly on the wealthy & rich. As for taxing the middle class. It HAS to happen. And hopefully the middle class will get pissed off. Enough, even if its at the government, to finally hold their employers to paying them a respectable amount of money. At what point did the American people become such wimps that they couldn't go to their boss and say I deserve a raise. I DEMAND A RAISE?

If the middle class is being held down toward poverty by anyone its by their people who pay them. Don't fool yourself into thinking the government is trying to destroy the middle class. It might be being used as a tool to do so, but you have to ask: Who's piloting this bitch?

Go to hell.

I'm going to assume your family situation isn't too great, and I can respect that. But its time to light a fire under the middle class again. Because either we become an apathetic bunch of winers on our way to the poor house, or we start standing up for ourselves again. Your choice.

What do you want to be? The loser who let it all go to hell?

I believe it is. Mainly on the wealthy & corporations; but the middle class (read preferably upper middle class $60K or more a year) should also bear a part of this burden.

Consider:

A telling example: General Electric, whose CEO Jeffrey Immelt recently landed a high-profile role heading up Obama's advisory "Council on Jobs and Competitiveness," pays some of the the lowest taxes of any corporation in America. The marginal corporate tax rate may be 35%, but GE effectively paid 15% in 2007, just 5.3% in 2008 and not one single penny in 2009. After recording $10.3 billion in income, they actually got a $1.1 billion tax benefit from the government. If that's not a revenue problem, what is?

Read More

From the same article, for every $1 the government has spent, it has provided $1 in tax cuts. Essentially, defunding the programs its creating as it creates them or doubling the debt depending on how you want to look at it.

Rather than cutting services, its probably time to look at funding services. Cutting services ultimately means creating more unemployed. Does anyone honestly believe that's good for the country?

Meanwhile, as exampled above, Corporations are going largely unmolested by tax collectors. If you look at the tax rates of the wealthy, you see the same thing.

Taxes have been cut consistently since 2001 when we elected Bush, and our debt has grown with it. Do you see a trend here? Is it really that hard to believe that we might have a revenue problem and not an excess of spending? Otherwise, why would we possibly only be able to cut $100 billion while we're handing out almost a trillion in tax cuts!?

At 2/18/11 01:04 AM, KemCab wrote: Both sides are biased, get over it. In fact, CNN has the same sort of biases which you could selectively attack as well, and it would be completely acceptable to do so. People say idiotic things on both sides, and that shouldn't be a surprise, because both the left and the right are moronic in their own regard.

CNN is piloted by attention grabbing idiots that flock to *big news* stories but rarely understand them. Don't get me started on them.

But Beck is a whole different class. Not only is he an idiot. He's a liar and propagandist to boot. I wouldn't call him McCarthy as quickly as I would to Joseph Goebbels. McCarthy was a politician, Beck is an instigator and manager of media...

He's that tame, I don't know what I'm talking about, but let me tell you WHAT I THINK. I think everyone's out to get you, but I might be wrong. But.... have you looked at your neighbors yet? You know... they might be liberals. And what are Liberals? Nazis. You heard me folks nazis.

That's my Beck impression. Thankyouverymuch.

At 2/15/11 02:52 PM, sharpnova wrote: Humans are biological "software & hardware" in execution.

Even if all of that is true (and it very well might be). I can't come up with a reasonable explanation for why, as another user put it so .... offly ...., I am me.

That is to say, why does self awareness spawn a level of thought/consciousness/complexity that whatever I am exists. Why doesn't it simply execute its rules, aware of itself as it is and the world around it, without generating *sentience.*

If I write a program that analyzes programs does it manifest an entity for that task? Of course not its too simple. And yet I can tell it to differentiate between small and large programs and it could then put itself into the appropriate grouping. Why is it that complexity then leads to what we are: Not only self acknowledging i/o devices, but i/o devices with *sentience.*

Is it simply a malfunction? A stray line of code? A state resulting from chaos?

Is the human condition so simply wrapped up as I/O?

I don't know. My humanity doesn't want to believe it and so it bothers me. I am not rejecting the idea, but my subconscious wants to. That small disbeliever in me wants to say its not possible. And of course its the hardest thing to explain. What is *me*?

