>> ^StukaFox:

Damn, George Bush Senior looks older than dirt.


He could very well be older than dirt if you believe the creationists. I mean, he does look at least over 9000 years old.

Where's my dreamy workout??? I should have known the "'s" couldn't simply be a dumb mistake.

>> ^quantumushroom:

The Top 200 Chomsky Lies


I love how they label the nuanced statements of Chomsky as "The Lie" and their half-truthy reinterpretation of them as "The Truth".

Example:

The Lie: “I have never considered myself a ‘Marxist,’ and in fact regard such notions as
‘Marxist’ (or ‘Freudian,’ etc.) as belonging more to the domain of organized religion than of
rational analysis.”

The Truth: Previously, Chomsky had said: “in my opinion, a Marxist-anarchist perspective
[on politics] is justified quite apart from anything that may happen in linguistics.” He had also
declared: “I wouldn’t abandon Marxism.”


Here's the last quote in context, from a printed interview and thus easily cited out of context:
"[Chomsky:] [...] But I don't see any reason to abandon the notion anarchism just because it has some strange periphery that uses it [namely, the right-wing anarcho-capitalists].
[Interviewer:] Just as you wouldn't abandon Marxism.
[Chomsky:] Yes, like I wouldn't abandon Marxism. After all, we're not interested in making heroes and identifying ourselves with them, but of finding what's valid in various ideas and concepts and actions that have some use for us."

So, Chomsky says we can't abandon either anarchism or marxism as wholes just because of some extremist interpretations. How does that say he is a Marxist? It does not, of course, unless you are a paranoid anti-communist trying to discredit Chomsky by associating him with what you consider an Evil ideology.

Also, you must understand that being a scholarly discussion, Marxism is here strictly differentiated from Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, etc. Marxism only refers to the initial political doctrine as expounded by Karl Marx.

As we can see, the cited text is taken out of context and made to imply much more that it actually says. Of course this is the typical modus operandi of the right, because let's be honest: their only arguments are those that appeal to our greed and selfishness. Better to demonize the opposition and thus appear angelic by default.

What I want to know is why this fail of a game between the Qatar and the Uzbekistan was broadcasted in the Koreas on MBC? Shouldn't they be showing Starcraft matches all day long by now? Discuss the implications of the internet addiction on the future of the professional gaming in the Southern Korea and of the communism to the same in the Northern Korea.

@kasinator

Replicating weapons is not a theory. In fact, all weapons and ship are replicated except for those parts that use materials that can't be replicated (like latinum). Of course, normally there are safety lockouts that prevent you from replicating weapons, plus you would need a replication pattern.

But anyway, my point concerning the Prime Directive was that, as a Vulcan precept it is not primarily concerned with morality per se. When Spock tells Kirk that his holodeck solution is logical, he is not saying in any way that it is a "good" or "bad" solution. Spock doesn't take morality into consideration, only logic. Thus, while Kirk's solution is "logical" in light of the moral dilemma he faces (that he created for himself) it is not a situation that Spock would get himself into because Spock would not have deliberated on whether or not he must try to save the natives in the first place. And it's not like Spock doesn't have emotions. Even pure-blood Vulcans have emotions, they just shove them aside most of the time. To a Vulcan, acting on emotions invites chaos sooner or later and chaos is inherently unpredictable. Instead of trying to predict the unpredictable and play god, you decide not to interfere.

But then we kind of see the reverse with the Q for a while. They are so high-up in the food chain that they do not consider their interventions as disruptive any more than we consider our destroying of an ant colony disruptive. After all, ants as a whole will adapt and survive in one way or another. But still, even they must admit that they cannot predict what will happen to their own continuum and so they realize they can't stop themselves from evolving without losing what made them Q in the first place. Their "Prime Directive" of not artificially ascending lower lifeforms (except Riker for a while) into Q stems mostly from apathy towards non-Q things but also from self-preservation, as they cannot predict what would happen if non-evolved Q arrived en masse. Thus the same could be said of the Federation's Prime Directive, even if the self-preservation aspect is unavowed.

