Notice - Social Issues
Jorge Da Silva
Just a brief notice.
I've created a homepage where I list some social ideas and new social
concepts, that could form future options for a new society based on
Technology and Ethics.
If these issues interest you please have a look in
http//:www.home.aone.net.au/techno-ethics
or do a web search on "techno-ethics (master page)"
Thanks for your time and attention.
Regards, Jorge.
"Uncle Al" Schwartz
Tommy Jefferson and the boys in the late 18th Century, when they weren't
busy diddling the local barmaids or stealing the Republic blind, put
together an excellent framework for a working society - the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights. They feared the encroachments of Divine Right
(which is all of them, buddy boy) government. One need go no further
than current day Washington. DC to appreciate the depths of their fears.
Add a massive dollop of Capitalism. Prohibit the Safety Net and social
engineering.
Publicly hang a few politicos by the neck until dead each year.
Privatize NASA.
Clone Uncle Al. What more do you need?
--
Alan "Uncle Al" Schwartz
Uncl...@ix.netcom.com ("zero" before @)
http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/uncleal.htm
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children, Democrats, and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!
Dan Evens
Jorge Da Silva wrote:
> I've created a homepage where I list some social ideas and new social
> concepts, that could form future options for a new society based on
> Technology and Ethics.
New ideas indeed. It's the standard leftist drivel of everybody who
makes money is evil and required to pay for the jerkoffs who want
to partake of the "right not to work."
The worst sort of spam.
Dan Evens
Joseph Michael
Ooohh.. touchy feller ain't he!
The world is driving towards increased automation and there will be no
work for anyone in the future if we carry one the way we do.
But there is a way to keep everybody in work
and fund organisations like NASA, huge medical projects, nano projects
etc.. have a look at http://www.stellar.demon.co.uk/economy.htm
"Living with 100% automation".
Its new and there are no leftist jerkoffs there - just plain old hard nosed
commerce - but with a way out of the 100% automation trap to ensure
everyone is in full employment - had some good reviews - let everyone
who is anyone know.. and give me links.. thanks..
.--------------------. .--------------------------.
| Joe Michael \______________________/ J...@stellar.demon.co.uk |
: \__________________________/:
| Futuristic . Shocking . Mind Blowing . Shape Changing Robots |
:-------. :
| \ http://www.stellar.demon.co.uk/ |
`---------+--------------------------------------------------------------'
Herman de Jong
Jorge Da Silva <jo...@p085.aone.net.au> wrote:
>Just a brief notice.
>I've created a homepage where I list some social ideas and new social
>concepts, that could form future options for a new society based on
>Technology and Ethics.
>If these issues interest you please have a look in
>http//:www.home.aone.net.au/techno-ethics
>or do a web search on "techno-ethics (master page)"
>Thanks for your time and attention.
>Regards, Jorge.
I think a message like this is OK in our newsgroup.
It would be wise not to react here I think. Find an other newsgroup to
respond to this ethics thing because it is not of general optics
concern.
I speak only for myself!
E-mail H.M.M....@Phys.TUE.NL
Homepage http://www.etp.phys.tue.nl/herman/herman.htm
Phone (031) 40 2473472 Fax (031) 40 2456442
Snail Eindhoven University of Technology, Dept. of Phys.
P.O.Box 513
5600 MB Eindhoven
The Netherlands
Carey Gregory
Joseph Michael wrote:
>
> The world is driving towards increased automation and there will be no
> work for anyone in the future if we carry one the way we do.
Being a programmer, I always find these sorts of statements amusing.
Ever wonder who will be designing, building, maintaining, purchasing,
delivering, installing, improving, and cleaning all that automation?
--
Carey Gregory
William Mayers
In <857998...@stellar.demon.co.uk> J...@stellar.demon.co.uk (Joseph
Michael) writes:
>
>In article <5g02al$e...@news.inforamp.net> dev...@inforamp.net "Dan
Evens" writes:
>
>>Jorge Da Silva wrote:
social
>>> concepts, that could form future options for a new society based on
>>> Technology and Ethics.
>>
>>makes money is evil and required to pay for the jerkoffs who want
>>to partake of the "right not to work."
>>
>>The worst sort of spam.
>>Dan Evens
>
>Ooohh.. touchy feller ain't he!
Yes, but he also happens to be correct. The idea of full employment is
a pipe dream, as any economist knows. We could discuss the particulars
of welfare and workfare, but I think I, at least, would prefer to deal
with someone who knows what they're talking about.
Bill Mayers
John R. Campbell
On Sun, 09 Mar 1997 18:18:50 -0800, "\"Uncle Al\" Schwartz" <Uncl...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>Tommy Jefferson and the boys in the late 18th Century, when they weren't
>busy diddling the local barmaids or stealing the Republic blind, put
>together an excellent framework for a working society - the Constitution
>and the Bill of Rights. They feared the encroachments of Divine Right
>(which is all of them, buddy boy) government. One need go no further
>than current day Washington. DC to appreciate the depths of their fears.
Consider that the Constitution of the US is designed to EVOLVE;
While a Constitutional Convention could be convened, it's first
step would be to start from scratch (which is why you call one)
so many of the mechanisms in the original would be tinkered with
to a degree that'd be (to me, at least) intolerable.
The problem we face today is that the US Gov't desires to maintain
a status quo, thus freezing evolution, and try to eliminate many
of the checks and balances against personal & political corruption.
>Add a massive dollop of Capitalism. Prohibit the Safety Net and social
>engineering.
"Social Engineer" is a PC title for "Con Man".
Social engineering seems to be a means of getting people to act
in a specific way by limiting their choices.
>Publicly hang a few politicos by the neck until dead each year.
Or make them personally liable for their actions; Bring back
duelling as a check-and-balance against corruption and punish
the winner by giving him the political job (making him the next
target)...
>Privatize NASA.
Or not. It's useful as an R&D facility, dealing with experiments
that are risky enough that few NGOs can legally perform.
>"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!
Not quite. Citizens not Subjects.
--
John R. Campbell, Speaker to Machines, Resident Heckler so...@jtan.com
"As a SysAdmin, yes, I CAN read your e-mail, but I DON'T get that bored!"-me
Disclaimer: I'm just a consultant at the bottom of the food chain, so,
if you're thinking I speak for anyone but myself, you must
have more lawyers than sense.
Chris Franks
"Uncle Al" Schwartz wrote:
>
> Clone Uncle Al. What more do you need?
Since you criticized me for using insurance money to pay for medicine
for my "defective meat" son, I suppose this means that you are one of
those rare, perfect physical specimens. Never had a tooth filled,
crowned, or removed. Never wore nor will need to wear eyeglasses.
Never sick, just looking for a job that will pay commensurate to your
abilities which are largely unappreciated by the rest of us. What a
genetic masterpiece you must be, Al! I think that all of us should get
together and sponsor you for a full-time job at the local sperm bank.
Then, you can get paid for whacking off into little paper cups, instead
of sitting at your computer for free and whacking off all over your
keyboard.
--
Speaking for myself from experience
Dan Evens
John R. Campbell wrote:
> >Privatize NASA.
>
> Or not. It's useful as an R&D facility, dealing with experiments
> that are risky enough that few NGOs can legally perform.
I'm not quite sure what NGO is. Non government organisation? You
think research only takes place in government? You think aerospace
research only takes place in govt? You think risky aerospace
research only takes place in govt?
Anyway: There is a song that floats around the filksong rooms
at science fiction conventions. Can't recall the whole song
but one or two lines go something like
If it weren't for bloody NASA
I could be a falling fan.
The idea is, many fans perceive NASA as having become one of
the major stumbling blocks between humans and orbit. Rightly,
or wrongly, they have some fairly knowledgable people telling
them this. For a while, at least, one of them was Jerry Pournelle.
--
Standard disclaimers apply.
I don't buy from people who advertise by e-mail.
I don't buy from their ISPs.
Dan Evens
Wayne T. Hally
In article <332471...@sc.hp.com> Chris Franks <cfr...@sc.hp.com> writes:
>From: Chris Franks <cfr...@sc.hp.com>
>Subject: Re: Notice - Social Issues
>Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 12:38:31 -0800
Eric Lucas
Dan Evens wrote:
>
> John R. Campbell wrote:
> > >Privatize NASA.
> >
> > Or not. It's useful as an R&D facility, dealing with experiments
> > that are risky enough that few NGOs can legally perform.
>
> I'm not quite sure what NGO is. Non government organisation? You
> think research only takes place in government? You think aerospace
> research only takes place in govt? You think risky aerospace
> research only takes place in govt?
Aw, c'mon, name one non-government organization that has participated in
anything anywhere near as risky (i.e. devoid of *any* obvious immediate
economic benefit), and on anywhere near such a grandiose scale.
And I gotta say, for my part, I'm damn glad they did it.
Eric Lucas
Jim Balter
Dan Evens wrote:
>
> John R. Campbell wrote:
> > >Privatize NASA.
> >
> > Or not. It's useful as an R&D facility, dealing with experiments
> > that are risky enough that few NGOs can legally perform.
>
> I'm not quite sure what NGO is. Non government organisation? You
> think research only takes place in government? You think aerospace
> research only takes place in govt? You think risky aerospace
> research only takes place in govt?
>
> at science fiction conventions. Can't recall the whole song
> but one or two lines go something like
>
> If it weren't for bloody NASA
> I could be a falling fan.
>
> The idea is, many fans perceive NASA as having become one of
> the major stumbling blocks between humans and orbit. Rightly,
> or wrongly, they have some fairly knowledgable people telling
> them this. For a while, at least, one of them was Jerry Pournelle.
Since when does being a raving reactionary and a so-so sci-fi writer
make one "knowledgeable"?
--
<J Q B>
Will Stewart
[followups to sci.econ]
Jorge Da Silva wrote:
> I've created a homepage where I list some social ideas and new social
> concepts, that could form future options for a new society based on
> Technology and Ethics.
Dan Evens" writes:
>New ideas indeed. It's the standard leftist drivel of everybody who
>makes money is evil and required to pay for the jerkoffs who want
>to partake of the "right not to work."
>The worst sort of spam.
Joseph Michael wrote:
>Ooohh.. touchy feller ain't he!
William Mayers wrote:
> Yes, but he also happens to be correct. The idea of full employment is
> a pipe dream, as any economist knows. We could discuss the particulars
> of welfare and workfare, but I think I, at least, would prefer to deal
> with someone who knows what they're talking about.
There is certainly no one correct answer. Unqualified welfare is
certainly a recipe for economic disaster. A pure worker's state is also
limited by the frailities of the human condition. On the other hand,
sweat shops and child labor deface the countenance of pure free market
enthusiasts. In the middle lies compromise, imperfection, injustice,
yet the potential for human achievement and fulfillment.
Sir Thomas More (if indeed he wrote it) showed us the most admirable
qualities a civilization could possess, IMHO. It will take some time,
and much pain, before it could be achieved for any duration.
Til then, "don't curse the darkness, light a candle"...
--
William R. Stewart
http://www.patriot.net/users/wstewart/first.htm
Member American Solar Energy Society
Member Electrical Vehicle Association of America
"The truth will set you free: - J.C.
Dr. Yili Zhu
building,... etc of themselves. These metal boxes will decide what they want to do with
humanbeing.
Yili Zhu
Rick Fletcher
Carey Gregory (cgre...@gw-tech.com) wrote:
: Joseph Michael wrote:
: > The world is driving towards increased automation and there will be no
: > work for anyone in the future if we carry one the way we do.
: Being a programmer, I always find these sorts of statements amusing.
: Ever wonder who will be designing, building, maintaining, purchasing,
: delivering, installing, improving, and cleaning all that automation?
No, don't tell me... a pride of cloned "Uncle Als?"
--
Rick
T. Rick Fletcher - http://www.chem.uidaho.edu/~fletcher/
Associate professor of chemistry | That's Idaho, not Iowa. | ad hominem
University of Idaho | Upper Left Hand Corner. | ad hominem
Moscow, ID 83844-2343 | No, I don't grow potatoes. | ad hominem
Jim Balter
Dan Evens wrote:
>
> Jorge Da Silva wrote:
> > I've created a homepage where I list some social ideas and new social
> > concepts, that could form future options for a new society based on
> > Technology and Ethics.
>
> makes money is evil and required to pay for the jerkoffs who want
> to partake of the "right not to work."
>
> The worst sort of spam.
Why are all right wing reactionaries such fucking assholes, Dan?
--
<J Q B>
Jeffrey Bodwin
On Mon, 10 Mar 1997, Chris Franks wrote:
<>"Uncle Al" Schwartz wrote:
<>> Clone Uncle Al. What more do you need?
<> Since you criticized me for using insurance money to pay for medicine
<>for my "defective meat" son, I suppose this means that you are one of
<>those rare, perfect physical specimens. Never had a tooth filled,
<>crowned, or removed. Never wore nor will need to wear eyeglasses.
<>Never sick, just looking for a job that will pay commensurate to your
<>abilities which are largely unappreciated by the rest of us. What a
<>genetic masterpiece you must be, Al! I think that all of us should get
<>together and sponsor you for a full-time job at the local sperm bank.
<>Then, you can get paid for whacking off into little paper cups, instead
<>of sitting at your computer for free and whacking off all over your
<>keyboard.
This has been debated ever since people have practiced medicine. If one
believes in evolution and natural selection, then from a species point of
view, curing diseases is not such a good idea because individuals with
less favorable genetic traits are allowed to reach reproductive maturity
at a higher rate. This leads to production of more individuals with the
less favorable trait, which throws the whole natuaral selection thing into
reverse.
On an individual basis, very few of us would advocate denying medical
attention to a sick child on the basis of it being beneficial to the human
species. That would seem barbaric.
You, Chris, have first hand contact with someone who lives with a less
favorable trait, and therefore probably have a hard time seeing things
from the species point of view. From high atop his ivory tower, Uncle Al
has a hard time seeing individuals and therefore takes the species point
of view on this one. Like many {most?} philosophical/ethical problems,
this one doesn't have a correct answer.
