Slashdot Mirror
Share Your Most Dangerous Idea
GabrielF writes "Every year The Edge asks over 100 top scientists and thinkers a question, and the responses are fascinating and widely quoted. This year, psychologist Steven Pinker suggested they ask "What is your most dangerous idea?" The 117 respondents include Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Daniel Dennett, Jared Diamond -- and that's just the D's! As you might expect, the submissions are brilliant and very controversial."
I wonder how many of these ideas while eventually some day be implemented.
LINUX ONLINE POKER: Linux Poker
This is very simliar to this piece from Foreign Policy Magazine in September of 2004 "The World's Most Dangerous Ideas" tcd004
Ironic how the human instinct to stick to what we're familiar with impedes us even in supposedly objective fields of science and research. I wonder if this gentle nudge will succeed in returning us to a path of progress.
1. Shaving my back with rubbing alcohol and fire+.
2. Testing for the presence of pheromones in ball sweat by putting my hand down my pants, cupping my balls, and holding my hand over my sleeping girlfriend's face while she slept.*
+ I was going to do this while in the shower with the water running off to the side so I could hop into the water in the event of the inevitable accident
* Danger: She's a biter thus the reluctance to tea bag her directly
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
Religion
I found David Buss's article interesting. He sums up with the following, "On reflection, the dangerous idea may not be that murder historically has been advantageous to the reproductive success of killers; nor that we all house homicidal circuits within our brains; nor even that all of us are lineal descendants of ancestors who murdered. The danger comes from people who refuse to recognize that there are dark sides of human nature that cannot be wished away by attributing them to the modern ills of culture, poverty, pathology, or exposure to media violence. The danger comes from failing to gaze into the mirror and come to grips the capacity for evil in all of us."
"The hyper-Islamicist critique of the West as a decadent force that is already on a downhill course might be true" - somebody give this guy a research grant.
Why would you trust a testimonial when choosing hosting?
This has to be the biggest "article" submitted to Slashdot ever.
Here's my idea: If you have a Bose-Einstein condensate of heavy atoms, why happens when they radioactively decay? Does every atom decay simultaniously? Wouldn't that be kinda like a bomb?
How we know is more important than what we know.
How about this one: a majority of people will become bisexual as social controls are removed, say over the next 50 years.
Let's make our own list.
/. posters what their most dangerous idea is. :)
My most dangerous idea: Asking
Humor aside, I am serious, let's make a list.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That looks like a one-time pad bounded by meaningless but seemingly meaningful non-pad data.
Unbreakable encryption - very dangerous idea indeed. You should be shot.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"Hold my beer and watch this".
"Better light a match to see where that gas is coming from."
"Yeah honey, you do look kind of fat in that dress."
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
...how about using antimatter as mouthwash?
I think trying to split the Moon in half with our nuclear weapons would be an interesting thing to try, even though it'd probably would be the end of us.
Reading Slashdot every day is pretty dangerous as far as ideas go. Never know when you're going to read something insightful, scream "Eureka!" and your head explodes like a nasty toliet.
Mentifex Mind.Forth AI is about as dangerous as it can get, doncha think?
It's a winning combination!
-- Lenny
"Mama, the dentist can't figure out why I have so many cavities when there's no bacteria."
"Son, those are craters."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...was putting ALL my assets into Google.
But the bet paid off. And now I can buy my own island. And a death ray.
Most of these don't seem really dangerous, just some ideas of what might come or be accepted in the future. Ideas that some iconoclasts already accepted but the masses have not. Like the idea of humans having no souls.
The ones that are dangerous are not dangerous in the "omg someone could kill millions with this idea" way. They are dangerous in the "our society will be even more effed up if this idea catches on" way. Like the idea that we can't win the war on climate change. If everyone accepted this how many countries would even try to reduce emissions? Or the idea that there really are fundamental differences between the "races". That would make the next genocide just a little bit easier.
This is funny, but I'm also totally serious:
Several times in my life, I've thought that I might be able to fix a broken object by using the process of melting. No matter how right I thought I was when I started, I've always, ALWAYS, regretted the idea.
Even knowing this, I'll probably try it again.
Dan Gilbert is a bit of a hero of mine. His research basically is about happiness--it's all any of us really, universally, want, so why, after millions of years of evolution, are we so bad at finding it? We should be experts! His stuff on affective forecasting and rationalization is amazing. I highly recommend his papers--and hearing him talk, if you ever have the opportunity, even more so! Anyway, he's a REAL character, and his response betrays that:
DANIEL GILBERT
Psychologist, Harvard University
The idea that ideas can be dangerous
Dangerous does not mean exciting or bold. It means likely to cause great harm. The most dangerous idea is the only dangerous idea: The idea that ideas can be dangerous.
We live in a world in which people are beheaded, imprisoned, demoted, and censured simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence.
Well, Dan, have you read Slashdot lately? I think we're still all right. For now.
one word - Peace
Intelligent Design. Sorry, I had to.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
That there is a being called the Devil that is the source of all human
urges towards violence and selfishness. That he and his hordes live in
a parallel dimension that we cannot see yet can be affected by. That
human life itself resides in the context of the constant struggle with
this being. That most human beings are not aware of this struggle and,
worse yet, will believe the devil's own implanted idea that he does
not, in fact, exist. Still worse, that the people who should know how
to fight this being (which is one of the purposes of the one religion
that is the source of all religions), are instead consumed by him and
then are pitted against each other as his pawns.