>> ^gwiz665:

The Prime Directive is immoral.
quality doublepromote


The Prime Directive is amoral. It comes from the Vulcans. It is a rational directive so as to not be squandered by moral dilemmas (when two options seem equally "good" or equally "bad"). The Prime Directive is neither good nor bad, it's just a directive to cut the moral Gordian Knot. That the application of the Prime Directive is debated so much shows why it exists : to cut the crap debates around morality. Because it's easy to think you won't interfere when you're far away but not so easy when you're in the middle of a situation. Hence the directive and hence the fact that they can't really punish you when you ignore it in the heat of a situation, unless you committed an actual crime like genocide. And I say "committed", not "let happen". You can let happen a genocide if by doing so you are respecting the Prime Directive in regard to a pre-warp civilizations' internal matters. If its two warp capable factions of the same civilization, it's a matter of whether there is ground to recognize them as two different civilizations, which is a political decision more than a moral one.

In Voyager they sometimes had good reasons to ignore the Prime Directive, for example with the Ocampas they were aware that they were being protected by an alien (the Caretaker). Also, the Kazon were warp capable and were interfering anyway so that's a good reason to beat the crap out of them (plus they were hostile from the get go). You can refrain from interfering in the internal matters of a civilization, but you can't use that excuse when it's not an internal matter (e.g. Picard and the Romulans vs. the Klingon civil war : don't interfere with the Klingon's own internal affairs but also keep the Romulans from interfering because that's not an internal matter).

The Prime Directive is not an absolute, but a code of conduct. Also, the only way I could see to get punished under it would be to give warp technology to a pre-warp civilization. That's a inter-civilization incident because you effectively wilfully bring a new player (de facto ally since you control their level of technological progress) on the galactic table, skewing things in your favor by artificial means. That's why you don't see the Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians or even the Ferengi giving warp technology. You just can't do that without facing consequences from other warp-capable civilizations.

lol at quantumushroom's loaded language. "Federal mafia", that's a good one! Except of course the federal mafia is composed of two families, Democrats and Republicans. And they hate each other because the Democrats want to help both Democrats and Republicans but the Republicans only want to help themselves (it's written in the bible!!!).

And the point about the economy being better when Republicans are in office is completely fallacious. The "good economy" of the Bush years was based on war (good for the economy on a short-term basis, but bad in the long run) and shady business practices. Of course, now that we're in the Obama administration, the long-term negative effects of war are starting to show and the economy came crashing when the banks realized their shady business practices were actually non-sustainable (again the banks wanted short-term gains against unknown long-term loses, which didn't happen because they were bailed out. Of course if Obama hadn't bailed them out and people lost everything, then he'd be made to be the bad black demon that didn't help the poor little people). So now the Republicans do what they do best, shifting the blame to the other side. The crazy thing is, it works. It works because Americans don't know shit about taxes or war, they don't know shit about the history of taxes nor the history of war, they don't know shit about how both taxes and war can be used to varying effects. Because after all American history started with taxes and a war, and Americans know all their is to know about taxes and war : War is Good and Taxes are Bad.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Truly words to live by. America should adopt them as its motto and print them on its money. After all, it only elaborates on "In God we trust" : peace is in destroying God's enemies, freedom is in submitting to God's commandments, strength is in having faith in God's all-knowingness. Are they teaching newspeak yet in Sunday school?

She said that "the actors wanted to mate with the production company" (6:30). I think that may actually be the biggest point of contention here.

Needs AKB48 tag for awesome.

@xxovercastxx:

Of course they're not synonymous. "Heat" and "molecular kinetic energy" are not synonymous. "Heat" is "molecular kinetic energy". I do not want to say identical, because what is identity really? Is an identical definition sufficient? Or must things be "identical" in some other, more substantial way? To define hearing though, you must define that something is being affected by vibrations. That makes hearing "identical" to being affected by vibrations. But hearing doesn't exist (doesn't happen) outside of something being affected by vibration. In the same way, the painter cannot be reduced to the printer, but the printing can be reduced to the painter and so can the act of creating the printing by the printer; ultimately even the printer itself can be reduced, although not literally since it is an object and not an action. The same way, being affected by vibrations cannot be reduced to hearing only, but hearing can be reduced to being affected by vibration. In fact, we can hear without our eardrums if vibrations can be transmitted to the ear in other, non aerial ways. Of course we can also "hear" without an ear, but that only means our present definition of hearing is too narrow, not that it's completely wrong. Our definition doesn't account for the fact that the vibrations need to be encoded in neurological patterns so that we can make sense of them. But that part of the equation does not affect the original question of "if a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound". Saying that it does is akin to answering the question "if a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, is it heard?". Of course it's not heard - that would be a contradiction - but that was not the question. Of course the fact that it's heard or not depends on your definition of heard, but for any definition that solely aims to define the human hearing system (or something similar) it is not heard. On a quantum level it may be "heard", but quantum physicist would more likely call it "observed" as it is a more general term that agrees with quantum mechanics' high level of abstraction.

