St. Paul and I Agree...
Taxation is not theft: "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves." -- Romans 13 The key idea implicit here, and the one that turned me on the subject of whether or not taxation is theft, is that "every soul" owes obedience to the "governing authorities." Now, if that is a debt I truly owe , then, when those authorities levy the taxes they need to do the job of governing, I owe them those taxes, and attempts to collect them certainly do not constitute acts of theft. And obviously it doesn't matter at all, from this point of view, whether or not I "signed" any sort of "social contract." (In fact, the history of political thought since the Reformation can be read as an attempt to find a secular rep...
Yep!
ReplyDeleteAnd while correlation does not imply causation, lack of correlation does not imply lack of causation.
Ehhhh. Burning fuel does not cause P to be any value, and is not claimed to. It is claimed to reduce P - V over a range of values.
ReplyDeleteAdjusting the thermostat is what is claimed to cause P to move to a new value, again over a range of values. As ex hypothesi it is a good thermostat you will see good correlation between the reading and P.
So this is not a good example of causation not leading to correlation:it shows good correlation between burning and P -V and on thermostat settings and P.
Ken, Nick was making a joke.
DeleteHe was making a point with a funny example. I have seen NR repeat the caustion/correlation thing on other sites. But the point doesn't actually follow from the example.
DeleteAh, now I see you misunderstood the analogy rather than failing to get the joke. Just what is "P - V"?
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