FFS, I'm not trying to make an argument. As for watching the video, that wasn't a waste of my time, it was entertaining and informative unlike the article which was desperately trying to excuse an awful situation.

But fine, you want an argument? Let's do this.

"If one doesn't want the very small set of restrictions that go with some (not all) religiously affiliated hospitals, don't go there. One does have a choice."

You have that backwards. If you don't provide all the services required of a hospital, you don't get to call yourself a fucking hospital.

How would you feel if there was a Jehovahs Witness hospital that didn't do blood transfusions? Or a Christian Science hospital that refused to do medical treatment?
Both of those are real world examples where people died.

There's a big bloody difference between "not equipped" and "unwilling". In a local area, there might be several smaller medical facilities, but finding two major care centres across the road from each other is pretty rare.

And it's a bit fucking rich to bring up false equivalencies when you just compared unavailability of potential life-saving medical treatment to someone whinging over not getting a big mac at kfc.

As for the article:

"First, Bee ignores the fact that Catholic teaching on human life and reproduction is a fundamental, longstanding tradition of the Church, passed down from one generation to the next for centuries. "

Irrelevant. Next...

"But Catholic priests, bishops, and cardinals don’t give “reproductive advice”; they articulate the truth about human life and reproductive ethics in accord with Catholic teaching."

Really? They "articulate the truth"... as I said before, this is self-evidently complete and utter fucking bullshit.

"the claim that women will be without care if they are refused service at a Catholic hospital."
Er, even the article acknowledges that Bee understands this point and makes the point that in an emergency situation, you go to the nearest available centre that can treat you.

"This is another straw man. In most cases, when women want a particular reproductive service, they have ample time to locate and attend a non-Catholic hospital. "

Yes, and in most cases, people do. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE FUCKING TALKING ABOUT.

"Even in the few emergency situations — which Bee presents as if they are the vast majority of cases"

No, she really doesn't.

"Though it sometimes might be inconvenient for a woman to travel to a non-Catholic hospital, the inconvenience surely does not outweigh the importance of conscience rights, which demand that Catholic hospitals not be forced to provide procedures that Catholicism deems morally wrong."

Yes, "inconvenient" is exactly the right word for a woman who is probably in the middle of the worst day of her life.
I mean, she might end up "inconveniently" dead, but hey, we wouldn't want to stop catholics telling other people how to live, would we?

"In reality, a direct abortion (in which a doctor intentionally kills a child) is never medically necessary to save a mother’s life. If a woman is having a miscarriage, having her child killed in an abortion will do nothing to improve her health or save her life."

And here we come to strawman of all strawmen. The problem is NOT that a woman needs a "direct abortion", it's that she may a surgical procedure that kills the child inadvertently. And this isn't theoretical, women have died from this.

The fundamental point is that religion has no place in medicine. If a patient wishes to refuse certain treatments because of their beliefs, well, they're an idiot, but it's their choice to be an idiot.

But a hospital doesn't get to refuse treatment based on some bronze-age belief. If the treatment is legal in its jurisdiction and they have the capability to provide it, they must provide it. Businesses should not be allowed to refuse service on religious grounds ("I am religiously opposed to treating gay people or blacks!!")

As you said yourself "If you don't like it, go work somewhere else".

Democracy IS the main check and balance.

Unlimited democracy is a theoretical construct.
Democracy is always "limited". There is always some "merit" bar for voting. There is always a limited agenda of what one can vote for (and get it too). One can experiment with the constraints and see what results one gets. Some experiments can be frightening, but as long as the basic principle remains (that you can attempt to repair the damage next time you vote), thats fine.

Levels of democracy (limits by "merit" and agenda or candidate availability) vary to an incredible extent among countries which on the surface look similar or even within one country.

Noocracy on the other hand proposes to find geniuses and let them loose. I am against that. Same with philosophers (that one is really funny), and technocrats (and their robots and AI).

Perfect government - humans dont need perfect day care centres. Humans need motivation to live. AI or aliens ruling us would be very depressing.

