>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Fact is that the federal government doesn't need 4+ TRILLION dollars to perform its constitutionally mandated functions. It takes that money to do a lot of unnecessary crap that buys votes (particularly union votes). The government could easily be trimmed back to a lean 1 trillion dollars by divesting itself of foolish entanglements in social experimentation and other welfare entitlements.
The states that are facing fiscal collapse (New York, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Illinois, California, et al) are almost UNIVERSALLY states that been controlled by decades of left-wing liberal "tax & spend" nanny state philosophy. The Chris Christies and Walkers of the nation were voted in to clean up the mess. To put it plainly, people got tired of dealing with children-liars who promise the world while brooming problems onto the next generation - and so they hired some grown-ups.
The kid in this vid doesn't come off as 'destroying' anything except his own credibility. It's an open display of a person who is not a critical thinker, and who has little or no understanding of economics, or civics.


Oh please, red and blue states are hurting across the board. Speaking for my own state (very red) we're hurting financially too and it's the same nonsense, give tax breaks away like candy to the people and companies who don't need them while at the same time, punishing the needy. We've gone through this shit before and it just doesn't work!

By your same logic, your top earners don't NEED all that extra money their tax breaks and bonuses net them. If you've got such moral outrage for the public sector "supposedly" having too much money, then where is the moral outrage for the private for having way more than they need when you're a top earner. Double standard much?

I totally agree that cuts need to happen, but they need to start at the top where it's fattest, not the bottom where it's already lean.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Fact is that the federal government doesn't need 4+ TRILLION dollars to perform its constitutionally mandated functions. It takes that money to do a lot of unnecessary crap that buys votes (particularly union votes). The government could easily be trimmed back to a lean 1 trillion dollars by divesting itself of foolish entanglements in social experimentation and other welfare entitlements.
The states that are facing fiscal collapse (New York, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Illinois, California, et al) are almost UNIVERSALLY states that been controlled by decades of left-wing liberal "tax & spend" nanny state philosophy. The Chris Christies and Walkers of the nation were voted in to clean up the mess. To put it plainly, people got tired of dealing with children-liars who promise the world while brooming problems onto the next generation - and so they hired some grown-ups.
The kid in this vid doesn't come off as 'destroying' anything except his own credibility. It's an open display of a person who is not a critical thinker, and who has little or no understanding of economics, or civics.


On that note, Texas is sitting on a budget surplus last I checked, but then again we are the best country on this continent

Fact is that the federal government doesn't need 4+ TRILLION dollars to perform its constitutionally mandated functions. It takes that money to do a lot of unnecessary crap that buys votes (particularly union votes). The government could easily be trimmed back to a lean 1 trillion dollars by divesting itself of foolish entanglements in social experimentation and other welfare entitlements.

The states that are facing fiscal collapse (New York, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Illinois, California, et al) are almost UNIVERSALLY states that been controlled by decades of left-wing liberal "tax & spend" nanny state philosophy. The Chris Christies and Walkers of the nation were voted in to clean up the mess. To put it plainly, people got tired of dealing with children-liars who promise the world while brooming problems onto the next generation - and so they hired some grown-ups.

The kid in this vid doesn't come off as 'destroying' anything except his own credibility. It's an open display of a person who is not a critical thinker, and who has little or no understanding of economics, or civics.

>> ^MycroftHomlz:

As a physicist, I am utterly confused how quantum mechanics plays a role in determining random differences between humans. I think probably chaos is more at work here.
It seems like the rest is conjecture. Even twins sometimes turn out very different. I highly doubt that two people with different genetics when subjected to the same environment and conditioning will arrive at the same end state. There are just way too many variables to assume that that is always true.
>> ^kceaton1:
...True, free will has and will always be an utter joke. People claim they would not do something in someone else's shoes, but if you impose the same biology and conditions--YOU WILL do EXACTLY the same thing (except for random quantum mechanical variations). In fact when it is said and done your mind will be indistinguishable from theirs...



Well to be honest when I wrote "quantum mechanical fluctuations" I'm talking about extremely small scale instances that get "measured" slightly differently (I explain a tad further down below). As particles have a pesky nature of doing two things at once or being measured somewhere else than expected or acting different than expected--it's even been shown to a limited degree that quantum mechanical effects like the dual slit experiment, entanglement, and superposition/duality may have some large scale implications (large scale meaning, the size of a few atoms or a molecule). Anything that would have large scale influences would have to be akin to "The Butterfly Effect". Repeating an event over ,as far as we know, can't be done "perfectly". Hence, the only reason I said fluctuations--yes, folks they would "most likely" be incredibly negligible. Give it 10 billion years then we might have something to talk about (like the small-scale setup at the big bang basically determining the layout and setup of the Universe as we see it now).

