Politics & Stuff

[johnnythefirst 1,076]

23 minutes ago, Sir Mikel OBE said:

 

Or you would have chose a school much cheaper, like the vast majority of people do.

 

 

 

Yes, and then you get a lesser education because you don't have the money, which causes inequality to grow generation after generation. 

My whole point, that you seem to ignore every time, is that there SHOULDN'T be expensive schools and that education should be free or as cheap as possible. The smarter the voters get, the less stupid the politicians. Maybe that's why they won't tackle the problem.

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,730]

1 hour ago, Yeboii said:

I can only tell you that in my country, which has been the "basic healthcare, free education" type for a very long time, the companies are having a hard time getting people to work in their factories, since everyone has this or that degree and consider themselves to be above working in a factory. Don't know the problem in other countries. You would be surprised how many factories are in America and Europe though.

No one is saying that we should work for 30 cents an hour. Also, the goal for every company is to make as much money as possible, so if they see that they make more money by moving their factories to Asia (but keep everything else in America/Europe, along with providing a lot of people jobs), can you really blame them?

Tax cuts are of no need when the tax is low enough in the first place. Companies get tax cuts because they keep the economy going and provide citizens with jobs.

 

The problem we have in America is a bunch of people have degrees, and there are simply no jobs for them. There are people I graduated college with working at Starbucks because there are simply no jobs for them. America doesn't need everybody with a degree, we simply don't have the jobs to hold them. We need people doing trades, which is where people who are considered losers are pushed into now. 

 

That is a large part of the Sanders appeal with his(mostly white) base. They like to think of the good days of the new deal where factory jobs were plentiful, and you raise a family on a single income. This ignores the fact that these jobs were only plentiful because the rest of the world was in the dumps, and because at home minorities and women were kept out of these good high paying jobs in the workforce.  It is a view of America steeped in white privilege. Now we have to compete in a global marketplace and people don't want to. They don't want to have to compete with Raj in India, they don't want Raj coming to America on an H1B to take their jobs. They want to be taken care of by their government. Screw the higher standards of living this globalization has given people not only across the world, but at home this century.  

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,730]

4 minutes ago, johnnythefirst said:

 

Yes, and then you get a lesser education because you don't have the money, which causes inequality to grow generation after generation. 

My whole point, that you seem to ignore every time, is that there SHOULDN'T be expensive schools and that education should be free or as cheap as possible. The smarter the voters get, the less stupid the politicians. Maybe that's why they won't tackle the problem.

 

Is your education any less than mine if I paid 12k a year for it and you only paid 650 dollars? Does 2+2 magically stop being 4 at a more expensive school?

 

Lets get real a person with a medical degree from Harvard is a doctor just like a person with a  medical degree from Southern Texas Christian college. The only difference is the prestige you will place on one above the others, and that is a societal issue. If you want to go to an expensive school, you pay for it. Don't make the rest of society, already taxed out of the ass and paying their own loans, pay for an expensive school you personally decided to go to. It can't reasonably be placed as our responsibility. That is textbook privilege thinking you should go to which school you want, and that the rest should foot the bill.

[johnnythefirst 1,076]

2 minutes ago, Sir Mikel OBE said:

 

Is your education any less than mine if I paid 12k a year for it and you only paid 650 dollars? Does 2+2 magically stop being 4 at a more expensive school?

 

Lets get real a person with a medical degree from Harvard is a doctor just like a person with a  medical degree from Southern Texas Christian college. The only difference is the prestige you will place on one above the others, and that is a societal issue. If you want to go to an expensive school, you pay for it. Don't make the rest of society, already taxed out of the ass and paying their own loans, pay for an expensive school you personally decided to go to. It can't reasonably be placed as our responsibility. That is textbook privilege thinking you should go to which school you want, and that the rest should foot the bill.

Since I'm not living in the States, I don't know whether the level of education at the Haskell Indian Nations University (apparently the cheapest) is comparable to the one in Harvard. I would say it isn't. ;-)

Point is that billions of tax dollars are pumped in the military every year for no use whatsoever, while they could just as easily be put in education. But apparently paying for someone else's college is a problem but paying to bomb some Iraqi civilians isn't. 

