Talk-Polywell.org

Meanwhile, back in the real world, American physicians are very much against socialist health care : Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring ear...

The story in the example you gave was not Austria. I'm asking what criteria a live birth meets towards infant mortality statistics in your country. I gave an example of how the statistics in some countries are made meaningless in comparison to US statistics because different criteria are used. Ther...

Sorry, I have to come back to this one. First, in response to the assertion that it is better to rely on the expert advice of our doctor when considering how to medicate a particularly malady you tell us: Doctors often seem pretty ignorant as well; they generally just add a heaping helping of arroga...

First, if you get the wrong computer it's not going to kill you. Whether it's going to kill you is immaterial to whether you need to understand how it works in order to purchase the right one. Clearly you don't. I can't think of anything in life that is more 'material' than whether a particular act...

There is no difference. It's the difference between the Human Genome Project and a drug that is based on a gene target found in the HGP, or the difference between semiconductor materials research and a Pentium III. In business terms both are cost and risk. No, it's the difference between science an...

How many people know how a computer works? Yet somehow we manage to buy them anyway, because the industry supplies metrics most people can understand. Consumer-advertised drugs are usually pretty easy to understand: you have a symptom, this drug is shown to alleviate it in x% of cases with y% incid...

I don't see how you can reconcile this position with your free market rhetoric. Then you don't understand the difference between productization and basic research. There is no difference. In business terms both are cost and risk. Scrolling back in this thread, you and others have held out the cost ...

Basic research is done by government. This is all fine and well; we can agree this is a public good. But basic research is not the same as productization. The Soviet bloc did lots of very good basic research. You may have noticed their productization was not so good. I don't see how you can reconci...

Found this to make you good'n mad about and find some more counter arguements to shoot it down. http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~scotch/gerth.htm Hahaha! What a wonderful find. We should definitely put a stop to that right away. Let the market fund these products on its own. It'll help with the budget...

What kind of relief will be required when the average income (PPP) of the bottom 20% is $50,000 in todays dollars? This will never happen. The planet can't support it. You can't imagine scenarios in which the earth can? Also, who said "on planet"? Okay, I can imagine some scenarios where the Earth ...

there really is no meaningful yardstick for culture. Sure there is, Q ratings and market penetration. American celebrities are better known to the world than those from any other country. bollywood produces more movies, sells more tickets to more people than hollywood, But far more Indians have see...

1) culture is not measured in dollars, and certainly is not limited to movies and records. there really is no meaningful yardstick for culture. Well we will have to stick with the meaningless ones then since they are the best we can do. Ok then. I prefer this meaningless yardstick: http://en.wikipe...

MSimon wrote:What kind of relief will be required when the average income (PPP) of the bottom 20% is $50,000 in todays dollars?

This will never happen.

The planet can't support it.

I'm not going to sit through a 15 minute video unless the presenter has some credibility. How about checking out some of the arguments and then deciding? You know the scientific method. You know van, all your backpedaling tells me you got nothing except squid ink. Ok, so I watched the culture secti...