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Look, folks! It's one of those caricature liberal moral relativists that geniuses like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are always railing against. As much as I thought Rush and Ann were idiots (and, believe me, I still do), I give them a smidgen more respect today since I would never have thought that anybody who wrote nonsense such as you did (above) actually existed.

Unless you're just trolling, which seems equally likely.

Of course, you were somehow marked "insightful", in yet another slashdot coup.

I would argue that japan is not that much of a democracy as it seems. While they generaly have most of the system that would alow for a democracy, there are few caveats. Free press is not that free. there is little debate within the ruling party, because if you are an elected member of that party, and vote against the line decided by the top, you are often expled from the party. While a bit caricatural, japanese people trust into the hierarchy much more than western people do. When a western country goes bad, people think "what are thoose asholes in the gov doing?" in japan, people think "Times are hard, we should support the gov much more, so that they can fix things". Plus, japanese people don't care so much for politics on average.

I know this sounds pretty biased and prejudiced. I do not claim that all japanese people act like this. But I have been living in japan for a while, and I notive much less political opinion from the common folks, who just don't seem to care that much for what the governement does. Additionaly, while this isn't necessarily being anti-democratic, the japanese governement is quite negationist (or at least pro-forgetting) regarding what the country did during WW2. this has quite an impact on how people think about foreign policy between japan and china, when you tell them of "the rising power of the chinese communist who hate us japanese" when you forget to add "because we mass murder them not so long ago, and continue to this day to honor the generals who lead that war"

I have lived both in japan and china, and though I believe that just by looking at the system in theory, japan is nice and china is evil, the difference is far less obvious when actualy living there (at least for urban china)

Heh...I'll see your BS call on that guy's racist school claims and raise you this guy'sclaim a mere few posts previous that a professor actively pushes students to have homosexual relations as part of his class. It's funny how much more likely we are to let an exaggeration/statistical anomoly slide when it supports our own views, isn't it?

I have a hard time believing you. What you've written (as an AC no less) sounds like a leftist fantasy or caricature of mainstream america. Unless you're going to George Wallace U. then what you've said here is either a lie or an extreme exaggeration.

And if someone is unwilling to make the effort to be good at anything? Tough shit, go work at MacDonalds for the rest of your life then. Life is tough, deal with it.

Heck, back in "the olden days", it was a lot simpler. Basic education ended around fifth grade, and only those with the desire and the money continued on. Extending free public education has been a laudable goal, but I think it's been carried to such an extreme that it's now a caricature of itself. The fervent push for all children to graduate high school (and lately even the absurdity of "every child a college degree") has resulted in a watered-down system that has elevated pushing kids through over actually teaching them. I am reminded of an essay by Robert Heinlein, written in the ?50's? (I think it's in "Expanded Universe", but I can't find it now). His father, with only a 9th grade education at the turn of the century, had to (among other things) read and write greek and latin, and memorize the multiplication tables up to 20x20. In their zeal to extend education to those unwilling to be educated, they've rendered the education a pointless dog and pony show.

So now I'm going to argue both sides (see another comment below about "the real world"). Do you think that it's fair that my grade should depend on how much I can parrot the professor's politics, regardless of how ridiculously caricatured it has become in the academic hothouse? I don't.

I hope FSF spokesperson Peter Brown is right in saying that we have a great opportunity to explain the benefits of freedom to the public over the coming year. I also sympathize with his claim that one must use the term "freedom" instead of focusing on "open source."
But opponents of the "open source" terminology always caricature the term and its supporters. Those who pushed for open source have promoted its ethics and community benefits just as free software proponents have. The virtue of "openness" as a general principle is powerful, and has brought people out on the streets in many countries.
I admit that the words "open source" do not slam the ethical challenge down on the table the way the word "freedom" does. But "open source" has helped free software spread to far more places in business and public organization. Now many more people have something to defend when the free software proponents warn them they're in danger of losing it.

