This isn't skillful but breaking a wine glass with your voice by following simple instructions on how to do so... is?

The definition of skillful is: Having or showing skill. What determines what is classified as a "skill" is somewhat subjective, but I think most people can look at a video like this and say: "Damn, that lady has got skillz in the cakez departmentz." Most people would say exactly that phrase.

Deano seems to append the modifier "extraordinary" inconsistently. Tyrant King of Skillful channel I beseech the, right your wrong. You can even re-re-recon your dodo cake vid back into your skillful channel as a cosmic offering.

Ask yourself: Can the average person execute the activity presented by the video in question without a great deal of experience (in this case) and/or serendipitous luck from the skill gods (in the case of other skillful tagged candidates dealing with physical prowess and manual dexterity, etc). If the answer is no, then it's most likely skillful.

This is skillful.

I've wondered before if this sort of thing isn't a generational divide. Did your cohort become so used to arguing with your parents, who were actually sexist and racist and homophobic, while feeling you had to pay such careful attention to your own attitudes and vocabulary to avoid becoming like them; that you're not equipped to understand your children, for whom all that nonsense is so far behind and beneath them they don't bother to trammel themselves in the same way, when they try to explain why calling something 'gay' isn't a symptom of an underlying prejudice?
Nobody cares about that any more. None of the smart people anyway, who are themselves the most viciously oppressed and under-represented group in modern society.

I'm eagerly looking forward to the decline of gendered nouns and pronouns in general. It's such a bizarrely inappropriate way of communicating, the equivalent of appending "(...and by the way I'm talking about a male here)" to so many words that don't call for that detail.

Your two example sentences honestly, HONESTLY read exactly the same to me. This ought to be welcome news to you. It means the war is over, you can climb out of the trenches into the sunny world of a post-feminist future.

I'm running your experiment in a casual way, though as has been mentioned already those words come up too infrequently and in the wrong contexts to get much out of it so far. I'm afraid you'll be disappointed or assume bad faith if we report an underwhelming experience, but if we find these words as harmless as we say we do then that's all we can report.
Your 'radical' version is unsound because it involves projecting a specific attitude directly in to the experiment. Of course you'll find chauvinism - you put it there.

What do you think is the #1 reason 'girl' as a synonym for 'woman' is in more common usage than 'boy' for 'man'?

>> ^bareboards2:

I was reading Dan Savage's column yesterday (love that man, every bit of his potty mouthed being). The first sentence in one letter asking for advice was this:
"I'm a man who just got out of a two-year relationship with a great girl."
So if we do the experiment, the sentence now becomes:
"I'm a boy who just got out of a two-year relationship with a great woman."
gorillaman Stormsinger SevenFingers, do you honestly experience those two sentences exactly the same way? Are they conveying the same information?
Or are you startled by the experimental sentence? Is a different story being told about the relationship of these two people? Who has maturity? Who has, excuse me for using a charged word, more power? And with that power, do they have more responsibility?
Storm, you said you would be willing to do this experiment ... have you noticed any word situations like this yet? Gorilla, you never answered my question, so I am taking it that you are declining the experiment?

I found these to be presumptuous. They do happen to some people, maybe even most people, but they don’t happen to all. Many people of no religion, and despite immense tragedies, live happy and fulfilling lives, and feel happy and fulfilled on their death beds. I’d further argue that people with religious faith also get depressed. I suspect you’d counter that anyone who is depressed has insincere faith. That seems tautological to me, but either way, it’s moot, for now.

Well, the central argument of the video is that life without God is meaningless. You've already agreed with that point, so the argument now seems to be is whether someone can be happy and fulfilled with a meaningless life. I'm sure there are plenty of people who weren't believers who died happily in ignorance of the truth, but the question is, did they understand that their life was meaningless? I doubt it. It is not something that many people are able to face, and even if they could, they certainly don't live that way. In some way or another, they are deluding themselves and living as if their life does have meaning.

Some people do, at least in part. It’s a lot more complex than just a lack of hope though. For some people it’s due to a tragedy, or overwhelming cognitive dissonance, or it’s simply chemical, and has no correlation with anything in their lives at all. Maybe I’m nitpicking. I just want to make clear that depression is a mental disorder and is not a synonym for, "lack of hope because I don’t have God in my life."