In specialised fields meritocratic peer reviewed groups work reasonably well if they are constantly renewed, and political parties can be like that for periods of time. But meritocratic peer review breaks down with political power, populism, bribery, backstabbing, nepotism and the rest of politics. Parties usually seem well organised when they are in opposition. When in government, things (people) start falling apart.

Granted there are countries where governments are democratically elected yet stable for decades and appear to be working as a meritocratic peer reviewed system. They are just lucky I guess.

Maybe if the noo tried harder they could achieve that?

Will it? Or might the ignorant heard instead frequently shit all over something that lies beyond their own foresight, self interest and/or ill considered sensibilities?

By way of example, the abolition of the death penalty was opposed by the majority population in the UK up until about 2015 (it was introduced in 1965)

Likewise with equal voting rights, the abolition of slavery, child labour and so on (though I don't have numbers/dates for those to hand).

I realise the question of democracy is more nuanced than that, but there are enough examples of progress despite popular opinion to seriously call it into question.

I just can't help but shake the notion that the most successful and free democratic societies tend to be those most limited by political elites within them. (this can of course work both ways)

I will agree however that the illusion of democracy certainly seems to do wonders for keeping the baying pitchforks at bay.

A cycle of violent revolution does not seem at all preferable I agree. Clearly we are going to need a bit of both, a meritocratically regulated Noo perhaps? (i.e. earned but readily accessible votes for the demos to influence an elite Noo)

Though of course the problems with establishing that are also legion. I suspect that ultimately unless/until we create a mind greater than our own (A.I. or somesuch), it's always going to be a bit of a shit sandwich.

I don't think the systems are usually the real problem. I think it's just that people as groups are bloody awful.

All hail the mighty Noosphere!

Edit: I'm using Noo here to refer to the higher functions of the hypothetical collective brain. Strictly speaking everyone is part of the theoretical Noo and the anticipated harmony which it would/could grow into.

Theoretically, science works great. However, as has already been noted, in the real world in certain fields, the pressure to publish something "substantial" combined with the inability to get grants for certain experiments because they aren't "trendy" right now causes scientists to self-limit the kinds of research they undertake, which is not at all great for increasing human knowledge.

Another problem is the "expert opinion" problem--when someone with little reputation in the field finds something that directly contradicts the "experts" in the field, they often face ridicule. The most famous recent case of this was 2011 Nobel Prize winner Dan Shechtman, who discovered a new type of crystal structure that was theoretically impossible in 1982 and was roundly criticized and ridiculed for it until a separate group of researchers many years later actually replicated his experiment and realized he had been right all along. This web page lists several more examples of scientists whose breakthrough research was ignored because it didn't match the "expert consensus" of the period.

Finally, in the humanities at least, one of the biggest problems in research that uses a quantitative approach (i.e. statistics) is that researchers apply a statistical method to their data, such a as a t-test, without actually demonstrating that whatever being studied follows a normal distribution (i.e bell curve). Many statistical tests are only accurate if what is being studied is normally distributed, yet I've seen a fair share of papers published in respected journals that apply these tests to objects of study that are quite unlikely to be normally distributed, which makes their claims of being "statistically significant" quite suspect.

There are other statistical methods (non-parametric) that you can use on data that is not normally distributed but generally speaking a test of significance on data taken from a normally distributed pool is going to be more reliable. As is noted in this video, the reason these kinds of mistakes slip through into the peer-reviewed journals is that sometimes the reviewers are not nearly as well-trained in statistical analysis as they are in other methodologies.

My guess is because rather than have an ongoing fire under or beside her oven she built it inside and then relied on the residual coals which necessitated keeping as much heat inside as possible.

What I was wondering was in a theoretical survival situation where did she get the store bought sausages and the perfectly flat stones that look like they came from Home Depot.

Here's a hilarious bit of news you might enjoy.....

LONDON (The Borowitz Report)—The theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking angered supporters of Donald J. Trump on Monday by responding to a question about the billionaire with a baffling array of long words.

Speaking to a television interviewer in London, Hawking called Trump “a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator,” a statement that many Trump supporters believed was intentionally designed to confuse them.

