Sisyphus

Actually, I looked it up, and the 18-24 demographic has by far the lowest voter turnout. Even in 2004 it was only 47%, and that was a Presidential election year. I agree. But then, as you say, what's the alternative? Any cure would be worse than the disease, I think. I know in my high school, government was part of the required curriculum. I don't whether that was just a New York State thing, or whether national standards changed between our respective times in high school. I fulfilled my requirements with "AP U.S. government and politics" and "intro to international law," both of which were largely debate and discussion based. Again, I don't know how typical that was, but there is at least some move to try to universally educate voters.

Americans can't wait to exercise their right to vote? Why do we have such ridiculously low turnout, then?

Sure, but why does it have to be "blind?" Morality as a whole is of the same kind.

See, it all depends on what you mean by "patriot," and what you mean by "country." I think you might be looking at it too narrowly. For example, risking Godwin's attention, let's cut right to the chase and talk about everyone's favorite evil empire, Nazi Germany. Now, what would it mean to live in such a country and be a patriot? "To love Germany" is true but obviously too vague. So what ways could there be? You could be a Nazi because you believe wholeheartedly in the mission and be willing to die for it. But that's not really love of the country, that's love of a particular idealogy, although the idealogy in question muddles the issue a little by necessitating you believe in the natural supremacy of Germany... You could be someone who sees your country is in trouble, and fight for it against those who would threaten it. This is pretty straightforward, and could be mocked as "blindly following orders," but it's not really that (at least not all the time). This could be done for several reasons. It could be a sense of duty, either from some oath taken earlier (perhaps as a military officer) or just a general belief that one is obliged not to abandon one's fellow citizens. Or it could simply be love of the country, no matter how dark the times become, and even if you don't necessarily agree with decisions the leaders make. Or, for the same reasons, you could do the exact opposite. You could fight against, not your country, but the way your country is going. The men who tried to assassinate Hitler did it out of love for Germany, and a desire to save it from the terrible path he had taken it down. Certainly they were considered traitors at the time, and by their actions they were. But I think what makes a patriot or a traitor is the motivations behind those actions.

Just to clarify, are you saying voting against a woman is anti-American? Is there some association I'm missing here?

ID is more than that, though. Lots of religious people strictly believe in evolution as the means God uses to create, but that's not the same as ID. ID supposes it is science, and something which can be proven, and, were it to become mainstream, would be quite harmful to the actual science, because it is basically a "God of the gaps." For example, if some complicated, unrxplained biological structure is encountered, a real biologist will approach it as a rich source of study that could possibly revolutionize the way we understand broader issues. A IDer, on the other hand, will just take it as proof of God's direct interference, since "it couldn't possibly have happened otherwise," and move on. Basically, it prevents science from learning anything new! It only applies to evolutionary biology, it's true, but teaching that its method is science can only harm the other sciences.

The executive branch does much, much more than that. Most federal agencies are overseen by the executive branch. All legislation has to survive veto, and much of it is "proposed" by the executive. Hence any and all activities of government that involve science are affected by the President's scientific opinions.

I don't think that patriotism means "unconditionally supporting any decisions your country's government makes." I think it means being willing to make sacrifices for your country, and that is NOT the same thing, although it is also a form a "loyalty." A patriot would defend his country in times of war out of love, and he would also care if it was becoming corrupt or immoral in its actions, and fight to right those wrongs. Being a patriot means wanting your country to be as good as possible, however it is you define "good."

"Most science fiction books/films focus on aliens or creatures from other planets." That's certainly news to me...

Indeed. That's one of the reasons I favor socialized medicine, to help out entrepreneurs and small businesses. But I guess that's off-topic.

No, that's not "in other words." Flipping two coins will give you a heads 75% of the time. Look: On average, there will be 1 roll of 4 in every 12 rolls. You will need at least 8 rolls to get at least one roll of 4 on average. Both of the above statements are true. The first deals with the average number of successes. Sometimes you get zero, sometimes more than one, and it averages out. The second deals with the chance of any success at all. Incidentally, your simulations prove me right. Are you aware of that? What was the point of them?

