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Tyson meats increased their profit from last year by fifty percent, even though costs have gone up only a fraction. It's otherwise a fact that only a handful of companies control the bulk of the economy and can simply raise costs without fear of competition. Anti trust laws have strong bipartisan support even though there's strong bipartisan corruption fighting use of these laws.
Competition is the American way... let's keep it like that by using our antitrust laws
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I think think it's a biological fact that men can't have babies, but I respect opposition too much to say it's a sociological fact. To the generic idea that men can have babies, I think liberals twist themselves into all kinds of positions that they're forced to conclude something as silly as that
This site doesn't get as much into identity politics
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Info on the martyrdom of the apostles as historical fact
What do skeptics think of this argument?
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This includes largely making life more affordable.
It seems republicans are more likely to focus on everything else except these things
Discuss, debate
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Simply by existing in the USA, u r forced to work. The only way to afford most necessities is by working forty hours a week. If a person is lucky they may live in a low cost of living area, and could possibly subsist part time. But most part time jobs r lower pay, and u wouldn't have much to show for ur effort.
How can ya not agree at least to a degree that we r slaves to society?
I gotta guess there's charity. But that makes ur options, bein a slave or relying on hand outs
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We should focus on exploiting the resources of other countries first
We should treat our own oil like a bank account and use it strategically and save some for when things start gettin outta control down the road
Governments r bad at competency but what they should do is have gas prices high enough to encourage alt energy but not so high it's un afford able
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True inflation is where everyone gets their wage increased... a reasonable minimum wage only increases inflation at the margin but the poor people r benefited more proportionally than inflation increased
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Bitcoin uses the same energy as a small country but it's largely renewable energy as most feasible to be profitable. Think of how much energy the current financial sector uses especially banking. All that sorting and storage and transfers.
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these unvax hospital staff dont believe in science, and are killing people. unvax people spread the virus to vulnerable populations that they serve. i'm not saying biden's mandate is or isn't good, i'm just saying on a case by case basis, hospitals are better off firing the hold outs, if they can handle finding replacements. there's no good science that says it's smart to stay un vax, especially if you do something like work at a hospital with vulnerable populations.
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warren had a decent idea of a two percent tax of a wealthy person's wealth. at first i was against the idea, because a lot of rich people do good things with their money, and if we're taking from them, they can't do good. such as Gate's and bufett's philanthropy, or musk and bezo's space travel. but then i realized we can just make exceptions to the tax for stuff like that.
imagine a country where a few people owned half the land, and half the country had none. how is that fair? i realize wealth is different than land, but it's all resources, so it's all the same idea.
rich people usually dont pay much in income taxes, cause they haven't had taxable event on their capital. so that means they pay less taxes than ordinary people like you and me. that's another reason we need a modest wealth tax
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we spend twenty four percent of our GDP on taxes. the average OECD country spends 33 percent. most think that means our taxes are low. not exactly. our healthcare system is 18 percent our GDP, and half of that is already from taxes, the rest from the private sector. so, given every other developed country has universal healthcare, if you added the private sector healthcare onto our taxes, we would be matching the rest of the developed world. so why can they afford to have more social services? 1. our healthcare costs twice as much as the rest of the developed world 2. our military is bigger than the next ten biggest countries combined 3. we've been borrowing against social security for decades, and now it's starting to become time to pay all that back.
so if we did raise taxes on people, we might be getting more services, but we'd also be paying more than the rest of the world, all due to us having bad accounting.
so it's accurate to say we pay less in taxes, but that misses the larger context.
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that link has yellen saying the spending bill will bring down inflation. i don't understand it though. how can spending more money bring down inflation? i guess if there's more people able to live their lives if they get assistance, maybe the labor shortage will lessen and the push upwards will lessen? this is too nebulous for me to understand. i dont see a clear argument that this bill will bring down inflation
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hypothetical. someone is traveling at almost the speed of light. they then turn on a flash light. i understand that how all observers to this will see the light move at a constant, the speed of light. that's based on relativity and frames of reference.
what i dont understand, if an observer sees someone almost going at the speed of light, wouldn't the light have to appear to be going faster than light speed given the person moving and the light being emitted are in fact moving at different speeds?
is it possible to appear to be moving at faster than light speed even if that's not in fact true?
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Science and Nature
trump's tax cuts were about 2 trillion, and he didnt even pretend they were being paid for with spending cuts. the democrats' plan as it sits now i heard, is also at around two trillion. but at least they're making an effort to pay for it. i was gettin close to ditching the reckless democrats given they aren't taking the deficit seriously first, but the republicans are still worse. seems the only common ground people can find in this country is to borrow more money. sad.
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does anyone dispute this?