Moments after Hawking made the remark, Google reported a sharp increase in searches for the terms “demagogue,” “denominator,” and “Stephen Hawking.”

“For a so-called genius, this was an epic fail,” Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said. “If Professor Hawking wants to do some damage, maybe he should try talking in English next time.”

Later in the day, Hawking attempted to clarify his remark about the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, telling a reporter, “Trump bad man. Real bad man.”

It failed due to two reasons. The F4E was a two seater aircraft with a dedicated radar and weapons co-pilot, meaning it was really more comparable to an F15, and the weapons loadout that the F4 could carry was greater.

The only other area that the F4E was even close to the F16 in was rate of climb, and it still lost there. Now if you mean the German ICE F4E that was modified with better engines, etc, then yes, it was slightly better in RoC and turning radius.

The design and per unit cost of the F16 were much lower than the F35, because it was built on data learned from the Vietnam War, not theoretical data on a conflict that hasn't occurred yet (or may never occur). I agree we should update our weapons as needed, but we should only ever update with field tested data, not on theoretical combat.

For instance, if I came to you and said I predict our future soldiers will need to be protected from man portable rail guns, and that I needed a trillion dollars to make the new body armor, would you give it to me? Or would you say that manport rail guns are highly unlikely to be used in the near future and we need to wait and see?

Agreed. "Talent" I think can be thought of as something akin to enthusiasm, rather than some kind of innate ability.

It's probably true to say that most of us are not cut out to be drummers, or theoretical mathematicians and such.

But I think this is only really because we do not care enough to practice sufficiently, or take enough care and attention in how we go about it to become truly good.

We lack the same "talent", but I don't think there's anything really mysterious about it.

Wait, how is the combination of words "Dwarf shortage" uttered within the bounds of a comedy show offensive to anyone? Why? Wtf?

Its not a joke that carries much meaning, besides the fact that it might be mocking the political correctness brigade a bit.

The second sentence might be the one that breaks the broadcast code, because basically anything you might happen to say to a dwarf can be theoretically deemed to be insulting.

Dwarves are fierce warriors, so I would definitely err on the side of caution there and cross the road if I see a dwarf coming.

It is as easy to claim being offended as it is for a soccer player to fall. How many of those offended were even real dwarves?

So, you have to resort to theoretical philosophy questions concerning a throw-away-reference to make a point?

Can't we just get the fuck along?
Why is that shit so hard? I can't understand. I don't want to, it's supposed to be simple.

Hahaha... seriously, what kind of passive aggressive bullshit is that? "Ignoring the theoretical underpinnings of socialism, because I've decided that that's waffling, I say Jesus was a socialist." Next time, maybe just write TL;DR and make a farting noise while rolling your eyes.

You can't dismiss the actual meaning of the word Socialist as 'semantics', if you're talking about whether or not something is socialist. That doesn't help the discussion.

In order to use socialism as you appear to be doing, you would have to first:
- ignore the history of socialism and its political development,
- ignore the entire body of academic work, current and past, on socialism, and
- ignore how the word socialism "IS used now, like it or not" in actual socialist or semi-socialist countries

By doing that you end up at your definition of the word, yes. But you had to take a pretty long detour to get to that point

Marx's quote on religion is pretty straightforward - it can be, as you say, open to interpretation, but it's generally agreed that he didn't say that your Jesus was a stand-up socialist. He is more commonly taken to mean that religion is a false response to the real suffering of the oppressed; religion provides a fiction of suffering and a fiction of redemption/happiness, that will never translate into real change. It makes the oppressed feel like they are bettering their lives, while actually keeping them passive and preventing them from changing anything.

The slightly larger context of the quote is this: "Das religiöse Elend ist in einem der Ausdruck des wirklichen Elendes und in einem die Protestation gegen das wirkliche Elend. Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüth einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volks."

I don't know how to make that more plain, but I can try. Religious suffering is on one hand a response to real suffering (wirkliche Elend, by which one would mean a materialistically determined actual lack of freedom, resources, physical wellbeing, etc), but it is also a false reaction against that real suffering. Real oppression creates suffering to which there could be a real respones, but religion instead substitutes in false suffering and false responses - it tries to tackle real suffering with metaphysical solutions. He goes on to say:

"Die Aufhebung der Religion als des illusorischen Glücks des Volkes ist die Forderung seines wirklichen Glücks."