No, I'm not making that assumption. However, when success overall is defined as at least one, the situations are equivalent. Roll ten pairs of dice. What is the probability that at least one will be a four? Answer: the same as the probability that ALL of them will be NOT four. The probability for each pair is 11/12. So the total probability is (11/12)^10. It's slightly more than 50, but assuming it was exactly 50, there would be no advantage to either of us. Any given set of 8 rolls has a 50 percent chance of containing at least one roll of 4. If I give you 9 rolls, you will have the advantage. This is true, but it is not the same as saying that the probability of success for a 12 letter string is 50%. Why? Because both "1 success" and "multiple successes" count as "success." If the average is one, then necessarily you are more likely to get at least one than not. Again, look at coin flips. On average, a set of two will contain one heads. But any particular set of two has a 3/4 chance of containing a heads.

This is incorrect. A probability of 1 means it will definitely occur. You are correct that the probability on any given roll is 1/12, but you can't just add probabilities of successive rolls. Instead: First roll is 1/12. If you roll 4, you're done. However there is an 11/12 chance you have to roll again, with the same 1/12 probability. So, for two rolls, the P = 1/12 + (1/12)*(11/12) = 23/144, which is less than 1/6. Or in other words, the probability of at least one roll of four is 1 - (11/12)^n, where n is the number of flips. You need 8 rolls in order to get a probability greater than 1/2. As you can see, the probability will never reach one, because each successive roll adds 1/12 of the probability that it wasn't rolled before. This makes sense - no matter how many rolls you make, you can never guarantee a roll of 4. If you're not convinced, look at a simple coin flip (the math is easier). What is the probability after 4 flips that you will get at least one heads?

It didn't say that in the article you linked to. The closest thing I see is: Aside from not being at all the same thing as "outlawing references to the word mom and dad," it is from the CCF president, who wants to paint it as poorly as possible. If the best scare-scenario he can come up with is textbooks that have to acknowledge the possibility of gay marriage, then I'm really not impressed. At worst, this is a publicity stunt and a redundant law, but it doesn't look like it will actually change anything. Or as the Gubernator aptly put it, it provides "vague protection when current law already provides clear protection against discrimination...based on sexual orientation."

I dunno. I agree completely there's no absolute criteria, but surely some comparison is possible. There are generalist species which can thrive in multiple niches and survive in lots of different ways (like raccoons), and there are hyper-pigeonholed species that aren't even terribly efficient in their own niche (like pandas). Come to think of it, how the hell aren't pandas extinct, anyway?

Even that, though, relies on the basic assumption that achieving AI analogous to human intelligence is just a matter of speeding up conventional computers, which I find highly questionable. The fundamental structure of the way we currently build computers might well be dead end as far as true AI goes, and that's the only thing that Moore's Law applies to. Certainly the human brain, which is really the only example of true sentience we have, operates on completely different principles from man-made computers. We might have to build organic-brain-like computers, and we don't even really know how the brain works! I suspect the quickest route there would be in simulating a much more rudimentary biological brain, then "evolving" it at the fastest rate we can manage, according to criteria that we hope will make it think like us. Really, that would be even more unpredictable, though...

For a mere ten thousand dollars, I will pledge not to set fire to set fire to any oil wells for at least one year. Best deal in town.

I'd say the reason they do bad things is because of lack of power in individual human beings. The organization of corporations makes it inherently almost impossible for them to ever act for any reason other than the absolute maximization of profits. In other words, they are naturally utterly ammoral, insatiable monsters. That's why Google's slogan ("Don't be evil.") is such a big deal, and why most people are so cynical about it. Basically agreed on 1 and 3, though, although I think you didn't really answer your own questions. You say they're necessary to be competitive, which is true, but that doesn't mean it's not a necessary evil, and it doesn't mean things can't ever change. It seems there's a gradual shift for more employee ownership, which HAS to be an improvement.

I elaborated a great deal on my thoughts on this in post #17. If by limit you mean keep the maximum contribution, then yeah, I would. The first amendment excuse is awfully lame, since even the people who use it know it's just an excuse. It's the policy equivalent of the frivolous lawsuit: everybody knows it's bogus, but there's enough people in power benefitting from it (that is to say, all of them), that there's always someone willing to step up and make a case for the letter of law, spirit be damned. However, I also happen to think the letter argument is rather weak. It's quite the stretch to say that giving somebody money is "speech," "money talks" notwithstanding.