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if you make all college free, tuition will sky rocket and make it unaffordable for taxpayers. people also should bear some responsibility for their actions especially since not everyone goes to college.
total tuition should be capped over the life of the college, the average income ten years out for that degree. nurses might make 60 k in ten years, so that's what the tuition should be capped at for the life of the college. if philosphy majors only make 30 k ten years out, that's what it should be capped to go to college. this makes the cost prooportional to the marketability of the major. if it doesn't need to take four years, colleges will have an incentive to lessen the time instead of dragging it out.
as far as finanical help. the disabled should have debt discharged.
everyone else, all payments should be income based and not part of a person's credit report that would stop them from getting other loans or mortgages. people should pay ten percent of their income per year after school. after ten years, hopefully they will be paid off. if not, half of the rest of the balance is discharged, and they continue paying ten percent a year for another ten years. then the half balance is again dischraged and the process repeats until it's paid off or they die. this ensures people take responsbility for their actions while not being completely unaided.
all grants should be abolished in favor of loans
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i'm a life long democrat supporter, but i'm considering switching sides if these multi trillion dollar budgets keep getting passed.
most democrats are pretty conservative. they are moderate, at least. they aren't run away liberals. but these radical progressives believe in all the things that we know republicans dont believe in, and that most democrats dont either. things like universal child care, universal housing, universal tuition... they just throw money at problems even if their methods suck. there are lots of constructive ways to adddress those issues without throwing money at them. plus, they pour fire on race relations calling everything racist. being woke is okay if all it means is you are aware of racial injustice, but not when you are actually being reverse racist. most people dont vote based on transgender rights or any of that garbage.
i wrote another thread on it, but healthcare is my main issue. it's possible to raise taxes for a universal plan, that the republicans would just cut the taxes, leaving us bankrupt. the only way that makes sense to get costs down is to regulate costs, and then find a way to get the uninsured under a plan. none of the dems talk this way.... they just want to throw money at the problem, as usual.
democratic socialists, is what they are. but they are no better than libertarians in their radical ways. i'm strongly anti economic libertarian.... those guys are clowns. but democratic socialists are just clowns coming from the other direction.
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the common complaint about getting the shot is that they fear side effects after getting the shot, well down the road in time.... but here's this
"Vaccines are highly unlikely to cause side effects long after getting the shot"
for every vaccine we've had in human history, the longest it's ever taken to develop side effects is six weeks. side effects, if there are any, are almost always immediate
this is from an actual reputable source. i'm sure this argument is the consensus within science. what are the sources who dispute this? random dudes on youtube, random websites no one's ever heard of. basically, trash sources of science.
people who live in areas that supported trump in the election over 90% are ten times more likely to die than folks who live in areas with less than ten percent support for trump. showing, this is too much politics.
the odds of dying from the virus is 7 in a thousand if you are unvaccinated. that's a high number. that's why hospitals and morgues are overflowing. that's why so many are dying, and why 2 in 1000 have already died. it's not even over yet. the odds for an average middle age person to die is about 2 in a 1000. still high.
most people who refuse the vaccine just lack critical thinking skills... they're basically just idiots. that's all it boils down to.
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anyone who really knows me knows that healthcare is my biggest issue. it should be affordable for everyone, as a right, at least in prosperous countries. but i've been becoming to see, that our political system is hopeless. politicians sell out to the highest bidder. i means, we should be able to cover everyone at half the cost like every other developed country does, with less wait times and better care.... but our system is too engrained. all those other countries built their systems from scratch, and we'd be fighting to change a major existing infrastructure, our status quo. what would happen if we did pass medicare for all or a public option? well, people would have care, but we couldn't force corrupt politicians into making it affordable for the people and government.... it's very possible that they could bankrupt us. we might get universal care, but they wouldn't fight the industry, and we could go bankrupt.
see, the biggest reason we spend more than every other country, is because we let providers charge to much. it's a fact that that's the biggest reason. health insurance is also overemphasized, given insurance companies are a pointless middleman that charges thirty percent on the dollar for administrative costs and profit, whereas medicare only charges three percent for adminstrative costs.
so what should we do? keep what we got, and grow healthcare costs at less than inflation for a set period of time. we can't just take axes to costs, as it'd shock the system. but we can grow slower than we otherwise would until costs are better managed. plus, we can deemphasize insurance to make it non profit so there's no profit motive. see, most other countries aren't single payer anyway... they just deemphasize insurance and make it nonprofit. thus, we'd be in line with most other countries too.
we can do those two thing without doing medicare for all or a public option. those choices are too risky, given our politicians propensity to be corrupt. we can have half the healthcare industry provided by private sectior as currently exists, but they just dont get charged so much. forty percent of the population gets government healthcare, medicare medicaid CHIP etc, or a small amount of these are insure themselves. these major engrained structures can remain.
i'm open to addressing the uninsured, the remaining ten percent of people, just not changing the whole system. id be open to getting the poor in states that didn't expand obamacare, covered with obamacare. that wouldn't do much to move needles but would be a big help for them. i'd be open to putting well off people who dont qualify for obamacare into a medicaid plan, where their costs are rationed but they receive good care, that way no one is uninsured. id expect rich people to reimburse all their costs if they are in medicaid though, and i'd suppose they'd be able to afford it.
in case anyone doesn't realize it, that's how other countries are half as expensive. they regulate prices. also, existing healthcare through government is regulated. medicare pays a third less than insurance for healthcare costs, and medicaid pays a third of what medicare pays. all im proposing is doing more of this, to be in line with other countries.
