TRoaches

In the example given it would be unlikely that any of the 15 negative respondents would be swayed into support of the bill simply by reading it. It will sound like gibberish to 95% of us (myself included), though many would likely pretend to understand its implications in an effort to avoid appearing unintelligent or uninformed. Very few people would be sufficiently capable or qualified to interpret the bill and make any meaningful prediction about what the bill's effect on society may be, and even those few people would likely disagree about the merits of the bill. Even if you could somehow assure that everyone is thinking in a completely altruistic way about the merits of the bill it is unlikely that an economist, a doctor, a nurse, a hospital manager, a social worker, a priest, a rabbi, and an imam will all come to the same conclusion about the merits of the bill. They will each draw from different experiences in forming their opinion, and even if they all share the same goal of "let us do what is best for everyone" they will be in varying levels of disagreement about how to reach that goal. A person who has none of the experience or knowledge required to understand the true implications of the bill (in other words the vast, overwhelming majority of us) will not suddenly become "educated" simply by reading the bill for the same reasons that a person who reads a technical manual for a nuclear reactor will not suddenly become "educated" about nuclear physics. The technical manual is only a useful source of information to a person who has the necessary experience to find meaning in the text.

My point is that you described the 15 respondents of your poll who oppose the bill as "ignorant" and "uninformed", inferring that they oppose the bill due to a lack of information or intelligence, and follow this with a plea for "better" education to correct this perceived defect. A curriculum designed to sway a person's political views is not education. You are advocating for more effective propaganda, not better education. This is a fine position to hold if you desire a more homogenized public consciousness, but homogenization of public consciousness is a trait more closely associated with a fascist society than a democratic one.

Whether or not the 16 people who were not against the ACA read over the law or not is completely irrelevant. The point I was trying to make is how uninformed our electorate has become on issues they know nothing about especially when one presumes to be so strongly against it. How can that possibly be irrelevant? I see no difference between a person blindly opposing or supporting a policy. In either situation they are uninformed. If you take issue with an uninformed electorate then it makes more sense to condemn the uninformed supporters of the bill equally with the uninformed opposition, though it may be less convenient for you to do so. I have no interest in defending Boehner's ignorance, but I do find it far less troubling than having an electorate who does not understand the difference between war and peace. Boehner was spouting off nonsense about the topic because he was told to do so by the people who paid to keep him in office. In the same way, Obama wages multiple wars because he was told to do so by the people who paid to keep him in office. I doubt that Boehner really believes that human's have no effect on the environment relative to cows, and I also doubt that Obama wants to give orders to drop bombs on children but they both do what they are told to do by the corporate/multinational/extra-governmental interests that grant them their power. If anything is an indication of a decline in real democracy it is this lack willingness or ability in our leaders to express and act upon their true beliefs, whatever they may be.

In a way you are illustrating my point with this statement. Radiometric dating has not "proven" that the earth is any particular age. It is a theoretical method of estimating the age of some materials. By stating that radiometric dating proves that the earth is over 4 billion years old you taking a theoretical scientific estimation of the age of the earth based on the best available information and describing it as an absolute truth, in contrast to the absolute falseness of some other belief about the same topic. If you were a student and the question on the test were "how old is the earth?" the only truly correct answer would be "nobody really knows, but the most rigorously tested and reviewed theories estimate its age to be 4+ billion years". Unfortunately, simply stating "the earth is over 4 billion years old" would probably be counted as correct despite such an answer being a strong indication that you lack understanding of the basic principles of science. The question itself, if worded as above, would also demonstrate the same lack of understanding on the part of the author of the test. You point to the statistic of almost half of the population in your area believing that the earth is 10k years old as an example of an area where they need to be educated to correct what you view as a misconception. This illustrates the problem with viewing education as something that can be quantified objectively, with some people being "more educated" and others being "less educated". Any subject of education that is not based entirely in math or pure logic can be inadvertently twisted by the educator in subtle ways that go beyond true vs false. The educator may not intend to mislead the student, but their lack of intention does not mean that they are not doing so. In your example, you learned at some point from some source that the earth is 4B+ years old. This may well be true, but it has not been proven to be true, any more so than the 10k claim, though most (or all) scientists would consider it to be better supported by observation than the 10k claim. The source from which you learned the age of the earth may not have actually stated the theoretical age as a fact and you simply misunderstood what they meant, or they may have lazily handed you a fact to memorize and rewarded you for doing so. This is why a more educated population is not the answer to better government. A more educated population could very well be educated in all of the wrong ways about what the issues are, and what the possible solutions to those issues may be. Instead of a better educated society I would like to see a society that is more comfortable with questioning the claims made by those in power, the claims made by those who recorded the history that led to our present, and the options that we are presented with regarding how to solve the issues that we face. A person who does any of those things is typically marginalized and ignored, and the marginalization of minority opinions is perhaps democracy's most negative trait. ETA: Did the 16 people who told you that they supported the ACA read the bill?

