Today, in the United States of America, hundreds of people will be arrested for marijuana-related charges.

These people will not have committed any crime upon anyone.

You said:

"What processes do you use to determine whether ideas and interpretations are based in reality or just imagined because of wishful thinking or past hurts?"

To which I replied:

"As always, the difference is in your chosen authority"

You could even go further than you suggest, and say that everyone has an authority for their beliefs. The problem is some stop at a certain level of discovery. They close the door so to speak, some never even bother to question anything at all. I think maybe what I mean can be understood better by saying that by "authority" I don't necessarily mean police and the law. What I mean is WHATEVER it is that convinces you, that can convince you, whether something is true or false, right or wrong, good or bad. Your epistemological authority.

I think when we get so entrenched in our beliefs that we "will never change" or cannot even see any new evidence let alone evaluate it, we become stagnant. Too many like this, I think

I couldn't agree more. It seems the spirit of intellectual inquiry for its own sake is being destroyed by slavish conformity to one authority or another.

As always, the difference is in your chosen authority, whether your own eyes, history, science, religion, your boss, your mother and father, the President, Rush Limbaugh, George Carlin, FOX news, etc.

I am sorry but wherever you got that definition, well the dictionary should be burned.

Belief can rest on proof, or might not. Most of us like to make a distinction between truth and belief, although if you want to get into it philosophically, David Hume did reduce all knowledge to what he called "true belief." But even in this case, true belief requires evidence to distinguish it from untrue belief.

The upshot is this. Suppose I believe in little green men and that right now I have the power to walk on Venus?

What you believe, alone, can never be proof of everything, at least for anyone but yourself.

I am not taking sides, I see you two have a thing going. Just thought I'd mention this (I get emails when someone posts).

Come on now, O hasn't had a chance to be a bad President yet, and Jimmy Carter? Easy on Jimmy, in my opinion he was the only President we've had since Jefferson who really gave a care about the people, he was a true humanist. And he did make mistakes (like boycotting the Olympics), but don't we all do that?

You people need to get off the right-left republican-democrat dichotomy. It means absolutely nothing and is just a label. Move beyond the label and tackle the issues. There is no real difference between a conservative democrat and a liberal republican other than the color of the flags used to divide us.

Thanks for the update man.

We know what the White House can do to good men.
We hear about honesty and rationality and reason and common sense, but all these things seem to fall away.

You begin to wonder how someone who cannot see, or will not act to correct, this strictly un-American marijuana Prohibition, on its face wrong in so many ways, can make any decisions at all. I realize it is still too early to tell, and I have not given up hope in him yet, but it seems while those executive orders were rolling, we could have had one thrown in for at least the people who by state law can have their medicine.

OK one more for today.
The problem you allude to (city versus country education, let's say) does exist, but there is not as much discrepancy as you would think. True, a higher percentage of rural kids graduate, but the same amount of geniuses and lifelong success come from both urban and rural schools. Also, there is a lot of variation, meaning there are some good urban schools and some bad rural ones.

What do you mean by learning techniques? A good teacher uses his or her own techniques, and the plasticity and artificiality of those who do otherwise only line the pockets of do-no-real-work psychologists, and become immediately apparent as pretenders to the students.

Begin your whys this way: Why do we treat kids in school like second-class citizens? Why do we stifle all creativity and make education very much about obeying rules and following instructions? Why do we allow silly test results to reward achievement, when the opposite should be the case? Why do we allow these No Child Left behind (because no child is moving) exams, at the expense of history, geography, the classics, and creativity? Why do we teach evolution alone, when it is as much a fabricated fantasy as Zeus and his thunderbolts?

I taught. I had kids in school. I know what the deal is. My school superintendent makes 250k a year. The teachers start at 20k. Now tell me why I do not teach, and WHY certain people who know little more than what their AA and teaching certificate got them, can legally be allowed to teach our children. Why we glorify babysitters as teachers. What possibly can they teach, if their minds contain nothing TO teach.

There is the root you seek, with problems in education. If you don't make students want to come to your class, to hear you, to OBEY you, you are doing something wrong, and you are not really a teacher. They are born, not made. The rest of the world knows this, hence, their superiority to the USA when it comes to educating the youth.

No, no I have not, I am sure they are just fine.
It's the cherry on top I wonder about.

Once again, what is it that you see as the real issues? I have offered several, yet you say these are not the real issues. I would like to know what they are, at least to you.

Education? What do you mean? We spend more money per capita on education than anywhere else in the world. Again, laziness, in teaching, in policy, and greed about the funds that should be going directly to the curriculum are your problems there. Maybe you are talking about trades?

Economic benevolence? Is that what you call fair wages for for fair work, is that what you call profit sharing? I say such will indeed fuel the economy. More people will have more money to buy more things, which will require more jobs to produce more things.

Now as to whether I can accept greed as a part of human nature. Maybe, maybe not, I tend to think I do not. Greed for material things seems to me like it has to be learned. Yes I know little babies are greedy little whiners, I raised several. But this sort of natural greed is not what we are talking about. We are talking about the kind that wants MORE MORE MORE, a product of the "keeping up with the Joneses" junk I thought we rejected back in the 70s. So I can accept it if I have to, but I prefer to reject it.

Perhaps physical violence is part of human nature as well? Why then do we not just accept it? I'll tell you why, because it is dangerous to society to allow such behavior, the exact same thing I am saying about this greed, that needs to be controlled.

And you need to really get an almanac or something and look at the numbers and see where the money is. Lucky I'm not running the show, I'd put a cap on bank accounts as well. Nobody gets rich, not Bill Gates, or anyone like him, without screwing somebody over, the employees, the environment, or the customer. These are the real issues. The incessant focus on "trying to find the problem" when it is staring you in the face is typical bureaucratic bullsh*t.