padren

Taking time to digest and come up with a thoughtful response, even if things get busy and no response ends up following, is far more honorable and productive than a quick, reactive response. If someone takes time to formulate a response, consider it a compliment

I think Jon really really doesn't want to do the news, preferring to do comedy, and feels just a little upset that it's been left up to him - a comedian - to point out the blatant hypocrisy, lies, flip-flopping, obstructionism, and demagoguery that both parties and now even the media portray. He's upset by the fact that no one is covering these sorts of comments unless it fits (or can be made to fit) a political agenda. Take this article on TARP from NPR, or more accurately on the media's difficulty in presenting the story: Now, it's clearly an opinion piece and I say the claims about the necessity of a narrative are invalid, but I can't say that the media in general doesn't consider the need for a narrative valid. For what the media has become, I can see the need for a narrative - something that boils it down for the public and frames it in a manner they can understand, at which point they can accept or reject the narrative and whichever news agency covered it with the most "appealing" narrative to that consumer would increase their viewership by one. Unfortunately, the practice of tailoring narratives runs counter to the goal of providing facts and letting people draw their own conclusions. What's wrong with just reporting: "For all the criticisms of TARP, including the absence of checks and balances, the cost, the rush, the secrecy, the strong-arming, and a repayment strategy that doesn't go beyond 'trust us' the one thing we can say is that this time, it turned out not to cost us $700,000,000,000 and may be the key reason we avoided a major depression." If anything, I think Jon's narrative is not right or left wing - it's "You can say and do what you want, but you will be held to account for what you say and do." and it applies to both the politicians and the media that fails to hold politicians accountable. I do think he gives a bit more slack to the left in that he has more benefit of the doubt that a social program to help the poor is "honestly to help the country" than a upper tax bracket break is "honestly to help the country" as a result of his own political leanings. Overall though I think this has a minor impact on his narrative, because when he sees blatant hypocrisy, lies, flip-flopping, obstructionism, and demagoguery he is as (if not more) upset with liberals as he is with conservatives. Secondarily: Pangloss, I appreciate the metrics you are using to to try and evaluate Jon's leanings, but I think it's somewhat backwards. I would say it does demonstrate that he will criticize The Left, but it doesn't address the reasons to the degree that can actually demonstrate causation with regards to the left/right criticism ratio. For that you have to look past who he's being critical of, and examine the common themes in what he's critical of cross-party. It's there that the "Stewart Narrative" emerges, which boils down to "Here's some politicians failing to give straight answers, and here's the media failing to call them on it." The comedy arises from the sheer cartoonishly absurd scale of these failings, hence as narratives go it's a pretty dark one. If he has a political bias that emerges in the ratio you presented, you'd have to look at the stories of the day that are considered but rejected as material for the show, and the amount of material (and priority) vary day to day depending on what the two parties have been up to.

First, what policies has Obama engaged in that actually surprised anyone? On a range from "no change at all" to "campaign promise" he has managed to float somewhere in the middle. He was elected to push a more socialized solution for healthcare, and he passed a watered down one that is better than "no change at all" but sure didn't live up to the promise of a public option. He's pulled combat troops from Iraq but we still have DADT. However, I haven't seen any sign of him doing anything "radically polarizing" unless you count doing what he was elected to do and not even most of that an outrageous abuse of our electoral system.

That is a correct assessment of my argument there, well said. Technically it can't be proven as "not harmful" as proving a negative is exceptionally tricky. The core feature of his argument that I actually agree with is that the hysteria the taboo invokes by adults in a child's life can be a cause of psychological damage. To rephrase what I believe he is saying, consider if we lived in a society where we all believed that taking a photograph stole a person's soul, and as such no one ever took photographs. If a child came running crying to their mom that a strange man in the street took their (fully clothed mind you) photograph, the resulting hysteria and reinforcement of the belief would certainly traumatize the child. The kid would be scared that some stranger had their soul, and every other kid that had experienced that was traumatized for life, so they can expect a long road to recovery. Our society could easily continue to blame such subsequent psychological trauma as evidence that photography can in fact steal a person's soul and naturally cause extreme psychological trauma. I believe that's the core of his argument, and I agree that it is entirely self consistent and possibly emerges in some situations. Where I disagree, is I do not believe pedophilia is as benign as taking someone's picture, I do believe it is quite capable of causing genuine harm all on it's own with no need for cultural reinforcement. Hysteria may amplify this harm, but the initial harm done would still be in there and is great enough that it justifies the laws against the practice regardless of cultural magnifiers. To explain why I draw this conclusion I've detailed many ways in which a child would be likely to experience psychological harm in previous posts. Marat, I never said I thought those practices such as competitive sports should be banned as too risky, I felt that your parents failed to properly protect you because they failed to identify the harm it was causing. I also said I have witnessed the damage caused by those practices and dislike them (I would not encourage my own child if I had one to engage in certain sports) but I think the solution in that case is to increase understanding, rather than to necessitate a ban. As to the risk pool analysis I think it's a little over simplified. Traffic navigation is relatively risky but it is a necessary life skill. Competitive sports are risky and a parent should be aware if their child is being harmed or coerced but I can't say it's not a worthwhile risk. I can't it's a worthwhile one either - I don't really know and hence it's up to a parent to raise and safeguard their child. Other activities, like carving up shotgun shells to make bombs is really not going to accomplish or teach anything (baring a zombie apocalypse) that justifies the risk. I would rate pederasty as somewhere near carving shotgun shells, where all the risk is on the child and all the benefit is some adult's sexual gratification. If the risk was around the level of "might catch a cold" I would say you might have an argument, but unfortunately it's much higher. If you want to contend that pederasty risks are not higher, I would recommend countering some of my arguments regarding why pederasty specifically (and not the hysteria around it) leads to great risk of psychological harm. I made many of them in previous posts that you haven't responded to.

