Economic Facts and Fallacies

[ravingdave]

Ravingdave:

On suspended animation

>What you are proposing doesn't result in any reformation and a small >punishment if any. Because I believe that human social dynamics is >virtually a constant, I have long thought that incorigibles should be >offered the opportunity to create their own community apart from the >rest of humanity. I dare say that they would very likely recreate a >relatively ordinary community with the same basic structure as exists >elsewhere in humanity. There would be the rich, the poor, the middle >class, the law enforcement, etc. Of course it would be a dictatorship with >the baddest guy in charge, but that's how all our societies started.


>In any case, while we're getting futuristic, guards will be very cheap >when they finally get the software written for them.


Yes, it does not do anything regarding reformation, but neither does prison. Infact send someone to prison increases the likelihood that they will reoffend. Suspended animation probably would not increase this likihood and would also be cheaper to maintain.

Don't get me wrong, I think prisons are not a good solution to the problem. I don't favor prisons. The idea that you are going to fix anyone by boring them to death for months or years is just silly. I've been thinking for years that some sort of mandatory educational boot-camp like facility would be better. Growing a few minds couldn't be a bad idea could it ?

I completely disagree that it wouldn't result in any punishment. Being separated from you group of friends for say six months a year, when they have all moved on would be a major punishment. Also social interactions are very much based on telling stories, if you go away to another country you have a story to tell, if you are sent to prison, you have a story to tell. But if you are put into suspended animation you would have no story. You're wife or girlfriend could be cheating on you and you would be none-the-wiser. Your role in work would be replaced by someone else. Suspended animation would be a considerable punishment.
An if you don't think its punishment enough then you could have suspended animation and flogging.
.

Flogging ... he he he... No seriously, people are separated from their friends and relatives when they are sentenced to jail. Suspended animation just does the same thing without the irritating waiting. They get out as fresh as they went in, the only difference is everyone else is older.
If it is a punishment, it's less of a punishment than doing the time in prison.

* * * *

I completely disagree with sending the incorrigables away from society to form their own commune. What if they sent raiding parties from their commune into the surrounding neighbourhood? Another problem is its not a just way to punish people. In a rough society like that some criminals would be treated like crap, far worse then in prison while others would rise to the top and have the time of their lives.

Commited multiple rapes and murder? Tortured a few children for ten years on end? I sentence you to be dictator of a criminal commune where you can rape and murder as many of your underlings as you want get all the best criminal women and have the time of your life in the process!

Is that justice?

Well, I left out some details of the idea because I thought they would be self evident, but I guess I need to flesh the idea out more.

One of the characteristics of the community is that it would have no unofficial contact with the rest of the world. Only official contact through the governmental authority which would manage it. (The old idea of "puttinng them on an island".) The community could be isolated in such a way that it was basically impossible to regain contact with ordinary society. Another detail that occured to me is that people just wouldn't get sent there. They would be allowed to go there if they met certain criterior.
Criterior like life sentence, an ability to control violent impulses, an understanding of the rules, etc.
Of course the idea might not be feasable, but it did however seem to work in Australia. What was wrong with how that turned out ?


David

[ravingdave]

David,

You have taken me back to the days of BBSs and FIDO Net. Some fun eh?
.

Yeah, I had a blast ! And I believe it WAS called FIDO Net ! I had forgotten about that... and XMODEM, YMODEM and ZMODEM. In those days I discussed everything. Gun Control, Abortion, Religion, Politics, Homosexuality, Science, History ... oh it was AWESOME !!!

I did learn a few things though. You will never "Win" an argument in a public forum. (no matter how badly you kick someone's ass with facts, logic, and reasoning, all they have to do is refuse to concede. )

I discovered (eventually) that people's ego's won't let them admit they were wrong about some deeply held belief in front of others. When obstinate opponents would inform me that I wasn't convincing them of anything, I responded that I was no longer trying to convince them of anything, I was simply trying to make them look like a fool so that other people might be able to learn something, because they obviously couldn't.

