Brain_Thief

9 ms·

31.
by Brain_Thief 7y ago
In your fervor to dismiss the human experience it appears that you have played a bit loose with the logical formation of your argument and thereby missed an important point. Your premise is that the veracity of previously-achieved scientifi
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by Brain_Thief 7y ago
I think you may have blown past my point a bit in the rush to label what is and is Not Science (:P). Generally speaking, scientists and engineers today do not seem to be indifferent to the concept of teleology at all - in fact, many of them
33.
by Brain_Thief 7y ago
I would argue the opposite, to an extent. The denial of a natural teleology (i.e., denying that a purpose, goal, or reason underlies the universe and Nature) was a useful conceptual bridge when scientific materialism was founded and growing
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by Brain_Thief 7y ago
I encourage you to look twice at your question - I believe that, under close scrutiny, you will see that it contains its own answer. No one is advocating for prohibiting people from peacefully expressing their genuinely-held political belie
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by Brain_Thief 7y ago
Are you aware of anyone in this thread, or of any major national movement, advocating for a tolerance-based right to perform sexual acts in public in front of children? Looking past the strange and extreme strawman you've propped up, t
36.
by Brain_Thief 7y ago
I don't know if this is the kind of answer you were looking for, but Elizabeth Warren was very successful in her efforts to get the CFPB off the ground, much to the displeasure of the financial sector: https://en.wikipedia.o
37.
by Brain_Thief 7y ago
This is correct and one of the best high-level descriptions I've read recently of why American-style capitalism's ultimate conclusion is pernicious social rot.
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by Brain_Thief 7y ago
Thank you for linking to this.
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by Brain_Thief 7y ago
This is fantastic - thanks for sharing!
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by Brain_Thief 7y ago
And control over users and their behavior.
41.
by Brain_Thief 7y ago
The simple and honest answer to your question is greed. The fact is that the USA has more than enough money to support a healthy and well-educated population through government-funded healthcare and education (including what you asked about
42.
by Brain_Thief 7y ago
Not OP but I would pay $5-10 per month without blinking an eye.
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by Brain_Thief 7y ago
It seems obvious to me that there is a burning need for tech unionization and the reason has little to do with individual compensation or job security (although those are very important ancillary issues that deserve to be addressed and disc
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
I've read your comment several times and am having trouble understanding your underlying point - could you elaborate?
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
I agree with the general spirit of what you're stating, but the fact of the matter is that the Chinese government has proven conclusively that its vision of the future is not one that incorporates a free flow of information or the pres
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
While I understand your point, I strongly disagree with the implication that individual actions are meaningless. People should not accept a "death by a thousand cuts" behavioral paradigm when it comes to moral decisions in the rea
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
1) The societies of the world are composed of individuals. Individual actions, if appropriately cultivated and communicated, may become group actions. Individual actions absolutely matter. 2) At no point did I claim to be against trade.
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
I say this kind of thing a lot, but I feel compelled to repeat myself. It seems like every week brings more evidence of oppressive governments edging ever closer toward a full-on 1984 nightmare scenario. At this point the decision tree faci
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
It seems like every week brings an ever-quickening deluge of this kind of information, whether about some surveillance corporation lying to / exploiting its users or an oppressive government edging ever closer toward a full-on 1984 nig
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
It's important to keep in mind that FaceBook is an enterprise founded by an individual who appears to have many of the traits of sociopathy, and that an overwhelming amount of shady, anti-privacy, socially-destructive, and downright ex
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
This type of behavior is exactly why I block all online ads, always. The fact that large companies like Google and Facebook (and many others) not only go out of their way to deceive their users about what they actually do with their data, b
52.
by Brain_Thief 8y ago
My bizarre experience attempting and failing to get Apple to refund erroneous charges to my credit card has reinforced my perspective that companies of this scale cannot be trusted with operations outside of their core competencies, and tha
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
I can't claim to know the OP's perspective w.r.t. why he / she doesn't like programming on Windows, but as an early (and current) user of the WSL I can say that I too dislike the overall experience, mostly due to how it
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
IMHO, anyone who claims to care about privacy should seriously consider throwing down the ~$10 a month (I forget exactly how much it costs) to have a paid PM account. The company isn't perfect, but it's a far sight better than the
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
I may be misinterpreting your question, but it seems as though you're equating the average worker's retirement fund investments to what the GP was most likely referring to: large investors who compose what we commonly refer to as
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
You've made some undeniably good points, and it is true that the current state of our country is in many ways lamentable, but a fair analysis of our current condition reveals that the negative news is only half the story; it is importa
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
Although I'm detecting a significant amount of hostility and condescension in your response, I'm going to ask you to elaborate on your position a bit more since I don't really understand what it is that you're trying to
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
Or, as informed consumers, we can identify the obvious fact that, outside certain exceptional industries, corporations have no inherent interest in improving the standards of living of their workers and accept that we have a vital role to p
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
I find this statement confusing. Is it not generally true that optimizing for maximum convenience (coupled with lowest monetary cost) often corresponds with an increase in negative externalities?
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by Brain_Thief 8y ago
Changing the ranking to the world's most polluted countries really puts into perspective the ecological destruction wrought by the trend of western consumerist fetishism (this isn't to say that the destruction of natural systems i

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