Hope is what keeps people going. Without hope, you are just going through the motions. When you have hope and lose it, it is emotionally devastating. A person without any hope is a person most likely clinically depressed.

You can call depression a kind of mental disorder, and some people may be born without the right chemical receptors for instance, but most people are depressed because of a lack of hope. A person, for instance, who worked their whole life and lost their retirement in an afternoon, or a mom whose kids abandoned her to live in a nursing home. They are not mentally ill, they are simply facing the cold, stark reality of their situation.

Here you slipped into metaphysical talk that means nothing to me, full of judgemental words ("sick and depraved") and terms that I had just told you I don’t accept as objective concepts ("evil"). You also know that I don’t think there’s any hope in your Yahweh God since he’s a mythological character, so I’m not sure where that’s coming from.

The point being, that if there is no God then no one is in the drivers seat here on planet Earth. I would be surprised if the extreme fragility of our civilization escaped you. If you look at history, and you contrast it to what is going on today, you will find that the new is simply the old in different packaging. We're watching the exact same game show, simply on a grander and more dangerous scale. Humanity has never been closer to utterly destroying itself anytime in its history than it is today. I'm sure, like everything else in creation, you will attribute that to dumb luck. However, if you think everything is a numbers game, then sooner or later the odds say that cooler heads will not prevail and there will be a civilization annihilating calamity. The truth is, it is only the sovereign hand of God that is restraining this from happening.

The reason I made that comment about God is because of your comment about your depression. The reason you have that feeling that if you believed in God you wouldn't be depressed is because you know there is hope in God.

(Also, not that it’s critical to the discussion, but I’d like a reference for your poll about young people not knowing who Hitler was.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/29/half-german-teens-dont-know-hitler-dictator_n_163659 3.html

Now, about "bliss". I didn’t define what I meant by that, so you didn’t understand it. I’ll make up for that now. By “bliss”, I don’t mean immediate pleasure, or instant gratification, or fulfillment of a goal, or basically anything you mentioned. I do mean a great powerful feeling of being centred, being in tune, achieving self-fulfillment, overflowing joy, love, inner peace, elation, connection, lightness, "harmony", "rapture" or a feeling that many describe as "doing what I was born to do/meant to be doing" or "transcendent". It’s the kind of happy that boosts your immune system and makes people around you feel good about themselves as well. (The words in quotes aren’t words I tend to use myself—I’m employing them to help clarify the concept I’m talking about.)

If you understand now what I mean by "bliss" (as opposed to instant gratification, etc.), you’ll understand that people don’t follow their bliss and rape people, nor find inner peace by beating their wives, and so there’s no need to append any rules about not hurting. I can’t imagine how anybody’s bliss could ever include causing harm to other people, but I’ll even address that hypothetical, towards the end of this comment.

Thanks for the elaboration. I am familiar with the philosophy of Sam Harris, and I figured you were borrowing from him, but it is good to know where you stand. My original point, however, still stands. You say you can't imagine someone finding bliss in hurting people. Well, have you ever heard of psychopaths? They do indeed find their bliss in acquiring power and control and making other people miserable, and they feel absolutely no remorse for doing so.

You also say that you feel the best state of a human being is to be blissfully happy. I'm sure everyone will agree with you that feeling blissfully happy is good. However, why should we believe this is actually what good is?. Yes, it feels good to feel good, but this doesn't tell us why we *ought* to do anything. Maybe this is just incredibly selfish and the opposite of good, or somewhere in the middle is true, or maybe none of it. You give no actual reason (beyond arbitrary statements like that which makes the world better or worse) to equate feeling good with moral goodness. In a meaningless Universe, neither is there any basis for thinking that you have any moral duties. This leads me to some questions that you didn't actually address in the last post. Let me ask them again because they are central to this discussion:

In a meaningless Universe there is no actual right and wrong, so why shouldn't you just do whatever you want? Why waste your time trying to navigate some moral landscape that you don't even believe really exists? Why not just take what you can, when you can, before you lose the opportunity?

