DrTodd13

A nation can define health care as the right of its citizens whenever it chooses to do so. It is certainly advantageous to eliminate pockets of disease that can spread to the general population. And it is hard to justify denying health care to children, who had no say in choosing parents who do not own health insurance. How about we sterilize parents who can't afford health insurance for their kids. That also solves the problem.

Blah blah blah....a bunch of modern liberal psycho-babble with no content. You have no reason why life should be sacrosanct. You are totally blinded by the fact that if this really is the most important thing and must be maintained at all costs then if it were necessary to enslave everyone on earth so as maintain life that that would be fine with you. You can claim but we wouldn't have to enslave everyone to maintain life and that is true but you'll never see how utterly broken your philosophy is until you explore the corner cases. You would have physical life but mental death and slavery...what good is that? The typically summary of the Hippocratic oath that you hear is "first, do no harm." I said I didn't know what the rest of it was and what implications it has for treatment without fee. My understanding is that most doctors don't swear to this oath anymore anyway. If what you say is accurate then I would agree it argues for treating without fee...but it also argues that if people came to you in droves you'd have to treat them all even if you never got a moment of time to yourself. As such, it's a pretty stupid oath to take. What does something existing have anything to do with it having a right to exist? Who says we should have a civilization or hope to continue it? I know the door is there and the problem is it is already open and civilization is crossing the threshold unawares to a land of cold scientific naturalistic reductionism where ultimately nothing has meaning. Temporarily we think certain things have meaning but we believe so without any reasons...like life...people will say it is meaningful but can't prove it. I would confront this philosophy head-on and tell people that if this continues that sooner or later we will realize that science and naturalism cannot give meaning to anything and that world will be a hedonistic hell with groups battling it out to maximize their own pleasure. The prospect of an existence without meaning I hope is enough to renew our search for the transcendent. For if there is no transcendent then sentience, consciousness, and pleasure are all illusory and we're really meaningless deterministic cogs in the universal machine.

You choose to live in the United States... By doing so, you are consenting to participating in the prevailing social contract and pay taxes. I consent to something by my mere existence? To refuse to consent I have to kill myself? Where would you have me live where I'm not given this choice? Good logic there.

Gene's do not have will. They follow the rules of physics. Is your argument that somebody has to oppress someone else so why not have it be the majority doing it? How about nobody forces their will on anyone else? Yes, indeed, why have central governments? In my philosophical view, they are inherently evil and should not exist. If someone has violated your rights then you have a right to get your own fair compensation or to contract with others to help you do so. Purely voluntary courts, legal system, and police are possible but if someone does not voluntarily place themselves under someone's jurisdiction then the only recourse is to take your recompense by force but that is not unethical because it is not the _initiation_ of force but instead justice. So, rather than having 200 some sovereign countries, we have 6 billion sovereign individuals. Countries manage to co-exist peacefully most of the time without a true higher authority and individuals would as well should countries not exist. How do we get national health care? Why don't you start a charity to provide health care to everyone and if it is such a great idea then you won't lack for donations.

Wow. You should be on the supreme court or something with that kind of logic. The language and intent of the statement is plain. They used to have some pretty horrendous "cures" for various conditions and this oath simply says don't go trying to cure something in a way that the cure is worse than the disease. Your modern mind may wish that they were swearing to be your slave but that isn't so. Corporations don't have a right to profit. To me, corporations don't even have a right to exist since they are a legal fiction that allows the owners to be irresponsible. Individuals don't have a "right to life." Individuals only have a right to be free from the infliction of harm from others. You don't have a right to happiness or wellness. You only have a right to be free from others _actively_ trying to stop you from being happy or well. I believe that no one has the right to initiate the use of force against anyone for any reason. What right to life are you protecting? The right to live as a slave to the majority? While we're at it, why don't you try and justify why it is ethical for the majority to be able to impose their will on the minority?

I think most states have a law that emergency care cannot be denied but just because it is the law doesn't mean it is right. Some doctors and hospitals do charity work out of the goodness of their heart and that is great but to force them to do it is wrong. I don't know if the Hippocratic oath obliges you to work for nothing.

