Why do you believe the way you do?

[Lauren]

lol

[Robert]

Miranda wrote: "Lauren wrote: ""May I stay at your house next time I visit Mars? "

If unicorns can breath nothing, as Mars isn't terraformed. "
Let's terraform it then! And what do unicorn have to do with anythi..."

Unicorns were an effort by H to demonstrate that one cannot use science and experience to extrapolate. H postulated that H was a unicorn, not a human, and challenged us to prove that she wasn't.

It was a counterproductive effort, of course, because we all know that H is, in fact, not a unicorn. We know this because no unicorn has been observed outside of fictional fantasies such as the Bible and the Amber series and fantasy-derived art. There are no unicorn fossils. There are damn few animals with a single horn in nature -- it violates bilateral symmetry, and animals such as the narwhal that appear to have a single "horn" in fact have a horn composed of one of two tusks, and sometimes both grow and not just the one. All other animals with horns on their head with the single exception of the "horn" on the nose of the rhinoceros have two.

This means that there is no good reason to believe that unicorns ever existed in the past. There is certainly no good reason to think that they exist in the present, as there are no horses with horns period, not even duocorns. Our reasoning systems take this evidence and convert it into a conclusion that, given a choice between H not only being a unicorn but being a sentient unicorn and H being a liar, well, liars abound in the world but unicorns have never been seen. A no brainer.

However, H's observation was also at least partly tongue in cheek, as H's purpose was to get a rise out of opponents in debate as much as it was to communicate or discuss any real point, and because H switched in and out of (apparent) seriousness and unicornate silliness, it became increasingly tedious to carry on a discussion.

rgb

[Miranda]

Okay, Okay. Now can we talk about terraforming Mars? That's the topic right?

[Robert]

Miranda wrote: "Okay, Okay. Now can we talk about terraforming Mars? That's the topic right?"

Seriously? Well, there are a few minor difficulties. It's a long drive there. Mars lacks a magnetic field, which is the thing that protects the Earth from the full force of the solar wind. The air is thin and isn't oxygen. The planet is too small to hold a proper atmosphere for very long, if one had anything to make a proper atmosphere out of. There isn't enough free water to support earth-style life and if there was it would largely freeze and stay frozen. Getting there and doing anything at all would be very, very expensive because it is actually NOT cheap and easy to move around in the solar system.

To simply get to Mars with humans and walk on it would be the most expensive thing humans have ever attempted. To be able to visit and DO anything besides play tourist and do science of the go-and-find-out variety would be a hundred times as expensive, because it would involve a hundred trips to an from Mars (or more) before turning anything vaguely resembling a profit in knowledge or technology or potential for doing science. To actually alter the Martian ecology in favor of humans would require a few THOUSAND times as much investment as THAT -- say, the concentrated investment of the entire global surplus of labor, energy, and money -- for several hundred, or even several thousand years. Wimpy planet or not, we're talking a lot of surface area, a lot of volume. Stuff like moving some of the moons of Jupiter or comets and crashing them into Mars and then waiting for the resulting mess to sort out.

In other words, right now it isn't even plausible science fiction. World peace and a rational society with a large surplus would be only the FIRST things required to make the effort, plus things like thermonuclear fusion power, magnetic mass launchers here and on the moon, a permanent lunar colony, or new physics.

That's why in order to enjoy SF stories, one has to begin by suspending disbelief. Quite a lot of disbelief.

rgb

[Miranda]

Awww.... :(

[[deleted user]]

I'm an anarchist. This would take me a long time to explain why, so I'm only gonna give a brief answer why.

I believe power corrupts, and that we would be inherently better off without government. Governmnent, power, always screws people up. To give just one example, one of the functions of states is to protect the people that it rules over. In the last century alone, 175million people died because of their states (due to war, etc).

What got me into anarchism? Reading, talking to other people, and just general looking at this world, seeing how completely messed up governments are, people in power, and coming to the conclusion that government is an unnecessary evil.

[Robert]

Roisu wrote: "I'm an anarchist. This would take me a long time to explain why, so I'm only gonna give a brief answer why.

I believe power corrupts, and that we would be inherently better off without government...."