I'll also address some of your comments:

In all cases, whatever they did, it was because they were feeling bad about something, weren’t centred, and reacted from "lizard brain" instincts of individual survival rather than from human compassion

People do evil because they get carried away by their lusts and become enticed. You view this as some sort of ignorance, or automatic function. Not so. When a person is doing wrong, they are almost always entirely aware of this, but simply override their moral restraints with their desire to fulfill their lusts. People are responsible for the evil that they do, not society, environmental factors, their parents, or anything else.

Divine morality isn’t necessary. Having any collective understanding of what is good and what is bad is enough. For most of humanity’s existence, even up to now, there hasn’t been a clear standard. In patches of geography where there was one, it only applied well to that time and culture. Just as ordinary people supplanted kings and emperors as absolute leaders without society collapsing, and just as ordinary people supplanted religions are sole arbiters of the law without society collapsing, ordinary people can supplant religion as arbiter of what is good and what is bad as well, and society will continue not to collapse.

I've already agreed with you that we all have a God given conscience that tells us right from wrong. Therefore, we don't need to read the bible to know that it is wrong to murder or steal. However, what God has commanded is that we all repent and believe in the gospel. This is something you aren't going to intuitively understand without being told.

And better than a list of what’s good and what’s bad is a system that determines for us what’s good and what’s bad. I’ve seen one model that I like, delivered by Sam Harris. The most salient bit starts at about 10:00 and runs to around 27:30. If you don’t want to watch it now, I’ll summarise the most important ideas: For a moral code to have meaning, it has to apply to some form of consciousness – it cannot apply to rocks and dust. Then there’s the central point which requires you to imagine "the worst possible misery for everyone", and assume that this situation is "bad". "Good" is then defined in terms of moving people away from this "worst possible misery for everyone". That’s it. I recommend hearing it from Harris himself.

I am familiar with his system, to which I reiterate the point; what is the ground for associating moral evil with misery and moral good with "moving people away from misery". Where do you get moral duties in a meaningless Universe?

The three advantages that occur to me of this system over Yahweh’s morality are that it’s a simple system rather than a long intricate list, so it’s quick to teach, easy to absorb, understand and reference, hard to corrupt, and all-inclusive; there’s absolutely nothing random about it, so odd details like not being allowed to wear garments made from two different thread types won’t make it in and there’s nothing objectionable about it from the standpoint of people who just want to do the right thing; and it’s truly universal in that it applies equally well now as it would have in 4000 BC China, in 30 AD Mesopotamia, or will in 12 000 AD Mars, so it’s broadly acceptable too.

The morality that God gives can be summed up in two commandments: Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy mind and all thy strength, and love thy neighbor as thyself. As Jesus told us:

Matthew 22:40

All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments

That's a very simple system. When you love God and other people everything else follows naturally.

Every act that is good makes things better for people. If an act makes the world worse, then it’s bad. Simple. Lots of generalities can be derived from it, like killing people is bad, respecting other people’s property is good, and there’d be no arbitrary crap about touching pig skin being bad or extra-marital sex being bad.

On the contrary, it's all arbitrary, because "what makes things better for people" or what "makes the world worse" is something determined by consensus. If everyone in the world agreed that torturing babies for fun made things better for people, it would be good in your view. If your moral system allows for this possibility, I think that's a sign its time to throw it away.

Even more generally, we clearly don’t require any god to tell us what’s good and what isn’t. We already have a conscience inside us that tells us what’s good and what isn’t regardless of laws. I know you believe that Yahweh made our conscience for us. Even if that were so, it doesn’t change the fact that if properly relied upon, a conscience precludes the need for an external set of laws. Any law that echoes what everyone naturally feels already is superfluous. Any law that contributes to human misery is morally wrong and deserves to be disregarded.

If this were true, there would be no need for courts, judges, prisons, or police officers. There are also laws which may make some people miserable but are necessary for the greater good.