Mod me down, whatever; I know it's coming, but this is the worst horror
film you can imagine, and it's the exact truth.
Wish with your heart to reach God spiritually in your lifetime so that
you may serve God - Who only wants for our happiness - and you will
succeed in throwing off the yoke of Satan. This is the message of the
Age of Hidayat.
Peace be with you all. May all love all.
.. yes, if people could one day track all their socks, where they came from or where the missing half of the pair is then someday it will revolutionize the way you and I live.
The government is currently rejecting any patents for such technology since it's so dangerous and detrimental to society. The want to cover up the gnome conspiracy, but no, we need to start a revolution and take back our socks.
JOIN THE REVOLUTION TODAY!
The United States has become the biggest threat to the world. It has abandoned it's principles, and the population shows no sign of concern. It's only a matter of time before the pretenses of civility and diplomacy are dropped.
In Linux - everyone seems to think that the technology is more important that the freedom in making the business case for using it.
In monitary policy - everyone seems to think that other measures of inflation and growth are more important, than the freedom from controll that the gold standard offers.
In public education - everyone talks about what kind of education the kids need, and noone talks about the financial freedom lost in paying for it, or the very influence that such has on the kids.
In social security and medicade/ medical care - everyones worried about how will we take care of the needy and elderly and noone talks about the people that need to be financially coerced to make these systems work.
In copyrights and patents - everyone talks about the poor starving inventor or creator, and noone talks about all the people that need to be coerced to make these systems of incentive work.
In the genocide of the poor - noone would even dare mention that the best solution would be to arm them and seciure their right to bear arms first.
Yes, I know it is an insanely radical shocking "lunatic" proposal and people would shudder at the thought that people might actually be "allowed" freedom and empowerment. Perhaps you should just mod me to minus infinity now to save society from the terror that such an outlandish notion would inflict.
This thing seems like a few gems from genuinely insightful people, and a whole lot of buzzword babble junk. My personal favorite so far is the "headaches are like a spoon" drivel that says we should abandon the idea of physical objects and that everything we think we know is just our brain's interpretation, and there's no reason for that interpretation to match reality in any way. Only problem is - the reality of a wolf ripping out my throat is a pretty good reason to evolve senses that give me a good picture of that reality. I swear, the matrix gave this crap a whole new motivation - and it makes me wanna barf.
I shall call it "thought vehicle" or short TV. - Sounds good too.. I should patent this idea.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
My most dangerous idea:
Teach people to think for themselves.
Someone hates these cans.
This is for the questions that don't have any answers.
Someone hates these cans.
I'm sorry for responding to my own post, but no argument about freedom would be complete without mentioning the "war on drugs". God forbid that people actually be "allowed" to act in ways that may not be in their own best interest. Even worse, God forbid that they might be "allowed" to decide what drugs might be in their own best interest. Yeah, if not for the war on drugs "we would have so much crime and violence" .... .... .... hmmmmmmmm.
leave bush as the pres?
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Fairly self-explanatory... make a porno image... or even... eeep... goatse guy... default Windows wallpaper via virus/worm, set default homepage to nambla.org.... then disable ability to change these back.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Asking your wife to hold your beer in an underground gas mine so that you can light a match to check if she looks fat.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Well, I'm really busy at the moment, but maybe I'll just check slashdot one more time, just for a quick breather... I'm sure I won't be surfing for too long and will get straight back to work as soon as I've caught up on the news...
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
We are all virtual... right?
"If you have a Bose-Einstein condensate "
I think most audiophiles agree that Bose stuff is way overrated.
Luring people to my secluded island and hunting them for sport.
Gain control of Microsoft and release all the source-code and to open up the document formats. I can't do this alone but if all the /. readers are kind enough to send me a donation, I can start buying M$ stock.
We are increasingly building a world where the rich are free and the poor are subjugated. People who are wealthy and well-connected can command outrageous salaries and bonuses, year after year, even with a history of failure. The middle class are herded by the media through a life of monotonous work and consumption. Poor people, trapped by limited economic mobility, are preyed upon by everyone. We have created a society which is increasingly unequal economically, and I believe this will translate into major social inequality soon. Rich people will enjoy more rights and freedoms, poor people will live in a prison without walls, and the middle class will have satellite TV.
Who is this Gottman prick? And why does he feel threatened by "emotional intelligence"?
Emotional intelligence is not a dangerous idea, merely an expression of maturity without reguard to scholarly learning, as many intellectual elitists are fucking keen on to operate without maturity whatsoever. I believe the notion behind it is that actual ethical good trumps academic research, as academic research is completely fruitless without the purpose to better the lives of the people of the world.
Let me simplify my thoughts: Who is the better man, a simpleton who emulates Ghandi based on emotional intuition, or someone who sharpens his intellect to the point of brilliance if only to raise himself in the world?
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Think about it. Everyone's pissing and moaning about the coming oil shortages, and so on, and NOBODY is thinking about how conveniently flammable alcohol is.
We have an entire Midwest full of Great Plains which are very well suited to growing grains which could produce alcohol.
It has been demonstrated that you can run a car on alcohol. Dragsters do it all the time.