Anarchy, my friend, is life in a state of nature. Ugly, nasty, brutish -- and short.

Without government, in particular without a reasonably democratic government with a strong bill of rights and a strong memetic ethos, the natural and rapid outcome of anarchy is the strong dominate the hell out of the weak. If I'm bigger and meaner than you are, and I want your woman, your land, your goods, I just kill you and take them. Why not? There aren't any laws or consequences besides the risk of doing so, and I'm bigger, stronger, and meaner. If I succeed, I get to live easy and have lots of babies with your ex-women living on all the wealth you accumulated. Maybe I'll even enslave your children.

Of course, as I kill off the weaker people around me to take their wealth, I'll run into other mean S.O.B.'s doing the same thing. Maybe one of them has a head start and has half again as many slaves and sons as I do, so it's just a matter of time before he kills me. So I talk to my neighbor, and I convince my neighbor (who is similarly weaker than I am) that together we can stand up to the bigger bully, and that if he swears allegiance to me (and I to him) we can split the plunder. Iterate a few times and feudal culture is born. Iterate a few thousand times and you have national bullies, and international bully empires. You have rampant slavery, horrendous tortures and punishments to keep an ever-increasing population of peasants (required to fuel the war machine that never really ceases as each empire seeks to dominate, to grow at the expense of its neighbors, with similar scheming and fighting for dominance within those empires).

One day the peasants in a fairly isolated area (expensive to attack) decide that they've had enough of it. They realize that although they are indeed weaker individually than the strongest individuals amongst them, and are far weaker individually than their feudal masters with all of their wealth and organization, collectively they are stronger than any of the above.

They give up the right to kill each other, to steal each other's land and women on the basis of anarchistic non-rules, might makes right. I give up the right to kill you if you give up the right to kill me, and we all band together with a hundred other like-minded individuals and agree to collectively kill off anyone that kills others individually for personal reasons or gain. We collectively stand up to the kings and empires of the age, and because we fight for ourselves where their soldiers fight for someone else, we gradually win, time and again (with some fortunate breaks from our isolation and the distractions of Imperial conflicts elsewhere).

As a superior memetic structure, this new form of government by the people spreads remarkably rapidly, and in only 230 or so years it has succeeded in eliminating almost all of the Kings in the world. For the first time in human history, decades pass without meaningful global confict. The remaining sources of conflict are the remaining social memetic structures that separate government power from the people -- religions (that give over tremendous power to set social and global agendas to a group of individuals that aren't elected and whose right to power is derived from an arcane and ancient mythology) and the handful of leftover "kings" -- dictatorships, kings, sultans -- and an emerging multinational feudal corporate structure powerful enough to continue the economic bullying at the global political level.

In a hundred more years, we could complete the historical process and achieve a truly democratic world and dismantle the complex and divisive system of national government, creating the united states of the world -- it could happen in two generations if the appropriate vision of this is ever expressed, given the Internet as a means for spreading this vision all over the planet instantly.

All of the above isn't opinion, it is a deconstruction of the historical process clearly visible across the entire Holocene. Government doesn't "always screw people up" -- conflicts between feudal states run by bullies screw people up. Feudalism is the bully state -- it most definitely screws people up.

Now explain to me how anarchy -- a return to an utterly unstable lack of government from which the re-emergence of bullies and feudalism is obviously and instantly inevitable as has been CLEARLY demonstrated by any number of social experiments where a culture in isolation has tried it and almost instantly and painfully was taken over by bullies (something that happens almost overnight in any neighborhood where there is too little "government" in the form of police) -- is going to improve things? I really enjoy having police to keep me and my possessions and my family safe, having a say in the laws that govern me, having laws that govern me as long as they govern the bullies of the world too, and having a strong bill of rights that create a social structure that is socially rather anarchistic while still making it quite illegal to commit rape, robbery, murder, slavery, extortion, torture, kidnapping, and oh so much more, with clearly specified rules and a body of citizens who are paid to enforce them and a system of government that (imperfectly, but adequately) regulates them so that they themselves don't ever devolve into de facto bullies?

rgb

[Dan]

I believe power corrupts, and that we would be inherently better off without government.

