Recent content by Bomb#20

Can you remind me who desperately needs Starlink, or an electric car, or a PowerWall, or her satellite launched on a Falcon 9? And assuming there is somebody who desperately needs one of those things but can't afford it, can you explain how Musk makes money from her desperately needing what she...

:consternation2: Elon doesn't have any equity in Mars, and I'm paying him for the internet that lets me read your posts -- thirty years in and he's the first guy to finally provide reliable high-speed service in my area. If he wants to use what I pay him for Starlink to build more rockets...

Why do you believe rhetoric like that? Billionaires need people who can afford to buy what they're selling. Take a look at the list of all the countries with no billionaires here...

Oh come on. The Sentinelese will make it. :happydrinking:

When you eliminate the incentive to create wealth while turning the incentive to consume it up to eleven, the total amount of wealth isn’t changing. Right.

Biden. Duh! Who you calling "us"? A lot of people here were already talking to me in good faith. You weren't; I highly doubt you'll start now. I expect you'll keep thinking of me as a redcap because you're a tribal thinker and can't wrap your mind around anyone else not being one too.

The point of a thought experiment is to actually think about what would happen.

What I'm not seeing in that long litany of civil war and economic disruption is people killing each other for believing the wrong thing, unless it was believing the wrong guy should be emperor. And no, of course you're right that it wasn't tolerant by modern standards -- I'm very much grading...

:picardfacepalm: "conspiracy theory or alarmism--whatever you would like to call it"?!? "Conspiracy theory" and "alarmism" are nothing at all like two terms for the same "it". Accusing your opponents of alarmism is perfectly normal discourse. In contrast, going on about a "grand, intentional...

:confused2: You say that like it's a bad thing. The Enlightenment was the best thing that ever happened to the human race. The thinkers of that era composed anti-Christian rants because they knew very well what Christianity had done to their world. It was Europe tearing itself apart for more...

Well that's meta.

Actually I wasn't offering any judgment about whether it was wrong and false; I was talking about what causes belief. There's nothing to stop an opinion that's held only because of a long cycle of hearing and repeating that all started with theological musings from turning out to be perfectly...

I guess I was unclear. By "religious concept" I was referring only to concepts whose source is a religion, not to just any old concepts with some other basis that some religion subsequently came along and plagiarized. Likewise, democracy is a core concept of the U.S., but I don't think that...

Normally, yes. Some Devil's Island prisoners are reported to have succeeded. You really need a prison system like that one that doesn't give a damn if the inmates live or die; otherwise a prisoner who tries it will be moved to a padded cell.

Well, nothing but the walls, the guards, and the cops. Most people who kill themselves use guns or poison; we've deliberately made those hard to get into prisons. Consequently, most prison suicides are by hanging. If you hang yourself your chance of dying is about 75%. If a prisoner hangs...