Needless to say, I had a lot of enemies, but I also had quite a few friends.

Nowadays i've come to realize that people can't help but believe in fallacies, because people are constantly bombarded with them from every direction. It is only though learning that we can begin to see bits of truth in the massive stew of information out there.

It used to be, when people expressed opinions contrary to my own, I felt it was my civic duty to set them straight. I felt the country was in a culture war, and I needed to do my part.

I still think we are in a culture war, but I no longer feel that it is useful to antagonize people who simply have some screwy beliefs. In many cases they can't help where they got their notions anymore than I can help where I got mine. Nowadays, if I do anything at all, it is to gently chide.

As a matter of fact, I had made up my mind not to express any opinions in a public forum until I happened to run across the article in EETimes that mentioned the Bussard Fusion Reactor. This thing was just too important to ignore ! The very first message I had posted since the early 90s, was the one that you responded to in which I urged everyone to chip in some money to get this thing going. I believe I mentioned I was a "Rightwing Extremist", which was just a joke. Actually everyone else are the "Extremists"! (ha ha ha)

BTW Randy and Ward were friends of mine back in the day. And XMODEM is making a come back for control processors.

I remeber some of the messages you've posted. You were in some interesting places at some interesting times meeting interesting people.
Oh, and I read that book you recomended. "The soul of a new machine."
I empathized deeply with those guys. Back in the 70s, I built my own "Cosmac Elf" computer featuring the RCA 1802 microprocessor, and then I added my own homade circuit with 2114 ram chips to expand my memory from 256 bytes up to a whole 1024 bytes ! I later interfaced a video card and wrote a simple game program to play on the machine.
(spiders, represented by text "X's running around a warehouse full of boxes represented by white squares, chasing Me, represented by a letter "A" with the spiders laying exploding eggs, "*"while I shot at them with my gun that fired bullets that looked like "-" . It even had sound effects ! ) (by toggeling the "Q" output of the 1802. )
In any case, I knew what kind of headaches wire wrapping was, especially at the higher frequencies, and Like I said, I empathized with those guys. I was doing the same sort of work at about the same time in the 70s, just not at their level of expertese. I was only 16 in 1977.


I still have the old machine by the way.



David

[Nanos]

> How can someone be better than everyone else if
> we're all equal ?

Only equal in wages/income.

I'd agree there would be a pecking order, but I see no reason why everyone couldn't be paid the same at least.

It could remove that, "I must lie and cheat to get a promotion so I can get a bigger salary' feature so many people are keen to work on.


Things I noticed from all that chatting over the years is, that often its hard to get experts to tell you answers (So many of them tell you to work it out yourself.. but then expect help in areas they are not experts in!) and peoples ability to refuse to believe that your experience based answer beats their theory answer. (I'm constantly having this kind of gentle argument with a good friend of mine who is always telling me PC's are supposed to work flawlessly, yet I'm always finding the broken bits!)

(Says he having to reinstall his OS again after a disk cloning OS went wrong, its supposed to work! todays lesson, do not use hard disk manufactors disk cloning tool... I would have used Acronis/etc. but none of them can even see the SATA disk!)


I remember the days before the internet when it would take me years to find answers to problems. (Took me 10 years once to track down something the old fashioned way, sigh..) And now its generally a lot easier to at least either find the answer, or get pointed in the right direction, though somethings are still a little tough..


> I expected to see high level discussions

Its really really hard to find that nowdays, especially in livechat rooms. (And one of the reasons I'm working on writing my own (Silverlight front end, Visual BASIC backend.) as the current lot are of generally such a poor design.)


On a related note, I've just started working on Zmodem code at the moment, if anyone has any pointers to versions of this in BASIC/similar it would be appreciated.