You state that without a divine moral standard that exists outside our consciousness, there is no objective justice. This is true by definition. Without a true objective moral code, you further argue that nobody can condemn any action as bad without being hypocritical, so in effect, everything is permissible. This is not the case, however. Although the moral code I advocate isn’t "objective" in the sense that it exists beyond our consciousness, it is universal among humans. And if we’re only attempting to determine moral behaviour for humans, then a universally accepted standard among humans suffices, regardless of where we think it came from.

It doesn't suffice, though. Yes, we can both agree there is a universal morality among human beings. How is that fact supposed to serve as grounds to invent an arbitrary system of good and evil based on people following their bliss and avoiding misery? I could just easily reverse the two and say the existence of universal morality justifies that too. I could say that the existence of a universal morality justifies that we should all love eggplants and hate rutabagas. There is no logical connection here between the system you've created and universal morality.

If there is no objective morality, then nothing is really wrong. Any system you create in the end is a human invention, based on human interpretation, and agreed upon by human consensus. You still cannot get an ought from an is. Good could be defined as a world of people who love each other, or a world of people who love to eat children. What is wrong then is simply based on your personal preferences.

The arguments I make here don’t describe a perfect system. That’s wasn’t my intention. I believe they do, however, answer your concerns about non-objective morality being insufficient to guide humans.

I understand that this wasn't meant to be perfect. It has, however, raised more concerns than it answered.

>> ^messenger

@shinyblurry

Of what you said above in the first two paragraphs about the consequences of accepting meaninglessness as reality, just about all of it I fully agree with. For clarity, I’ll mark the exceptions:

the closer you are to death the less happy and hopeful you will become
and
Eventually, when enough tragedy happens to you, you will break down and the future will become more and more like a millstone around your neck.

I found these to be presumptuous. They do happen to some people, maybe even most people, but they don’t happen to all. Many people of no religion, and despite immense tragedies, live happy and fulfilling lives, and feel happy and fulfilled on their death beds. I’d further argue that people with religious faith also get depressed. I suspect you’d counter that anyone who is depressed has insincere faith. That seems tautological to me, but either way, it’s moot, for now.

Further, you comment that, "people become depressed because of a lack of hope."

Some people do, at least in part. It’s a lot more complex than just a lack of hope though. For some people it’s due to a tragedy, or overwhelming cognitive dissonance, or it’s simply chemical, and has no correlation with anything in their lives at all. Maybe I’m nitpicking. I just want to make clear that depression is a mental disorder and is not a synonym for, "lack of hope because I don’t have God in my life."

For all of our so-called progress, humanity is just as sick and depraved as it always has been. Evil is increasing, not decreasing, and mankinds destructive appetites will never be satiated. There is no hope in man, but there is in God. I think you know that.

Here you slipped into metaphysical talk that means nothing to me, full of judgemental words ("sick and depraved") and terms that I had just told you I don’t accept as objective concepts ("evil"). You also know that I don’t think there’s any hope in your Yahweh God since he’s a mythological character, so I’m not sure where that’s coming from.

(Also, not that it’s critical to the discussion, but I’d like a reference for your poll about young people not knowing who Hitler was.)

All that is to say I pretty much agree with your view of what meaninglessness implies, and if there’s any bits that you want to explore more, I’m all for it.

Now, about "bliss". I didn’t define what I meant by that, so you didn’t understand it. I’ll make up for that now. By “bliss”, I don’t mean immediate pleasure, or instant gratification, or fulfillment of a goal, or basically anything you mentioned. I do mean a great powerful feeling of being centred, being in tune, achieving self-fulfillment, overflowing joy, love, inner peace, elation, connection, lightness, "harmony", "rapture" or a feeling that many describe as "doing what I was born to do/meant to be doing" or "transcendent". It’s the kind of happy that boosts your immune system and makes people around you feel good about themselves as well. (The words in quotes aren’t words I tend to use myself—I’m employing them to help clarify the concept I’m talking about.)

If you understand now what I mean by "bliss" (as opposed to instant gratification, etc.), you’ll understand that people don’t follow their bliss and rape people, nor find inner peace by beating their wives, and so there’s no need to append any rules about not hurting. I can’t imagine how anybody’s bliss could ever include causing harm to other people, but I’ll even address that hypothetical, towards the end of this comment.