It has been demonstrated that a fuel cell can generate electricity from methanol.
Alcohol doesn't poison the environment if you spill some. It burns clean if you have a darwinian-selection moment and light it up. And in a pinch, you can drink it. Try THAT with petroleum.
Well? Wouldn't an alcohol economy be easier than a hydrogen one?
Just a thought...
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I was thinking of installing the latest Longhorn beta, or playing Russian roulette with an automatic - haven't decided yet.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Now, there MAY be a way to use a BEC more destructively. If you have a BEC that consists of pure deuterium, use magnetic containment to prevent the BEC from expanding back out at all, raise the temperature as close to instantaneously as possible to the point where fusion can occur...
The BEC obviously can't remain a BEC at superhigh temperatures, so must unfold to some degree. The structure is guaranteed to move to the lowest possible energy state, because that is what atomic structures do. This is part of why it would be important to raise the temperature rapidly. You want it so that there simply is no valid state with deuterium nucleii.
If deuterium is simply not an option, the nucleii will fuse. They have no alternative. Here is where it gets fun, though. If the energies are high enough and the compression great enough, you can produce elements as far up the periodic table as you like. Unlike normal particle accelerator efforts to produce super-massive atoms, these will actually last for a while - there won't be room for them to fall apart.
The difficulty in producing the correct conditions would be enormous, but if you could crack that nut, there'd be no theoretical reason why you couldn't push for a nucleus with an atomic mass of a thousand or so.
The energy to produce such a monster atom would be guaranteed much greater than ALL of the energy output by the fusion reactions. (Iron takes more energy to fuse than it gives out and we're talking something a couple of orders of magnitude larger.) Sustaining it might even be worse.
The fun part, though, will be in letting it collapse after a time. A very substantial part of the energy put into the fusion of the nucleii would be released in a matter of microseconds over an extremely small space. Current physics predicts that if you exceed a certain energy density, space will "inflate". This might cause the whole of space/time to explode, it might form a pocket universe, or it might do all sorts of other strange things. Nobody knows much about energy densities of that magnitude.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
And on the 8th day, he created darkness.
Yeah!
Non-Time drives forward the notion the past does not create the present. This would of course render evolutionary theory a local-system, near-field process that was non-causative (i.e. effect).
Non-Sequential reverberates through the Turing machine and computation, and points to simultaneity. It redefines language and cognition.
KAI KRAUSE
"The relative innocence and stable period of the last 50 years may spiral into a nearly inevitable exposure to real chaos. What if it isn't haphazard testosterone driven riots, where they cannibalize their own neighborhood, much like in L.A. in the 80s, but someone with real insight behind that criminal energy ? What if Slashdotters start musing aloud about "Gee, the L.A. water supply is rather simplistic, isn't it?" An Open Source crime web, a Wiki for real WTO opposition ? Hacking L.A. may be a lot easier than hacking IE."
Don't Tread on Me
...but weaponized strangelets spring to mind. Whether they have to be added to standard matter at sufficient temperature is moot; one could just lob 'em into the sun and wait a few months for them to get there. Or not, if you've got a particle accelerator of sufficient power.
I'd say the most dangerous idea is the sentiment of (far too) many people nowadays that science and rational thought is too complicated and doesn't give any real answers.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Pick a list of people to ask that isn't the same !@$%^&* names again and again.
Rudy Rucker? Stewart Brand? Danny Hillis?
FOR !@$%^&* SAKE, I am so sick and tired of hearing from these people.
There are so many legitimately fascinating brilliant thinkers, writers, artists, poets, scientists, and on and on living on this planet.
How is this for a DANGEROUS IDEA? PICK SOME NOVEL NAMES.
Sheesh.
My ideas that are most dangerous to human life on earth are to invent the transporter, and also warp speed, or impulse spacecraft. Just one spaceship the size of Enterprise A tearing through the Earth at Warp 1 would in theory destroy the earth into a cloud of planet vapour. Transporters would be used to rob every bank devised, and kidnap world leaders. Everyone would have to have a transporter inhibitor, or you'd be kidnapped almost right away, and probably not by aliens, but by the Swords of Righteousness Brigade or their ilk in Iraq.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Man, I've kept skimming the articles - and they are just getting worse. I can't believe they gave the "electric universe" nutjobs any space in here.
Based on the idea that all humans are created equal and have inherent rights that man cannot by right take away ... I propose the ideas:
.. and how is it in the national interest to piss off God ..he can take down nations can't he? .. It's one of the proverbs (16:8 I think).. look it up.:
1) Idea that before subjecting a human to a punishment or torture, being absolutely sure that are guilty of a crime that deserves it (due processs). This idea is not valid for humans born outside of the USA for "security reasons".
2) Not carrying out cruel and unusual punishments that are degrading. This is not valid for humans born outside of the USA for "security reasons".
I don't think it will be done, because my idea is unique and novel nobody ever thought of it before.