Of course, a quantum physicist would probably argue that we're all wrong about identity and don't understand quantum mechanics and that even if things are identical they're really not, etc. He'd probably be right, but no one cares.

>> ^MarineGunrock:

That shit looks sloppy, what with all the bouncing up and down.
This is much better. Less jarring. I might be biased, though.
I need to ask: why make them have both feet off of the ground at the same time? But I digress. When the USA starts having these kinds of parades through central DC (with fully armed and equipped soldiers and vehicles, then you can start calling out "fascism!" Until then, stfu about it.


It doesn't matter. This is simply a march, other militaries have other kinds of more or less stylized march. Basically, it's fad. Look here for the Chinese and then the USSR here. All communists, not the same march. The march doesn't matter. America is not (yet) a fascist state, but it has almost all the ingredients to become one. What will save America I think, is that she is too politically divided for fascism to become a mass movement without outside help (from something like - you guessed it - the army).

>> ^xxovercastxx:

Some of you people seem to really have it out for the guy on the left when you don't even understand the question to begin with. He seems to be the only person on the panel who understands the crux of the question... ultimately it comes down to "What definition of sound do you go by?"
If you define sound as vibrations in the air, then you'd say yes, the tree makes a sound.
If you define sound as the sensory experience of those vibrations, you'd say no, it makes no sound unless someone hears it.
They are both valid definitions of sound. See definitions 1 and 2 here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sound
It doesn't mean the tree doesn't fall if nobody witnesses it.
By the way, light is invisible. You can't see it, only its effect on objects it strikes.
Also, that idiotic tool's name is John Lloyd. He's the creator of the show.


Like Stephen Fry said, given the second definition the point is moot since you can say a mechanical recorder can experience the vibration. If you admit that - and there is no reason you shouldn't except bad faith - then you can take it to the quantum level and say that every object around the falling tree is an observer and thus "hears" (is affected) by the vibrations. In fact, given the first definition, sound cannot exist without affecting something (the molecules in the air) thus by default there must always be at least one observer in order to even conceive of the possibility of the existence and transmission of a sound in the first place. Thus, whether there is a macroscopic observer is moot since there is always a quantum level one in the first place to produce anything (like the tree falling). Its a regression problem and in the end it comes to quantum probabilities: there is a small chance that no sound will be produced, but it is highly unlikely. You'd need an Infinite Improbability Drive to make sure you're there when the sound doesn't happen and be smug.

By the way, light is visible since what is visible is what you can see with your eyes. In fact, technically speaking the only thing you can see with your eyes is light. What you think you "see" (objects) are your interpretations of the light patterns on your retina. What light you can't see are those particles of light that are not converging on your retina, just as you can't see objects that are not in your field of vision or can't hear sounds that don't enter your eardrum. Doesn't mean you can't see anything or hear sounds now does it? Also, you can't ear supersonic vibrations, but your dog can. Thus you can't hear sounds? No, you can't hear supersonic vibrations. The same way you can't see ultraviolet light, but you can still see light. See? It doesn't matter what definitions you take, only that they all be on the same level of abstraction. Now do that with the second definition of sound and you see that you get solipsism. Thus the second definition of sound is not good for any kind of knowledge about the world. Why? Because it cannot explain the exteriority of the sound's provenance. The second meaning can only be a special usage reserved to neurology as a substitute for a more appropriate but cumbersome technical word, just as we still use "heat" to refer to the state of excitation in molecules.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

No, he is nearly making the subtle, but logical distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. Have had this conversation here a lot on the sift. The experience of blue is a very different one than the wavelength of 475 nm (which corresponds to blue for most people). "Light" is a subjective experience not related to real properties of photons. Photons appear bright because through the course of a billion years of evolution, interrupting photons as light, and their corresponding wavelengths as colors has better aided that animal that interrupting them as something else. But that says nothing about photons themselves, only the way in which minds are translating reality.
It is the distinction between Empiricism and Intellectualism. One believing that it takes senses to understand truth, the other, that only the power of pure reason can lead knowledge. I, for one, am mostly under the school of intellectualism as it pertains to epistemology. I trust the power of reason and logic to find truth, not eyeballs and olfactories.

