Posts by Trevor_Pott

Re: I agree

"Thanks to globalisation, the 'little guy' can live an extremely more comfortable life than would have been possible 20 years ago. The price of food is extremely low, a much lower percentage of people's budgets now than 30-50 years ago, the general cost:quality ratio of most things has gone down."

Bullshit. Life was far more comfortable and stress free 20 years ago. Food is a higher percentage of budgets than 30-50 years ago, and most of the creature comforts that first worlders enjoy have been bought with massive amounts of personal and governmental debt. Globalization hasn't provided the few benefits we do enjoy and it has driven up the cost of everything else.

Re: I agree

"Free market and globalisation cut both ways."

Since when? Provide there examples of globalisation working out for the little guy*.

*If you say "American cloud providers", I shall hit you. They are unavailable to a "global "audience, unless you're quite happy with breaking local laws.

Re: @Jan 0

Aye, and it isn't limited to a geographic distribution. I use the terms "cuntweasel" and "cockferret" rather often with zero overtones of misandry or misogony. They rank along side "douchepopsicle" and "gonadgremlin" in my lexicon. I don't care if some person or another takes offense beyond the obvious "this is an epithet". If they read deep hatred for $identifiable_group into that then it is entirely because of their own personal hangups.

I'm strictly egalitarian. I hate everyone equally, regardless of gender, race or so forth. Bunch of gonadgremlins, the lot of 'em!

Re: bummer...

That's what you get out of that. "OMG misogynist!"

*sigh*

This is why I hate humans.

"They should make it a criminal offense"

Really not. Crimes should be for major infractions of the law that cause significant harm or distress. They should not be "because it dun irritated me!" There's enough of THAT bullshit from the intellectual property maximalists. We don't need more.

Re: The FTC should use simple crowd sourcing

So get the carriers involved. FFS, we're not talking rocket science. Dear AT&T/Verizon/Microsoft/etc. The call that I just received on my landline/cell voice/sip/etc was spam. Please log the call and pass that info back to whomever handed the call off to you. I am positive each call that occurs in a modern infrastructure has a GUID, and all you do is pass that GUID up the stack to the last telco that routed it.

Keep on going until you either find a telco that refuses to cooperate (in which case you treat them like a spam-hoster) or you find the line/URI that originated the call. Once enough spam reports are aggregated about that line/URI, report them to relevant body.

...why is this hard?

Re: Finally!

"So, in a nutshell, you just do not like religion."

Not true at all. I don't believe children should be indoctrinated into a religion. I'm perfectly okay with adults believing whatever they wish; they have the cognitive development to make that choice. (Well, most of them, anyways.)

"the human race has no way of determining with absolute certainty just what truth is"

Perfectly aware of this. Which is at the core of my disagreement with indoctrinating children. That said, while we can not be 100% positive that every single organized religion on Earth is a fabrication - proving a negative is impossible - we can be statistically sure enough that it makes no difference. They are all lies. Some more pleasant than others...but all lies.

" faith is not "accepting the word of another over your own judgement"; faith is simply taking the next logical step into the unknown based upon what I already know."

Wrong. Faith absolutely is one of two things: accepting the word of another over your own judgement, or choosing to believe in something that can't be proven (usually because it is the most comfortable alternative.) The next logical step into the unknown is to find out where the "known" ends and do more research. Faith is never the next logical step; it is what happens when you choose to cease asking questions.

"I must also congratulate you on the "forehead-slanted idiot" insult - that one struck me as quite inventive."

Thanks, but honesty is of prime importance to me, so I can't claim any sort of credit for that. It comes from a kids show called "Beasties." (A transformers cartoon.) One of the characters (Blackarachnia) encounters a fawning austrolopithicine. Disgusted, she says "ugh, get away from me kid, your forehead slopes."

As for the "overall tone" of my posts, this is always done with a purpose. The use of emotive phrases and mixed language (mixing gutter epithets with words that have more than four syllables) tends to cause the majority of individuals to become emotionally invested in the conversation.

