I'd much rather take my chances with a few gun-toting mentally deranged people than prohibiting my ability to defend myself, or prohibiting the millions of other responsible, sane folk who also want to retain the ability to defend themselves.  There is almost no difference between a police officer -- a person, like any other -- having a gun, and the average Joe having a gun.  Cops keep crime rates down because they have the means of deterring criminals.  Similarly, crime rates are deterred when higher numbers of civilians have guns.  This is backed statistically when controlling for other variables.

By the way, you really should learn how to write properly.  I can't take you or your views seriously, and that's because I'm assuming your chaotic, unstructured post is a reflection of a chaotic, unstructured mind.

I think the issue of gun control is so often mischaracterized because the issue of government control casts a veil of ignorance over almost everyone's eyes.  The extent to which guns can be controlled is predominantly influenced by how much control can be exercised by government at the Federal and state levels.  The larger governments get, the more tightly regulation generally controls all other facets of life, including things such as commerce, education, criminal justice, mental and medical health treatment, and even social relationships.  

On one hand, progressively granting government more control propels the myth that people would somehow be unable to work together harmoniously without such structure.  On the other hand, granting such control would make catastrophe all but certain if it were suddenly removed (i.e. we've gotten ourselves in too deep to easily pull ourselves out).  The situation is far more complex than people make it out to be, and you'll never reach a viable solution to the gun issue by simply looking at gun statistics, or even by relating those statistics to other things over which the government has been granted authoritarian control.

As I stated in the other thread, I see where this is going.  You're a black-and-white thinker, and little more than a parrot of buzz-word rhetoric.  I don't have the time to educate you about how to stay within the context of an argument instead of changing it willy-nilly whenever you have an idea, nor do I have time to explain to you the difference between things like correlation and causation, the definition of "mediating variable," "false dichotomy," or otherwise.  I'll retain my freedom to both carry a gun and think for myself, thanks.

Ahh, I see where this is going.  I'm not responding to any more of your posts on this issue.

Oh give me a break.  You just took a detour into total irrelevancy.  Tanks?  Really?

Fair enough.  I had actually thought it was Jefferson from memory, but to double check I just Googled the quote, and it popped up as Franklin.

Still, who said it, or if nobody said it, changes nothing.

And correction:  YOU have priviliges.  I have freedoms.  Try to take them away from me.  I dare you.

I've seen your posts in the gun control thread, too.  Nice to know you've thought this one out for yourself  

I'd be interested to know what you think about issue, in your own words, and without framing the issue in an infantile false dichotomy.

 ”Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.” -- Ben Franklin

If you, as a person, give up your freedoms (like the right to carry a gun) and hand them over to someone else in exchange for protection, you are acknowledging a few things:

1) You acknowledge that someone(s) is more capable of protecting you than yourself.

2) You acknowledge that that you are content with being at the mercy of the decisions of those to whom you have conceded your freedoms.

3) You acknowledge that the extent to which you continue to have liberties is determined by those to whom you gave up your others.

 
So, here's the question of the day:  If you believe you are not best suited to handle the security of yourself, then how can you conclude that sacrificing liberties for security was the best idea to begin with?

Because if you isolate that statistic, North Korea looks a heck of a lot better than the United States.  

Well that's a neat little piece of information that tells you almost absolutely nothing.  If that's your basis for your opinion, you've chosen a context the size of a peep hole.

1) I really don't understand the "let's not shoot the messenger comment."  I'm guessing it's non-essential, though I don't know who I shot lol.

2)  I agree that we can make sensical and non-sensical statements with plain English, and that the non-sensical statements do not render English inoperable or useless.  The syntax and rules of operation for English determine what is sensical and what isn't.  Statements are relayed back to the syntax and processed according thereto to determine if it is meaningful in a way consistent with it.  Thus, at the syntactic level there is indeed a "reasoning" process by which statements are evaluated, but the syntax itself is structural, i.e. it imposes constraints upon what can be considered meaningful.

3)  Yes, I recall your mention of the Liar's paradox.

4)  If you run software with code that does not conform to the syntax of its programming language, it will be evaluated as an invalid input. If valid, how those statements are expressed is a product of both their relation to their governing syntax, and also in relation to other object-level statements governed by the same syntax that may affect them (e.g. if-then or "conditional" statements).  I'm not sure if I fully responded to what you were saying, here.  I'm at lunch on an iPhone.

Edit: Linking this to subjectivity and objectivity, consider a governing syntax of Reality in total as it relates to its internal components.  As we perceive real content and subsequently process and model that content, we can either model that content in a way that is consistent with the syntax of Reality in total, or in a way that is inconsistent.  Because the structural syntax of Reality in total necessarily distributes to all of its content, if our model is consistent, then it is objectively valid, else we have an inconsistent, invalid model that provides us with no objective value.  In this way, we can consider this process in terms of a fundamental utility function, where utility is defined upon consistency and congruency with Universal syntax.  

