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eriatarka

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Everything posted by eriatarka

  1. But there are similarities between the type of people who get attracted to extremist groups regardless of the ideas those groups promote - get a hardcore Leninist, a LaRouchian, and a fundamentalist Christian, and youre likely to see some personality overlap. Look at the work thats done been done on the Authoritarian Personality for example - there are shared traits between modern right-wing authoritarianism and Bolshevism, which arent entirely explainable in terms of the underlying ideas involved. People who feel alienated by mainstream society for whatever reason are more likely to gravitate towardss extremist positions than people who feel well-adapted. edit: I skimmed the Unabomber's manifesto a few years ago ago and dont remember thinking it was particularly crazy, there's reasonable points in there among the mistakes, like in most political texts. Its not a million miles away from crtical theory/situationism/Freud/Nietzsche/etc even if less nuanced. Lots of people have thought theres something fundamentally wrong with modern life, they just didnt go out and blow up buildilngs afterwards.
  2. There's one politics forum that I semi-regularly read but other than that I dont bother following news really.
  3. Typically for a psychologist, she ignores the effect that things like sociology, culture and education have on decision making, and ends up with the conclusion that because people act in a certain way today they _have_ to act that way, which is fallacious. Given a more rational culture which didnt promote poor impulse control (through advertising etc) and an education system which was actually geared towards developing critical thinking and intelligence, people would almost certainly make different decisions from those they make today. Secondly, her claim that people cant delay reward is misleading - large parts of middle class life are based around giving up present happyness for a perpetually delayed reward that often never arrives (and this parallels certain nihlistic interpretations of Western religion - sacrifice life on earth for eternal happyness afterwards). The number of people who are prepared to waste their youth working themselves to death in horrid office jobs just so they can 'save for retirement' for example. If anything, I'd say that people today are losing the ability to live in the present and enjoy things for the pleasures they bring in themselves through their pure immediacy, although its slightly complex because this interacts with the poor impulse control which is fostered by a culture based around advertising. But regardless, the deeper point is that theres no reason to believe the same attitudes would exist if the culture were to be radically changed.
  4. Kant distanced himself from Fichte because he was concerned about the number of people who were agreeing with what they saw as the 'spirit' of the Kantian system while disagreeing with the 'letter' of it (ie those who were inspired more by an aesthetic vision in his work [particularly the third critique] while ignoring his more fundamental points about the futility of speculative metaphysics). Fichte was one of the first and most prominent philosophers do this, and while Kant initially agreed with Fichte it soon became obvious that Fichte disagreed with huge parts of Kant's system (as would Schelling and Hegel afterwards, both of who were influenced by Fichte), so Kant published a few letters which stressed the differences between his ideas and the ideas of those who claimed to be following in his footsteps. Theres nothing remotely dishonest or arrogant about that, and I'm not really sure what evidence you could have for your claims. Kant always stressed that his 3 critiques didnt complete the task of critical philosophy, nor did he deny that there was more to be done. The point isnt that he wanted everyone to agree that he had somehow completed philosophy and solved all open problems, its that he realised people like Fichte were abandoning his system rather than working to expand it (even though these people claimed to be Kantians). This sort of thing is very common in philosophy - often the disciples of a great philosopher will initially try to contribute to and extend their mentors philosophy and then eventually abandon parts of it and go their own way, all while claiming that they are being 'true to the spirit' of the original system. This just isnt true.
  5. There are already transaction taxes on buying shares in various countries and it hasnt killed the stockmarket. 10% is retardedly high though and the person proposing the idea obviously has no knowledge whatsoever about finance.
  6. Pretty sure most people would rather live in Norway than in most US states (California and maybe New York excepted) tbh, given that it regularly tops most quality of life studies, not to mention the girls. There's much more to how 'good' a country is than its GDP. edit: Norway also has a higher GDP per capita than the US (actually the 2nd highest in the world)
  7. Its empty posturing, of course they wont close it. Not that I'd shed many tears if they did anyway, DRM is horrible and iTunes mp3s are generally low quality (<192 cbr)
