Sisyphus

Also, there's really no such thing as "direct observation," in the strictest sense. When you're looking at that bacterium through the microscope, you're inferring the existence of things based on the stream of photons hitting your retina from a certain direction, i.e. very indirectly. Observation of an individual atoms is not so different, but the indirectness of it seems more jarring because it's not what we do naturally all the time, and because it's at the scale where fundamental uncertainties start to make themselves more inconvenient.

This is such a non-issue. If it was a campaign, I would agree, since that would be an unfair (though still practically meaningless) pulpit. However, it's not a campaign. It's the transition team of the President-elect. And while Obama does not currently hold any actual office, he is the Constitutionally designated person to be sworn in as President in a few weeks (I know, the electoral college hasn't had their ceremony, bla bla, harumph harumph), and in practice that is a real role to play. For example, Obama also currently gets the same security briefings as the President, even though currently he's technically unemployed, because he has to be fully brought up to speed before he takes office. Surely that's much more significant than domain names, no?

There are no dinosaurs in the Bible...

The debate about legalization of marijuana (or any drug) comes down to two different questions, the ideological and the pragmatic. They can and should be argued separately, but both should be considered. Personally, I think the marijuana legalization arguments are stronger on both fronts, which makes it a very easy call for me: I'm for it. Ideologically, it's a question of whether the government has a responsibility to protect people from harming themselves. And as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't. As long as you're not harming or endangering others, you can do whatever you want. That's a free society. Now you can come in with a melodramatic voiceover and talk about how it does harm others, and cite DUI and child neglect and wokka wokka wokka, but none of those things are inherent to using, and they're already crimes in themselves. And pragmatically, you can talk about the "damage to society," which is a reasonable concern that I am actually open to. I just happen not to buy it in this case. Is there damage to society? Probably. But is it worse than the cost of the war on drugs, in the time and money of law enforcement and the societal cost of putting so many people in prison? I really doubt it. Especially since you're not weighing the cost against the harm marijuana does now, you're weighing it against the imagined increased harm it would do if legalized. And I think it would actually do less since it would be regulated (and thus safer) and out of the hands of criminals. Would more people smoke? Probably. But not many more, since, let's face it, it's not exactly hard to come by even now. People who would want to be potheads are potheads. This seems to be universal - in the few places it is legal (like the Netherlands), usage is no higher than average. Some individual responses: ajb, I also know a couple of people who seem to have damaged their lives with marijuana. I also know alcoholics, who are a lot worse, and perfectly analogous. Most people drink alcohol, but only a few abuse it. Most people I know have also at least tried marijuana (including myself - I tried it a couple times, didn't care for it, and haven't touched it since), and an even smaller percentage end up abusing it. And, mind you, this is all while it's illegal. padren, I agree about the credibility gap with anti-drug education, and I've seen the same thing. Pot usually isn't a "gateway drug," but when it is, IMO, it's largely because it's illegal. People see for themselves that it's pretty much harmless, despite the dire warnings they've been given their whole lives, so they scoff at the warnings about other illegal drugs, when those actually are true. Don't do meth, kids. And I think I'll close with this rather apt (and hilarious) excerpt from Dewey Cox: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57DdviStOFo

waitforufo, calling the evidence for nigerian yellowcake "inconclusive" is incorrect. It was known to be false, and there was no other evidence for a nuclear program. Citing UN resolutions is disingenuous as well. Many nations have them, and that doesn't give individual nations a justification for making war on one another. If it did, we (and anyone else who felt like it) would be invading Israel, Turkey, etc. And if human rights abuses were justification for unilateral war, then we'd have to declare war on every nation on Earth, and they'd all declare war on us for the same reason. Fun, no?

You couldn't have particles, per se, but you could distinct "entities" with various relationships between them. It's basically the same as the question of whether life could evolve in a computer program that doesn't simulate a physical world. I have to ponder this more, but it seems to make sense. On the other hand, what we perceive as "space" could just be described as a certain sort of relationship between fundamental entities (particles), and so the proposed universe wouldn't actually be as different as it seems. Or something. Whatever, I have last minute shopping to do.

That’s true, and I don’t think that was wrong. It is definitely not my position that we should only take the most popular stances on issues, so as to avoid offending people. That, obviously, would be ridiculous. What I’m talking about is pointlessly antagonizing the opposition. The cold, hard, fact is that a strong majority of Americans disagree with us, and there won’t be any lasting change until that is reversed. This is a democracy, not a war, and “battles” are won by convincing people. Shrilly demonizing the people you are trying to convince is highly counterproductive, and whether they deserve it is irrelevant. The best ways to convince people are to stay civil, to demonstrate that you understand and sympathize with their position (but still believe the opposite), and to lead by example. And offer them something worthwhile. MLK offered a dream of healed wounds and a unified nation. The Black Panthers just promised retribution. How was a white person supposed to respond to that? The difference is between helping your side “win” by dominating the other side, or by converting them. (A contemporary example: Iraq. We can patrol their streets and keep them more or less under control indefinitely, but wouldn’t it be preferable if they didn’t need foreigners in humvees?) So yes, protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. I agree. What I’m talking about is working towards a time when that protection won’t be needed.

