3,623 Forum Posts by "Ravariel"
At 1/4/08 12:56 AM, cellardoor6 wrote: I'm in disbelief that Edwards beat Clinton.
See, I really don't like Hillary, but John Edwards is such a sleazeball. I don't understand how anyone can like him. He looks like, acts like, and talks like a car salesman.
Fuck me... I was just having a convo with a friend of mine on the drive home from work tonight about that very thing.
The question then becomes... what does a third place in Iowa mean for the Clinton campaign? Will she have to post a double-digit win over Obama and Edwards in New Hampshire to regain her lost momentum? Or will it take a Dean-esque scream to nail her coffin shut?
At 1/3/08 11:03 PM, TheMason wrote: No. He didn't campaign there; he basically sent Iowa a huge "fuck you".
Sounds to me like a winning strategy!
owait...
Is anyone else pleasantly surprised at how amazingly crappy Gulianni did?
4-freaking-percent.
owned.
Am I the only one who finds it hysterical that the Repub website is abysmally slow while the Dem one is perfectly smooth?
It'll probably be tomorrow before everything's definite, but probably by midnight-ish.
At 1/2/08 04:26 PM, reviewer-general wrote: Most Underrated Poster
-Ravariel!
Woo-hoo!
Richard Dawkins Award for Atheism
-Drakim, though it was very close. Congratulations. =)
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAX!
I demand a recount! Black voters were unfairly made stupid and borked their ballots!
jk, congrats... I think.
At 1/3/08 12:14 AM, Musician wrote: Animals are sentient and conscious beings.
Sentient, yes. Conscious, no. (by the way, I've been using those terms backwards (just looked them up) and if this caused any confusion, I apologize) Yes, most living things have some form of sentience (ability to perceive via senses) but only the smartest of animals show signs of self-awareness (consciousness). Human self-awareness had to start somewhere (and much later than single-celled ancestors), as must "computer" self-awareness.
Self-awareness being a defining attribute of what it means to be "human", we can postulate that any ancestor without self-awareness was not "human". Once (if ever) we have broken the complexity barrier of consciousness for artificial "life", the word "computer" stops having enough relevance to be equitably descriptive, and thus it may be that computers can never be conscious. But that is a semantic argument, and not the one you're trying to make I think.
The real question, that you have yet to answer, is why is a guided self-consciousness somehow less valid, less "real", than an unguided one?
I understand your hesitation to believe that a computer can become self-aware... to encroach on the one thing that humans have over other animals. But I can find no logical explanation for it other than some narcissistic need to be the #1 animal on the block... or some prehistoric fear of the unknown.
probably back at the single celled organism phase, however we never needed the guidance of another race to make progress, so you can't make the comparison that I know you're trying to make
Why does guidance make a difference in the consciousness of either us or a programed neural network? Some say (and I can't prove them wrong) that our own development was guided. Does that make us any less self-aware? If it leads to the same result, why would the self-awareness be "soured" by guidance?
Regardless, at one point, our ancestors were non-sentient... they then became sentient. So, too, must the computer. In this, as a natural process, the ends really do justify the means.
Many things may be said about me. That I'm a cheap date is not one of them.
At 1/2/08 11:42 PM, Musician wrote: Me personally? the beginning was 5 to 10 million years ago where the first known humans appeared in Africa. That was the beginning of "humans". Of course they probably went through many stages of evolution before they reached that point.
Indeed... were any of our previous steps non-sentient?
At 1/2/08 10:59 PM, Memorize wrote: I can place them ALL in order in which I would prefer over the other.
So, because a poke in the eye is preferable to a kick in the junk, it is completely okay? Well, shit, since Fission nuclear weapons are less destructive than fusion weapons, we should start using those all the time!
Just because there are worse things doesn't make the discussed item any less abhorrent.
And just as YOU would choose, Waterboarding would be the prefered choice as it causes no physical pain. Isn't that right?
Uh... no.
oooh purty
...wait... what was I saying?
Anyone else notice that none of our posts after the new year are showing up on author searches? I use a few comps during the day, so I usually use that to check for replies instead of seeing which threads have new posts... and nothing past 12/30/2007 is showing up.
At 1/2/08 08:43 PM, Musician wrote: Either way, possible or not, this doesn't really apply to XeroXTC's argument because humans were sentient from the beginning, and computers were not (if they ever will be).