-------------------------------**-------------------------------
| Jeffrey J. Bodwin It doesn't matter what temperature |
| bodw...@umich.edu the room is, it's always |
| Just me, not you, not UM. room temperature. |
~~~~~~~~~~**~~~~~~~~~**~~~~~~~~~**~~~~~~~~~**~~~~~~~~~**~~~~~~~~~~
Joseph Michael
In article <332440...@gw-tech.com>
cgre...@gw-tech.com "Carey Gregory" writes:
>Joseph Michael wrote:
>>
>> The world is driving towards increased automation and there will be no
>> work for anyone in the future if we carry one the way we do.
>
>Being a programmer, I always find these sorts of statements amusing.
>
>Ever wonder who will be designing, building, maintaining, purchasing,
>delivering, installing, improving, and cleaning all that automation?
Also being a programmer, if it were only that simple any more with fractal
machine technology! :-) (http://www.stellar.demon.co.uk/automate.htm)
Out of the 8 work roles mentioned, eventually only the 1st and 7th are the
human operations left with the new technologies as time goes by,
and gradually the 7th role will shrink to almost nothing leaving
only high level design such as where to locate a factory.
How's that for a brave new world for billions of workers?
John R. Campbell
On Mon, 10 Mar 1997 19:44:26 -0500, Eric Lucas <eal...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>Aw, c'mon, name one non-government organization that has participated in
>anything anywhere near as risky (i.e. devoid of *any* obvious immediate
>economic benefit), and on anywhere near such a grandiose scale.
>
>And I gotta say, for my part, I'm damn glad they did it.
How's about Bell Labs? The development of the transistor, the
deployment of ESS, etc...
Of course, one can argue that the old Bell System didn't really
qualify as a non-governmental organization.
Rand Simberg
On Mon, 10 Mar 1997 19:44:26 -0500, in a place far, far away, Eric
Lucas <eal...@ix.netcom.com> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:
>Aw, c'mon, name one non-government organization that has participated in
>anything anywhere near as risky (i.e. devoid of *any* obvious immediate
>economic benefit), and on anywhere near such a grandiose scale.
That is not the definition of risky.
>And I gotta say, for my part, I'm damn glad they did it.
To which "it" are you referring?
************************************************************************
sim...@interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1391 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org
"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Carey Gregory
Dr. Yili Zhu wrote:
>
> Well, some day we will have automation systems that do all the designing,
> building,... etc of themselves. These metal boxes will decide what they want to do with
> humanbeing.
Automation changes the workplace but can never eliminate it. If I
suddenly find myself with nothing to do, then I'll go find something to
do. If a machine makes me unnecessary, I'll design a machine to replace
it and get fabulously wealthy selling my newer, better machine.
That's the way life works.
This prediction of automation making humans unnecessary is old news, and
well explored by sci-fi writers over the years. It's a bore.
--
Carey Gregory
Bruce Salem
In article <5g2f8d$7d9$1...@newshound.csrv.uidaho.edu>,
Rick Fletcher <flet...@goshawk.csrv.uidaho.edu> wrote:
>Carey Gregory (cgre...@gw-tech.com) wrote:
>: Joseph Michael wrote:
>: > The world is driving towards increased automation and there will be no
>: > work for anyone in the future if we carry one the way we do.
>: Being a programmer, I always find these sorts of statements amusing.
Not everybody is a programmer and even if you are your job
security is vulnerable to productivity improvements. C and Fortran aren't
good generic skills whereas C++ and SQL are relatively more valuable because
of the productivity gains they represent.
It isn't even necessary that your job be eliminated by automation
for you to suffer. Try going from a $15 an hour job to a $5 an hour job
because your employer emininated you job to hire a junior person. What
if you were an accountant replaced by a general office temp who knows
Quicken.
The situation is worse for people who don't have many technical
skills. Productivity gains come in the guize of embedded products that
are easier to use and require less training. They also can be used by
temp or lower-paid workers.
Overall the work of one high-tech worker leads to productivity
gains that reduce the value of many less-skilled workers, or even eliminates
their jobs. The question becomes, what is the toll on these people? They
are being made to bear the cost of productivity gains in the economy as
a whole in terms of loss of income, loss of marketavility, and other
less tangable social costs. Think of the ammount of violence that can be
linked to people blindsided by economic changes?
>: Ever wonder who will be designing, building, maintaining, purchasing,
>: delivering, installing, improving, and cleaning all that automation?
>
>No, don't tell me... a pride of cloned "Uncle Als?"
Oh, some of the people displaced will be paid alot less to serve
machines that never sleep. Some of them will even have to work odd shifts
to work at all. Some of the highly-skilled people will be on call too.
Now the motive will always be to reduce labor costs. The productivity
gains may be offset by human stress though.
Bruce Salem
--
!! Just my opinions, maybe not those of my sponsor. !!
Carey Gregory
Bruce Salem wrote:
>
> It isn't even necessary that your job be eliminated by automation
> for you to suffer. Try going from a $15 an hour job to a $5 an hour job
> because your employer emininated you job to hire a junior person. What
> if you were an accountant replaced by a general office temp who knows
> Quicken.
I never said automation doesn't change the economics of the workplace.
Obviously it does. However, if you look back over the history of the
industrial revolution, you'll note that the dire consequences predicted
with every new advancement and every new machine don't generally come to
pass. Yes, there are displacements and individual hardship stories, but
that's not what this is all about. This is about automation eliminating
*all* jobs.
Sorry - won't happen. Can't happen. People will find a way to fill
their available time, and with enough available time they will
eventually find something extremely clever.
--
Carey Gregory
Jim Balter
Jeffrey Bodwin wrote:
> This has been debated ever since people have practiced medicine. If one
> believes in evolution and natural selection, then from a species point of
> view, curing diseases is not such a good idea because individuals with
> less favorable genetic traits are allowed to reach reproductive maturity
> at a higher rate. This leads to production of more individuals with the
> less favorable trait, which throws the whole natuaral selection thing into
> reverse.
Those who understand natural selection understand that this is utter
nonsense. In the absence of pressure against some trait, such as a gene
for some curable genetic disease (of which, in fact, there aren't any),
that trait will be able to express itself. If such pressures later
arise (say the doctors and molecular biologists all migrate to
Aldebaran), then individuals who carry those genes will have fewer
offspring. Natural selection is natural selection; there is no
"reverse" about it.
OTOH, suppression of disease allows longer lives and more variety
in the gene pool, which can allow certain otherwise marginal genes
to mutate into something useful, or allow useful genes that are
linked to otherwise fatal genes to be passed on.
Social Darwinism is not only morally bankrupt, but it is also based
upon ignorance and bad science.
> You, Chris, have first hand contact with someone who lives with a less
> favorable trait, and therefore probably have a hard time seeing things
> from the species point of view. From high atop his ivory tower, Uncle Al
> has a hard time seeing individuals and therefore takes the species point
> of view on this one. Like many {most?} philosophical/ethical problems,
> this one doesn't have a correct answer.
What a bunch of rank dishonest rationalizing crap. Uncle Al is a
flaming asshole, looking out only for himself.
--
<J Q B>
Sam Hall
On 11 Mar 1997 14:47:57 GMT, camp...@phu989.mms.sbphrd.com (John R.
Campbell) wrote:
>On Mon, 10 Mar 1997 19:44:26 -0500, Eric Lucas <eal...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>>Aw, c'mon, name one non-government organization that has participated in
>>anything anywhere near as risky (i.e. devoid of *any* obvious immediate
>>economic benefit), and on anywhere near such a grandiose scale.
>>
>>And I gotta say, for my part, I'm damn glad they did it.
>
> How's about Bell Labs? The development of the transistor, the
> deployment of ESS, etc...
>
> Of course, one can argue that the old Bell System didn't really
> qualify as a non-governmental organization.
>
>--
> John R. Campbell, Speaker to Machines, Resident Heckler so...@jtan.com
> "As a SysAdmin, yes, I CAN read your e-mail, but I DON'T get that bored!"-me
> Disclaimer: I'm just a consultant at the bottom of the food chain, so,
> if you're thinking I speak for anyone but myself, you must
> have more lawyers than sense.
>
Bell Labs putting Telstar (the first one) in orbit.
--
Samuel L. Hall
Systems Engineer
(communications systems)
Kevin O'Connell
Dan Evens wrote:
>
> John R. Campbell wrote:
> > >Privatize NASA.
> >
> > Or not. It's useful as an R&D facility, dealing with experiments
> > that are risky enough that few NGOs can legally perform.
>
> I'm not quite sure what NGO is. Non government organisation? You
> think research only takes place in government? You think aerospace
> research only takes place in govt? You think risky aerospace
> research only takes place in govt?
Without having to jump to absoutes, yes I do. There are
2 kinds of risks (okay more actually) safety, and finacial.
There is vast amounts of unsafe research out there. There vastly
less fincial risk being taken. Yes it does go on but the truth is that most
organizations would not expose themselves to the finacial risks of
many of the advances that governments can choose to assume.
[snip]
>
> The idea is, many fans perceive NASA as having become one of
> the major stumbling blocks between humans and orbit. Rightly,
> or wrongly, they have some fairly knowledgable people telling
> them this. For a while, at least, one of them was Jerry Pournelle.
There are very few things that are ALL good or ALL bad in
this world. NASA is by no means an exception. They are one of the
only games in town so they are in the position of having to choose
and those choices affect alot of people, not all of them for the
better. I'm not sure that makes them "The Problem".
Kevin
Phil Hunt
In article <Pine.SGI.3.95.97031...@Mn.Chem.LSA.UMich.Edu>
bodw...@umich.edu "Jeffrey Bodwin" writes:
> This has been debated ever since people have practiced medicine. If one
> believes in evolution and natural selection, then from a species point of
> view, curing diseases is not such a good idea because individuals with
> less favorable genetic traits are allowed to reach reproductive maturity
> at a higher rate. This leads to production of more individuals with the
> less favorable trait, which throws the whole natuaral selection thing into
> reverse.
>
> attention to a sick child on the basis of it being beneficial to the human
> species. That would seem barbaric.
What if you treated them, but sterilised them? This gives you the best
of both worlds.
--
Phil Hunt
Eurolang info at http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/eurolang.htm
Herman Rubin
In article <332c261d...@news.airmail.net>,
Sam Hall <sam...@dkdavis.com> wrote:
>On 11 Mar 1997 14:47:57 GMT, camp...@phu989.mms.sbphrd.com (John R.
>Campbell) wrote:
>>On Mon, 10 Mar 1997 19:44:26 -0500, Eric Lucas <eal...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>>Aw, c'mon, name one non-government organization that has participated in
>>>anything anywhere near as risky (i.e. devoid of *any* obvious immediate
>>>economic benefit), and on anywhere near such a grandiose scale.
>>>And I gotta say, for my part, I'm damn glad they did it.
>> How's about Bell Labs? The development of the transistor, the
>> deployment of ESS, etc...
>> Of course, one can argue that the old Bell System didn't really
>> qualify as a non-governmental organization.
As for devoid of any obvious economic benefit, much of the research
throughout history, and even before, was of this type. The US was
very much in the forefront of scientific research before WWII, with
very little federal funding.
Of course no single non-governmental source has anywhere near the
resources of the government. So even though federal funding of
research is a tiny portion of the budget, it overwhelms what a
single corporation, university, or foundation can do at this time.
But I believe that if foundations had been allowed to grow with as
few restrictions as they used to have, we would have at least one,
and possibly more, private foundaions supporting research at a
higher level than the present highly restrictive government funding.
Government means control, and research needs freedom. We need to
have the government withdraw, and let research be done with private
auspices. Instead of fragmenting research among the universities,
we need research universities which will not have to cater to teaching
routine to illiterates.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
Dan Evens
Jim Balter wrote:
> Why are all right wing reactionaries such fucking assholes, Dan?
I don't know. I don't know any right wing reactionaries.
Clearly, "right wing reactionary" has become the new phrase
to replace "She's a witch! Burn her!" Instead of actually
making the effort to understand the issues, you hope to
close discussion and "win" by branding me. Such attempts
are really quite silly, demonstrating far more about your
intellectual sloth than anything else.
Dan Evens
Jim Balter wrote:
>
> Dan Evens wrote:
> > The idea is, many fans perceive NASA as having become one of
> > the major stumbling blocks between humans and orbit. Rightly,
> > or wrongly, they have some fairly knowledgable people telling
> > them this. For a while, at least, one of them was Jerry Pournelle.
>
> make one "knowledgeable"?
Since none of this is relevant to Dr. Pournelle, your question is moot.
However, Dr. Pournelle is knowledgeable because he has spent many
years studying the relevant issues, both formally and informally.
He has also been, numerous times, a technical adviser and direct
participant in various scientific and advanced engineering projects.
Including NASA.
Carol Robbins
h...@ix.netcom.com(William Mayers) wrote:
>
> In <857998...@stellar.demon.co.uk> J...@stellar.demon.co.uk (Joseph
> Michael) writes:
> >
> >In article <5g02al$e...@news.inforamp.net> dev...@inforamp.net "Dan
> Evens" writes:
> >
> >>> I've created a homepage where I list some social ideas and new
> social
> >>> concepts, that could form future options for a new society based on
> >>> Technology and Ethics.
> >>
> >>New ideas indeed. It's the standard leftist drivel of everybody who
> >>makes money is evil and required to pay for the jerkoffs who want
> >>to partake of the "right not to work."
> >>
> >>The worst sort of spam.
> >>Dan Evens
> >
>
> a pipe dream, as any economist knows. We could discuss the particulars
> of welfare and workfare, but I think I, at least, would prefer to deal
> with someone who knows what they're talking about.
>
>
I think most of us prefer to deal with knowledgeable people
when discussing an important issue. Since you have made the assertion
that "any economist" would agree with you, why don't you give a
reasoned argument for your point of view that addresses the concerns
of the earlier postings? The reason "ad hominem" was given a Latin
name was because "any logician" would recognize it as fallacious.
Regards,
Chris.