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theists say God could have caused the universe. atheists say the universe could have caused itself. but the problem is we have reasons to think otherwise.
1. lower energy states come from higher energy states. something had to cause the first maximum energy state of the universe. as far as we know it from our reality, an energy state greater than the universe must have caused it to occur, because we have no reason to think the universe could have caused itself given it had a maximum energy state as a beginning.
2. existence should have an infinite beginning given it looks like there's an infinite end. i acknowledge there could be a finite end, but from what we can tell existence will be forever more even if it's emptiness. an infinite ending of our universe cannot have a finite beginning that we see. something else must be the infinite beginning. if i'm wrong, how can a finite beginning cause an infinite end? how does that series play out out of nowhere?
i acknowledge that there could be evidence that contradict these principles... the problem is that we see no such evidence in the universe, all we have is speculation that these presumed principles are faulty.
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eternal view had me organize my thoughts so i thought i'd jot them down for my easier future reference.
there's good evidence for God. atheism is irrational because they pretend there's no evidence or at least there's enough evidence to be at least agnostic.
we see things that look supernatural happen to praying theists but there's no reason to assume those things happen to atheists. supernatural healings.
the large majority of people who have NDEs who are atheists end up believing in God (almost everyone who has those experiences, even skeptics, end up believing in the afterlife, but that's just a related point). there's lots of good evidence for NDEs so we should take them seriously. such as out of body experiences being verified under scientific study. it's stupid to argue that it's common for people to hallucinate elaborate afterlife stories when they die and then give no good reason why that happens, when drugs dont cause that to happen either. dr longs book 'evidence for the afterlife' is full of good evidence.
there's good and inexplicable evidence for demonic possession.
there's the point that the universe is going from high energy to low energy as if it's a clock that got set (how does something happen once within all eternity and never happen again, what does that even mean?)... there's no good alternative hypothesis that has good evidence for it, just speculation.
it's stupid to argue that humans are just elaborate living robots. it should be intuitive that we are more than that, and it's forced and artificial to think that way.
the design of the universe is weak evidence but it's evidence
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i dont actually support this, because of freedom and all. but i dont know what would happen if this law was implemented? id think the cost of a house would plummet and it'd be affordable to own a house for almost everyone who works full time. what do you think would happen?
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i totally believe in miraculous healings. but when it comes to things like the parting of the red sea, we never see it. i tend to believe in some non healing miracles, but they are harder to pin point beyond something just unlikely or coincidence or a figment of imagination.
maybe many miracles need plausible deniability to maintain faith?
what do you think, theists?
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he's requiring it on large businesses. i might be wrong but i think a person doesn't have to get the shot if they get weekly testing.
if ya'll idiots dont care about the people you're killing by not getting vaxed and wearing masks when needed, why should i care that someone is illegally trying to coerce you into doing the right thing, what you should have done all along?
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OH MY FUCKING GOD, GET THE FUCKING VACCINE ALREADY, YOU FUCKING FUCKSHi, if you are reading this essay then congratulations, you are still alive. And if you are alive, then you have either gotten the COVID-19 vaccine, or you still have the opportunity to get the vaccine against COVID-19. And holy fuck, if you aren’t fucking vaccinated against COVID-19, then you need to get fucking vaccinated right now. I mean, what the fuck? Fuck you. Get vaccinated. Fuck.The fucking vaccine will not make you magnetic. Are you fucking kidding me? It just fucking won’t. That’s not even a fucking thing, and that lady who tried to pretend the vaccine made her fucking magnetic looked like a real fucking fuckwad and a fucking idiot, so get fucking vaccinated. Jesus. Fuck.The vaccine also doesn’t have a fucking 5G chip in it. What the fuck do you think a fucking 5G chip is, fucknuts? You think it’s like some invisible nanotechnology they can suspend in a liquid and then just put in your fucking blood and then it what, exactly? Fucking floats around in your body going on Instagram and telling the government you went to the grocery store? No one fucking cares where you go, you absolute fucking fuck-barf. Fuck off with that. Fuck.Oh, you’re afraid of fucking side effects? Fuck you. You know what has fucking side effects? Fucking aspirin, fucking Tylenol. You could be fucking allergic to pineapple, you fucking fuckwit. Everything has side effects. You’re being a big fucking baby with a huge diaper full of fucking diarrhea, complaining about maybe feeling slightly tired for a day or two while your asymptomatic COVID case you get and pass to some innocent fucking kid could wind up killing them or someone else. Fuck you, you fucking selfish fucking shit-banana, you unredeemable ass-caterpillar, you fucking fuck-knob with two fucks for eyes and a literal poop where your heart should be. You want a two-month-old to wind up on a fucking ventilator instead of you, a fucking adult, getting a fucking sore arm for a day? What are you, a pitcher for the Yankees? A fucking concert