The simple fact is that if you hide the cost of something and make it appear free then the inevitable result is increased demand, which will result in higher prices and/or rationing or long waits (if prices are not allowed to move). In the US or in a country with nationalized health care, there is very little downward pressure on prices because people don't shop around for the lowest prices since the costs are hidden. The insurance companies would like to pay less but all they can do is negotiate after the fact. If you want to control health care costs then only have health insurance for catastrophic events (> $10,000 deductible) and otherwise have health savings accounts and have people compete based on price for those health savings account dollars. The fundamental presumption of health care as a right is totally ridiculous. What if no one was willing to be a doctor at the prices the government was willing to pay. Would the government then have an obligation to force smart people into medical schools under point of gun? Stop existing doctors from retiring? The whole concept is offensive. Nobody has a right to the productive efforts of anyone else and the only way to guarantee the "right" to health care is the partial enslavement of others.

Like it or not, people generally want to play with people of their own skill level. There will always be a demand to know how good someone is who you haven't met before.

Hairy, It has been the experience that systems which use a computer calculated ratings system still have problems with your #2 and #3. Rather than people overestimating themselves, they'll spend all their time complaining about how the rating system doesn't reflect their true ability. Do you think this is better? The true downside is that people become ratings obsessed. The first bad hand with someone and they leave for greener pastures. The vitriol is much more intense when ratings are at stake. Some of us have been suggesting anonymous, subjective, cross-rating rather than self-rating. This decreases the chance of vitriol because if you make an ass of yourself people are likely to rate you lower rather than higher. Todd

As others have noted, I think there are two groups of people playing bridge. I don't think the division is between those playing for fun and those playing "seriously" because I think those playing "seriously" are also playing mostly for fun. I think the difference is about thinking. Most people learn enough to be able to play and despite having taken up an intellectual game they then don't want to learn much else. The other group is constantly trying to improve, exploring new conventions and systems and working on declarer play and defense. At first glance, a good situation would seem to have events for each type of person. Most would play in GCC events. The others could play in super-super-flight events (Forcing Pass baby!). This could be a good solution but I don't think it is stable and I think that the ACBL knows it. It is inevitable that the unrestricted events will have more prestige and be viewed as true bridge whereas the restricted events will be viewed as a shadow of real bridge. The force of pride is stronger than the unwillingness to think and so people who don't enjoy it will play in the unrestricted events because playing in the GCC event is a subtle admission of inferiority. Some will even quit given the choice between having to defend a multitude of systems or playing in events viewed as inferior.

Come on people. A Constitution doesn't mean anything. It is a piece of paper and isn't going to hop around arresting people who violate it. We have daily, systematic violation of our constitution in the US and nothing happens. Why? Because that is what the people want. Regardless of how many "supermajorities" you try to build in, they can always be ignored. If people believed in the principles the constitution embodies then you wouldn't need the constitution. If the people don't believe in those principles, a constitution is powerless to stop them. The simple fact is that anything with voting involved will eventually devolve to tyranny of the majority. There is no stable form of government. Dictators go to far and people power defeats them. Anything based on voting will devolve into people trying to live at the expense of others and this is an impossibility. Anarchy systematically does not violate anyone's rights but those with a lust for power will inevitably try to acquire it and good people are too scared or lazy to be eternally vigilant to stop them so anarchy devolves to dictatorship. Pick your poison.