Lots of people do bad things to others and themselves, and later on, some may consider what they did was bad, or they might not. If they still think it was OK, it’s because they’ve used some kind of justification, like, "She did it to me first," "She was teasing me. What did she think would happen?" or, "He had it coming," or "I had no choice," And so forth. These are all rationalizations after the fact, justifications that allow them to still consider themselves as good people rather than change their behaviour or take responsibility for having done something wrong. These don’t address the real reason these people did these things. In all cases, whatever they did, it was because they were feeling bad about something, weren’t centred, and reacted from "lizard brain" instincts of individual survival rather than from human compassion.

I believe that the natural and best state for a human being to be is happy (and here again, I mean blissfully happy). Every bit of programming we have nudges us towards certain actions by rewarding us with feelings of happiness, or reduced misery. We only live once, so I would modify your description only slightly to, “taking what bliss you can when you can”.

Divine morality isn’t necessary. Having any collective understanding of what is good and what is bad is enough. For most of humanity’s existence, even up to now, there hasn’t been a clear standard. In patches of geography where there was one, it only applied well to that time and culture. Just as ordinary people supplanted kings and emperors as absolute leaders without society collapsing, and just as ordinary people supplanted religions are sole arbiters of the law without society collapsing, ordinary people can supplant religion as arbiter of what is good and what is bad as well, and society will continue not to collapse.

And better than a list of what’s good and what’s bad is a system that determines for us what’s good and what’s bad. I’ve seen one model that I like, delivered by Sam Harris. The most salient bit starts at about 10:00 and runs to around 27:30. If you don’t want to watch it now, I’ll summarise the most important ideas: For a moral code to have meaning, it has to apply to some form of consciousness – it cannot apply to rocks and dust. Then there’s the central point which requires you to imagine "the worst possible misery for everyone", and assume that this situation is "bad". "Good" is then defined in terms of moving people away from this "worst possible misery for everyone". That’s it. I recommend hearing it from Harris himself.

The three advantages that occur to me of this system over Yahweh’s morality are that it’s a simple system rather than a long intricate list, so it’s quick to teach, easy to absorb, understand and reference, hard to corrupt, and all-inclusive; there’s absolutely nothing random about it, so odd details like not being allowed to wear garments made from two different thread types won’t make it in and there’s nothing objectionable about it from the standpoint of people who just want to do the right thing; and it’s truly universal in that it applies equally well now as it would have in 4000 BC China, in 30 AD Mesopotamia, or will in 12 000 AD Mars, so it’s broadly acceptable too. Every act that is good makes things better for people. If an act makes the world worse, then it’s bad. Simple. Lots of generalities can be derived from it, like killing people is bad, respecting other people’s property is good, and there’d be no arbitrary crap about touching pig skin being bad or extra-marital sex being bad.

Even more generally, we clearly don’t require any god to tell us what’s good and what isn’t. We already have a conscience inside us that tells us what’s good and what isn’t regardless of laws. I know you believe that Yahweh made our conscience for us. Even if that were so, it doesn’t change the fact that if properly relied upon, a conscience precludes the need for an external set of laws. Any law that echoes what everyone naturally feels already is superfluous. Any law that contributes to human misery is morally wrong and deserves to be disregarded.

You state that without a divine moral standard that exists outside our consciousness, there is no objective justice. This is true by definition. Without a true objective moral code, you further argue that nobody can condemn any action as bad without being hypocritical, so in effect, everything is permissible. This is not the case, however. Although the moral code I advocate isn’t "objective" in the sense that it exists beyond our consciousness, it is universal among humans. And if we’re only attempting to determine moral behaviour for humans, then a universally accepted standard among humans suffices, regardless of where we think it came from.

The arguments I make here don’t describe a perfect system. That’s wasn’t my intention. I believe they do, however, answer your concerns about non-objective morality being insufficient to guide humans.

>> ^Duckman33:

Hey Mr. Tattoo Arms preaching about lifestyle!
Leviticus 19:28 "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord."


It has always baffled me how "I AM THE LORD" is always appended to the silliest rules in the Bible, as if that explains everything.