[jmc]

The NIDA says you can't get addicted unless you have the genetic factors and some unspecified "environmental factor". I've made a pretty good case that the environmental factor is trauma. So the only people who can get "addicted" to drugs are those that need them. Which says that the drug dealers are serving an under served population. Kill them? If they weren't such scum they would deserve a medal.

BTW the illegal drug market is proof positive that supply and demand meet at a price.

It depends on the drug. 1/4 of people who have ever taken heroine are addicted. 1/3 of those who have ever tried nicotine are addicted. That's a very common genes. You'll have to show me the details behind this NIDA report. Because while I can believe genes affect someones tendency to get addicted in a statistical sense, I don't believe they force people who've never even tried a given drug into addiction. Similar I find it almost impossible to believe there is a gene that makes someone "immune" to all addiction regardless of circumstance or frequency of use. I'd have to be shown some pretty powerful evidence to be convince of that and not just the opinion of some body of "experts".

You've made a pretty good case that environmental factor is trauma in some (probably a small minority of) cases you have not shown that most addicts have suffered deep trauma to an extent that exceeds the trauma suffered by the average non-addict. Nor have you shown that taking drugs has a long term beneficial effect on the traumatised drug addict, as opposed to the view that they resort to drugs as a short term relief to their long term detriment.

Drugs don't just ease trauma, they also cause it. I can imagine little experiences for a 4 year old youngster more traumatising that sitting in a cot, ignored while mummy, daddy and all their junky friends are hanging around smoking pot, LSD and generally feaking out.

Not only does the abuse of drugs and alchohol lead to behaviours that cause trauma for others, they also leave people more vulnerable to suffering trauma themselves. A woman walking home drunk and drugged off her head on marujana could find herself waking up raped, not even knowing whether she was raped or not and incapable of describing her assailant. Then finding herself pregnant and forced to rip it out of her womb or to spend the rest of her life with an unwanted child and no husband. That too could be pretty traumatising for both mother and child.

Places where drugs are prevalent available and cheap develop drug problems.

Places that develop drug problems develop crime problems. (Which causes rather than alleviates trauma by the way)

So yes drug dealer do deserve to die as they are getting rich off spreading filth, misery and social breakdown and I really don't know how you can even suggest awarding them with a medal.

Regarding supply and demand, drugs create addiction, this means they manufacture a demand that previously either didn't exist or existed on much much lower levels. I believe highly addictive substances is where the normally benevolent economic process of supply and demand breaks down and ceases to serve the benefit of society.

[MSimon]

> How can someone be better than everyone else if
> we're all equal ?

Only equal in wages/income.

But that destroys most of the incentive system for people to improve themselves. What you get is (relative) stagnation. See USSR. The people who wanted to improve themselves there became criminals.

BTW capitalism is the best system for the environment. People are constantly striving to do more with less to gain a competitive advantage. Note: the USSR is an environmental disaster. As is China.

===

Re: NIDA:

Start here:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... sease.html

BTW your stats for the addictive power of some drugs is wrong. As to why tobacco is harder to kick than most drugs by far:

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives ... t_439.html

Note: mild schizophrenia is very helpful in creative pursuits like engineering. I'm mildly schizophrenic. I like tobacco. So did Dr. B.

You want to hire creative people? Find out if they smoke tobacco. A good indication.

The tobacco hysteria is just another indication of people making laws who don't have a clue.

[JohnSmith]

Whoa, hold on a second. Simon, of all the policies the government has put into place lately, stronger smoking laws are one of the few I agree with.
I don't give a darn about what you do to yourself, but I'm not going to put up with other people poisoning me. And if you think I'm parroting the anti-smoking lobby, well, you've never met any of my aunts.

Smoking is a crappy indication of creativity. Sure, some creative people smoke, but not near all. Of all the smokers I know, I wouldn't put more than two in the 'creative' category.

[MSimon]

So yes drug dealer do deserve to die as they are getting rich off spreading filth, misery and social breakdown and I really don't know how you can even suggest awarding them with a medal.