Second, what I mean by "wearing someone else's shoes", is to show that that this line of reasoning is impossible as we understand physics and neurology. In my opinion it also shows a very large lack of empathy or understanding in someone. At the least they do not have a good grasp of multiple subjects and how they interrelate; especially concerning the sciences.

I'm saying we would take whatever constitutes "the soul" and stick it in the baby. From my understanding and point of view, as I don't believe in a magical source of self that exists at any level. This would mean, literally nothing changes. Then let things go from there; this really is a time-travel experiment. This is a ludicrous idea. Experience and time, what we face and our decisions, our neurons and their connections and the chemical composition and topography of the brain IS our soul. If you switched places, you WILL be that person; as you don't exist. In your example the other twin would have to literally occupy the exact time and space as her twin--which can't happen; it's untestable. It's a thought experiment. Quantum mechanics would by definition require some changes to occur if "the test" is possible to be created by us--we would change things by interfering in any way.

Only someone religious could ever find a separate or different answer.

I'm talking of a literally switch not a philosophical attributed example (like religion) or a biological test and study of nature/nurture. It is ludicrous, as everything we know about our psyche shows that we experience reality as a type of delusion (practically the only way to describe our reality, psychologically speaking) which can be changed by a great many factors (your biology, drugs, or any interaction). When we communicate to each other (and this is what makes humans so important on Earth and different) we are able to communicate and describe across that sensory and brain created "delusional" void. What can and does get across IS also immense: our experiences, our own point-of-view, our senses, our own delusion. Then we can compare and make a determination of what constitutes reality by ourselves or in a group. Even if someone is high or I should say using anything that will change perception or alter senses, they/we can tell that there is a change through internal logic and experience a new "delusion" or perception. Some religions see this as a way to communicate divinely or likewise; i.e. examples like Native Americans and peyote. It's THE supreme attribute and ability we have as humans as well as "old world" monkeys. They seem to also, "possibly" grasp this "void" and how that barrier can be crossed too. A VERY limited version of ours, however.

We have found ape fossils that suggest that there may've been apes in the past that had I.Q.s in the 300 range. But, without the ability to teach each other, in a very complex manner, they were useless and died off. The fact we can retain old knowledge and teach and re-teach, write it down, save it to a drive, etcetera is the reason why we prosper with a smaller I.Q..

I hope that's much clearer. Or at the least helps. Some is meant for general consumption by others.

/One thing. If you're a physicist as you say, please tell me you don't think "chaos theory" or something akin to it, works on any other level than "maybe" (as we don't know yet) the quantum mechanical level. Everything that is bigger than a particle has very straightforward understandings. Otherwise, we'd have nuclear reactors blowing up everywhere, planes falling out of the sky, etc... Even people would start doing things "for no reason" except: well chaos theory made me do it. If you're talking merely about small-scale interactions still bigger than an atom, then still if you had the detectors, math, and "layout" ready beforehand you'd be able to "predict" an amazing array of things.

The only reason it seems chaotic is sensory and theory deprivation. The main forces of physics (weak/strong/electromagnetism/gravity/pluswhatwefind) describe actions very well. Especially, when we build it.

//Sorry, I think that may be a little too adversarial, but chaos to me is just a lack of "x"--whatever your dealing with.
///Lastly, (a bit more about above) the brain is amazing, but I definitely know I do not even come remotely close to being able to claim I've made a choice due to free-will; modern psychology is starting to understand that this is a fallacy of perception--The Matrix got one thing very right (as much as I hated the second and third shows, THIS was a great line that bears repeating and understanding): It's not the choices that we make that should surprise us, it's why we made the choice in the first place. Free-will is used best with LOTS of pre-planning and thinking ahead; most choices are made for you already. Understanding the way the human brain is doing the stuff it's doing is showing us that "WE" or "ourselves" have a great ability to take horrifically misunderstood or saved-sensory information and make it fit what we want it to fit. It's our rational ability that is the amazing and saving grace for us, or we would ALL be truly mad and lost in our own delusional worlds--each person seeing the world immensely different; like people with illnesses/on drugs/ or having a true mental illness do.

It should be noted that other people can also act like drugs, illnesses, senses, and other type affects on you. Hence, religions do very well at self sustaining belief and manipulation; this goes for all group-think.

A bit long, but this is a subject that I'm impassioned about and I do hope some take it to heart and understand it's implications and ramifications as they're far reaching. It has brought me great peace to know I found some truth in this life. I also have peace in what I would say is my spiritual health (psyche, but more general--including memories and thinking). Losing faith with nothing to use is an extremely disheartening event; I know. Science and understanding helped me transition immensely. I know many others that did not have this to use; I'm not kidding when I say that all sciences and math comes to me easily--many I know don't have this ability. It caused me to fight lies, fear, misunderstandings, and ignorance with patience and the ability to never give up. Truth has one great quality in that it is a lot like water. It finds every nook and cranny on a rock. It goes everywhere and ultimately will collapse and destroy anything that isn't waterproofed and all it needs is time. Ideas are the same, but truth is like water. If you find someone that is willing to at least ask a question of you, that is the half way point. Point them in the right direction and time will cause the change, but they must be curious, steadfast, and ready to question the questions.