One need only look to any of the African or Middle Eastern nations with broken, powerless governments to see what a horrible idea this is. The world would be better off if it was more like Afghanistan? I doubt that's true.

I love Internet anarchists. They don't mind using the Internet, which was developed in large part by the government, and which runs on computers powered by electricity, which is managed by the government. They don't mind driving on roads that exist because of government, or breathing air and drinking water that is clean because of the government. They don't regret not having the skin cancer they might have had government not regulated CFC's. But they somehow think that we would either be better off without these things, or that these things would just magically take care of themselves without government.

[Robert]

Amen, Dan. Although usually it is just hormones, I suspect. We're programmed by evolution to rebel against the social order and differentiate ourselves from our parents. All teen-agers do it (or nearly so). In a way, it is a good thing. Think of it as a period of "memetic mutation" where new, good ideas sometimes emerge -- and sometimes the kids survive the bad ones to learn the good ones all the better.

rgb

[techno]

ya I would agrre with you rgb I mean if there was a nation with out violence rage crime disease and uneaducated people it would be all good but the world we live in which has 6.5 billion peopleall all around the world will always have some poblems which make a nation stronger I believe cause they lern from there mistakes and know not to make that same mistake again occionally they will but the government is so corupt that what is the need for the presidet I mean if every thing is suppost to be in balace which it should the government controlls the president cause he can't do any thing legally with the governments permission and visa versa I mean if you look at the system the government is run on you will se that the balce of this world order has been far been off blance cause if this nation is a nation of democracy well that mean power to the people i mean the people get to deside what happens to the present and future of this world supposible but the government twists that and and trys to control the people through a number of mind boggling ways so I am just saying that the government should be equel to the people not above not below but even to keep the balance of this nation and every other nation in order does anyone agree tell me if you need me to explain any of this more clear to yall ok

[Robert]

techno wrote: "ya I would agrre with you rgb I mean if there was a nation with out violence rage crime disease and uneaducated people it would be all good but the world we live in which has 6.5 billion people..."

Well, that is the idea and purpose behind the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, and it actually does function the way you describe most of the time. "Power to the people" was the point of "We the people". Does it function imperfectly? Sure. People (that's us) aren't perfect, and without perpetual vigilance and using your right to vote intelligently we end up in debacles like the one we're in now -- what do the American people expect if they elect a stupid, venal man to office -- twice? The US is a big, complex country and even our smartest people, even Harvard Law review kind of smarts, may or may not be enough to pull us out of the hole Bush put us in.

On the good side, so far Obama has done a great job of stopping the bleed and maybe, maybe turning it around. But the solution isn't to dump the whole government. We've just HAD eight years of asleep at the wheel government: Asleep during the time preceding 9/11, worse than asleep while it was setting up a (in my opinion) criminal relationship with the large oil companies that let them run the price of oil up through the roof and make record-setting profits all through Bush's presidencey, dementedly asleep when they blamed Iraq (however wicked a regime it was) even obliquely for 9/11 and left oil-free Afghanistan to pursue more oil for his buddies under the guise of "fighting the same enemy", asleep to the point of being in a coma while the US financial institutions dug themselves a grave that would pull the entire world economy into it with them when the piper presented his inevitable bill.

Agreed, having a wickedly or stupidly directed government (or one that is a disasterous mixture of both!) does seem worse than having no government at all, but as Dan and I pointed out, it really isn't. People starve to death in the streets when government and money collapse, and this in places like Europe, not just the third world. It would happen here, too -- we rely on an enormous system of food production and delivery, infrastructure galore. Don't pray for no government -- if you are (as you seem to be) a moral young man who wants to make things better, then focus on school, learn all you can, and get involved!

The US is government by the people, and it relies on good people going into government. When good people cannot be bothered to run for public office, that's when you end up with looters, with idiots who do government as an alternative to having a real job, when you end up with cronyism, favoritism and nepotism, when you end up with depression, famine, war.

rgb

[techno]

well rgb not always are the people in the gov good and well if you think things are gonna be good know I I feel sorry for the people in the future

[Ji Mei]

To be honest, I don't know what being conservative, liberal, etc. is. I believe what I believe partially because of my religion, but also because the experiences I've had.