In these days of indigestion it is oftentimes a question
As to what to eat and what to leave alone.
Every microbe and bacillus has a different way to kill us
And in time they all will claim us for their own.
There are germs of every kind in every food that you can find
In the market or upon the bill of fare.
Drinking water's just as risky as the so-called "deadly" whiskey
And it's often a mistake to breathe the air.

Cho: For some little bug is going to get you someday.
Some little bug will creep behind you some day.
Then he'll send for his bug friends
And all your troubles they will end,
For some little bug is gonna find you someday.

The inviting green cucumber, it's most everybody's number
While sweetcorn has a system of its own.
Now, that radish seems nutritious, but its behavior is quite vicious
And a doctor will be coming to your home.
Eating lobster, cooked or plain, is only flirting with ptomaine,
While an oyster often has a lot to say.
And those clams we eat in chowder make the angels sing the louder
For they know that they'll be with us right away.

For some little bug is going to get you someday.
Some little bug will creep behind you some day.
Eat that juicy sliced pineapple ;and the sexton dusts the chapel
Oh, yes, some little bug is gonna find you some day.

When cold storage vaults I visit, I can only say, "What is it
Makes poor mortals fill their systems with such stuff?"
Now, at breakfast prunes are dandy if a stomach pump is handy
And a doctor can be called quite soon enough.

Eat a plate of fine pig's knuckles and the headstone cutter chuckles
While the gravedigger makes a mark upon his cuff.
And eat that lovely red bologna and you'll wear a wood kimona
As your relatives start packing up your stuff.

Those crazy foods they fix, they'll float us 'cross the River Styx
Or start us climbing up the Milky Way.
And those meals they serve in courses mean a hearse and two black horses
So before meals, some people always pray.

Luscious grapes breed appendicitis, while their juice leads to gastritis
So there's only death to greet us either way.
Fried liver's nice, but mind you, friends will follow close behind you
And the papers, they will have nice things to say.

For some little bug is going to get you someday.
Some little bug will creep behind you some day.
Eat that spicy bowl of chili, on your breast they'll plant a lily .
Oh, yes, some little bug is gonna find you some day.

>> ^criticalthud:

Western medicine tends to be really good in one area - trauma.
guess where western medicine learned most of it's trauma skills...? yes indeed, the battlefield.
For other things such as chronic pain, western med generally sucks. Partly because you have a for-profit system that makes far more money treating than through prevention or cure.


I spent years trying to get something done for my cluster headaches. Eventually, a pain clinic helped me the most. Small amounts of long-acting narcotics for the "leftover" headache, but high-flow oxygen (12-14 L/h) kills it dead in it's tracks, assuming I stay on it for about 30 minutes or so. I requested that, not the doctors...

Otherwise, I would be playing merry-go-round with anticonvulsants, narcotics, and antidepressants. I would also be very pissed as cluster migraines hurt like nothing else. Even pulled muscles/tendons, broken bones, appendicitis, etc... got nothing on that pain level. (It can radiate as far as my lower thigh and cause me to keep my eyes closed due to the pain from light--it feels like someone is stabbing a needle through/into your eye, even with an extremely small light, like a power-button LED...)

>> ^Herostratus:

I have pretty great insurance and was floored by the statement of benefits ("This is not a bill") I received after acute appendicitis. Everything had been covered 100% (including a pic line and once-a-week homecare nurse for a post-op infection), but they sent me the paperwork. It was insane; a doctor who stopped in my hospital room once for less than 5 minutes and merely asked me "How are you feeling" charged the insurance a ~$700 consulting fee. Next to that was the amount paid by the insurance: $0.
It was hilarious to see the charges and total submitted by the hospital in one column (tens of thousands) and the "fuck you, we're paying you this and you'll like it" from the insurance company in the second column (somewhere around 10-20% of that requested).
I'm not sure who was being the bigger dick in this situation, but I didn't pay for anything (except for my monthly $200 pre-tax deduction from my paycheck, which is still pretty crazy, but I ended up utilizing what most people end up just giving away to their insurance company).


I got a similar statement of benefits recently. Thank you for the reference point.