Adults are the most lost. With my understanding of the human mind it makes perfect sense why they are the hardest to change. It may eventually be shown that it's impossible to reach everyone, physiological and psychologically speaking. Their own neural pathways and memories literally make it impossible for them to make that change or escape their own delusion, their current mind/brain has no way physically to do it--maybe with drugs or surgery--extreme, I know, but this also goes for chronic depression, mania, and SO MANY other type of conditions.

/Wow, that covered a lot of ground--heavily edited in a few spots for better clarification or expansion of a notion that needed some meat to be understood correctly. Tom Cruise is a moron who may be like what I said in the last point (unfortunately). I hope this is more informative than derisive as some points will be no matter what.

WARNING: Meant to be long and informative.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

This whole issue has been framed as a false dichotomy: Legalize gay marriage or ban gay marriage. This woman was not particularly well spoken but she hinted at what I feel is the critical point in this debate: Government should not be involved in marriage. So many of you think the solution is for the government to step in; have you even considered that the government should step out? Marriage is a religious ceremony and, as such, the government never had any place promoting, regulating and rewarding it. There wouldn't be a problem if the government wasn't involved.
Contract law can already handle what marriage currently does without the need for coopting religious traditions. Here and now any 2 people of adequate age can enter into a binding contract, gays included. Tax revenue instantly increases; nobodies marriage changes; everyone has equal rights.
It's also amusing how many "Conservatives" are perfectly willing to have the government step in and outlaw gay marriage. How exactly is that conservative? Sounds a lot like Big Government^TM to me.
Someone give me a good reason why marriage should be legislated. I don't dismiss the possibility that there could be one, but nobody has provided me one yet.


I fully agree with you, in principle. For my part I was speaking pragmatically, seeing as how the government is already entangled with marriage and that "institution" doesn't seem to be going anywhere, anytime soon. I'm with you abstractly though!

SD, congrats, I thought it'd be a given that words can have more than one meaning. I specifically said common usage for a reason, as in, the meaning the average person would be most likely to derive from the word. Keep playing semantic games to push this retarded narrative of yours. I just figured you could be more precise when describing other people's intent instead of lazily tossing around generalized blanket terms which end up meaning different things for different people. By your own definition, any one person who is not some apathetic nihilist, who has any interest in shaping the future of the world in the human marketplace of ideas (I hate using that phrase but it is apt) is basically a "militant".

MLK, to use your flawed example in a previous argument, was one militant motherfucker for daring to change the status quo and it's unsurprising that there were people like you, not racists, just tone trolls, saying the exact same thing.

Here's a good word, secularist. Was that so hard? Put "atheist" in front of that and at least you have something accurate. Expressing a personal desire to see religion gone and supposedly attempting to destroy it on those grounds are two different things. The New Atheists are of the former; they think it has no place in governance or science. New Atheism was a label foisted upon them by the media that ended up sticking, it was never something they came up with, there's nothing new about their form of atheism as they have all but given up exasperatedly trying to say so and disown the label. They think people should be free to practice religion in private and certainly want people to be educated about them in schools, via comparative religion. The fact that I even have to mention this just shows how uneducated you are on their positions. Out of context quote-mining is worthless when they have expanded on what they actually mean by those quotes in exhaustive detail to AVOID the very confusion you are trying your very hardest to sow. They are actively trying to minimize its status through education, not outright destroy it.

It's pretty clear to me what your intent is. You're trying to smear any atheist who dares not keep it to him/her self. You're too worried about atheists merely speaking out, yet I hear nothing from you about the vastly disproportionate amount of influence and entanglement religion (a bunch of imaginary ideas with no basis in reality used to control, kill, and enslave people for thousands of years) has in society and politics right now, fucking up my country in the process. Where's your indignation when it comes to that? Oh, but BOOHOO, we're sooooo militant. Give me a fucking break.

I'm not replying here to sway anyone through pleasant-sounding yet essentially hollow rhetoric, just to correct your nonsense.

On the one hand you have a biased pushy interviewer, on the other hand you have Assange who is weaseling himself through the answers like an experienced politician.

"No court documents have been provided to me, in English" -> So apparently they have been produced in Swedish....

"That I appear in one of every 10 google hits for rape shows the smear campaign against me is working" -> I am sure that has nothing to do with Assange being a press whore (or if you want it put less biased, a famous person in an ever growing Internet entangled in a longwinded public case). If you were to look for 'Assange' and 'albino' you get a disproportional number of hits as well...

