oppie you need to spend some time off of /pol/

I get being critical of democracy and liberalism, I do, but please no /pol/ muh white minority disappearing bullshit

I agree labeling racist on everything is infuriating, believe me I do, but it's very unamerican to oppose Immigration, considering that's our entire country, and saying you're gonna ban all muslims isn't racist, it's xenophobic and asinine.

Nothing "works" about it.

And please for the love of Allah, can you please stop saying "libbie" or "liberal" every 5 seconds? It's such a buzzword and makes you sound like a pissed off redneck. Throwing labels on everything and thinking of everything as "left and right" views is insanely irritating.

Quote from: challengerX on March 24, 2016, 06:28:50 AM

This Cadenza dude is a fucking retard

He didn't used to be this iirc. He only popped back in and started throwing his Trump stuff around.

Quote from: Cadenza on March 24, 2016, 05:52:41 AM

Trump's solution gets results plain and simple.

I really can't wait to see what your opinions on Trump and his message are when he loses in the General election. Everyone outside the far right dislikes him, and Cruz isn't a better option either.

Also

Quote

trying to be moderate and to compromise and appeal to liberal sensibilities has not worked for the right wing, it just makes us look weak and gives you an advantage,

Quote

trying to be moderate and to compromise

Quote

compromise

Where have you been since 2010? The reason a lot of Republican voters hate their party is them promising things and never getting them done, and not even doing something as simple as their job. Obstructionism was their main priority for a vast majority of them, and anyone who disagreed with them, they tried to hammer and kick out of office for so much as wanting to come to agreements. It's sad when the top priority of the senate majority leader was to make Obama a one term president. Not immigration reform, not healthcare reform (we'll repeal Obamacare and replace it with something better, but we'll get back to you on what we have that's better), nothing. It's literally a reap what you sow situation.

Quote from: Cadenza on March 24, 2016, 05:23:44 AM

Because the entire liberal world has turned on normal people for not being "progressive" enough and Trump is a big fuck you in response.

Oh, what a great reason to put a cartoon character in the most powerful office in the world.

Quote

Did you ever consider that that is exactly the point of all this? you liberals are so arrogant in your beliefs that you can't comprehend somebody being opposed to you forcing your "progressive" ideals on people. We don't want immigrants, we don't want white guilt, we don't want  forced diversity, we don't want the hypocrisy of us being the only group on earth capable of being racist, we don't want to be labelled worse than Hitler for simply voicing our opinions. And we don't want your fetish for blacks and muslims.

And you what the funny thing is? There are a great deal of progressives who don't want any of this stuff either. Myself included.

Except for maybe the white guilt thing.

Considering almost 1/3 of married couples don't have a child, the original purpose you are bringing up now is practically non-existent. Especially when the system is showing support for that 1/3 and is steadily rising. I'm not saying the nuclear family is bad, but that time is coming to a close. Keep in mind that this has been on the rise since the end of the 50's "Traditional America".

Quote from: Cadenza on February 14, 2016, 05:53:59 PM

And the purpose for strengthening that bond is to help with raising children. If you don't want children then marriage isn't for you, use a different method for strengthening your relationship instead of trying to force a system to cater to a group of people that it was never meant to cater to.

Quote from: Cadenza on February 14, 2016, 01:14:04 AM

What do you mean by preferable?

It is the preferable situation for kids.

Quote

If the majority of Gay marriages were about adopting orphans that would be a fair point, but that begs the question of if Gay adoption is a good alternative to what we have now.

Alternative to what?
Gays being allowed to adopt doesn't take away from others ability to adopt, right now there are plenty of kids without homes that aren't being taken up by heterosexual couples.

Quote

That I can agree with, monogamous relationships are better for society, but you'll have to go a step further to justify Gay marriage over a Gay relationship.

Marriage as it stands exists to strengthen the bond of a monogamous relationship to legal status, creating greater mutual obligation and more difficult exit. Barring a group from that, especially if you want couples to be staying together longer, is counter-productive.

