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Arafat's dead (pg. 12)
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by St_Andrew
I might agree that the very right and the very left is easy to point out. But everything in there between is very relative. For example, a left party in Sweden is more for capitalism than for communism. So that would mean they are a right party then if you would strictly follow the right-left wing not-relative scale. But that doesnt make sense to call them right, because compared to most of the western world they are left. |
It's not "very" right or "very" left. There's a hard line at the left and right edges. Swedes can call it whatever they please, but the fact of the matter is that Sweden is a left-wing, socialist welfare state.
| quote: | | well, it would indeed still be 1kg, but would it be a lot or a litle? |
That's the whole point. To some people maybe it's a lot, to some people maybe it's a little, but it's 1 kg no matter which one you call it. Behind all the silly semantics there is actually an objective reality.
| quote: | | So you are not a centerist then? Or please define "the midle" for me =) |
Well actually there are numerous middles, and centrists come in many different flavours. It just means that you carry certain right-wing views and certain left-wing views that tend to balance each other out, and that you don't "align" yourself with either side, which is true. The primary reason that Canadian (and a lot of European) Leftism disgusts me is the smarmy attitude that everyone who doesn't agree is stupid - typically accompanied by an absence of facts to support why the disagreeing party is actually incorrect - whereas the Canadian "right" usually has no problem listening to other people's ideas. Now, that doesn't mean a Rightist won't speak up and say that those ideas are a crock, but there's usually a "because", followed by a rational explanation, and sans the anger and personal insults.
I tend to be central on both the social and fiscal scales. For example I am:
- An atheist (definitely Left)
- Against drug regulations (Left)
- For gun regulations (Left)
- For the right to an abortion (Left), with certain restrictions relating to age of consent/age of majority/etc.
- Against affirmative action (Right)
- For welfare, but restricted to about half the minimum wage for a limited time period (Left by an objective standard, Right according to socialists)
- Against corporate taxes and consumption taxes (Right)
- For income taxes to support military and law enforcement, preferably a flat tax (center)
- For equal rights, but offended by sexism masquerading as feminism (call that what you want)
- Against public schooling, but have no problem with public educational funding (i.e. voucher systems)
- Against government-controlled health care, but have no problem with a two-tier system or public insurance
Ya gettin' my drift here? These things hardly define an extreme-right-wing philosophy. In fact I'm pretty much a Liberal, the way Liberal was defined about 30-40 years ago before it became a "left" term.
| quote: | | Everything is relative, didnt you learn anything in physics ;) |
Yes, being an electrical engineer, I learned quite a bit of physics. I learned that the ETR is widely misunderstood. And I learned that everything is quantized with distinct minima and maxima. I'd hazard a guess that anyone who paid attention in physics would be well aware that not only are there absolutes, but that the universe would cease to function without them.
But don't worry, I know it was just a joke. ;) |
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| DigiNut |
Point well taken, Liberals and Leftists are not the same, although this subject has been discussed before, and my terminology is based mainly on the fact that Canadians who call themselves Liberals are generally pretty far-left.
| quote: | | Now, by using your absolute scale, Canadians supporting Kerry would mean they are not leftists. Since Kerry and the Democratic party aren't leftists on the absolute scale (someone like Nader is), they are only leftists relative to Republicans. Didn't you just support my point? |
Um, actually, no. Nice try, and thanks for coming out, but both Bush and Kerry are starting to lean left at this point. Kerry wants a health care system like Canada's - does that SOUND right-wing to you? Even Bush is moving toward that, unfortunately.
Perhaps you are basing this on the fact that current U.S. policy is somewhat right-wing, and I certainly agree with you there, but that says nothing about either Bush or Kerry themselves.
| quote: | | Not exactly. My argument was based on the political scale being relative, so if you don't consider that valid you really shouldn't make assumptions beyond that. |
I don't consider that valid, so I suppose there is little more to discuss on that.
| quote: | | That reason is not a very good one. Consider the measurement of speed on a scale. There is an absolute minimum (0) and an absolute maximum (c), but speed is still relative. Let's say you are travelling at 10 000 km/h, is that fast or slow? It's on a scale that has an absolute minimum and an absolute maximum, so based on your reasoning it is a slow speed, since it is closer to the absolute minimum. To most people in everyday life however, speeds that approach c are not meaningful, and so 10 000 km/h is considered very fast. |
Fiber optic scientists are quite concerned with speeds approaching c. Whether the average person considers this fast or slow is not relevant to its actual speed.
