In, now.

The worst crimes of the holocaust were a conspiracy within the Nazi government. The Nuremburg trials had testimony from an investigator who was attempting to prove his supicions of these practices, and ultimately prosecute the offenders who were killing the Jews. It is likely that only a few hundred Germans were directly involved.

The Nazi government was built upon projecting genetic kinship onto the state itself, and while it didn't want any Jews in Germany, they weren't actively seeking the elimination of the Jewish race. In fact, the 'final solution' was not the first solution - they attempted deportation several times.

I've come to be of the opinion that the Nazi goverment - while certainly not being the sort of state I'd advocate - really weren't all that bad. Given the feminist/pro-immigration state that's growing in Canada, I might actually prefer it.

If anyone's skimming through these comments, it's worthwhile noting that most of my original ideas as seen in my top-level comment have been thoroughly refuted.

tl;dr - My perspective is, in short, echoed on Marginal Revolution:

‘Of course, there are systematic problems with charitable giving. Most importantly, the feedback mechanism is never going to work as well when people are buying something to be consumed by others (as Milton Friedman explains)’ –

Those criticisms that remain and many stronger points of contention are far more eloquently independently explained by Journeyman's critique here.

Anyhow, I don't like the movements branding, which is essentially its core feature. Since the community would probably reorganise around a new brand anyway. Altruism is fictional, hypothetical, doesn't exist.

It has been observed, however, that the very act of eating (especially, when there are others starving in the world) is such an act of self-interested discrimination. Ethical egoists such as Rand who readily acknowledge the (conditional) value of others to an individual, and who readily endorse empathy for others, have argued the exact reverse from Rachels, that it is altruism which discriminates: "If the sensation of eating a cake is a value, then why is it an immoral indulgence in your stomach, but a moral goal for you to achieve in the stomach of others?"

It is therefore altruism which is an arbitrary position, according to Rand.

• W. Pedia.

As I understand it, the mainstream interpretation of that document is not that Bin Laden is attacking America for its freedom; rather, AQ's war aims were the following:

• End US support of Israel (also, Russia and India)
• End the presence of US troops in the Middle East (especially Israel)
• End US support for Muslim apostate dictators

See, e.g., this wikipedia article, or The Looming Tower. Eliezer is correct that AQ's attacks were not caused by AQ's hted of American freedoms.

The argument doesn't understand what the moral uncertainty is over; it's taking moral uncertainty over whether fetuses are people in the standard quasi-deontological framework and trying to translate it into a total utilitarian framework, which winds up with fairly silly math (what could the 70% possibly refer to? Not to the value of the future person's life years- nobody disputes that once a person is alive, their life has normal, 100% value.)

You are confusing two different sources, the one that mentions FizzBuzz and the one in your link. Although both sources use the number 200, they are using it to refer to different things. It is the former (which uses it to refer to interviewees) which I object to, not the latter (which uses it to refer to resumes), except insofar as the latter is used to try to prove the former.

You seem to be confusing applicants with people who are given interviews

No, I'm not. From shminux's link:

The "Fizz-Buzz test" is an interview question designed to help filter out the 99.5% of programming job candidates who can't seem to program their way out of a wet paper bag

The job market isn't just Google. Is it really true that anyone who can program FizzBuzz will immediately get snapped up by the first place they apply to, if they are not applying to someplace like Google which receives such large numbers of applications? I find it hard to believe that the average accounting company or bank that needs programmers has to do 100 interviews on the average every time it hires one person.

(Furthermore, multiply by how many competent programmers they go through. If they hire on the average 1 out of every 4 competent programmers who applies, that makes it 400 interviews for each new hire.)

If it was true that 99.5% of candidates fail the FizzBuzz test, then someone who passes it is better than 99.5% of the candidates who get to the interview stage, and should be hired immediately for any computer software job they try out for (unless you believe more than 100 people on the average get interviewed before anyone is hired) . The experience in the job market, of people who can pass the test, does not bear this out.

The Syrians and Libyans seem to have done OK for themselves.

They are organized paramilitary groups who buy military-grade weapons and issue them to their soldiers, not random gun toters who fight with personally owned handguns and shotguns.

It seems to me that the main issues in setting up a militia are organization, recruitment and funding. Once you sort that out, acquiring weapons isn't much difficult.