Once they're committed, minor verbal probing will get them to reveal their positions and cause them to focus more on defense than dissembling. If they can do nothing but dissemble, you can be reasonably certain they have no knowledge worth mining.

If they respond emotively you know that they are speaking from a position of belief. Attack them. Sting them. Force them to go into a shell of false dignity and mad Google Scholar searching. Here they might not only turn up the odd useful tidbit of knowledge worth digesting, but you trigger in your opponent a form of introspection.

In approximately 10% of cases I've logged so far, this will actually lead to either completely redefining their belief system in the tread itself. Of these, about 90% land not too far from where they started, but about 10% of individuals land far afield. (I'd have to write some scripts to mine the data to see how many ended up close to the argued position and how many landed somewhere orthogonal to both, but I suspect the latter is ever so slightly more common.)

The trick is to categorise the opponent. Once you've isolated the basic elements of the individual you can tailor your prose to achieve maximum effect. So far, I've only got a sample size of about 5000 debates. Given the limited debate partner choice amongst the few sites I've conducted my research in, this isn't quite enough to determine a representative sample. I'm still refining classification categories.

With time, perhaps, I will gather enough data to be able to write a proper comment trolling bot. The autotroll 5000! Point it at the comments section of any website and watch the commenters go insane! It's a long way off, but man...there's money to made if I can get it right. :)

Re: Finally!

"I submit to you that it is possible to present a religion to a child in a positive manner, one that does not fixate on negatives like Hell or demonize those who do not share such beliefs."

So? Even if you can present a religion to a child that isn't chalk full of psychologically damaging crap designed to keep the peasants in line so the priests can rule...you're still presenting the child with a carefully manufactured lie and indoctrinating them into believing that it is the truth. That is still abuse.

You are still placing them at a disadvantage compared to those who weren't raised in a lie, to say nothing of the potential psychological fallout should they ever find out the fairy tale isn't true. Nihilism spirals aren't fun.

Present all known possibilities to the individual and give them the tools to make rational, informed decisions. If they choose to believe a lie - or to believe in one possibility amongst many in situations where the truth isn't yet known - that absolutely must be their choice. Forcing it upon them through "one truth and only one truth" indoctrination is still abuse.

"Jesus was the antithesis of a douchebag, I submit to you the idea that he could use a whole new fanclub - one whose members actually try to live like him."

Oh, yeah, the world needs another Christian cult like it needs a nuclear war. Puh-lease. You're veering dangerously close to the sun of "my church knows the one true truth, and everyone else is an unbeliever!" Danger! Danger! Danger!

"But I must point out that Richard Dawkins is no mental health professional - he has an axe to grind." You mean he champions empirical truth and condemns organized lying? Well shit, he's a witch! Burn him!

"The article also comes close to conflating sexual abuse with the mental trauma you no doubt want me to notice."

I don't give a bent goat what you notice or not. I've spend several days building things from source and I'm bored out of my skull. I'm trolling you largely for my own personal amusement because I don't think for a second you're actually capable of considering the negative impact of religion.

Your little line about "conflating sexual abuse with mental trauma" is evidence of your bias. You quite obviously perceive mental trauma to be not as important as physical or sexual trauma. Somewhere, someone taught you that this was so. Probably repeatedly until you internalized it good and proper. Sex is bad! Sexual abuse, therefore is significantly worse that mental abuse! Based on nothing, of course, excepting your own moral judgement about how different kinds of abuse are "rated"...which is rooted in your belief system. Hence why this whole conversation was completely pointless several comments ago...but hey, I got my trolling on, so I'm quite happy.

"...religious instruction received in childhood often does stick around for life. But, outside of those cases where ham-handed assholes have done damage, is that necessarily a bad thing?"

Yes.

Religious indoctrination is the removal of the child's choice in what to believe and who they want to become. That is wrong, regardless of how "good" and "moral" and "right" you think your religion is. Those "ham handed" types teaching their kids racism or burning the heathens? They don't think to themselves "that's wrong, better teach it to my kids." They think to themselves "my beliefs are just, right and moral, I must pass them on to the next generation."