Kurt Ullman
In article <5g67q5$20...@b.stat.purdue.edu>, hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu (Herman
Rubin) wrote:
>
>But I believe that if foundations had been allowed to grow with as
>few restrictions as they used to have, we would have at least one,
>and possibly more, private foundaions supporting research at a
>higher level than the present highly restrictive government funding.
If you mean highly restrictive in the sense of allowing great areas of
research to be followed, I doubt it. The today's research foundations today
are almost always targetted toward a specific area. In medicine, one
foundation largely looks at heart disease. Another focusses on diabetes.
Robert Wood Johnson delves into treatment issues, etc.
So, I doubt that the lack of government funding would have lessened
the disjointed research efforts going on today.
>
>Government means control, and research needs freedom. We need to
>have the government withdraw, and let research be done with private
>auspices. Instead of fragmenting research among the universities,
>we need research universities which will not have to cater to teaching
>routine to illiterates.
So.. are you saying that Purdue wouldn't be such a bad if it weren't for all
those damn students?
Kurt (PU Class of '84) Ullman
---------------------------------------------------------
"We're seven years from the millenium
That's a science fiction fact
Stanley Kubrick and his buddy Hal
Now don't look that abstract!"
-Jimmy Buffett
Lance Remington Hampton
selection? If humans are able to survive to reproduce because they can
cure themselves of diseases, shouldn't that be viewed as a survival
trait?
Lance Hampton
Eric Lucas
Dan Evens wrote:
>
> Jim Balter wrote:
> > Why are all right wing reactionaries such fucking assholes, Dan?
>
> I don't know. I don't know any right wing reactionaries.
>
> Clearly, "right wing reactionary" has become the new phrase
> to replace "She's a witch! Burn her!" Instead of actually
> making the effort to understand the issues, you hope to
> close discussion and "win" by branding me. Such attempts
> are really quite silly, demonstrating far more about your
> intellectual sloth than anything else.
And haven't you just indulged in exactly the same thing?
Eric Lucas
Eric Lucas
Sam Hall wrote:
>
> On 11 Mar 1997 14:47:57 GMT, camp...@phu989.mms.sbphrd.com (John R.
> Campbell) wrote:
>
> >On Mon, 10 Mar 1997 19:44:26 -0500, Eric Lucas <eal...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>Aw, c'mon, name one non-government organization that has participated in
> >>anything anywhere near as risky (i.e. devoid of *any* obvious immediate
> >>economic benefit), and on anywhere near such a grandiose scale.
> >>
> >>And I gotta say, for my part, I'm damn glad they did it.
> >
> > How's about Bell Labs? The development of the transistor, the
> > deployment of ESS, etc...
> >
> > Of course, one can argue that the old Bell System didn't really
> > qualify as a non-governmental organization.
> >
> > John R. Campbell, Speaker to Machines, Resident Heckler so...@jtan.com
> > "As a SysAdmin, yes, I CAN read your e-mail, but I DON'T get that bored!"-me
> > Disclaimer: I'm just a consultant at the bottom of the food chain, so,
> > if you're thinking I speak for anyone but myself, you must
> > have more lawyers than sense.
> >
> Bell Labs putting Telstar (the first one) in orbit.
The things that Bell Labs have done were *nowhere* near as risky (either
in the sense of financially risky or physically dangerous) or grandiose
as what NASA has done in the same time period. The transistor has
actually become an item of commerce, and thus it has paid dividends.
(Don't I remember it was actually invented elsewhere? Perhaps at GE?)
Not sure I remember what function Telstar served, but if I remember
right, it did serve a commercial function and thus there was payback on
the investment. And besides, NASA took part of the risk on that one
too, as far as I know, by paying for the flight that took it up.
Besides, how can you even begin to compare the risk of putting up one
satellite and a 45-year space program that has resulted in hundreds
(thousands?) of launches, and millions of man-hours in space, with a
return on the investment which was indirect at best.
However, as I said, I *do* feel that the Space Program was an excellent
investment for the good of society as a whole, precisely because it was
so risky. Conservative research is an oxymoron! But, by and large,
it's what the chemical industry practices almost exclusively these days,
even at some of the former bastions of long-term corporate research!
Eric Lucas
Eric Lucas
Dan Evens wrote:
>
> Eric Lucas wrote:
> > And haven't you just indulged in exactly the same thing?
>
> I also belittled the claim that these notions were new.
>
> Jim Balter then called ME a right wing reactionary and a fucking
> asshole.
>
> Declaring that a block of text lacks certain virtues is very
> different to calling a person rude names. One is a sensible
> argumentation method. The other is ad hominen.
> Dan Evens
No, I'm talking about phrases like "intellectual sloth." Same idea,
different degree.
Never mind.
Eric Lucas
Jim Balter
Dan Evens wrote:
>
> Eric Lucas wrote:
> > And haven't you just indulged in exactly the same thing?
>
> Hardly. I called a treatise leftist drivel and gave examples.
> I also belittled the claim that these notions were new.
>
> Jim Balter then called ME a right wing reactionary and a fucking
> asshole.
No, actually I didn't. But you seem to feel that you fit my
description.
> Declaring that a block of text lacks certain virtues is very
> different to calling a person rude names. One is a sensible
> argumentation method. The other is ad hominen.
Apparently you don't know little about "sensible argumentation"
or "ad hominen (sic)". Calling people rude names is not an
ad hominem argument. Dismissing a presentation by calling it
"standard leftist drivel", OTOH, is.
--
<J Q B>
DrG
Reposted from alt.paranormal:
For all you PARANORMAL fans out there...
I can sense vibes off the tv, movie, radio, whatever...
This is true whether it is a taped show or "live!"
Past, present,...well...NOT future!
Which validates the opinion that things are MEANT to happen!
Aloha,
'DrG'
Hawaii
PS there are so many posts to this group...does anyone read any of
them? The posts seem to 'scroll' off so quickly!
PSS If you would like me to respond to your 'responses' please
post them to alt.fan.jay-leno
There a rare posts there anyways... Thank you.
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu
In article <3325E7...@netcom.com>, Jim Balter <j...@netcom.com> writes:
>Jeffrey Bodwin wrote:
>
>> This has been debated ever since people have practiced medicine. If one
>> believes in evolution and natural selection, then from a species point of
>> view, curing diseases is not such a good idea because individuals with
>> less favorable genetic traits are allowed to reach reproductive maturity
>> at a higher rate. This leads to production of more individuals with the
>> less favorable trait, which throws the whole natuaral selection thing into
>> reverse.
>
>nonsense. In the absence of pressure against some trait, such as a gene
>for some curable genetic disease (of which, in fact, there aren't any),
>that trait will be able to express itself. If such pressures later
>arise (say the doctors and molecular biologists all migrate to
>Aldebaran), then individuals who carry those genes will have fewer
>offspring. Natural selection is natural selection; there is no
>"reverse" about it.
>
in the society, it becomes the society's problem, not just said
individuals problem. That natural selection eventually works doesn't
mean that its workings are pleasant.
>OTOH, suppression of disease allows longer lives and more variety
>in the gene pool, which can allow certain otherwise marginal genes
>to mutate into something useful, or allow useful genes that are
>linked to otherwise fatal genes to be passed on.
>
Or allow said genes to mutate into something yet more damaging.
>Social Darwinism is not only morally bankrupt, but it is also based
>upon ignorance and bad science.
Now, where did I see it before. I mean the classification of science
into "good" and "bad" according to whether somebody does or doesn't
like the results? Something in this spirit was posted, not long ago.
Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
me...@cars.uchicago.edu | chances are he is doing just the same"
Dan Evens
Eric Lucas wrote:
> And haven't you just indulged in exactly the same thing?
Hardly. I called a treatise leftist drivel and gave examples.
I also belittled the claim that these notions were new.
Jim Balter then called ME a right wing reactionary and a fucking
asshole.
Declaring that a block of text lacks certain virtues is very
different to calling a person rude names. One is a sensible
argumentation method. The other is ad hominen.
Dan Evens
wie...@afit.af.mil
The assertion has been made that NASA should be privitized.
Lets compare how well the government space program; the planetary
probes, the manned programs, the military programs have done versus
their for-profit competition.....
Mmmmm.....I'm familiar with the government programs, but the
for-profit, private corporation space accomplishments don't seem
to come to mind.......
And thats the way it usually is. Corporations are _very_ risk
adverse, usually only jumping into a market _after_the government
has developed the technology. (e.g.: the 707 was a simple spinoff
of the Air Force KC-135 tanker.) And especially in today's market
where less than 20% per year profits is considered poor performance,
and where any R&D program had better be showing such profits by
the next quarterly report to the stockholders, or else.....
These are my own personal opinions, and do not necessarily
represent those of the Air Force, Department of Defense, or U.S.
Government.
William E. Wiesel ph: 513-255-6565 ex 4312
Professor of Astronautical Engineering net: wie...@afit.af.mil
Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics fax: 513-476-7621
Air Force Institute of Technology
Wright-Patterson AFB, OH 45433-7765
Herman Rubin
In article <5g70it$c...@newsfep1.sprintmail.com>,
Kurt Ullman <kurtu...@sprintmail.com> wrote:
>In article <5g67q5$20...@b.stat.purdue.edu>, hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu (Herman
>Rubin) wrote:
>>But I believe that if foundations had been allowed to grow with as
>>few restrictions as they used to have, we would have at least one,
>>and possibly more, private foundaions supporting research at a
>>higher level than the present highly restrictive government funding.
> If you mean highly restrictive in the sense of allowing great areas of
>research to be followed, I doubt it. The today's research foundations today
>are almost always targetted toward a specific area. In medicine, one
>foundation largely looks at heart disease. Another focusses on diabetes.
>Robert Wood Johnson delves into treatment issues, etc.
This is the PRESENT situation. We do not have foundations now which are
relatively as large as the private foundations were before WWII. There
are laws restricting foundations; they are highly limited in how large
they can get. There is far too little emphasis on basic biology; trying
to treat diseases is mostly non-productive of basic information, although
sometimes an overly massive effort gets SOME of this.
We have little research on nutrition, because the drug companies cannot
make much money on it, and because the administrators were unwilling to
realize the importance of it; it seems that a little is being done now,
most of which could have been done long ago. But if we had independent
university research, a few researchers would have been able to get this
going long ago. The universities then had to support the researcher's
research activities, or risk losing the scholar. Now all they can do
is provide a smidgen of support, and say, "Ask Uncle Sam."
As for foundations, without the restriction, I believe that we would have
a non-profit space foundation which would have a money base of well over
100 billion dollars, AND the right to use it. We now have no academic
institutions capable of funding pure scientific research, whereas we
had many of these before WWII. What has happened is that federal
funding, originally more than could be used well, caused universities
to eliminate almost all their internal support for research funding.
The federal government has also been involved in some of a "share the
wealth" idea of research funding. As they were giving so much money,
non-research universities got into the act. So the distinction which
was present before between universities which emphasized research and
those which did not got blunted.
> So, I doubt that the lack of government funding would have lessened
>the disjointed research efforts going on today.
I am not opposed to disjointed research efforts. I am opposed to the
attempts to have a common direction.
>>Government means control, and research needs freedom. We need to
>>have the government withdraw, and let research be done with private
>>auspices. Instead of fragmenting research among the universities,
>>we need research universities which will not have to cater to teaching
>>routine to illiterates.
>So.. are you saying that Purdue wouldn't be such a bad if it weren't for all
>those damn students?
If the government had not gotten into the act, Purdue might never have
become a research university, and in that case, I would never have come
to Purdue. If the federal government pulled the plug, it is not clear
that Purdue could find a way to operate; far too much of the Purdue
budget comes from federal research funding.
Instead of having, say, 100 universities emphasizing research, we have
some 300 or more universities with significant amounts of research, and
few of them can support 10% of the scientific research going on there.
At least a substantial portion of the present Purdue student body would
have difficulty passing a decent 8-th grade examination of a century
ago. The courses have plummeted; why do you think we have so many
foreign students in our graduate programs, and so many foreign faculty
members?
A quarter of a century ago, 80% of the PhDs in the mathematical
sciences granted by American universities went to Americans; I am not
exactly sure what that means. But as I recall the recent figures,
there are about 75% as many PhDs granted, and a minority are American.
We have incoming American graduate students with A's in key
undergraduate courses who certainly do not know anything. Before,
research universities and strong colleges did not dumb down their
courses because those plunked into the classroom were not up to them;
now, there is pressure to retain the students and give them degrees in
mathematics.
Herman Rubin
In article <wiesel.57...@AFIT.AF.MIL>, <wie...@AFIT.AF.MIL> wrote:
> The assertion has been made that NASA should be privitized.
> Lets compare how well the government space program; the planetary
>probes, the manned programs, the military programs have done versus
>their for-profit competition.....
They did it because it was MILITARY, because they had perceived threats.
The government would never have done anything in space without those.
The end of the Cold War is destroying progress.
> Mmmmm.....I'm familiar with the government programs, but the
>for-profit, private corporation space accomplishments don't seem
>to come to mind.......
> And thats the way it usually is. Corporations are _very_ risk
>adverse, usually only jumping into a market _after_the government
>has developed the technology. (e.g.: the 707 was a simple spinoff
>of the Air Force KC-135 tanker.) And especially in today's market
>where less than 20% per year profits is considered poor performance,
>and where any R&D program had better be showing such profits by
>the next quarterly report to the stockholders, or else.....
I do not agree that NASA should be privatized. Rather, we should
ALLOW those who believe in space to put their money where their
mouth is, to set up huge non-profit foundations, now prohibited
by federal law, to be free of federal restriction in exploring
and even settling space, and most of all not to have Congressmen
and bureaucrats saying that "it is not in the public interest".
Ted Mooney
Lance Remington Hampton wrote:
>
> Phil Hunt wrote:
> >
> > In article <Pine.SGI.3.95.97031...@Mn.Chem.LSA.UMich.Edu>
> > bodw...@umich.edu "Jeffrey Bodwin" writes:
> > > believes in evolution and natural selection, then from a species point of
> > > view, curing diseases is not such a good idea because individuals with
> > > less favorable genetic traits are allowed to reach reproductive maturity
> > > at a higher rate. This leads to production of more individuals with the
> > > less favorable trait, which throws the whole natuaral selection thing into
> > > reverse.
