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211
General / Re: Millionaire Patriot Wants YOU Armed and Trained!
« on: July 08, 2008, 08:37:34 PM »
I'm a fan of the GOA, they're very responsive and very principaled on gun rights, so if their endorsement is good enough for me. 
212
The Polling Pit / Re: How do you solve problems?
« on: July 08, 2008, 08:21:56 PM »
I agree with Alex Libman... I tend to deal with confrontation by avoiding it. Unless it's with my wife... Then I tend to either run from it, conceding everything, or bumble into it on accident.
213
The Polling Pit / Re: Should retards be put to death?
« on: July 06, 2008, 03:16:46 PM »
I am not God. I do not have the capacity to see through time and I did not lay out a design for the universe.
Sickle Cell Anemia is fatal, but it also has a benefit in that sickle cell carriers are immune to malaria. My friend's son has Aspergers and while he can't speak well, the kid is an electronics guru. His brain functions just fine, it happens to function differently than mine. He's sentient (which is my criteria for the life, liberty, property thing) and therefore killing him would be immoral.
If being a retard (in whatever form, for the sake of this thread) is a negative trait, it will extinct itself. I support no action against the retarded, and not artificial actions to support them.
Sickle Cell Anemia is fatal, but it also has a benefit in that sickle cell carriers are immune to malaria. My friend's son has Aspergers and while he can't speak well, the kid is an electronics guru. His brain functions just fine, it happens to function differently than mine. He's sentient (which is my criteria for the life, liberty, property thing) and therefore killing him would be immoral.
If being a retard (in whatever form, for the sake of this thread) is a negative trait, it will extinct itself. I support no action against the retarded, and not artificial actions to support them.
214
The Polling Pit / Re: Teleportation & personal identity
« on: July 06, 2008, 03:02:10 PM »Quote from: 'vosti backle'
If I hit you on the head with a baseball bat, and you go unconscious, are you then dead?
Assuming I never regain consciousness, for all intents and purposes, yes. If and when I awaken, I'm aware of a previous existence and I consider it continual.
Quote from: 'vosti backle'
When you wake up, are you the same person you were before?
This reminds me of one of my time travel thought exercises. If someone went back in time and changed something about my past, and those ripples changed my memory of the event, were my memories actually changed?
Every morning I wake up and believe I went to sleep the night before. As far as I can tell, I lived before this moment, and as far as I can tell I am the same person. My sense of "self" is based on that perception. I'm open to the theoretical possibility that when I sleep, my "perception file" so to speak is erased and replaced with a new set of memories that I percieve as being entirely consistant. An organic firmware flash from "God" if you will.
It's simply that, if this is the case, I can't percieve it or change it and it is largely irrelevant.
It's much like positing to an atheist "If there was an omnipotent, omniscient being that decreed "I am beyond human detection"" would that make you believe in God? Does it really matter if it's not affecting you? I don't beleive it does. While I like thinking about things like this, every morning I wake up with perceptions that make an image of "self" and as long as that is the case, that is "me".
215
The Polling Pit / Re: Teleportation & personal identity
« on: June 25, 2008, 06:59:00 PM »
When I use the term "me" it is the percieved continutity of myself. I personally connect the concept to my perception. The child that was "me" when I was 4 years old was quite differnt physically than the "me" today yet they're linked through the fact that I percieved to percieve them both.
If my conscious mind were transfered into a computer, existing only on hard drive but offered continuity of thought, I'd consider that computer to be "me".
Now, I'm assuming that in this vaporization and rematerialization, my percieved continuity of self wasn't broken. If it was I consider myself 'dead'. If not, I don't consider myself dead. I would also not consider myself "dead" if my heart stopped beating or my brain simply stopped functioning IF I continued to percieve continuity in my perception of myself. The fact that the atoms in my body and brain are scrambled don't mean "death" to me - me not continuing to percieve myself does.
There was an episode of The Next Generation where there was a transporter glitch. Riker was beamed aboard through an weird atmosphere that caused the energy beam to reflect back to the planet's surface and rematerialize a second Riker. In the moment when the duplicate was created but BEFORE they began living different lives, the perceptions of both copies were identical so both were "the real" Riker and the moment that their lives became different, the "copy" became an individual in his own right for all things that matter to me.
If my conscious mind were transfered into a computer, existing only on hard drive but offered continuity of thought, I'd consider that computer to be "me".
Now, I'm assuming that in this vaporization and rematerialization, my percieved continuity of self wasn't broken. If it was I consider myself 'dead'. If not, I don't consider myself dead. I would also not consider myself "dead" if my heart stopped beating or my brain simply stopped functioning IF I continued to percieve continuity in my perception of myself. The fact that the atoms in my body and brain are scrambled don't mean "death" to me - me not continuing to percieve myself does.
There was an episode of The Next Generation where there was a transporter glitch. Riker was beamed aboard through an weird atmosphere that caused the energy beam to reflect back to the planet's surface and rematerialize a second Riker. In the moment when the duplicate was created but BEFORE they began living different lives, the perceptions of both copies were identical so both were "the real" Riker and the moment that their lives became different, the "copy" became an individual in his own right for all things that matter to me.
216
General / Re: Which Firefox add-ons do you use?
« on: April 07, 2008, 11:50:44 PM »Quote from: 'rabidfurby'
Or my laptop, I have all of the above, except Vimperator (which gives Firefox a vim-like interface and keybindings, perfect for the small screen on my Eee)
Haven't you heard? Vi and it's offspring are the editor of the Beast, for it's number shall be VI VI VI.
217
General / Re: Which Firefox add-ons do you use?
« on: April 07, 2008, 05:16:20 PM »
Download Statusbar and ShowIP... Which doesn't work on the Nightly Minefield builds. 
218
The Polling Pit / Re: Best Web Forum Software
« on: April 07, 2008, 01:34:11 PM »
I'm torn here.
I only use software if I have the source code, the right to edit that code and share it. This means that Simple Machine's Forum isn't for me since it can't be shared. I also HATE the SMF admin interface and I think the user side layout sucks but that can be handled with themes.
vBulletin is, IMO, the best forum as far as interface, features and stability. The downside there is that it also doesn't provide the freedoms I require in software that I run.
So phpBB is probably my "favorite" given all of the tradeoffs.
As to SMF being used on so many libertarian forums... That MAY be that there's a very active, core group of people with technical inclination and those people have favorites. I've noticed that Drupal is also fairly common among certain libertarian sites and I think that can very directly be attributed to having a "resident Drupal expert" in the club.
I only use software if I have the source code, the right to edit that code and share it. This means that Simple Machine's Forum isn't for me since it can't be shared. I also HATE the SMF admin interface and I think the user side layout sucks but that can be handled with themes.
vBulletin is, IMO, the best forum as far as interface, features and stability. The downside there is that it also doesn't provide the freedoms I require in software that I run.
So phpBB is probably my "favorite" given all of the tradeoffs.
As to SMF being used on so many libertarian forums... That MAY be that there's a very active, core group of people with technical inclination and those people have favorites. I've noticed that Drupal is also fairly common among certain libertarian sites and I think that can very directly be attributed to having a "resident Drupal expert" in the club.