SethInMI

Tesla has almost 50,000 employees, much of them in the US. Those employees are well paid and pay taxes. So the amount of tax money going into the system as a result of Tesla is greater than the amount of tax credits.

pics or it didn't happen. congrats!

are you still as bearish on Tesla as you were a few years ago? if now you think they will succeed, does that make the tax credits less evil in your mind? the argument being that Telsa is a net win for the country; the tax revenue generated more than covers the lost revenue of the tax credits.

my schadenfreude these days is tesla shorts.

you guys can both be right. if the theory is that religion helped in organizing primitive societies into complex ones that became civilization, it could be true that: 1. without religion such societies would have eventually developed. 2. without religion such societies would have taken much much longer to develop, such that on earth they still would be undeveloped today.

ok, but if you went back to those days, you would think the people were mentally ill, there was so much superstition and practices that we would consider crazy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_religion#Advantages_of_religion I am not disputing this, but I don't think it is very relevant or important.

I was a big Rush fan, when Neil Peart died I listened the hell out of their stuff from the late 70s and 80s. Neil was an atheist, but several of his songs touched on this idea, of imagining a world beyond our own. But as he ends this verse from Mystic Rhythms, it is just entertainment... "We sometimes catch a window A glimpse of what’s beyond Was it just imagination Stringing us along? More things than are dreamed about Unseen and unexplained We suspend our disbelief And we are entertained —"

There is a difference between having a spooky or unexpected feeling and then shrugging it off later, and repressing your humanity. For example, many people get really freaked out after watching a horror film. They may go so far as to not go into a dark room, or refuse to be alone in a house. Now later if they shrug that off as ridiculous, are they repressing their humanity too? No. They are just acknowledging the mind doesn't always operate rationally.

the patheos link is to a satirical section of the website. The news story is not true.

If I may be so bold as to respond for Jerry, his single line quote of you makes it clear what he found insulting: quote: (You may not have followed the entire discussion, which is understandable) By that line, you meant: "You have obviously not followed the entire discussion. The discussion is not easy for anyone to follow because it is so fragmented, so even though you are an intelligent person, the messy format of this thread caused you to miss a few points" But Jerry read it as: "You have obviously not followed the entire discussion. It is a straightforward set of posts, but because you are stupid, I would not have expected you to be able to follow it." ------------- we will see if Jerry agrees with my read...

no it doesn't sound like that to me. bandwidth issues usually result in things running slow, taking too long to load etc. this problem is not like that. if the result is a database connection issue, then it does seem to be persistent for some time. I don't know how number of database connections relate to how many users are making requests.

this is still happening. is there a fix planned?

I came up with the same. Do whatever you can (violate any rules of the road etc) to avoid any collisions. But if you don't have a clear open path to swerve into then follow the rules of the road (braking as hard as possible is assumed) and hit whatever is in front of you.

I am sure I could google "trolley problem" and find some well reasoned arguments for one or the other. My thoughts: there is a tipping point somewhere, where doing something that causes some death and also prevents more death would be a moral obligation (more extreme example: you can stop a bomb from blowing up a building full of people but it would require killing an innocent person strapped to the bomb, so not 5:1 trade but 5000:1 trade). I think most people realize that it is a terrible position to be in, regardless of how much time you have to consider it, and calling it an obligation requires a high threshold, probably higher than 5:1. but morally permitted, yes. what would I do? I think I would pull the lever, but I would hope to god the lives those 5 were living were not worse than the 1 I took. Similar questions pop up about self driving cars, which will someday be faced with similar dilemmas, does the car run over the person who just walked in front of it, or swerve into the next lane and smash into another car, which may hurt both occupants but probably not kill them? (there are a bunch of scenarios that one could come up with, but the point is who decides the rules?)

this is one of the most ridiculous things I have read in incidents. you are saying if you drop your cutaway handle it could get wrapped around the plane's propeller and cause it to crash? smh. <edit>ok so Bryguy1224 was just making a joke. I don't know the poster at all and got sucked in.</edit>

favorite jokes of my nephews heard over xmas: Q. What does a sea monster eat? A. fish and ships Q. why was the dragon not a good boss? A. he kept firing people

I just waded through 3 pages of discussion. I will throw a 2c in here and then duck out again. I see I largely agree with gowlerk and take a pragmatic view of morality. Humans form social contracts that govern our behavior and that is all morality is to me. I like the PJ O'Rouke quote that Kristen (god I hope I got her name right) had as a sig: "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." As far that pragmatism limiting my ability to experience certain things, shrug. I have been moved to tears by singer singing a song or just walking in a building (la sagrada familia) or viewing an outdoor vista. Would I call that level of emotion a spiritual experience? Probably, but to me it just means a deep level of feeling. My pragmatic "what are we living for" answer is: to have fun, find happiness, and try to leave the world a little better that when I entered it.

In "The Portable Atheist" the anthology edited by C. Hitchens, one author makes the snide remark that what God actually said was "go fuck yourselves" but it got re-worked into "be fruitful and multiply".

Do you mean giving advice on this site? or in real life? or some other way? The fact you are asking the question is a good sign, you know you don't know everything, and if someone asks a gear and rigging question like "what brand of X should I get" you know to stay out of that one. But plenty of questions are timeless. "I'm scared, is that ok", "how do I handle situation X with person Y" "Is it ok my reserve is smaller than my main" so advise away when you think you can.

hmm, something better than "my karma ran over your dogma?" History is not on your side, but never is a very very long time, so I won't bet against it. If you come up with something let me know.

I can't argue with that. But people are not good (in my non-religious humble opinion) at keeping the realms separated, and they allow their subjective experiences to influence what should be considered objectively.

Ha. As a lapsed believer, someone who grew up a Christian and left the church, I have subscribed to both sets of ideas. I can't say for sure what my subconscious level thinks, but consciously I am more comfortable now with my ideas than I was then. I don't agree with the idea that non-measurable / non-reproducible experiences are equally valid to measurable / reproducible ones, which is I think what your long post is trying to say. When I have to face death eventually, I hope I will face it like I face jumping from a plane. Absolutely certain of how it will go? no. Confident I have prepared as best I could? yes.

I listened to a interview a few weeks ago, and the respondent was talking about how her life had some very rough points, but as a religious person she took great comfort in the fact that everything was unfolding in some great plan, even if it wasn't what she wanted. Listening to that, I was struck by the fact that as an atheist, when tragedy strikes I take comfort in the opposite truth, that there is no plan at all, and therefore no need to rationalize or search for some sort of meaning in the senselessness of tragedy. I think it is similar with morality, religious people take comfort in the existence of an external code, an "absolute" standard of right and wrong which they can fall back on. (and I say absolute in quotes, because the centuries have proved that that code is quite flexible). Atheists take comfort in the opposite, that we humans get to define our moral code, and we have to live with the results. It's my favorite turn of phrase: "there's no justice, there's just us"