Bay 12 Games Forum

I've been wondering about jobs having a wage maximum and minimum according to the social value they created.

So hospital cleaners would earn a lot more, but advertising consultants might earn very little.

Very nebuous concept to measure, but an interesting thought.

My "controversial" response: society, in aggregate, already sets wages in proportion to the value they provide.

Controversial idea: The US government should cut it's discretionary military spending by half and instead distribute that money to all it's residents (including children with their share being allocated to their parents until they're adults) each year, turning the average American into an economic powerhouse by literally dumping millions of dollars into their budget each year.

Military spending would still be 3 times that of Russia by the way.

This smells like a confusion between million = 10^6 and million = 10^9.  There are only about 330x10^6 people in the US.  The entire annual US government spending is "only" $3.8 x 10^12.  That is on the order of $1 x 10^4 per person.  I'm not sure how you'd consider this dumping "millions" into the average American's budget each year.

That's just an established saying, it doesn't change the primary definition of the word. English, what a language.

The first-listed definition in many (most?) English dictionaries for 'faith' is just "complete trust or confidence in someone or something."  So instead of saying "the skeptic has faith in the system of evidence-based validation of theory" how about "the skeptic has trust in the system of evidence-based validation of theory". Does that really change anything?

Anyway, thing is lack of belief isn't an affirmative belief in and of itself, however much certain brands of bible thumpers say otherwise. You don't need anything to not believe in a god, you just don't believe. No faith involved one way or the other 'cause there's nothing involved to begin with.

Maybe on a fundamental level, I agree - but most people don't just "not believe" - they "believe that their belief is the correct one" - which takes some... for lack of a better word, faith?  I think that is the point the video is making.

There is also the aspect of - if you were not in a culture that espouses the idea of atheism, what would you believe?  How much of the "it takes no effort to not believe X" is actually a product of environment?

Put another way - did the first human cultures have a theistic belief or not? If so - did that take more or less "effort" than the alternative?

but we don't KNOW that we can't because we can't know anything.

Are you sure? 

Eh, if the things labeled christian diverges wildly from what you believe, what you believe probably isn't christian, though you likely shanghai'd the name.

I suppose that depends on how you interpreted 'diverges wildly'.  I didn't think it was that vague... I mean, most denominations that claim to be Christian have essentially the same core faiths like the Trinity and Jesus is divine (although you can't assume this - some Christian seminaries don't actually teach this).  But beyond that, things can be pretty different in terms of what even that 'core' faith means in terms of how your life might be affected.  I mean, people tend to have this view that "Evangelical Christian" in the US means Dispensationalism and hypocrisy, heavy personal salvation but don't have to change behavior, your neighbor be damned, etc. Some denominations are heavily works based, some are all about only "personal" salvation, your neighbor be damed to fire and brimstone, others are about loving your neighbors and enemies (though not necessarily supporting their behaviors), etc. etc.  And that's not even getting into stuff like church governance (hierarchical? congregational?), is wearing (or not) a hat a sin, and are guitars the work of the devil (forgetting that David worshipped so freely he got criticized for not dressing properly while doing so)?

I mean, there are "reasonable" differences in theology like is communion transubstantiation or not, just what does predestination mean anyway, that are kind of "non-divisive" but then you go down the rabbit hole into things like qualification for church leaders and sexuality and roles of men, women, children, and hats.  And some of these aren't trivial either - they speak volumes about people's views of God and humanity and the relationship between them - especially with the more recent developments about morality (which oddly focuses on consensual sexuality, you don't hear much controversy about substance abuse or financial corruption - is it ok to have a practicing embezzler be a head pastor?) that sort of confound the concept of an unchanging God (which, depending on your denomination, may or may not be a thing).

So all that to say - both in religion and politics - there is almost assuredly not any organized group with more than one person that has exactly the same beliefs.

Forgive me if that's like complex numbers 101 thing, but this post just made me realize...

Complex numbers are essentially an extension of the principles of negative numbers to another type of operation, aren't they?

What I mean is it seems to me you could essentially view all negative numbers as complex-ish numbers of positive numbers and -1. -1 is in its own way an 'imaginary' construct - when have you last seen negative-one apple on the table? - that acts weird in respect to a 'basic' form of the operation of addition, i is just the same thing for powers.

What do you mean by "an extension of the principles of negative numbers"?  Negative numbers simply flow from the rules of addition.  Countable numbers are natural numbers, negatives are still real numbers.

Or put another way, what do you mean by "i is the just the same thing for powers"?