cactusface

Maybe you're addicted to random payouts. 1% of the time it is worth it. For example, District 9 could have the exact same title, but that's highly entertaining.

This conversation was too hostile for me a long time ago. I apologize for my contributions to that. Take care.

You're making a (fallacious) slippery slope argument by refusing to admit a middle ground.

Further, every law exists for (some portion of) society's benefit. What else are laws for? That's why I keep asking, if the application of a law doesn't have any benefit to anybody, why do we need it? Because then we might scrap other laws, or other applications of the same law? Again, slippery slope.

Ooops...

Wow, that is a really cool idea! Usually I don't like political games but this seems like it could actually be fun and avoid preachiness, all while exploring the high level social planning issues.

Hypothetical question: an asteroid is hurtling towards Earth. You don't know for sure if it will hit, but you're pretty sure that if it does hit, it will be exceedingly bad. As the supreme authority on Earth, what resources are you willing to sacrifice to try and blow it up or divert it?

edit: Never mind, I read your answer up above. Well, anyway, a judgment call.

Can you clarify what you mean by "harm"? I think it's a judgment call as to whether we should proceed with the method to stop the extinction. For example, if it means sterilizing all humans, I would say don't do it. If it means everybody has to be vegetarian, I would say do it. If it means economic harm, then it would depend on the extent and the available measures to mitigate it.

We operate on beliefs all the time. For example, the belief that science is good.

We've destroyed a lot of natural habitats, and we know that these habitats contain a great deal of biodiversity. We just don't know what would have happened if we hadn't destroyed those habitats. My guess is that we wouldn't be facing a mass extinction event, but there's no way to check.

Even if there was only a 10% chance humans were responsible, I would still rather play it safe than ignore the issue.

> If one is happening within 200 years of the advent of the industrial revolution, the cause is not exactly a mystery.

Lots of things happened within 200 years of the advent of the industrial revolution. Correlation is necessary but not sufficient to show causation. To be clear, I believe humans have caused this problem, but how is it even possible to claim scientific knowledge of it? Where is your control experiment?

Well, one thing they glossed over is the cost of tuition at the colleges in question varies. The poorest families are more likely to send their children to cheaper colleges. You might get an S curve if it was for colleges with $50K tuition, or whatever.

Putting a rational human being in a cage makes them mentally ill and irrational. Well, at least we know this for sure about solitary.

Or better yet, if there was a unit test introduced with each bug fix.

No, I don't see the point. I never said anything about tasteless hyperbole, idle stupid chatter on facebook, criticizing others' religions, or advocating for sedition. Obviously there are times where those things are beneficial. (Since my reply you added some other things that I never brought up. Include them as well.)

I was just wondering, is it ever beneficial to advocate for murder? If it is not beneficial, why do we need to protect it?

So far as I understand you, your answer is: we need to protect it because it's the law. I know that it's the law. I am asking, why do we need that law, when it comes to advocacy for murder? Are you saying that if we ban advocacy for murder, soon we'll be banning other things that do have some arguable benefit? If that is what you are saying, why is there no middle ground where we can just stop at banning advocacy for murder?

Note (again): in the specific case of advocacy for terrorism, we did ban advocacy for murder.

Ironically, "slippery slope" is the name of the logical fallacy you are making by not admitting a middle ground.

I think there's a misunderstanding. I wasn't questioning what the law is or how it works. I was questioning the benefit of allowing for murder advocacy under the law. That is, why is free speech ever useful, in the specific case of murder advocacy? If murder advocacy is never beneficial, why do we need to protect it? I'm not disputing that there's a benefit to angry speech.

So we need to allow murder advocacy because the government might make a mistake in identifying it?

So advocating murder doesn't bring any benefit to society? Then why do we need to be able to do it? I'm not talking about any kind of speech besides murder advocacy. Note: you cannot advocate terrorism. Further, you cannot make an explicit death threat.

As far as I can tell, your claim is that we need to be able to do something bad, because otherwise somebody would have to decide what the good and bad things are.

> "Its (sic) judges like these that should be taken out back and shot." And, "Why waste ammunition? Wood chippers get the message across clearly. Especially if you feed them in feet first."

These are not clear death threats, but what benefit to society is there from speech that advocates murder?

My point was that CBT is ineffective against depression in the face of a hostile environment. As in, the depression will not lift, even if it gets a little better. I wasn't clear about the role of sadness, anger, and shame in depression; those aren't wholly different, but they aren't wholly the same either. I didn't feel like getting into it based on how receptive you were in general.

You wrote: "Depression (clinical, major depressive disorder) is ... (generally) in fact not a results of bad treatment or other external factors."

This is a straightforward dismissal of what I wrote. Furthermore, there are no sources. I knew you were wrong, and I knew a simple Google search would suffice to prove it. You failed to concede the point graciously, although you did actually concede it. At this juncture I decided I didn't want to argue with you.

> Additionally, I think that participants in discussions pertaining to mental illness (amongst other subjects) in particular have a unique responsibility (i.e. a moral obligation) to back their claims up and rely upon knowledge

I don't owe you anything - that's a cognitive distortion, number 8 on the classic list in Feeling Good ("should statements").

http://www.apsu.edu/sites/apsu.edu/files/counseling/COGNITIV...

> USA is a country of institutionalized hatred.

Maybe, but which countries are not?

This is a great idea. It would be nice if you did double dates for couples.

> We work with a variety of high-quality restaurants in different tier price ranges to accommodate every budget.

It would be nice to see a list of restaurants. Some people eat out a lot, have strong opinions about where's good and where's not, and really care about where they spend their time and money.

> The best part of eating out is being able to order exactly what you want.

The best part of eating out is sharing a bunch of good food with other people. This is apparently not a US thing.

> If you want to share and don't hear back, don't worry, people fail to respond to emails all the time.

This is a little confusing / weird.

That's all.

Neanderthals died out about 40,000 years ago. Why would the Scandinavians have trolls in their stories but not other cultures?

Human rights are just beliefs about the way things should work; there's no guarantee of enforcement; not everybody has the same beliefs.

I'll try the demo out first, cheers.

Why would you want a multi-process VM anyway?

They broker transactions. The "good" they produce is the marketplace. eBay is just a website, they also broker transactions to create a marketplace.

It's proselytizing.

Ask how much he wants per month with no equity. If you give him equity, you have a strong incentive not fire him. Well, that sucks if down the road you want to fire him. Also, retainers usually cover billing by the hour and are not paid as a salary. There's more than one red flag here.

This is definitely the most straightforward way to go. It is almost certainly not the way he will go. In particular Awk is just great for this job and very easy to learn.