The individual you want to indoctrinate deserves the right to choose for themselves what to believe. What is right and what is wrong. They deserve, most of all, to be taught critical thinking so that they can identify truth from fabrication; to identify where the truth is genuinely unknown versus where manufactured controversy exists.

If they choose to make a leap of faith, that's up to them. under no circumstances should that faith be indoctrinated into them.

"We all need some sort of "lens" to view and make sense of the world around us and we largely get that from the people around us whether they be family, community, teachers or, in some cases, churchy types. This lens will be acquired long before the child reaches an age you consider appropriate for making informed choices, can't be helped thats just how life works. If the lens is not based on hatred, violence or negativity does it really matter where it comes from?"

Absolutely, yes it does. Critical thinking is what needs to be passed on, not doctrine. A moral compass doesn't require religion, and quite frankly doesn't benefit from religion at all. Doctrine and faith obscure the ability to question authority, question morality, question standing ethics and question extant social moors.

A child should be entirely free to believe that there is no "one true truth". That everything needs to be questioned, analyzed and confirmed. They need to know that people lie, and that as a consequence of this you cannot simply take what the parent/teacher/priest/politician/journalist/etc says at face value.

Faith of any sort is the instruction that it's entirely okay not to question. That something simply are, no matter what anyone says. Faith is about accepting the word of another over your own judgement. It is about accepting the authority of the lie over the truth, or - at the very least - accepting that the truth is unknowable/not worth knowing, and choosing to believe the comforting thing instead.

When the child is of age and they are ready to make an informed choice about faith, more power to them.

Until then, the "lens" they should be gifted is one of truthseeking.

Truthseeking is all the more critical as our population balloons. The percentage of charlatans per population unit likely hasn't changed much with time, but as the absolute population grows, so does the absolute number of charlatans. Worse, technology enhances their power and reach manyfold. Today's charlatan can do a lot more damage than those of yesteryear, and there are more of them.

So that child will grow up in a world where nearly all jobs are automated. Where competition for any job at all - let alone a good job - is rabid and fierce. Where charlatans of skill and knowledge are everywhere and where the truth is every more easily obscured beneath layers and layers of personal opinion, anecdote and beliefs.

Being taught that there is a "one true faith" is a weakness. It's a chink in the armour. Not only does it increase your attack surface (as you have so helpfully demonstrated) but it means you are trained from birth to accept a comforting lie as truth. It's a minor effort to find the hooks that drove into the psyche and exploit them.

"As for me being a self-important cockbag, look in the mirror - you're the shouty one. Seriously."

Funny, I don't feel particularly shouty. Bored, maybe. A little somolent. Perhaps eve a tinge malevolent with a dash of gleefully impish. Shouty would imply I'm either talking in all caps, or that I care enough about the topic to get worked up about it. Neither are true.

Re: Trevor, Trevor, Trevor

I never said that children exposed only to one religion would not be able to exercise free will. I said that exposing a vulnerable child only to one belief system and repeating over and over that it is the "the One True Truth" is abusive and damaging. One example amongst many is discussed by Richard Dawkins here.

The reality of it is that once inculcated into a given belief paradigm, the overwhelming majority of individuals can't move too far afield from it. Train a child to believe that hell exists, and if they're bad they'll go there, that will be in the back of their mind for the rest of their life. It certainly goes beyond religion.

A good (no religious) example from my own life: if the house was not perfectly clean when my mother got home, there would be hell to pay. The sound of the garage door opening late at night caused completely autonomic fear, anxiety and panic. Fifteen years later, the sound of a garage door opening in the middle of the night is still enough to bring me out of a dead sleep, body flooded with ++ adrenaline.

Religions have a similar impact. They impart a sense not only of what is right and wrong (though it needs be noted that in no way are religions the only means by which right and wrong can be transmitted), but they impart concepts like eternal damnation, faith-based-lack-of-consequences (nothing you do matters, so long as you believe you'll get into heaven!), hatred for non-believers and so on and so forth.