Uhh... define "the beginning"...
At 1/2/08 06:01 PM, Grammer wrote: If there's any responsible gun owner or person who knows a lot about guns, I would love for them to convince me why hand guns are inferior in defending yourself as opposed to assault rifles.
Have you even READ TheMason's posts?
Seriously...
At 1/2/08 01:52 PM, Grammer wrote: My e-wife showed me a picture of her with my name written on a piece of paper.
She's hot :O
Sounds to me like you're gunna have to share. ^_^
At 1/2/08 12:32 PM, SevenSeize wrote: 3. Celebrity girls will show their naughty bits to paparazzi on accident.
You misspelled "on purpose".
10. That woman on the discovery channel who has like 18 kids is going to have another. If she's already pregnant right now, and I didn't know, she'll get pregnant again this year.
I need to introduce you to my sister's Mormon boss.
Them: We're going to have as many children as god will let us.
Doctors: Have another and it's likely your uterus will rupture and you will die.
Them(pregnant again): We're going to have as many children as god will let us.
God: Fucking STOP already!
At 1/2/08 02:05 AM, Musician wrote: You can't make a machine feel emotion, it's not possible.
Why not? By what standards do you say that programed emotions aren't possible?
They would have the appearance of sentience, not actually sentience.
And what's the difference if you can't tell the difference?
It just is, the logic we use to program computers isn't as advanced as the physics that govern the universe.
...yet.
Name one example of a machine that actually overwrites its original source code while it's running. You wont find one, because all programs (even the ones programmed to learn) will always be confined to what they have hardcoded into them.
Much like humans. You don't see significant base personality changes in people without some damage to the "OS". We don't/can't "overwrite our original source code" anymore than machines can. Show me one example of a person who can alter his own DNA.
Because that's just what it is, mimicry. The closest we can ever come to making computers into sentient beings is to have them mimic sentient beings. It's not the same as being one.
If the "mimicry" is perfect, then why not?
At 1/1/08 10:40 PM, Grammer wrote: I'm noticing a lot of you guys think Obama will beat Hilary for the nomination... interesting...
No huge stretch. Iowa polls show that it's anyone's game. But we know that anything less than a #1 spot by Hillary there will be considered a HUGE blow to her campaign. In New Hampshire it's still tilted Hillary's way, but Obama is closing the gap. A win in Iowa could catapult his stock in NH, then it's a snowballing effect if he can keep it up.
At 1/1/08 05:03 PM, KeithHybrid wrote: I'd much rather it be cold as fuck. I very much liked it when it snowed every winter and actually stuck. Nowadays, it snows, but never sticks. I loved walking around in the snow, but I can't anymore.
Die.
In a fire.
At 12/29/07 01:11 AM, fahrenheit wrote: Track and Field is hardly a sport. They're merely running and throwing activities.
Bite your tongue, heathen!
Besides, those are the records, not the average. Saying that a few women can compete with men does not mean the average women can compete with men.
Yes, actually it does. If both sexes have an equal upper limit to their abilities, then their abilities in general can be shown to be similar as well. TBH, only one female that I have ever raced alongside (same meet, different events... separation and all) was able to better my time at any distance... and she went on to a stellar college and pro career. However, the disparity in the medain skill levels can be easily attributed to centuries of social, psychological, and physical conditioning via the "common knowledge" that women's bodies were more fragile and weaker than males. Now that availability of equal training is gaining ground, we see a greater increase in skill levels over time, and a narrowing of the gap between males and females.
Opening up sports to all genders, especially on the pro level, would do nothing except eliminate the female sporting teams all together. The top women from each sport might be able to make the men teams but very, very few would be able to.
Very very few MEN are able to... so that is as it should be. Few women may be able to make (at first) the varsity sports in high school... but you better believe nearly half of the Junior Varsity would be women... and the ratio at the Varsity level would increase over time, as we eventually did away with our ingrained ideas of the physical abilities of men and women.
Now, I'm not saying that women are best suited for the NFL... but I thoroughly believe that they could compete in the NBA, soccer and nearly all non-contact sport. Shit, even in some intensely contact sports, women rule.
Most of the "conventional wisdom" about female physical ability is false.
So back to Title IX... because it is, in fact, allowing us to close the gap physically between men and women, do we keep it? Or is the cost to the ones who are most likely to DO sport (physical ability aside, women are generally psychologically less physically competitive and less likely to do sports) too great.