[Yeboii 1,844]

1 hour ago, CHOULO19 said:

And I was talking about people on the right only bringing up costs when it comes to services to the actual communities when NO ONE ever asks about where the funding for wars and tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% can come from. 

Where can you get money for schools? From cutting military spending and closing tax loop wholes. 

 

1 hour ago, johnnythefirst said:

Yeah, maybe we should close all these schools and invest in a couple of extra million dollar bombs to drop on the heads of random brown people. 

Of course wars and tax cuts are to be avoided. Never said anything else. Man, Trump was against the war against Iraq.

Also, since you only wish to speak about the United States, then most expensive schools there are private schools (schools that the government does not own), same goes with hospitals. If they wish to have a high price on their services then they are free to do so. Just like John the carpenter can charge whatever he thinks is a good price for his service. That's life. If you want the government to regulate everything you say and do, then you can be against this.

Also, I see you are from Belgium. The random brown people are not so random. They are who the governments believe to be the heads of ISIS, the ones who are responsible for the attacks on Brussels and Paris. That's a whole new topic though.

1 hour ago, johnnythefirst said:

No they get tax cuts because they slip the right people some dough.

If you think companies and the businessmen are not the ones that provide the citizens with jobs, while also being the ones that keep all economies going, then I think you might need to think some more about it.

9 minutes ago, Sir Mikel OBE said:

The problem we have in America is a bunch of people have degrees, and there are simply no jobs for them. There are people I graduated college with working at Starbucks because there are simply no jobs for them. America doesn't need everybody with a degree, we simply don't have the jobs to hold them. We need people doing trades, which is where people who are considered losers are pushed into now. 

Same thing here. Except that, instead of working at Starbucks (or a place like that), they stay at home and get money from the government. Then they realize how easy it is to just stay at home and get money for nothing they milk it for every cent they can get! A lot of people think that a degree=more respect in life. So if they have a degree, working at a factory, while waiting for the right job to come, is below them.

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,730]

4 minutes ago, johnnythefirst said:

Since I'm not living in the States, I don't know whether the level of education at the Haskell Indian Nations University (apparently the cheapest) is comparable to the one in Harvard. I would say it isn't. ;-)

Point is that billions of tax dollars are pumped in the military every year for no use whatsoever, while they could just as easily be put in education. But apparently paying for someone else's college is a problem but paying to bomb some Iraqi civilians isn't. 

 

There are comparable schools that are cheaper. Surely you don't recommend us sending everybody to the number 2 ranked school in the country?

 

No doubt we pay too much in military spending, but at least with that a decent amount is to research that might give us another internet. 

 

2 minutes ago, Yeboii said:

 

 

Same thing here. Except that, instead of working at Starbucks (or a place like that), they stay at home and get money from the government. Then they realize how easy it is to just stay at home and get money for nothing they milk it for every cent they can get! A lot of people think that a degree=more respect in life. So if they have a degree, working at a factory, while waiting for the right job to come, is below them.

Oh we definitely have those down here. They game our disability system. Usually a vague trip or fall at work or a supermarket, and they use shady lawyers to allow them to draw disability while they sit at home and watch shows like Maury and Judge Judy where they have commercials by lawyers all day trying to get even more money out of the government by telling them new ways to screw over the system. Its so widespread that we even have a hotline in my state so you can report people.

[johnnythefirst 1,076]

25 minutes ago, Yeboii said:

 

Also, I see you are from Belgium. The random brown people are not so random. They are who the governments believe to be the heads of ISIS, the ones who are responsible for the attacks on Brussels and Paris. That's a whole new topic though.

 

They've been random brown people ever since World War II ended and we all know it.  :-)

[Fernando 6,374]

3 hours ago, johnnythefirst said:

Why should morality come from a god? Maybe it just comes from not wanting to be a violent idiot and from treating others like you want to be treated yourself.
The fact you think people are only being good because they fear eternal punishment in the afterlife, doesn't speak for your image of humanity. 
 