The Bible says (pooh pooh on it all u like, but it does make some good points)
"Better a little gain by righteousness than a lot by injustice"
my dangerous idea:
the internet has replaced the encyclopedia
it is replacing want ads, real estate agents, auctions, music companies, publishers, etc.
it will someday replace government
but hold on, there's a catch:
if the internet does this, it will do it the same way it is defeating the music industry: not through any conscience effort, but just a gradual, inevitable, unfightable erosion of relevancy by little efforts made by individuals not even consciously trying to do anything coherent
in other words, if you are actively seeking to defeat government and promote anarchy/ libertarianism/ revolution, or whatever, you are way off
because you are making a conscience effort
because if and when it happens, no one will notice it starting
just like the guys who built the original arpanet in the 1960s didn't say "hey! let's build a radically superior music distribution model that cuts out the middle man and removes the economic incentive!"
except that's exactly what they did
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
Sorry, couldn't help myself
-Brandon
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
It seems to me, that of the lot, Jerry Coyne came the closest to this idea, "Many behaviors of modern humans were genetically hard-wired (or soft-wired) in our distant ancestors by natural selection". I believe that this concept is dangerous because most people don't like the idea of being considered a biological machine whose sole purpose is to perpetuate itself. If you are a machine, you have no "soul", hence, no identity. You can only imagine the amount of trouble these ideas can conjure ... *COUGH*-evolution-*COUGH*...
Connecting a Microsoft Windows machine directly to the internet...
A number of times I've come to the conclusion that I could very easily inflict some major terrorist type damage to various public/infrastructure type assets without working very hard. Scientists have a HUGE advantage in knowing where the weaknesses of various things are and a lot of our national infrastructure is VERY prone to attacks. People even trust us.
I've come to the conclusion that terrorists are either very dumb or they are too busy to attack us right now or they are saving up for the next big attack.
Morbid, I know. Scary too.
IMO Hoffman gets the prize for navel-gazing and cluelessness and should be forced to attend a semester of Western Philosophy 101 as punishment.
Here is an idea that is considered highly dangerous and will scare any corporate know-nothing CxO....
....now once you stop turning white in fear and start breathing again, can we get back to work?
Ready?
Here it is....My idea is that we eliminate Microsoft Windows totally from use in our company.
Oh I said it...it's out there in the open... I'm not prowd of it, but gosh darn it I have these thoughts about things being better for the company in the long run and stuff, and they just won't go away.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
Good Lord some of these people love to read themselves ramble on. I think there was a misconception between "dangerous" and "boring."
Well, at the risk of being labeled a traitor... ***THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN REMOVED***
7h3$3 4r3n'7 7h3 Ðr01Ð$ ¥0 4r3 £00|{1n9 f0r. M0v3 4£0n9. --OB1
Share Your Most Dangerous Idea
This one is really scary so put away the kids, the scary idea is:
Sharing
*gasp*
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
My first reaction when my friend said "NO" was "if he doesn't like it, then this must be a really good idea. He eventually talked me out of it, but it's still there in the back of my mind.
As for the most dangerous idea that's come to fruition? Pouring gasoline down the barrel of a potato gun and tying a burning piece of newspaper to the end. Two Important facts: You get a HUGE jet of fire and not all the gasoline will combust. Clear the area immediately.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If you had a truely dangerous idea, and you knew it, and you were a world renowned scientist, you'd have to be either an egomaniac with no morals, or a fool to share it.
These scientists won't tell you their most dangerous ideas. The less scrupulous might just sell them to the military though.
Anyway, you'd have all manner of government agency after you if you went public with a really good idea.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
strangelets are the ultimate "high density bullet", unfortunately the energy has to come from somewhere.
a strangelet weighing 20 tons, but smaller than the width of a human hair, would still have to be accelerated to astronomical speeds to cause earthquakes or whatever mayhem you want.
I'd say throw a nuke at an asteroid, that explodes in front of the asteroid and completely stops the asteroids forward motion, relative to the earth.
there you have a 20 ton asteroid, no strangeness, and gravity and reentry to do it's work (I guess technically, just entry).
just like nukes, the danger isn't from the impact, it's from the explosion. an asteroid exploding in the atmosphere may well cause our extinction.
If I hear one more self-consciously pontifical insight from Danny Hillis, I believe I shall die.
The Chinese gov't would also back you on that one, I suspect. The idea that religion is the most dangerous idea in the world has thus far been able to make several forms of atheism into the most dangerous idea in several of our larger nations.
Create an Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky bridge.
http://outcampaign.org/
How come there are no female scientists who look like Paris Hilton, Christina Aguilerra, 7 of nine, or Jenna Jameson? Because if there were, we guys would be a lot happier. Instead we always get the short fat troll looking chicks with moustache problems. We're getting sick of it. Someday one of us is going to create the ultimate woman with looks like those mentioned above, a brain like a thousand Feynmans. She won't be capable of love and will want to get laid any time we want to. She'll also be totally interested in everything we like to do. She'll also have the added benefit of having tits on her back during sex so that we won't have to strain ourselves to play with them during doggy syle. She'll swallow and deep throat because she won't even know what a gag reflex is. Once we create perfect women like that, lame ass genetic women's usefulness will be numbered. Watch it chicks. Either learn to put out when requested and learn to look good, or just forget about being fit to survive.
take a submarine or mini-sub, load it with the attacking/owning country's most powerful nuclear bomb in their arsenal, send it to the bottom of the ocean about 500 to a 1000 miles off the coast of the enemy nation you are attacking, then detonate the bomb, the displacement from the bomb should create one helluva tsunami... (it is (I figure) semi-plausible for this to have been the cause for the tsunami of December 2004 that obliterated a good most of the Phillipines)
The idea that scares me the most is the threat of viruses tailored to attack (or not attack) a particular racial group. It's not so much that I think such things are really viable weapons, but rather I fear that major militaries in the world will actively research the idea "just in case". Bioweapons strike me as high destablizing - very difficult to disprove that an adversary has them, high deniability in a release (leading to potential paranoia/misplaced accusation; eg: AIDS skeptics), high error in trying to predict the outcome of a release (outbreak might quickly burn itself out Ebola style, might quickly mutate into a non-leathal form, might become a pandemic). Then for fun, throw in movements advocating willful ignorance of basic biology concepts in powerful countries (*cough*ID*cough*).