Are just seeing another version of "separate but equal"?
Can we do better?
At 12/28/07 05:26 PM, Christopherr wrote: Who gives a shit? Women in general aren't as good of athletes as men, so why bother letting them into male sports, such as... pretty much every sport?
Cuz Track and Field is totally a "male sport"... that's why women are catching up in nearly every record on the books, and are on pace to equal men's best times within a couple decades.
Passed 35 years ago to advance (supposedly) the equality of opportunities for women in sports. But does it really do what it says. Female sporting events pull in a fraction of what male sports do... and often, male teams are eliminated to try to avoid Title IX lawsuits.
Some feminists actually believe that Title IX itself is sexist. (listen to the show)
So... do the benefits outweigh the costs? Should we simply remove gender-specific teams altogether, and let women compete as true "equals"? Or is it good as it is now?
At 12/28/07 01:29 PM, Christopherr wrote:At 12/28/07 12:25 PM, poxpower wrote:So you have one too?At 12/28/07 12:11 PM, Christopherr wrote: This is possibly the most inventive gadget I've seen all year.win
Doesn't everybody?
At 12/28/07 06:48 AM, WolvenBear wrote: And the entire above is bullshit. Every single thing you put above can fall into one of two habits:
1. Routine.
2. Thoughtlessness.
Because it's never a control issue, right? Sure, those can be factors. But far more often than you're apparently willing to admit, they are techniques used to exert control over someone. I thought you were supposed to be the cynical one... because you're sounding awfully naive. Regardless, this is secondary to the main issue anyway. Methods of control that are not as severe as physical or emotional abuse exist, that is all we need to agree on. And it should be an easy compromise.
Nonsense. There is nothing in the statistics of his that I have read, not any others to assume that women are worse caregivers. You're pulling that out of your ass to make your point.
Allow me to quote here:
At 12/22/07 10:23 PM, cellardoor6 wrote: - Researchers in Michigan determined that "49 percent of all child abuse cases are committed by single mothers.
- Children living with a never-married mother are more likely to have been treated for emotional problems.
- Children reared by a divorced or never-married mother are less cooperative and score lower on tests of intelligence than children reared in intact families.
At 12/23/07 01:47 AM, cellardoor6 wrote: - Forty-three percent of prison inmates grew up in a single-parent household -- 39 percent with their mothers, 4 percent with their fathers
At 12/23/07 02:41 AM, cellardoor6 wrote: ... although female-headed families constitute only 20 percent of all families, they represent 55 percent of all poor families.
Research conducted in 1990 throughout all industrialized nations proved that children in solo-mother families are at greater risk of poverty.
63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes
90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes
85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes
80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes
71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes
75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes
70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes
85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home
- Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, suicide, poor educational performance, teen pregnancy, and criminality.
Sounds to me like he's pretty much conclusively proven that (single) women suck at raising kids. Even single fathers are apparently better at it. We need to get these crazy wimmins away from our children!!!
Show proof or move on.
See above, cellar already did it. I think it pretty conclusively proves that men are as good as women at raising kids. Because all sarcasm from my previous comment aside, most of that disparity in "fatherless homes" can be attributed to poverty and not to the gender of the single parent.
Except he never said "wives should be submit blah blah blah"
Reread page 2. Cuz yeah, he did.
And yes, teh nuclear family is superior to every other variety.
Noone's saying that 2-parent households aren't better than single-parent households. However, there has been NO indication that a matriarchal or equal relationship is harmful to marriage or children.
In a real relationship it's next to impossible to determine who is in charge.
Usually true. As such, saying that the male should "call the shots" (see page 2 again), is unfounded and sexist.
Throughout the majority of history there is evidence to suggest men ruled the outside and women were the owners of the house.
To a point, yes. But one must only consider the stereotypical redneck coming home from work to realize that it's not always the case.
Except a majority, if not all, of his points are indisputable. So, you are just crying "sexism" to deny the fact that he has a couple of points.
I don't dispute the veracity of his statistics. What I dispute are his conclusions based on those statistics.
So because he connects two different points, it means he touched on neither of them? Please.
No, because he connects two non-sequitur points from a tenuous correlational relationship and tries to say it's causal without any REAL evidence, he hasn't proven his case at all.
