Bay 12 Games Forum

Disclaimer, first of all: I've had to reexamine and completely alter my arguments several times in this post, and I've moved stuff, edited stuff, and deleted stuff. I hope it makes sense and is at least somewhat logical.

It seems people constantly mix "Do you believe in God?" with "Does God exist?" Former is knowable, latter is not.

Using those two questions then, this is how I would define the religious terms:

A theist by definition would answer "yes" to both of those questions.
An atheist would answer "no" to both of those questions.
An agnostic would either answer "yes" or "no" to the first, and "I don't know" to the second.

However, it should be noted that the first question is, under normal circumstances, the same as the second. The agnostic response provides the exception to this, of course, but if this were any other similar question the two you posed would be exactly the same. That is because by asking "Does god exist?" you are also asking "Do you believe in god?". With the 2 questions you gave, a sane person cannot answer "yes" to one and "no" to another; they are either going to answer "yes" to both or "no" to both. It is only when the agnostic says "I don't know if a god exists" that you are required to ask "do you believe in god?" because answering the 2nd question with a yes or no automatically answers the first. When you ask someone if something exists, you are really asking them if they believe it exists (the exception, again, being the agnostic, but I'm too tired to reason that out with logic). While the questions are logically different, I suppose they are interpreted to be the same due to social and practical conventions.

And second, the percentages don't make any sense. What's it like being 72% sure and how is it different from being 59% sure? Either you accept the claim or you don't.

Perhaps I made a mistake in that regard. As far as my mind can tell me right now, there is not a qualitative difference between 72% sure and 59% sure. The point I was trying to make (but perhaps did not emphasize well enough) is that there is a qualitative difference between 99% sure and 100% sure. If you were 100% sure, while you may still be lacking real and factual proof, your certainty is so strong that you truly think the proof is there (regardless of whether it truly is or not).

Quote from: The Mechanical Man on July 20, 2012, 03:32:25 pm

Hurray for being able to disable GFWL on Grand Theft Auto IV! Still have to deal with that Social Club thing, though...

Also, Crusader Kings 2 is 75% off in a flash sale. I missed it's original sale. Inevitable "is it worth it?" question. Will be looking into the Crusader Kings 2 thread for answers, but any quick replies here would be helpful as well. It's on sale for another 2 1/2 hours!

Yes.
Very much so.
Whether to get the music and the expansion pack (which you need to play as muslims) isn't so clear, if you think they are worth it get them as well.
But the base game is absolutely great (although its a bit complicated at times, so be sure that you are fine with that).

I take it this game will appeal to a man such as myself who enjoys the Total War and Civilization games?

EDIT: Please disregard my method of defining the terms of atheist, theist, and agnostic here. Refer to my next post for a more accurate definition.

To truly be an atheist, one must have absolute (100%) belief in that a god, deity, or something of similar nature does not exist.
To truly be a theist, one must have absolute (again, 100%) belief that a god, deity, or something of similar nature does exist.

For anyone in these definitions, that is the final answer. For them, the mystery is already solved. There is no wiggle room here; if you are an atheist, you absolutely do not believe in god. There is no doubt whatsoever in your mind.

To be an agnostic, one does not have absolute belief of the existence or non-existence of gods.

As such, an agnostic atheist would then believe a god does not exist, but accepts that one may (however small a chance). In this case, they would have anywhere between 50-100% belief in the non-existence of gods (if belief could be measured as a percentage. Perhaps this make this faulty logic? I don't think so myself). An agnostic theist would also then have between a 50-100% belief in the existence of gods. They would believe that a god exists, but their lack of 100% certainty makes them agnostic; because if you lack 100% certainty that god exists, then that missing percentage is the measure of your certainty that god does not exist.

What agnosticism is not is a 50/50 belief- that you are 50% certain god does exist, and 50% certain god does not exist. That is not what agnosticism is. Agnosticism is not a belief in the same way that atheism and theism are. I, for one, do not believe that anyone can be "agnostic" but not be an atheist or theist. Either you are an atheist, theist, agnostic atheist, agnostic theist, or whatever that 50/50 belief is.

But I'm sure that since everybody has their own little definitions of things, my explanation of this would be totally wrong to some people.

Quote from: The Mechanical Man on July 18, 2012, 07:23:19 pm

The argument relies on the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest, only applied to economics. There is a constant competition between businesses. Ultimately, the idea is that the business with the most costumers will get the most profits. In order to attract costumers and be the best business, that business may have to have higher quality products, lower prices, etc. This is to convince people to go to that business rather than another one, the so-called "invisible hand" that guides people to the better business. But the result is that things are improved for the consumer through this competition.

Well, if we're going to misapply principles from completely unrelated fields: When a big enough entity dies, it collapses into a black hole from which nothing can escape.

I mean, seriously, even social darwinism is closer to being a correct use of darwinian principles. If you are dealing with economics, you should use, you know.... Theories of economics!

Not only did I correctly apply the principle, this is part of an economic theory just under a different name. I'll explain it to you some more.