Actually it is prohibition which spreads those things. See alcohol prohibition. Which was instituted by people with your attitude. As was drug prohibition which came somewhat earlier.

Regarding supply and demand, drugs create addiction, this means they manufacture a demand that previously either didn't exist or existed on much much lower levels. I believe highly addictive substances is where the normally benevolent economic process of supply and demand breaks down and ceases to serve the benefit of society.

Actually it is trauma combined with genetics which spreads addiction. It is pretty well documented. I'm assuming you have read the literature. If so it just goes to show how hard it is for people to change their beliefs even when confronted with evidence. Which is why death is so useful. Most folks stop learning at age 20 or so. This idea (death changes persistent wrong ideas) is well documented in the field of science. And the nature of addiction IS a scientific question.

I have been fortunate in being able to change major parts of my world view several times in my 60+ years. Most people are not built that way. With people living longer (a good thing) bad ideas are more persistent.

I once confronted a retired Sheriff with my evidence (when it was much sparser) and got him to change his mind. Being a religious man he was very sorry that he had persecuted so many for nothing.

Note we have a wide range of drugs now for treating various mental conditions. Some are legal. Some are not. However, they all go to the same set of receptors in the brain. And we do not count it as addiction if your medicine comes through approved channels. Which is rank superstition. Cargo cult science.

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... holes.html

Side note: I'm probably the top amateur in this field. I started writing on it well before the NIDA came around. I HATE PERSECUTION.

As per usual most people are not willing to do the research. Fewer still will change their minds based on evidence. I'm convinced that it is another function of the amygdala. However I haven't researched that aspect of the amygdala. And I haven't come across any studies on the matter.

In any case persecuting the traumatized seems especially pernicious and unChristian. It is not very Jewish either.

Let me go further. Hate is another well known addiction. To my knowledge it has never been studied in the context of brain chemistry. However, you can see its advantage in evolution. It is a survival mechanism. It is not very intelligent though.

[Nanos]

> But that destroys most of the incentive system for people to
> improve themselves

Does it though ?

Most of the time I tend to see it only encourages people to learn how to take more advantage of those around them, than to actually improve themselves, as its easier to take credit for someone elses work than to do it yourself.

If you take the current situation with two workers from different fields earning the same amount of money, does it effect their incentive ?

What of all the volunteers (Like those in this forum..) who work for nothing to better themselves and work for others ?


What about tribal societies where there is no money, no one gets paid, yet everyone gets fed, housed, watered, looked after, that works rather well..


Whats your evidence that equal wages destroy peoples ability to want to improve themselves ?

[MSimon]

Whoa, hold on a second. Simon, of all the policies the government has put into place lately, stronger smoking laws are one of the few I agree with.
I don't give a darn about what you do to yourself, but I'm not going to put up with other people poisoning me. And if you think I'm parroting the anti-smoking lobby, well, you've never met any of my aunts.

Smoking is a crappy indication of creativity. Sure, some creative people smoke, but not near all. Of all the smokers I know, I wouldn't put more than two in the 'creative' category.

True. But given two engineers of seeming equal capacity I'd pick the smoker. But still. The dangers of casual second hand smoke have been greatly exaggerated. Poison is dose dependent. Water can kill you if you drink too much in one sitting.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/340/12/958 - subscription required

linked at:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,100318,00.html

also:

http://www.junkscience.com/mar00/shscience.htm

And is persecuting schizophrenics (mild or severe) really what you want to be about?

Most people seem to need their daily Two Minutes of Hate at some socially approved object. It strikes me as rather uncivilized. See Orwell "1984".

My view? Reason is way overrated as a determiner of human behavior. There is very little of it going on and it doesn't have much short term effect except in places where emotional biases are not predominant. It is why the view that the Earth was the center of the universe persisted for so long. Other views are not near as satisfying despite being better descriptions of our state of knowledge.