I very much doubt it will be sudden thing, since there is still a lot of opposition to it among both liberals and conservatives (for different reasons, generally), and the onus of being president pothead would be pretty great even for one who isn't already a black guy or caricatured as an ammoral hippie. Not that it couldn't be done, but it probably wouldn't be deemed worth the political cost. I might be (and hope I am) wrong, but I doubt it. That said, I'd be very surprised if we didn't see a gradual and accelerating move towards eventual decriminalization, through de-emphasis and de-funding of the war on drugs, and more and more liberal local and state laws.

I think we were intentionally, greatly, and apparently casually mislead about the strength of the evidence, but I also think they actually believed that evidence anyway, and just wanted the chance to prove it. They shouldn't have believed it (the evidence wasn't there, after all), but they did, because they were so caught up in the groupthink and neoconservative revery. Incidentally, it really was the bit about Nigerian yellowcake that just barely tipped me into the pro-war column, so the fact that that was blatantly false still feels like a personal insult to me. Some commentators try to play it down as "just 14 words" or whatever, but that really was what made all the difference, as it was the only hard evidence of nuclear WMDs.

This is obviously OT, but quickly: That's a common misconception. The cosmos is indeed currently expanding. However, it's not exapnding "outward," and there is no point of origin. Stuff in the universe isn't "moving" overall, per se, it's just getting farther apart, because space itself is expanding. It's difficult to visualize, since it doesn't really work in the normal 3D way we're hardwired to think in, but there have been plenty of topics here about it.

You pretty much hit on it yourself: why self-preservation? If I don't have some notion that existence is inherently good, I won't act to preserve it. If I don't have some notion that anything is inherently good, I won't act at all. That's not to say that it would always be appropriate to call these things "morality." You could say that they are judgements that one circumstance is preferable to another. (Morality might be described as a generalization of this preference to a general or consistent good over a personal or momentary one.) That is something that logic alone can't provide. Logic can only yield conditional statements. "If I don't eat, I'll die." It can tell you how to achieve a goal, but it can't provide the goal itself.

Isn't that a bit of an unreasonable demand, though? Has any category of hate ever been completely removed through the power of anything? Plenty have been marginalized, though.

No, of course not. But it might unnecessarily spend huge amounts of political capital that could be better used elsewhere, perpetuate a bitter, partisan atmosphere, and ultimately end up being counterproductive to the intended goal. Well, we've never legally persecuted Nazis in this country, but they're still pretty damn unpopular. Aside from that, the most obvious example is the civil rights era. Who ultimately did more to help the plight of blacks in America, Martin Luther King, or the Black Panthers? (And yes, I realize there was the Civil Rights Act, etc. I'm not inherently against unpopular legislation. But I'm talking about the respective goals of a post-racial America and "**** whitey.")