It's always awesome when a Sift expert in the video subject is able to clarify things. Thanks :]

>> ^smooman:

paratroopers do jump out the back, and no, there arent any entanglements or anything like that from doin a tailgate jump and you use the same cable to hook your static line to on a door jump as you do a tailgate jump. You still go one at a time, your static line is just 2 seconds longer. But typically door jumps are made, especially in the 82nd and especially with c17/130
oh this brings back memories =)


>> ^Gamble:

We do jump out of the tailgate at times, but usually not C17/130. The static line (the yellow cable attached to the cable in the plane that deploys the parachute) has a greater chance of getting wrapped around things it doesn't need to be. Like the jumpers.

paratroopers do jump out the back, and no, there arent any entanglements or anything like that from doin a tailgate jump and you use the same cable to hook your static line to on a door jump as you do a tailgate jump. You still go one at a time, your static line is just 2 seconds longer. But typically door jumps are made, especially in the 82nd and especially with c17/130

oh this brings back memories =)

Uhm.. are you talking about women?

>> ^Payback:

I've always thought tunable quantum entanglement would be a wicked way to start a conversation to welcome our new pissed off harpy overlords.

I've always thought tunable quantum entanglement would be a wicked way to start a conversation to welcome our new pissed off harpy overlords.

Net neutrality only addresses the symptom of a much more insidious problem. All of the companies he named have their major revenue stream in some form of government protected monopoly industry. Cable and telco media giants are the creations of government entanglement in the market. They created the monster they now claim they need to subdue. While it wasn't Al Franken that created these government protected monopolies, he proposes a solution that has time and time again shown to worsen our plight rather that help it. Any short lived deregulation ability the FCC would impose would surely over time be twiddled down by people who have billions to spend on lobbies and the ear of regulators. His sentiments of protecting free speech are admirable, but the prescription is that of an even greater disaster. Open up cable, telco, and radio markets to ACTUAL competition and their strangle hold over media will start to dissipate.

In other words, trying to kill the beast with the same thing that made the beast is foolish. Just undue that which made the beast first, then clean up any loose ends that didn't solve. It is practical, fair, and not reactionary, and doesn't open Pandora's box like it did for radio and TV (which are now HIGHLY regulated mediums).

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

What your describing is pretty neat, and also known as occasionalism.

Hah, then I could get it the rough treatment of an atheist. I knew of the particulars to which you referred, but didn't know of Hume's relation. I'll give it a read. The only problem about the human brain aspect is that it's entangled to the physics it wishes to describe. That destroys the ability to view it from a conceived outside perspective (if that's what you meant, otherwise disagreed it.).


As soon as you become entangled you destroy the old process/object and create a new hybrid. Like two soap bubbles running into each other.

Actually, there has to be a smallest unit of time logically speaking. You can also understand time in a "tickless" way; as a proceeding chain of events or states. Much akin to a program in a computer. A computer has code adjacency that exist in a timeless state, there is no objective amount of time it would take for one line to execute to the next. However, you could describe the progress from one line to the next time; a progression of events in a "tickless" state would still approximate our current understanding of time. So, you can see the entire universe in state "A", then state "B" even without knowing how "long" each was. Metaphysically speaking, though, you need an actual smallest unit of time for things to happen. It is similar to Xenos paradox. A smallest unit of space joins space so that you can actually move. Without a smallest unit matter would just be moving around through space boundlessly. Interestingly, when you combine both ideas of smallest unit of time, and smallest unit of space you get a bit of magic. If an something has to move from point a to c, and has to hit all points in-between, it can only do so in t=1 units which builds in a speed limit to the universe. As fate would have it, we observe just such a phenomena! The speed of light gives credence to the Xenos paradox solution of smallest units of time and space! Indeed, even particle physicists are now clamoring about a smallest unit of space via recent measurement experiments.

Ya, I share your problem of entanglement. It is why I have come to the notion that science will never get us "Truth" with a capital T. It will always be humans current understanding of how "WE!" experience the universe, a very subtle but distinct difference than truth and understanding. I love science, it is my field and one of the few things I have a natural nack for! But when it comes to truth and certainty, you have to check it at the door and pick up philosophy and metaphysics. There isn't much money there, so bring some food with ya if you come!

BTW, baryons aside... The fact that superposition and duality are a common theme in underlying physics really screams at me that the theories we have now are wrong purely because of how we see it.

If the Universe doesn't have an aspect of "time" as we know it (two measurements with an interval), then that solves a lot of problems. We create the mystifying part and need to somehow shift our perspective.

Don't ask me how. I have no idea how to figure out a puzzle without looking at it, unless we can get an "outside" or non-entangled view of the physics. Only problem is that as soon as you mess with something you're now entangled...