(of course, the best defence against a potential race-targetting weapon is a highly diverse society, so guess there is potential for some social good)
This isn't my idea, can't remember where I saw it.
Suppose a virus grepped your Outlook/Outlook Express address book for people's names. Then it grepped all the emails/documents/spreadsheets/whatever on all drives it could reach for those names.
Once it found a document with someone's name, it emails that document to them.
Imagine the chaos as confidential HR memos, payroll spreadsheets, legal documents, and just plain gossip are indiscriminately sent out.
Well, with my karma the way it is at present, I'd say my most dangerous idea of late has been posting on slashdot. That and setting fire to peoples garden gnomes... Blueprinting a seven story building to be made out of lollipops... Then there was that time when my dad filled a garbage can with petrol, attached a fuse, buried it and lit a match, but I'm not going to go there.
A quick Google search will confirm that you're not the only one who's thought of burning alcohol as a fuel.
Replacing oil with alcohol would not solve our problems.
Sure, it would invest in agriculture rather than exploiting technology to find, extract and refine crude oil. But It would replace the known problems associated with enriching arab states with a history of bad civil rights, with some unknown problems related to a huge mega-farm raising a monoculture crop. Pesticides, GMO, soil depletion are issues we know would be involved, but what else is involved with monobreed farming on that scale?
There's also the problem that American bio-energy fuel production could only generate a 10th of the fuel supply that the USA currently uses - and that's only gasoline. There are lots of products we get from crude oil that we can't press out of biomass: think about plastics, asphalt, lubricants.
Then there's the issue of what we're fueling in the first place: the realized dream of cheap fuel for vehicle freedom has resulted in a transportation engineering crisis that requires moving around and storing enormous cars rather than people. That creates sprawl that eats up farmland so we can have a parking lot around WalMart and sprawling acres of land devoted to roadways, driveways and freeways to link far flung suburban housing developments and equally sprawling office parks, and the previously mentioned WalMarts. Not to mention vehicle's polluting of the the environment.
And yes you can drink alcohol, but not the 85% Ethanol/15% Gasoline mix we create for cars. It also is only about 30% cleaner than burning raw gasoline, so you might not want to light up indoors. It's also significantly more expensive, even if you ignore the farming subsidies that artificially cheapen it.
Sometimes the simplest solution is also the least well thought out.
I would suggest determining the real problems before offering a solution. A nation designed around cars instead of people is definitely part of the problem, and alternative fuel doesn't solve that particular problem at all.
onto a Win XP machine.
It's called "fluoride," and not only does it make your tooth enamel nice and firm, but it is also a neurotoxin. It helps people become docile and consentful.
People say that fluoride is "not lethal in small doses" - of course it isn't lethal in 1 or 4 ppm, but that's not the point: it still effects you, especially as the fluoride builds up in your body over time.
Unfortunately, fluoride in drinking water (common in the United States) is only one tiny part of your daily exposure - almost any product processed with water probably contains fluoride, as well as tea.
So, because it is so pervasive, I have given up on trying to avoid fluoride... or is that the fluoride talking?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I've been working on a side-mounted flamethrower device using pressurized butane, a flexi-pipe pump system, a perfume atomizer, and a spark valve.
When activated, it'll launch out a fireball a la Dan Hibiki's Gadouken.
Now if that ain't dangerous, tell me what is.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
That technology could reveal an extremely easy way to cause enormous amounts of damage. That in itself presents the darwinistic challenge to our whole species into the hands of a few individuals. Perhaps something that can destroy our entire universe via locally initiated big-bang event (maybe something silly as massive superposition of photonic waves beyond some unknown breaking point), or tweaking the rule base of every particle in the universe by as yet unknown quantum entanglement tricks. If something like this is theorized then social devolvement may be nightmarish to say the least. Knowledge control, civilization & universe teetering on the brink of devastation. Forced psychological medications to keep everybody 'happy', surveiling those who know too much, vaporizing those who tinker with it, communications monitored, encryption illegal, unsanctioned Internet transmissions banned. Then there's all those X billions of worlds out there each with potential civilization of aliens pondering the same thing, perhaps some realize it's in their interest to destroy every other planet as fast as possible since every other civilization ultimately poses a serious threat. Movie plot? game plot? real plot?
Here is an even more dangerous idea.
Forgo alcohol/biodiesel.
Switch to a large number of Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactors like China is doing, and use this energy to run run cars on Hydrogen or electricity.