  8. UK copyright protection for books lasts until 70 years after the death of the author afaik...
  9. From a quick search, electronic copies of most of her major works (fountainhead, atlas shrugged, Virtue of Selfishness etc) exist although I dont know where you could purchase them legally. Maybe try and pick up a 2nd hand copy of the CD somewhere? Or just ask someone who has it to make a copy and post you it, and then donate $50 or whatever to the ARI. edit: er, why do you think that the CD has been discontinued? The Ayn Rand Bookstore seem to be selling it: http://www.aynrandbookstore2.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AR66M
  10. In a society where most people had intellectual interests I'd expect libraries to run on a rental-scheme model similar to videoshops. However since we live in a society where most people have fairly low-brow tastes, I doubt that private libraries would carry many books with literary value (because few people would want them) and would instead focus on mass=market books like sci-fi/fantasy/romance/Dan Brown/etc since thats what most people want, and hence would be most profitable. You can see the same thing in most videoshops where 90% of the space is devoted to Hollywood movies, while art cinema and foreign films get a couple of shelves, if that. So yeah, private libraries could exist but its doubtful that theyd have much artistic/intellectual value compared to public libraries because thats just not what the market is interested in - sadly, free-markets normally lead to the dumbing down of tastes, because its easier to make money by catering to the lowest common denominator. However, I think that more online book rental services would start to spring up to cater to niche audiences, since they have vastly lower overheads than real-life shops. There's already quite a few fairly large online book rental services and their popularity would increase greatly if public libraries were to close. So I think they would be the most logical replacement. Also as we start to move towards ebooks, distribution becomes even easier because the removal of the physical product again reduces overheads and makes the online rental model more appealing since books can be acquired instanteously (although I dont deny that ebooks have drawbacks too).
  11. How is Obama a 'socialist'? He's probably to the right of pretty much every mainstream political party in the UK and its a stretch to say that the UK is a socialist country. Obama is a fairly bogstandard centrist who supports government-regulated market economics like pretty much every other social democrat in the world, and trying to label him as being part of the radical left is just right-wing hyperbole. If Obama is a 'socialist' then what are Ralph Nader and Ken Livingstone? The differences between McCain and Obama seem fairly minor in the grand scheme of things - a few extra percentage points on the income tax here, more promotting of intelligent design in schools there. Its not like America is going to change into a reincarnation of the Soviet Union or into a Christian theocracy depending on who they elect - the difference between the policies of the mainstream parties just arent that radical. If you were comparing McCain to Nader or Obama to Ron Paul then yeah, you could start talking about significant differences. I'd say the main issues facing America at the moment are 1) the neo-conserative agenda (has pretty much failed due to the public backlash against the Iraq war, so the only real difference between Obama and McCain is their Iraq exit strategy since neither are likely to do anything radical like invading Iran and both have similarish policies on Israel), 2) the war on drugs (which is responsible for more domestic oppression and crime than any single other policy. Neither Obama or McCaine will work towards ending it), 3) avoiding a depression (I'd expect both to have fairly similar economic policies in terms of slightly increased financial regulations and bailouts), and 4) trying to bring back some kind of transparancy, oversight, and separation of powers back to the government after 8 years of the Bush administration basically doing whatever it likes (this is the only issue where I'd expect Obama to be significantly superior) Its just not going to happen. The Iraq war has essentially killed neo-conservatism - the public opposition towards another aggressive war would be too great for any politician to consider invading Iran, and America couldnt afford it anyway since the ridiculous costs of Iraq have more or less bankrupted the country. The Iraq war has been estimated to have a total cost of around 2 trillion dollars and theres no way America could afford a similarly costly war in Iran with the deficit it's currently running.
  12. Its a bit of a stretch, and requires a lot of interpretative licence. Marijuana is property so do you think that the due process clause makes drug laws unconstitutional, for example? The purpose of due process isnt to protect specific items of property or individual acts - its to prevent people from being punished without having access to a fair legal trial. Due process shouldnt place any restrictions on what laws can exist (eg outlawing laws which violate freedom of contract), it just means that you cant be punished unless a legal trial establishes that you have broken one of these laws. That is to say, due process doesnt create any rights in itself, it just says that the state cant violate the rights created by other laws unless a person has had a fair trial. Substantive (rather than procedural) due process is often hard to justify without giving the impression that rights are being created to suit the judge's personal ideology, as in Lochner. Yeah but if we go down that road then its difficult to object when left-wingers invoke the 9th amendment to find consitutional rights to privacy/healthcare/education/etc. There arent any constitutional guidelines on what can be classed as a non-enumerated right so there doesnt seem to be a principled basis for saying that (eg) freedom of contract is, whereas privacy isnt.
  13. Citing a scholarly consensus is an 'appeal to tradition', yet citing a fringe book published 15 years ago is a rational argument? But you dont need even need to cite constitutional scholars here really, theres nothing in the text of the fourteenth amendment that mentions contract law, nor was that intended to be its purpose. If 'freedom of contract' is meant to be a fundamental right then there should be a constitutional amendment supporting it - trying to read rights into passages which only have dubious relevance is the same logic that leads to things like Roe v Wade or the various interstate commerce atrocities (or indeed the Federal Reserve).
  14. Well the description of that book in the link you posted admits that the orthodox position among legal scholars is that Lochner was unjustified.
  15. What I'm opposed to is irrelevant, the question is whether theres a constitutional basis for the type of freedom of contract found in Lochner (there isnt). You cant just start saying judicial activism is a good thing when it happens to support a position you personally agree with, and claim to have respect for constitutional government. The point is that judicial activism has went both ways throughout history so portraying it as something which always acts to expand government power is misleading - some of the most dubious Supreme Court decisions have acted to increase freedom rather than to reduce it (Roe v Wade being the obvious example).
