Non-IT News Thread
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@scottalanmiller said:
Maybe that is what it is meant to do maybe not, that isn't stated. I appreciate the idea that you want the ability to overthrow the government but I don't believe it is safe or realistic.
I'm sure England thought the same thing until 13 colonies decided to fight back.
Is it safe? No, definitely not. Realistic? Definitely!
Is it probable that it will happen again? Eeeeehhhhh. I doubt it will happen in our lifetime or maybe even our children's... But you can bet if / when it does, it will bad for everybody involved.
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@scottalanmiller said:
That's definitely a realistic thing, the US simply might be a violent culture.
I think you could largely be right about this. Going back in history, we had to fight for our independence, then we had slaves revolting against unfair owners, and then we had to fight amongst ourselves (hey, I did it! ... see the Random Words thread, lol)... Nowadays, it looks like people are just being violent for the sake of being violent, when reality is, it is pretty much ingrained in all of us.
Thinking on a global scale, I think it could also have something to do with how small the planet has gotten -- especially in the last say 30 years or so.
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@MattSpeller said:
TL;DR - take away? Have we learned anything? Anyone that brave?
Many letters were spilled on this white canvas and I don't think we got anything done.But we covered so many topics! And as @scottalanmiller we generated lots of traffic!
The Short, Short version: People Like Guns! People Don't Like Guns! We can still be friends!
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Maybe that is what it is meant to do maybe not, that isn't stated. I appreciate the idea that you want the ability to overthrow the government but I don't believe it is safe or realistic.
I'm sure England thought the same thing until 13 colonies decided to fight back.
Actually no, the military leaders prior to the war advised the king that a war in the colonies was unwinnable due to terrain and population. England went to war knowing it had no ability to win. Both the army and the navy (commanded by brothers) had told the king they were incapable of winning a war should be pursue one.
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@dafyre said:
Is it safe? No, definitely not. Realistic? Definitely!
The revolution is not the war to compare to. That was an unwinnable war fought by a foreign power fought via attrition.
A war at home would be a civil war and would be neighbor against neighbor. Every weapon kept at one person's home would be turned on the weapons at the house next door. It's not government versus government but person against person with, presumably, the military on one side (almost certainly the same side with the most guns at home since the politics of the military and the "guns at home" groups have always aligned.)
If anything, an armed populace suggests an irregular force that would back the military rather than oppose it. But in either case, we are talking about killing each other, not one country versus another. The US civil way would be a better example, but a bad one, but one that had a far better chance of succeeding (and had almost none as it was.)
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@dafyre said:
Is it probable that it will happen again? Eeeeehhhhh. I doubt it will happen in our lifetime or maybe even our children's... But you can bet if / when it does, it will bad for everybody involved.
I'm confident that it will never happen. Very confident. There is no precedence in history for a sovereignty at the imperial level (which the US very much is) having an uprising of that type. It has literally never happened AFAIK and simply could not happen.
The only situation where it would make sense is a small group of heavily armed irregulars supporting the regulars in a military coup to become a dictatorship.
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Not that I'm saying military dictators are bad. Cuba has done pretty well. They have better healthcare than the US, lower homicide rate and do so with almost no resources and two generations of embargo. Dictators are not always bad things. But I feel like the people who often fear the government taking over aren't the ones who normally want dictators to be the result.
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@dafyre said:
Nowadays, it looks like people are just being violent for the sake of being violent, when reality is, it is pretty much ingrained in all of us.
Only in the east. In the west there was traditional a culture of nonviolence. During the pioneer days of the west, for example, gun fighting was almost unheard of and even lacking a central government and police force there was very little violent crime.
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@dafyre said:
Going back in history, we had to fight for our independence
"Had to fight" wouldn't make us violent. But what really happened was that we "chose to fight", and that's what makes the violence more likely ingrained. There was no need for a war. It was not the clear cut war that we like to feel like it was today and the people egging the populace on were very rich and set to become richer by doing it. It was anything but a grassroots fight for freedom. Most Americans may have actually become less free through the process.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
Going back in history, we had to fight for our independence
"Had to fight" wouldn't make us violent. But what really happened was that we "chose to fight", and that's what makes the violence more likely ingrained. There was no need for a war. It was not the clear cut war that we like to feel like it was today and the people egging the populace on were very rich and set to become richer by doing it. It was anything but a grassroots fight for freedom. Most Americans may have actually become less free through the process.
By and large, I can agree with this.
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@dafyre said:
The Short, Short version: People Like Guns! People Don't Like Guns! We can still be friends!
I think a better (actually useful, if you will) takeaway is that these kinds of discussions are valuable (if only because they create traffic, ha ha) not only because we seek to potential pursuade someone to a different viewpoint but also to establish why it is that there is the other viewpoint.
To someone with one viewpoint, the resulting call to action seems obvious and we go around and around trying to figure out why everyone doesn't automatically agree. But like many things in a political discussion, it's not that we understand the data or outcomes differently, it is that we have different priorities on the outcomes.
For example, my own priority on outcome from gun ownership is almost exclusively focused on violence, crime and safety results. Dash's is, I believe, primarily focused on protection from the government and maintenance of existing freedoms. Totally different priorities that result in different uses of the same data.