I won't use the word evil - that may be too far, but I'm certainly thinking it. The problem I see is that I don't know how to look at modern conservatism and address the manipulation, lying, hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance, fear mongering, and blatantly self serving agendas of what appears to be the "spearhead" of the current movement without using harsh and perhaps insulting terminology. I am equally put off when democrats do it such as the "Taliban Dan" quote that Jon Stewart points out, but if I focus overly on the conservative side it's because it dwarfs the intensity of the other side. Liberals should be held to account for their own dirty tricks but it's like they are throwing firecrackers at old ladies when the conservatives are burning down whole city blocks. Maybe I am just incredibly jaded but when people can just invent whatever narrative they want, reality be damned, call it news then cite the news as a source and manipulate millions of voters it's a serious problem. I'm not suggesting they don't have the right to free speech or should be silenced in any way but this is a real problem. As a left leaner I know I have a sampling bias too, but things have gotten crazy on orders of magnitude larger than I can blame on that. It was a comforting idea to say "well both sides are bad, that side just irks me more" for many years but I have given up on the idea that is equivocal. I have to believe my eyes and say it's gotten destructive, dangerous, and it's absolutely the right that are manufacturing the problem. Where liberals have dabbled in dirt conservatives have built an industry. I don't care if people call Obama a Kenyan plant, a socialist, a Muslim or Hitler. What bothers me is that there is an entire industry in place to make sure that when they do, people will believe them. It's sick, it stinks, and it's a game that the right has taken, reinvented and industrialized. If I thought the people who were mixing the cool-aid were also drinking it I wouldn't call it evil, just misguided. I can't believe that though, because the narrative changes gears so quickly and so ubiquitously you'd never know we were ever at war with Eastasia. It's too fast and too polished not to be deliberate. Genuine ignorance moves and shifts in a much more organic and sloppy manner. I really do hope the "take it down a notch" mentality prevails, and I certainly have no interest in supporting representatives that throw around incendiary terminology because I do believe it's counter productive. I would like to see conservatives and liberals alike come to the conclusion that their concerns are better conveyed for debate and discussion within the democratic political process then their representatives don't operate in a manner largely indistinguishable from works of evil. PS: Good to see you both around Bascule, iNow, I always appreciate both of your posts.

I can hotlink to an image, and I can upload the image and have it show as an attachment, but if I take the URL of the attachment and try to use that in an embedded image it says "you cannot use that extension" because it has detected the .php filename. Is it possible to make an exception for this so you can embed images that are linked via an attached image?

I know the guy that does these, so technically it's a plug but I thought it was pretty funny and clever: Don't Ask, Don't Care

Firstly: No no no no no, that is not what objective means. You are using your life experience to draw your conclusions, meaning it is a subjective analysis, not an objective one. Secondly: Whether your parents would have overreacted does not tell us anything other than how your parents would have reacted to that situation. I believe you yourself established that your parents (for all intensive purposes) were basically stark raving mad and entirely unreliable at risk assessment. It is quite likely that many parents would react severally but many would actually try not to traumatize their kids by making it worse. Thirdly: You have absolutely no reflection on the risks - to you because you weren't hurt you assess the risks are minimal. You may as well say "Math teachers have an objectively unsupportable value judgment against buying lotto tickets" because you bought one and just happened to win a million dollars. I am not saying the odds of your successful navigation of the risks were on par with winning the lotto, but they are far closer to that than the "minimal risk" you keep repeating. Just because your parents would overreact due to their beliefs that there was a 100% chance you would be harmed does not mean all parents are like that nor does it mean that the concerns of most parents are unfounded. Your parents apparently had no sense of reality. Other parents could react in a lesser-but-still-upset manner for completely legitimate reasons due to completely reasonable risk assessments. I have outlined a great many risks that you haven't acknowledged, all you have done is repeat that "you were fine" so it wasn't risky, which is not logically conclusive. Welcome to our sick, brutal and barbaric culture. You mentioned all this before and I took the time to reply and explain how it is not relevant to the issue of pederasty. All it says is that many parents put their children in harms way without realizing it due to cultural traditions they haven't stopped to question. That does not mean they should stop realizing that pederasty is high risk and can cause serious harm and suddenly condone it. Do you see how these are separate issues? No. I can't grant you the risks are objectively less, for reasons already covered. Yes, the risks are blown out of proportion by many parents, but that does not mean a proportional response would be to condone the activity as actively as they would condone competitive ice skating. Many people in our culture have a lot of baggage and hangups about sex that don't need to be there. I agree with that. That does not mean that getting rid of all the baggage will demonstrate that there is no serious risks of harm. Except that 'physical pleasure' can apply to anything as mundane as a back rub or as intense as sex, which has massive emotional, perceptual and psychological liabilities. To bundle the words together would be like saying "A duck and a hippo are both animals, so lets call them animals, and when you find a duck and weigh that animal, it is light, therefore animals and by proxy hippos are light." Different behaviors that release different chemicals in the brain in different intensities carry different implications. Only adults that go to shady parlors for happy endings. Many adults also regard a good cigarette part of sex, but that does not mean cigarette smoking is sexual. It means it can be. When it is, then it is. When it's not, then it's not. This is on a case by case basis. It is clear and very easy to separate a non-sexual massage from a sexual massage. For instance, a non-sexual massage does not carry the majority of the risks associated with a sexual massage. To call them both "massage" when you are clearly trying to refer to very different types of massages with very different activities and implications only serves to obscure and blur the meanings of what you are describing - language is designed to make things more understandable and unambiguous, not less. They differ in quality, and any MRI would show that. There would be dramatic differences in brain activity, and there would be an entirely distinct set of chemicals flooding the bloodstream in a sexual act. The "line" is when it crosses over from general contact to focused sexual stimulation. It means your parents are totally nuts, and even people bothered by religious nut parents terrorizing their kids couldn't do anything about it because the issue of religious freedoms and child raising rights and responsibilities are a very difficult gray area we are still working through. Just because the crazy religious aspects of your parents aren't objective, and just because their behavior is tolerated by a mix of people (some who directly condone it, others who don't but can't find a practical solution that would allow any form of intervention) does not mean that the concerns over pederasty are not objectively motivated. I am open to your arguments but the contrast to your religious upbringing and competitive sports activities vs. sexuality cannot in any way tell us a single thing about proper reactions to sexuality. All it tells us is that your parents had no issue putting you in harms way with regards to some activities, while did take great issue with exposing you to others. You can isolate what they did condone and say they condoned it out of hypocrisy or out of ignorance or whatever you like - none of those factors support or condemn their views on pederasty. It infers they may have had a predilection to overreact to the harms of pederasty, but it doesn't even infer that the harms of pederasty are non-existent and solely borne of social taboos.