So...back to Fermi's paradox. If you take a look at most of the original and modern suggestions for the values in Drake's equation, you'll see there should be many intelligent space-faring civilizations in our galaxy, some of which would have had enough time to colonize a significant part of the galaxy. Fermi's paradox asks where they all are because we've yet to detect their presence and we should detect the presence of a Type III civilization quite easily I would suspect. If you start tweaking the parameters to create a "rare earth" then I think you are just being intellectually dishonest to create the scenario you want rather than searching for truth. the evidence seems to point to a rare earth which begs the question why? Are we a true cosmic accident? Are we in part the result of a creative effort by transcendent intelligence? The very ability for the free parameters of physics to allow matter to coalesce in interesting forms necessary for any life is exceedingly unlikely. In science, you never assume an initial observation is an exception rather than a rule and so they try to explain how it is we exist when scientific belief says the whole galaxy should already be colonized. If science is about testability then the theories they have invented are not scientific. Some say every possible universe was created and we are lucky to inhabit one of the few where life is able to exist. Others say that the universe existed in a massive quantum superposition until consciousness evolved and collapsed the wave function. But back to the main question...if life in varying complexity is found on other worlds then you can make an argument that maybe we are just probabilistically one of the lucky few. The religious do have a problem...did God create this other life just to confuse us and cast doubt on his own existence? I don't think He would allow his existence to be proven because then faith would be unneeded. Likewise, if we could ever conclusively say that there was not a hint of life anywhere else in our galaxy then those with a scientific bent have a problem.

All this line of reasoning states is that it is not impossible for someone who claims to be logical to believe in God. I don't think this is a fallacy of the consequent though although it is a poorly reasoned argument. To make it leak proof, you'd have to also claim that a person who claims to be logical is always logical in every circumstance and never makes a mistake.

Yes granted, but it is a serious question I am a non believer and by that I mean, I do not beleive in the existance of God, any God for that matter and I accept that people are entitled to thier beliefs and I respect that, it is their belief, even though I actually believe that the same people, if their parents were Muslims or Quakers or Jehovahs witnesses, then that is what their belief would be you see what I am trying to get at is, that children will follow in their parents footsteps, how many Muslim kids brought up, suddenly change to Judism or Catholosism aged 18. is it not fair to say once brought up in a religion then that is what you bec ome and that main point I am making is that THere is no choice for these kids, their parents make them what they are the same applies to a lesser degree with politics and perhaps more so for racist views I also disagree with Dr Todd that it is an offensive question, it is a question he may feel uncomfortable with but it is a question and that is all it is as for a dangerous suggestion, why is it a dangerous suggestion (perhaps because you do not like the possible answers) ? I presume what you are really wanting to do is to indoctrinate with a humanist, rationalist worldview rather than with a religious one. There is no such thing as raising children in an indoctrination free manner. The rationalist worldwide carried to its logical extreme is I think both dangerous and inconsistent. If you try to be rational in everything, you will find that there is no rational reason to accept basic things like "minimizing human misery is good." Why should human misery matter? People will tell you that their own misery matters to them but why is this a sufficient reason for it to really matter? It is perfectly rational to say that human are insignificant specs in a gigantic mechanistic universe and that literally nothing matters or has any real value. As soon as you try to claim something has value then you are believing something for which there is no rational reason and this becomes an article of faith...something usually part of a religion. A rationalist typically believes physics and physics currently tells us that everything is (largely except for quantum effects that percolate up) deterministic at the macroscopic level with some randomness at the quantum level. Physics and neuro-chemistry don't seem to leave room for free will and without free will all such questions as these become irrelevant because I have no choice in what I teach my children. I can argue from what is probably your own belief system that nothing matters and that choice is an illusion. Your whole question presumes we have choice and choice implies you don't accept a consequence of what is likely your own belief system.

This is an offensive question and a dangerous suggestion. It assumes that a bunch of bureaucrats in the school system are better placed to decide on truth and proper values and then to insist that everyone conform. This reminds me of a Brave New World. Children are going to soak up whatever they are exposed to whether that be from parents, from teachers, or from TV. If parents don't do anything, you wind up with self-absorbed, state worshipping, consumers. This is exactly the kind of people that the state wants. Truth and morality are ultimately considered either unknowable or non-existent. If you don't think that the state teaches some form of racism then ask yourself what nationalism is? Nationalism teaches that you are to prefer the benefit of one kind of people that are near you compared to a typically different kind of people farther away. Draw some arbitrary line and then prohibit people from pursuing their own happiness on the other side of the border in order to benefit those already on this side of the border.