This, too, seems pretty straightforward to me, but you might see 4 or 5 different things there. Religion teaches the people an illusory form of happiness, which doesn't actually change or even challenge the conditions of suffering, and must therefore be tossed out, for the people to ever achieve real happiness.

A fundamental difference here is that religious goodness is internally, individually, and fundamentally motivated. 'Good' is 'Good', and you as a Christian individual should choose to do Good. A goal of Marxism is to abolish that kind of fundamentalism and replace it with continuous criticism; creating a society that always questions, together, what good is, through the lens of dialectical materialism.

You might recognize this line of thinking* from what modern Europeans call the autonomous left wing, or what Marx and Trotsky called the Permanent Revolution, which Wikipedia helpfully comments on as "Marx outlines his proposal that the proletariat 'make the revolution permanent'. In essence, it consists of the working class maintaining a militant and independent approach to politics both before, during and after the 'struggle' which will bring the 'petty-bourgeois democrats' to power." Which sounds great, except it can also lead to purges, paranoia, and informant societies.

My entire point is that socialism and Christianity are entirely different beasts. One is a rich, layered mythology with an extremely deep academic and political history, but no modern critical or explanatory components.** The other is an academic theory of economics and politics, with all the tools of discourse of modern academia in its toolbelt, and a completely different critical and analytical goal.

TL;DR? Well, Jesus (in a lenient interpretation) taught that we should help the weak. Marx explained that the people should organize to eradicate the conditions that force weakness onto the people. Jesus
taught that greed would keep a man from heaven, Marx explained that religion, nationalism, tribalism and commodity fetishism blinded the people to its common materialist interests. Jesus taught that the meek will be rewarded for their meekness, and while on earth we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's; Marx explained that meekness as a virtue is a way of preventing actual revolutionary change, and that dividing the world into the spiritual and the materialistic helped keep the people sedate and passive, which plays right into the hands of the Caesars.

*I'm just kidding, I know you don't recognize any of this


**There probably are modern scholars of Christianity who adapt and adopt some of the tools of modern academic discourse; I know too little about academic Christianity.

So theoretically one can feel the need to be a Mormon, and in spite of that remain a good person (even though one is aware of the publicly available information about the church). Ok.

I wonder how far we can go in forgiveness for weird needs. Out of respect for all the many good people who are also Mormons I shall present no embarassing examples of weird needs. Especially not my own.

Like its understandable for grandparents (or most other relatives) to be mildly racist and smoke, its also fine if they are Mormons. If they are good people. Beyond that I am not so sure. Not all churches and religions are the same.

I'll keep this fairly brief for once but, why is everyone so hung up on the idea that the theoretical "simulation" is somehow distinct from "reality"?

To put it another way, what are the laws of physics themselves?

We do appear to inhabit a reality defined by laws we can describe mathematically. The mathematical models may be abstracted, but whatever they describe is presumably in some sense analogous in its "true" nature right? (even if we can't get at it directly)

If you take the leap into thinking that reality may be more mathematical than physical in nature (or rather that "physical" is a property of what we could think of as mathematical phenomena interacting in the right way), then questions about who's computer were in kind of become moot.

If reality itself is fundamentally mathematical in nature, we don't need a computer in which to run it, so much as reality itself is the computer.

I really don't think it's an either or thing, more like a shift in how we think about the concept of "reality" itself. Even if an experiment could prove that the universe is holographic in nature, it needn't change anything about it's validity as a "real" thing.

The "simulation" and "reality" needn't be mutually exclusive, merely different ways of understanding the same phenomenon i.e. that we exist and experience things.

He seem pretty confident about a bunch of theoretical stuff..

Wouldn't you need an enormously powerful computer to stimulate a universe?

In what reality or universe does that computer exist?

Aren't we right back at the "big bang doesn't work because what happened before it" paradox?

Interesting.. but sorta silly.

I feel like the Tenth Dimension theory explain things better.