I can't picture any pair-up of the current lot that actually be a good debate, though most have the potential to be funny. (That's really depressing, now that I think about it.) Hair Wars: Edwards vs. Romney would be something. A Clinton vs. Giuliani rematch might be fun, also.

Actually, I think you're right. Upon closer examination, maybe I am being "too democratic." That sounds like a sarcastic statement, but it isn't. The fact that it sounds so just shows how conditioned we all are without even realizing it. Democracy is great, but approaching it as an absolutist is neither practical nor necessarily even beneficial. The practical part I knew - the nature of money is such that I can't imagine a society in which it is completely divorced from political power. All we can do, as you say, is continually think up new ways to check its influence. And even that has to be weighed in such a way that the cure isn't worse than the disease. Some people call it a free speech issue, which to me seems manifestly bogus, but it does at least give us pause. However, the "maybe not beneficial" part I hadn't really considered. Would we actually be better off willingly allowing money and power to cozy up more than is necessary? Instinctively I recoil at the unfairness of it. And it is unfair, by our basic postulates of government. "All men are created equal" means, among other things, that rights do not depend on means. And, obviously, merely having money does not necessarily mean one is smarter or better able to govern. Anyone of even moderate intelligence and decent work ethic can become extremely wealthy if that is one's only goal in life, and, conversely, neither the most intellectual nor the most civic-minded career choices tend to pay very well at all. But the over-all effect? I don't know. I'll really have to think about it. I think you're probably right (despite my above existential issues). But there are obstacles to even straightforward solutions. For all politicians' talk of campaign finance reform, the Catch-22 of the matter is that in order to be in a position to reform the system, you had to have become indebted to it. Screwy laws with lots of loopholes favor incumbents, which means the people who vote on the laws. And so, much like silly pork-barrel spending, it's unlikely to go away, and neither party has more to gain than to lose by pushing it. Vastly! But I doubt it will ever become the status quo, just because they're so much harder than corporations to get started. Perhaps in the future there will be more public awareness about this kind of things, and corporations will grow more and more employee-owned for PR purposes, to appease market forces that favor "less evil" businesses.

One criticism I would raise would be that the faster these technologies evolve, the less meaningful our predictions about them become. We really have no idea what computers will or will not be capable of at given computational capacities, and we don't yet even understand human creativity well enough to make more than the most general of analogies with AI. Further, there is actually no reason something like exponential technological growth will continue in all the necessary areas. Moore's Law has applied for a surprisingly long time, and that's amazing, but who's to say that a) it won't drastically slow quite soon, and b) that computational speed is the only factor that needs to advance. The whole notion of accelerated change --> singularity is based on essentially static analysis, which is a notoriously unreliable predictor. In other words, exponential growth for one period of time does not necessitate or even imply that it will continue indefinitely. The humorous illustration of this often cited is that static analysis predicts that disposable razors will have an infinite number of blades by the year 2015. Similar predictions include the entire Earth covered in Walmarts by 2035, etc. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying any of this is impossible. I believe that strong AI will make its appearance, and the effect of that appearance will have effects that can't possibly be predicted yet. I believe, also, that we'll experience forms of exponential growth that will lead to truly bizarre changes in the way we live, and I look forward to it with deep optimism. They just almost certainly won't be the changes we expect. Vintage science fiction is full of predictions of the wrong kinds of accelerating progress. e.g. we don't have Martian cities or flying cars or home nuclear reactors or global landfills, but we do have the internet. True AI could be right around the corner, or it could far, far away. But something is right around the corner...

I nominate myself for First Self-Nomination.

You're certainly going to find correlations between geologist and non-young earth creationist. I mean, duh. The one implies a specific knowledge, the other implies a lack of that same knowledge. You might find similar correlations with something like "atheist," but it's much less meaningful, since "god" can mean an infinity of different things, and there can't possibly be any particular body of knowledge that would make one an atheist or a theist. So it's just not an analogous circumstance. Your implied conclusion, that physicists somehow learn something in their studies that makes them atheists, does not and can not ever hold water.

So where do we disagree, then?