Now, as you previously pointed out to some extent, real content isn't static, and this is because it is expressed through conditional changes according to the unconditional syntax of Reality.  This implies that Reality's syntax embodies rules for self-configuration via relational feedback between syntax and content, essentially a mechanism of self-evolution.  It is no different for us in an isomorphic sense.  We, too, embody this same mechanism for self-configuration, and this self-configuration can be defined in terms of the utility it generates.  If we self-configure in a way that is consistent with our own structural syntax, then bueno.  Else, no bueno.  I think this can serve as an objective basis for concepts like "good" and "bad," lending itself as a means of objective ethical mapping.

Edit 2: This may be getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, but consider for the sake of argument that what I have said so far in this post is true.  Relating to the computer analogy in which code that does not conform to the syntax of its program language would be considered invalid and thus incapable of being expressed, what would happen then if we do not conform to the syntax of Reality?  Might we, too, be deemed "invalid" and incapable of being expressed?  If so, might this be the basis of seemingly-religious concepts such as Heaven (i.e. something akin to "living with God forever, or in congruence with him), and Hell (i.e. being incongruent with God, and potentially facing interdiction from the system)?

You don't need >50% to be lucky for a few blocks.  It would just be statistically impossible to continue outpacing the other chain indefinitely with <50%.

Paradoxes are fun, no doubt.  But, as Langan further notes:


This is really the crux of it all.  Presenting a consistent model that provides a means of resolving said paradoxes automatically grants the model explanatory precedence.  Consequently, what thus determines a given, consistent model to be superior to another is generality.  By identifying a limit of theorization and evoking categorical relationships between the limit itself and reality, the result is a consistent model of reality at the epitome of generality, precluding the existence of a consistent model more general than itself.  In other words, it is the best we can ever do, and all that remains is to use such a model as a context within which to frame all sub-theories/models, resolving the paradoxes contained therein and providing us with objective insight which may give us clues as to how we can gain additional, practical utility from them (and perhaps even objectifying practical utility itself, giving us a concrete path to follow with regards to ethics and other considerations).


The "higher-level paradoxes as side-effects" would again be precluded by the reintroduction of yet another metalanguage to resolve paradoxes in an object-oriented metalanguage.  Isomorphic regression is not the same as infinite regression in the traditional sense because falsifying isomorphic regression would require introducing a metalanguage to attempt to falsify it, making it impossible to falsify it without actually adhering to it.  Thus, the falsification attempt renders itself inconsistent and therefore invalid.

Edit:  A way to visualize how isomorphic regression does not equate to infinite regression is to consider a 'prime' metalanguage as an algebraic construct which serves as a primordial archetype which distributes its structure isomorphically to all linguistic subsystems.  This means the archetype is a static, unchanging structure distributed among both reality in total and in part, objectively relating the latter to the former.


On a lower level, it isn't static, but at the highest level it would be totally static and unchanging...complete and self-consistent with respect to its non-static constituents.  A presumption of the kind you're making would suggest there would be something external to reality itself that would be capable of determining it incomplete and/or inconsistent (claiming its either or both is itself an objective determination, and this would reintroduce the problematic infinite regression).

Quoting from the same source as previous post:


Edit:  I'm a big fan of Langan's work, as you can see my beliefs closely reflect his -- and I've spent literally hundreds of hours dissecting it.

Correct, absence of proof is not proof of absence, but in this case that only applies directly to Empiricism, which necessarily omits comprehensive explanation and thereby not only leaves unfalsifiable assumptions on the table, but also leaves a necessary cause of which it can never model.  In a self-deterministic model where objective content is fundamentally inseparable from the mental constructs that model them, the necessary cause is modeled, and in such a way that it also explains the cause of the model itself (i.e. through theoretical self-reference).  

A self-deterministic model is not in any way threatened by such unfalsifiable assumptions in the same way that an Empirical worldview is because it precludes any instance in which such unverifiable content is actually relevant to Reality.  Accordingly, these unfalsifable assumptions are a priori unreal.  This distinction is especially highlighted by the fact that Empirical models cannot account for themselves (because they are abstract and therefore beyond the scope of Empiricism altogether), and can't even account for their own assumptions (e.g. that we live in a Positivistic Universe, a purely philosophical assumption that also falls outside of their scope).  

