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Messages - LuminousMonkey

#1
General Discussion / In Public Hands
May 07, 2010, 12:11:53 AM
The Western Australia State government wants to privatise hospital services. (Edit: Cleaning services)

However, as usual, there's opposition to it, despite the television advert that annoys me, there's also this website:

In Public Hands

Their evidence page is, well, lacking evidence, and just seem to be making assertions.

However, they have a research paper that's just been made available that I'm going to look through.

Thoughts?
#2
Future Episodes / Re: Veganism/Vegatarianism
April 01, 2010, 03:04:37 AM
You could always ask Jacob why his dog still eats meat.

There is a proven benefit to reducing your meat intake, and that's the position I would take if arguing for vegan/vegetarianism.  Animal rights/pain/etc are an emotional issue.

But regardless, I don't lose any respect for Jacob over this.
#3
Quote from: VectorM on March 17, 2010, 04:23:49 AM
Totally not on topic, but am I the only one that actually refers to ladyattis as a "she"?

Sidenote: A few weeks ago I asked her what pronoun she prefers, she said he or she is fine.
#4
Could always shoot back with "Remember the Wright brothers?"?
#5
Part 1
[yt]j4H0_8nnlxE[/yt]

Part 2
[yt]pRy6kV9-U4E[/yt]

Am I wrong? But, is this nothing but an appeal to emotion, followed by a link to some scientific papers, then him just using them as a basis for a line of thought of:

"In free markets, companies go bust, which causes unemployment, which causes crime, so free markets are bad."

(So he would advocate government bailouts of companies?)

I think the premise is, free markets are unstable, so they need to be made stable via government.

Please don't go off what I say here, watch the videos, but I think that's his gist?
#6
Given the recent discussions about the public healthcare "option" in the US.  I've been a bit curious as to how our own healthcare system in Australia has affected things.  So I've been thinking about exploring it's affects, and how things were before it existed, etc.

A sort of case study, however, I've never done any research like this when I was at Uni, so does anyone know of any good books I can find on the subject of statistics, etc, they may help me in trying to interpret what I find? I want to try and approach this as scientifically as I can.
#7
I seem to recall some people are a bit worried about domain name registration and the majority of the root DNS servers being in control by one agency or country.  Unfortunately I'm relying off memory, so I could be way off.

Even if that was the case, it could be very quickly duct taped up if it went to poop.

Unless of course you're a government and pass legislation to introduce a mandatory filter to "protect the children."  But then again the decentralised nature of the Internet will let us Australians get around that.
#8
General Discussion / Re: Fail Quotes
March 13, 2010, 08:43:31 PM
He used the argument saying the current king of France is neither an theist or an atheist, because there is no such thing that exists.

He seems think that if someone argues that the word atheist is someone that lacks a belief in god or gods, then it is incorrect, because rocks and people that don't exist clearly aren't atheist.

Talk about moving something completely out of context, I was going to comment and say the next time he talks to rocks, or non-existent people he should let me know.  But I've decided that he's just a waste of my time.

Quite frankly, his discussion seems to be, if you will excuse me, just a bunch intellectual masturbation.  He's talking about set logic, yet seems to miss that it's boolean logic.  If something is not true, then it is false.

Talking about the belief of a rock is out of context in the discussion, and is meaningless.
#9
General Discussion / Re: Fail Quotes
March 12, 2010, 12:29:56 AM
I don't think I've good enough at elucidating my thoughts, or I must be misunderstanding what he's saying.

He says this:

QuoteA gnostic claims to know. No-one is gnostic.

To me that looks like he's using the correct definition of gnostic, then suddenly shifts the meaning right after.  Am I wrong here?

Religious people claim to know god exists all the time, they think such things are knowable.  He just seems to, basically twist around and up his own backside.  But I'm just a simple man, so I could be wrong.
#10
General Discussion / Re: Fail Quotes
March 11, 2010, 11:17:44 PM
"A gnostic claims to know. No-one is gnostic." -- gklr

I really can't be bothered with him after this either.
#11
I've been wondering the same things. I thought I could have a play with WolframAlpha to see if I could get a general idea.  But unfortunately I don't really know enough about statistics to have an educated guess at the moment.
#12
Spot on about Thunderf00t I think.

His videos that go outside debunking creationists have been pretty telling, I've lost respect for him because of them.
#13
It also makes the point that it's cruel you can't buy insurance after the fact.  Geez, do they think you could buy home insurance after your house burns down?

What I don't get though, is they always seem to be against people being able to opt-out.  I mean, sure, have the option, but why not let people who don't want it opt-out and not pay the tax associated with it then?

Or wouldn't that work anyway?
#14
Quote from: valvatica on February 25, 2010, 06:46:38 AM
Kodos, to be correct  :)

Argh, I wasn't sure and resorted to the first quote I found.

We have compulsory voting here in Australia, and basically I will just do an invalid vote because none of the parties are close enough to what I want, so I don't think any should get any help from me.
#15
Vogter2100 has posted yet another video on the subject again, now, while I still place myself in the "still researching" camp (while favouring liberty). I am finding it frustrating that he still doesn't seem to understand.  In his latest video, he's making the point that people don't want to bother with having to handle the water, sewage, police, etc, that's why you need the state to do it.

But I'm struggling to see how he could have that point of view, just because some people wouldn't want to take care of it, doesn't mean that there wouldn't want to be companies that do?

I think he could be making the point that my wife makes (in a separate issue), in that, if there's too much choice, then it's too hard for people to make a decision.  For example, if you had 100 insurance companies then it's too hard to make an educated decision on the "right" one.  I think it's a pretty weak argument, but I think that's a point he is making, if I understand correctly?