> > >
> > > attention to a sick child on the basis of it being beneficial to the human
> > > species. That would seem barbaric.
> >
> > What if you treated them, but sterilised them? This gives you the best
> > of both worlds.
> >
> > --
> > Phil Hunt
> > Eurolang info at http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/eurolang.htm
> Why should you take a human's actions outside of the loop of natural
> selection? If humans are able to survive to reproduce because they can
> cure themselves of diseases, shouldn't that be viewed as a survival
> trait?
>
> Lance Hampton
If medicine for the sick defeats natural selection, so do clothes for
the cold.
We should deny people their hats and coats and gloves. That way our
bodies will evolve back to where we are hairy apes again -- which should
make a good match with the direction our minds are headed these days.
-- Ted Mooney
Bill Goodrich
In article <332440...@gw-tech.com>,
>> The world is driving towards increased automation and there will be no
>> work for anyone in the future if we carry one the way we do.
>Being a programmer, I always find these sorts of statements amusing.
>Ever wonder who will be designing, building, maintaining, purchasing,
>delivering, installing, improving, and cleaning all that automation?
AIs and 20GLs, and nanoautomata of course! <-;
W.E. (Bill) Goodrich, PhD
*-----------------------*------------------------------------------------*
* CHANGE YOUR SEXUALITY * http://www.nyx.net/~bgoodric/ctg.html *
* * *
* Without Aversive * bgoo...@nyx.net *
* Behavior Modification * Creative Technology Group *
* or Drugs * PO Box 286 *
* * Englewood, CO 80151-0286 *
*-----------------------*------------------------------------------------*
Robert G Kennedy III
In article <01bc3008$224a5660$07a045cf@deanmachine>, "Carl Dean"
<cde...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > This prediction of automation making humans unnecessary is old news, and
> > well explored by sci-fi writers over the years. It's a bore.
> >
> Highly efficient automated machinery and computer systems allow a few
> people to do the work of hundreds. If you don't believe me, then I have an
[massive snip]
> between the haves and have nots is going to increase if it hasn't already
> started. It may be a boring subject to you, but it will affect us all in
> one way or another.
What it will do is make us all rich. Touch labor in manufacturing is on a
crash dive, yes. Manufacturing employment shall one day represent about
the same share of gross employment as agricultural employment. We in the
US are fully into the transition from a secondary economy to a tertiary
economy. There's one more step to go, a quaternary economy, where the
majority of the population is involved with doing things worth doing for
their own sake. Education. Exploration. Health. Entertainment. A fraction,
<10%?, keeps the machinery going. Past that stage, Herman Kahn couldn't
see.
But he described the inhabitants of the US in 1976 as "few, poor, and
weak" when comparing them with the end state of "many, rich, and powerful"
which he envisioned in the _The Next 200 Years_. (1976)
What are we going to do with all these products? Well, there's 3-4 billion
other people on this world who are not in the developed nations who would
sure like a chance to figure out what to do with that wealth if they had
some. So, in a sense, you can treble output by whatever means and still
have meaningful work.
Why would anyone think that a machine, which having been built and
programmed cranks out material plenty with little human intervention, is
going to make anyone poor?
An economy is fundamentally a way for people to swap time, the one asset
they can't replace. Time is what specialization of labor is really all
about. If some widget over there is cranking out goods using raw inputs
provided by yet another widget, all without using any of yours or anyone
else's time, how could anyone possibly be worse off?
Phil Fraering
On 14 Mar 1997, Carl Dean wrote:
> and land by themselves already. Huge farms are run by only a few people.
> So what's left for the masses of people to do that will earn them a decent
> wage? The answer is nothing. What this means is a gradual reduction of
> the middle class with a small portion of the population making lots of
> money and huge portion of the population performing low wage work. The gap
> between the haves and have nots is going to increase if it hasn't already
> started. It may be a boring subject to you, but it will affect us all in
> one way or another.
>
> Carl Dean
By this logic, 19th century China must have been very prosperous; they
needed well over 90% of the population just to get in the crops. None of
all the unemployment you get with any higher amounts of productivity per
person...
Phil
Carl Dean
>
> This prediction of automation making humans unnecessary is old news, and
> well explored by sci-fi writers over the years. It's a bore.
>
You may consider it a bore, but that doesn't mean that its not happening.
Highly efficient automated machinery and computer systems allow a few
people to do the work of hundreds. If you don't believe me, then I have an
example of this. US Steel in Birmingham was once the city's biggest
employer. It once employed tens of thousands of workers, now it employs
approximately 1500 with no decrease in volume of steel produced. The plant
has actually added new product lines as well. With fewer workers, a
business requires fewer managers, office workers, etc. I'm an engineer and
have worked on automation projects. To be honest, I wonder where all of
the people are going to work in the future. Factories hire automation
consultants to automate their plants and make them work. Then they hire
people with only a high school education and have the consultants train
them how to run the equipment (low wage position). The company will have a
group of technicians to maintain the equipment (2 year degree) and maybe a
couple engineers to oversee them. The total number of people employed by
the automated facility is quite low compared with the amount of goods
produced. I have visited factories that only had one engineer and he was
the plant manager.
Where is everyone going to be employed? In office jobs? Nope, computers
make a single employee very productive and fewer employees are needed.
Just like with factories; when you have fewer workers, you don't need as
many support personnel.
I guess everyone could become truck drivers...nope - I seen prototype
trucks that can drive themselves. These will supposedly be used only for
cross country (from city to city) runs. I heard of mines that are looking
at automated heavy equipment that drives itself and other earthmoving
projects that are using automated conveyers. Airplanes can takeoff, fly
Carl Dean
Herman Rubin <hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu> wrote in article
<5g9n7b$q...@b.stat.purdue.edu>...
> In article <5g70it$c...@newsfep1.sprintmail.com>,
> Kurt Ullman <kurtu...@sprintmail.com> wrote:
> >In article <5g67q5$20...@b.stat.purdue.edu>, hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu
(Herman
> >Rubin) wrote:
>
>
> >>But I believe that if foundations had been allowed to grow with as
> >>few restrictions as they used to have, we would have at least one,
> >>and possibly more, private foundaions supporting research at a
> >>higher level than the present highly restrictive government funding.
>
> At least a substantial portion of the present Purdue student body would
> have difficulty passing a decent 8-th grade examination of a century
> ago. The courses have plummeted; why do you think we have so many
> foreign students in our graduate programs, and so many foreign faculty
> members?
That is the professor's and the University's fault if they do such things.
If someone cannot pass an 8th grade examination while in college, then they
should flunk the course and eventually flunk out of college. In all
fairness, they should have never been admitted into the University.
Jim Balter
Phil Hunt wrote:
>
> In article <Pine.SGI.3.95.97031...@Mn.Chem.LSA.UMich.Edu>
> bodw...@umich.edu "Jeffrey Bodwin" writes:
> > This has been debated ever since people have practiced medicine. If one
> > believes in evolution and natural selection, then from a species point of
> > view, curing diseases is not such a good idea because individuals with
> > less favorable genetic traits are allowed to reach reproductive maturity
> > at a higher rate. This leads to production of more individuals with the
> > less favorable trait, which throws the whole natuaral selection thing into
> > reverse.
> >
> > On an individual basis, very few of us would advocate denying medical
> > attention to a sick child on the basis of it being beneficial to the human
> > species. That would seem barbaric.
>
> What if you treated them, but sterilised them? This gives you the best
> of both worlds.
Sure, let's sterilize children who get colds. That will make a lovely
world.
Will guys please go out and learn something about genetics and natural
selection before spouting off your nonsense? And I don't mean
Desmond Morris, either.
--
<J Q B>
Herman Rubin
In article <01bc300b$207f04e0$07a045cf@deanmachine>,
Carl Dean <cde...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Herman Rubin <hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu> wrote in article
><5g9n7b$q...@b.stat.purdue.edu>...
>> In article <5g70it$c...@newsfep1.sprintmail.com>,
>> Kurt Ullman <kurtu...@sprintmail.com> wrote:
>> >In article <5g67q5$20...@b.stat.purdue.edu>, hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu
>(Herman
>> >Rubin) wrote:
>> >>But I believe that if foundations had been allowed to grow with as
>> >>few restrictions as they used to have, we would have at least one,
>> >>and possibly more, private foundaions supporting research at a
>> >>higher level than the present highly restrictive government funding.
>> At least a substantial portion of the present Purdue student body would
>> have difficulty passing a decent 8-th grade examination of a century
>> ago. The courses have plummeted; why do you think we have so many
>> foreign students in our graduate programs, and so many foreign faculty
>> members?
>That is the professor's and the University's fault if they do such things.
>If someone cannot pass an 8th grade examination while in college, then they
>should flunk the course and eventually flunk out of college. In all
>fairness, they should have never been admitted into the University.
I agree that they should flunk, but at this time this is politically
impossible, unless the university will admit almost nobody. The problem
is that the university has essentially no information.
Now how is the university to know whether or not they could do this?
More importantly, how is the university to know if they have the mental
ability to do this? We have credentials of at best dubious quality.
Grades are not based on knowledge and ability, including at universities,
Multiple choice tests necessarily have to test relatively unimportant
features; while these are correlated with the important information,
the correlation is not that high.
Correcting the fault will require schools outside the present systems.
D Gary Grady
hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) wrote:
>This is the PRESENT situation. We do not have foundations now which are
>relatively as large as the private foundations were before WWII. There
>are laws restricting foundations; they are highly limited in how large
>they can get.
I've never heard of such a restriction on the size of private
foundations; could you provide more specifics? Certainly university
endowments such as Harvard's are larger now than they were then, and I
suspect the same is true for some other large foundations. In fact
just a few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal had an article about
large new foundations being established.
D Gary Grady
Durham NC USA
73513...@compuserve.com / dg...@mindspring.com
Carey Gregory
Carl Dean wrote:
>
> You may consider it a bore, but that doesn't mean that its not happening.
> Highly efficient automated machinery and computer systems allow a few
> people to do the work of hundreds. If you don't believe me, then I have an
> example of this.
Of course it's happening. Anyone with a high school history book can
find thousands of examples starting from prehistoric man's first
agricultural efforts, through the industrial revolution, and up to
today's state of the art computers. Automation and cost reduction have
always proved beneficial to society as a whole in the long run. I dare
you to find an example where they haven't been.
> US Steel in Birmingham was once the city's biggest employer.
So? Are the people of Birmingham now destitute, poverty stricken,
hungry?
No, they're not. Their standard of living is higher now than it was
then.
> It may be a boring subject to you, but it will affect us all in
> one way or another.
Yes, and in the long run the effects will be positive for society as a
whole.
--
Carey Gregory
Dan Evens
Jim Balter wrote:
> No, actually I didn't. But you seem to feel that you fit my
> description.
You've just done it again.
> Apparently you don't know little about "sensible argumentation"
> or "ad hominen (sic)". Calling people rude names is not an
> ad hominem argument. Dismissing a presentation by calling it
> "standard leftist drivel", OTOH, is.
Ad hominem means directing arguments to the person rather
than the issue. Insults are clearly part of this. As
are spelling and grammar flames.
Declaring that a block of text lacks the virtues claimed
for it is not.
Jim Balter
Dan Evens wrote:
>
> Jim Balter wrote:
> > No, actually I didn't. But you seem to feel that you fit my
> > description.
>
> You've just done it again.
You are mistaken. Perhaps you will take such a claim
to be an ad hominem argument.
> Ad hominem means directing arguments to the person rather
> than the issue. Insults are clearly part of this.
Ad hominem arguments can involve insults or not, and insults can
be a part of an ad hominem argument or not.
> As
> are spelling and grammar flames.
"(sic)" is not an argument.
> Declaring that a block of text lacks the virtues claimed
> for it is not.
Dismissing something as "standard leftist drivel" is a textbook
example of an ad hominem argument.
--
<J Q B>
Brian Duda
> > At least a substantial portion of the present Purdue student body would
> > have difficulty passing a decent 8-th grade examination of a century
> > ago. The courses have plummeted; why do you think we have so many
> > foreign students in our graduate programs, and so many foreign faculty
> > members?
I think that a large part of the reason for this is that there are so many more people
seeking college degrees now. People who would not have gone to college a century
ago are now going. I think there are probably still at least the same number of
"brilliant" scholars as there were then, maybe more. There are just more students
overall though, and you can't expect all of them to be geniuses. In today's society
a college education is much more necessary than it was before. You could get along
quite well with a high school diploma years ago. Now that is not the case. So you
have more students going to college, many of whom would have probably stopped
at the High School Level years ago. But what I think is happening is that, now, with
so many people in the university system, the standards are starting to reach an
equilibrium with the student body, so we are seeing a lowering of the standards
somewhat. Its all relative though. Today, a bachelor's degree is probably equivalent
to what a high school diploma used to be. The higher level scholars end up going
on to grad school.
Brian
Bill Ward
Brian Duda <bjd...@ucla.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Herman Rubin <hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu> wrote in article
>> > At least a substantial portion of the present Purdue student body would
>> > have difficulty passing a decent 8-th grade examination of a century
>> > ago. The courses have plummeted; why do you think we have so many
>> > foreign students in our graduate programs, and so many foreign faculty
>> > members?
>I think that a large part of the reason for this is that there are so many more people
>seeking college degrees now. People who would not have gone to college a century
>ago are now going. I think there are probably still at least the same number of
>"brilliant" scholars as there were then, maybe more. There are just more students
>overall though, and you can't expect all of them to be geniuses. In today's society
>a college education is much more necessary than it was before. You could get along
>quite well with a high school diploma years ago. Now that is not the case. So you
>have more students going to college, many of whom would have probably stopped
>at the High School Level years ago. But what I think is happening is that, now, with
>so many people in the university system, the standards are starting to reach an
>equilibrium with the student body, so we are seeing a lowering of the standards
>somewhat. Its all relative though. Today, a bachelor's degree is probably equivalent
>to what a high school diploma used to be. The higher level scholars end up going
>on to grad school.