Regarding the question of education of the public, or lack thereof, I have to agree to an extent with MajKrAzAm. If your position is that the public is uneducated, lazy, and apathetic then there are really only two possibilities as to how you perceive yourself: You either believe that you are more educated, more motivated, and less apathetic than the majority, or you are consider yourself to be just as uneducated, lazy, and apathetic as the rest. If the former is true then it doesn't make much sense to express offence at the notion when someone else points it out. If the latter is true then it doesn't make much sense to complain about an uneducated, lazy, apathetic public. The notion of blaming our problems on a lack of education troubles me, because the line between education and indoctrination is very thin and very subjective. There is very little objective truth to be found when studying fields like history, politics, or sociology. The same events can be described in drastically differing terms depending on the motives and preconceptions of the observer. If one states that the public needs to be more educated about these topics then the logical follow-up question would be "Educated in what way, according to which version of the truth, authored by which source?". In the fictional dystopian societies envisioned by authors like Orwell, Huxley, or Bradbury the public was extremely educated in a certain sense of the word, to the point that nearly everyone possessed the same level of knowledge and was equally competent with regard to their duties as citizens. In those novels they had achieved the goal of no child being left behind. The problem was that there was no diversity of thought, and this was the direct result of everyone possessing the same level of knowledge and being equally competent with regard to their duties as citizens. History and politics were treated as objective truths that only a fool would question. If your solution to the ills of democracy is to better educate the public then it implies that the people who currently disagree with your vision of how our society should operate are in disagreement with you because they lack knowledge that you possess. In many instances this may be true, but it could just as easily be said that you disagree with them because you lack information that they possess, making you the uneducated one. The old argument of teaching evolution vs creationism in school is a fine example. People who advocated creationism are viewed by many as being backwards and ignorant, but the fact is that evolution is itself a theory that is based on a great many assumptions and is, in the end, entirely theoretical. To argue that it should be taught as an objective scientific fact is just as flawed as any creation theory. One could even argue that teaching evolution as an objective scientific fact is more damaging to a child's understanding of the principles of science than creationism is because it implies that science is a dogmatic collection of truths rather than a method used to question dogma and explain the unexplained. If there is a problem with education and its effect on political thought it is not that people are being taught the wrong information or are not learning enough; it is that people are being taught that the purpose of education to learn facts instead of learning how to learn. A student who memorizes the most facts will usually be viewed as a "good student", while a student who questions the teacher's assertions will be viewed as a disruptive troublemaker. This same attitude is seen in politics, where a candidate or voter who strays too far from the center is viewed similarly as a disruptive troublemaker and a candidate or voter who maintains the party line (either party) is viewed more positively.

We could, but it would require that the people who are in a position to impose their will upon society were altruistically motivated. This, unfortunately, is an unlikely scenario. People rarely, or perhaps never, rise to power by being nice to others. An altruistic dictator is not an impossibility, but it is a very unlikely. To illustrate the concept: imagine a race being run between two competitors. The first competitor feels morally compelled to run a fair and honest race, and is opposed to any form of cheating that would give him an unfair advantage. He wants to win honorably, but is willing to lose if necessary to maintain his sense of honor. The second competitor is not hindered by any desire for honorable victory, plans to murder his opponent when the judges are not looking, and is very skilled at murdering people. Who is more likely to win? Applying that metaphor to the imposition of governance, imagine two potential dictators: One is altruistically motivated and wants to lead his people to greatness by imposing just and fair government for the benefit of all. The other yearns for power and wealth, and is not hindered by any sense of morality or altruism. Who do you think is more likely to rise to power, and to maintain that power after achieving it? That said, an altruistic elected leader is also an uncommon thing, but it is more plausible than an altruistic dictator. More importantly, and elected leader holds power temporarily. If an elected leader demonstrates that they lack any concern for their constituents or enforces policies that their constituents are opposed to there is the strong probability that they will be removed from office against their will through some form of civil action such as election or impeachment. The only way to remove a dictator from office against their will is with force. I would rather vote against a bad leader than participate in a violent uprising, and that is why I prefer a democratic system over totalitarian leadership. Democracy is, in my opinion, the less flawed option with greater potential to benefit the society and less potential for mass violence.