Vince Desi is absolutely correct. What made Postal 2 great was the simple fact that you were presented with everyday activities (get the mail, buy groceries, vote in an election) and could handle those activities in whatever way you chose. It wasn't easy to complete those objectives without resorting to violence, but it was absolutely possible. Postal 2 is a ridiculous caricature of a town where everyone has a chip on their shoulder. It's no exaggeration when Desi says this is the most politically correct game ever made - considering the disposition of rest of the population it's not hard to play as the biggest pacifist in town!

Why does Thompson decry simulated murder but not actual murder? It's like suing the creator of Monopoly for being responsible for Walmart. I can't wait until someone sues this ambulance chaser for belittling the death of a loved one by equating it with a game.

I understand the joke. It's not funny. Stupid, witless caricatures are simply annoying.

I agree that anyone who creates a curriculum will always exclude ideas. I am not arguing against private individuals deciding for themselves what ideas to accept and what ideas to reject. I am arguing against government making that decision for the individuals in question. In other words, my fundamental issue is not with evolution vs intelligent design, but with the threat to liberty posed by the public school system as it is currently devised--with government acting as the censor.

You seem to be advocating a position where the majority votes on which ideas should be promoted and which ideas should be suppressed. You seem to be convinced that the majority will accept whatever scientific findings are currently in vogue as being "true", and that this will be the basis for their suppression of other ideas. Even if your notion that science holds the answers is correct, I doubt that the general public has the depths of understanding of science required to ensure that scientific truths win out in the curriculum.

My educational background is in Physics. As a physics graduate student, almost everything I learned was a contradiction to the view of reality that most people hold. Even to the extent that the names for advanced ideas in Physics are widely believed to represent truth (i.e. relativity, wave-particle duality, Heisenberg uncertainty, etc.) the public perception of these ideas is only a caricature of the actual ideas. When the typical person says he accepts the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the thing he typically has in mind (that the energy transfer of making a measurement creates a change in the state of the system) is so far from the actual principle as to be almost the very thing rejected by it.

The main impact of introducing Intelligent Design into the classroom would be that there would arise a much larger group of people with an interest in developing falsifiable experiments that would allow people to decide between the two theories. Even if it turned out (as I suspect) that evolution is generally the right way to go, I think that it will only help our understanding of the theory to subject it to such challenges. These experiments would also help theologians, who might have to refine their thoughts on their religious beliefs to accommodate the results of these experiments. Censorship is the wrong way to handle these objections.

"To try to come a bit on topic I would ask what would be the differences in science development had the Catholic religion been replaced by another religion. I mean, Catholisism brought the Inquisition and the so called Dark Ages (again I am just stating this from my very limited history knowledge) and in one way or another opaqued science development trough the ages. While to the best of my knowledge, religions as the Egypcian or Aztec promoted science (even before it was called science) on their own."

Religion and science tend to happily coexist when science does not contradict the basic tenets of the dominant religion. This was no more or less true of Catholicism than anything else: the inquisition was seldom invoked against scientists, doctors, engineers, etc., because few of them did anything that challenged the Church's authority. Even Galileo, who is often cited as an example of clerical repression of scientific thought actually caused most of his own problems. He had been told that he could freely publish his ideas about the Earth not being the centre of the Universe by the simple expedient of stating that it was a _theory_ (as Copernicus had), and he chose not to do this. Furthermore, his book was published in the form of a series of dialogues between a brilliant know-all based on himself, and a complete idiot who was obviously a caricature of the Pope. He thus did everything he possibly could to provoke the Church, so it is hardly surprising that they responded, yet his punishment was simply house arrest and being prohibited from publishing anything else -- positively benign when compared with what they did to religious heretics.

Any condemnation of Catholicism for repression of scientific thought must also consider that the Jesuit order, almost from its inception, has not only embraced science in general, but also produced a large number of excellent scientists (the debate between Galileo and some Jesuits during his trial is interesting, because they make him look quite foolish on several occasions). Not many other religions can claim to have an order almost exclusively dedicated to the pursuit of science, and it is the Jesuits as much as anyone who have resulted in Catholicism's eventual acceptance of a non-geocentric universe, the theory of evolution, and various other viewpoints which contradict a rigid interpretation of the Bible.

NB: I am not in any way defending Catholicism: the point of my post is simply to put it in context with other dominant religions, few of which have displayed any notable tolerance for opposing viewpoints (Buddhism being a notable exception).