I really think it was the Cold War that did it. World War II started for the US when Pearl Harbor was bombed and quite quickly occupied the national attention, but it also left the sense of isolationism's inadequacy as a defensive policy. Immediately following the war US quickly found itself in a nuclear and conventional military arms race with the Soviet Union, in which it pretty much adopted a policy that - while glad to stand by her allies - would ensure that we were capable of unilaterally matching any threat the USSR could pose. I can't imagine what it would have been like in Western Europe, Australia, or any of the Western Nations but here (I imagine) the sense was the USA and the USSR were two super powers locked in an ideological (and probably literal) death match, hot or not. Considering it was a time where helping Osama Bin Laden recruit religious radicals to fight Soviets in Afghanistan seemed like the least messed up thing to do, you can be pretty sure it was overall quite a messed up time. For half a century every political discussion in the country had to occur within the context that at any given moment the person we put in the White House may have to signal the launch of thousands of nuclear missiles to end the world as we know it in less than an hour. Obscene amounts of money were spent during the Cold War in the name of self preservation and a commitment to preventing the Soviets from achieving military superiority. Foreign policies like "If you push us, we'll push back, but only as far as is financially prudent" were unthinkable, and to this day we react to any military (or terrorist) threat in an all out do-or-die fashion. Now we don't only have to deal with a runaway military budget but also (like many maturing 1st world nations) an encroaching entitlement crisis, and we are still so shell-shocked from the cold war we have to tip toe around a ton of third rails. The US has half of the world's aircraft carriers and if you raise the question if this is necessary, you are looked at like you are a pod person, robot or cold blooded commie. Certainly as someone without the red blooded "whatever it takes" will power to make sure this nation is always ready to defend against any threat to the very last breath. And yes, the ideals are worth dying for, but when budget policies are drawn from that mentality even when there are no military rivals the result is what you see today. I highlight the military as an example but the mentality isn't limited to defense. It's the idea "This is who we are, this is who we are going to be, and we will be this way or die trying" that is at the heart of it. For some that is the indomitable free market capitalistic America that would rather die than surrender and become a rich taxing socialist Euro-state. For others it's "Medical for everyone, at any cost" because you just can't negotiate on moral imperatives. For others its the 10 extra spy satellites in the name of security that make sure terrorists don't target your Ford Torus, specifically. It started with the drawing of lines in the sand during the Cold War and raising of rhetoric, and now long after the collapse of the Soviets we are still recovering from that mentality and long term effects.

I always thought superpositions were the latticework through which the varying probabilistic qualities of the Universe are interconnected. When you take a measurement you find out what side you are on, and you know that the other value is on the other side, but there is no way to interact with that other side or predict which side you are on beforehand. The intersections are not based on "decisions" but quantum superpositions, so our "choices" aren't what it's about. Also: They have determine that the Universal Constants do vary in this universe, and appear to distort the farther away from our galaxy you get. Some of the deepest Hubble imagery has provided data that describes how those constants vary, though they are as good as constant for the purpose of almost everything within our ability to observe.

It's how they test the waters and I think a lot of the time kids back out before it gets that intense. An interesting question I think is when one kid becomes uncomfortable and the other is pressuring, it could end up causing harm. At the same time they are both kids and we don't expect them to understand other people's feelings that well. It's a tricky topic to explore. I agree they aren't "ruined" but if they do get a taste for it (not the blood, the rush), it can lead to very intractable behavioral problems. Basically providing what I consider empirical evidence that suggests that even adults have a lot of difficultly making wise decisions in face of sexual drives. That difficulty is ubiquitously exploited/leveraged in our society and it's adults who try to navigate it, quite often with pretty poor results. I agree. I think it would require an almost saintlike disposition for an adult not end up with compromised judgment. Certainly requires more than a priest-like disposition if current events are any indication. It seems to me to be safe to say that children are too impressionable, malleable, and vulnerable to be expected to cope with any degree of sexual leveraging from an adult... and the only thing that has ever seemed to keep an adult in check is a sharp, equally experienced partner. Imagine if every argument you ever had with a sexual partner could be trumped with "You're too young to understand" and you got to win every single one? I hate to think how my life would have turned out if I always won those arguments - thank goodness I've always been interested in challenging partners.