To "most people in every day life", speeds approaching c are not meaningful because they aren't attainable. Rather, speeds in the range of 0-200 km/h are meaningful because that's the range of their speedometers. On the political scale, however, both the extreme right and extreme left are not only attainable but have been seen numerous times throughout history (communism and feudalism), so I can't see how you consider either one or the other to be any less relevant.
Perhaps feudalism is not relevant to you, and you consider everything right of Pierre Trudeau to be right-wing, but simply because you hold that opinion does not make it valid - the political scale is not relative and holding such a belief would make you objectively wrong. (P.S. I'm using the word "you" hypothetically, not making assumptions about your political stance).
| quote: | | That's a bad analogy. Relating something subjective like political standings to something quantifiable (measuring wavelengths) like colours doesn't make sense. A better analogy would be if you were writing a test and got a mark of 50% on it, on an absolute scale it is a very bad mark. But if it happens to be the highest mark in the class, and most people got 25% then you should be happy, and releatively speaking you got a great mark. Unless it was a province-wide or nation-wide test, you will only be graded against your classmates. The absolute scale means nothing and you will end up performing well. |
The 50% on the test is still a 50%. It still means you got 50% of the answers wrong. It still means that either the test was unfair (which means we're no longer using an objective criterion, in which case your argument would be void), or that you did not learn the material properly.
It's specifically this "relative to your classmates" attitude that's producing so many poorly-performing graduates. By an objective standard, you barely passed. By an objective standard, you almost failed and should perhaps be relieved that you didn't, but not happy that you did such a good job. The "curve" is not supposed to imply that you *actually* performed WELL as long as you performed BETTER than other students; the "curve" is simply in place to keep class sizes manageable and to make the professors look good.
In fact it's quite interesting how you chose to use academics as an example because the world of Academia is one of the prime sources of relativism and is very, very far-Left. Brainwashing 101.
| quote: | | I hope you mean military spending is right wing, and not military cuts. But anyway, the problem is that no country does ALL of those things, otherwise it would be really easy to label a country as either left wing or right wing. As soon as they start to adopt a few policies from each end it's not so easy to tell where they sit on an 'absolute' scale. |
Again, as previously mentioned, hence the 4-point scale. But whether you use one axis or two, it's certainly not difficult to "place" a country or a person on the scale. Aside from the fact that objective criteria do exist to determine this (much like the criteria used in, for example, the Kiersey test), adopting policies from either side simply brings an entity closer to the center. Whether or not they lean left or right (or are dead center) is a matter of how many policies they implement from each side, and to what extent they are implemented (i.e. how much welfare do you actually give).
If people can't determine whether a party leans left or right, it's not an indication that the objective criteria have somehow been blurred - it's more of an indication that the person analyzing it either doesn't fully understand the political scale or doesn't fully understand the party's platform. Ignorance is not a legitimate argument, however.
| quote: | | Relativism and objectivism aren't mutually exclusive, you can objectively look at something that is in a relative frame of reference. Either that or time dilation, length contraction, and simultaneity don't exist and Einstein was wrong. |
The ETR doesn't imply that an objective reality doesn't exist. Again this is a concept that seems to be widely misunderstood and, even moreso, mis-applied to totally unrelated issues. Relativism and Objectivism are philosophies, not sciences, and the ETR is based on physical interactions of fundamental forces, not to mention a lot of speculation (it's not as though the ETR answers every physics problem in the universe - in fact, most cosmological arguments about the origin of the universe say that the ETR would have to break down approaching the origin).
Of course Einstein wasn't wrong, but your analogy is false because a frame of reference is not required simply because it is possible. We can just as easily ask the same questions without a frame of reference, because there ARE objective measurements that can be made. Those measurements may appear different from a different frame of reference, but that doesn't mean that the physical reality has changed.
In fact, the perfect analogy using the "frame of reference" argument is: if a train is going at 500 km/h, and you are going 600 km/h in the same direction, it may appear to you as though it's going in the opposite direction, but it's actually going in the same direction and it's actually going pretty fast for a train. See what I mean?