I might have something for this eventually. In the meantime I'm trying sink a hole in one with out having ever played golf before. I have the opportunity to meet the lead editor of Penguin Books. If I can have a mostly finished Novel by May, I might have the opportunity to present it to her. So I'm about to sink my entire being into a project, which I haven't done since college. Here's to hoping that works out.

If it doesn't and this is still going, I'll whittle down my novel/novella to an appropriate length for the anthology. If I do get published by some strange crossing of the fates, I have a few back burner stories I could work on. Understandably, I don't have time for those right now...

I'm glad to see this project is in capable hands. I'm sorry I couldn't pull it through on my own, but hey, this is like a relay race. At least I didn't drop the stick AND lose it.

At 2/3/11 07:51 PM, Saen wrote:

At 2/3/11 07:44 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: Rape?

Rape kits.

So rape kits get rid of babies? Or, abortion is ok in this situation? Which is it?

Your morals only go so far? And don't say you didn't want to bring morals into this. You brought them in through the front door and paraded them in front of everyone.\; and then pretended your arguments were devoid of personal bias and were a wall against any and all disagreement.

Incest?

Increased availability of birth control.

Yeah, but if some fucked up boy wants to have sex with his sister and he's under 18 you think he's going to have the cash and means to acquire such things? You think he's going to go up to dear old mom and pop and say, "Hey! Mom! Dad! My sister's hot, go out and buy me a condom."

Having the baby means the mothers possible or probable death?
The baby will be born dead?
The baby will die due to a horrific disease within months of being born?
The baby is guaranteed to be mentally retarded?
The parents discover they have a horrible genetic or sexually transmitted disease that will be passed on to the child?
The parents were too poor to afford monthly birth control and the condom broke?

*This thread was not created to discuss abortion. The theme of this thread is that if birth control was widely distributed, the need for abortions will approach extinction. Topics should be, "Why isn't birth control being distributed more?", "Should we lower the age to gain access to birth control?", etc. Please I beg you, don't let this thread degenerate into another progress-less debate on abortion!

Oh, don't get me wrong. Birth control is the better option. It should be more widely available. But I'm not so blind as to believe birth control will eradicate the need for abortions.

Rape?

Incest?

Having the baby means the mothers possible or probable death?

The baby will be born dead?

The baby will die due to a horrific disease within months of being born?

The baby is guaranteed to be mentally retarded?

The parents discover they have a horrible genetic or sexually transmitted disease that will be passed on to the child?

The parents were too poor to afford monthly birth control and the condom broke?

In short, stuff it.

If you believe Obama has been anything other than a compromising moderate you're fucking yourself.

At 1/24/11 09:06 AM, Drakim wrote: If you have a system of logic and thought that operates with a sense of "me" and things external from me, isn't inevitable that a persona is present?

I mean, even if you weren't in your body, somebody has to be,

You're sure about that? If you look at a complex algorithm, even if it is massively parallel (millions of processors running algorithms), there's still a governing algorithm and a finite set of data. When you look at a human brain, is this really anything more than that. Yes there must be a unique instance of the algorithm, and the algorithm must also understand that it is "a self" but that doesn't mean that there's an actual entity or "soul" watching everything. I being me. Like, what is it exactly about my brain that "I" (my soul/my whatever) came to be attached to this body. Why isn't this body just a silent algorithm that knows it exists and takes in input and spits it out. Why do I, ME, MYSELF need to exist for that to happen?

seeing how it has a functioning brain. You could just as well ask "why am I exactly here in this location?". You'd have to be somewhere to even ask that question in the first place. It doesn't need to have some sort of divine prophecy or anything.

The fundamental question here is that at what point and how does self awareness transcend basic calculation and memory storage so that it essentially develops a "soul" (And I don't mean divine godly soul).

At 1/24/11 05:30 PM, SteveGuzzi wrote: i think its pretty awesome that something so close to us (in terms of our experiencing it) is also the most distant from us (in terms of our understanding it). we are never NOT dealing with the human mind, and yet it's the most complex and hard-to-unravel thing we're presently aware of.

kinda neat.

Oh, I totally agree. But this is just like staring up in the sky and realizing you could never see the end of of what you're looking at. Its that infinity feeling. That pure mortality "I am finite" feeling. Its amazing, neat, scary and everything else.

I don't know how to put my finger on it to explain it. But the actuality of my existence bothers me.