That's fair. Perhaps it boils down to the Maslow Hierarchy somewhat, but it is worth noting that sexuality in our society is the most powerful and judgment affecting drive that tends to come into play. Perhaps we use sex to sell in ads because if people are preoccupied with the more basic drives (like food) they probably don't have much money to spend. Of course, people do eat incredibly overpriced fish eggs and snails, so even when in excess food is a strong drive but I also supposed people that spend that sort of money on food have no shortage of money. When basic quality food is covered, people tend to financially suffer for sex more than other drives.

Out of curiosity are there any studies done by countries that have already passed through various stages of integration? It seems like the sort of thing military brass would like to study: how has the introduction of women into combat operations impacted the chain of command? Can men still do as they are told in German to do? Do the Israelis have women-linked (either due to their actions or that of men because of women) failures? It feels like we can intellectually talk about all these gender-focused hardwired behaviors all day, but the real question is how it pans out in the field.

The problem is in your thought experiment you removed far more than just the cultural disapproval. You removed any way for the child to experience anything or grow up without an adult that is trying to have sex with them. I honestly believe the longer a child grows up without being exposed to sexuality the better, outside of their own exploration in terms of playing doctor with kids their age and such. When you compare child "doctor" games to adult sexuality you are comparing the difference between pixie sticks and crack cocaine. The only act that an adult will focus on more intensely than a sexual act will be violence. As far as our hardwiring goes, we become most engrossed in acts associated with reproduction, and second is having to kill or be killed. A distant third is eating. Once a child discovers an adult level intensity of sexuality it is going to have an impact on their development. When a dog "tastes blood" the animal is usually put down, because it won't manage that appetite once triggered. If a child has a bad adult sexual experience, it will be intensely bad. If they have a "good" one the intensity will still overshadow other things they should really be preoccupied with. Consider: The easiest way to separate a grown, mature intelligent successful man from his money is to use sex. Not crack Not fast cars. Just sex. People we trust to "press the button" and nuke the whole world over and elect as well accomplished leaders still can't always keep it in their pants when it is obvious they should. Setting up a child to try to navigate those sorts of emotions in a world of adults is ludicrous - they'd have a better chance navigating class 5 rapids in a wet paper bag. Because your parents were either too dense, too preoccupied, too uncaring, or too dependent on conventional wisdom to realize the effects of the event on you. So, because people fail to see the damage some conventional activities cause, the answer is to also fail to see the damage sexual activities cause? That does not add up. You can be sure they believe it was for your own good. Getting beat was considered an indispensable learning tool in child raising not long ago: "Spare the rod, spoil the child" pretty much says if you don't beat your kids they'll hate you for it later on. The way I see it, it works like this: 1) We are slowly moving from an exceptionally violent culture to a less and less violent culture. 2) As we do so, we find not only do we not need to use violent and harmful techniques to "toughen" children up, but it ends up hurting in more civil societies than it helps. 3) Groups that have had traditions for thousands of years are going to continue believing in their techniques, until society says "oh I don't think so" and takes a stand against specific harms we see and intervene to stop. -- This includes child labor, discipline involving physical abuse or neglect, pedophilia, and most recently whether religious parents can prevent life-saving care in hospitals for children facing life threatening conditions. 4) Some negative traditions persist out of ignorance to their harm, while others persist because we haven't solved the touchy issue between protecting a child and protecting the rights of a parent to raise their child. Honestly I wonder if any kid should be playing competitive sports like soccer. I know people in their early 20s who hurt every day and have horrible joint problems from highschool sports. Because we have been able to determine that pederasty does cause harm, and thankfully pederasts don't have a massive stranglehold on our political system so we can actually protect kids from that. Religion is a lot trickier because it involves a lot of magical justifications but we do intervene far more now than ever before when a child is exposed to physical harm due to religious beliefs of their parents. Under the principle of self-determination you can't really stop a parent from educating their child with a fire/brimstone faith, but you can stop them from hitting their kids, denying their kids medical treatment, or marrying off their kids. The fact that we still have problems with how much we do/don't protect children from their parents isn't really relevant to the question if we should protect kids from a specifically known type of harm. Humans aren't perfect and in 500 years we'll probably be horrified about what people in our age did and considered normal. But you can't just throw your hands up in the air because we haven't gotten it "all right" just yet. It's an incremental process.