I haven't read too carefully through this thread, because flame wars just make me tired. But skimming, I see some interesting points all around, both about Warren and the issue of gay marriage generally. I personally don't believe the government should be involved in marriage for anyone, so if I were in charge it would be a moot point. Just offer civil unions to everyone, and in your personal/religious life you can call it whatever the hell you want. I think there’s a real chance that will end up being the situation, since it seems to be a situation most people on both sides can accept, if you frame it wisely. The liberal appeal is true equality and a secular government, and the conservative appeal is (or should be) “the government can’t tell me what to do” and the fact that gays still can’t be “legally married,” whatever that means. You’d probably still get opposition from diehard Christian conservatives, but they’re a smaller minority than they would have you believe. And also, **** them. That said, I'm still quite sympathetic to the normal liberal position, and I find the usual conservative arguments to be very weak and often disingenuous, if not necessarily the boiling cauldron of hate they're typically accused of being. The whole "marriage has meant this thing for thousands of years" argument seems especially silly. The popular notion of what marriage means has changed in my lifetime, and a lot more so in my parents'. The transition from the "father knows best" mentality to widespread acceptance of it as an equal partnership is that recent. And that’s hardly the only example. I suspect more cultures have accepted polygamy than have condemned it. And I didn’t know that about gay marriage (or something like it) in the early Christian church. That’s hilarious. But the heart of this argument isn’t about gay marriage, it’s about the value of unity vs. the value of refusal to compromise core principles. I don’t know the answer, since I think you’re both right. In the long term you can do much more good with patience and compromise than insults, but on the other hand, many (though not all) of these people deserve those insults, and there’s real injustice happening right now. Ultimately, I think I’ll side with Obama and unity over “keeping it real.” A good historical example is Abraham Lincoln himself, a man Obama is obviously trying to emulate in a number of ways. Lincoln’s position on slavery was very interesting. He spoke with great fire and eloquence against it, and was famous for quotes like “if slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong.” And yet, in running for President, he went to great pains to stress that the abolition of slavery was of secondary importance to preservation of the United States. He said that if he had to choose between a unified country that included slavery and a divided one that ended it, he’d choose the former. Of course, the southern states didn’t believe him when he said this, and didn’t give him a chance to prove his word. But still, that was his position. Although the situation today is not as dire as it was in 1860, it’s still pretty dire, and the Bush years have been incredibly divisive. What Obama seems to believe (and what I agree with) is that what this country needs is not just another attack dog in the opposite direction, but a fundamental change in the style of government. In order to truly accomplish anything great, you can’t just have 52% helping to punish 48%. You need to convince those 48% to help you move forward, and to do that you have to compromise, and be forgiving, and show respect to those you disagree with and learn to speak their language. (Incidentally, whoever said it made a good point that Obama and Warren pretty much have the same public position on gay marriage. I’m aware of that. I personally do believe that Obama was probably just pandering in this, but I don’t know that for sure, and so I’ll take him at his word. As far as I’m concerned, he’s against gay marriage. But the larger symbolism of reaching across cultural and ideological divides still stands.)

Indeed. This is the kind of arrogance of and sense of entitlement to ridiculous privilege in the face of widespread economic woe that preceded, say, the French Revolution. Maybe we should replace the Bull statue on Wall Street with a guillotine. Not that it should see any use, of course, but it might make the right people appropriately nervous.

The article said it was weighted for (im)probability and therefore only had a small effect on the overall score. To justify even that small effect, I would say that making the technology (or at least related technologies) more widespread inherently makes nuclear weapons more likely to proliferate, which in turn makes them more likely to fall into the wrong hands. The stuff they use isn't even close to weapons-grade, it's true, but still, the skills are not entirely non-transferable. Yes, it's all extremely unlikely, but the consequences are also extremely bad. Hence the small but still significant factor.

rueberry, I don't see what artificial intelligence has to do with it. The same dichotomy between determinism and randomness applies to any being, artificial or not. Also, logic and reason alone can't determine action. Reason is a tool used to reach some desired end, but there still needs to be desire to determine that end. Any being which acts of its own accord thus needs some notion of "good" or "bad" (even if it doesn't consciously consider them as such) otherwise there would be no reason to act. Having an ultrarational being help us out is all well and good, but what would it help us do?

Well, they're "passive" in that none of their functions are consciously controlled, just like most of your organs (with the exception of some of your muscles). And yes, they need muscles to move. They contain nerves for the same reasons that all your organs do: to control their functions (like blood production) and to let the brain know what's going on. And of course the spine is the conduit for the spinal cord.

Well you can't "just say no" to it, because that would literally mean going without electricity. We can, however, try to reduce its necessity as much as possible as quickly as possible, which I'm all for. But no matter what happens, we're still going to be burning coal for electricity for at least a couple more decades, and we have to face that reality and mitigate its consequences, rather than denying it outright. Interesting about nuclear, though. If that study is accurate, then it's very disappointing, since I always considered nuclear a pretty important component of the solution.

How about just, "huh?"

I don't know the convention, but I'm guessing it's just undefined, since assigning some arbitrary azimuth doesn't make much sense, and it would have to be arbitrary.

Obviously they forced the issue for publicity: 1) They can't write a name on a cake themselves? 2) Who puts a full name on a birthday cake? Why not "Happy Birthday Adolf?" 3) They named their kid Adolf Hitler. Jackasses. They should be allowed to name their kids whatever they want, of course. And ShopRite is free to refuse service if they think it will cause trouble, which was reasonable in this case. Aren't free countries great?

Yeah, you're right. It's not longer or wider at the head, but the neck would cause problems in some fixtures. Plus it's not all one piece, so the GE one is flashier.

I agree in theory, but it still seems like a bad idea. This is just going to make them angrier. And if they were vocally trying to oust before, they'd look foolish for backing off once they've been sent to the time out box. It would be like admitting childishness.

I would say no. "Evolution" describes biological changes. Our intelligence is evolutionary, sure, but not what we do with it. That said, it's still part of the equation, since access to medicine is a major change in our "environment," and hence has/will become a major driving force of evolution. For the pathogens, of course, that's even more so. And their resistance to drugs is certainly evolution at work.