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Look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_stateSeems like the evidence is contrary. Higher gun ownership generally correlates to lower gun violence. Look at this for example: District of Columbia: 3.6% gun ownership and 16.5 gun murders, highest gun murder per capita in the USA and lowest gun ownership Hmm, whos right here? Yeah, still me genius. Correlation is not causation. By the way, I'd sure love to see one of you address this point: In response to the “everybody should be armed” argument, people should simply ask the gun activist whether or not they support Iran getting a nuclear weapon. By the logic that the gun activist applies, everybody is safer when everybody is armed, and this would translate to support for Iranian weapons; in reality, these people almost always say that Iran isn’t a rational actor and that giving them a nuke endangers everybody around them. When they say this, you should simply tell them that not every gun owner is rational and that unrestricted gun ownership is the micro-equivalent to letting every country have nukes. Fuckin cognitive dissonance man, everywhere you go. So irritating. The USA has invaded 22 countries in the last 20 years... of those 22, how many had nuclear weapons? 0. How many deaths have resulted from these invasions? the government won't release figures but its estimated at somewhere between 10 and 20 million... Oh and in case you missed it check out funtotry's response... might help you sort your dissonance out, if thats too uncomfortable for you, maybe you'd feel more at home posting on the fox news or cnn forums? |
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interesting Poll results wouldn't you say? it'd be great to get some more numbers so that they're more meaningful... so far windows is on top in terms of chance of having BTC stolen...
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God damn Feminist sharks!  |
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Chef Ramsey, a paradigm shift is where the incentives have changed, and the shift is unavoidable. It doesn't require any education of the actors, because they implicitly grasp their self interest as evident by the recent example of the green line below.
Self Interest is THE incentive, that hasn't changed. What has changed is the means by which people can best serve their self interest. |
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God doesn't help. He only murders.   explanation? Millions of people have been killed in god's name throughout the course of history. Millions of people have been killed by acts of god also  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_God If I spent most of my days helping people but every once in a while I decided to set off explosives that killed thousands of people would you say I was a good person? All people die. Some die as infants. Others live over 100. If a person is a Jesus believer, he goes to Heaven where there is forgiveness and everlasting joy. If he is not a Jesus believer, he goes to Hell where there is everlasting punishment for the sins he committed while living here. If God lets believers die young, they are in joy. If God lets unbelievers die young, they have fewer sins to be punished for in Hell = less everlasting punishment. So, if God lets people die, it is for their benefit.  You dont honestly believe all that do you? No really.....you dont right? No really....seriously tho? hahahahaha, my reaction exactly... not sure if trolling.... |
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Subjective and not derived from first principles, like the vast majority of cultures. Subjectivity in such an important issue and pillar of society is not sustainable in a globally connected world, I'm hoping everyone manages to make their way over to the objectively rational and secular ethics camp eventually. Logic, philosophy and the scientific method for the win!
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God doesn't help. He only murders. explanation? Millions of people have been killed in god's name throughout the course of history. Millions of people have been killed by acts of god also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_God If I spent most of my days helping people but every once in a while I decided to set off explosives that killed thousands of people would you say I was a good person? |
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I'm saying thats what i've seen, specifically in Central Kalimantan. If you don't think i'm capable of determining this that's fine with me, in which case i highly recommend you go and see for yourself. Just because it doesn't appear in western historic literature doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
Malaysian government is significantly less corrupt (and more functional) than Indonesian government which is why i referenced central Borneo(Kalimantan) instead of Malaysian Borneo. Where abouts in Guangdong did you stay?
I can't remember names of specific communities and google maps doesn't have anything aside from the major cities listed. I flew into Palangka Raya and spent a few months riding motorbikes around and staying with locals, visiting schools/orphanages and teaching children amongst other things.
The government does nothing except extract taxes in alot of those places (it really is nothing more than a mafia, watch "the art of killing" for a better idea of what goes on) sometimes not even that and the people have very little in the way of financial wealth yet they still do better at looking after underprivileged than we do.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are suggesting that in the absence of taxes - which means that the government will not be able to provide financial aid to orphans - altruistic people will suddenly emerge to adopt and take care of these orphans?
What is stopping these altrustic people from adopting these orphans right now?
Altruism does not depend on any set circumstances before it can appear.
He's saying that the same people who are doing it now will continue to do it but instead of putting tenders to government for funding, they will be directly funded by people. The argument could be made that in the absence of a violent (and inefficient) monopoly claiming responsibility for remediation of a VERY important issue, the quality of care that underprivileged get will be significantly better without them. As per the Oxford Dictionary, altruism is defined as "Disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others".
Not "Disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others after certain conditions are met."
Altruism should mean that all of the 400,000 orphans that society as a whole do not want would be adopted by families annually - now.
Since the dawn of time, has this ever happened before? Has societies, collectively, voluntarily decide to adopt every orphan, provide assistance to single mothers, and care for their old, sick and handicapped? No, it hasn't - other than a few truly altruistic individuals, society has largely turned a blind eye to the plight of others.
Depends on what society you're talking about. What i've noticed whilst travelling is that in countries where governments are too corrupt to provide welfare, the communities look after the underprivileged themselves... In fact, i would say that the safety net is far better in some cases. The deciding factor is resources really. Shouldn't we all aspire to be the best that we can possibly be, morally, ethically and financially, instead of devolving into small clusters defined narrowly and exclusively by self-preservation?
Doing the right thing is never easy.
Do me a favor. This weekend, make a trip to a local orphanage or centers for single mothers or the handicapped. Spend a few hours there. I swear, your whole perspective will change.