Wait a moment, what about survival of the fittest?

Doesn't that concepts apply here? or that gets thrown away?

3 hours ago, manpe said:

Totally wrong. This sounds like some nonsense you might hear in a church. Morality isn't exclusively tied to religion, never was and never will be. You cannot believe that before 2016 years ago all people were sociopaths until some guy told them it was wrong. Morality comes from a conscious living being's ability to feel and convey emotions. For most normal people doing something bad to another human makes them feel bad, they feel it is wrong and therefore don't do it. This applies even to some other animals, and I doubt they know the first thing about god. You should look into human psychology more, unless you believe that all our thoughts and actions are determined by some higher being, in which case it would be pointless discussing it with you. Evolution beats creationism hands down, it's not even a contest.

Can you give the example of other animals?

How evolution beats creationism? If you have major faults in your transnational species. Not to mention the dating test that you use for measuring age of something is so wrong. Giving that you don't take into account the acceleration of radio active decay. You guys "assume" that this was constant all the time. And that's a wrong assumption to go by.

[Dion 2,476]

6 hours ago, Fernando said:

This why Evolution doesn't make sense to me.

Those who believe in evolution it shouldn't matter to them about morale right. Morality comes from a god, in which they don't believe.

With Evolution you just live and die. No good or bad matters, because you go back to nothing.

Now if there is a god, then your accountable to him.

It is possible to reach a "morality" solely by using rationality. It's all about reaching a state of universalized well-being which will/would also benefit myself as an individual. It's about realizing humans can achieve a better quality of life as a whole by working together, cooperating. And it's actually better than morality because you don't have to deal with absolute statements like "killing is bad/wrong". Because killing can do good in certain situations if you look at the greater picture. It's true that to preserve the lives of everyone in a society, which is the primary reason for humans organizing themselves as a group – survival (or at least that was the starting reason), starting by protecting every single life is a good concept. But in an extreme example, there may occur a situation in which the protection of someone's life endangers the lives of the whole society, well, in this situation protecting that single life defeats the purpose of society itself. Ending that life is not bad in this sense. However, if you think about it in terms of morality than it's way harder to deal with it. The way every individual should operate is focusing to maximize their own well-being while avoiding causing harm to others, or hindering their chances to reach their own state of well-being, as best as possible, in fact, aiding others to reach it would be best whenever possible. That's my "morality", it has nothing to do with God.

[Fernando 6,374]

12 minutes ago, Dion said:

It is possible to reach a "morality" solely by using rationality. It's all about reaching a state of universalized well-being which will/would also benefit myself as an individual. It's about realizing humans can achieve a better quality of life as a whole by working together, cooperating. And it's actually better than morality because you don't have to deal with absolute statements like "killing is bad/wrong". Because killing can do good in certain situations if you look at the greater picture. It's true that to preserve the lives of everyone in a society, which is the primary reason for humans organizing themselves as a group – survival (or at least that was the starting reason), starting by protecting every single life is a good concept. But in an extreme example, there may occur a situation in which the protection of someone's life endangers the lives of the whole society, well, in this situation protecting that single life defeats the purpose of society itself. Ending that life is not bad in this sense. However, if you think about it in terms of morality than it's way harder to deal with it. The way every individual should operate is focusing to maximize their own well-being while avoiding causing harm to others or hindering their chances to reach their own state of well-being as best as possible, in fact, aiding others to reach it would be best whenever possible. That's my "morality", it has nothing to do with God.

But aren't you being irrational? 

How could we argue that it is wrong for others to murder if morality is nothing but a personal standard? You stated it's a good concept protecting life. But by who standards? By who ideologies? 

If morality is a subjective personal choice as you clearly are choosing, then Hitler cannot be denounced for his actions since he was acting in according with his chosen standard.....

If people are simply chemical accidents, why should we care about their happiness at all? Concern about others does not make sense in an evolutionary universe.

 

[manpe 10,855]

2 hours ago, Fernando said:

Can you give the example of other animals?