As for the top two: yes, I agree with those statements. Consider watching a movie, and for about 30 minutes in the middle the movie takes place on some of the most scenic landscapes imaginable. By the time those scenes are over and you are in the last half of the movie, the movie will never show those landscapes again. The fact they aren't at the "end" of the movie doesn't mean the movie is ineligible for Best Cinematography Academy Award. You may say "if no one is around to remember the film, then what's the point?" and that would be understandable, but even if you watched the movie, noticed the great scenes, and lost your memory of the movie immediately after - would that mean the movie did not contain those great scenes? They are still there, and they'll still be great even if no else ever saw them. The movie doesn't ever have to be played again to contain the attributes that make it remarkable, nor does it need a legacy. Not having a legacy simply means it doesn't have a legacy - it does not mean that there is nothing great about it. On the last question, asking whether one can get away with wrongdoing is not the same thing as whether right and wrong are meaningless. I doubt there is any divine punishment for wrongdoing, but really we have to ask whether divine punishment is a realistic way to address the value of right or wrong. Personally, I think the punishment for wrongdoing is built into the laws of physics (from which our biological systems emerged) in that in order to justify a life of wrongdoing the wrongdoer has to either (A) have no conscience at all, like a sociopath, (B) feel justified by viewing the world as a place where "right" is meaningless, or © feel like a broken useless person who can't seem to do right. Granted, I do have a rather self-specific sense of right and wrong so the standards I hold myself to are different than those I expect others to hold themselves to. Overall, I feel my personal morals are the best ones I could live by and happily update them as my views evolve. I think that's the best way to go about it though, and whether there is divine punishment for wrongdoing or not, I don't think "fear of judgment" is a very good monitor of a person's morality - it only tells you they can follow orders when intimidated enough.

I think the "harm" test case is necessary, though I think pedophilia falls on the "clearly causes harm" side of that test. Children aren't allowed to work in factories the way they did during the industrial revolution, and it could be argued that there are opportunities that would be beneficial "if done right" in factories today, and while itself is a tenuous case it also fails because the "if" is so abstract that a child would most certainly be put "at great risk" even if they do not come to harm in a single scenario due to the general uncertainty. (Again to reiterate, the uncertainty on my part is towards my own expertise to evaluate the massive evidence that demonstrates it's harmful, I personally (albeit lazily) still trust that evidence and believe the behavior is harmful.) Interestingly enough, if I had to vote one way or another I'd still vote on banning pederasty even if the evidence in the case in support of the ban was too capricious to pass a standard constitutional challenge. I would have to consider myself both hypocritical and bigoted to take that stance (and again, it's such a strange hypothetical to consider) since I regularly browbeat moralists that employ that same standard. If the proponents of the challenge had a genuinely strong case it's conceivable I could be persuaded.

I think even framing it as a democracy/freedom vs. oppression/terror is the wrong way. We don't have terrorists from China hitting us, and they are not a democracy. If it boiled down to those polarities the whole world would be in a lot more trouble. Even take Iran - most people thought of it as a relatively backwards superstitious and violent middle eastern country until the post-election riots. There was a lot of talk on the news about those protests and the need to support those fighting on the streets for Western style freedoms- but they weren't. They were fighting for Iranian style freedoms that most Westerners still don't understand and even those protesters don't want to see Iran become like the west. They want a less radical and less intolerant Iran that is more responsive to the values of the younger generations emerging there, but they don't see us as an ideal model. We do need nations to understand that there is a degree of responsibility for the conduct of even rogue elements within their borders that if they don't fix, we will have to by force should they risk boiling over, but most of those nation states don't want to attack the US, they want to rule their nations corruptly and ignore the festering problems caused by poverty, lawlessness and instability. Terrorist groups take advantage of those problems in the same way gangs recruit in slums and as such it becomes our (advanced nations) problem. The solution however isn't to obliterate and erect a democracy in every case though. In some cases it can be better solved with countering corruption, or supporting the efforts for internal change towards stability, even if it retains some qualities (more akin to China) we may not prefer. If we found out that Cuba was being used by terrorists to plan attacks here despite their government's attempts to stop them, how would we solve it? 1) We could blow it all up, erect a democracy, and fight off the locals who violently oppose us and will side with terrorists against us to preserve their sovereignty. 2) We could help them clean up the problems that create that risk in the first place and work with them to find and detain terrorist cells even if we don't like their government model. Option (2) would probably even require a different "partner in the fight against terror" than ourselves, as there has been too much mistrust for too long between Cuba and ourselves, but it would probably be far more worth while, result effective, and cost effective overall. Sometimes an analysis will demonstrate that the risk factors are systemic to the mechanism of government in place and those in power will fight to preserve it. In those cases we can carry out operations in within their borders and basically say "You could hit us, but I recommend staying out of our way" while supporting internal reform movements... or bite the bullet and engage in a full scale invasion of the country. Due to the costs though, to both us and to noncombatants just trying to survive there we need to be real about what that commitment will take and not do so with cavalier bravado.

Marat, I agree actually that the societal taboo facet does add to the harm done. I don't have the expertise to even say with conclusive empirical evidence that every possible scenario where an adult and a child engage in a sexual relationship necessitates harm - at the same time there are fringe cases where people balance meth habits successfully or people drive better drunk than other people legally drive sober. I also don't know the subtleties of Ancient Greek culture, or if certain taken-for-granted characteristics someone mitigated some of the harms that seem inevitable in today's society when adults and children enter sexual relationships. As such, I am not in a position to argue from empirical evidence on every possible scenario. However, I do still feel that I trust those that claim to have such empirical evidence over those who say it's just taboo - it's a personal opinion. Your scenario about the Space Ship is somewhat like the argument that "if someone drives drunk on a public road when there is 100% chance no one else will be on that road, how can they harm others?" It's such a fringe case you mitigate a ton of real-world factors. Just to give a few: what if there were two adults on the space ship and one child? The adults totally control the child's choice of which if either to be involved with, whereas if the child grew up and become an adult, they could make their own decisions. The simple fact is that child is relying on the adult(s) for guidance to grow as an individual, and the adult(s) have a bias preference towards shaping that child's emerging personality towards that which suits them in an exploitative manner. It is my opinion that an adult has about the same chances of not exploiting a child in that position as a drunk has of being better at driving than the majority of legal sober drivers. The conditions are too precarious and too high risk to warrant a legal exception. I personally still believe that if the evidence was quantified well enough, that both the manner in which it is harmful to the child as well as the answers to the "but the greeks pulled it off okay" mystery would be solved, and pederasty would remain illegal. I don't have the evidence personally so I would be the wrong person to argue on behalf of the law to the SCOTUS, and I don't consider myself a bigot as I would genuinely in good faith review any evidence to the contrary, but I do acknowledge that my opinion leads me to believe (based on the arguments cited previously) that it is harmful.