Religion doesn't merely present hatred, fear and lies to children, it imprints it deep into their psyche as the truth. The majority of our species finds that decades later they still believe these things that they were indoctrinated to believe. Even after a lot of effort on the part of many individual to "unlearn" these subconscious beliefs they were so kindly "gifted" by their parents, it's still there.

Contrary to your callous disregard for the impact of childhood indoctrination, one does not simply wake up one day and decide they don't believe in $religion anymore, thank you very much. Even if they put real effort into it, it's twisted up into so many aspects of their understanding of the world that it may never be untangled.

That is the legacy of religious indoctrination. And by advocating for the right of the parent to indoctrinate their child that is what you are saying it is your right to do to the mind of an innocent.

Most children are absolutely not fully cognitively developed by 10 years old. High neuoplasticisty is observed up to an average of 16 years of age, with children still developing important core psychological concepts (like conservation) into their teens.

Just because a kid learns to talk back doesn't mean they're ready to be told hell is real and if they love the wrong person they'll spend eternity there, or that if you think about something really hard you can cure any disease, or that aligning your spirit properly will solve your schizophrenia.

A child asking hard questions doesn't mean they're immune to being indoctrinated. It doesn't mean the indoctrination that occurred prior to that point suddenly vanishes. It means only that they've entered one of the latter stages of psychological development; there's still a great deal of development yet to occur before they are fully adult. (Incidentally, it's a great time to introduce children to the concept of religion, along with multiple examples and let them ask hard questions. So long as you aren't holding up any one belief and saying "this is the one true belief" then it will indeed help them develop critical thinking.)

As for your BS about "knowing about only one religion has afflicted probably the majority of humans that have ever lived yet we still managed to come up with" is just that: BS. You can rape a person to within an inch of their life and they can still go on to cure cancer. Does that mean you didn't abuse them? Cause long-lasting psychological damage? Even put them at a disadvantage compared to their peers?

Lots of people have achieved great things with disabilities. Does that mean that if I poke out your eyes and sever your legs I'm not abusing you? What utter twaddle.

Mental and emotional abuse is still abuse.

Regarding your self-congratulatory claims of intellectual supremacy, I'm afraid I'm going to have to take a pass on that particular leap of faith.

Addendum: my calling you a goddamned idiot doesn't weaken my argument at all. Facts are facts and reality is objective. What you think or feel matters nothing to how the world plays out. An argument stands on it's own merits or it doesn't; attacking the individual (or bitching about attacking the individual) doesn't make a difference to the content of the argument, it's purely emotional byplay. It can affect acceptance of the truth, but does not change the substance of the truth itself.

To wit: I think you're a self-important cockbag who feels that the minds of children are property. As such, I will obtain whatever minor pleasure I can get from calling you a dunce. You don't have to like it. I rather hope you don't. And your tiredness (or not) with regards to the concept doesn't affect me one bit.

Nothing you've said has altered my initial impression of you, but you've manged to reinforce it repeatedly. Hence, I will enjoy continuing to needle, poke, jab and jibe until you trundle off to impose your belief system on another innocent.

Cheers!

Re: Trevor, Trevor, Trevor

I never said all homeschooling is bad, you forehead-slanted idiot. I qualified it by saying very specifically that home schooling in order to indoctrinate your children with religion is bad. There are reasons why home schooling can be a good thing, but that - on the whole - it isn't engaged in for those reasons.

1. I have no issue with adults choosing a religion because they have reached the point where their brains are at their maximum development. They are not going to get any better at making decisions. I believe the right to choose your own fate is a fundamental human right. That means that at some point people have to have the right to choose.

Science tells us that we are no longer vulnerable to easy influence by authority figures around the age of 16, give or take two years, depending on the development of the individual. It's one of the reasons why the age of majority is generally accepted as 18(ish) in most countries.

Also: you again completely failed to actually read what I wrote, instead inserting your own inane gibberings. I said - quite specifically - that a spiritual belief was required for some individuals. As a matter of fact, we can even identify the gene sequences responsible for this requirement. It absolutely does not affect the entire population, it is present in approximately 25% of us.