Believe it or not, Nuclear power is actually CLEANER ounce per ounce than most other energy methods (Try comparing it to coal, for example, which is still currently used, or many other things.) However, most people are scared of it, because they dont understand it.
For those about to reply OMG! Nuclear power ZOMG!!!111!!11One!!! You should perhaps read the wikipedia article.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
So where do I file this? As a child, we would tape .177" metal balls (BBs) over the primer of a 12 gauge shotgun shell, glue 3 feet of light plastic ribbon to the crimped end, and hurl them as far as we could before taking cover behind whatever was near. Sort of an improvised hand grenade. Sometimes it worked, but if too much horizontal, you would just dent the rim of the shell.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
Let's put pasta and antipasta together and see what happens.
Will it disappear? Explode? Be converted to energy? Ruin my dinner?
I'm to afraid to find out.
1. Advances in nanotech or advanced, private and cheap rapid prototyping machines allow the average citizen to create devices of such destructive power that each individual has the capability of killing millions of people or destroying an entire city at the touch of a button.
2. Advances in genetics show that free will is largely an illusion, and that a person almost inevitably becomes what their genes instruct them too. Genetic markers for low intelligence and criminality are found. This leads to a collapse of the idea of universal human rights and radically changes the ideas surrounding justice and punishment as well as reward for genius and giftedness.
I'll share my most dangerous idea soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Our ideas may not matter much after all, as suggested by John Allen Paulos. His idea is short, sweet, and simple: we are not much more than "nominal, marginally integrated entities having convenient labels." Combine this with the anti-anthropocentric ideas of Irene Pepperberg, the pan-psychism of Rudy Rucker, and the eco-dynamics of Scott Sampson, along with the nuclear doubts raised by Jeremy Bernstein, and it all seems to make sense after all. We build thermo-nuclear devices becuase we need to help Gaia redistribute excess energy, not because we need the weapons for war. So, this dangerous idea implies no matter what our governments do with the stockpile of weapons grade plutonium, its not going to have much impact off-world.
Software freedom...I love it!
I'm not sharing my most dangerous idea until I get a patent.
The Crusades would have happened without Christianity. The Crusades were the product of two societies trying to stop infighting by picking on someone else. When Mohammed founded his empire he had to forge together many warring tribes who had bad feelings going back generations. Just like Ghengis Khan, he did this by constantly expanding outward through military conquest. This expansion eventually brought the Moslem empire into Europe. They were defeated by Charlemagne, but they were always threatening to enter Europe. In Europe, the same solution was found. The Pope, in an effort to get most of Christendom to stop beating the crap out of each other, started the crusades. In both cases, the supposedly faithful zealots were barely literate of their faith. Most moslems joined Mohammed for pillage, and most Christians at that time could barely read, much less read the Bible. The same thing would have happened in your atheistic paradise.
Read the story, then combine with nanotech:
"Whoops! We meant to build a DNA repair nanobot, but we've released DNA disassemblers by mistake. Oh well."
Not enough room to grow enough crops to come near the demand of the United States for oil. Yeah, our dependency is that bad. Play with a calculator, if you wish.
Maybe if we cut down some more trees. Hey, you ever been to Easter Island?
Dangerous ideas?
I had expected to see a lot more "Installing Windows"
Galileo's idea that a heliocentric model for the solar system was correct was not and is not dangerous by itself. It became dangerous to Galileo when it intersected with the church dogma of the day that held to the belief of a geocentric model of reality. To hold and idea contrary to that enforced belief was dangerous, as Galileo discovered.
Similarly take the idea of evolution. Not dangerous, rather sensible and supported by many facts related and unrelated to biology. Mix that with whatever collection of fairly tales and bible quotes the Christian fundamentalists want to belief this week, and you get a very dangerous mix.
Or consider this: The idea that an operating system designed for internal network applications can be extended to the Internet without problems can be debated and laughed at as we please. A belief in this would lead us to where we are now, with a laughable security situation that long ago ceased to be funny.
Could you explain the Conservation of Mass, Conservation of Energy,
Einstein's formula e=mc^2 in relation to the *ginormous* amount of
matter and energy in the universe?
But then again, I can't really explain it either except to say that
God created it. That's what He does: creates. (And maintains).
And for all the big bang theorists around here, even those scientists
know for a fact that we can't understand what was going on at like
10^-33 sec after the big bang. Castaneda would call that region
the Unknowable.
Peace be with you,
bmac
I found MARTIN E.P. SELIGMAN's thoughts on relativism to be pretty intriguing. My thoughts on cultural relativism in ethics is that it isn't so much a statement of the innate nature of ethics or moral truths as it's an observation of de facto conditions that influence our personal observations or our subjective realities. In other words, there may be absolute moral values/imperatives but our moral standards are always skewed by cultural influences--that is why in any given society you have what is considered common sense morality, which the majority of the population adheres to, yet common sense morality may vary greatly from culture to culture. So I think this has more to do with sociology and psychology than philosophy since it's a phenomenon that arrises from human psychological development and social interactions. That allays, in me atleast, any fears of humanity descending into a pit of moral nihilism.