Counter terrorism is worthwhile, but a War on Terror certainly isn't. We reacted to 9-11 the same way we reacted to Pearl Harbor, and it was entirely the wrong response. When we were attacked by Japan, we quickly rallied to do "all that it takes" and that is a good thing - you can't put a price-tag on sovereignty (at least not within the American mentality). WWII was the right place to go all out and stop at nothing to defeat our enemies. On the other hand 9-11, was far more of a symptom of a growing problem in regional instabilities providing environments for local extremists to act on a global stage. I completely disagree with how we declared the "war on terror" but I totally agree that we had to look at the whole globe in a new way to assess an ignored problem - even when Jon Stewart talks about the money-sink that has become the two wars and criticize the Afghanistan efforts, I can't help but to feel like the problem is so large because it has been so ignored for so long. It's like having your septic back up in the sink, and not being able to understand why it's so expensive to "fix the sink" when that's not even the scope of the problem. However, the real tragedy in my mind is just how much we have treated it like a war. It's a fact that it's part of the American way that when Americans at home die in large attacks from foreign sources, the military expects a blank check, and the public expects no expense to be spared. How we reacted to Pearl Harbor pretty much convinced the Japanese that the war was already lost. That sort of reaction only strengthens terrorist groups - they want a huge reaction, and they want their own existence validated. They want to be taken seriously as a player on the stage. We should have treated it like a really bad slum or ghetto... the police won't go there, and some people go out from there and rob / kill people in other wealthy neighborhoods. It's a gang problem on a global scale but you can't solve gang violence by treating gang-laden neighborhoods as enemy states. You have to assess why those neighborhoods are vulnerable and address those vulnerabilities. You may have to send in troops and even blow a lot of stuff up on ops, but if it's treated like a straight up war (get Japan to surrender, build a democracy there) you're basically going to fail.

Only if you have a fear of non-existence. Besides which - of course 50 years is better than 1.... you get to actually live longer. I'd rather know now if I was going to die in exactly 1 year or in 50 years so I would know how best to use that time. Saying life is better when you are ignorant to the facts is a rather ugly way to view the world IMO. I want to understand what actually is to the very best of my ability and do my best to appreciate what actually is, not live in blissful ignorance based on a completely inaccurate view of the world. I honestly believe the more you know about the Universe, the more meaning there is to be found. Hiding in ignorance and blatantly false predictions may allow someone to have a less stressful life for a span, but hiding in a delusion is no way to go through life. At least it's not how I want to spend my time here. The idea of eternal life has existed long before Christianity, and I hardly think that it makes the world a better place within the context of producing "the best soldiers" frankly. The concept also gave us the brutality of the vikings as they sought Valhalla, the kamikaze soldiers of WWII Japan, and of course the fruits of radical Islam. You can throw in the crusades of course, and all the brutality of the Christian Age of the Roman Empire. I fail to see how the idea of immortality giving people a religious zealot's dedication to killing without regard for their own safety is considered beneficial to the world.

its current value has nothing to do with its future value - if something no longer exists in the future, and there is no one to recognize it then, the value it has currently is unaffected by that future value. When you build something that is worth little to you currently in hopes that it will be something of value in the future, that is still a worthwhile endeavor but it is a gamble and the only thing that you can be sure about is it's current value. The only other thing you can be sure about is that at some point in the future, it probably will have passed it's moment and no longer exist. But it's value comes from the span of time in which it does exist, which is not negated by a future in which it doesn't. If you subconsciously expect some sort of immortality tied to either your identity or the results of your actions, the idea that it probably won't be like that is kinda depressing. But I also thought I would be an astronaut and get to hang out with aliens when I was a kid... realizing aliens don't really buzz this rock and the limits of FTL was pretty depressing for a while. The whole reason things are depressing aren't because the reality is so dire - it's that expectations were so much higher. The only way to overcome that IMO is to take a small bit of time to appreciate what you do know you have and try to enjoy it. Maybe you won't, maybe you will. Maybe my one true calling in life was to hang out with aliens from other planets, and now that it won't be like that I will have nothing worthwhile to find my whole life. Or, I'll find that life - even sans-aliens is worthwhile. I have to try to give sans-alien reality a chance though before I could be sure... so far I'm pretty happy with the results. Meaningless is a very strong word. You imply for something to have meaning, it must persist. Is time infinite? Will the universe go on forever? How can anything persist beyond the lifespan of the universe? Right and wrong exist in the same manner that love and beauty exists. When we experience those things and don't understand them, we think of them as miraculous mysteries - learning about how brain chemistry works and "answering" the mysteries of the feelings we have when we see beauty or fall in love may take the mystery out, but it doesn't invalidate the value. Miraculous mysteries are great, but even without the mystery part the miraculous experiences still exist. The fact you are able to worth within a framework where right and wrong exist allows you to benefit from them and value their meaning. If all life in the universe ceased to exist at a point in the future, there really couldn't be any right or wrong - stray photons and electrons buzzing around atoms aren't likely to run into moral quandaries. Within the framework of our lives right and wrong, beauty and love all have meaning and give our lives richness of experience plus the knowledge that the universe does include right and wrong, as it includes us and we experience those things. So it does have meaning, it's just not likely to still mean something during the time-span when the universe eventually dies.