Thus some of us have a need for some sort of spiritual belief to feel whole. The rest don't. Determining if that is true of you is your own personal journey.

Is any belief as good as the next? Yes. The bible isn't true, and none of the other scraps of parchment written by madmen wandering the desert are either. Morality isn't divine. Morality flows from pragmatism and a genetic predisposition to altruism that exists in approximately 85% of our species. (About 5% of our species are not pre-disposed to tribalism and sociopaths make up about 10% of the population.)

Literal interpretation of any sacred text is outright lunacy, which makes any religion as good as the next. Morality is asynchronous of religion: you learn your society's values regardless. That means that it doesn't matter what you believe, so long as you realize that those beliefs are limited by laws. If you want to change laws, you have to work within the system.

2. The reason that it is bad to tell a child what to believe is quite simple: humans aren't born fully formed and fully capable. We have a learning process wherein we are heavily influenced in our formative years by individuals in authority over us.

Telling a child repeatedly their whole life "this is what you must believe, this is the One True Faith" is not giving them a chance to choose a belief system. It is forcing your own upon them.

A life involving spirituality is not a net positive for all individuals. In fact, it's net positive for only about 25% of our species. All children should have the opportunity to decide for themselves A) whether they feel religion is net positive for them and B) which religion they would like to believe in.

What you, as the parent, believe doesn't matter because you don't matter. Not in the context of the rights of the child. Your desire to pass on your belief system is irrelevant. The right to choose comes before your desires.

And that choice must include the right to choose not to believe in a religion at all.

The separation between child and adult is all about cognitive development. If you use a position of power to tell a child what they should believe - especially if you isolate them from their society in order to reinforce it repeatedly over the course of decades - you're a monster. Pure and simple.

By all means teach children that religions exist. Teach them about as many as possible. Do not tell children that one - and only one - is somehow "fact".

Instead, teach them critical thinking and let them decide for themselves what is or isn't fact. Do not use your position of power on a developing mind to force them to develop a belief system. That is nothing more than child abuse, pure and simple.

By demanding the right to do so, you are demanding the right to abuse your child. Would baby jesus want that, do you think? Little baby jesus? Really? He wants you to take advantage of the children? Really?

Re: @Trevor_Pott yet again

"So you admit my main argument against your position - that you cannot handle people thinking differently than you and that you do support using the power of the state to enforce Orthodoxy."

Not at all, I'm perfectly okay with people thinking differently, if they are allowed the opportunity to make an informed choice. I absolutely do not hold that "removing someone else's rights" is merely "thinking differently." It is not merely "thinking differently" to indoctrinate a child. It is removing their right to choose.

You claim "indoctrination is unavoidable", but have nothing to back it up. You throw this out as a justification for religious indoctrination but cannot prove that raising a child to think critically and offering them a wide range of diverse options for belief as well as broad life experience before asking them to choose consists of "indoctrination." That is because, in fact, it is the opposite of indoctrination. It is not forcing any belief system on the child, but giving them the tools to discover one on their own.

You naturally think that it's okay to let the loonies abuse children because you are in here arguing for your personal right to abuse your child. You are arguing stridently that your "right" (and I maintain no such right exists) to force your belief system on an undeveloped child supersedes their right to be free to choose.

You also don't seem to actually read what I write, you just jump in and start screaming. I never said that "teaching a child about god, sky fairies, invisible pink unicorns, flying spaghetti monsters, tree spirits and Santa Claus" harmed a child. I said that religious indoctrination was akin to child abuse.

To be perfectly clear, I am saying that teaching a child that one and only one religion is the "one true faith" is akin to child abuse. This would include taking some subset of science and holding it up as absolute doctrine, never to be questioned.

In fact, if you reread my comments you'll find that I believe children should be exposed to all of the mainstream faiths before the age of majority, and as many non-mainstream faiths as possible. They should be exposed to science, mathematics, art, literature and more as well. More importantly than anything else they should be taught critical thinking.

Exposure to this broad mix of beliefs and science, combined with as rich a life experience as is reasonable to afford the child is the only way to give them the tools to choose for themselves what to believe.