>I think intelligent design arguments were stating that
>since we can't figure out how things work or comprehend them,
>that they must have been created by something superior
>intelligence above our own.

Um, no. They weren't. But caricatures were.

If that is so why do ID followers always try to dig up things that "science cannot explain"?

Where is the logic in that? Why don't they say "Cool! Ain't God grand?" when it comes to stuff that were discovered hundreds of years ago?

I tell you why:

Because the grandparent poster is dead-on target. The only way that ID makes sense if there are things that evolution cannot explain. If evolution can explain everything about living things, what is left of ID?

Nothing.

Nonsense. This is a caricature of ID perpetuated by those who know nothing about it, haven't bothered to read the central works, etc. An ID advocate would (and no doubt will say), "Cool! We discovered the novel, innovative way that the Designer chose to make Bees fly!" The more religiously minded intelligent design sorts would say, "Ain't God grand?"

Except if that novel, innovative way is evolution itself :) (Gotcha!)

Now, if the ID advocates had their way, we would have just said, "Hey, God makes bees fly. Since I already know the real reason, there's no real reason to keep studying it." In fact, some of them will probably even go so far as to dismiss the findings as false because it conflicts with their notion that God must be responsible. If we listened to them, we wouldn't have possible future scientific and engineering discoveries, discoveries that could possibly lead to even more important work on truly world-changing devices.

The bogus, idiotic, pseudo-scientific types opposing ID would say, "ooh! Here's an interesting finding that I can somehow stretch to attack ID," on the basis of a few off-hand remarks made by a few non-central ID advocates.

The claim that we don't know how bees fly is by no means central to ID. This is just propaganda.

This is a weird conversation; it's like you're responding to some set of posts that are only vaguely similar to mine.

I'm sick of people trying to get away with "Well, I didn't SAY that."

Sometimes, yes, people say things with lots of subtext and then try to deny the subtext. Other times -- more often, I think -- they say "I didn't say that" because, you know, they actually didn't say that. The things you seem to think I said, I really didn't say, nor did I mean to imply.

Now shut up ...

Wow, that's some sophisticated debate technique you've got going there. I retreat in awe before your stunning display of logic.

(And in case you're wondering, THAT was subtext.)

You're making the assumption that EVERY who believes in science feels the same way as you.

No, I'm really not; again, if you go back and read what I actually wrote, you'll see that I'm very careful to use phrases like "tend to" when I'm talking about personality types and beliefs, on both sides of the argument. I make no claims to absolutes.

Truth is, everyone sees their position as "The Truth", or they wouldn't believe in it. Whether it's science or religion or whatever.

You've just turned yourself into Exhibit A for what I said above: "They caricature scientists as authoritarian because that's the way they think themselves; they honestly can't understand people who genuinely do not think the way they do. In their worldview, everyone has some kind of absolute faith, and if it's not God, it must be Science." No, not everyone sees their position as The Truth. Everyone sees their truth as the truth, true enough, but some of us don't insist on the capital letters. In other words, ideologues (who are, by definition, not scientific) see their view of Truth as eternal, absolute, and universal; in contrast, non-ideologues are willing to modify their view of truth based on new evidence. The ideologue's failure to grasp this distinction is very frustrating for those of us who try to stay grounded in reality.

The scientist simply does not "believe" in science the way the Christian believes in Jesus, or the Communist believes in Marx.

The second you admit that you accept that your "truthes" in science may be completely bogus if the true nature of reality were completely different from what it actually is, I'll let you go.

Of course I "admit" that, and have never denied it. That's what science is: a view of reality based on our observations, which can change as the observations change.

Look, maybe a specific example will help. You wrote in another post, "I accept Jesus as my savior... Bible says that's sufficient for salvation... so what are you trying to accomplish? I'm still going to heaven." Okay, fair enough. Now, I'm guessing that there is absolutely nothing that I, or anyone, could ever do or say that would convince you that this is not the case; that accepting Jesus as your savior is a guarantee of salvation is The Truth in your view, and no evidence against this belief, nor any lack of evidence for it, is going to change your mind. And of course this is True not only for you, but for a great many other Christians.