>> ^Herostratus:

I have pretty great insurance and was floored by the statement of benefits ("This is not a bill") I received after acute appendicitis. Everything had been covered 100% (including a pic line and once-a-week homecare nurse for a post-op infection), but they sent me the paperwork. It was insane; a doctor who stopped in my hospital room once for less than 5 minutes and merely asked me "How are you feeling" charged the insurance a ~$700 consulting fee. Next to that was the amount paid by the insurance: $0.
It was hilarious to see the charges and total submitted by the hospital in one column (tens of thousands) and the "fuck you, we're paying you this and you'll like it" from the insurance company in the second column (somewhere around 10-20% of that requested).
I'm not sure who was being the bigger dick in this situation, but I didn't pay for anything (except for my monthly $200 pre-tax deduction from my paycheck, which is still pretty crazy, but I ended up utilizing what most people end up just giving away to their insurance company).


Having family in the health industry, I can at least try and explain why they bill so high and why medical insurance companies pay out so low. It was explained to me that usually insurance companies will fight tooth and nail to pay out as little as possible(most of the time for less than is even economically feasible), so to combat this, hospitals charge exuberant amounts and they meet somewhere in the middle. It's pretty much a negotiation.

It is incredibly difficult for a hospital that is not funded by the government to break even let alone make money. Everything is expensive. Most hospitals barely break even, and when the economy takes a dip, a significant number can close down.

I have pretty great insurance and was floored by the statement of benefits ("This is not a bill") I received after acute appendicitis. Everything had been covered 100% (including a pic line and once-a-week homecare nurse for a post-op infection), but they sent me the paperwork. It was insane; a doctor who stopped in my hospital room once for less than 5 minutes and merely asked me "How are you feeling" charged the insurance a ~$700 consulting fee. Next to that was the amount paid by the insurance: $0.

It was hilarious to see the charges and total submitted by the hospital in one column (tens of thousands) and the "fuck you, we're paying you this and you'll like it" from the insurance company in the second column (somewhere around 10-20% of that requested).

I'm not sure who was being the bigger dick in this situation, but I didn't pay for anything (except for my monthly $200 pre-tax deduction from my paycheck, which is still pretty crazy, but I ended up utilizing what most people end up just giving away to their insurance company).

Blame it on America's unyelding sense of justice. All must be punished. We are like the borg and we raise borg police officers. Our society (and many like ours) dole out punishment to placate everyone's need for hypocritical retribution.

Pot? Go to jail! Fight? Go to jail. Accident? Go to jail. Have to pee, public? Go to jail. Accidentally kick a paramedic in the face due to medical condition, which is still agaianst the law? Go to jail. Sick.

>> ^CyberViperDriver:
About five years ago I woke up in the middle of the night with severe pain in my groin and lower back/abdomen. I had my wife call an ambulance because I was afraid my appendix was about too burst or something. Fast forward 30 minutes later. The ambulance has arrived and I am on the gurney behind the ambulance in my yard. thats when the cops rolled in. In a case such as this it is common for the paramedic to do a test to see if it is indeed appendicitis or something less severe such as a kidney stone. The test is that they lift one leg (the affected side) and bend the kne, raising the knee as close to the torso as possible...if it is your appendix you will feel an intense but brief shock of pain and instinctively kick hard to straighten your leg. it was indeed my appendix and when he bent my leg I kicked, the paramedic lost control of my leg and I ended up bloodying the paramedics lip. he laughed it off since it is common (I learned later)
The two county sheriff deputies drew their tasers and commanded me to stand down. I was writing in pain strapped to a gurney. there was alot of shouting, one of the officers starting chanting his mantra of "lay still or I will tase you!" I couldn't lay still, I was in agony. the paramedic actually put himself between the sheriff and myself saving me from getting tased. Off we went to the hospital, My wife had to stay home because we have small children and couldn't get anyone to stay with them at 3am. later I learned that the officers had entered my home and performed a search without my wifes consent. she finally relented when they threatened to tase her and charge her with obstruction...this would have led to her arrest and the children being placed into police care shudder The police left when they couldnt find anything damning.
a few days later as I was recovering in the hospital from the surgery I received a notice that assault charges had been filed on me ON BEHALF of the paramedic I had "Assaulted" after getting home from the hospital I contacted the EMS service and was notified that the paramedic had refused to file charges even after being threatened by the two officers...so they went and filed charges on his behalf (perfectly legal for them to do I guess)
three court appearances and almost a year later I was finally cleared of this charge of assaulting an emergency responder (a felony) when the paramedic took the stand and explained to the judge just how everything had went down. since I had obviously plead not guilty I was liable for all the court fees on the defense. a few grand.
I have never had a criminal record, and a well established successful member of my community and I was almost raped by the people who are supposedly there to serve and protect...so yeah..cops can go suck a dick, every last one of them.