Taking a child out of school so that you can spend 15 years teaching them "science is evil, Muslims are evil, Blacks are subhuman, and everyone who doesn't worship Jesus in exactly the same way as we do is also evil" is fucking child abuse. End of.

What is not child abuse - what is in fact the antithesis of child abuse, or of orthodoxy - is to expose that child to various flavours of Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto, Hindu, the various other Abrahamic religions, the flying spaghetti monster, Gaianism, various flavours of paganism while also teaching them science in all it's messy, controversial and argumentative glory.

Teach them about the right diversity of human thought and never, under any circumstances tell them what they are to believe. Tell them that part of growing up is making that choice for themselves. Let them experiment, play, investigate and learn.

To force a child - and make no mistake religious indoctrination in the "one true faith" from nipple to nupital is the use of psychological force - to believe something is abuse. You can try to dismiss that as somehow "okay" because you feel it's your "right" as a parent to own that child, but that just makes you a monster.

Homeschooling can be a great thing, especially if the local school system is inadequate. It can also be a great thing if the only public school available is hell bent on indoctrinating a child into a given a religion.

Where homeschool absolutely is a terrible thing is where it is used by self-important monsters to remove from children the right to choose what to believe. Quite frankly, that it was it seems to be used for more than anything else, especially in North America.

And I don't care if you use homeschooling to achieve the ends or not; indoctrination of a child is abuse.

Re: @Trevor_Pott #3

1. Think as differently as you want. Don't indoctrinate children before they are old enough to make decisions for themselves.

2. Morality doesn't flow from religion. You can still be doing what you think is right and abusing a child. In fact a lot of people who abuse children don't honestly believe they are being abusive.

3. If you are homeschooling in order to give your child a better education because you feel that the extant system is inadequate, I've no issue with that. If you are doing it in order to religiously indoctrinate your child then I believe you should not be allowed to have children. Period.

4. The very concept of a "scientific fundamentalist" is nonsense. To be a fundamentalist you need a doctrine to adhere to. Science has no doctrine. Any aspect of science can be proven wrong if the correct reproducible evidence is provided. I absolutely am a believer in teaching all people critical thinking, but that doesn't necessarily lead to science. (It most frequently does, but make of that what you will.)

As a matter of fact, I am myself a religious person, I just don't generally discuss my religion because it isn't particularly mainstream and it takes a rather long time to explain. I chose my religion, after having explored various faiths, and decided that some element of faith - a belief in something greater than myself - was required to fill a void in my life. But I'm not fundamentalist about that either. I see no reason why I would push that faith on someone else - especially an innocent! - or even discuss it at length unless asked.

People must be free to make their own choices. If you do not believe that, then to my mind, you're a fucking monster. Whatever religion you wrap your ideology up in.

5. Don't you dare try to say "you cannot indoctrinate a child into a religion against their will because teenage religion." That's fucking bullshit and I expect fully that any reader of this site be capable of recognizing it for what it is. If you can't, leave. Don't ever come back. You aren't smart enough to play here.

6. I demand that the power of the state be used to ensure that all children be raised in such a manner as to be capable of making choices in their lives as to what to believe. That isn't orthodoxy. It's ensuring freedom for all citizens.

Your freedoms end exactly at the point where they would infringe upon the freedoms of another. A child does not belong to it's parents. A child is not property. Therefor you do not have the freedom - or the right - to indoctrinate them. They have the right to make their own choices.

You advocate a "right" by parents to to take away the right of children to choose, by indoctrination them before they are biologically developed enough to understand what is happening, old enough or experienced enough to make choices in full knowledge of the alternatives.

You demand the right to determine the fate of another human being and then have the unmitigated gall to say that I am the one preaching orthodoxy?

Do I believe that the state should prevent parents from indoctrinating children? Yes. Just like I think it should prevent parents from physically abusing them.

I also think the state should prevent people from murdering, from raping, from treating those who are a different gender/race/sexuality/etc differently...

All people should be equal under the law. That means we don't have the "right" to deprive others of their rights, or to force them to do our bidding, or to force them to believe what we tell them to believe. To me, that absolutely includes a parent's relationship with a child, or any vulnerable adult.