You can use google. It's still not a fact though afaik, so you may safely disregard that single sentence from my post. What about the rest of what I said about morality?

2 hours ago, Fernando said:

How evolution beats creationism? If you have major faults in your transnational species. Not to mention the dating test that you use for measuring age of something is so wrong. Giving that you don't take into account the acceleration of radio active decay. You guys "assume" that this was constant all the time. And that's a wrong assumption to go by.

Major faults in transnational species? Please clarify.

So your whole argument against evolution is that scientific dating tests are not 100% accurate, who would have known. I still trust them more than.. I don't even know what we're comparing it with, since this is all we got. And no, I don't take some dates mentioned in the bible as fact. But I'm still not sure how determining something's age is relevant here. The fact that we can't reliably pinpoint something's exact age doesn't mean that millions of years of evolution didn't happen.

How evolution beats creationism? For an atheist, that is a simple question. I'm not sure if I'm gonna muster the time and energy to explain, as it's clear that we don't share the same beliefs, so it's completely pointless to run in circles. But for example, we can to this day find signs of evolution on our own bodies (f.ex. rudimentary muscles we don't need anymore). Fetuses still start growing tails in the womb for a short period of time until our genetic code stops it. If creationism were true, then I see no reason for god to have engineered us with body parts and functions we don't need. Do you? Perhaps god just works in mysterious ways, so everything unexplainable can be explained by this. What is more likely though? That they have become obsolete over a long period of time as a result of adapting to changes in environment and way of life.

I have never ever seen a creationist bring forward any studies to even semi-convincingly confirm creationism or debunk evolution, but there are far more evidence supporting the latter. By the way, I'm not trying to be aggressive towards your beliefs, though it may sound so. I'm just puzzled how people can be so confident in their beliefs based only on (blind) faith, something I so far have failed to understand.

[Dion 2,476]

7 minutes ago, Fernando said:

But aren't you being irrational? 

How could we argue that it is wrong for others to murder if morality is nothing but a personal standard? You stated it's a good concept protecting life. But by who standards? By who ideologies? 

If morality is a subjective personal choice as you clearly are choosing, then Hitler cannot be denounced for his actions since he was acting in according with his chosen standard.....

If people are simply chemical accidents, why should we care about their happiness at all? Concern about others does not make sense in an evolutionary universe.

 

The ideology is using logical thinking, if I assume I'm allowed to kill you, then I have to assume you are allowed to kill me. Living in society is sort of having a mutual agreement, I won't cause you harm and you won't cause me harm. Inflicting pain is not an ideology, is not a standard, is not an opinion, it's Biology. It's biologically unpleasant.

It shouldn't be subjective. It should be derived from using rationality to achieve a positive well-being to the human species. Does it look like to you that was what Hitler was doing?

Because happiness is pleasant. Again, Biology. Concern about others makes sense in an evolutionary sense if it was advantageous to survival and passing the genes along. Your understanding about evolution is flawed.

[Fernando 6,374]

40 minutes ago, manpe said:

You can use google. It's still not a fact though afaik, so you may safely disregard that single sentence from my post. What about the rest of what I said about morality? Why are you ignoring this?

Major faults in transnational species? Please clarify.

So your whole argument against evolution is that scientific dating tests are not 100% accurate, who would have known. I still trust them more than.. I don't even know what we're comparing it with, since this is all we got. And no, I don't take some dates mentioned in the bible as fact. But I'm still not sure how determining something's age is relevant here. The fact that we can't reliably pinpoint something's exact age doesn't mean that millions of years of evolution didn't happen.

How evolution beats creationism? For an atheist, that is a simple question. I'm not sure if I'm gonna muster the time and energy to explain, as it's clear that we don't share the same beliefs, so it's completely pointless to run in circles. But for example, we can to this day find signs of evolution on our own bodies (f.ex. rudimentary muscles we don't need anymore). Fetuses still start growing tails in the womb for a short period of time until our genetic code stops it. If creationism were true, then I see no reason for god to have engineered us with body parts and functions we don't need. Do you? Perhaps god just works in mysterious ways, so everything unexplainable can be explained by this. What is more likely though? That they have become obsolete over a long period of time as a result of adapting to changes in environment and way of life.

