shirgall

I'm certainly sorry to hear that he died. We had Irwin come to a Libertarian Party of Oregon convention and speak and autograph his books. He was a brave and learned fighter for freedom.

They could be, but the benefit is that anyone could choose to replicate anything they want, so long as they have adequate access to methodology and results. This openness is required for the system to work.

I know this is not about her, but Swift is a shrewd marketer, and knows quite well what she is doing. She has long learned to cultivate a group of followers with her statements and get free airtime and marketing from it. She's learned a lot of about financial smarts from her father, who works maintaining a specific financial advisory group for Merrill Lynch. Some examples: http://guardianlv.com/2012/10/taylor-swifts-epic-marketing-genius-is-on-the-scale-with-steve-jobs/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2015/05/28/taylor-swift-marketing-genius-how-bad-blood-went-right-to-number-one/

https://www.fastcompany.com/3048571/know-it-all/why-you-shouldnt-bother-having-brainstorming-meetings

My definition of excessive drinking is "whenever you borrow money to pay for alcohol." For the most part, never borrow money unless it's for something that will produce real returns.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/10/16/humans-exited-africa-and-trekked-to-china-fossils-reveal.html

Fact-based ones based on long-term environmental differences seem relevant to me, but maybe that's my agenda.

It's very hard to answer the question for you. In general, I found that being able to work in the field I wanted to be in while I did my requisite study was critically important.

I think you meant "if women are paid 77 cents on the dollars compared to men for the same work, why do companies hire men at all?"

Where the lines are drawn. My family has been in America for 455 years. I'm not a "Native American". It may or may not be a useful label, but it is an arbitrary distinction. Instead my race is defined by a mountain range we haven't lived near in a millennium.

http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html

My statement does not prove I have a particular agenda. By saying that "Man is the measurer of all things" I am pointing out that arbitrary distinctions come from a will to make them, and are therefore driven by an agenda. I made no value judgement about any agenda, however. If anything, I am a skeptic first, especially of authorities.

Man is the measurer of all things. When people start making arbitrary distinctions it's usually because they have an agenda.

Yeah, because they wanted to make Hillary look young and spry, they put in at least one person that forgot which debate they were at.

Classical engineering, however, it creative destruction. The horse and buggy business was destroyed by automobiles. The telegram business was destroyed by email. The feudalism business was destroyed by a strong merchant class and improved farming techniques. These may have been bad for some people, but they were not demonic.

There is of course the potential for self-correction without government, but some people like watchdogs... http://www.nature.com/news/how-scientists-fool-themselves-and-how-they-can-stop-1.18517

Man--in the image of God--desecrates what is supposed to be sacred, often as an act of creativity, which kinda invalidates the idea of anything being sacred and creativity being divine.

The Africans did get to America without the slave trade, since all modern humans derive from Africa, including the Asians that crossed the Bering Strait to become "Native Americans" ten thousand years ago.

Not at all. The investor chooses what to do with the money he or she has. Could be buying an ice cream cone. Could be helping the guy on the corner open a store. Could be buying stock in a existing company. It's worth something *before* it is invested, and it's worth it to the worker to offer some future return to attract that financial support of the worker's future work. You are saying that no investment has value without "the worker" as some larger-than-life figure out there. That's not how it works. There are many workers, all of whom are trying to attract investment in their particular form of producing value, and the way they attract it is the return from the investment, be it an ice cream cone, a small cash flow as dividends from a successful story, or a stable inflation-resistance stock price.

You are drawing a distinction without a difference. Man is part of nature. Man is made in the image of the divine. Man is akin to baboons. Man is special because he is creative. This sounds like Man is anything you need Him to be to support your argument. Pretty adaptable, but I think you broke it. For example, you cite "sacred" practices, but "sacred" should be undefilable, but Man defiles his own creations, including his religious ones, all the time.

You have not offered any argument that discounts my experience of working with scientists, and I'm a pretty skeptical fellow. The extraordinary claim that I'm suffering from indoctrinated authoritarian bias requires evidence.

Most of us are pretty empathetic because this site is a guidepost on the road to self-knowledge. Not everyone is on the same part of the journey, and not everyone responds to posts that aren't asking the right questions. In fact, a lot of us sit back and watch to see if a posting is a troll versus a discussion of something that could help us all become better.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-12/economic-research-too-good-to-be-replicated