hate == thought hate crime == thought crime

Someone will win the lottery..... http://pinealsqueegee.net/img/breakinglotto.jpg Marie will kill someone.

This reads like "It's a known fact that (insert colourwheel's opinion here)".

What does "shut down the government" mean?

Fatal snake attacks are extremely rare, and fatal snake attacks by pet snakes are so rare that it is nearly unheard of. Dogs are, by any measure, much more dangerous than snakes. There are millions of dog attacks every year, and always a number of fatalities. The fatalities are usually infants and small children. If you are going to label any creature as a "monster" the label is much more appropriately applied to dog than a snake, unless you are trying to be sensational. If given a choice between being locked in a cage with a 14 foot snake or an aggressive, territorial dog would choose the snake. The snake is less capable of doing harm to me, more predictable, and more easily controlled. If the dog's potential for destruction is compared to that of the snake it is clearly more monstrous than the "monster" snake could ever be. Dog lovers of Nexus: Please note that I love dogs as well as snakes, and am not condemning dog ownership in any way by pointing out their potentially dangerous nature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_dog_attacks_in_the_United_States This is another example of a sad but relatively unimportant incident being pounced on by the media because it is sensational and it fills space.

Trey Parker

Free speech laws are not about protecting safe, uncontroversial expression. They exist to protect controversial, unpopular expression. If we reach a point where any expression, no matter how controversial or unpopular it may be, is prohibited then free speech will truly be dead. The right to hate speech has been upheld enough times that I doubt any legislature is going to make any further attempts to legislate against it. The new topic of interest with regards to anti-free speech legislation is the cyberbullying laws that the congress people are tripping over themselves to sponsor. They often are named after a kid who committed suicide, and many of them criminalize posting anything online that could cause "emotional distress" or some similarly vague criteria. example

Any law that considers the race or ethnicity of the victim or perpetrator of a crime as a determinant of the wrongness of the crime and the punishment given in response to the crime is an inherently racist law, and any racist law hinders social progress and human evolution. Such laws perpetuate the belief that humans are intrinsically separated by their racial background. A heavier sentence given for a crime motivated by racism is, in my opinion, just as bad as a lighter sentence given for the same reason. It is also ineffective as a deterrent, because a person who is sufficiently motivated by racism to commit a crime is obviously not sufficiently concerned about the possibility of prosecution to deter them from committing the crime in the first place, and is therefore unlikely to be deterred to any greater extent by the prospect of being charged with an additional hate crime.

I still can't find an answer to the question: Do YOU have free will? If I possess free will simply because I believe that I do then this statement: ...sounds a bit presumptuous, in that you seem to be stating with certainty that I am being denied true free will, which you define as being dependent on personal perception, and that this denial is the result of an external controlling force. If my free will is dependent on my perception and perspective alone then why would you claim to be capable of denying its existence? If only my perception of free will from my own perspective is required to prove its existence how would it be possible for an external controlling force to affect it without my consent? Why do you assume that I have provided this required consent to that controlling force, that mysterious cook?

I can't find an answer to the question in your reply.... Do YOU have free will?

The first video was interesting. The second one was misleading to an extent. All it proves is that he was able to find a few people who gave goofy answers. A similar poll given to a pool of classical musicians, brain surgeons, or theoretical physicists would probably yield a few similar results, but it would not prove any of those groups to be collectively dumb. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that you are correct: My perception of my own free will is an illusion, and I in fact have none because my universe is controlled by others. In this scenario do YOU have free will?