My claims are falsifiable, as I have already explained how there is a theoretical way to falsify them.  Again, what you will find is that any attempt to falsify them will only reinforce the general idea in the same way that any attempt to falsify the existence of absolute truth only serves to reinforce it, since any claim must necessarily assume its own absolute, objective weight in order to be objectively relevant to the argument.

...Objectively relevant.  These are the types of relationships you need to become aware of.  What is objective is only so in relation to something else.  For example, the syntax of a system is objective relative to its contents, while its contents are only relative to its syntax and not in any way absolute to it.  However, the same, objective syntax of the original system is merely relative to the syntax of an even greater system containing it.  Objective does NOT mean something like "it is what it is all by itself."  Objectivity is a relation.  You avoid infinite regression by modeling objectivity self-relationally (in the same way that sound logic is logical because sound logic says so).

And of course you're inclined to think subjectivity and objectivity aren't connected in the way I propose because the notion apparently runs contrary to what you've been assuming (i.e. your inclination) this entire time.

You have absolutely no basis to say that it "by no means affects the objective existence of a thing."  This is your fundamental error.  How can you possibly know that without making a (as I noted before) "totally unnecessary and wholly unfalsifiable assumption?"  How can you possibility know what the objective existence of something is without being aware of it?  To falsify your assumption requires that you would need to be aware of its objective existence independent of your awareness of its objective existence.  Your assumption negates its own possibility.

Whereas you make an assumption that impossible to falsify empirically or logically, I make exactly zero assumptions.

This point isn't even anything novel.  This is taught in classrooms globally.  I hate appealing to authority, but how many academic references would you need to convince you otherwise?  Though, the explanation contained in this very post is enough to prove the flaw in your assumption beyond all doubt.  You are making an assumption that is absolutely impossible to establish, provide reasonable grounds for, or falsify, and there is not a shred of evidence to support it.

1)  The mere existence of something is meaningful.  That is, if you assert something exists, then it is imbued with meaning, and it is your awareness of its existant form that determines, in tandem with each other, that 1) it exists, and 2) to that extent (at the very least) it is meaningful.  Existence and meaning are a package deal.

2)
Yes it does.  See #1.  

1) Correct, objects are not made meaningful or meaningless by themselves.  Information of any kind is utterly meaningless unless it is processed by some entity capable of processing and rendering that information in a meaningful way.  Thus...

2) ...I am not ascribing them any intrinsic meaning in and of themselves as you suggest.  Although, I would like to point out that you seem to be making some very definitive claims about the nature of objects in general, which goes against your favoritism towards indeterminism as an explanatory model (i.e. you are determining their meaning).

3) Again, meaning is derived from a subject-object relationship.  You seem to acknowledge this by claiming that objects are neither meaningful nor meaningless (see #1).

4) If you acknowledge #3, then you should also acknowledge that you cannot say objects (like cancer) can exist (imbuing them with your own meaning) outside of subjective awareness.

I don't see any sensationalism or spin in the headline.  I think it's more likely that an average reader may spin it themselves to align with other legitimately sensationalist articles they may have read or heard of in the past.  That doesn't mean there's anything here to suggest that BTC is inherently related to terrorism in any way.

No.  It boils down to the fact that subjective and objective are homogenized at a fundamental level...that objective content is ultimately inseparable from the mental constructs that describe them.  You're a huge fan of dichotomies, and I'm encouraging you not to be.  You're not familiar with this point of view because you keep trying to cram your square peg into a round hole.  Something is known to exist after it has been verified.  You can't know what you can't verify, and you can't verify what you aren't aware of, and so you can't objectify anything without being aware of it.  Therefore, what is objectively known is utterly dependent upon subjective awareness or "mind."  This does NOT, however, means it loses objectivity.  Rather, you just have a poor understanding of objectivity.

Edit:  Consider the syntax of our own language and what is required for meaning.  Consider the following (non)sentence: "Apple."  This means nothing by itself.  An apple, we know, is an object, but it is a completely meaningless object unless it is related to some subject.  Now consider the sentence: "An apple is a fruit."  Now, broken down: "An apple (subject) is a fruit (object)."  Meaning is derived from a subject-object relationship. This sets a 'ratio' (the root word of "rationale") between the subject and object so we can make sense of it.  Objectivity by itself is meaningless in the way you describe it.  You're failing to consider that, for objectivity to be in any way meaningful, it must be fundamentally inseparable from subjectivity.

Edit 2:  Another, more primordial example, is the self-evident process of metacognition whereby we, as subjects, objectify ourselves in a self-referential process.  We derive meaning in our lives and form a meaningful self-concept through this process whereby we, as subjects, objectify ourselves [e.g. "I (subject) am a subject (object)."].   And voila! -- Subjectivity objectified