There's no scientific argument one can use to prove that relativism is viable. It's a moral argument (much like religion) that simply ignores the physical reality and all evidence to the contrary in order to sustain itself. |
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| drgoodvibe |
| ^^^^^^^^^^^ Digi! i'm in no way taking away from your post or anything, and I mean this in the best way possible, but I'd like to threadjack for just a moment and ask you what your hobbies are? :thepirate |
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| dEsidEL |
| quote: | Originally posted by drgoodvibe
^^^^^^^^^^^ Digi! i'm in no way taking away from your post or anything, and I mean this in the best way possible, but I'd like to threadjack for just a moment and ask you what your hobbies are? :thepirate |
stop trying to incite something before i call the AAAAadddmin ..
LEAVE! LEEEEAVE.. before the AAAAadddmin .. bans U !!
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by drgoodvibe
^^^^^^^^^^^ Digi! i'm in no way taking away from your post or anything, and I mean this in the best way possible, but I'd like to threadjack for just a moment and ask you what your hobbies are? :thepirate |
Dear lord man, it's a Sunday afternoon, I woke up 3 hours ago and I'm now on the last day of a 3-day party streak (not including last Wednesday) - what else do you think I'm *capable* of doing with myself right now? :p |
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| drgoodvibe |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
Dear lord man, it's a Sunday afternoon, I woke up 3 hours ago and I'm now on the last day of a 3-day party streak (not including last Wednesday) - what else do you think I'm *capable* of doing with myself right now? :p |
lol dude, I'm envious I never have the time. |
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| dEsidEL |
| quote: | Originally posted by drgoodvibe
lol dude, I'm envious I never have the time. |
LEAVE! LEEEEAVE..!!
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by drgoodvibe
lol dude, I'm envious I never have the time. |
Pff... joke all you want, I work more than full-time hours and still find time to go to the gym, cook, party on the weekends, see friends 2 or 3 times a week, and piss around on the computer (meaning post on TA, download music, etc). Whatever else I do usually varies from week to week so it's hard to narrow down. There's 168 hours in the week - if 3 hours on a Sunday seems like a lot to you, I'd have to ask what *you're* doing with those 128 hours when you're not working. :p
(Kind of funny how the whole "tolerance" thing goes down the ter for so many people as soon as they meet someone who disagrees with them about something - makes you wonder what the hell they mean by it) |
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| drgoodvibe |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
Pff... joke all you want, I work more than full-time hours and still find time to go to the gym, cook, party on the weekends, see friends 2 or 3 times a week, and piss around on the computer (meaning post on TA, download music, etc). Whatever else I do usually varies from week to week so it's hard to narrow down. There's 168 hours in the week - if 3 hours on a Sunday seems like a lot to you, I'd have to ask what *you're* doing with those 128 hours when you're not working. :p
(Kind of funny how the whole "tolerance" thing goes down the ter for so many people as soon as they meet someone who disagrees with them about something - makes you wonder what the hell they mean by it) |
I work full time hours, go to school, pursue photography, read a load, do h/w, try to pursue other business ventures, work out, party with friends 2-3 times a week or so, and have to try to stay in touch with people gah! I haven't downloaded a song since 2003 =[. When I do vege out, I almost feeling guilty for vegging out. But hopefully you didnt take it the wrong way, just wanted to know what a day in the life of Digi was like =] |
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by drgoodvibe
I work full time hours, go to school, pursue photography, read a load, do h/w, try to pursue other business ventures, work out, party with friends 2-3 times a week or so, and have to try to stay in touch with people gah! I haven't downloaded a song since 2003 =[. When I do vege out, I almost feeling guilty for vegging out. But hopefully you didnt take it the wrong way, just wanted to know what a day in the life of Digi was like =] |
Well sounds pretty similar to me except with the school thrown in. Geez, school AND full-time work? No wonder we don't see you out much... that's brutal, I don't know how you do it.
I didn't take it the wrong way from *you*, a joke's a joke, but they seem to egg certain OTHER people on in TA-land ("Hey, I'm too lazy to actually respond to his argument, so let's just all make fun of his post size/personal life/physical appearance" - way to go kids, you're older than me and still haven't graduated from junior high!).
You've gotta take some time off buddy! Hope you're planning a vacation. |
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| dEsidEL |
*sigh*
next time goodvibe .. listen to my advice ..
LEAVE! LEEEEAVE..!!
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by dEsidEL
*sigh*
next time goodvibe .. listen to my advice ..
LEAVE! LEEEEAVE..!!
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I've got nothing against G, he acts his age. |
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