On the other hand, there are still other Christians for whom Truth is different, who believe, quite as sincerely as you believe in your version of salvation, that salvation requires the observance of certain forms and rituals. Now, you may be right, or they may be right, or you may all be wrong; in any case, there's no way to test these propositions without dying. But you believe your Truth, and they believe theirs, and both parties will almost certainly go on doing so regardless of what you or I or they say.

But there is no belief in science that is like that. Not a single one. Every currently accepted scientific theory was once new, and untested, and many were rejected by the scientific community of the time; every one had to prove itself through repeated obser

But your advice, just take perfect photos and you won't want to post-process, is not helpful at all.

People ask me, "Marco, how do you make the people you photograph appear so beautiful?" and I tell them, It is easy -- I only photograph beautiful people! Wrinkles, no! Blemishes, no! Only beautiful, yes!

Blindly asserting that anti-scientists must dictate claims of universal, absolute, and revealed truth.

Except I didn't say that; please notice the use of the phrase "tend to follow" in my original post.

In the same vein, Christianity in itself does not dictates absolute truth. There are a variety of Christianities out there, and fundamentally they agree on just a few points. There is a God, he had a son named Jesus who died to release us from our sins, and much of our most accepted foundations of faith are recorded in the Bible.

Just because some dictate authority from this position does not mean that all of them do.

Very true, and you'll notice that I never specified Christianity as the ideology in question. Again, please read what I actually wrote.

But I'm not trying to play coy here; obviously there are varieties of Christianity which do insist on their interpretation of the Bible as absolute truth, and I don't think it's a coincidence that people who believe this way tend to be profoundly anti-scientific. They caricature scientists as authoritarian because that's the way they think themselves; they honestly can't understand people who genuinely do not think the way they do. In their worldview, everyone has some kind of absolute faith, and if it's not God, it must be Science. Those are the only people I'm talking about here; unfortunately, as I said in my reply to another one of your posts, there are a lot of them.

Nor do I claim that Christians are the only ones who exhibit this behavior. Luddite hyper-environmentalists whose version of Absolute Truth is "The Environment" are just as bad; so are Randians who reject any government restrictions on industry even when industrial behavior presents a clear and present danger. Also, as I noted in my reply to your other post, Soviet Communism tended to rewrite science when it conflicted with their interpretation of Marx's Holy Writ -- I get the impression Chinese Communism is starting to grow out of this, but it's got a way to go yet.

In short, the problem isn't the ideology; it's the ideologues. The great advantage of science in relation to all the examples I mentioned above is that it's not an ideology at all, and thus ideologues -- the sort of people who need Something to believe in as The Truth, whatever that Something may be -- tend not to be attracted to it in the first place.

Scientists have always admitted that they don't know everything. Various anti-science types like to caricature scientists as claiming to know everything, but this has no relation to reality. It is probably not a coincidence that the anti-scientists tend to follow specific religious and political ideologies in which the claim of universal, absolute, and revealed truth plays a central part.

Perhaps its human nature to do the same thing to someone else that they do to you. Blindly asserting that anti-scientists must dictate claims of universal, absolute, and revealed truth.

Dictation of authority has long been a method of control, and science is not immune, it just hasn't had the opportunity yet, to be used as a totalitarian standing point.

In the same vein, Christianity in itself does not dictates absolute truth. There are a variety of Christianities out there, and fundamentally they agree on just a few points. There is a God, he had a son named Jesus who died to release us from our sins, and much of our most accepted foundations of faith are recorded in the Bible.

Just because some dictate authority from this position does not mean that all of them do. Likewise, just because most scientists refuse to give authoritarian assertions, does not mean that they all don't. I think these people are generally considered "pseudo-scientists", or "scienticians", but one can easily use science as a position of control, since it by nature asserts that it has the best current explaination.

Scientists have always admitted that they don't know everything. Various anti-science types like to caricature scientists as claiming to know everything, but this has no relation to reality. It is probably not a coincidence that the anti-scientists tend to follow specific religious and political ideologies in which the claim of universal, absolute, and revealed truth plays a central part.