My premise was not that free will has been maximized, only that it has increased over the course of history. There are some people being held without trial (Gitmo), but they are a very small group that is the exception to the rule. This is an improvement over the historical norm, which is that nobody ever receives a fair trial. The point is that more people receive fair trials now than at any point in history. I find it hard to swallow the idea that political correctness is more damaging than war. Imagine telling a child who just had their limb kinetically amputated by a bomb "You are SOOOO lucky, kid! In my country we are FORCED to be PC! I envy you kids from (war torn country). Well, I'm off to work at my oppressively PC job. Try not to die of blood loss between here and the hospital, which was also bombed!" Here in the US nobody is being legally prevented from saying anything offensive to anyone. I can be as offensive as I want towards anyone, from the President down to the garbage collector, and there is no chance that I will be imprisoned for it. If you feel like you can't say something it is not because you are afraid of the government. It is because you are afraid of the reactions of your peers, and this is entirely your problem. Some of the European countries like to enforce political correctness, but even that is an improvement over the world wide historical norm of absolute and unquestioned censorship. Also, the term "free will" as I used it here means more than just free speech. Do you perform the same job as your father? If not, then you exercised your free will in a way that was not possible for most of history. In the past if you were born a farmer you died a farmer. If your father was a cobbler then you were taught the business, and inherited it upon his death. Common people were not offered many options of how to earn their living. This extended to every other aspect of life. Travel was difficult or impossible, so our current ability to be anywhere in the world in one day or less demonstrates an increase in free will. Food had to be grown locally, so people had less choice in what they ate. Music had to be performed live, so there was little choice of what to listen to. It goes on and on like this, to the point that our current level of mental and physical freedom becomes incomparable to those who lived just one century ago.

New methods have developed, but those new methods have actually resulted in fewer casualties and more localized damage during conflicts. There is less murder than before (especially considering that many acts currently defined as murder were not even defined as such in the past). War causes less damage to property (consider the Dresden bombings vs current "smart" bombs) and fewer casualties among civilians and combatants. In the distant past sieging a single city meant sending thousands to their likely deaths. This is no longer the case I don't think it is the rate of mental illness that has increased, but rather the definition of such illness has been broadened and detection has been improved. If a person in the middle ages was hearing voices they were more likely to be hailed as a medium or prophet, or considered affected by spirits or demons, than regarded as a person with an illness. In any case there was no clinic for them to attend, no field of medicine dedicated to their troubles, and no personnel trained in their treatment. Even comparing the current rate of the mental health diagnosis to that of 50 years ago is not a fair comparison because the field has advanced by so much. Even the least educated among us can still read and do simple math, provided that they are educated to some level. A construction worker who could read one century ago was a rare thing. This is no longer true, and even the most basically educated laborer has an opportunity to start his own construction company and employ others, apply for bank loans, insurance, perform payroll duties, negotiate contracts, advertise, etc. There is no logic in the statement that we should all be gazillionaires: Are you a gazillionaire? Why not? This is not true. There are fewer casualties of war than at any point in the past. The revolutions are less bloody. Forced conscription is more rare, and when it is done many more factors are considered than the physical ableness of the conscript. A few hundred years ago 99.9% of the world's governments were dictatorships, and conscription meant an overlord of some kind rode into town and rounded up the young men to be sent to near-certain death. The efficiency of such spying has increased, so more people are surveilled for more of their time. While I agree that this increase in surveillance is troubling, it is still does not compare to the government surveillance that preceded it for the last few thousand years. It is an improvement over the old system of A) Accuse neighbor of witchcraft/sedition B) Convict neighbor based on confession given during torture C) Execute neighbor publicly. The danger with our current surveillance practices is that they may lead to a step back for our legal system towards these old methods if left unchecked, but currently there are no same-day public executions based on tortured confessions and hearsay in most countries. Even those accused of the worst crimes receive legal counsel and opportunities to appeal their convictions.

