Phi for All

Very good point. I rather like walking on the sidewalks for a few dollars a year in taxes, as opposed to the monthly fee I'd be charged if they were privately owned. And don't forget, when a group wants to reduce taxation for social spending, they're usually also aiming to reduce funding for regulation as well. Our taxes pay to keep our goods and services free from contamination and bad practices. I would venture to say that these groups cost taxpayers several times what the OP's "lazy" citizens cost us. These "greedy" folks waste far more taxes, and don't contribute as much to the economy overall. And when they use their wealth to lobby for less taxes for themselves, they compound the problem for the rest of us.

True market capitalism requires those who are more successful within that system to subsidize those who are less successful within that system through taxation. Everyone is needed, but not all are good at accumulating wealth, so we need taxes for programs that fill the gaps in a system of private ownership. The wealthy don't need libraries and museums and swimming pools and parks because their homes have all these things and more, so taxes are required to build facilities the rest of us can share. I also think the depiction of social programs as free handouts for the lazy to be naive and small-minded, but to be fair, the right has been pushing this myth forever, or at least since Reagan and his Black Welfare Queen. FOX News famously pushes these myths and has since their beginning. More misinformation aimed at reducing much needed social spending, and a very sad perspective on modern life in large societies.

I used to feel the same way about threads where people focused mostly on ridicule and making the other person's arguments look silly rather than making their own look strong, but all we can ever do is voice our concerns and see if they're shared, and hopefully the reasoning gets the spotlight instead of the drama.

This makes it sound like reason and sound arguments can only be made by "regulars", or that "regulars" get special treatment that amplifies their voice, or that "regulars" with lesser arguments can gang up on a better argument to overwhelm it. Or is it something else? Because after all the dust settles from a fractious conversation here, I can still go back and re-read to tell the good arguments from the bad, and adjust my worldview accordingly. Perhaps the subject of a thread in Comments & Suggestions if you're concerned about it?

"I have no problems with you working in the cannabis industry, Sid, but why is there glitter and macaroni glued to your cover letter?"

! Moderator Note We seem to have multiple issues going on here. Gender terms, transphobia, legal ramifications, celebrity support, and misinformation are just a few. These are all discussion-worthy by themselves, but when we talk about them all simultaneously, we end up going around in circles, trying to apply each argument to many issues. Staff has been wanting to split these topics into separate discussions, hoping for some focus, but it hasn't been easy to figure what needs its own topic. We're on page 25 of this thread, and it feels like 5 pages have just been repeated 5 times. Weirdly, just like politics and voters in general, most folks are displaying a lack of long-term memory and just keep rehashing the same points and ignoring what others have replied to them. We'd like to float the idea of talking about Jordan Peterson's ideas on gender terms vs the law, and also talk about Dave Chappelle and his issues with transgenders, and also about misinformation on mental health issues, and also about perspectives on the arguments applied to sensitive issues in this age of extremist views, but NOT ALL AT ONCE. We're going to leave this open for suggestions on how to proceed, but please don't add to the chaos here. Would you like to discuss these issues separately, or should we close this and go fume in our respective corners?

! Moderator Note Oh, we're not doing another six pages of this! Either you have enough to help you overcome this stumbling block and you just need to go back and reread the thread, or you're purposely misunderstanding the replies you've been given (either because you don't know enough to understand them, or you're trolling to waste the time of people who've studied this). In any case, this thread needs closing so bad!

It's probably only a "ding" rather than a full red flag. Perhaps you aren't going to get the job if they have other similarly qualified candidates who don't have cannabis experience, but I doubt it's going to automatically make them roundfile your resume.

The paper seems to suggest this may be more common in birds than previously thought. I get the genetic stability benefits, and it's always advantageous to lay more eggs, but doesn't this create a lack of genetic diversity if it happens more often?

! Moderator Note We've been doing this for a while, and know it's detrimental to the learning process to have more than one thread on the same subject. Learning through discussion is our focus, not on catering to individual wishes. We work for the owners, not you. I recommend you start your own site and develop the rules you and your membership want. Thread closed for lack of engagement.

I remember the debates staff had here regarding whether to allow creationist discussions, since the tactics used were more or less the same: misrepresent, misinform, keep repeating previously refuted statements, and make claims supported by nothing but personal incredulity or fallacious reasoning. This subject seems to elicit the same types of arguments designed to wear away at critical thinking.

Probably something I'm not talking about. Yeah, I'm going to go with that.

You shouldn't, because even though she's not a scientist, she embodies the idea of not being capable of dealing with a natural world event without filtering it through her religious beliefs first, possibly to the detriment of others. Have you met my country, the USofA? We have many of these, many of them in leadership positions.

This is how I define the word. It's ALL indoctrination when you're teaching a certain methodology or curriculum or coursework that benefits from everyone being on the same page. Intent is the key, whether you're trying to get all the welders to follow best practices when building a bridge, or trying to weed out independent thought from the folks you want to control so you can use them to take over the world.

On the contrary, I think "lack of belief" is an excellent claim, and is basically the null hypothesis between "I believe god(s) exist" and "I don't believe god(s) exist. I can assume that a lack of belief is appropriate until evidence shows otherwise.