If I make a little program that adds numbers together 1+1 = 2 + 1 = 3... etc forever. I don't expect it to be self aware. Because it isn't. But even if it were self aware, I wouldn't expect consciousness arise.

Its just that, a simple or complex machine ought to be able to go through the motions "thinking" or whatever else without having a "voyager" or "passenger" or whatever you call it. You know, there was "nothing" before I was born. And there will likely be "nothing" afterwards. But here in the middle I exist. And most of the time I don't have a problem with that. I accept that I'm human or whatever and go about my day. Most of time I'm thinking about work or food or whatever.

But what the hell makes a human brain so special as to create this unique persona that not only is capable of feeling rules; but feels confined at its little space in the brain; that creates some sort of perception that knows its real but can't face death; and where is that perception coming from that I have manifested in this temporal location but will likely cease to exist sometime after.

I don't understand how it is that I came to exist in this one body? You know. And that's something we'll probably never know. And I'm not a religious man, but its this one thing that probably keeps scientific people coming back to the soul and religion.

Have I made any sense?

At 1/21/11 06:09 AM, KemCab wrote:

At 1/20/11 08:01 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: Pretty much, though of course I'm not imagining some extra-dimensional ribbon running off through the eons with a slider moving up and d own flipping bits (though it is possible).

Reminds me of this xkcd comic.

Yeah, I've seen that before. :)

I almost linked to it.

I agree with you though.

The only thing is that dream sequences in Inception were a lot more simpler than one might have expeceted.

Yeah. No, as far as a movie goes, it could have been better. But it got the philosophy right. Which made me smile. And it made money, which made Nolan happy.

Oh, they are both in the pockets of the rich. There's no such thing as a "liberal" party. The Republicans are just about overtly fucking over the middle and lower class while serving their corporate masters. The weird thing is that the Republicans are better at selling their shit as if it'll help middle and lower class; or that its somehow fair.

At 1/19/11 11:25 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: It seems to me that it's our friends the Statists who are jumping for joy at the fact that this woman almost died.

The first way to attack an opponent is to dehumanize them. You calling an entire group of people Statists and lumping them together with some sort of "mind-meld-plot" is a practice of the same type you're speaking against.

Vitriol in politics can just be boiled down to the human condition and humanity's xenophobic vein of thought.

I wouldn't say this guy belonged to any one group or that he was particularly following any one stratagem. As an individual, he seemed to be aligned with anti-statist sentiments towards the end of his emotional spiral; and a confused one at that. But I wouldn't imply that meant all statists were ready to go and murder a congress woman. He railed against our banking system; the fed; burned the flag, etc.

The only thing about vitriol that should worry us as a people, is the moment it becomes unavoidably decisive. At that point, only a war and a lot of real suffering would diminish our hate other worries enough for us to just move in.

If the American people are lacking anything right now, it is perspective. And that's what happens when the people who experienced the problems die off and leave their children without an emotive experience that's comparable.

Oh, and the final useful rule for living, "Reality is the thing that keeps punching you in the face."

At 1/16/11 01:43 PM, KemCab wrote: So basically what you're saying is that the universe might just be running on some kind of Turing machine? If this machine existed somewhere, it would necessarily be outside of the universe, so you still couldn't know the existence of any of its individual components or how it works. The only aspect of this machine that would be apparent to us would be the physical laws that govern the universe, just as how you can't have any knowledge of what is actually going on inside your computer by simply staring at your screen.

And you still can't know whether or not anything in this universe exists. If no objects existed, no interactions or relationships could exist either.

Pretty much, though of course I'm not imagining some extra-dimensional ribbon running off through the eons with a slider moving up and d own flipping bits (though it is possible). But, if the "language" is sufficient enough the interactions & relationships could be real enough to the observer.

Is any of this particularly useful? Not right now. Maybe with enough technology we'd be able to determine what the universe wasn't and use it to our advantage, or sort out the rules for our advantage as we've begun to do. On a personal level, though, the main thing you must do for your own sanity is accept some reality as your own. Sure, the universe could be a turing machine (and in some sense, probably is), but that's not going to matter in our day to day lives.

I make the comment every now and then that The Matrix never got it right. Inception did. You can never know whether you're part of the dream or the reality. You must make an assumption at some point that where you now exist is reality, or you're preferred reality. Cobb's acceptance of his reality at the end of the movie is the most important part. He's come to accept where he lives regardless of whether he's living 'on top.'