>Brian
So we've improved education to the point it now takes 16 years to teach
what used to be 12 years worth of material? Oh well, let's just throw
more money at the problem and maybe it will go away.
(Sorry, I guess I'm just a bit prickly today.)
Bill Ward
ale2
In article <5gf8ca$7...@sjx-ixn8.ix.netcom.com>
bward*remove_this*@ix.netcom.com (Bill Ward) writes:
>
> So we've improved education to the point it now takes 16 years to teach
> what used to be 12 years worth of material? Oh well, let's just throw
> more money at the problem and maybe it will go away.
>
As a nation in general we don't expect more from our children. They are
capable, just as a hundred years ago, of much more. If they just spent
as much time learning as watching TV and playing vidio games we would
have a nation of "geniuses"?
It is ultimately the parents (and citizens concerned with the state of
their country) fault?
altavoz
Subject:
Re: Notice - Social Issues
Date:
Tue, 11 Mar 1997 00:01:28 -0800
From:
Jim Balter <j...@netcom.com>
Organization:
JQB Enterprises
Newsgroups:
alt.sci.planetary, sci.physics, sci.math, sci.astro,
alt.energy.renewable,
sci.space.policy, sci.chem, sci.psychology.psychotherapy,
de.sci.philosophie, sci.med,
sci.environment, sci.lang, sci.engr.mech, sci.optics,
sci.energy, sci.econ, sci.skeptic
References:
1 , 2
Dan Evens wrote:
>
> Jorge Da Silva wrote:
> > I've created a homepage where I list some social ideas and new social
> > concepts, that could form future options for a new society based on
> > Technology and Ethics.
>
> New ideas indeed. It's the standard leftist drivel of everybody who
> makes money is evil and required to pay for the jerkoffs who want
> to partake of the "right not to work."
>
> The worst sort of spam.
> Dan Evens
Why are all right wing reactionaries such fucking assholes, Dan?
--
<J Q B>
altavoz: Right wing ?! I don't see a right wing , i see a CAPITALIST .
Capitalists are proud to call themselves capitalists .
Commies are never proud to call themselves commies .
"We're not commies , we're democrats , we look out for the poor"
BULL SHIT YOU DO , YOU MAKE POOR A PROFESSION
______End of text from altavoz___________
altavoz
"Carl Dean" <cde...@mindspring.com>
Organization:
MindSpring Enterprises
Newsgroups:
alt.sci.planetary, sci.physics, sci.math, sci.astro,
alt.energy.renewable,
sci.space.policy, sci.chem, sci.psychology.psychotherapy,
de.sci.philosophie, sci.med,
sci.environment, sci.lang, sci.engr.mech, sci.optics,
sci.energy, sci.econ, sci.skeptic
References:
1 , 2
>
> This prediction of automation making humans unnecessary is old news, and
> well explored by sci-fi writers over the years. It's a bore.
>
You may consider it a bore, but that doesn't mean that its not
happening.
Highly efficient automated machinery and computer systems allow a few
people to do the work of hundreds. ( Carl Deans/Chicken littles
prediction of a sky falling down was snipped )
Carl Dean
altavoz: The definition of a high std of living is putting as many
people out of work as possible . This tells the displaced , to have
fewer children , reducing the population , there by increasing the
size of each slice of the pie . improving quality of life . DUH .
It has to do with efficiency factor , the more people , the worse
the efficiency of that country .
The USA is a socialist country , struggling along on 5% capitalism.
If our stupid, overbearing govt would stop paying the poor to destroy
our gene pool , we'd be OK in 100 years .
Don't respond to this , cause i know you're a commie and you know
i'm a capitalist , so we don't have anything to talk about .
Gordon Sollars
ro...@esper.com (Robert G Kennedy III) wrote:
>We in the
>US are fully into the transition from a secondary economy to a tertiary
>economy. There's one more step to go, a quaternary economy, where the
>majority of the population is involved with doing things worth doing for
>their own sake. Education. Exploration. Health. Entertainment. A fraction,
><10%?, keeps the machinery going. Past that stage, Herman Kahn couldn't
>see.
[cut]
>An economy is fundamentally a way for people to swap time, the one asset
>they can't replace. Time is what specialization of labor is really all
>about. If some widget over there is cranking out goods using raw inputs
>provided by yet another widget, all without using any of yours or anyone
>else's time, how could anyone possibly be worse off?
One can be in complete agreement with Kahn's analysis and still worry
about about short term trends. His analysis does not state that we
are dealing with a non-decreasing function, but only that we will be
better-off way down the line.
If public education keeps failing us (and we keep insisting on it), we
may have too large a number of folks who are unsuited for quaternary
employment. Is this a short term "problem" or an "opportunuty"?
________________________________________________
Domestic education is the institution of nature;
public education, the contrivance of man. It is
surely unnecessary to say, which is likely to be
the wisest. Adam Smith
Arlos W. Anderson/Judy Friend
In <5g6sfp$g...@news1.voicenet.com> Carol Robbins
<crob...@omni.voicenet.com> writes:
>
>h...@ix.netcom.com(William Mayers) wrote:
>>
>> In <857998...@stellar.demon.co.uk> J...@stellar.demon.co.uk
(Joseph
>> Michael) writes:
>> >
>> >In article <5g02al$e...@news.inforamp.net> dev...@inforamp.net "Dan
>> Evens" writes:
>> >
>> >>Jorge Da Silva wrote:
>> >>> I've created a homepage where I list some social ideas and new
>> social
>> >>> concepts, that could form future options for a new society based
on
>> >>> Technology and Ethics.
>> >>
>> >>New ideas indeed. It's the standard leftist drivel of everybody
who
>> >>makes money is evil and required to pay for the jerkoffs who want
>> >>to partake of the "right not to work."
>> >>
>> >>The worst sort of spam.
>> >>Dan Evens
>> >
>>
>> Yes, but he also happens to be correct. The idea of full employment
is
>> a pipe dream, as any economist knows. We could discuss the
particulars
>> of welfare and workfare, but I think I, at least, would prefer to
deal
>> with someone who knows what they're talking about.
>>
>> Bill Mayers
>>
>
> I think most of us prefer to deal with knowledgeable people
>when discussing an important issue. Since you have made the assertion
>that "any economist" would agree with you, why don't you give a
>reasoned argument for your point of view that addresses the concerns
>of the earlier postings? The reason "ad hominem" was given a Latin
>name was because "any logician" would recognize it as fallacious.
>
> Regards,
> Chris.
An Economist is simply an accountant with out enough personality
to become an Economist. Hardly the wise source to turn too in volitile
times....
Arlos
Frank Crary
In article <332AFC...@ucla.edu>, Brian Duda <bjd...@ucla.edu> wrote:
>> > At least a substantial portion of the present Purdue student body would
>> > have difficulty passing a decent 8-th grade examination of a century
>> > ago. The courses have plummeted; why do you think we have so many
>> > foreign students in our graduate programs, and so many foreign faculty
>> > members?
>I think that a large part of the reason for this is that there are so many more people
>seeking college degrees now. People who would not have gone to college a century
>ago are now going. I think there are probably still at least the same number of
>"brilliant" scholars as there were then, maybe more. There are just more students
>overall though, and you can't expect all of them to be geniuses. In today's society
>a college education is much more necessary than it was before. You could get along
>quite well with a high school diploma years ago. Now that is not the case.
You may be right about why college student aren't as sharp as they were
a century ago, but I think this is based on a harmful illusion. A friend
of mine dropped out of Berkeley without getting her B.A. and is currently
earning more than I do, with a B.A. and a M.S. More to the point, she
is also hiring people for a company developing a web search engine. She's
told me that a college degree means just about nothing: Whether or not
someone has one is largely irrelevant to their useful skills or the
quality of their work once hired. She does note that degrees in science
and engineering are an exception, but degrees in the humanities and
social sciences are basically irrelevant to future job skills. Despite
this, many companies consider a degree in these fields important, and
many people go to college because the think they need a degree to get
a good job (and expect one that pays well, even if their major didn't
teach them anything of practical value.) This is a wide-spread illusion
that getting a degree in something irrelevant to your future occupation
has some value. This, in and of itself, is harmful to education. It
increases the size of classes (and therefore decreases the quality of
education) and causes people to get degrees in things they are good
at but will never use after graduating (which is a waste of time, money and
effort for all concerned, unless they are rich enough to spend four
years studying something for the pure joy of studying something they
are interested in.)
>...But what I think is happening is that, now, with
>so many people in the university system, the standards are starting to reach an
>equilibrium with the student body, so we are seeing a lowering of the standards
>somewhat. Its all relative though. Today, a bachelor's degree is probably equivalent
>to what a high school diploma used to be.
Which is exactly the problem I described. A high school degree costs far
less than a Bachelor's, and requires far more effort (both from the students
and the instructors.) If people didn't have this myth about the value
of a college degree, they could safe themselves four years of effort
and professors would have more time to spend on the serious students
and/or research. If a high school diploma was, in the past, equivalent
to a Bachelor's, today, why does all this extra monkey motion to get
a Bachelor's degree make sense? We ought to be teaching more at the
high school level, and be less obsessed with college degrees.
Frank Crary
CU Boulder
Andromeda
> altavoz: The definition of a high std of living is putting as many
> people out of work as possible . This tells the displaced , to have
> fewer children , reducing the population , there by increasing the
> size of each slice of the pie . improving quality of life . DUH .
> It has to do with efficiency factor , the more people , the worse
> the efficiency of that country .
> The USA is a socialist country , struggling along on 5% capitalism.
> If our stupid, overbearing govt would stop paying the poor to destroy
> our gene pool , we'd be OK in 100 years .
> Don't respond to this , cause i know you're a commie and you know
> i'm a capitalist , so we don't have anything to talk about .
>
> ______End of text from altavoz___________
Okay,
I'm not a communist but here is the problem. Though the governments
wellfair system needs MUCH improving apoun, it does keep people fed, and
in fair health, it may prevent them from getting out of the system, but
it also provents them from going a month withough food. Machines are
faster an more efficiant on assembally lines, but with machines making
machines to make products, and people out of work because of it, more
will need some sort of government support or something to keep them from
starving. In general, some kind of economic reform would be needed,
communism is deffinatly out, we already know it doesn't work. So if
someone could come up with a way to make businesses more efficiant, while
keeping people fed, healthy, and happy at the same time, that'd be great.
But so far I've only seen it on Star Trek.
Herman Rubin
In article <5gfb5a$1g...@r02n01.cac.psu.edu>, ale2 <al...@psu.edu> wrote:
>In article <5gf8ca$7...@sjx-ixn8.ix.netcom.com>
>bward*remove_this*@ix.netcom.com (Bill Ward) writes:
>> So we've improved education to the point it now takes 16 years to teach
>> what used to be 12 years worth of material? Oh well, let's just throw
>> more money at the problem and maybe it will go away.
>As a nation in general we don't expect more from our children. They are
> capable, just as a hundred years ago, of much more. If they just spent
>as much time learning as watching TV and playing vidio games we would
>have a nation of "geniuses"?
It is not the matter of the amount of time spent. Those children who
can learn that much could learn far more in less time without working
any harder. If honest conceptual subject matter was taught instead of
beating around the bush and teaching rote and routine, this can be done
according to the pace of each student. This latter is also a key point;
attempting to teach the same to all means that none will get any
approximation of a good education.
rose...@sunserver1.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de
Andromeda (andr...@thepentagon.com) wrote:
: > The USA is a socialist country , struggling along on 5% capitalism.
: > If our stupid, overbearing govt would stop paying the poor to destroy
: > our gene pool , we'd be OK in 100 years .
: > Don't respond to this , cause i know you're a commie and you know
: > i'm a capitalist , so we don't have anything to talk about .
: >
: > ______End of text from altavoz___________
: Okay,
: I'm not a communist but here is the problem. Though the governments
: wellfair system needs MUCH improving apoun, it does keep people fed, and
: in fair health, it may prevent them from getting out of the system, but
: it also provents them from going a month withough food. Machines are
: faster an more efficiant on assembally lines, but with machines making
: machines to make products, and people out of work because of it, more
: will need some sort of government support or something to keep them from
: starving. In general, some kind of economic reform would be needed,
: communism is deffinatly out, we already know it doesn't work. So if
: someone could come up with a way to make businesses more efficiant, while
: keeping people fed, healthy, and happy at the same time, that'd be great.
: But so far I've only seen it on Star Trek.
Ok then I am not a commie either, but mind this :
Who owns the bloody country
(And therefore may see to removing the 'superfluous' (sp?) from the
economical process and line them up for welfare - but the latter is adlib
of course, and shouldn't suit the die-hard capitalist )
--
(rose...@rz.uni-duesseldorf.de)
ale2
In article <5ggul6$2p...@b.stat.purdue.edu>
hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>
> It is not the matter of the amount of time spent.
At some point i thin it is. You can have the best damn teacher in the
world but if you don't put in the effort ( spin your brain wheels) you
don't get better?
Those children who
> can learn that much could learn far more in less time without working
> any harder. If honest conceptual subject matter was taught instead of
> beating around the bush and teaching rote and routine, this can be done
> according to the pace of each student. This latter is also a key point;
> attempting to teach the same to all means that none will get any
> approximation of a good education.
At some point you have to turn off the god damn TV.
ale2
At some point you have to turn off the TV, and i think a lot of parents
don't have the energy to put up the fight?
Tom Potter
ale2 <al...@psu.edu> wrote in article <5ghfgl$u...@r02n01.cac.psu.edu>...
If companies in the private sector, made it as difficult
for us to buy their goods and services, as the public
education monopoly does for us to get an education,
the economy would be orders of magnitude smaller.
McDonald's would be blaming parents for their kids
not getting good hamburgers.
We would be lining up to get bread because we
were hungry, and had no other choice.
I suggest that the greatest danger to a society
is to let a government control the means of
brainwashing the masses. ( Education, religion
and media. ) They not only do a lousy job,
but they use the brainwashing to promote
their self-serving agenda's.
Tom Potter http://pobox.com/~tdp
John P. Oliver
Frank Crary wrote:
... big cut ...
