fargolime

Ha, good point. Could be pre-arranged. But if something can be pre-arranged, I like mikeash's answer.

Nice answer!

I'm guessing one stays put and the other does a grid pattern search.

I store a dynamic TrueCrypt volume on DropBox. I use a dynamic volume so that Dropbox need only upload the changed blocks from my machine. It seems to work fine.

The TrueCrypt docs warn about using a dynamic volume [1]. I'm not concerned about leaking info about which volume sectors are unused.

[1] http://andryou.com/truecrypt/docs/creating-new-volume.php

Is the name Google (or Microsoft or Apple) much more appealing than NameCheap? Seems when companies get huge their weird names are no longer weird.

I don't care for the name NameCheap either. On the other hand it's been easy to remember.

I'll stick with NameCheap. All else being equal, I prefer the vendor whose core business is the service I'm seeking. They can neither drop the service nor quintuple the price (a la Google AppEngine). Same reason I use DropBox.

There's also a luck aspect. Perhaps Mochizuki's proof is comprehensible but no one has the desire to read it. A mathematician or scientist should be prepared to be a lone wolf, never receiving recognition and their groundbreaking ideas never known to another.

Sure I do that. But not a dozen (actually mundane) things daily, like the teen's "I'm about to go to this cool party". Among my friends we might mention the highlight of the week by email.

With fish stocks and aquifers fast depleting, it seems inevitable that it'll become normal for citizens of the developed world to dine on bugs.

> so make a better group service and bring everyone to that.

Email? Works like a charm for my friends, and no vendor lock-in.

Feeling old too. I do_not_get the need to post the highlights of your day throughout the day. It reeks of narcissism. I feel sorry for them, in my oldness.

So if you see a little kid getting raped, you won't touch the rapist? Pretty sure even the Amish would take some action.

In that case you effectively voted for the greater evil. They probably played you too, by lending support to the third party to split the vote of the good people.

Cut anyone out you want. I cut people out who support evil deeds, not necessarily those who vote for a particular party.

My oath doesn't prevent me from taking untaxed intoxicating liquors across state lines, in whatever hypothetical case in which that would do the greater good, no matter how unlikely. My oath is to my interpretation of the Constitution, its spirit, and not its literal wording. Where my interpretation differs from the wording, the wording should change. For example, if the document allowed slavery, it should be changed to disallow slavery. If the document allows <insert evil here>, it should be changed to disallow <that evil>, or that allowance should be stricken.

> And you've just relied on the No True Scotsman fallacy. Obviously anyone who doesn't interpret your oath the same as you do must have flouted it. Or perhaps it's Cheney who says you flouted the oath. How do I tell again who's right?

Just as obvious as that, except for those lacking empathy, is that some things are wrong. You needn't prove they're wrong, you need only believe they are. Do you have to seek others' say-so to tell whether it's okay to kick a toddler in the face?

Oliver North flouted his oath, because his actions didn't serve the greater good. Simply consult your own conscience to tell whether ones' oath is broken.

> In that case, what should the Ventura supporter do? I believe you would say to vote for Humphrey.

Yes, vote for Humphrey. If Ventura then loses by one vote, you still made the best choice with the info you had. 9 times out of 10, or whatever high percentage, the 3rd place poller would've lost even with your vote, in which case you did the best by voting for the lesser of the top 2 evils.

Perhaps Ventura won because Ventura supporters felt that Coleman and Humphrey were equally worse, in which case voting for Ventura wasn't risky.

It's not pretending they don't exist, it's meting out a consequence for their actions, so they don't get away with supporting evil scot-free.

We now have better support for gay marriage largely because of youth becoming of age to vote [1]. The youth are open-minded. Go ahead and tell the person you're ostracizing why you're doing it. But odds of seeing a change are nil.

[1] See trend here: http://www.gallup.com/poll/169640/sex-marriage-support-reach...

We're far from that, with most people being unwilling to mete a consequence to those who vote for evil. When adopted by all the good people, my attitude would lead to a fairer world, if only after a Civility War.

I upvoted your political opinion. Of course mine isn't universal, because not everyone has my rock solid ethics. (And that's party because rather than analyze their own choices in the face of others', they call others' choices stupid.) It is certainly evil to support violence, like torture, when it isn't the best choice to prevent greater violence.

Preventing greater violence justifies violence. In general, preventing greater harm justifies harm. Preventing evil doesn't justify everything.

No, adhering to the oath excludes torture or other violence that isn't the best choice to prevent greater violence. I haven't yet seen a 9/11 related case where the details justified torture. Clearly our "employed and elected torturers" flouted their oaths.

My ethics are rock solid and will never break the oath.

Let's assume that Ventura was the best choice, ignoring his poll numbers, and Humphrey was way worse than Coleman. The defense for voting for Coleman is, recent polls showed that Ventura wasn't very viable. If Ventura then loses by one vote you can take comfort that you did the best you could. You shouldn't beat yourself up because your vote prevented a rare upset from happening. It was much more likely, given the info you had, that Coleman could beat Humphrey, so that you indirectly support Humphrey by voting for Ventura. (Keep in mind that a well conducted poll will typically have a margin of error of only 3% with high confidence. It's a "black swan event" to be off by as much as in this election. Probably the poll was flawed or voters had assessed info that postdated the poll.)

I don't like making these kinds of calls, though, which is why I support vote ranking or some other way to make third parties more viable.

Agreed, that's why I say you are blameless for anything that party does that you disagree with.

I support torture where it's clear it's the best viable choice to prevent greater violence. That may be an exceptionally rare case.

On your hypothetical I'll say only that I strongly support the The Congressional Oath of Office, namely this part:

> I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same

That said, the best ways to effect change are still legal, like general strikes and boycotts.

At some point back then it would've been clear it was viable. We're obviously not anywhere near that point yet, and there are likely other better ways. We don't yet have full dictatorship, which makes the difference. For example, it would likely take less energy to gain vote ranking (or other way to make third parties viable) by protesting and striking than by revolution. If the protesters and strikers are mowed down by bullets or tanks, then you need revolution.

You make the best choice with the info you have. If the choice isn't clear then you make a judgment call. Good points on McReynolds and Ventura. I presume that Ventura wasn't polling way below the other candidates, like Nader was in 2000. If he was, a voter couldn't be blamed for voting for someone else deemed viable.

If we had vote ranking at the national level, like Minneapolis does, this wouldn't be an issue.

I upvoted you. But Cheney is still rotten despite being honest. He doesn't deny that many in Gitmo are innocent (or not known to be guilty), yet still declares them terrorists. In that way he worked against your kids.

> You're not blameless for voting for the less-bad of two bad options. You still voting for a bad option.

There's no contradiction. You made the best viable choice. You can't be made "bad" by doing that.

That benefit of voting for a non-viable third party is outweighed by the advantage of voting for a lesser evil that can viably win. If hypothetically you were the voter that could tip the election to Gore in 2000, your best choice is to vote for him, not Nader, even if voting for Nader has some benefit. Voting for Nader could be reasonable only if Gore had no realistic chance of winning your state.

One can do both, although making a worse choice at the polls usually goes hand-in-hand with a closed mind, in my experience.

You can support an end to the 2-party oligopoly and vote for the lesser evil. Doing both does greater good.

I don't support revolution, because it's not the best viable way to improve things, let alone very viable at this point. A much better way is for the good people to ostracize (as much as possible) the bad people. Imagine if Bush's daughters had disavowed love for him, over his needless violence. It may well have had an effect, and if not then at least been a consequence to him, serving as a warning to others.