I Wholeheartedly agree with your aspirations! I think that it is essential to strive for the best possible morals and ethics. I that unless we can all agree on an objective (not a subjective culturally biased) and universal standard for ethics based off something that we all know gets results and works ie:the scientific method, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of history. There are such frameworks out there already if you choose to take that long arduous path to self knowledge, but doing the right thing is never easy. Do me a favour, spend some time in central Borneo or rural China. You'll realise that people can and do solve these problems without government interference. |
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I saw him talk at UWA last week. In regards to his presentation, aspects of his presentation were woefully and inadequately researched and alot of the facts presented were just plain wrong. His understanding of bitcoin related tech is worse than my mothers... and that is saying something! great in terms of entertainment value though http://freebeer.com.au/2014/08/31/establishment-vs-bitcoin/ This guy blogged about his presentation but didn't realise that the transaction volume has doubled in the last year... |
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I'd Check out Bitsharesx, their DPOS system is very interesting. Holding some NXT as a hedge is probably a good choice.
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I'd like it if i made the 10 or so coins i could have mined back... but at a 1% fee reduction, that'd take 2 months if the difficulty remains the same... Its really just a business decision on your part Wolf0. I have no idea what your costs are, what you want to get out of the Pool and/or what your plan is going forward. Or whether or not its worth offering that kind of incentive to get people back on board, most people tend to forget things quickly so it might be pointless? I'm sure if you decided to do it for the addresses that verifiably missed out on returns you'd gain a loyal user base though. Its your decision as to whether the inevitable loss that occurs is worth the loyalty and the potential gains via word of mouth/forum checking when choosing pools for moneo. Most importantly, whatever you decide to do, make it public (perhaps a banner on the pool page so people know) and stick to it Cheers mate |
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Lower fees for a larger amount of time would pay people back over time after a while. I'd imagine you have a list of the addresses who had unsubmitted shares during this time. You could even just do it for them as a kind of loyalty thing to get them back on board?
I'm just speaking for myself here, but i'd be back on board with my 3.5mh if you did this. If i'm willing to, then i'm sure others would be also, if thats the case over the long term i'm sure it would make you more and you'd probably gain more mining share than the ~1mh/s that were mining on your pool before this happened.
Cheers!
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I like the looks of that poll! |
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[many things]
Yes, I am justifying both taxes and wealth redistribution. My morality is based on balancing the 'suffering vs happiness' equation. If an action results in more happiness than suffering, or it takes away more suffering than it does happiness, then that action is moral. Of course 'suffering' and 'happiness' are very difficult to define precisely, but in general: - The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. - Alleviating extreme pain, poverty and despair outweighs providing people with luxuries. In this context, the idea that forcibly taking money from people who already have lots of money in order to feed, educate and heal people is "immoral" makes little sense to me. If you delve a little deeper into your assessment of suffering vs happiness, your idea to tax sounds good on the surface and theoretically should provide a better outcome and add to the happiness pool more than the suffering pool. But Communism and Socialism are also great in theory(The fundamentals are based on wealth distribution)... However, after some spectacularly failed experiments we now know that in practice the reality is alot different. What if that person has been saving that money and living on beans for 10 years because their child needs an operation that can only be performed by the best surgeon in the world? Your "Moral" act of thievery has just gone and killed that persons child... Can you rationalise away the death of that person for the potential quality of life improvement of a group of people that probably won't see most of the money you stole? The answer is probably yes if you're a politician, you think you're doing a good thing by redistributing wealth, people definitely DID benefit from the funds you stole... mostly the people who distributed it but the people who needed it got some too and chances are that guy wasn't even going to spend the money on his child, he just liked living on beans and hoarding money... Its reasonable that you and the hard working thieves receive some for doing all the hard work and actually taking the money... Isn't it? In what kind of society is thievery morally justified? especially when history shows that wealth redistribution (whether it be to the top or bottom of the pyramid is irrelevant) gives catastrophic consequences over time... Unless i'm missing something and stealing actually increases the net wealth of society? Surely that thief would be better off doing something productive rather than stealing? |
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An example of how the debt paradox is wrong: Suppose I am a fisherman and I create IOUs to buy a boat and those IOUs are used as currency. The IOUs are debt, just like the dollar, and they have interest payments. I don't have to create more debt to pay the interest because I can pay the interest with fish (or IOUs gained by selling the fish). Everything is ok as long as I don't go so far into debt that I can't pay the interest with fish. If I have to continually create more debt to pay the interest (as the U.S. is currently doing) then eventually the system will collapse.
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I see what you're doing there, but interest (I) and the load (L) have to be paid in dollars, not something else. I have to take that out of the total money supply (S), where every dollar bears interest (apparently, don't know if this is true). S = L < L + I So where does the interest has to come from? Or is this way too simplistic? Currency is reused. Suppose my interest payment to the lender is the value of a load of fish. So I go fishing and I get a load of fish. The lender (for example) buys the load with some currency and I make the interest payment with that same currency. I could potentially do this forever and there is no need for additional currency to make interest payments. but by the logic of the debt paradox, since 95%+ of the money supply is debt money that is collecting interest, even if the currency that is involved to pay off your own interest is reused, it itself has associated interest due of some third party not mentioned in your example. if the total amount of debt is greater than the total amount of currency in circulation, then does it matter how much the actual total value of goods in the economy grows (e.g. catching additional loads of fish)? In my example, I am the issuer of the currency. Perhaps the example was not clear. The point is that debt-based currency does not have to be created to pay interest. Interest can be paid with production. The paradox becomes real when the interest exceeds production because then the excess interest can only be paid by new debt, and a collapse is inevitable. Why does interest have to be paid at all if the debt is based off the produce of the same people the money is supposed to go to? |
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