Finding out why people view the means desired is important because it is different ends that we desire and/or prioritize. It's a valuable discussion.
And this applies to IT. There are a few things that we practices here, that maybe no one noticed, and these included practicing looking at anecdotal evidence and its applicability to statistical data and how both can be informative and both risk being misleading, how to view statistics (all stats are not equal) like where Dash was dissecting the types of violence (gangs vs. individuals), and exploring business context - one business prioritized cost savings, one prioritizes risk aversion, etc. We can view a dissection of politics, especially this one, as a way to view how we deal with business decision making in IT. We have to figure out what the business goals are (ability to hunt, maintenance of control, protection from regulation, lowering of cost, increase in performance) before we can begin to determine what means allow us to reach those ends.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I think a better (actually useful, if you will) takeaway is that these kinds of discussions are valuable (if only because they create traffic, ha ha) not only because we seek to potential pursuade someone to a different viewpoint but also to establish why it is that there is the other viewpoint.
With any real and good discussion where people are honest with themselves, they learn (rediscover, realize) more of the nuances in the way they think and why they think that way; they also learn more about why the folks on the other side of the coin think the way they do as well.
A good discussoin like this has the net benefits of everybody learning something, somewhere.
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One thing that I bet would lend some visibility into a political discussion, just as a general rule that I have learned, is getting people to think about and describe political ideals or high level viewpoints.
For example, I would guess that @Dashrender and @dafyre are likely republicans (little R, not the political party per se but actually supporting the concept of a republic - strong leanings towards Jefferson, Monroe and Madison) while I am, in general, a monarchist with strong leaning towards federalism in the American context (John Adams, George Washington and Alexander Hamilton would be my political figures of representation.)
These high level designs can shed a lot of light on the approach we take to other things.
For example, if I had to choose a period in Roman history in which to live it would be Imperial Rome under the emperors but I would guess both of them would choose Republic Rome under the senate.
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I'm interested to see if they agree with that assessment or if I guessed incorrectly.
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@scottalanmiller If you shoot just for the high level goals, then I think for me, you are quite right. However, for me, I would rather have lived among the Native Americans before they got invaded, lol. Things were much simpler then. Live with the land and not on it.
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller If you shoot just for the high level goals, then I think for me, you are quite right. However, for me, I would rather have lived among the Native Americans before they got invaded, lol. Things were much simpler then. Live with the land and not on it.
So an interesting point of view or perspective about me and something that colours my perspective on the American story..... my family was from the New Netherlands colony which, unlike the British colonies, were not invaders but came and bought "right to live" on the land from the local Indians who then lived and worked side by side with the Dutch colonists. The "right to live" did not stop the Indians from also living there, just gave the Dutch to live there too. We were literally legal immigrants to the Indian nations but because they purchased the land (in accordance with how the Indians understood land ownership to include the rights of the sellers to remain living there) we were allowed to self govern on our "own" land.
When the British came and conquered the colony, they conquered us and the Indians together. But it makes for a very different viewpoint. I have no (known) Native American heritage, but my family has been here longer than the British, was never an illegal immigrant to the new land, never invaded, didn't steal the land, paid for it, etc. We were conquered by the British just like everyone else who "already lived here."
So I have a very different perspective on the American story, one far more related to the Indians than to the British colonists. The Dutch colony had no association with the slave trade, never conquered or attempted to conquer the Indians, never were illegal aliens, etc. Many of the "bad things" associated with the new world colonies don't apply to the pre-British colonial settlers.
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My family didn't arrive here until the mid 1800s (before the Civil war). I picked up a bit of the desire to be in nature from my direct descendents on both sides of the family. Before the great depression, my family owned a large portion of land in my home town that was used for farming. A lot of it now is still farmed and used for cattle, oh, and a church. Can't be in the Bible Belt without a church on every corner.
But to know that the "American" culture had a hand in pretty much eradicating the lifestyle of the Native Americans has always made me sad. That is why I consider us the invaders. It is nice to know that there are some folks that showed up over here and tried to do right by the Indians!
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@dafyre said:
But to know that the "American" culture had a hand in pretty much eradicating the lifestyle of the Native Americans has always made me sad. That is why I consider us the invaders. It is nice to know that there are some folks that showed up over here and tried to do right by the Indians!
Great book on the history of the New Netherlands colony: The Island at the Center of the World.
My family came over as one of the master farmers that came to rescue the starving colonists from the first wave - none of which could farm. My family started in Albany (the original colony) but didn't like being around people so moved to Long Island and were the first non-Indian residents of the island. I'm a direct descendant of the founder of Brooklyn. The Flatbush on the Jamaica Road was my family farm.
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Hey we climbed to 10K views on this thread! Not too shabby.
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Just saw this hit the news...
Mass Shootings Climbs to More Than One Per Day in the US for 2015
Staggering numbers. Important to note, this is a more accepted definition of mass shooting than what the FBI tracks, which is only mass killings, not shootings. This tracks four or more people shot, rather than three or more people killed. The FBI uses an incorrect term to alter the stat (similar to, but in the opposite direction, of putting suicides in with homicides) so the FBI number makes it sound much lower but doesn't track what it says that it tracks.