Survival of the fittest means that the species with the best adaptations for its environment will survive (surprising, isn't it!). Survival involves a competition for resources such as food. The so called Darwin Finches provide an example of this. Over time, several variations of a bird had developed on an island. They had different adaptations (different beak shapes/sizes, different kinds of feet, etc.) in order to obtain the greatest amount of food and eliminate competition for that food. In this case, the birds eliminated the competition by going after a different food source (some ate insects, some ate nuts and berries, etc.). This ensured their survival, as with this food they can live and reproduce. If a certain variety of finch was not able to compete with another, they would go extinct due to lack of food. The end result is that the most adaptable, most efficient species survives while the species that adapted too slowly or too poorly did not.

This applies to businesses. A business, like a species, is in constant competition for costumers (which bring profits) just as the birds are in a competition for food. The business that is able to attract the most costumers (or as in the bird example, the bird that is able to get the most food) is able to live on and make a profit. The unprofitable businesses, having made no money due to lack of customers, go out of business. Just as the bird that could not collect enough food would go extinct. The end result is the business that attracts the most customers survives, and in order to have attracted the most customers they must have had the lowest prices or highest quality goods. Or awesome advertizing.

I fail to see how this is a misapplication of the so-called "survival of the fittest" principle. Enlighten me as to why you think it is not. As for these theories of economics, what I am talking about here is one of the basic arguments of laissez-faire economic policies and classical liberalism. This stuff goes back to Adam Smith. Competition is good, is the totally basic idea.

Quote from: The Mechanical Man on July 18, 2012, 07:23:19 pm

The argument relies on the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest, only applied to economics. There is a constant competition between businesses. Ultimately, the idea is that the business with the most costumers will get the most profits. In order to attract costumers and be the best business, that business may have to have higher quality products, lower prices, etc. This is to convince people to go to that business rather than another one, the so-called "invisible hand" that guides people to the better business. But the result is that things are improved for the consumer through this competition.

Constant competition does not necessarily make these enterprises efficient. It's perfectly possible that while there may be an competition, that a great deal of inefficiency exist in the system. Rarely does competition from rival companies get to the point where a multitude of inefficiencies put a company down. There's a great deal of leeway in terms of how much large businesses can get away with being lazy.

Large businesses and massive corporations, maybe, but not so much at a smaller scale. Competition doesn't automatically make enterprises efficient, but it encourages them to be efficient. After all, efficiency means more money, and what business owner wouldn't want more money?

One of the fundamental principles of this idea is that individuals are motivated by greed. Business owners want money. In order to get that money, they have to have a good business. They have to have something that I would want to buy. Otherwise I'd shop someplace else. The problems today (mostly with big business) is that enterprises are finding loopholes to exploit in order to gain quick and easy money. This undermines the whole idea, so naturally stopping this from happening would be very good for the system as a whole.

Here is a handy graph that gives you a look at what you are talking about trimming.  Note that non-defense discretionary spending is only 530 billion... compared to a 1000 billion dollar deficit.

So when people tell you they want to make government more efficient to close the deficit one of these three things are true:
1) They will completely cancel a huge part of the federal government like disbanding the military or ending social security
2) They don't know what they are talking about
3) They are lying

There are many areas in which the government can simply step out and let private enterprise run things. It's been more cost effective in many cases in which this has already occured.

What then do you advocate to fix the deficit or budget?

You're either going to raise taxes (which will of course end up hurting growth in almost every scenario, and actually wouldn't bring in a ton of new revenue anyways), cut government spending, or a mix of both. There literally is no other option.

It would cause one of a ridiculous deficit increase or the pushing over the line into starvation of many lower income workers, depending on the rate set.  How can you not see why moving the tax burden from people who can afford to pay it towards people who have no means to do so is a bad idea?

I believe I need to clarify; I understand it is impossible right now, but I support a flat rate as a principle. It's not fair for one person to pay more (as a percentage) than another, and that just makes sense. So perhaps I need to rephrase- I consider it a good idea from a philosophical and fundamental point of view rather than a realistic one. I don't understand why people disagree with it from a philosophical standpoint- why they would instead want taxation inequality ideally.


EDIT: Oh, and couldn't deficit increases be curbed by a reduced budget? A low tax rate would eliminate the need to spend a lot of money in certain areas (that the government spends a lot of money on right now). But of course, nobody likes to reduce the budget.

That's impossible simply because it IS a capitalistic system. There's no "fair" in capitalism. At all. A basic tenet of it is needing capital to make capital; in order to invest, you need money. So those with money already are going to make more money, and those without... aren't.

You wanna level the playing field? Support redistribution of wealth. Support things that burden the wealthy for the benefit of all. With great power comes great responsibility... so don't let those in power shirk it because they think they can ignore the little poor people below them.

If I don't have enough money to make money, I take out a loan. Then when I start making a profit, I can pay off the loan. Or I get a loan and invest in another business, and if that business does well then I have enough money to pay off my loan plus plenty extra. Fundamentally and philosophically this is the answer, but of course in real life it is another thing entirely. But this is because the current lending system is broken.

We have many broken systems. If they were fixed, redistribution of the wealth wouldn't be necessary.