In the Surrogates film the brain is not removed from the body and interfaced with the robot. Instead the person lays inside an isolation chamber and remotely experiences the world via their surrogate body. If I remember correctly (been awhile since I've seen the film) the initial application of this was for physically disabled people. A person with a severe physical disability would likely jump at the chance. It doesn't even seem so far fetched. I remember reading of several projects recently that were successful in allowing a person to move a mouse pointer or type words via wires plugged directly into the brain. Stephen Hawking himself has been involved in this research. When I watched the Project Kronos film I couldn't help imagine that the brain inside the probe was his. At his somewhat advanced age, very advanced state of disability, and lifelong dedication to studying the cosmos I imagine someone like him being open to the idea of lending their brain to such a project, or even a more terrestrial one that simply wants to place a brain inside a robot.

If I understand what they are doing with Robots like Jules the purpose is not really to develop intelligence, just to mimic subtle physical expression. When the robot shows signs of emotion it is simply responding according to a script of sorts. This is not a diminishment of their accomplishment, and it has applications in AI if and when true AI is developed (which may have already happened, "intelligence" has a very fuzzy definition so who knows) but it is not really accurate to say that the robot is intelligent or emotional. It just looks intelligent and emotional because it is sending us very subtle facial cues that we recognize and have never seen anywhere other than a real human face. That said, if you attach that Jules head to the Atlas body you would have a very freaky creation to play with. I think that it is something that will be interfaced with human brains before a true AI is developed, sort of like in the film Surrogates. On a somewhat related topic, I just watched a very cool and thought provoking short film that is about wiring human brains up to use them as computers in space probes. Highly recommended for any fellow sci-fi nerds: http://www.project-kronos.com/

@gunslinger6972: I did not "automatically assume" anything. Rather, I pointed to historical precedent. This is not a guarantee that anything in particular will happen, and I did not claim that it was. It is, however, widely agreed to be one of the best methods available to anyone who is trying to make an educated guess about what will happen in the future. It is particularly effective if you are looking at something that has been trending steadily in one direction for a very long time. To illustrate, if you look back on any given period of time (decades, centuries, or millenia): -technology has increased -Health and life expectancy has increased -common level and quality of education has increased -democracy has increased -free will has increased You can find brief and localized periods of reversal of these trends (such as your example of China), but overall they are fairly consistent patterns of improvement. If you are in an airplane ascending shortly after takeoff and you state "I think we will continue to gain altitude for several minutes" you are not making an assumption. You are making an observation based on the current trajectory of the airplane. You could be proven wrong if the fuel tank explodes and the plane plummets to earth, but the odds of this happening are extremely low compared to the chance that the upward trajectory will continue as predicted. Blindly charging into a new era is the only option available to anyone who lacks prescience. Conditions got better for workers the moment that they were able move away from year-to-year subsistence farming because it made upward economic mobility possible. Andrew Carnegie started as a boy working with his mother in a cotton mill. For him this was an improvement over the alternative situation of young Andrew working just as many hours in the field and the whole family praying that the harvest was sufficient to prevent starvation that winter. That impoverished boy became so economically upwardly mobile that he returned to his native country as an adult and bought a castle. Had his family stayed in Scotland and he grew up a farmer he likely would have been killed on sight if he had been caught trespassing on its grounds. Carnegie in his Scottish castle is a perfect image illustrating the opportunities that industrialization opened up for "common" people like him. I would say that his conditions improved quite a bit by any measure.