About five years ago I woke up in the middle of the night with severe pain in my groin and lower back/abdomen. I had my wife call an ambulance because I was afraid my appendix was about too burst or something. Fast forward 30 minutes later. The ambulance has arrived and I am on the gurney behind the ambulance in my yard. thats when the cops rolled in. In a case such as this it is common for the paramedic to do a test to see if it is indeed appendicitis or something less severe such as a kidney stone. The test is that they lift one leg (the affected side) and bend the kne, raising the knee as close to the torso as possible...if it is your appendix you will feel an intense but brief shock of pain and instinctively kick hard to straighten your leg. it was indeed my appendix and when he bent my leg I kicked, the paramedic lost control of my leg and I ended up bloodying the paramedics lip. he laughed it off since it is common (I learned later)

The two county sheriff deputies drew their tasers and commanded me to stand down. I was writing in pain strapped to a gurney. there was alot of shouting, one of the officers starting chanting his mantra of "lay still or I will tase you!" I couldn't lay still, I was in agony. the paramedic actually put himself between the sheriff and myself saving me from getting tased. Off we went to the hospital, My wife had to stay home because we have small children and couldn't get anyone to stay with them at 3am. later I learned that the officers had entered my home and performed a search without my wifes consent. she finally relented when they threatened to tase her and charge her with obstruction...this would have led to her arrest and the children being placed into police care *shudder* The police left when they couldnt find anything damning.
a few days later as I was recovering in the hospital from the surgery I received a notice that assault charges had been filed on me ON BEHALF of the paramedic I had "Assaulted" after getting home from the hospital I contacted the EMS service and was notified that the paramedic had refused to file charges even after being threatened by the two officers...so they went and filed charges on his behalf (perfectly legal for them to do I guess)

three court appearances and almost a year later I was finally cleared of this charge of assaulting an emergency responder (a felony) when the paramedic took the stand and explained to the judge just how everything had went down. since I had obviously plead not guilty I was liable for all the court fees on the defense. a few grand.

I have never had a criminal record, and a well established successful member of my community and I was almost raped by the people who are supposedly there to serve and protect...so yeah..cops can go suck a dick, every last one of them.

I think this has come up before. But the issue with comments was how to merge them into the conversation on the other video. Whether to integrate them in amongst the current comments based on date/time etc, or to append them onto the end.

I think they could be integrated, with some sort of comment or indicator on each comment to highlight that it's come from a dupe'd video. There's plenty of options here.

One thing I would like to see that I noticed recently, is that "hotness" is not transferred when declaring dupes. The other day there was a situation where the same video was posted three times within an hour. The latter 2 videos quickly got votes and become "hot" on the front page. But these were then declared dupes of the original "not-hot" video... However, the original, didn't seem to get any "hotness" from the other two, despite the fact the 2 dupes were both hot and now this original had a fair few votes within an hour. I just think the hotness should get combined... after all, if a video has been posted a few times in quick succession like that, it is likely to be a hot and popular video.

My two cents anyway.

>> ^dannym3141:

I'm often trollish myself, man. I (and you i imagine) just don't try to excuse it.

The important thing is not to excuse it. Although I've been in the situation where I needed to apologize, I try not to "excuse" what I've said...admitting you're wrong is hard, but when you append an excuse to it, it nullifies the apology.

Apparently Sky Vassar was a young woman in New Mexico who died from complications due to appendicitis surgery.

Took me a while to find that info, and it is not from a very reliable source, but it bugs me not knowing the details of a situation like this...