So, divorce doesn't necessarily mean the marriage isn't working, just that the woman no longer needs the man. Is that your argument?
...no. And you're being awfully disingenuous trying to suggest that.
"Women should never work" is not the same argument as "work should take a backseat to kids".
Now, that IS a bit different. See, the second statement you just gave is gender-neutral... the first pair you gave ("women should work less and raise children" slightly paraphrased) were not. "Work should take a backseat to kids" should (and does oftimes) apply to BOTH parents equally. More often than not, this means that the male does most of the work as he can maximize efficiency that way as being able to make more money (statistically). However, in households where the wife has the more marketable skill, it would be more efficient (with little to no detriment to the kids (and probably only a little to the male's ego)) for her to work most of the hours.
Sorry, simplified your argument for space.
's cool.
You don't have to marry an oil tycoon to get good money out of a guy. Any guy who's making in excess of 30k a year (which is well more than 50% of married guys), can be hit HARD for both allimony and/or child support. Both child support and allimony are based entirely off of what HE makes. So she can have a job and still get teh bucks.
It's hardly "teh bucks". Trying to raise children on a fraction of one person's income is NOT easy. She's not going to be able to afford that house in the Hamptons, 2.5 cars and a nanny because of an Alimony payment from your average Joe worker. She might be able to keep a similar lifestyle to the one she had prior to the divorce, but now she probably has to work full time (if she didn't before) and be but one person doign what used to be a joint effort (raising kids).
Alimony is not this grand money-pit you make it out to be. Remember, before the divorce the woman would have had access to ALL of her husband's money with minimal extra expenses, and another person to help out with the kids.
To be blunt, the more a woman values her career, the less she values her family. (This is true in males too, but since men see themselves as bread winners...to a lesser degree.)
True.
You're right, it has nothing to do with leadership. And everything to do with dedication. Men in higher income brackets are less likely to divorce their wives than women in higher income brackets are to divorce their husbands.
I don't doubt it. However, the landscape changes dramatically when either parent reaches the higher end of payscales. For your average low-middle class family (which is what I'm talking about mostly), the increase in divorce rates are obviously based almost solely on the woman's feeling of financial security. This is why completely dependent women and completely independent women have about the same divorce rates. We can add in the extra stress to the relationship when both spouses are working a lot and it becomes clear. Male's reluctance to initiate divorce is also easily seen as relating to the likelihood of them losing custody of their children and having to pay alimony or child support. Another claim I agree with. But trying to link this to a breakdown of the "natural" order of marriages is just ludicrous.
To be honest, this is because divorce favors women in every single circumstance.
As much as divorce can "favor" anyone, yes, you're right. However, trying to tie this to a breakdown of the "natural" leadership role of men is even farther out there.
This mash fella needs to go... like wow.
Holy mother of shit, you're stupid.
GTFO of my messageboard. You're dirtying the water.
At 12/27/07 06:14 PM, WolvenBear wrote: Oh please. You're being melodramatic. "ordering for the wife at dinner=SUBTLE SLAVERY!"
No, I'm not. Several things can be done without physical abuse to control a partner. Not only doing things like that, but speaking softly to move someone around a room, making and breaking dates on a whim in order to keep the other dependent on your schedule, requiring dinner or some other event at a specific time. All of these are subtle control mechanisms that over time can completely subjugate a spouse without anyone even realizing it.
He said the following things:
1. Most divorces are initiated by women. Which is correct.
Okay... this means nothing on it's own.
2. Working women are more likely to initiate divorce.
Okay... I've already given several reasons why this statistic is irrelevant, but whatever.
3. Children need a parent in the household to raise them, and women are better suited to this than men.
This has not yet been shown. In fact, his statistics show that, if anything, women are worse. But again, there are several other factors in these equations that he's not considering.
However, from a biological standpoint, this is probably the case. However, our brains have also evolved in the years since we were in nomadic tribes, and we can mostly compensate for the evolutionary tilt.
4. The nuclear family is the best structure to raise a child.
This has not yet been shown at all. Nor is it even relevant. The original claim he was defending is that "wives should graciously submit to their husband's sacrificial leadership". This has nothing to do with any of the myriad of statistics he has thrown at us in some blatant smokescreen. This has nothing to do with divorce rates or who is better at raising a child. It has nothing to do with ANY of the things that cellar has thrown at us.