I think you are seeing a problem where one does not exist, or worse yet seeing a beneficial situation as problematic. New opportunities are always created by technological advancements, even if they are not readily apparent. An average modern university physics student is more knowledgeable about physics than Newton ever was. It is not because that average student is "smarter" than Newton, but because they were able to grow up with very little concern for their basic survival needs relative to someone alive during Newton's time, and were thus able to dedicate most of their time to their studies instead of food procurement. This would not be possible if technology had been stifled in the interest of preserving jobs. If such measures had been taken, and that university physics student was instead "guaranteed" (meaning "restricted to") a job as a farmhand, that would be considered by most people to be a lost opportunity. The new opportunities opened up by technological advancement are not always just another job. Decreasing the focus on pure survival allows one to increase their time spent on personal advancement, such as academia. This does not at all describe what actually happened. Prior to slavery there was....slavery by a different name. Do you think that a feudal farmer actually profited? He did not sell the crops that he tended for profit. They belonged to the land owner, who paid for the labor by letting him eat just enough of the crop to stay alive and allowing him to live in a house with a dirt floor just large enough to allow his family to sleep. It doesn't matter how cold it is, don't burn too much of the manor Lord's timber! Don't hunt his game or catch the fish in his river! If they protested too loudly against their "employer" they would imprisoned, tortured, or executed. That does not sound much different from slavery to me. The same goes for every other laborer in a feudal society. They were not stacking up savings accounts for their children to attend Oxford. They were barely scraping by under a system that was another form of slavery. Later feudalism was renamed again to the "landlord" system. During this period 1 million Irish died during a potato blight. They were growing plenty of food, but they were not allowed to eat it because it did not belong to them. It belonged to their lords (slave masters). It was just more slavery. The logic that you are presenting would be better applied as a defense of slavery, in that the abolition of slavery led to unemployment (if not death) for the slaves, with no immediate opportunities being opened as a result. THAT whole bottom tier was what the economy depended on at the time. Should we have maintained the slavery system in order to prevent negatively affecting the economy or putting slaves out of work? I certainly don't think so. I think the negative effects on the economy brought about by abolition were outweighed by the positive effects that it had on society at large, and that the problems that abolition caused for the emancipated slaves were justified by the opportunities that it represented for their progeny. Abolition was not a technological advancement, but it was a social advancement that had similar short term negative effects with long term benefit similar to those presented by technological advancement. It is more accurate to say that the unskilled laborers who lose their jobs to automation are being forced to choose between entering a new field or being unemployed and on welfare. They are not, however, being forced into either one of those choices. How do you propose that the over-abundance of college graduates is remedied? Are you suggesting that we maintain the unskilled jobs so that people with BAs can perform unskilled labor? I don't see the problem with a loss of demand for unskilled labor coupled with a surplus of educated people. I suspect that the statistic ($10k reduction in BA income) is more complex than you suggest. Has there been any change in the statistics on choice of major study? For example, if more people are pursuing lower-paying fields of study (i.e social work, arts, etc) than 10 years ago then that would easily explain that statistic. I don't know if this is the case or not. It is just an example of one factor that could be influencing that statistic. Also, I think that having a surplus of educated people is a clear indicator of positive social progress, not something to be feared because the graduates feel entitled to a high level of pay. Would you be willing to trade a 20% reduction in nationwide college attendance in return for a 20% raise for yourself?

Source 1 Source 2 eta: corrected url (i think)

I don't think that such laws could exist without at least infringing on innovation. Going back to the textile weavers of the 1800's, if such a law had been passed to protect their jobs it would have certainly slowed the development of textile machinery. No technology is developed independent of other technology, so that hindered development would have hindered all other technological development as well. The demand for better textile machinery likely contributed to advancements in metallurgy, precision machining, lubricants, electrical systems, safety protocols, quality control, and so on. Each of those sub-fields that contributed to the advancement of textile machinery also led to further developments, such as the need to improve quality control leading to improved methods of measurement with lower error margins, which itself leads to more advanced industrial applications of mathematics. Stifling the demand for those textile machines would have also stifled all of those advancements to some unknowable extent. When considering any technological advancement there is always going to be some good and some bad that comes from it. War is an awful thing, but perhaps humanity's greatest benefit from war has been advancements in the medical treatment of physical trauma. If a farm worker suffered a traumatic amputation while operating farm equipment 200 years ago they were almost certain to die. Now they can be airlifted from the most remote area to a hospital with a trauma center and will not only be likely to survive, but rehabilitated to the point that they could possibly continue their work on the farm or at the very least maintain a decent quality of life. This is only possible because of the medical knowledge gained from treating battle wounds, since every step of their treatment was developed for and applied to a war zone before it was ever applied to civilian life. There are certainly some modern people who have survived extreme physical trauma partially because of the information gathered from the deaths of their ancestors. Likewise, there are certainly some current engineering students studying one or more of the above mentioned industrial fields who are descendents of textile workers forced out of their jobs by automation. I doubt any of them wish they were sewing garments instead of attending university. @jim_uk: Here's another good quote that is very similar, but attributed to a much scarier source: "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." -Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founding father of international finance and patriarch of perhaps the wealthiest family business dynasty in the world