As far as relativism in evolution, I hadn't really read or heard of anything about this up until today. But it does seem to make some sense to me. One example that's crossed my mind is the common cold. Our body's defenses are in a constant arms race against the various strains of the cold virus floating about. Our body adapts to fight off these pathogens, and the viruses adapt to circumvent these defenses. And after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution we are still at a stalemate--why? Because although r-strategists favor small organisms that are relatively simple biologically compared to k-strategists, that's just part of their evolutionary strategy. An r-strategist like cold viruses doesn't need to retain many evolutionary changes to develop into more complex organisms over time because their biological simplicity is their evolutionary advantage, just as our biological complexity is our evolutionary advantage. Small simple r-strategists can adapt much quicker than large complex k-strategists, but k-strategists typically have lower attrition rates, and adapt more "intelligently," with fewer evolutionary changes spreading through its entire population over time than r-strategists.
By and large it seems that even though each species takes a different evolutionary path, most that live in the same environment at the same time have equally evolutionarily viable living strategies that they are biologically adapted to. Environmental changes may tip the balance from time to time, but in the grand scale of things, any two systems of genes that have survived the same amount of natural selection as each other should reasonably be equally "mature." Right now man may seem to have the upper-hand, but if nuke ourselves out of existence, the r-strategists may gain the upperhand.
This notion also carries into intraspecies evolution. Being smart, or artistic, or athletic, or aesthetically appealing are all seen as positive traits while being dumb, or uncreative, or unathetlic, or ugly are seen as negative traits. But in most of the population these traits seem to be evenly distributed in a way that there would seem to be a correlation between certain seemingly positive traits and certain negative traits. If you are beautiful and athletic in our society, you may be able to get by very well on those traits alone, but perhaps because of this you do not need to develop much intelligence to get by. Or perhaps someone who is both intelligent, athletic, and beautiful may get by very easily without treating others very nicely and as a result don't develop much empathy for others, and may even develop sociopathic characteristics. It's also proven that creative geniuses like writers and painters have a higher susceptibility to depression, while mathematical geniuses have a higher susceptibility to asperger's and autism.
I imagine that if you could assign a Net Evolutionary Desirability Coefficient to every organism in a certain population, you will find that the standard deviation of the NEDC in the population is very low compared to the standard deviation between the Evolutio
Seriously, if every liberal person here on Slashdot (which I think is the majority, it seems like the hacker nature) decided to link up, create a small encrypted network for communication and plan something like, say, kill George W. Bush and take over the white house - it would most likely succeed.
I believe, and have seen evidence to support, that the collective brain power of Slashdot, trolls excluded, is exceptional. What other public Internet site has that many postgrads, engineers, former students of the most respected colleges, and just plain smart thinking people? I think none.
Your comments remind me of the story of an old woman living in the old Soviet Union.
She was very concerned about reformists that wanted to make steps towards democracy. She had concerns and questions very similiar to yours like, "if the government doesn't provide bread, then 'where' will I get it?" Sure, she could understand that enslaving people was wrong, idealistly, but ideals weren't going to give her any bread.
The point of the story is that some people are unable to understand what democracy is, what liberty is, what freedom is. In a free country, store shelves are filled from top to bottom with loaves, and at every store. This isn't because they are a "rich" nation, it's because they are "free" one.
Free to work, free to sell ones labor, free to keep what you have earned, and free to spend that which you have earned. The government is there to 'protect' these freedoms, not bake bread.
(Note for those that don't understand analogies, "bread" is being used in this story to relate to the parent poster's comments about the government being a 'nanny' state that 'provides' all things, like education, food, health care, jobs, etc... by forced enslavement of the populace, rather than the populace freely electing representatives to protect thier freedom.)
What if... Time cube is correct?
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
Why does anyone take this jackass seriously?
Dog is my co-pilot.
Wow. Only a psychologist would come up with an idea like this. It's clearly a straw-man argument. The simpler version we've all heard for years: if a tree falls in the forest and noone is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The answer is of course it does. The weight of the tree crashing against the ground via the force of gravity sends a shockwave through the air. Whether or not a person is in range of the shockwave is completely irrelevant.
This is the highest form of hubris: it takes people/intelligence for quantifications to have meaning. Bullshit.
Take a universe exactly like ours in every respect with the very minor alteration that life never got started on earth. Well guess what? It still takes a minimum threshold of matter to condense and form a burning star. The label we've given to that threshold is nothing; a mere convienience. The real important fact is that matter *can* condense into a burning star, and it will do so even if there's no humans around to pontificate.
End rant.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Religious fundamentalism?
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
nuff said.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
nuff said!
it won't be a flashy revolution, it will be a gradual, boring replacement, piece by piece
zoning decisions, financial budgetting, appointment of the dog catcher, then public advocate, then chief of police, then mayor, etc.
until traditional government is all hollowed out and depends utterly on the internet to function
sure there will still be elected officials and appointed officials making decisions, but it will all be transparent, and they will get where they are through internet participation, both in building constituencies, continuing to feel them out, and hedging bets and flouting topics
if you have a problem with the concept, it is because you are thinking about it in revoltuionary dramatic terms
but if i am right, it will be the most boring glacial kind of change, so slow and gradual you won't even think any of it is special or notable in the least, it won't be dynamic or volatile in the least
in other words, viva la anemic revolution
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
*Agnosticism* is the state of being without a belief in a god or gods; *Atheism* is the state of believing in godlessness.
