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Moreover, all of this is contingent upon you being found out. In a scenario like this, is that really that likely?
Yes. It is.
It sounds like you're implying that most lies are easily found, and consequently, most unchallenged statements are truths.
That's, really really really stretching my capacity to believe. Either you're unique with this ability, or you're also committing the typical mind fallacy, w.r.t thinking all people are only as good at lying (at max) as you are at sniffing them out.
In response to
Tsuyoku Naritai! (I Want To Become Stronger)
That's a great saying about the angels and donkeys. I've read that most ancient civilizations had the same kind of view of history. They did not have our notion of progress; rather, they saw mankind as having fallen from a primordial "golden age", and heading pretty much straight downhill ever since. No doubt this was aided by the near-universal agreement among old people that the young generation just doesn't measure up to how people were in the old days.
So if we go back to the "chronophone" thought experiment, Archimedes might have been spectacularly uninterested in information from the future (especially through such a garbled connection). Unlike today where we would assume that future civilizations would be sources of tremendous knowledge and wisdom, he would have imagined a future of near-bestial creatures who had long lost whatever vestiges of grace mankind had still retained in his age.
I can corroborate that. Indian Hindus believe that there are eons (longer) and numerous eras (shorter) consisting of 4 "yuga"s, during each of which humans generally become worse off... all great traits are part of the first yuga, and goes downhill to the last one (in which we exist, obviously). After each era, a "pralaya" takes place destroying everything. Then start afresh.
Sigh.
In response to
Debate tools: an experience report
Today I did a google search for "debate map", and this was the very first result:
This... is exactly what we're looking for, isn't it?
Though it still doesn't actually do anything with numbers.
I still haven't gotten around to continuing my own project for a debate tool that actually does calculations involving probabilities, though it has finally risen to the top of my to-do list. I was planning to get back to work on it last weekend, but ended up getting distracted by other things again.
I'm slowly getting more and more determined that a mass-usable but based-on-sound-principles debate/argument tool should be created, and a structure is taking shape in my mind. And somehow none of the tools I have seen can be adapted to fit this bill.
I have seen your extensive comments and articles on this subject here. So :
Are there any serious problems in going mass-based? I would like this because we need to get more arguments, and that can't be done with a highly rigid and hard-to-use interface and model. This would limit it to those who are extremely passionate, either about the issue, or about putting it in an organized manner.
Are quantitative measures necessary? Right now the quality of arguments is so low, that virtually anything structured is far better than the status quo. Would you say that, without a way of measuring the acceptance, authority, or logical strength, a tool would be ineffective?
Do you disagree that a strong community moderation is far better than very rigid rules in place? A system that rewards editing of arguments into logical nodes on a graph, much more than putting forth a plaintext argument, would encourage moderators in the way http://stackoverflow.com and allied sites do.
Can I PM/ping you?
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The second point is something that really gets me. It seems to me that rather than feeling bad about donating to one charity rather than a more efficient or more "important" other charity, we should feel bad about spending money on frivolities rather than donating to charity. Nonprofit organizations are forced to compete against each other for slender resources in many ways, including donor dollars -- why can't they compete against things that have less moral value instead? It would be awesome if there were more social pressure to donate to charity rather than going to the movies or buying pretty clothes.
Interestingly, however, there is some social stigma against donating "too much". A few years ago, there was a New York gentleman who donated a much larger than "normal" percentage of his money to charity, as well as his kidney, plus some other stuff. (I'm sorry, I really wish I could remember his name, but I am very sure I have these details correct, because I read a lot about it at the time.) People speculated in the press about his mental status and other children mocked his kids at school, although his family was hardly left poor by the experience, and his health was not endangered.
In terms of the point in the OP about the lawyer who should be working overtime rather than volunteering ... I struggle with this so much. I spend most of my time doing activism, and I have friends who spend more time than I do (who do things like take very low-paying part-time jobs in order to finance spending most of their time doing activism), but most of us are sex-positive activists, and sex-positive activism is arguably an extremely "low priority" type of activism. If we are concerned about saving more lives, for example, then we should be dedicating our time to other types of activism, or we should be using our intelligence to get awesome jobs and then spending the money on charity. However, I (for one) have tried dedicating all my time to doing activism that seemed "more important" (HIV in Africa) rather than the activism that is most interesting to me (various types of sexuality stuff in America), and I was both less happy and less effective. I am also very sure that I would be unhappy if I dedicated my considerable IQ to becoming a corporate bitch and then donating lots of money, rather than working directly on the issues I care about.
Additionally, it is undeniable that someone has to work on the issues I care about, or else who would I donate money to even if I had a lot of it?
A vote for the statement that : sex-positive activism is (unarguably) an extremely "low priority" type of activism.
It might be better if you can find ways to change what you feel happy about.
Just my 2p.