Do you think it should be legal for a parent to take their adult child, strap them to a chair and Clockwork Orange them with propaganda until they believe what they're told? No? How the merry fuck is that different from taking a child and indoctrinating them in a religion?

With an adult you'd need the restraints because they would otherwise walk away. A child can't. Even teenagers are demonstrably vulnerable. There's scads of science on this.

So, to come right down to it, you demand the ability to abuse children psychologically in the form of religious indoctrination be granted as a "right" to parents and enforced by the state with guns.

I demand that parents be prevented from abusing children psychologically in the form of religious indoctrination by the state, using guns if necessary.

The difference is that you aren't capable of accepting that your demands amount to child abuse. Somehow "it's different" if it's religion. And I say: "that's fucking bullshit." You can continue to reinforce your point, but you aren't going to change my mind on this. Indoctrinating a child into a belief system before they have the biological capability, knowledge and life experience to make a decision about what they want to believe is abuse. Full fucking stop.

Re: The correct order...

I challenge you on the technology bit. And the growth bit. Both crowns belong to Google.

Re: @Trevor_Pott

@Cool Koon

I'm perfectly okay with nations "spreading Western hate." Go for it. We need to be reminded on a regular basis that there's nothing "exceptional" about us, and that we aren't superior. For that matter, we need to be reminded that naked capitalism isn't the "best' form of government and that political and social development don't just suddenly stop because it is our collection of nations that is currently on the top of the heap.

Do I think theocracies are good? No. Do i think for a second that I - or anyone else in my nation - has a right to judge a system of government elected by it's people? No. Maybe theocracy is good for them, maybe it's not. But if it's what they want, then they need to find out for themselves if it works, or doesn't.

And maybe they'll invent something new. Democratic Socialist Theocracy. Freemarket Strong Arming. Flying Spaghetti Nationalist Capitlaism. Who knows. Not you and not me. And that's the point.

Free market capitalism has shitloads of problems that we brush under the rug. Yet apparently it's all good to tell others to be just like us? Why?

Re: @Titus_Technophobe

Personally, I consider Japan to be in many ways "better" than most western nations. It has it's problems, but I believe they are less horrible than our problems. I rather like the Nordic countries, and consider them exemplars for the world. They're sort of Western...but yet...not. Their take on things is so different from that of Americans and Australians that they really can't be considered part of the same culture.

In addition, while India is besieged by various problems, I admire their democracy. Not comparing levels of corruption or "effectiveness"...but the lack of political apathy amongst their voters. The right to self determination means something there. More than it does in Canada or the USA.

As to the Syrian revolution, as you said it is ongoing. The people are sorting themselves out. But I see no reason whatsoever to believe that they will end up under a brutal dictatorship, as you posit above. Their issue is that Syria is a dozen+ tribes that all have to coexist and find a way to share power. They are currently trying to find that balance. It's messy, but they've got issues there to deal with that no Western nation does.

As to Iraq...Iraq wasn't part of the Arab Spring. Not even a little. The Arab Spring was the people rising up to overthrow repressive regimes and assert themselves. Iraq was invaded by the USA and a puppet government installed. "The people" had no say in anything there, so that's an invalid example.

Re: @Titus_Technophobe

"If you are referring to Egypt in your last point above you could clarify that the elected ‘president’ was effectively booted out by the military, and the government has been described by some as a military junta."

And yet, after the election the junta-like activities seem to have ceased. They were imposing martial law after kicking out that cleric. They were suppressing dissent. Unless I'm terribly mistaken, a lot of that has eased up and they are slowly opening up, within reason, given that the religious whackos are still blowing things up periodically.

"Whilst it is certainly true that the western societies haven’t solved all the problems. I have traveled to a number of places that have made much less progress, have you?"

Yes, and I've traveled to places that have made more. Your point? Western civilization isn't "better".

"Fingers crossed this happens. But the evidence in the news suggests otherwise."