And every time we try to get him back on track, take him to task, he just throws more irrelevant statistics at us.
In NONE of those statistics is there any mention of any difference between matriarchal and patriarchal or bipolar (dual/equal leadership, not manic-depressive) households. That he would defend such a statement as right and good IS sexist, by the very definition of the term.
This is hardly "women need to submit".
Actually, once we dig back to the original issue, it is.
You just called him a sexist and ignored his argument. His stats aren't irrelevant.
Yes they are. Point to ONE that indicates a patriarchal family has any benefit to a matriarchal or equal household.
Note: the amount of money each person makes is COMPLETELY irrelevant to this point.
Though I think thats because the argument is of teh following variety:
Cellar: Here's my conclusion, and here are the stats to support it.
Everyone Else: Your stats are irrelevant and you're a sexist prick.
More like:
Us: Huckabee signed something that says women should submit to the leadership of their husbands? That's awfully sexist.
Cellar: Nuh-uh. Women who work destroy families.
Us: Wait, you're defending him? And what does that have to do with anything?
cellar: yes, I'm defending the natural order of things.
us: if you think that's natural and good, then you, too are a sexist.
cellar: nuh-uh *repeats all of the previous statistics several times*
us: *facepalm*
And he actually posted that the more hours women work, the more likely they are to get a divorce. So indeed, that encompasses: strain on the relationship, distance between the two, and lack of sex.
So, he has considered and even addressed that.
Except he's piggybacking that onto some claim that working and breadwinning = leadership in a family. He's trying to say that women should basically get out of the workforce, and sit at home and raise the kids like they did back in the 40s. He's also trying to show with his statistics that a man would have less leadership in a family where the woman works and that that is the main reason that divorce happens... that when a man isn't in a leadership position, keeping everyone in line, that them wimmins get all uppity and want divorces and stuff.
As though divorce rates were actually indicative of the health of the relationship, and not indicative of instead, a greater ability of the women to take control themselves.
His evidence is exhaustive. And far from being "women should never work", it's more than women should raise the children, and work less. Not women working=bad.
Umm... how, exactly, are those two things different other than in spin?
Men are more likely to have to pay allimony based on his income and child support based on income rather than need. So divorcing a man with money when you yourself a re not always of means doesn't mean you'll be hurting in the cash department.
Moreover, what does this say when the wife simply says "I have money, I don't need you." Perhaps there's a fundamental difference in the way career women view relationships as opposed to family women.
Lol... you're assuming some serious wealth in these families. Social Services can only ever take 25% of a person's paycheck for alimony/child support (in Michigan... might be more elsewhere). This is great for the woman who divorces an oil tycoon... not so good for the one who divorces a cashier. Or even one who divorces a middle-class man, making 40k/year. When, like you said, they are more likely to get the kids, living on 10k/year with kids isn't very easy. Any woman contemplating divorce will realize this. Sometimes you stick in the relationship that sucks so that you don't starve. Now if the woman is making 40k/year of her own, then when they split the child support, is better spent. For whoever gets the kids, even adjusting to an almost 50% decrease in income is a hard thing to do. You have to realize that a family lives together completely... so the woman suddenly goes from making the house payments, car payments, food, gas, utilities, kids stuff on 80k/year to doing it on 50k. It's a big adjustment. It's less of an adjustment if the woman was making 50k and the man was making 30k... cuz then it drops from 80k to 58k... the more the woman makes, the easier (financially) the break is.
I mean, look... we can easily assume that the health of the relationships between husband and wife are similar throughout payscales, no? If that's the case, then we have to ask ourselves why there are differences in the divorce rates by wage proportion within families. Cellar wants to intimate that it's due to the lack of "leadership" on the part of the male. My point is that it has NOTHING to do with that, and much more to do with the financial safety, education, self-awareness, and self-confidence of women. All of which can be shown to be largely proportional to the amount of money a woman makes (hollywood notwithstanding).
At 12/27/07 04:01 AM, Angry-Hatter wrote: Understanding people is preferable to understanding Einstein's theory of relativity.
Why choose one or the other when you can understand both?
At 12/27/07 02:37 AM, CommanderX1125 wrote: I feel sorry for you when Cell finds this.
We should start a pool... one for number of links in the first post... one for the number of insults. We could even break it up by type of insult.
on-topic: OP's claim is pure BS.
