Minimum wage laws don't make sense in the new globalized era. If companies can't find cheap labor here at home, they'll find it overseas. By getting rid of minimum wage laws we could allow companies to hire more people thus reducing unemployment and improving our economy.
Well thinking like that results in nasty collateral damage. It's not worth blowing up a building full of 100 civilians to kill 1 enemy combatant.
What do you mean nothing is fair? If people agree to behave in such a way so as to maximize the benefit for all, you have fairness.
From Wikipedia's Evolution FAQ:
Q: But isn't evolution unproven?
A: Proof has two meanings: in logic and mathematics, it refers to a proposition that has been shown to be 100% certain and logically necessary; in other uses, it simply refers to a proposition that is well-supported (much like the colloquial meaning of fact).
In the first sense, evolutionary theory is not proven. However, this is because nothing in the natural sciences can be proven in the first sense: empirical claims such as those in science cannot ever be absolutely certain, because they always depend on unproven assumptions about the world around us. To call evolution "unproven" in this sense is technically correct, but meaningless, because propositions like "the Earth revolves around the Sun" and even "the Earth exists" are equally unproven. Proof is only possible for a priori propositions like "1 + 1 = 2" or "all bachelors are unmarried men", which do not depend on any experience or evidence.
In the second sense, on the other hand, evolutionary theory is indeed "proven". This is because evolution is extremely well-supported by the evidence, has made testable confirmed predictions, etc. For more information, see Evidence of evolution.
Q: How could life arise by chance?
A: If by "arise", one means "develop from non-organic matter through abiogenesis", then this is a question that is not answered by evolutionary theory. Evolution only deals with the development of pre-existing life, not with how that life first came to be. The fact that life evolves is not dependent upon the origin of life anymore than the fact that objects gravitate towards other objects is dependent upon the Big Bang.
On the other hand, if by "arise" one means "evolve into the organisms alive today", then the simple answer is: it didn't. Evolution does not occur "by chance". Rather, evolution occurs through natural selection, which is a non-random process. Although mutation is random, natural selection favors mutations that have specific properties - the selection is therefore not random. Natural selection occurs because organisms with favored characteristics survive and reproduce more than ones without favored characteristics, and if these characteristics are heritable they will mechanically increase in frequency over generations. Although some evolutionary phenomena, such as genetic drift, are indeed random, these processes do not produce adaptations in organisms.
If the substance of this objection is that evolution seems implausible, that it's hard to imagine how life could develop by natural processes, then this is an invalid argument from ignorance. Something does not need to be intuitive or easy to grasp in order to be true.
All of the examples you gave as benefits of college (knowledge of research, asking questions, and class discussions) could be obtained by simply having these experts communicate with students via a system like the one we are using here.
You would save a lot of money by not needing buildings in the real world. Everyone, rather than just a classroom full of people, would be able to benefit from a professor's insights.
I don't know if I agree with everything he did, but he did cut taxes a lot. Most economists would say that tax cuts are generally good for the economy because the free market allocates resources more efficiently than the government.
He didn't cut spending enough to compensate for the drop in revenues though.
Well in my argument I was talking about undergraduate colleges. But the same logic applies to professional schools. Do everything online that you can. Real world experience can be obtained through internship level programs. If they need a central building to cut up cadavers or whatever, then ok, keep that in the real world.
That's one way of interpreting the question. But I'm looking at it from the societal level rather than the individual: "Is college currently providing enough value to justify the massive resources we're pumping into it?" If you look at it that way, I think the answer is clearly no. The services it provides can be provided in better ways.
"Psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness," writes Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert in his best-selling "Stumbling on Happiness," "and they have generally concluded that wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter."
Ok, I think you're right: College, at this point in time, is worth the cost for most people.
Still, right now the average tuition for one semester at a public four year university is $6,585. Multiply that by 8 semesters and that's $52,680 for an undergraduate degree. On top of that, you forgo the money you could have earned working full-time over the course of those four years. Now that's a hell of a lot of money.
At some point (soon, I think) the cost is going to overtake the benefit, and people are going to be demanding some alternative means of extracting that value. There are already potentially better ways to get all the value that college provides. Web communication platforms like this one have the potential to do a better job of educating people than universities ever have. The hard part is convincing people to look for new ways of structuring society.
Most people aren't autodidactic in ability or discipline.
Maybe not. But then, why do people learn in college? Because they are incented to do so via the earning power a degree will bring. A certification process would have the same effect.
Sitting in a lecture hall with a hundred other students while a professor reads a Powerpoint presentation isn't any improvement over reading a well designed website.
interdisciplinary universities are more cost-effective...
I'm not sure what you're saying here, but it sounds like "universities are cost-effective because students pay tuition." Well that's not cost-effective, that's just offloading the cost onto the students. In my argument I was suggesting that we could have one social structure that exists for the purpose of transitioning adolescents into adulthood and another that facilitates public research, rather than one institution that does a mediocre job at both.
It signals that... [you] can add to whatever institution you enter.
Well that's a rather vague benefit, isn't it? If we want people to have a broad range of knowledge, than that can be incorporated into the aforementioned certification process.
I agree that we should take action, but I don't think "setting an example" is a very good argument. I would phrase it in more realist terms: Bringing down our carbon emissions will give us the high ground in compelling China and India to do the same. We could apply economic sanctions, for example. But we're not going to be in a good bargaining position while we're still the #1 carbon emitter in the world.
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/
It was a weak argument.
Btw, if you want to find an old argument you can just google "{a few words from the argument} {username}" and it will usually turn up. I found this one by googling "senate minority report republican propaganda jessald"
I'm gonna say no. This article makes a pretty good case, imo.
You can easily learn stuff without college, via books and the internet. Sure college provides some nice social opportunities, and universities conduct useful research, but if we want to do those things, we should create separate institutions that are far more cost effective.
The one reason to go to college is to signal competence to potential employers. I think we should replace degrees with some kind of certification process for various professional fields.
Developing countries like China and India have long said they will take action against global warming if the US does as well. Global warming is indisputably happening, and looks like it will cause big problems. The bill passed by the house is an important first step in addressing this problem. The people who opposed it are either selfish or foolish.
I don't think he's a moron -- quite the opposite actually -- but it's a simple fact that an atheist would almost definitely not be elected President of the United States. Thus, any politician will have an incentive to delude themselves and avoid thinking about the question too much. So I would say he's not a moron or a liar, he's simply choosing not to seriously question his faith.
No, the initial force could have been non-intelligent, like in my river example. You're just stretching the word "God" to mean "any possible initial force." In conventional usage, "God" means "Intelligent being who created the universe."