> You may be right about why college student aren't as sharp as they were
> a century ago, but I think this is based on a harmful illusion. A friend
> of mine dropped out of Berkeley without getting her B.A. and is currently
> earning more than I do, with a B.A. and a M.S. More to the point, she
> is also hiring people for a company developing a web search engine. She's
> told me that a college degree means just about nothing: Whether or not
> someone has one is largely irrelevant to their useful skills or the
> quality of their work once hired. She does note that degrees in science
> and engineering are an exception, but degrees in the humanities and
> social sciences are basically irrelevant to future job skills. Despite
> this, many companies consider a degree in these fields important, and
> many people go to college because the think they need a degree to get
> a good job (and expect one that pays well, even if their major didn't
> teach them anything of practical value.) This is a wide-spread illusion
> that getting a degree in something irrelevant to your future occupation
> has some value.
I pretty much agree with the noted exceptions ... my BS Phys and PhD Ast
were essential to my work .. I needed the knowledge and experience, not
just the "ticket". On the other hand, my wife has progressed from
keypuncher (data entry creature to you youngsters) to Business Officer
of a 13 M$ university library system with no college degree. She does
the work and has the duties normally handled by an Assoc. Director, but
not the title because of the lack of a degree.
altavoz
Andromeda <andr...@thepentagon.com>
> altavoz: The definition of a high std of living is putting as many
> people out of work as possible . This tells the displaced , to have
> fewer children , reducing the population , there by increasing the
> size of each slice of the pie . improving quality of life . DUH .
> It has to do with efficiency factor , the more people , the worse
> the efficiency of that country .
> The USA is a socialist country , struggling along on 5% capitalism.
> If our stupid, overbearing govt would stop paying the poor to destroy
> our gene pool , we'd be OK in 100 years .
> Don't respond to this , cause i know you're a commie and you know
> i'm a capitalist , so we don't have anything to talk about .
>
> ______End of text from altavoz___________
Okay,
I'm not a communist but here is the problem. Though the governments
wellfair system needs MUCH improving apoun, it does keep people fed, and
in fair health, it may prevent them from getting out of the system, but
it also provents them from going a month withough food. Machines are
faster an more efficiant on assembally lines, but with machines making
machines to make products, and people out of work because of it, more
will need some sort of government support or something to keep them from
starving. In general, some kind of economic reform would be needed,
communism is deffinatly out, we already know it doesn't work. So if
someone could come up with a way to make businesses more efficiant,
while
keeping people fed, healthy, and happy at the same time, that'd be
great.
But so far I've only seen it on Star Trek.
altavoz: I found it , here it is !!
Andromeda said "it does keep people fed,..."
altavoz: This is COMMUNISM . It makes proffessional poor ppl .
Capitalism solves poverty by giving them nothing and telling
them "work hard and we'll tax you 4% TOTAL COMBINED INCOME TAX !
and you'll soon be middle class rather than poor . But you can't
get there by having 6 kids .
An encredable small amount of capitalism supports RUSSIA , CHINA
and other COMMIE countries . The same for the socialist country , USA .
We must get the govt out of everything ! Post Office, education,
energy , feeding people, R&D , NASA , putting ppl on the moon ,
running our land grant colleges , giving med' research grants
to colleges , paying 9.4 billion$$ to black kids to get bad grades,
GET THEM OUT OF EVERYTHING ( except min' policing/regulation)!!
Now Watch , you'll see idiots argue the "min policing/regulation",
they'll need it spelled out in a 10,000 pages of text/law !
Min policing means if you murder someone , the police will need
to go after you . But we don't need police chasing PAIN KILLER venders.
Andromeda
rose...@sunserver1.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de wrote:
>
> Ok then I am not a commie either, but mind this :
> Who owns the bloody country
> (And therefore may see to removing the 'superfluous' (sp?) from the
> economical process and line them up for welfare - but the latter is adlib
> of course, and shouldn't suit the die-hard capitalist )
> --
> (rose...@rz.uni-duesseldorf.de)
That's a good question. Who owns the country? I would say land wise, the
government. You can buy a house, and the land it's on, but it's still
part of the country. Anyway that's straying from the subject. In general
all I'm saying is that it would be just plain wrong to leave a few
million people to starve to death while you reform something. If you are
going to reform something and keep the country together at the same time,
make sure you can do it withough killing anyone. Just a little political
statement here again, for anyone that cares to read. Communism isn't
neccisarily what you saw in the USSR, that was iron fist, and pretty much
the same with China, but with free trade. The services in America, Police
Department, Fire Departmen, any kind of government emergency service in a
way, is a type of communism. Something supported by the community. Your
money, paying for something run by the government, to benifit you. Just
had to clear that up. I do not aprove of the kind of communism the former
USSR had, or the kind China has, or any kind of that sort. I like to be
abble to say sometimes, "This is mine, and no one elses." So yes, in
general I'm a Capitolist pig and proud, but I don't think people should
stand there watching their house burn down why the fire cheif gives them
an estimate....sounds like something a Ferengi might do:)
Vidhyanath K. Rao
I don't know what this thread is doing in all the science groups.
I have no idea of what the right follow-up group is either. Please forgive
me and what ever is the right place. But I couln't let the first
sentence quoted pass.
In article <332CCA...@thepentagon.com>,
Andromeda <andr...@thepentagon.com> wrote:
>rose...@sunserver1.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de wrote:
>> Who owns the bloody country
>That's a good question. Who owns the country? I would say land wise, the
>government. You can buy a house, and the land it's on, but it's still
>part of the country.
That begs the question of where the government came from and what is
its relationship to the country. In the standard US philosophy,
the government is made by the people and does not posses any rights
powers or properties not given to it by the people. It does >not<
own the country.
Europeans and others with a monarchial tradition might see the
government as the successor to the king, who alledgedly owned
the country. But that is not the `divine' law or the `natural' law.
--
Vidhyanath Rao It is the man, not the method, that solves
nath...@osu.edu the problem. - Henri Poincare
(614)-366-9341 [as paraphrased by E. T. Bell]
Carl Dean
Robert G Kennedy III <ro...@esper.com> wrote in article
<robot-13039...@205.138.57.47>...
> In article <01bc3008$224a5660$07a045cf@deanmachine>, "Carl Dean"
> <cde...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > > This prediction of automation making humans unnecessary is old news,
and
> > > well explored by sci-fi writers over the years. It's a bore.
> > >
> > You may consider it a bore, but that doesn't mean that its not
happening.
> > Highly efficient automated machinery and computer systems allow a few
> > people to do the work of hundreds. If you don't believe me, then I
have an
> [massive snip]
> > between the haves and have nots is going to increase if it hasn't
already
> > started. It may be a boring subject to you, but it will affect us all
in
> > one way or another.
>
> What it will do is make us all rich. Touch labor in manufacturing is on a
> crash dive, yes. Manufacturing employment shall one day represent about
> the same share of gross employment as agricultural employment. We in the
> US are fully into the transition from a secondary economy to a tertiary
> economy. There's one more step to go, a quaternary economy, where the
> majority of the population is involved with doing things worth doing for
> their own sake. Education
Education in its self does not create wealth, its application may.
> Exploration.
Exploration in it's self does not create wealth, the exploitation of
resources found does.
> Health.
Health care redistributes wealth. The pursuit of health creates no wealth.
> Entertainment.
Entertainment only redistributes wealth.
>A fraction,
> <10%?, keeps the machinery going. Past that stage, Herman Kahn couldn't
> see.
>
> But he described the inhabitants of the US in 1976 as "few, poor, and
> weak" when comparing them with the end state of "many, rich, and
powerful"
> which he envisioned in the _The Next 200 Years_. (1976)
Now every is rich when before you said that only a few would be rich.
>
> What are we going to do with all these products? Well, there's 3-4
billion
> other people on this world who are not in the developed nations who would
> sure like a chance to figure out what to do with that wealth if they had
> some. So, in a sense, you can treble output by whatever means and still
> have meaningful work.
You are using magic to create wealth and it does not work that way. The
other 3-4 billion people will get their small amount of wealth from the
redistribution of the developed countries wealth. This is occurring by the
production of cheap manufactured goods. Proof of this can be seen by the
US's huge trade deficit with the rest of the world (basically). Once this
money leaves, it is not coming back. This makes the US less powerful.
Let's face it, money is power.
>
> Why would anyone think that a machine, which having been built and
> programmed cranks out material plenty with little human intervention, is
> going to make anyone poor?
>
Yes it does. Imagine if you can that the machines don't need any human
intervention at all. Who is going to buy all of the products? People must
make a living doing something.
> An economy is fundamentally a way for people to swap time, the one asset
> they can't replace. Time is what specialization of labor is really all
> about. If some widget over there is cranking out goods using raw inputs
> provided by yet another widget, all without using any of yours or anyone
> else's time, how could anyone possibly be worse off?
No one takes home a pay check and they live in a cardboard box.
Carl
Carl Dean
Carey Gregory <cgre...@gw-tech.com> wrote in article
<332994...@gw-tech.com>...
> Carl Dean wrote:
> >
> > You may consider it a bore, but that doesn't mean that its not
happening.
> > Highly efficient automated machinery and computer systems allow a few
> > people to do the work of hundreds. If you don't believe me, then I
have an
> > example of this.
>
> Of course it's happening. Anyone with a high school history book can
> find thousands of examples starting from prehistoric man's first
> agricultural efforts, through the industrial revolution, and up to
> today's state of the art computers. Automation and cost reduction have
> always proved beneficial to society as a whole in the long run. I dare
> you to find an example where they haven't been.
>
> > US Steel in Birmingham was once the city's biggest employer.
>
> So? Are the people of Birmingham now destitute, poverty stricken,
> hungry?
>
> No, they're not. Their standard of living is higher now than it was
> then.
Its better because we still have that steel mill and many others, plus
other manufacturers and a major university (wasn't there before). However,
my point was that tens of thousands of jobs are forever lost.
>
> > It may be a boring subject to you, but it will affect us all in
> > one way or another.
>
> Yes, and in the long run the effects will be positive for society as a
> whole.
That's your opinion and I do respect it. However, try to understand my
opinion as well.
>
> --
> Carey Gregory
>
>
>
Carl Dean
altavoz <alta...@mail.idt.net> wrote in article
<332B75...@mail.idt.net>...
> "Carl Dean" <cde...@mindspring.com>
>
> >
> > This prediction of automation making humans unnecessary is old news,
and
> > well explored by sci-fi writers over the years. It's a bore.
> >
> You may consider it a bore, but that doesn't mean that its not
>
> altavoz: The definition of a high std of living is putting as many
> people out of work as possible .
If people don't have a job, they can't buy any products and make other
people wealthy. History showed this during the Great Depression. I
suggest you read some history.
> This tells the displaced , to have
> fewer children , reducing the population
It been proven that poverty causes the birth rate to increase and just
worsens the poverty problem. (population studies around the world prove
this)
>, there by increasing the
> size of each slice of the pie . improving quality of life . DUH .
Population increases, poverty increases even more and the quality of life
goes down the tube.
> It has to do with efficiency factor , the more people , the worse
> the efficiency of that country .
> The USA is a socialist country , struggling along on 5% capitalism.
Prove this number.
> If our stupid, overbearing govt would stop paying the poor to destroy
> our gene pool , we'd be OK in 100 years .
So you want to starve the poor to death. Also, prove that the poor have
bad genes.
> Don't respond to this , (too late) cause i know you're a commie and you
know
> i'm a capitalist , so we don't have anything to talk about .
I'm someone who is thinking about what our country will become and you are
only concerned about your immediate profit level. This has been America's
biggest problem. We do very little long term planning, if any at all.
Since you brought up communism, I think it ironic that the last major
communist country with no respect for human life receives the US's most
favored nation trade status. This proves that the US has lost touch with
it own ideals (that it was founded upon and has fought to defend in several
wars).
Carl
Julian Pardoe
Vidhyanath K. Rao wrote:
> Europeans and others with a monarchial tradition might see the
> government as the successor to the king, who alledgedly owned
> the country. But that is not the `divine' law or the `natural' law.
That, surely, is a matter of opinion! We all have different ideas
of what `divine' law or `natural' law is.
-- jP --
Carl Dean
Phil Fraering <p...@stiletto.acadian.net> wrote in article
<Pine.SOL.3.95.970313...@stiletto.acadian.net>...
>
>
> On 14 Mar 1997, Carl Dean wrote:
>
> > and land by themselves already. Huge farms are run by only a few
people.
> > So what's left for the masses of people to do that will earn them a
decent
> > wage? The answer is nothing. What this means is a gradual reduction
of
> > the middle class with a small portion of the population making lots of
> > money and huge portion of the population performing low wage work. The
gap
> > between the haves and have nots is going to increase if it hasn't
already
> > started. It may be a boring subject to you, but it will affect us all
in
> > one way or another.
> >
> > Carl Dean
>
> By this logic, 19th century China must have been very prosperous; they
> needed well over 90% of the population just to get in the crops. None of
> all the unemployment you get with any higher amounts of productivity per
> person...
>
> Phil
Please reread my original post. You obviously missed the point.
Agriculture low wage work is what you are referring to above, and is not
what I meant. However, it is true that at least they are working and
earning some money.
Carl
>
>
>
altavoz
Your are not a capitolist . In free mkt capitalism , we
pay a private company to put out fires ANYWHERE ,FOR FREE
cause if they don't extinguish the fire , it will burn other
houses . DUH .
Everything is done better by capitalism, education , paving
the streets, indigent health care, postal service , getting
to the moon .......
Jeremy Wanat
Unfortunately many companies and almost all universities have a "glass
ceiling" preventing people without degrees from advancing past a certain
point. I've seen it in the company I'm at now and also at a university
where I once worked. I would bet that the individual who is making more
without a degree is working at a small start-up company where hard work
and dedication goes a lot farther than at a large corporation or
university, where you are judged a lot by your credentials and your
individual contributions are not as noticeable due to the larger number
of employees competing for attention. I think the personal history of
people making the promotion and raise decisions will have a big impact
as to whether the candidates have degrees or not. Someone who has done
well without a college degree will probably put more emphasis on hard
work, dedication and punctuality than someone who has a college degree.
