If you have walked a mile in someone else's shoes, you can then say whatever you like. For one thing, you are now a mile away, and for another, you also have their shoes.
(Not meaning to make light of what was an excellent post. Is just that I read your edit, and I thought you might be cheered up by sillyness.)
The complexion doesn't matter, they are religions, not ethnicities. Also you are likely to get an even bigger reaction as you would probably then be viewed by some people as some kind of traitor.
If I were a muslim girl getting discriminated against for wearing a hijab, I'd stop wearing the hijab.
So you would, I guess, also suggest that Sikhs should stop wearing turbans, Jews should stop wearing a kippah, nuns should stop wearing habits, pagans should stop wearing pentangles, etc.
Not only is your suggestion frankly both offensive and pretty idiotic, but the world it would lead to would have even more discrimination than now and be a hell of a lot more boring.
Excellent point. But "if the result of happiness_from_identification_with_current_religion + happiness_from_how_people_make_me_feel" is negative, maybe a) you are unhappy, b) it's not an untractable problem because c) there is something you can change in the equation, and there is something you can't change.
You know the saying - you can't change the others, only yourself.
Even if you only consider personal happiness as important, you should reflect on the quote I posted. Some temporary unhappiness and struggle may be preferable in the long run.
Only from a very narrow set of perspectives. There are many perspectives on life and for many of them a 'utility function' would seem nonsensical at best. Economics is not as all-encompassing a discipline as some people would like to make out.
Would you care to come up with such a "perspective on life"? I bet that for any actual, constructed perspective (rather than an a-priori incompatible one like "a perspective on life such that it doesn't admit a utility function") a utility function can be defined.
Just because a utility function can be defined for a given perspective doesn't mean that it automatically makes sense from within that perspective, given that defining a utility function is choosing to view things from an economic perspective and even in economics there is a difference of opinion of what that actually means, with some economists viewing it as something abstract that is only used to discuss more fundamental things and with others saying that utility functions are in themselves fundamental.
Saying that utility functions are the "what there is to life", is a bit like 42 being the answer to life, the universe and everything in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What meaning you can draw depends totally on what question you are asking, or what perspective you are looking at it from.
For instance, if you are a squirrel, then an economist might be able to calculate a utility function for your behaviour, however the concept of utility functions themselves have no bearing (as far as we know) on "what there is to life" from the squirrel's perspective.
Right, and this is basically saying that we should be aware of how much anti-Muslim prejudice sucks to experience, so that we can start changing ourselves.
> So you would, I guess, also suggest that Sikhs should stop wearing turbans, Jews should stop wearing a kippah, nuns should stop wearing habits, pagans should stop wearing pentangles, etc.
Only if said individuals of the group are uncomfortable with their experience of discrimination. Others have thicker skins and ignore it, and some don't face any discrimination at all. Some want to rebel against society like a teenager and knowingly do stuff that gets them disapproval. My advice is an obvious solution to a specific problem, it does not generalize to "all members of X".
So you are saying that if you are uncomfortable with your experience of discrimination then you should change your appearance to appease your persecutor?
Do you make this crap up yourself, or does it get sent to you through the mail as part of your subscription to Batshit Monthly?
Its a matter of psychological dissonance; when you're under that much pressure, you either change your thought (ignore the haters) or change your actions (stop wearing Hijab), it's a subjective thing, no point on arguing whats right or wrong here.
Murders are detectable outside of homes. Is someone missing? Yes? Then start an investigation.
They could be missing already, or be unregistered kids, or recently arrived unregistered migrants. Not everyone who is murdered is noticed missing. Also, very few of the people who are missing have been murdered.
So what do you propose we do, regularly search all houses looking for bodies? These hypotheticals are edge cases which we already accept will in practice go unpunished. To eliminate them would involve violating the 4th amendment.
No, just arguing against your suggestion that they are not crimes if they are not detected by straightforward means.
If someone detects a murder by extremely technological means, say while using muons from cosmic rays to image though a structure like they are doing at Fukashima at the moment http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v109/i15/e152501, then that murder is still a crime whatever the method of detection.
Now it is reasonable to argue that growing weed should not be a crime in the first place, but to argue that growing it indoors should not be a crime on the basis of the level of technology required to detect it, does not seem to make any sort of sense.
So long as that somebody is not the police actively looking for a crime without a warrant, then that should not violate the 4th amendment.
I feel that I should emphasis that I am not proposing a change to existing law. I am merely advocating the point of view that new fancy technologies should, by default, be considered unreasonable searches.
I really hope you aren't being sarcastic, as that would be funnier. Here's how to make an x-ray machine strong enough to work with standard film that you can plug in the wall and uses old tv parts. Be careful in doing this as dosimeters apparently are required. http://www.belljar.net/xray.htm
"The studies I've read from the Motor Accident Commission and the Victorian police here in Australia show a clear correlation between speed cameras and reduced incidences of accidents and fatalities"
You also have to be careful with some of these statistics. Speed cameras often get put up in reaction to a series of accidents. But statistically you would expect the amount of crashes to go up and down, and if you have just had an unusually high level of accidents on a stretch of road, then you would expect the average measured afterwards to be lower in the majority of cases, irrespective of whether a speed camera was installed.
The record companies real problem with filesharing is that they feel that not paying musicians is their own special prerogative and it annoys them for everybody else to be getting in on the act, especially in a manner so unprofessional that it doesn't even bother including absurdly written contracts.
(Not meaning to make light of what was an excellent post. Is just that I read your edit, and I thought you might be cheered up by sillyness.)