pianist? An arm model? Get the fuck out of here! Fuck you. Get vaccinated. Fuck. Fuck you!You think vaccines don’t fucking work? Oh, fuck off into the trash, you attention-seeking fuckworm-faced shitbutt. This isn’t even a point worth discussing, you fuck-o-rama fuck-stival of ignorance. Vaccines got rid of smallpox and polio and all the other disgusting diseases that used to kill off little fucks like you en masse. Your relatives got fucking vaccinated and let you live, and now here you are signing up to be killed by a fucking disease against which there is a ninety-nine-percent effective vaccine. You fucking moron. Go in the fucking ocean and fuck a piranha. Fuck. Fuck that. Fuck you. Get vaccinated.Oh, you say you have a genuine allergy or medical condition that prevents you from receiving a fucking vaccine? That’s fine. I’m clearly not talking to you. I fucking love you. Fuck.Look, if you have been forwarded this essay from a friend or loved one, then there are two possibilities. Either you are a normal, regular, sensible fucking person like me who got fucking vaccinated at the first possible moment, and this essay channels all your fucking rage and sadness and is therefore cathartic OR, and I really hope this isn’t the fucking case, you AREN’T fucking vaccinated, and someone sent it to you because you fucking fucking fuck, you need to get fucking vaccinated. And rather than being fucking offended that someone is trying yet again to get you to take the fucking vaccine, you should understand that someone fucking loves you enough to try one last motherfucking time to get you to take the fucking vaccine before you fuck off to heaven, or hell, or some in-between place that’s just like a fucking mall or something where everything is free, including and especially the soft pretzels. So, congratulations! There is ONE person remaining in your life who wants to fucking save you from drowning in your own fucking lungs, you fucking fuckshit fuckdick, so for god’s sake, get your fucking ass out of your chair, go to the fucking pharmacy, and get a fucking vaccine, you absolute conscienceless fucking fuck fuck fuck. Get it. Get the fucking vaccine. Fuck you. Fuck fuck fuck. Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck!
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i assume most atheists will ask where is the evidence of the supernatural. they always do. then i post my links. (such as a damaged retina that healed itself, or a skin scale disease that just went away) then they move the goal post and say that those things happen to them too. but this thread is to cast light on that foolish assumption. why should we assume that?
we theists can show things that look like supernatural healing. healing that happens despite the science saying it's impossible. atheists can't show things that look supernatural happening to them. why is that? atheists assume the same level of things happen to them... but the examples are just never reported. for me, if someone prays and then something supernatural looking occurs, i see no reason to assume similar things happen to atheists too. the burden of proof is on the atheist, if they claim those things happen to them too.
it's plausible for an atheist to just claim that their assumption is that those supernatural things happen to their group too. if that's the case, they dont necessarily have a burden of proof. but that's a stance with no balls to it. why not try arguing your position as true? i guess we know why they dont... they can't prove their case if they did.
we have people getting miraculously healed right before our eyes. it's plain evidence. yet, as always, atheists dont like plain evidence. atheists just have a deep seated need to not believe, that's all there is to it.
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when folks talk about quality of care, they usually mean wait times are worse in the rest of the world. (every other developed country covers everyone at half the cost that we do) the thing is, we know this isn't true just by lookin at the supply of doctors. we have a doctor shortage.... which means we suffer when it comes to wait times compared to other countries. doctors like to specialize to make more money... so we do slightly better with specialized care. if you dont believe this basic supply and demand statistic, just look at the study done by 'the commonwealth', a healthcare think tank, that measured wait times, and concluded exactly what i just said.
we have ten percent of people uninsured. we know that they still receive care, just not as much. so adding ten percent more people to coverage isn't going to change much, even if they weren't already using care.
no matter how you look at it, this universal healthcare equals wait times thing, is a myth.
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after millions of years, they just decided to die in the industrial age. is there a conspiracy by mother nature to make mankind look guilty when it's really not?
i realize some skeptics acknowledge man's role, but still dont think we should do anything, but this thread is for those who think man hasn't caused this.
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why are we paying people's rent, when we could be building lots of shelters? i dont know the costs involved, but this could be building more apartments at the most, or it could just be building boarding houses like we used to have a long time ago. it doesn't cost a lot to give people shelter. we could give zero percent loans for the private sector to build and maintain those shelters, and instead of writing open checks, the government gets paid back. this would involve going against the left who wants to pay everyone's rent and the other part of the left who is opposed to opening development to the low income. of course, this is opposed to the right too, who doesn't want government involved in housing.
instead of just paying people's rent, we could make shelter affordable for a lot more people. people pay what they can afford, income based. homeless people get first dibs on new shelters.... homelessness would be cut drastically as a portion of their meager income is next to nothing.