Just my two cents.
Mike Wright
Vidhyanath K. Rao wrote:
>
> I don't know what this thread is doing in all the science groups.
> I have no idea of what the right follow-up group is either. Please forgive
> me and what ever is the right place. But I couln't let the first
> sentence quoted pass.
I have stripped out sci.lang, where I read it, because I'm sure that it
doesn't fit there. On the other hand, I can't resist it, either.
> In article <332CCA...@thepentagon.com>,
> Andromeda <andr...@thepentagon.com> wrote:
> >rose...@sunserver1.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de wrote:
> >> Who owns the bloody country
>
> >That's a good question. Who owns the country? I would say land wise, the
> >government. You can buy a house, and the land it's on, but it's still
> >part of the country.
>
> That begs the question of where the government came from and what is
> its relationship to the country. In the standard US philosophy,
> the government is made by the people and does not posses any rights
> powers or properties not given to it by the people. It does >not<
> own the country.
>
> Europeans and others with a monarchial tradition might see the
> government as the successor to the king, who alledgedly owned
> the country. But that is not the `divine' law or the `natural' law.
Actually, in the Western European tradition, the feudal lords might give
their allegiance to the king, but they owned their own lands (and the
tenants of those lands). In contrast is the system of "oriental
despotism", as it appeared in pre-revolutionary Russia and China. In
those empires, the country, and everything and everyone in it, did
belong to the emperor (or czar). (I assume that Rome was like this
during some periods.)
In practical terms, the results were about the same. A strong king could
act like an emperor, and a weak emperor had to ask his nobles for
assistance. The main difference is in the theory by which position of
the king or emperor was justified. Notice how the "Mandate of Heaven"
could be seen as having been withdrawn from the Chinese emperor simply
by the fact that he could not hold on to his power.
In the same way, the US principle that the government belongs to the
people must be enforced by the people. Theoretical principles alone are
not enough. Those who believe in the principles must take suitable
actions.
--
Mike Wright
____________________________________
email: dar...@scruznet.com
WWW: http://www.scruz.net/~darwin/
Phil Fraering
On 17 Mar 1997, Carl Dean wrote:
> > By this logic, 19th century China must have been very prosperous; they
> > needed well over 90% of the population just to get in the crops. None of
> > all the unemployment you get with any higher amounts of productivity per
> > person...
> > Phil
> Please reread my original post. You obviously missed the point.
> Agriculture low wage work is what you are referring to above, and is not
> what I meant. However, it is true that at least they are working and
> earning some money.
> Carl
1. The situation is more analagous than you think...
2. The low productivity didn't bring them any miracle cure for
unemployment, unless you count death by starvation, and such draconian
population control methods as female infanticide.
So no, I *don't* think the chinese peasants of the ancien regime would
have said it was very good for them... I don't see you volunteering to be
in their place, even in a modern society.
It's only the rich modern societies, made that way by productivity and
even robotics, that can *think* of putting people on welfare instead of
starving them to death.
Phil
Phil Fraering "This tiger is sprawled so still and so flat,
p...@acadian.net A question arises when glancing thereat.
Standard disclaimer, Is he asleep? To be perfectly frank,
Standard excuses. He looks more as if he was creamed by a tank!"
- Bill Watterson
Michael Hodges
Tom,
Your post comment<<If companies in the private sector, made it as difficult
for us to buy their goods and services, as the public
education monopoly does for us to get an education,
the economy would be orders of magnitude smaller.
McDonald's would be blaming parents for their kids
not getting good hamburgers>>
Thanks for presenting the point cleanly.
Reminds me of the following "With competition, the bad (schools) would
change and the good ones would get even better. There's no such thing as
outcome-based competition to make sure nobody's feelings get hurt. The real
world is not a padded romper room at McDonald's." R. Lutz, President
Chrysler Corporation"
Bottom-line: no organization can survive by blaming its customers, unless
its advocates have a monopoly that can obtain revenue without consent of he
who earned that income in the first place. Where is the logic to break up
such as an AT&T supposedly on the grounds of increasing competition in the
interest of citizens, and not require the same of public education? Even
more so for public education, as the quality of their service is clearly
open to question, whereas that of AT&T prior to break-up was not.
--
Michael Hodges
mwho...@msn.com
The Grandfather Economic Report - home page:
Economic challenge for families & youth, compared to prior generations:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3795/
Education Productivity: shortchanging our youth -
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3795/education.htm
John D. Gwinner
Carl:
> > Of course it's happening. Anyone with a high school history book can
> > find thousands of examples starting from prehistoric man's first
> > agricultural efforts, through the industrial revolution, and up to
> > today's state of the art computers. Automation and cost reduction have
> > always proved beneficial to society as a whole in the long run. I dare
> > you to find an example where they haven't been.
> >
> > > US Steel in Birmingham was once the city's biggest employer.
> >
> > So? Are the people of Birmingham now destitute, poverty stricken,
> > hungry?
> >
> > No, they're not. Their standard of living is higher now than it was
> > then.
>
> Its better because we still have that steel mill and many others, plus
> other manufacturers and a major university (wasn't there before).
However,
> my point was that tens of thousands of jobs are forever lost.
Ah, but the point that Luddites miss is that when tens of thousands of jobs
are lost, hundreds of thousands of jobs are created. True, not all the job
skills will translate, so I think that there may be what economists (which
I am NOT) call surge unemployment or some such fancy term.
Look up the history of the Luddites -- it's interesting. They attempted to
halt the introduction of a 'pin making machine' that would make thousands
of pins an hour, vice a Pin-smith who could hand forge (blacksmithing)
maybe ten a day or some small number. The fact was, the pin-smiths did go
'unemployed' (although they probably just had to start making some other
kind of metalwork) but the garment industry EXPLODED. Modern clothing
would not have result. So in the long run, many more jobs are created than
are lost.
The alternative is to use the 'USSR' system where the state decided 'Good
enough' is a choke hold for 'better'. Many FSU factories are having a hard
time competing now, as their cars for example are sadly obsolete, feature
wise, than newer cars from other countries. Of course, they are probably
more hand made. So keeping the level of technology artificially low isn't
good in the long run just to save a few jobs -- it'll cost you in the long
run.
The biggest problem the US has with unemployment is in that we price
ourselves out of the market, IMHO, not automation. But then again, that's
capitalism for you -- live by the sword, die by the sword.
== John ==
Brian J Flanagan
On Mon, 17 Mar 1997, Julian Pardoe wrote:
> Vidhyanath K. Rao wrote:
> > Europeans and others with a monarchial tradition might see the
> > government as the successor to the king, who alledgedly owned
> > the country. But that is not the `divine' law or the `natural' law.
>
> That, surely, is a matter of opinion! We all have different ideas
> of what `divine' law or `natural' law is.
Because they can.
JOHN LOCKARD
> So if someone could comes up with a way to make businesses more
> efficient....
Paradoxically, it would lead to more unemployment and fewer people
working even more hours. Back in the fifties the increase in efficincy
would reduce the fourty hour work week down to thirty hours or less.
What happened is computers came in and a person could do more work -
no more slide rulls for calculations, statisticians, or secretaties -
doubling or tripling productivity. But business, tied to the needs of
wall street, found that it could boost profits by dropping people and
making them work longer hours 60 to 70 hours a week. Factor in taxes,
benfits, health costs, and it adds up to even more profits.
So we're just caught in a bind. It's basically a traid off of
either a booming stock market -or- full employment and less hours.
Jay Hanson
You are right Julian. Modern evolution theory finds that
the human brain is, in large part, a machine for winning
arguments, a machine for convincing its owner and others
that its owner is right.
The brain is like a good lawyer: it defends the passions
of its owner -- no matter how odious -- by trying to
convince the world with moral claims and logic. Like a
lawyer, the human brain wants victory -- not truth --
and like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for
skill than for virtue.
According to Robert Wright, "We are far from the only
dishonest species, but we are probably the most dishonest,
if only because we do the most talking."
For more, see:
http://csf.Colorado.EDU/authors/hanson/
Jay
-------------------------------------------
Pluto (pluoo-toe) noun
1. Roman Mythology. The god of the dead
and the ruler of the underworld.
2. American politics. The family of
corporations that bought America's
political system.
Eric Lucas
Michael Hodges wrote:
>
> Tom,
> Your post comment<<If companies in the private sector, made it as difficult
> for us to buy their goods and services, as the public
> education monopoly does for us to get an education,
> the economy would be orders of magnitude smaller.
> McDonald's would be blaming parents for their kids
> not getting good hamburgers>>
>
> Thanks for presenting the point cleanly.
> Reminds me of the following "With competition, the bad (schools) would
> change and the good ones would get even better. There's no such thing as
> outcome-based competition to make sure nobody's feelings get hurt. The real
> world is not a padded romper room at McDonald's." R. Lutz, President
> Chrysler Corporation"
>
> Bottom-line: no organization can survive by blaming its customers, unless
> its advocates have a monopoly that can obtain revenue without consent of he
> who earned that income in the first place. Where is the logic to break up
> such as an AT&T supposedly on the grounds of increasing competition in the
> interest of citizens, and not require the same of public education? Even
> more so for public education, as the quality of their service is clearly
> open to question, whereas that of AT&T prior to break-up was not.
That's all well-and-good in theory. However, have you actually set foot
in a classroom lately? When I taught a Freshman lab as a postdoc, I was
*continually* shocked at the attitude that the students had--that the
teachers owed them a good grade, and if they didn't get it, they would
complain to the professor, complain to the head of the department,
complain to the dean, sue the school, etc. What these spoiled little
twits needed to realize is that, the *totality* of what the school owed
them was to provide them with a quality education. This includes
putting forth the information needed to learn the subject at hand.
Clearly in this case, the customer is *not* right. A college that puts
out students that have excellent grades and nothing between their ears
is worthless, no matter what the customer might think. And this was
even at an educational institution that is subject to the competition
that you mention, and, while it receives money from a state, is not a
"public" institution in the sense that you use above. As near as I can
tell, this slovenly attitude toward education is nearly ubiquitous
(meaning present at all schools, not in all students), and until it
disappears, students will continue to get out of education what they and
their parents put into it, regardless of whether or not it is provided
by a private or a public institution.
I say parents would do well to take a more active role in the education
of their children, and stop abbrogating the responsibility of raising
and educating their children entirely to the schools.
Eric Lucas
Garrett
Eric Lucas wrote:
>
[stuff deleted]
> When I taught a Freshman lab as a postdoc,
You were teaching Freshman lab as a POSTDOC? Man, is academia getting pathetic
or what these days!
[stuff deleted]
>
> Eric Lucas
--
-Garrett (glad he is OUT of that mess!)
Herman Rubin
In article <332F50...@ix.netcom.com>,
Eric Lucas <eal...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>Michael Hodges wrote:
>> Tom,
>> Your post comment<<If companies in the private sector, made it as difficult
>> for us to buy their goods and services, as the public
>> education monopoly does for us to get an education,
>> the economy would be orders of magnitude smaller.
>> McDonald's would be blaming parents for their kids
>> not getting good hamburgers>>
>> Thanks for presenting the point cleanly.
>> Reminds me of the following "With competition, the bad (schools) would
>> change and the good ones would get even better. There's no such thing as
>> outcome-based competition to make sure nobody's feelings get hurt. The real
>> world is not a padded romper room at McDonald's." R. Lutz, President
>> Chrysler Corporation"
The causes of the atrocious education are implicit in the current
structure of academic progress: everyone on the same assembly line.
Even different speeds on the same assembly line does not solve the problem.
>> Bottom-line: no organization can survive by blaming its customers, unless
>> its advocates have a monopoly that can obtain revenue without consent of he
>> who earned that income in the first place. Where is the logic to break up
>> such as an AT&T supposedly on the grounds of increasing competition in the
>> interest of citizens, and not require the same of public education? Even
>> more so for public education, as the quality of their service is clearly
>> open to question, whereas that of AT&T prior to break-up was not.
>That's all well-and-good in theory. However, have you actually set foot
>in a classroom lately? When I taught a Freshman lab as a postdoc, I was
>*continually* shocked at the attitude that the students had--that the
>teachers owed them a good grade, and if they didn't get it, they would
>complain to the professor, complain to the head of the department,
Anyone who believes that the purpose of a class is to get a good grade
does not believe in learning. It is inculcated in the elementary schools
that doing what the teacher says gets a good grade. This makes the
grades given, and the schools, fraudulent, as it is claimed that the
schools provide education and the grades reflect it.
>complain to the dean, sue the school, etc. What these spoiled little
>twits needed to realize is that, the *totality* of what the school owed
>them was to provide them with a quality education. This includes
>putting forth the information needed to learn the subject at hand.
This is more than a school can hope to deliver. It can only provide
an opportunity to obtain a quality education if the student has the
will and the capability.
>Clearly in this case, the customer is *not* right.
Who is the customer? This is not an idle question; even at most private
schools, there are outside funds. It would help if there were real
choice.
A college that puts
>out students that have excellent grades and nothing between their ears
>is worthless, no matter what the customer might think.
This is consumer fraud. An automobile dealer might sell a customer a car
with certain features, but if he claimed to be selling a high-performance
sports car and delivers an old clunker which gets 5 miles to the gallon
and is lucky to travel that far is guilty of fraud. But this is what
the public schools are doing, and the colleges have followed along.
And this was
>even at an educational institution that is subject to the competition
>that you mention, and, while it receives money from a state, is not a
>"public" institution in the sense that you use above. As near as I can
>tell, this slovenly attitude toward education is nearly ubiquitous
>(meaning present at all schools, not in all students), and until it
>disappears, students will continue to get out of education what they and
>their parents put into it, regardless of whether or not it is provided
>by a private or a public institution.
>I say parents would do well to take a more active role in the education
>of their children, and stop abbrogating the responsibility of raising
>and educating their children entirely to the schools.
I would suggest that they take over the education, and let the schools
only do what is either academically unimportant or the few odd situations
where the schools will be doing at least a fair job. We also need to
abolish grades as part of the student's record, and base credentials on
the ability to put it all together. When an undergraduate who has credit
for two full years of calculus cannot do it on a take-home exam, it is
clear that the credit means nothing.