Quote from: eggsalad on February 13, 2016, 05:17:22 PM

Quote from: Prime Multivac on February 13, 2016, 05:01:51 PM

Quote from: eggsalad on February 13, 2016, 04:00:26 PM

Quote from: Prime Multivac on February 13, 2016, 12:21:28 AM

You cannot be tricked into thinking that you're thinking (because that means you're already thinking). Thinking inherently requires the capability of thought. If a being is thinks, then in can think; if it thinks, then it exists.

From what observation can you derive this if we have established that all observation we can make of this world is unreliable.

Thought it not perceived through the senses. In what way can one be manipulated into thinking without thinking in the first place? Thought, as the most basic rationality, cannot be deceived like touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing.

if this is all a dream, you cannot rely on your five senses to seek knowledge. You can "see" green where green may not truly be; this is the basis of illusion. You cannot think where there is not the capability of thought because the existence of thought presumes thought. Thinking requires the ability to think.

What is thought without external stimuli? I can't envision thought ever being independent of external influences.

a + b = b + a, regardless of if we can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Thought is an entirely separate thing from the senses.

Monogamous marriages, regardless of sex, are preferable for producing working, tax paying adults.

Orphans are a thing.

Therefor it's in the state's and society's interest to promote committed monogamous relationships, regardless of sex.

A researcher in Russia has made more than 48 million journal articles - almost every single peer-reviewed paper every published - freely available online. And she's now refusing to shut the site down, despite a court injunction and a lawsuit from Elsevier, one of the world's biggest publishers.

For those of you who aren't already using it, the site in question is Sci-Hub, and it's sort of like a Pirate Bay of the science world. It was established in 2011 by neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who was frustrated that she couldn't afford to access the articles needed for her research, and it's since gone viral, with hundreds of thousands of papers being downloaded daily. But at the end of last year, the site was ordered to be taken down by a New York district court - a ruling that Elbakyan has decided to fight, triggering a debate over who really owns science.

"Payment of $32 is just insane when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers to do research. I obtained these papers by pirating them," Elbakyan told Torrent Freak last year. "Everyone should have access to knowledge regardless of their income or affiliation. And that’s absolutely legal."

If it sounds like a modern day Robin Hood struggle, that's because it kinda is. But in this story, it's not just the poor who don't have access to scientific papers - journal subscriptions have become so expensive that leading universities such as Harvard and Cornell have admitted they can no longer afford them. Researchers have also taken a stand - with 15,000 scientists vowing to boycott publisher Elsevier in part for its excessive paywall fees.

Don't get us wrong, journal publishers have also done a whole lot of good - they've encouraged better research thanks to peer review, and before the Internet, they were crucial to the dissemination of knowledge.

But in recent years, more and more people are beginning to question whether they're still helping the progress of science. In fact, in some cases, the 'publish or perish' mentality is creating more problems than solutions, with a growing number of predatory publishers now charging researchers to have their work published - often without any proper peer review process or even editing.

"They feel pressured to do this," Elbakyan wrote in an open letter to the New York judge last year. "If a researcher wants to be recognised, make a career - he or she needs to have publications in such journals."

That's where Sci-Hub comes into the picture. The site works in two stages. First of all when you search for a paper, Sci-Hub tries to immediately download it from fellow pirate database LibGen. If that doesn't work, Sci-Hub is able to bypass journal paywalls thanks to a range of access keys that have been donated by anonymous academics (thank you, science spies).

This means that Sci-Hub can instantly access any paper published by the big guys, including JSTOR, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier, and deliver it to you for free within seconds. The site then automatically sends a copy of that paper to LibGen, to help share the love. 

It's an ingenious system, as Simon Oxenham explains for Big Think:

    "In one fell swoop, a network has been created that likely has a greater level of access to science than any individual university, or even government for that matter, anywhere in the world. Sci-Hub represents the sum of countless different universities' institutional access - literally a world of knowledge."

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

literally philosophy 101 guys