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Isn't the PBS a seperate issue in this case? The PBS is about government subsidising of drugs but, as far as I know, it doesn't dictate which drugs are actually available (for those with the money) in Australia - that is really an issue to take up with the therapeutic goods administration (TGA)...

I agree with much of the anti-libertarian ranting. Take a single issue - healthcare. As far as I know, the USA has the healthcare which is most in line with libertarian ideology in terms of how uncontrolled and market driven it is (they have medicare and other forms of coverage for a select...

I'm of two minds about human rights discourse. On the one hand, it accords with many of my personally held values - I have been brought up in an essentially Western/Judeo-Christian/Liberal ethical tradition after all. On the other hand, I am a relativist and so some aspects of human rights...

Apologies (I heart Metaphysics).

I think that's an overly dark view. Really it depends on who happens to be wielding the term 'human rights'. Certainly it is used by hypocrites and manipulators who use it when it suits them to advance their ends. However, there are plenty of individuals and groups out there who genuinely...

To make some of the above relevant to what you have previously said: This won't hold for multiply realizable entities or properties if 'every element of the physical truth' involves detailed descriptions of particles and the like. It may, however, be possible to get such human truth <-->...

One issue that I should have brought up is that of 'fuzziness' or of multiple realizability. Here I'm using 'multiple realizability' in a non-mind-specific sense to refer to the phenomenon where several non-identical arrangements of a basic, 'micro'-level system (particle arrangments, for...

I agree that to learn how to perform such translations is very useful (note: I say exactly this in my post above). However, I think we have to be realistic/cautious about how we make use of this ability to translate. I just think that some discussions and arguments are better had at a higher...

I still think that you need to be careful about trying to provide your descriptions at that kind of level. It strikes me as being like insisting that a student of art theory wishing to compare the works of Mondrian with those of Pollock must conduct their comparison at the molecular level. Sure...

Aye, I would suggest that structural isomorphisms (between the representation and the represented) are central if you want to explain what makes a belief a 'good enough fit' to the state of the physical world to call it 'true'. However, the question of whether such representations have to be...

W.V.O. Quine: "[W]e cannot detach ourselves from it [that is, our conceptual scheme] and compare it objectively with an unconceptualised reality. Hence it is meaningless, I suggest, to inquire into the absolute correctness of a conceptual scheme as a mirror of reality. Our standard for...

I'm not sure why you see truth as dying with god. Plato certainly made arguments for the independence of morality from god, i.e. in Plato's Euthyphro a dialectical argument is made, claiming that things are not 'pious' in virtue of the fact that they are loved by the gods, but rather the gods...

To me that seems like one of those claims which would do well to take heed of the idiom "the grass is always greener on the other side". While I won't go so far as to attribute the above claim to you (given your penchant for ironic parody), I nonetheless think that claims like what you wrote...

It's always hard to tell what channels this kind of data comes from, so always take it with a grain of salt, but I do remember hearing in the past that both the median AND the mean fell in the 99+ range ( 99.3 - 99.7 or so, from memory). You can have an average in the 99's with some students...

Haha, Tetsuyah's is just the one that stands out in my mind (it often tops Sydney food guides and makes 'world's top restaurants' lists) - it's certainly more dear than Doyles! I've never done Tetsuyah's myself, though I have been to Doyles once for a special occaision.

Notably: the Russian prison system = le fucked up (in particular with regards to tuberculosis... it's a bit of a breeding ground for drug resistant forms).

I was going by this document for the payment of staff specialists (i.e. fellows/consultants and what not): http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/policies/ib/2007/pdf/IB2007_024.pdf Since it was NSW health I assumed that it gave details for remuneration of government payed specialists, where the...

Do you mean that there isn't much money to be made in medicine? I'm not sure where people get this idea from. Sure, medicos can't expect to do as well as corporate lawyers and mining engineers but nor can most people. The fact that physicians in the public system seem to be garuanteed to...

But do their views change because there exist moments of hyper-rationality amongst the general cognitive decline, or as an emotional shield against the existential anxiety brought on by the inevitability of death/nothingness? You misappropriate the Life of Pi quote. The kind of doubt...

Patenting can be pretty fucked, IMO. Take for example the law suit which took place a while back where some 39 pharmaceutical companies tried to sue South Africa which was trying to ensure cheaper access to certain life saving medications. While the collective prosecutors eventually conceeded...