> Eric Lucas
Daniel Zepeda
Altavoz needs to learn about the subjects it wishes to spout about,
*before* it spouts off.
altavoz <alta...@mail.idt.net> writes:
>
> Andromeda <andr...@thepentagon.com>
>
> > altavoz: The definition of a high std of living is putting as many
> > people out of work as possible . This tells the displaced , to have
> > fewer children , reducing the population , there by increasing the
> > size of each slice of the pie . improving quality of life . DUH .
Where did you get this definition? Certainly not from any textbook or
dictionary I've seen. Standards of livining have nothing to do with putting
people out of work. Although it may be true that it is easier to maintain a
higher standard of living with fewer children, your statement is patently
ridiculous.
> > It has to do with efficiency factor , the more people , the worse
> > the efficiency of that country .
Again, you are finding causal relationships where none exist. The number
of people in a country has nothing to do with its efficiency. The
efficiency factor in anything has to do with how a thing (or person) is
*utilized*, not how *many* there are available.
> > The USA is a socialist country , struggling along on 5% capitalism.
Hah. Now I really know you don't know what you are talking about. While it
may be true that the U.S. may be moving more towards a socialist structure
in some respects, it is still definitely a capitalist country. Capitalism
is what the U.S. does best, and to suggest that the U.S. is anything but
capitalist is to show your ignorance on the subject. How can you possibly
label a country that spends less that 2% of its GDP on social programs
socialist?
> > If our stupid, overbearing govt would stop paying the poor to destroy
> > our gene pool , we'd be OK in 100 years .
Another patently ridiculous statement. Again, how does spending less than
2% of the U.S.'s GDP amount to " paying the poor to destroy our gene pool"?
Despite what you see and hear in the press (which is, by the way, owned by
less than 20 corporations nationally, down from hundreds just 20 years ago)
it isn't easy to get welfare, and it pays only about 70% of what is
thought of as poverty line. The poverty line itself is drawn from
statistics from the Bureau of Agriculture on how much food is needed to
*subsist temporarily in an emergency environment.* Not live indefinitely
on mind you, but *subsist temporarily in an emergency environment*. I don't
see how paying people only 70% of what is required to *subsist* amounts to
the above statement.
> > Don't respond to this , cause i know you're a commie and you know
> > i'm a capitalist , so we don't have anything to talk about .
I'm not a communist, just an informed American. I suspect this paragraph is
here to relieve yourself of the responsibility of hearing your arguments
shot to hell.
> >
> > ______End of text from altavoz___________
>
> Okay,
> I'm not a communist but here is the problem. Though the governments
> wellfair system needs MUCH improving apoun, it does keep people fed, and
> in fair health, it may prevent them from getting out of the system, but
> it also provents them from going a month withough food. Machines are
> faster an more efficiant on assembally lines, but with machines making
> machines to make products, and people out of work because of it, more
> will need some sort of government support or something to keep them from
> starving. In general, some kind of economic reform would be needed,
> communism is deffinatly out, we already know it doesn't work. So if
> someone could come up with a way to make businesses more efficiant,
> while
> keeping people fed, healthy, and happy at the same time, that'd be
> great.
> But so far I've only seen it on Star Trek.
>
>
> altavoz: I found it , here it is !!
>
> Andromeda said "it does keep people fed,..."
>
> altavoz: This is COMMUNISM . It makes proffessional poor ppl .
I think that you need to read up on what communism is. Hint: what the
former Soviet Union and China practice was/is *not* communism.
> Capitalism solves poverty by giving them nothing and telling
> them "work hard and we'll tax you 4% TOTAL COMBINED INCOME TAX !
Capitalism does not "solve poverty". Poverty is an inherent problem with
the capitalist system. That is why you have seen the push for some social
programs since the '60's. It is an attempt to ameliorate some of the
inherent problems with the capitalist system, so that it does not collapse
under the weight of many dissatisfied citizens. BTW, where do you live? I'd
like to move there so that I can get taxed at 4 percent. AFAIK, there isn't
anywhere in the U.S. where the tax rate would be so low.
> and you'll soon be middle class rather than poor . But you can't
> get there by having 6 kids .
I'd have to agree that having 6 kids is an impediment to getting into the
middle class. However, having a lousy economy is just as big an
impediment. You don't see too many people coming up from poverty to the
middle class these days, and one of the reasons is the economy. Even though
it is the best we've seen it in a while, it will never be the economy of
Post WWII where the myth of the middle class was born.
> An encredable small amount of capitalism supports RUSSIA , CHINA
> and other COMMIE countries . The same for the socialist country , USA .
I'm getting tired of this. Russia is a capitalist country now. China does
not practice communism. It is more like socialism, with communism as the
*goal*. Read up, find out what you are talking about *before* you speak.
> We must get the govt out of everything ! Post Office, education,
> energy , feeding people, R&D , NASA , putting ppl on the moon ,
> running our land grant colleges , giving med' research grants
> to colleges , paying 9.4 billion$$ to black kids to get bad grades,
> GET THEM OUT OF EVERYTHING ( except min' policing/regulation)!!
I'd like to see your plans for accomplishing these goals. If you read the
Constitution of the U.S. you will find that the government is set up to
provide the infrastructure for the market economy (capitalism) that we
have. Without this infrastructure, capitalism would fall on its face. So,
if you "get the government out of everything", you are prounouncing a death
sentence on capitalism as we know it.
The government is the only one that can *afford* to subsidize Research and
Development. You "get the government out of everthing", R&D and all of its
benefits would go away rather quickly, because the government subsidizes
big corporation's technological development efforts. Without these
subsidies, you'd see a lot of R&D shut down, and then the corporation would
shut down later because it couldn't keep up with other corporations that
have their governments subsidisng *their* R&D. You'd see a lot of loss of
jobs, maybe including *yours* Altavoz.
Your racism is showing with the 9.4 billion for black kids comment. Where
did you get this figure? How do you know they are getting bad grades? As
with most of your post, the *facts* you quote are fluff with no
substantiation.
>
> Now Watch , you'll see idiots argue the "min policing/regulation",
> they'll need it spelled out in a 10,000 pages of text/law !
Oh, this is a good tactic. Attack any dissenter's intellect, before they
even get to speak.
> Min policing means if you murder someone , the police will need
> to go after you . But we don't need police chasing PAIN KILLER venders.
>
> ______End of text from altavoz___________
Altavoz, your ideas are so simplistic, and usually downright wrong, that I
usually leave such drivel to itself. Sometimes I have to speak, so that
others are not mislead by your racist, ignorant remarks.
Dan
Richard Guy
In article <332FB5...@en.com.NO.SPAM>, Garrett
<gar...@en.com.NO.SPAM> writes
>Eric Lucas wrote:
>>
>
>[stuff deleted]
>
>
>or what these days!
Rubbish. The postdocs we get are excellent. There must be bad postdocs
but there are certainly good ones.
Richard Guy _____________________________
__ /|Home e-mail: |
. _______ /RG| / |ric...@guyy.demon.co.uk |
| ___.'o \_______/ |---< |(University e-mail:) |
:< ='=--- ,./ \ |(rt...@st-andrews.ac.uk) |
| `--------------------' \|http://www.guyy.demon.co.uk |
' `----------------------------+
Rebecca M. Chamberlin
Rick Fletcher wrote:
>
> Herman Rubin (hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu) wrote:
> : This is assuming that the new schools will be like the present ones.
> : The causes of the atrocious education are implicit in the current
> : structure of academic progress: everyone on the same assembly line.
> : Even different speeds on the same assembly line does not solve the problem.
>
> or fail.
>
> --
> Rick
Sounds great in theory, but there's this thing called grade inflation.
Students give high ratings to professors who teach easy classes and give
high grades. Administrators who can't be bothered with making sure
students are being *educated* use these "popularity" rankings when
determining professors' raises and promotions.
At least that's what I read in the Chronicle of Higher Education 'bout 2
months ago. One university is considering scaling students' GPA's based
on how "hard" their courses are (determined in part by the average grade
given out by the professor). Too bad nobody has the guts to scale the
professor's salaries according to whether their students are learning
anything.
cheers,
Becky
Herman Rubin
In article <5gpmpn$hrq$3...@newshound.csrv.uidaho.edu>,
Rick Fletcher <flet...@goshawk.csrv.uidaho.edu> wrote:
>Herman Rubin (hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu) wrote:
>: This is assuming that the new schools will be like the present ones.
>: The causes of the atrocious education are implicit in the current
>: structure of academic progress: everyone on the same assembly line.
>: Even different speeds on the same assembly line does not solve the problem.
>Why is this true? Teach to the top and let the rest struggle and survive
>or fail.
This will not turn out enough educated people. Also, the same person
can be at the top in one area and far down in another.
But even for those at high levels, concept formation will be quite
irregular. A person normally quite quick at getting concepts may
get a hangup at a particular point.
William H. Stoddard
In article <5gotf7$2c...@b.stat.purdue.edu>, hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu
(Herman Rubin) wrote:
>
>Anyone who believes that the purpose of a class is to get a good grade
>does not believe in learning. It is inculcated in the elementary schools
>that doing what the teacher says gets a good grade. This makes the
>grades given, and the schools, fraudulent, as it is claimed that the
>schools provide education and the grades reflect it.
>
Problem one: You have parents who demand that the schools give their
children good grades whether or not the children are learning the
material, instead of demand that their children be educated and being
outraged when a child who can't push the right buttons on a calculator
gets a passing grade in math.
Problem two: This demand is somewhat realistic, in that those children
are going to grow up to face corporate hiring departments that give a lot
of emphasis to grades and paper credentials, so that a school that gives
lower grades for the same quality of work can be seen as handicapping its
students in the job market.
Problem three: You have governmental policies in which an employer can be
sued for "discrimination" for any decision made informally or by the
employer's judgment, putting a premium on making decisions by standardized
procedures such as examining grades.
I'm sure there are more layers to the problem than that, but the problem
isn't solely the result of failure on the part of the schools; to some
degree their crime is providing society with what it really demands and
not with what it likes to pretend it demands.
--Bill Stoddard
William H. Stoddard You're sure to find him resting,
or a-licking of his thumbs,
whsto...@axnet.net Or engaged in doing complicated
long division sums.
--T.S. Eliot, "Macavity: The Mystery Cat"
Rick Fletcher
Eric Lucas (eal...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: That's all well-and-good in theory. However, have you actually set foot
: in a classroom lately? When I taught a Freshman lab as a postdoc, I was
: *continually* shocked at the attitude that the students had--that the
: teachers owed them a good grade, and if they didn't get it, they would
: complain to the professor, complain to the head of the department,
The view expressed above is opposite to what I see everyday so I must
challenge your post. The vast majority of students with whom I work are
motivated and possess a strong work ethic. Many are underprepared, but
they are very different from the way you describe them.
--
Rick
T. Rick Fletcher - http://www.chem.uidaho.edu/~fletcher/
Associate professor of chemistry | That's Idaho, not Iowa. | ad hominem
University of Idaho | Upper Left Hand Corner. | ad hominem
Moscow, ID 83844-2343 | No, I don't grow potatoes. | ad hominem
Rick Fletcher
Herman Rubin (hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu) wrote:
: This is assuming that the new schools will be like the present ones.
: The causes of the atrocious education are implicit in the current
: structure of academic progress: everyone on the same assembly line.
: Even different speeds on the same assembly line does not solve the problem.
Why is this true? Teach to the top and let the rest struggle and survive
or fail.
--
Herman Rubin
In article <33301B...@lanl.gov>,
Rebecca M. Chamberlin <rlmi...@lanl.gov> wrote:
>Rick Fletcher wrote:
>> Herman Rubin (hru...@b.stat.purdue.edu) wrote:
>> : This is assuming that the new schools will be like the present ones.
>> : The causes of the atrocious education are implicit in the current
>> : structure of academic progress: everyone on the same assembly line.
>> : Even different speeds on the same assembly line does not solve the problem.
>> Why is this true? Teach to the top and let the rest struggle and survive
>> or fail.
>> Rick
>Sounds great in theory, but there's this thing called grade inflation.
>Students give high ratings to professors who teach easy classes and give
>high grades. Administrators who can't be bothered with making sure
>students are being *educated* use these "popularity" rankings when
>determining professors' raises and promotions.
>At least that's what I read in the Chronicle of Higher Education 'bout 2
>months ago. One university is considering scaling students' GPA's based
>on how "hard" their courses are (determined in part by the average grade
>given out by the professor). Too bad nobody has the guts to scale the
>professor's salaries according to whether their students are learning
>anything.
The scaling procedure is the typical response of someone who believes
in the religion of statistics.
But I can think of only one way to eliminate the pressure to have the
professors reduce the curriculum so the courses will not be "too hard",
and also to keep the students from even wanting easy courses. That is
to make course grades purely advisory, and to have lengthy degree
examinations, where the students will have to put it all together.
These need not be the usual type of examination, but should be real
problem examinations under appropriate conditions, allowing appropriate
use of books, computers, laboratory equipment, etc.
The only important consideration is whether they can use what they
have been taught. Those who believe in the present grading should
see what happens when their students are asked to use the material
on which they have been given A's and B's.
Eric Lucas
Garrett wrote:
>
> Eric Lucas wrote:
> >
>
> [stuff deleted]
>
>
> or what these days!
>
What's your point?
1) I asked to be allowed to teach, partly for funding (our group was a
bit heavy on postdocs at that time) and partly for fun--and at that
point I was still trying to decide whether or not I wanted a permanent
career in academia.
2) Why do you assume that, as a postdoc, I was any less qualified than
a faculty member to teach that lab? I was/am as educated as any faculty
member that might have taught that course. In fact I would say more so,
as, for example, the faculty there collectively felt that the right
format for a lab report was to fill in a bunch of blanks on a preprinted
form, and wouldn't let me require a proper lab report of my students. I
find this repugnant to good education, and not wanting to fight this
cookie-cutter mentality toward "education", I opted out of academia for
my career.
Eric Lucas