No, the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon would more properly apply to colours than to light itself, which was proven by Newton to be a particle (or at least particule-like, and then later a dual particle-wave thingy of course). His conclusions were accepted by Kant, who redefined the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon to not contradict Newton's findings. Goethe disagreed with Kant and Newton, but he was a fool. He thought light and colour were the same thing thus he failed. Schopenhauer rectified Goethe's theory to apply only to the perception of colour but Goethe wouldn't have it thus he failed again and it was up to psychologists to prove Schopenhauer was actually right in a limited sense.

Your distinction of empiricism and intellectualism is also very naive. As far as we know, the only way you can prove the factuality of your knowledge is through experience. That's why modern science works and idle speculation (like most Ancient Greeks did) does not. Being an empiricist doesn't mean you "trust your eyeballs", quite the contrary in fact. That's why David Hume talks a lot of the required skepticism needed to know nature from one's senses. If we could see things as they are (as noumenon), then we would not need our senses nor our reason to interpret what they sense (the phenomenon). That's in fact the basic premise of Kant's whole Critic of Pure Reason. His solution, in a word, was to view reason as recreating it's own idea, in the original Greek sense of "form", of the original noumenon (the thing-in-itself) by interpreting the filtered sense data of phenomenon that passed through the categories of understanding (like substance, causality, etc.). Some call his solution a form psychologism and I think they are right, but Kant certainly didn't think so. In fact, I think it's not psychologistic enough, though one must be wary of going as far as to try founding everything on psychology, a circular dead end if there was one.

Ultimately, it comes to the question of what kind of knowledge you want: absolute knowledge or human knowledge? I purport absolute knowledge is unknowable (irreducible) to human knowledge in the same way the noumenon is irreducible to the phenomenon, not only by its own definition but by the very way knowledge works (at least for us, meaning in a subject-object duality where the subject cannot simply copy the object it wants to know but must make an inherently reduced image of it, i.e. an idea). I think this problem to be related to the P=NP conundrum. Only if P=NP can we ever hope to achieve absolute knowledge and then that is not even guaranteed (we would need to evolve somehow to transcend the P and NP divide which factually exists in our present human knowledge). As Scott Aaronson of the MIT puts it, "If P=NP, then the world would be a profoundly different place than we usually assume it to be. There would be no special value in “creative leaps,” no fundamental gap between solving a problem and recognizing the solution once it’s found. Everyone who could appreciate a symphony would be Mozart; everyone who could follow a step-by-step argument would be Gauss; everyone who could recognize a good investment strategy would be Warren Buffett. It’s possible to put the point in Darwinian terms: if this is the sort of universe we inhabited, why wouldn’t we already have evolved to take advantage of it?" (from his blog).

>> ^ctrlaltbleach:

Announcers never cheer on the American version of the show. This lady has won several times but I can't remember if a lady has ever won in the mens competition.


lol. not even the men win the men's competition. In fact, in all history of the show only two won.>> ^lucky760:

It's worth mentioning that this is not the same Ninja Warrior tournament that only 3 men have completed, Sasuke, but the women's version, Kunoichi.
Even more worth mentioning is that not only did Ayako Miyake beat Kunoichi her first time out, but she won three tournaments in a row. Impressive.


Only two ever won SASUKE. Also, KUNOICHI is kind of a joke. For comparison, the third stage of SASUKE (the men's competition) has no time limit; that's just how difficult it is. And after that you have the final stage, with a rope twice as long as the women's pole. IMO, they could just have the women do SASUKE with less of the upper arm endurance (replace it with full body endurance or leg endurance) and add time to the time limit on the first, second and final stages. The fact that such a scrawny girl, an acrobat at that, won shows it takes more balance/coordination/lightness than muscle/endurance/speed to win KUNOICHI, so the girls who train with SASUKE in mind are disadvantaged (especially, they can't have enough muscle and endurance to beat SASUKE, but they have too much to beat KUNOICHI which requires a lighter, more "balanced" - in every sense - body).

Also, the English commentator is piss-poor. It's even more infuriating than the Japanese guy who keeps screaming like she's winning the first freaking gold medal of History. At least the Japanese guy does it consistently in a crescendo and not only when he thinks there's "action" happening in a weird counterpoint or worse, whispering for no reason since she CAN'T BLOODY HEAR HIM. The Japanese guy comments live and doesn't whisper, why the hell would he do that. He should be imprisoned for noise pollution over the airwaves. Also, get rid of the ridiculous overlays, it's distracting.

What kills it for me is the humans playing robots in the back... they play their role a little too well.