This just reinforces my point. I don't know what they meant to mean when they said "do not harm." I suspect they didn't think about this at the next level and assumed that harm is obvious when obviously it is not. :) If biological pain is what is meant by harm then stealing is okay unless you want to introduce another axiom or you want to include mental anguish as pain. This has its own problems.

Not really. AFAIK, there are no universally agreed upon such axioms so I was just asking what other people use. As I suspected, most of what have been suggested as axioms aren't really axioms or at a minimum they are underspecified. Somebody suggested something like "do not harm." I don't think harm is specific enough or clear enough to be part of an axiom. What is "harm?" I think a lot of these things boil down to something like "the minimization of human misery is good" where misery is defined totally subjectively. Personally, I'm not too happy with this subjectiveness but moreover I see no reason to accept this as an axiom. My misery feels like it matters a great deal to me but science so far tells us that people do not have free will so anything that happens to me will be either deterministic or random and there is no "meaning" or "value" to be found in anything that is deterministic or random. The whole question of one having ought to do one thing versus something else presupposes, I think, not only free will but also the existence of objective value.

I got the link that I posted from a reddit submission. I couldn't have told you what site it was on or what else was on the page. I'm so used to filtering ads and fluff on webpages that I don't even notice anymore. I hadn't seen that particularly documentary before and it had a couple of nice segments that I hadn't seen in other similar documentaries. Like others have said, YouTube or google video has a bunch of similar documentaries.

So I can't scan a list of all tables and pick the one I want to join? I find the "I want to play a pickup game feature" pretty useless, at least for the way I use BBO.

If they are anything like the US, they exclude major sections of the economy like housing and energy. Whatever...they have people convinced that inflation is the equivalent of inflation rather than being caused by inflation (of the money supply). If the vast masses really understood that every world government routinely steals 3 or 5 or 10% of their wealth every year through debasement of the currency there would be revolutions.

Merry B-day!

I played flight C NAOP at nationals once. My partner and I were a very temporary partnership and he was easily distracted and intimidated so we didn't do too well. However, don't expect much to get thrown into your lap. Do you throw stuff very often into your opponent's lap? In absence of other evidence, you should assume that you're roughly in the middle of the pack. You won't do well by trying to generate good results. Just play your best normal bridge. My estimate is that there will be 4 or 5 pairs who would be competitive in higher brackets but are only playing in flight C because they want a better chance at winning. I met a few really decent pairs there. Funny story about my experience...day one I was playing some contract against this husband and wife pair and in a complicated situation the husband made a mistake and pitched the wrong card which this enabled a squeeze position against his wife. At the squeeze card, the wife went into the classic "*****, I'm squeezed huddle." At that point, I just claimed saying that if she held X, Y and Z cards she was squeezed in the following manner. The next day against the same pair I was playing another contract. There was another squeeze possibility on this hand as well. I didn't know if the squeeze was operating for sure until the squeeze card when she yet again went into the huddle. I looked at her and said "do I have you again?" She said yes and in comes the overtricks...yeah at matchpoints. She at that point jokingly told me she hoped she never met me again. Long story short....you're going to meet people who can execute squeezes in flight C.

Nice circular logic there. "Psych" has a pretty clear definition. Either this call fits or it doesn't. A desire to regulate it makes no difference. Very true....but I was talking from their perspective. Presumably people want to stop this behavior and you can't do that if you call it a psyche. Fortunately, it isn't a psyche but misinformation and so you have one legitimate and one illegitimate reason for not calling it a psyche.

I still don't want to call it a psyche. In the situation you describe, the description of HSGT is _misinformation_. It isn't a psyche because the pair has an undisclosed agreement to bid this way. Nobody should want to call this behavior a psyche because if you do you can't regulate it. Call it what it is, misinformation, and penalize them for failing to adequately disclose their agreements.

why not? if you bid 3♦ which should be xxxx and you have x or AKQxx or et cetera, isn't that a deliberate and gross misstatement? A psyche is a deliberate and gross deviation _FROM YOUR AGREEMENTS_, not from some traditional definition of the bid. If your agreement is that 30% of the time your HSGT is made on a short suit then you can't be violating your agreement by making that bid with a short suit.