Marat, I'll respond but I do hope this post and the whole pedophilia tangent are moved to it's own thread. 1) These societies ran the gamut from employing slavery to cannibalism within an extremely hostile, violent, and by our current standards traumatic environment. Trying to spot the damage of sexual abuse would probably be about as difficult as spotting a candle in a campfire. 2) Even if Stockholm Syndrome finally set in and the child defends their abuser as someone they love, it set in as a survival mechanism - not a personal choice. 3) Sexual attention is one of the most intense forms of attention one human can pay another and the result can be absolutely jarring for a child. It is also completely outside the experience of a child, so a child would have no idea what they are consenting to even if they could. There's a huge difference between understanding a cell phone contract and understanding how entering a sexual relationship (even with an intellectual equal) can screw you up one side and down the other. 4) Lovers quarrel, and generally for good reasons. There is no way a child would have the life experience or skills to compete with an adult, and even adults often find inequity in this facet unhealthy. There is a big difference between games like doctor and adult sexuality. That's why even consensual sex between and adult and a minor is considered statutory rape - "being delighted" does not equal "ends well for you." Would you still be delighted if that woman became pregnant by you when you were only 13? What if you caught Hep c? Do you really think your hormone addled brain was capable of giving informed consent? That was your hormones, not adults. It may have been painful, but was it abusive? Do you wake up in cold sweats from nightmares of not-sex? If you say you were abused by being denied sex (not sure how that would work really) I'll agree to consider that a possibility, but it doesn't negate anything else. It's not like consensual sex with someone your age wouldn't have rectified that, so don't think it really applies to the pedophilia argument. I think I covered this pretty well above, but I have no idea where you draw "infinitely more risky" from, as very few kids have ever committed suicide or endured years of therapy while battling through semi-functional relationships because they once jumped off a diving board. You seem to think the risks of sex are somehow limited to the mechanics - are you accounting for the intense emotional risks, the possibility of pregnancy and STDs? Personally, I think we should move as a society away from physical abuse, rather than towards pedophilia to solve that particular hypocrisy. It's also worth noting that we have changed a lot in our thoughts on physical punishment and how far a parent's inalienable rights go. I think the hypocrisy you point out is a better at showing why nuns shouldn't be allowed to beat kids, rather than showing why adults should be able to have sex with children. If I was to take a stab at the answer, I'd say it's because we are still rather screwed up in ways that only a few dozen of millennia of absolute barbarism can accomplish. We are getting better at the "how not to screw up absolutely everything" front but it takes time. It could have been the other way around, but religious zealots do tend to be better armed and more militant than pedophiles, so it kinda makes sense which died off first. I mean we did finally get them to stop burning crosses in people's yards for the most part, but there's a whole lot of crazy to deal with left over from the crazy ages. I'm sorry society didn't get to the nuns issue sooner, though I do believe at least in the US it's a lot different now than it was even a few decades ago. As I said in the previous post: that's enough to get a law passed - but to keep it when challenged means you have to defend it and to do that you need a lot of evidence. To a degree, you can skate entirely on the fact it's taboo and get away with it for a while, but it's an untenable position that is designed to be unstable. You could be right - but in my view (and reasons behind it at the top of this post) you are incorrect in that last assessment. I agree about the thread split and would prefer it. This thread was a good discussion on DADT and it kinda sucks when GLBT rights threads get sidetracked down the same usual suspects of slippery slope side topics.

