TheRobin

ah sure, I fail to see the problem though. If a father wants to throw away his money can't he do that? I mean, there's always unequality when it comes to where/how you're being born. Nothin can funadmentally change that. But if a guy is born with no legs, you don't complain about "all the people being able to run" and how unfair that is for some, but you help to poor guys without legs as best as you can, if you really care about them. I also don't see how it's implicit that the poor only get 1 chance or fewer. Getting chances has to do with the skills you bring to the table and not the money you've saved up or the income you have fundamentally. If you start a business and fail, you still have gotten a lot of experience out of it (idealy) and other people will value that and hire you as a result of that. So, can you maybe elaborate a bit on what you mean with "the poor only getting one chance"?

idk why you cite Bush as a member of "the rich" and not as a member of "the state". If he'd run a private enterprise and failed, then he'd be bankrupt, just like any other guy who runs a private enterprise and fails. Also not sure why you use quotation marks for the word "real". is there an argument behind that or just a way to implicitly discredit the idea of a free market without actually bringing forth some arguments? But to give a maybe more accurate example: If Paris Hilton started a business and failed, do you think investors would voluntarily give her more money for a new business?

where does that down-arrow come from? (I mean how do the chartmakers base their prediction on?) Or is this more basic trader knowledge/methodology?

that's a loooong article...But generally what I'd say to peopel saying "we can't have competing justice systems" is this: Then you can't have more than one country (as all countries justice is different from the next to some extend), so logically you'd be advocating a one-world government, which is the exact opposite of a "minimal state".So IF the prinicples that you put forth for a MINIMAL state will logically lead to the BIGGEST POSSIBLE state, then your argument is invalid.

the reason I called your behaviour as "being a dick" is cause you repeatedly used the phrases "welcome to the internet" and called him "overly sensitive" and such, for which I don't see good reasons ("overly sensitive" is another way of saying that he's wrong feeling insulted, despite you then saying he's allowed to feel insulted, which is another way of saying "You're wrong but feel free to believe whatever you want" which is really just passive aggressive at that point).Though I have to say in order to make a good case for it I'd have to write about as many paragraphs as you did and I really don't feel like doing that, especially since it would involve a lot of quoting and going thourgh a lot of posts and such, which is really tedious work and I don't realy enjoy doing that. So yeah, I get this isn't that helpful given the shortness of the reply. I'd go and search for a podcast, but I don't really remember a good one on that topic, maybe someone else can jump in here.

only 4-5 in your life? I think I have more than that in a year :)I think the best theory explaining it is some neurological one, that simply states, that the information that comes in takes the wrong route through the brain and goes through the memory center thus creating the idea that what you experience live right now is actually a recollection of events. (Put in very simple and laymenish terms ofc, since I have not much knowledge about how the brain works in detail)

intersting explanation/summary of the latest BTC events http://bitcoinmagazine.com/8778/bitcoin-chinas-new-special-economic-zone/

why did they sell their farms to landlords in the first place?

poopmeat: Being on the internet is not an excuse for behaving like a dick. If you want to offload the responsibility of your behaviour to something else then I'm pretty sure that's the wrong forum to do that.

thanks for the detailed explanation. I found it very helpufl in getting what's going on

Dylan, yeah, can agree to that, even with the internet it can take quite a while to find articles of substance. though the article that Stef once read, has been adressed here (http://www.skepticalscience.com/david-evans-understanding-goes-cold.html). I'm just a guy without any knowledge or background in climate science of course, but it looks like quite a solid rebuttal from that point of view at least.

Fractional Slacker: out of courisoity: How many hours have you spent figuriing out the pro-global-warming position and it's rebuttals to common skeptic claims?

thanks wesley. In regarsds to what zg said though, what does that mean for bitcoin and how is that relevant if you're holding bitcoin atm?

zg: can you translate that into something a laymen can understand? I'd very much appreciate it

Why not make it the other way around: Have you read his case against deism (or for atheism if you prefer)? If so, what faults did you find with the arguments?

Well, from my little understanding there's a huge difference between minimum wage that's enforced across the board by the state and employees striking for a higher minimum wage in their respective company. I don't know the details of McDonalds finances, maybe it's not that bad an idea for the workers to try and negotiate a new wage. It might not be the worst thing for the management either if the emplyoees feel they're being exploited to sit with them at the round table and talk some numbers. So (again, from my little udnerstanding in economics) I'd say it all comes down to whether the emplyoees want to negotiate with their bosses or run to the state and bring the guns.

well the pro man-made-global-warming position certainly hasn't been off to a good start in terms of clear and open communication, though from what I gathered the last few times where I searched the web for pro and contra arguments, they seem to have the facts on their side, so this doesn't come as that big a surprise for me at least (whatever that's worth). Though to really get a clear picture at this point one would need to spend probably days or months chewing through all the back and forth that happened over the last decade, so I'd say unless it's really important to you, you might have better things to do

Oh, so you didn't do the 10 minutes thing then? (Or did you get so far in ten minutes? if so, wow, kudos )But idk, the only thing I figured that helped in the low numbers was getting 1 with 4/4 and make odd numbers that way.

if you think that's crazy: In probably abour two years, the Swiss will have to vote about an "unconditional income". That being said, I'm still relieved "we" dodged the bullet on the 1:12 bullshit. At least for now.

Partly relevant maybe, but still a lot of good points in regards to bitcoins utility:http://libertarianstandard.com/2013/12/01/ponzi-logic-debunking-gary-north/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thelibertarianstandard+%28The+Libertarian+Standard%29 Also intersting in regards to the cryptographic aspects of bitcoin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t1jAsPVQ3g

Well, again, where is the cause of what peer group they chose? Are you gonna argue that it's completely random? And same with which genes are actually active.And to top it off, given that most parenting nowadays is abusve and/or neglectful to some degree: What standard do these studies have for "unusual abusive or neglectful"? To me it seems a lot like saying, during the dark ages, that dying of the plague was genetic, just because it was so prevalent no one thought of it as something taht was caused by specific behaviour, so it just got downgraded to random chance, so that the powers that be needn't changing.Or like saying "Of all the kids we that regularly get tortured, only some start taking drugs, and it's mostly related to genes and peers." That might be true in a sense, that peers and genes are the tipping point, but none of it would matter if there was no torture in the first place, and given that the standard for parenting is still quite low I don't see how any study that doesn't have an independant health-standrd that isn't simply the current cultural norm can claim any explanatory power whatsoever.

I don't know, but form what you tell me he already contradicted himself when he thinks that parents are not responsible for what culture or peers they expose their kids to. Let alone, that kids who have a good and happy relationship with their parents would barely want to hang around peers who are abusive and unempathetic. But out of curiousity, what are Pinker's arguments for the causality here exactly? Like, what exactly makes a child hang out with certain peers? Or does he just ignore that questtion altogether and claims it to be a sort of "fixed and uncaused or random" thing that no one has any influence over anyway? I mean it's very easy to just pick a random variable in a complex situation and make a statstical correlation to other variables in the same situation, but that doesn't really explain or proof the causality of anything.

Conscience is just another way of saying, that one has empathy for others, which is another way of saying one has an emotional connection to other human beings.Without a conscience you're not better off, you're forever alone in a meaningless world, where ultimately nothing you do matters, cause you won't have anyone to share it with.I can't imagine any non-life-boat scenario where one could be considered "better off" living like that.

Cool little Fraggle Rock song perfectly describes what anarchy is all about imo. Enjoy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o_U8--_ee0