For me, it most closely aligns with my stance on the matter. In science, it's better to say "We don't know" rather than conclude something there's no evidence for. Since science deals with the natural world, and the concept of deities is a supernatural one, I think the scientific stance is to withhold any judgement until there's some evidence to analyze. Science doesn't have the tools to measure god(s) until they agree to become observable, predictable, and consistent.

In this discussion, how much do you learn by guessing from your novice status, then rejecting replies that are trying to correct you? What you see as "taking the time to learn" comes off more like "stop telling me I'm wrong until I'm finished explaining my idea!". If you were building a house instead of a hypothesis, I'd let you know right away that you screwed up the foundation, and I'd advise you NOT to build any further upon it. And I'd hope you'd thank me for it instead of giving me so much pushback. In science, we're looking for evidence that either supports or falsifies a particular explanation. Opinion has very little meaning there. But hey, every new actor wants to tackle Shakespeare. How hard can it be, really?

How is that an analogy for the topic? AFAICT, people asking you to use their preferred pronouns aren't responding like this at all. They're clearly telling you that it makes them uncomfortable because they don't identify with those gender labels. They're not saying "Stop saying that, you're making me suffer for reasons I won't elaborate on and are none of your business!" Haven't they been elaborating about their reasoning all along, and asking you to make it your business as well? Honestly, I can imagine all this happening to the first guy who tried to tell people his name is spelled differently. Geoffrey: "Actually, I prefer a different spelling. It's not Jeffrey. I spell it Geoffrey." MigL's Great-Great-Grandpa: "Hey, around here we spell it 'Jeffrey', so that's how I'm going to spell your name. You look more like a Jeffrey than a Geoffrey! Are you gonna call the cops if I get it wrong?" Geoffrey: "Of course not, but that's not how I want it spelled. I'm having it written this way in all my legal documents, and asking people to spell it correctly. If you spell it with a J it will be wrong. Why do you want to spell MY name YOUR way?" Koti's G-G-G: "Jeffrey is the way it's always been spelled, and so what if that offends you? I'm basically blameless if I stick to tradition, Jeffrey. Jeffrey! Jeffrey! Jeffrey! Wait, you have to call me Oodiladido from now on!"

As an example, when she was part of the McCain ticket in 2008, many people worried about Sarah Palin and her religious stances, and whether she could put aside her deeply held beliefs that an apocalypse is prophesied in the Bible if she was ever put into the position of deciding to pursue nuclear warfare or not. Based on her past stances, many thought she would only be pretending to consider it a choice. And if you're not Catholic, or believe in a religion that claims the Earth is only thousands of years old instead of billions, how do you find success in biology or another field that requires a healthy understanding of the evolutionary process? How can you simultaneously believe your deity created your species out of dust AND that millions of years ago all us vertebrates were tiny fishes, without pretense of some kind?

That's why I offered "accept". It could basically mean you accept their rights to a particular religious belief system. It doesn't have to mean you accept it as gospel. It has a more affirmative meaning than "tolerate", which seems more neutral to negative, while not being as positive as "respect". In the case of a funeral, I would say you "respect" the individual's wishes, you "accept" that they worshipped in a way you never did, and you "tolerate" the religious aspect that you feel isn't necessary for you to "respect" your acquaintance. You're not an adherent, you understand that they are though, and think enough of the deceased to participate in a way you think they'd appreciate. This hopefully removes any perceived obligation on your part to adhere to religious practices.

You don't seem to be making a distinction between people's rights to an opinion and people's right to point out why an opinion is shitty and wrong. To analogize, nobody is knocking the dinner plate from anyone's hands, they're just pointing out the unhealthy dietary choices piled high there. This seems to be similar to some posters who come here and claim censorship when all that happened was their idea met criticism. Nobody is removing what's been said; instead, what's been said is being held to the fire and found lacking.

I would classify this as wishful thinking. If it helps you in thinking about death, and doesn't cause you to change the way you live your life, I see no harm in it.

Something I had to do was split my belief system into three parts: Explanations I trust, explanations I wish were true, and explanations I accept on faith. Science gives me a methodology that produces information I can trust, and I feel the explanations for various phenomena derived from that method are the strongest parts of my beliefs. OTOH, I wish what you're saying here about consciousness were true, but I have nothing to support that belief except hope. There's no evidence that our consciousness survives the death of our body and brain. There is very little to nothing I believe using faith, since that requires me to ignore evidence to the contrary. Some people think faith is the strongest form of belief, but I think it's the weakest.

Trust me on this, it's your blind spots that will cause you the most woe as you get older. The longer you take to find them, the more shocking and disruptive they'll be when they're uncovered. Ignorance is bliss until it's suddenly not.

Do you have a way to determine whether these people are asking for "respect", or just "tolerance" of their beliefs? It sounds like you give an "acknowledgement" that they have a right to their beliefs, so maybe that's all they're asking for in many cases. Does "respect" mean you have to "accept" their beliefs as valid? There seems to be enough terms to describe behavior on a spectrum, and thus be more accurate in descriptions.