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i'd propose everyone pays ten percent of their income per year, for ten years. that means, everyone chips in for their own tuition. everyone can afford ten percent of their income, no matter what the income is... so this improves affordability. it also means, that the better off grads/majors pay more.... which is the way it should be. any major that thinks they need more tuition should need special approval from congress. also, the fact you pay loans shouldn't affect your credit or ability to get a mortgage or things like that... it should be a hidden cost you pay. (currently many former students can't get mortgages and such cause of student loans)
at the very least, this should be the case for students who use FAFSA for financial assistance.
this is very generous, as it doesn't cost a lot to educate people. we should focus on educating people and getting them jobs, not on writing open checks to throw money at tuition. i'm opposed to free college the way the ilks of bernie want to do it.
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many generals in the army said it would happen, and even before the operation to end that war was over, the country succumbed to the taliban. it was definitely predictable. now the taliban has all the resources and weopons and such that they seized.
with that said, some people say if it was so easy for all this to happen, it was always a tenuous situation and we were just fighting an endless war to prop them up against something inevitable if we ever left. some say we also achieved our main objective, which was gettin those who were primarily responsible for 9 11.
maybe the real test for if biden gets blame, is if any of those terrorists regroup and attack the usa.
questions, comments, words of wisdom?
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of course this boils down to what is 'decent'.
just look at the amount of deaths and how many people live in the usa. 640000 dead divided by 333333333 living people = 2 in a thousand people have died, and the pandemic isn't even over yet.
here is more data....
"For all these reasons, reported infection fatality rates have varied. To get a better estimate, Brazeau and his team looked at 175 studies, finding just 10 they regarded as reliable. They adjusted for confounding factors and calculated the death rate for each age group, including 0 per cent for under 4s, less than 0.1 per cent for people under 40, 0.36 per cent if 50 to 54, 2.17 if 70 to 74, 5 per cent if 80 to 84 and 16 per cent for those over 90."
to put these numbers in perspective, if u r under 40, u have a one in a thosuand chance of death if u get the virus. if you are in your 40s u have probably about two or three deaths in a thousand.
they say with the delta variant, everyone will come in contact with the virus at some point. r u sure u wanna have a two in a thosuand chance of death for the average middle age person?
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aside from not being fully FDA approved, there's no good reason not to get it. every credible scientist says it's safe for almost everyone. there's a chance of death if you dont get the shot, but there's almost no chance of death if you do get the shot.
i expect a lot of non sense in this thread. probably a bunch of conspiracy theories. a whole lot of "consensus science isn't necessarily true even though i trust my own versions of authority". a lot of saying things without really saying anything.
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i think white people are open minded towards black people. it's just that there's a lotta baggage with black culture. so, they whites might be less likely to hire blacks or place them in housing, or whatever. i would call that discrimination. not racism. it's discrimination because the factor that is being used to make a decision is skin color, not the content of the person's character. but i dont think it's prejudicial in an unreasonable way. white people are only human and often fear blacks, and it's understandable that whites dont want to associate with much of black culture given there's so much toxicity included often times.
i think it's reasonable to say if there's discrimination there has to be racism as if they're one and the same. i just dont like to say there's so much racism given how open minded whites are. i can even understand if someone thought my distinction between discrimination and racism was a stupid distinction.
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i cite someone on quora.
“Socialism” and “redistribution of wealth” have nothing to do with each other; in fact the latter as a policy regime precludes socialism and only exists in capitalist and pre-capitalist economies.
Socialism is defined as social ownership of the means of production, implying that everyone is a recipient and beneficiary of the net social product and any productivity gains generated by the means of producing wealth. Under such a social arrangement the initial distribution of income would be more equal ex ante as there would be no classes based on the division of property ownership, and thus no need for redistributing income ex post.
Redistribution of wealth - by that I assume you mean progressive taxation and tax-funded public assistance - exists in capitalist systems to ameliorate poverty and as a remedy for employers failing to provide living wages to lower-working class workers. The goal of these measures is to enable more people to engage in the capitalist system as consumers, to prevent revolt and give workers a sense of security (to safeguard the capitalist system from radical criticism and discontent), as well as out of a general ethical concern for helping the less fortunate. None of these reasons have anything to do with replacing the capitalist system or private property with a socialist system and collective property in the means of production. Indeed, all these reasons for income redistribution and progressive taxation would be entirely redundant in a socialist system.