The view on marijuana legality is pretty much changing in step with how people view marijuana itself regarding it's health risks as compared to alcohol. Just because people have measured the two substances and presented that, on a number of measured indexes, alcohol is more harmful than marijuana the real resistance to legalization comes from people who believe it's more dangerous regardless of what scientists measure. A lot of people view THC as at least more psychologically harmful than alcohol - they may be totally wrong and base it on a sampling bias against "lazy stoners" but the difference in why one is illegal and the other is legal is due a genuine belief that THC is more harmful. Alcohol is seen as something than can ruin some people who are susceptible or weak willed, but that marijuana turns otherwise productive active people into lazy couch surfers. We are a good distance past the "gateway drug" scare but it takes people a while to come around. However, regarding the "harm principle" I would have to say that the line is drawn by allowing laws to pass by popular support, regardless of whether they are unconstitutional... but they can be challenged for it. When a proposed law fails to get passed on the grounds it's not constitutional, that is basically saying it's not worth passing the bill because it would be quickly struck down - not that it couldn't be passed. People of course disagree about the constitution and it's still as fallible as any other human endeavor. Rulings do get reversed as the culture changes. But where the debate in passing a law usually revolves around whether it will solve a problem and if it's popular the debate when arguing before the SCOTUS in a challenge are not at all issues of popularity or effectiveness, but of specifically constitutional integrity. (Or technically if the law is legal, it could be considered illegal for other reasons than constitutional ones.) So even though humans (and judges) do get biased by cultural pressures, the arguments from both proponents and opponents of a law are only framed by the context of whether it is constitutional. Even the pedophile who feels he can't have a normal healthy sexual relationship with a child solely due to prejudicial laws has a case. It's just a horribly weak case and would never survive the mountains of evidence that demonstrate his claim that "no one is harmed" is completely false. Maybe that mountain of evidence will somehow be discredited someday and it will turn out the Greeks of old were right and the pedophile will win his case. I doubt it, but the system is geared to follow that principle regardless of which way it goes. It's imperfect and fallible, and sometimes the pressures of society do delay social change (over civil rights, slavery, property rights, abortion, women's suffrage, DADT, etc) for a long time but as long as people are subjected to discriminatory laws and have access to the means to challenge them it becomes almost inevitable that unconstitutional policies that cause undue discrimination will be struck down. That's why you draw the line there in terms of harm: some laws that are unconstitutional may never be struck down - but only because no one is challenging them because no one is being adversely affected enough to do so. However, when we discuss things like DADT and gay marriage or any topic where people are bringing forth a strong case for discrimination it is a very false comparison to compare it to a hypothetical bestiality or pedophilia challenge, because no one (sane) is challenging those laws. The reason no one is, is the facts are against them. So even if anti-pedophilia laws are passed solely because of moral taboos, it's the evidence that pedophilia does causes harm that prevents those laws from being stuck down in constitutional challenges. So back to DADT we have people of a sexual orientation that even proponents of DADT acknowledge are just as capable - the fact DADT exists is a testament to that. Proponents of DADT say that homophobic soldiers will cause a loss of cohesion, and since they don't want to address the homophobia problem they try to solve it by hiding homosexuals in plain sight by not asking or telling. Just imagine for a moment if it was possible to hide your race, and we had a policy that black people could enter the military as long as they played along and let everyone assume they are white without ever giving away they were black. Would we really coddle the racists that get "disrupted" by openly black soldiers? It's an unfair burden to make a soldier live in the closet just to appease the prejudices of a few bad apples. At least that's how I feel the issue plays out.

It will mean nothing at some point in the future, but it does mean something at least to me now in the present. The fact that it won't mean anything at some point in the future does not diminish the value it has in the present or the past. As I said before, in the objective sense past, present and future are equal - it doesn't matter when something happens, just whether or not it does. Whether myself or anyone else is around to appreciate it, I know what I appreciate in the Universe and even if I cease to exist, those aspects that I appreciated will always exist in their moments in time. The value in going to the moon is being able to (at least during my cognizant span of time) to appreciate that in this Universe, somehow, that happened. The Universe exists in such a way that somehow I was able to find myself here and walk on the moon. If I get to walk on the moon, that will forever be a feature of this Universe within space and time, and I would absolutely love both the experience and the fact that such a moment exists. I need a sense of Ego to function, but I don't need to let it torture me by it's insistence that impermanence equals absolute failure. Part of me would love to know that my efforts and actions will be valued (one way or another) for all time to the end of time and beyond. Part of me would love to be aware throughout it all. But I also know I have no control of whether the Universe actually works in such a manner that those things could be possible, and I accept that as happily as I would accept a cake without icing because - hey, free cake. I could get upset because "cake is supposed to have icing" but it would only be my limited preconception that cakes are supposed to have icing - but if the Universe is a cake without icing, then I'd rather enjoy the cake than descend into an existential crisis. Right now I am here, and I am enjoying it, and I don't expect to be here for long. While I am here, I want to experience and enjoy what the Universe is, rather than be bothered by what I think it should be but it isn't. I am not the sort of architect that is qualified to make such judgments about the Universe, and even with the finite and transient nature of my existence I find the Universe amazing enough to keep me continually engaged and excited.

The problem with the current polarized political environment is the same issue as what happens in a completely unregulated free market: certain entities find it easier to destroy the competition than out perform them. The Republicans are trying to stonewall Democrats so they have no meaningful progress to show in the coming elections, and Democrats are trying to let them in hopes they'll hang themselves with all that rope. Both sides are trying to hurt the other party instead of providing voters with strategies that solve the problems that affect them - both have literally framed the entirety of "the single biggest problem facing voters" as "the other party has some margin of power that has to be reduced." Those are policies of destruction, not progress. Watching news today from any source as a moderate is almost impossible without a fully stocked bar. Watching Sarah Palin tell a reporter that the Alaska Legislative Council cleared her of any ethical violations or violating the public trust at it's point of conclusion, but that the Main Stream Media Liberals kept lying about it was a blatant lie that the "reporter" didn't even bother to challenge. It's only gotten worse since then, and meanwhile left leaning media keep giving Democrats a pass even when their rhetoric make John Kerry look passionate and to the point by comparison. The funny thing is, if you want to get anything resembling news while you eat dinner (and get it down) you pretty much are left to the comedians that blast both sides for their blatantly hypocritical lie-ridden counter-productive platforms. So many people watch John because while he's definitely left-leaning, his overall tone towards the need for real solutions from Washington instead of partisan politics resonate with them. One thing I will say about Jon's bias though: If the Republicans did come up with a real viable solution to any of our current problems, he would praise them for it and even chastise Democrats for stonewalling a discussion of it. I think the most entertaining part of Jon's rally though, will be when O'Reilly goes simply to "find the green smoke" in the crowd to validate his conclusion that only stoners watch Jon. It should be interesting to see how much the "crazies" that love Jon get media attention versus how representative that segment is. It will be the closest thing we'll get to a "tit for tat" that we had with the crazies in the tea-party rallies. Not useful mind you, but definitely entertaining.