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Communism can be proven wrong just by pointing out that people value their leisure time, so if you reduce the financial incentive to work to zero, people will have little incentive to work. I don't understand how that logically follows. Just because you have growth and progress over time doesn't mean the economic system you have isn't terrible. Technological progress exists, so China under Mao, North Korea and Venezuela under Chavez could experience economic growth simply by adopting new technologies. Economic growth occurs in spite of terrible governments, not because of terrible governments.

Speaking of uninhabitable, which is more uninhabitable? Near the South Pole: Or near the Equator:

If people want to argue that vaccines cause autism, then so be it. I'd rather the people who believe that vaccines cause autism try to engage with others about their beliefs, which results in the potential for this individual changing their mind, rather than never have the discussion.

I don't really agree with you here. I'm a consequentialist, so I justify freedom of speech due to its good outcomes, rather than due to some 'inalienable rights'. I'm not even sure these fundamental principles you refer to exist.

Give it another million years. Long run, very long run ! To be fair though, nazism and communism came to and kept power largely as a result of preventing freedom of speech and preventing opposing ideas.

So? Let them have freedom of thought and freedom of speech. If they want to argue the moon is made of cheese and believe it dogmatically, so be it. In the long run the best ideas win in the free market place of ideas.

Why not just let the people that disagree about the historic account of WW2 have their opinion and just explain why they are wrong?

And look how it's affected our foreign policy with Russia. All our politicians have this cold-war mentality which has resulted in us funding 'moderate rebels' to engage in a proxy war with Russia over Syria, reduced our cooperation with Russia to fight ISIS, and has resulted in unnecessary polarization in Ukraine, which contributed to the civil war.

The religious minorities.

Choose refugees on the basis of oppression then, don't implement some sort of quota. And of course it's not as one sided as most people in the west view it as. If you are a Sunni male, you are more expected to go fight and die in a war fighting for Allah compared to if you are female. And if you are a non-Sunni male, you are more likely to be killed compared to a female. Personally, I'd rather be a sex slave rather than killed and given that most sex slaves do not commit suicide I think it suggests most people find sex slavery preferable to death.

Women make up 49.3% of the Syrian population. Being Christian is a choice, being a women, not so much. It makes sense to select Refugees that are most in need. Religious minorities are in greater need than Sunni Muslims because ISIS specifically kills/oppresses religious minorities. Women, not so much. To select refugees on the basis of their sex is sexist and against the ideals of Voltaire. "All mortals are equal; it is not their birth, But virtue itself that makes the difference." - Voltaire

The idea that men have 100% of the agency in society is ridiculous and this sexist myth reinforces traditionalism. This sexist view, that 100% of the agency is on males, greatly reduces our society's ability to deal with the threat of ISIS and of Islamism. Men and Women are equally capable and believing in crazy religious nonsense, and Islamism is no exception. Many women support or even fight for ISIS, the majority of Saudi Arabian women support the burka and the ban on driving. Yet our politicians in the west primarily view ISIS as a group consisting almost entirely of men and view all the women involved as simply oppressed as opposed to individuals that have the agency to support ISIS. If we do not know our enemy, then according to Sun Tzu we will likely fail. Do you mean some men or all men?

If a human is suffering and is in need, why does it matter what their phenotypical sex is? To dismiss people who are suffering just because they are male is sexist and wrong. What a joke that someone who uses Voltaire as their avatar would advocate such a position in opposition to equality. I think the attitudes highlighted in this thread demonstrate what I mean by the empathy gap in this thread: http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums/topic/24911-empathy-gap-male-disposability-reproductive-utility/

Yes. However, if they are correlated with solar output and you treat the strength of solar output as a free parameter, then this deals with the issue and gives an unbiased estimate of climate sensitivity; though the main issue is that this increases the confidence interval considerably (Van Hateren's confidence intervals are very small).

It's not liberalism, especially if you look at the roots of liberalism, which is based on individualism and treating people equally. Unfortunately, the word 'liberal' has been hijacked by neoprogressives.

^ Only in crazy neoprogressive orwellian land does advocating for equality count as sexism.

I'm not that optimistic. Also, the young people trying to enter the work force today have been indoctrinated with alarmist propaganda since they entered school, this didn't occur with previous generations.

Right now I'm leaning more towards using they as a singular pronoun. Colloquially it is already used as a gender-neutral third person singular possessive pronoun. Though I think that in order for it to work, you need to conjugate they with singular forms of the verb to help avoid confusion and make it feel more natural as a singular pronoun. For example: "My friend Sam was talking to a group of undergraduate students. They is funny." vs "My friend Sam was talking to a group of undergraduate students. They are funny.". In the first case it is clear that Sam is funny, which helps reduce ambiguity.

Are there really any fourth world nations anymore? You underestimate the power of our neoprogressive education system and media. All the movies with scary ominous music as ice caps melt in the summer, to poor baby seals looking sad, to children being taught about how to be activists to advance the cause of 'Climate Justice', etc.

I'll also point out that according to the definition of Berkeley, Voltaire committed microaggressions when he said: "Mortals are equal; it is not birth, it’s virtue that makes the difference" Darn Voltaire, denying people's racial identity by focusing on virtue. His work is clearly problematic and we should ban Voltaire in universities.

To be fair, it depends on which context. People might stereotype women as incompetent when it comes to things like shopping for electronics. On the other hand men are often stereotyped as idiots who need a smart women to save them when it comes to tv commercials. Arguably a lot of the difference in perception is due to neutony, which results in reduced empathy towards men and a reduction in taking women seriously.

What are the chances that the billions of Trudeau's infrastructure payments will go to refineries? Or the chance that some of those billions of dollars that go to Eastern Canada as transfer payments will be used to build refineries? I say zero. Trudeau is controlled by Gerald Butts, and look at how Trudeau really views Albertans: http://www.torontosun.com/2012/11/22/trudeau-would-rather-have-quebecers-than-albertans-in-charge

Usually I wouldn't advocate such a position, but I'm pretty indifferent on Canada fighting ISIS in Iraq/Syria due to the crazy circumstances. It was idiotic to fund the 'moderate rebels' in the first place, and the west's 'Assad is an evil dictator using chemical weapons on his population' is, for the most part, false. The west should have stayed out and let our so called allies of Saudi Arabia and Turkey deal with the issue; as they are Sunni majority countries, ISIS would not be able to invoke the Quran to get as many new recruits as they currently do (where as now they can say 'the infidels are invading muslim land' and point to verses that say it is now every muslim's duty to help ISIS). If the west didn't intervene then ISIS would continue to expand until Saudi Arabia and Turkey have no choice but to deal with them. However, 'there is no use crying over spilled milk' and the question of leaving now that Canada is already involved is different from the question of joining in the first place. It would be far better for the crazy Islamists in Saudi Arabia and the crazy ISIS Islamists to wipe each other out rather than fight Saudi Arabia's proxy war against Iran for them. Who funds ISIS? Who funded the ideology of Wahabbism over decades, which has lead to the rise of Islamist groups from Boko Haram to Al Shabab to ISIS? Who commits continual genocide against apostates and gays? Saudi Arabia. Where does Saudi Arabia get their money? Oil. Who buys a lot of that oil? The USA. Obama wants to buy Saudi oil over Canadian oil due to his immense misunderstanding of the magnitude of climate change and then have Canada waste resources fighting Saudi Arabia's ISIS problem that they created for them? The issue of displacing Saudi oil in the global market is not independent of the fight against ISIS; so leveraging our military campaign against ISIS to reduce funds that go from the US to Islamists makes perfect sense.