I have never ever seen a creationist bring forward any studies to even semi-convincingly confirm creationism or debunk evolution, but there are far more evidence supporting the latter. By the way, I'm not trying to be aggressive towards your beliefs, though it may sound so. I'm just puzzled how people can be so confident in their beliefs based only on (blind) faith, something I so far have failed to understand.

There's many out there, just that you have not done the research...

I will give you a couple of examples besides the issue of transitional species. 

First we have Dark Energy.

This guy explains it better than me so....:

 

Second we have the Goldilocks concept. The concept that earth is just at the right place, right spot in the solar system, galaxy and universe. 

A long with the Goldilocks concept, you can add these two. If the earth's rotation was different we would have a catastrophe for humans making civilization impossible. The tilt of the rotational axis is just the right direction to allow life in the globe. 

Third there's Genetic Entropy. This shows that the human race is actually deteriorating, not evolving. 

Fourth this one is interesting, Natural selection has not explain the origin of information in DNA. 

And last is the Cambrian explosion. This is linked with a lack of transitional species. There's a lack of transitional fossils prior to the Cambrian explosion. 

Actually the case I'm making for is not much for evolution but intelligent design. That as you study more and more the universe you find order and not chaos. 

[Fernando 6,374]

57 minutes ago, Dion said:

The ideology is using logical thinking, if I assume I'm allowed to kill you, then I have to assume you are allowed to kill me. Living in society is sort of having a mutual agreement, I won't cause you harm and you won't cause me harm. Inflicting pain is not an ideology, is not a standard, is not an opinion, it's Biology. It's biologically unpleasant.

It shouldn't be subjective. It should be derived from using rationality to achieve a positive well-being to the human species. Does it look like to you that was what Hitler was doing?

Because happiness is pleasant. Again, Biology. Concern about others makes sense in an evolutionary sense if it was advantageous to survival and passing the genes along. Your understanding about evolution is flawed.

True it has some flawed but so is the origin of evolution.

Tell me can you explain how logical thinking evolve? 

And the point about biology is very true and also interesting as well. But doesn't that state that it had to be programmed into our biology? Somewhere a long the line the genetics had to be changed in order for this to happened..... 

Otherwise how do you explain the evolution from nothing....if we are to believe the big bang theory. Where matter explode, eventually giving way to water, then organism and on and on. 

[Dion 2,476]

32 minutes ago, Fernando said:

True it has some flawed but so is the origin of evolution.

Tell me can you explain how logical thinking evolve? 

And the point about biology is very true and also interesting as well. But doesn't that state that it had to be programmed into our biology? Somewhere a long the line the genetics had to be changed in order for this to happened..... 

Otherwise how do you explain the evolution from nothing....if we are to believe the big bang theory. Where matter explode, eventually giving way to water, then organism and on and on. 

I do not know how logical thinking evolved. But if I had to guess, I'd say it was similar to how other features have evolved. I mean, let's say you have a population of species X. One of these individuals from species X has a mutation that enables him to do better associations between cause and effect because of some differences in the way his brain functions. For instance, let's say he eats some berries and it causes him a major diarrhea or something. Now his brain makes a link between those two things, while the other individuals from species X cannot. From this point onwards this mutant individual already has an advantage over his peers since he'll avoid eating those berries. As evolution progressed this system became more and more complex as organisms got selected by their brain capacity, we humans just happen to be currently the apex in this regard.

Now I wouldn't know the exact mechanism which provides us with this ability. Perhaps if I'm a neurologist one day I'd be able to tell you better.

 

Concerning the origin of life that's anyone's guess, but there have been some interesting experiments. If I recall correctly, one of them was made by a scientist named Oparin.  He tried to recreate our primitive atmosphere composition and continuous electrical discharges and, after a couple weeks or months running the experiment, he found that amino acids, organic matter which compounds proteins, had been spontaneously created at the bottom. Now imagine this experiment running in a HUGE scale, the whole planet, for millions or billions of years. It might have originated the first cells and then evolution started its magic, or it might not, nobody knows for sure.