We see it here all the time. When we present our (so far limited) evidence of the likelihood of a BFR working we get hoots from the more conventionally oriented scientists and engineers. Out of all the hooters (heh) only one has taken the time to research the evidence and he has changed his mind some. Kudos to Art Carlson. He has come to the same conclusion most of us have. There may be something there but we need more evidence.

So if you hate "drugs" or hate "tobacco" or hate "CO2" enjoy. It may not be scientific, but it is satisfying.

[Nanos]

> Most people seem to need their daily Two Minutes of Hate at
> some socially approved object

I have noticed/observed in groups of humans that its quite common for one of the group to be picked upon as the scapegoat/bullied, and that others are afraid to help out of fear that they would be next targetted.

I can understand the evolutionary reason for this, to remove the weaker members of a species.


> Reason is way overrated as a determiner of human behavior.
> There is very little of it going on

Agreed, though I do reckon its possible to continue domesticating us and breed us to one day be more Vulcan like.

[MSimon]

Nanos,

You are leaving out the lessons of history. The USSR was based on just the system you say will improve our lot in life. Where are they now? What was their environmental record?

But as I said above. Most people's beliefs remain unchanged despite massive evidence to the contrary. Look at anti-evolutionism for a glaring example.

We used to have an old saying: Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it is the opposite. So the only question is under what system do the exploited live better? Capitalism hands down.

In any case you are fighting the 80 - 20 rule. About 20% of the people will control 80% of the wealth. You see this in almost all natural systems. Small advantages lead to big differences in result. So what is the best way to deal with this problem? Increase the wealth. Even Marx said that if you want to expand the amount of capital capitalism is the way to go.

In America even the poor have more wealth than the rich in most poor countries. That should be a clue.

We are a poor family by American standards. We have 5 people living in our house and 3 autos (junkers to be sure). In the 3rd world a man with a car is wealthy. With 3 cars? Near the top of the heap. Did I mention running water? Central air, electricity, computers, etc. etc. etc. What don't I have? Status. Again I am rich by Zen standards. And what makes me rich? I am satisfied with my lot in life. Although I am working to improve it. In any case if I was better off I would not be working on BFRs. That would be a loss, eh?

So what do I want for America? Let the rich increase the capital stock as fast as they can. We will all be better off. But I am not an envious person. Another way I am somewhat unusual. I do have a lot of experience with helping make the rich richer. You see I have to go to them when I want to do a big project. I have had the honor of signing a million dollar contract on behalf of my rich benefactors. They want to make money and I want to help them. What do you get out of it? Cheaper products.

[JohnSmith]

Poison is dose dependent. Water can kill you if you drink too much in one sitting.

And is persecuting schizophrenics (mild or severe) really what you want to be about?

Maybe, maybe. I've never looked at the data. Like I said, I have looked at my aunts. And beyond the poison dose question, it smells bad. Don't argue. It does. Pretty much every non-smoker agrees.

Where did persecuting schizophrenics come from? Because I don't like having people smoke around me? Listen, if nicotine helps, great. I don't see why they wouldn't use the patch or some direct injection, but whatever. If they like smoking, they're welcome to it. But I have no sympathy for them when they 'really really want a smoke break' or don't go very far from the doors because it's cold out. They chose it. They can deal with it.

I don't mind someone else using cocain, heroin, marijuana or anything else as long as it doesn't affect me. Maybe that's selfish, but I don't much care.

My rant aside, I agree with Simon on this thing. Capitalism does seem to be the best system for raising standards of living. And if by making rich people richer I can get into space, I'll live with it.

[ravingdave]

> How can someone be better than everyone else if
> we're all equal ?

Only equal in wages/income.
.

That's the one that matters most. That is the one that people are going to demand be differential, for that is the one that will allow them greater or lesser status over their fellows.

>
I'd agree there would be a pecking order, but I see no reason why everyone couldn't be paid the same at least.

It could remove that, "I must lie and cheat to get a promotion so I can get a bigger salary' feature so many people are keen to work on.
.