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they are superior due to the laws of political correctness. you can't say that their smaller brains and lower IQ and test scores makes them less intelligent. but you can say that they have superior athletic ability. thus, they are equally smart, but physically advantaged... making them genetically superior.
here's some science that points to them being able to run better, and such.
then again, maybe it might be permissible politically to say asians with their bigger brains and better test scores, are smarter. just as long as we're not contrasting blacks with whites in a negative way, then maybe there's more leeway than i might expect.
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we spend enough money on housing that every person who isn't completely crazy or drug addicted should have a place to go. my guess is most homeless people have those problems, but i'd think there's plenty who should have a place to go to. we can't give everyone an apartment and such. it's too wasteful and expensive. if we geared money towards homeless shelters, we'd have fewer homeless people, which should be our goal.
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private companies can limit speech. only the government is prevented from limiting speech. this is so settled as law, that i doubt the supreme court would even take the case. i saw that thomas had a dissent in a case that would support trump, but i assume the other conservatives are traditional enough not to join him.
colleges have governmental regulation as a condition of taking federal funds. big tech doesn't get government money to my knowledge. i doubt they'd need or want all that.
trump's case might be good politics, in that he seems like he's taking on bullies, and it's good for fund raising... but that's all it is, pure politics.
which of you ditto head dim wits agrees with trump on this, and why?
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evidence for God and the supernatural exists
you could make the case that the supernatural exists beyond a preponderance of the evidence. yet, despite this, atheists are atheists and have faith in nothing.
i'm referring to the every day definition of the word atheists, those who believe God does not exist. atheists as simply a-theist, without God, another definition, is at least plausible. those types are more like agnostics anyway, which is also plausible.
most atheists are ignorant, but i dont see too many who change their views when presented with evidence, so it's mostly a problem with being irrational.
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is it a human construct? some people say time doesn't exist or is an illusion. the idea being that we simply exist, and we have a way to measure from one moment to the next, but that doesn't mean there's something 'moving' when we are just 'existing'.
but the reason i'd say time exists, is because if you go at light speed or around black holes, you would age at a different rate. maybe time should be considered the fourth dimension, after all.
what do all ya'll think?
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Science and Nature
it's very rare for someone to need an assault rifle for self defense. we're talking maybe hundred per year of examples, i'd think. but how often are those guns used in mass shootings and for murder? much more likely.
assault rifles are not just like other guns in scary lookin form. they are more efficient at shooting multiple people quicker. that's because of their spread and their ease of triggering.
yes knives kill more people than assault rifles, but when you consider how many murders are done by the rifles versus the knives, the rifles have a higher rate of murder.
gun are not just tools. people are more likely to kill if they have a gun. this is common sense and backed by science. (gun murders are wildly out of control in the usa versus other countries while non-gun murders are not- this isn't just a bad person problem. areas with more guns have more murder)\
more gun control science: https://guneducationalinformation.weebly.com/
people dont kill people, bullets do. ('guns dont kill people, people do')
there's no evidence the framers were even trying to protect self defense and hunting, let alone that they were trying to protect mass killing machines
just thought i'd address some of the more common nonsensical arguments upfront.
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quanta act as particle when observed. they act as waves when not observed. doesn't this mean our consciousness does more than have interactions in our brain? this double slit experiment proves that our mind affects stuff outside of our mind. there's clearly something much deeper going on than "human consciousness is merely a function of our brain"
this has spiritual or religious implications, arguably.
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Religion
-You can tell this is a gun problem, not just a bad person problem as the gun lobby says, also by comparing non-gun homicides of similar countries as the USA, and then adding guns to the mix: non-gun homicides are slightly on the higher side but within normal range, while gun homicides go wildly higher. If this was a bad person problem at its core, there would be a wildly higher amount of non-gun homicides as well, but that's not the case. Included is an article describing this phenomenon and a link with a graph
it's possible that folks just use guns instead of other weopons to kill, such that non-gun murders are within the global normal range. but that's not the most strightforlward interpretation. it goes against logic. non-gun murders should be wildly out of control, too, even if it's not to the same extent as gun murders.
we have half the world's guns and our murder rate is way out of control, particularly gun murders. this is pretty obvious what is happening.
but it's not just gun v non gun murders, there's a ton of other persruavsive evidence that points to guns causing more murder than would otheriwise occur without so many guns.
GUN CONTROL SCIENCE
-where there is more gun control, there is less murder. this is the scientific consensus, as shown with the literature review. being a literature review makes this a lot more informing than just being a single study; we see the consensus forming. also included is a link to a poll of scientists but a literature review itself makes the claims even stronger.
-where there are more guns, there is more murder, across geographic regions from localities and larger. this is also a lot more informing because it a literature review of lots of studies. what's more, people are shown not to kill with other weopons instead of guns, as is often argued, because if they did there would be no correlation here.