[Dion 2,476]

1 hour ago, Fernando said:

There's many out there, just that you have not done the research...

I will give you a couple of examples besides the issue of transitional species. 

First we have Dark Energy.

This guy explains it better than me so....:

 

Second we have the Goldilocks concept. The concept that earth is just at the right place, right spot in the solar system, galaxy and universe. 

A long with the Goldilocks concept, you can add these two. If the earth's rotation was different we would have a catastrophe for humans making civilization impossible. The tilt of the rotational axis is just the right direction to allow life in the globe. 

Third there's Genetic Entropy. This shows that the human race is actually deteriorating, not evolving. 

Fourth this one is interesting, Natural selection has not explain the origin of information in DNA. 

And last is the Cambrian explosion. This is linked with a lack of transitional species. There's a lack of transitional fossils prior to the Cambrian explosion. 

Actually the case I'm making for is not much for evolution but intelligent design. That as you study more and more the universe you find order and not chaos. 

The bolded part I think is a terrible concept. I get the impression it starts from the wrong place. First and foremost, life didn't have to exist, you know? Life is the exception, it looks miraculous because we ARE the exception. Look how many planets and how many places don't have any form of life, or at least none that we know of or similar to the ones we are familiar with. I don't know how to put this better but it seems everything fell in place in this particular place and time because it has. If it hadn't we wouldn't be here to observe it. Imagine if the earth's rotation had been different – well, we wouldn't exist then and as such we would never know, you see? We are only able to see the events lined up because that's the condition for our existence. And also there might be another couple of exceptions like us, because the universe is huge it is likely that it happened elsewhere in the cosmos where conditions are similar. And second, there might be other forms of life that we don't even know how to start looking for because they are not biochemical forms of life like ourselves or because they may exist in another scale of size or parameter.

[Fernando 6,374]

19 minutes ago, Dion said:

I do not know how logical thinking evolved. But if I had to guess, I'd say it was similar to how other features have evolved. I mean, let's say you have a population of species X. One of these individuals from species X has a mutation that enables him to do better associations between cause and effect because of some differences in the way his brain functions. For instance, let's say he eats some berries and it causes him a major diarrhea or something. Now his brain makes a link between those two things, while the other individuals from species X cannot. From this point onwards this mutant individual already has an advantage over his peers since he'll avoid eating those berries. As evolution progressed this system became more and more complex as organisms got selected by their brain capacity, we humans just happen to be currently the apex in this regard.

Now I wouldn't know the exact mechanism which provides us with this ability. Perhaps if I'm a neurologist one day I'd be able to tell you better.

 

Concerning the origin of life that's anyone's guess, but there have been some interesting experiments. If I recall correctly, one of them was made by a scientist named Oparin.  He tried to recreate our primitive atmosphere composition and continuous electrical discharges and, after a couple weeks or months running the experiment, he found that amino acids, organic matter which compounds proteins, had been spontaneously created at the bottom. Now imagine this experiment running in a HUGE scale, the whole planet, for millions or billions of years. It might have originated the first cells and then evolution started its magic, or it might not, nobody knows for sure.

Your first point is very good however it falls under the condition of "information". And where does information comes from? Not evolved that is, but passed on as you yourself adequately illustrated. 

The second point I think you will find that many people have now rejected that idea of a pre mordial soup. Instead they have gone into panspermia theory.... 

[Dion 2,476]

5 hours ago, Fernando said:

Your first point is very good however it falls under the condition of "information". And where does information comes from? Not evolved that is, but passed on as you yourself adequately illustrated. 

The second point I think you will find that many people have now rejected that idea of a pre mordial soup. Instead they have gone into panspermia theory.... 

I don't know. I think it makes sense. There are others similar to the primordial soup which also look decent. I don't like the panspermia theory, I think it only moves the question elsewhere to "so how did life began wherever it was before coming to earth?"

 

Btw, I don't think I get what you meant by information.