  16. Its worth pointing out that dubious readings of the Constitution havent been exclusively used for the expansion of government powers - for instance there was a period at the start of the 20th century where a speculative interpretation of the Due Process clause was used to implment a libertarian(/Objectivist) agenda regarding labour laws: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_era . And Roe v Wade is fairly indefensible on strictly Constitutional grounds regardless of whether its the correct decision morally (which it is).
  17. What ideology? What connection is there between environmentalists who believe that the Earth have value in itself which takes precedence over human life, and scientists who honestly believe that the available evidence shows that current human modes of living are going to result in catastrophe somewhere in the near future? Theres no underlying shared belief system here, and trying to group these people under the same label seems almost dishonest - one may be labelled as a commitment to an 'anti-human' ideology, but the other is an attempt at a value-free position based on the scientific analysis of data. Climate scientists may turn out to be right or wrong, but trying to smear them as being 'anti-human' or brainwashed by some inherently irrational belief system is just silly.
  18. Again this is an abstract argument which has little relevance to how people actually make decisions in the real world. Obviously you have the choice to stop going out with your friends altogether if you dislike smoking, but realistically not many people are going to sacrifice their social life just to avoid being in an environment with smokers. Yeah, someone may really dislike smoke for both the health risks and the disgusting smell, but theyre unlikely to feel passionately enough about the issue to give up their friends. I think its morally indefensible, yet ends up producing a situation which most people would agree is superior, and which wouldnt have happened without illegitimate government intervention. Thats why its an interesting issue.
  19. Smoking bans are quite interesting in that once theyre in place, most people end up supporting them and agreeing that theyre a good thing, yet they wouldnt ever have got started without government intervention. And this intervention is impossible to defend morally even though the results are good and wouldnt have happened without it. This is a purely formal argument because in practice no restaurants/bars were operating no-smoking policies, even though a lot of people said they were in favour of them. Its also not as simple as you make out because people go to these places in groups, so the 'individual choice' is replaced by the decision of the group which will normally include both smokers and non-smokers.
  20. Its unlikely that a show like Qi would be made by private television so thats not too surprising.
  21. y_feldblum made that post around the same time that you met your partner
  22. I'd settle for them bringing back Dublin Mudslide because all their current flavours are rubbish compared to Haagen Dazs' :/
  23. It totally depends on your goals, theres no 'best' art. If you mainly want to be able to defend yourself then boxing/Muay Thai/Krav Maga would probably be best, but if you think that grappling and groundfighting look fun then wrestling/BJJ/MMA are worth considering If you want to impress people at parties then Capoeira all the way. If youre completely new to martial arts do you not think it would be better to pick one thing (eg Muay Thai or BJJ) and stick with that for a year until youve learned the basics, rather than trying to learn 2 things from scratch at once?
  24. This is simplistic and ignores how the nature of religious belief changes throughout history. Most 'Christians' today would have been considered atheists/heathens 200 years ago. In practical terms, the vast majority of Europeans arent Christian, even if they go to Church once in a while and claim to believe in the Bible. Its like trying to compare the percentage of people who identify as 'virgins' in a country where only vaginal intercourse counts as sex to the number of self-identifying virgins in a country where things like blowjobs/anal are also classed as being sex. Self-identification is a very problematic way of measuring things, and some kind of objective standard (preferably based on behaviour) is necessary if you want to make comparisions across history/cultures. Personally I think opinion polling is close to being useless from a sociological perspective unless its done _very_ carefully.
  25. I dont think its this simple, because humans dont really have the ability to reason or exercise volition outside of culture. As far as I know, the human brain hasnt changed too much in the last 100000 years but its only quite recently (say 10000 years ago) that the species has started to exercise higher level mental functions, and this probably has more to do with changing cultural environments than anything else. If theres a 'singularity' then I suspect its a cultural singularity which occurs when a society reaches a point where its language and institutions allows for the transmitting of complex information between generations, rather than something which occurs purely in the brain (except in as much that the brain needs to develop the ability to use language, but whether this is a result of a specific kind of modular specialization or a more holistic capacity is unknown afaik, but this is an introduction to some of the arguments). Look at feral children for instance - theyre arguably closer to animals in terms of mental capacity than they are to humans. 'Reason' isnt something which humans are innately endowed with, it's a potential which can only develop given the right cultural embedding and linguistic environment. If a society of chimpanzees developed the capacity to use a crude language, then who knows what could happen. Human infants are similar. The key difference is that a chimpanzee essentially needs to learn everything about the world from scratch, whereas a human infant is able to partake in a large range of cultural institutions which teach him how to think, provide him with premade categories for understanding the world, show him methods for solving problems and achieving goals, and so on. And all of this is made possible by language, which turns thought into a cultural product that can be passed down to new generations and incrementally built upon. I think feral children are evidence that if humans are forced to learn about the world on their own, without access to this kind of cultural information, they dont do much better than chimps.
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