-women are five times more likely to be killed if their significant other has a gun. this is a practical point in illustration of the guns v murders correlation. same in individual lives as general trends
-you are more likely to be murdered if you have a gun, as well as those close to you
-States with more gun control have fewer mass shootings
-only around two hundred and fifty killings are done in the name of self defense per year. people like to pretend defense is such a huge thing, but the odds of being murdered is is closer to forty times higher. the odds of being shot and not necessarily killed are upwards of four hundred times higher.
-we have half the worlds guns in the usa but a small percent of the worlds population
-Police are more likely to kill unjustifiably in low gun control and high gun areas due to their increased fear, and police are more likely to be shot themselves in those areas.
-we have half the worlds guns in the usa but a small percent of the worlds population
-Police are more likely to kill unjustifiably in low gun control and high gun areas due to their increased fear, and police are more likely to be shot themselves in those areas.
-Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the United States' gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher.
-High school kids in the USA are eighty two times more likely to be shot than the same kids in other developed countries.
-states with more gun control have fewer youth who die from guns
https://abc30.com/5396718/?ex_cid=TA_KFSN_FB&utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=5d2d172f8e73cc000164c229&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2T40EdBsGdPZk_VCL8Bi5RDJsNtpF2Ud9NIYiB74njS72zrcqudw1idWY
https://abc30.com/5396718/?ex_cid=TA_KFSN_FB&utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=5d2d172f8e73cc000164c229&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2T40EdBsGdPZk_VCL8Bi5RDJsNtpF2Ud9NIYiB74njS72zrcqudw1idWY
-it is claimed that most murders are gang related, but this looks to be factually incorrect in the link. even if higher numbers floating around on the internet are true, our murder problem still there if you take out the gang murders from consideration. the numbers here can be arrived at with basic math.
-this really isn't just a mental health problem. we don't have more people with mental health problems than other countries.... just more people with guns. the study controls for mental health factors v other factors.
-we dont have more crime than the rest of the world, just a lot more people getting shot and killed. you aren't more likely to be mugged here, for instance, but you are more likely to be mugged and shot in the process. again a gun problem. showing it's not just deviants being deviants as some suggest but an emphasis on the gun problem.
-You can tell this is a gun problem, not just a bad person problem as the gun lobby says, also by comparing non-gun homicides of similar countries as the USA, and then adding guns to the mix: non-gun homicides are slightly on the higher side but within normal range, while gun homicides go wildly higher. If this was a bad person problem at its core, there would be a wildly higher amount of non-gun homicides as well, but that's not the case. Included is an article describing this phenomenon and a link with a picture.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gunpolitics/comments/71n1u2/gunnongun_homicide_rates_in_oecd_countries_for/
-people like to say assault rifles are not that dangerous, because there are only a few hundred murders with them per year out of only around ten or so thousand of gun murders. the thing is though, the percent chance an assault rifle will be used to kill someone is significantly higher than the chance other guns will be used to kill someone. /// you can do the math yourself. there are 2.5 million assault rifles in circulation. 374 rifle deaths per year. there are 11000 gun homicides. there's a gun for every person in the usa, 340 million. what's the math say? 374 divided by 11000 is 3.4 percent of deaths are from rifles. 2.5 milliion divided by 340 milliion is less than a percent. so what does this mean? despite rifles being less than a percent of guns, they cause 3.4 percent of deaths. that is, a rifle has a higher percent chance of being used to murder than a non rifle. most guns that are used in murder are hand guns, but assault rifles are more likely to be chosen over a hand gun when faced with that choice. just like, as an analogy, people are more likely to speed in a sports car, but most cars that speed are not sports cars.
-people like to throw around number of defensive gun use. the idea is that not all defensive gun uses result in a killing. the most common number in literature is tens of thousands, though the number vary wildly. the only thing is, even if you are more likely to use a gun in self defense than being murdered, you are still more likely to be murdered than someone who doesn't have a gun. also, a lot of those thousands of defensive uses are not all that critical.... downplaying their significance. and, a lot of those 'defensive' uses were actually situations that were people instigating and escalating a situation that wouldn't otherwise exist, as the link below illustrates. even if we used the higher numbers, is it all that convincing that there are tens of thousands more near murders in a nation with already a globally disproportionate number of murders? it holds true, that we could give lots more people guns, and that may increase defensive use... but it would come at the cost of more murder, too.
-for more on giving an overview of the gun issues, see the following
-in the usa, the number of murders has overall gone down in recent decades. the thing is, while the number of guns went up, the number of people owning them went down. also, this is just one measure: all the other measure include all the countries and localities where gun levels are proportionate to murder rates.
-for more information on gun policy in the usa and other countries: www.gunpolicy.org
-for more information on gun policy in the usa and other countries: www.gunpolicy.org
-australia. they enacted major gun reform around twenty years ago after a mass shooting. they bought back a bunch of guns and enacted other gun control. their mass shootings stopped. this almost surely is not an anomloy. their homicides dropped by up to fifty percent. the idea is a lower murder rate came with a lower percent of people owning guns (note that this is different than the specific gun ownership rate because if less people own more guns that could cause the percent owning to go down but the overall rate could be the same). misinformation attempts like to point that overall murder went up slightly after reform, but the rate did not and went down. also, the number of guns have gone up closer to previous level but the gun ownership rate is still lower. it is true that global murder went down, and some of that correlates with australi's rate... but global reductions arent as drastic s australia's.