??????

>
Things I noticed from all that chatting over the years is, that often its hard to get experts to tell you answers (So many of them tell you to work it out yourself.. but then expect help in areas they are not experts in!) and peoples ability to refuse to believe that your experience based answer beats their theory answer. (I'm constantly having this kind of gentle argument with a good friend of mine who is always telling me PC's are supposed to work flawlessly, yet I'm always finding the broken bits!)
.

This behaviour is the natural result of having a higher "status" in some paticular catagory than someone else. haughtiness is an affliction of our "betters." People can be our "Betters" in catagories other than money. They can be our "Betters" in education, talent, appearance, strength, or any other catagory known to man. People not being able to gain status in one catagory will often seek out something which they can excell at simply so they can be our "Betters". Of course much of this behaviour is motivated by unconsious thought.

(Am I making any sense or am I just "raving" ? )

>
I remember the days before the internet when it would take me years to find answers to problems. (Took me 10 years once to track down something the old fashioned way, sigh..) And now its generally a lot easier to at least either find the answer, or get pointed in the right direction, though somethings are still a little tough...

I love the internet, except for all the bullshit. (spam, identity theft, spyware, etc.)

>
> I expected to see high level discussions

Its really really hard to find that nowdays, especially in livechat rooms. (And one of the reasons I'm working on writing my own (Silverlight front end, Visual BASIC backend.) as the current lot are of generally such a poor design.)


On a related note, I've just started working on Zmodem code at the moment, if anyone has any pointers to versions of this in BASIC/similar it would be appreciated.

Isn't Zmodem just a protocol ? I bet you can find some code already written somewhere on the trillions of possible locations on the internet.
I bet it would be a lot easier to find it written in C. (C++, C#)

In any case, why do you need backward compatibility with Zmodem. Unless your application is intending to send large files, just do a little handshaking between packets on both ends, and send it one packet at a time.
An application that I wrote would send time stamps and packet numbers in the packet header, but of course it was for a specific program to trade information with other instances of itself and a server.

What are you trying to do ?

David

[ravingdave]

> How can someone be better than everyone else if
> we're all equal ?

Only equal in wages/income.

But that destroys most of the incentive system for people to improve themselves. What you get is (relative) stagnation. See USSR. The people who wanted to improve themselves there became criminals.
.

You have nailed it.

I have long railed (is railing better than raving ?) about communism (theoretical communism, not the real governments I have railed about them too, but they aren't perfect models of theoretical communism.) being completely incompatible with human nature, and that is why it fails, but it is not completely incompatible. It is only incompatible on a large scale.

The idea that people are willing to work equally hard for the benifit of strangers whom they do not know as for themselves is simply unpalatable to a normal human being.

(because)
There is no close genetic connection (known to the worker) to the people whom his work will benefit outside of his family.

Within the family unit, communism is not only compatible, but necessary. (to each according to their needs, from each according to their ability.)

Mommy and Daddy are perferctly willing to work for the benifit of their offspring, and all are willing to accept and contribute work for the benefit of the family. ( I'm talking about non dsyfunctional familys) The same dynamic exists to a lesser extent in the case of relatives and friends. (what is often refered to as "Kith and Kin.")
Communism works just fine in it's natural environment, but this bullshit about the "Brotherhood of Mankind" attempting to extend this concept to strangers, simply violates genetic and communual instincts.

Like I said in a previous post. The math works, but the human nature doesn't.


David

[MSimon]

Maybe, maybe. I've never looked at the data.

I guess that makes you an expert by human standards.

And where did persecuting schizophrenics come from? See above. I presented a link to a short article on the subject which has further links to source material and you couldn't be bothered.

I am amused. It is typical of the kind of opposition I get. My mind is made up. Don't confuse me with facts.

And yet here I am among people most likely to be swayed by reason and evidence. God help us all. Because for the most part we appear unable to help ourselves.