What evidence? Your own innate pessimism? Or your irrational belief that if reovlutions don't result in paradise after the first [short timeframe] they're a failure?

Re: Double-edged sword this is

"it also means that there will be work IT support types for a long time to come."

Digital Janitor doesn't pay well, and in a lot of jurisdictions they're classified as an "essential service worker" and not allowed to unionize or strike. Yeah. This is great news. We can collectively keep fighting fires for a fraction of a bent pittance instead of moving on to something that provides real value and along with it at least the illusion that we'll get more pay.

@icetrout

No rational person debates the reality of climate change, or htat humans are responsible for it. You are admitting to being irrational, then?

Re: Bad poll?

Two wrongs don't make a right. They just destroy the future faster. And for the record, China is pumping trillions into replacing their energy sources with CO2 neutral sources. They have big incentives; most of their economy is on the coast.

Re: Needs better explanation

Quantum effects of mammalian neurology is something that at the very least I know a group at the University of Alberta is working on. To listen to them talk about it, they've got folks around the world they're working with on the problem. I know the people involved and they don't do frivolous research. I also happen to know they aren't really anywhere near publishing.

Next time I sit down for beer with 'em, I'll poke more into the details.

As for qbits being used for natural language comprehension, I wish I could go into details, but it honestly does fall under "protecting a sources." I know that sounds like a cop out, but I am sworn to secrecy about the whole affair.

Re: alternative view courtesy of StateWatch...

"the ISPs have previously stated to ACPO that they need to retain data for about 5 minutes in order to complete the billing process, the metadata could then be archived to tape."

Um...no. There's a whole system we use here wherein we log in to the ISP's network to register our devices. We assign devices by MAC address to the system so that we can select between dynamic IPs and static IPs (assigned by DHCP as well). This prevents people from just tossing unlimited numbers of devices naked to the modem and hoovering up IPs. It also allows the ISP to assign combinations of dynamic and static IPs to the same line.

That's why they need to keep the IP --> device mapping around. It's literally integrated into how the entire infrastructure works.

Re: Huh?

The Tories are the ones who have consistently fucked that province. Everyone else has to spend a great deal of time cleaning up their mess.

As for you leaving, please, do go. You aren't needed, or wanted. There are plenty of sane Canadians making good money who actually don't have a problem paying taxes because we appreciate what we get in return. There's a nation just south of you that is far more conservative than Canada will ever be. Go live there. If you're such a "producer", they'll welcome you with open arms.

Oddly enough, I find most conservatives aren't much in the way of "producers" anyways. They're typically either outrageously wealthy (and that ain't that many people) or they are outrageously poor. (Lack of education makes it impossible for them to realize how screwed up the party they vote for is.) There aren't a hell of a lot of mid-wage conservatives, at least not in this country.

The "producers" in Canada tend to be very centrist. The country more or less runs fine, we want it to keep running as it is. We'd really like it if the Tories didn't spend all their time trying to destroy our civil liberties, and we'd like it if the NDP would wake the fuck up and build some goddamned nuke plants.

Here's a deal for you: let's go get proportional representation passed in this country. That way each vote counts equally. Then, if our country really is made up of a bunch of overburdened conservative "producers" being taken advantage of by a vast leftist conspiracy you can turn the tables on us nefarious no goodniks and banish us into the ocean.

Oh, suddenly you're not so interested? You're afraid of proportional representation? Whyever would that be? Hmm?

Re: E-Warrants and such

If you were king, and that was your approach to privacy, I'd seize your throne by right of combat. You're fucking loony tunes.

Privacy doesn't end because computers are involved. That you seem to think a lower standard should apply "because internet" is fucking appalling. End of.

Re: As to bullying ...

Nope. Wrong. Canadian judges don't like e-warrants. That's because cops can't be trusted to be on the level. So the judges want to have actual communication with the cops to make sure they aren't trying to pull a fast one.

Damn, it's a bitch when your judiciary cares more about the people's rights than the swift application of almighty justice, eh? Stupid peasants should know they're all guilty, it's just a matter of finding out what they're guilty of!

Re: Huh?

I'm in!