-japan. they literally have barely any murders, and barely any guns. they have a rigorous process for allowing guns
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it's a fact. people often experience elaborate afterlife stories when they die. they're called near death experiences. these are either people experiencing the afterlife, or they're people hallucinating elaborate afterlife stories. this latter point is the only thing that is a rational possibility that an atheist can claim. but it's a far fetched stupid theory. i've seen atheists try to claim people dont experience elaborate afterlife stories when they die, but there's no other way to describe it. they died, clinically. they're not hallucinating random imagery like aliens or fractals or something like a drug trip. no drug causes consistent elaborate afterlife stories for people. what i'm saying is especially true for the exceptional examples. visit nderf.org to get an idea of the basic and exceptional examples. even the basic examples are afterlife stories to some extent. but even if it was just the exceptional examples we used, it's still right to call the situation as people experiencing elaborate afterlife stories when they die.
this isn't even looking at the strong scientific evidence for why near death experiences are probably authentic afterlife experiences.
it's irrational to say people arent commonly experiencing elaborate afterlife stories when they die. it's a stupid, but admittedly possible, theory to say they're just hallucinating all these stories so consistently. it's at the very least a big mystery as to why they would just hallucinate all this, to which atheists have no good answer, and most of the time their ideas are irrational or incoherent. i expect lots of irrational nonsense from atheists in this thread.
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the main reason they suggest masks even for those who get vaccines is because they dont want people to spread the virus to those who dont get the vaccine. but if folks get the opportunity and are too stupid to take it to get vaccinated, fuck em. i realize that the vaccines are not a hundred percent effective and even those with vaccines might die, but it's a negligible amount. there's risks to being alive, that's just the way it is. we should re open the economy soon and do away with mask mandates for these reasons.
i would also prefer to give stimulus money first to those who get the vaccines, and again fuck those who dont get vaccinated. so that's the only reason i'd postpone getting back to normal in the next few months, to give people a chance to get vaccinated and get paid.
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a good wage should come from the employer, not from the good will of customers. plus the current system allows and justifies employers paying a few bucks an hour, which is ridiculous. i actually respect people who dont tip, cause the system is perpetuating this stupid system. it would be okay if tips were just good will for good service, but it's become expected. i like people to have the freedom to tip, but outlawing tipping would make more sense than our current system, because our current system just creates more problems than it solves, so just shutting down the whole system at least has a logic to it.
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i think a lot about politics, but never really considered that this issue could be argued either way, i think.
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from Quora
Given that Republicans lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight Presidential elections, and that Trump never polled above 50%, why doesn't the GOP realise that Trump 2024 or a Trump endorsed candidate is a almost certainly a losing ticket?The current iteration of the Republican Party has relied on a shrinking base of rural white voters since Nixon's Southern Strategy back in the late 1960s. It's been kept afloat by gerrymandering, voter suppression and the Electoral College ever since.
Today even all that may not be enough. Deep red states like Georgia and Arizona have already turned blue. Without those two states the Republican advantage in the Senate and Electoral College have vanished.
If only the Republican Party had a real leader who could come up with actual ideas and policies that might make people's lives better. Maybe then they could expand their base to minorities and college educated suburbanites. Instead they choose to cling to Trump since he brings 80% of the shrinking Republican base with him. It's clearly a losing strategy which is in some ways a shame. For Trump to cause the Republican Party to descend into the party of white victimhood and wacky conspiracy theories is definitely bad for America. That's the choice they have decided to make. Good luck with that.
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species to species evolution
"Fossil hunters have discovered the remains of the earliest ancestor of the modern whale: a small deer-like animal that waded in lagoons and munched on vegetation. ... In less than 10m years, the whale's ancestors completely transformed as they shifted from a four-legged life on land to a life in the ocean."
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Science and Nature
the main reason i say that, is because the police man's supporters say floyd was gonna die anyway as he was doped up. they seem sure of it. i think this is the key issue that it will all hinge on, how likely floyd was gonna die and how much policeman contributed. i dont buy it that policeman should be found guilty just for making the death come sooner if he was gonna die anyway... and i dont think he should be found guilty if there was just a very small chance floyd would have lived.
what i think this all should boil down to, is what percent of doubt is truly reasonable doubt? ten percent? five percent? if there was a five percent chance floyd could have lived, i dont think we can say the policeman is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. id draw the line at ten percent. basically i think we need to be ninety percent sure someone did the crime before finding them guilty. and id say that probability of reasonable doubt, is tied exactly to whether floyd was gonna die anyway.
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