(Posting Anonymously in case this is Top Secret or gives the wrong people ideas...) What if you had a pea sized sphere of Lithium(6), held at the centre of a hollow sphere of Plutonium (with a vacuum gap) with a mass on the order of 1kg, in the centre of a sphere of explosives, inside a neutron reflector that also has a farnsworth fusor inside. Sounds like it's already been done, but it's probably on the order of 1/5th the mass of the davey crocket (due to use of the farnsworth fusor as a strong neutron source and trigger).
Or perhaps use a farsworth fusor as a neutron source for a sub-critical mass (even if spherical) miniature power reactor using a berylium reflector to decrease the required mass even further. Mr. Fission might be a reality in military vehicles of the future.
This guy doesn't realize that most slashdotters would not be up to this. Most have never even left their parent's basement...
See the subject line.
... OK, how about Iran?
Every year The Edge asks over 100 top scientists and thinkers a question, and the responses are fascinating and widely quoted.
First Bono with poor people or something, now The Edge! WTF does a guitarist have to do with scientists? I guess the world just can't function without a friggin' Irish rock band getting mixed up in everything, FFS!
From the link, a quoted article in the Guardian:
Craig Venter, founder of the J Craig Venter Science Foundation, said the genetic basis of personality and behaviour would cause conflicts in society. He said it was inevitable that strong genetic components would be discovered at the root of many more human characteristics such as personality type, language capability, intelligence, quality of memory and athletic ability. "The danger rests with what we already know: that we are not all created equal," he said.
Right after that is The Times:
THERE IS ONE dangerous idea that still trumps them all: the notion that, as Steven Pinker describes it, "groups of people may differ genetically in their average talents and temperaments". For "groups of people", read "races".
Finally, major media is printing the 'revelation' that races are not equal! I love 2006!
It's a bit like taking liquid hydrogen and exerting enough pressure on it to turn it into solid metal. The temperature technically goes up, but it can't remain liquid or convert to a gas because the volume is too small. The most stable state it can enter is a "high-temperature" solid.
In this case, what we're doing is compressing a BEC "superatom" to a temperature in which it can no longer remain a BEC, but it cannot revert to deuterium atoms either. Neither is stable, under the conditions imposed. The only alternative is for the nuclei to fuse together, because it is the only valid way left that they can reduce the space requirements to what they have.
You'd need to be a little careful, though. You don't want to leave any nuclei with no valid state, or you're going to squish the lot into a quark-gluon soup. Again, that could be nasty, as I'm not sure you can magnetically contain the gluons... which ARE going to react with the containment system.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Please don't mistake this for me being closed-minded. I'm listening. I'm just waiting for something that counts as an actual plan.
No problem, but bear with me as this might seem like I'm repeating what I said.
1) Baker processes ingrediants to manufacture bread.
2) Baker sells bread to stores.
3) Baker saves his money in bank.
4) Baker spends his money for more ingrediants.
5) Baker repeats.
Before someone comments that this explained nothing, let's 'read between the lines'.
1.5) Baker is processing the ingrediants because he 'wants' to. (self interest)
2.5) Baker is selling bread because he's free to do so. (free trade)
3.5) Baker feels 'safe' that his money won't be stolen or 'nationalized'. (private property + rule of law)
4.5) Baker is profiting, and likes it (positive response). (capitalism)
5.5) Positive responses reinforce Baker behavior. (Pavlov's dog)
Now that you've read this, instead of asking "How will I get 'bread' if the government doesn't provide it?", you can go out and make it. If you want to help someone, then give them some of your bread, or hire them at your bakery, or cooperate with others (an organization) to help others to help themseleves.
You keep asking the same question "how" are you going to do it, and I'm asking you "who" is stopping you from doing it! *maximum encouragement voice*
By this I mean that our existence on this planet is an incredible fluke, and there is nothing in Nature that says we are wanted or needed. All that we have could be lost if we don't take care of it ourselves, and Nature will not be doing us any favors - she could hardly care less.
Most importantly: the "prime mover" in the destruction of this planet is the number of people on it; if the numbers were lower, so would the damage. I don't like the idea either, and have no idea what to do about it; I can't think of anything humane, but I won't be surprised to see at least one destructive war in our future.
(this is not a
When the word was coined, the original meaning of "agnostic" was that one admits to not _knowing_, and being intellectually honest about that, instead of saying that one knows there is (a) god, or knows there isn't. Some people of conscience cannot do otherwise than declare that they don't know, no matter what they still put their faith in.
It is right there in the word: "a-gnostic", where gnostic refers to knowledge, and agnostic refers to the lack of it.
Nowadays, "agnosticism" is often taken to mean declaring a lack of _belief_ either way - and here "belief" refers to "have faith in", not "known to be true beyond doubt". (The word "belief" is itself confusing, because different people take it to mean different things, or even the same people in different contexts, without making those differences plain).
My guess is that this change in the word "agnostic" over time makes sense as more and more people, including devout religious people and atheists, analyse their beliefs to the degree that they accept their knowledge is not absolute, but they have faith or commit to following the implications of their beliefs anyway. In a sense, the original idea "agnostic" has become more widespread, so the word isn't used for that so much now.
The upshot is that "agnostic" does _not_ mean "atheist" in another guise. Because an atheist puts his/her belief (as in motivation/faith) in "there is no god". That is different from the agnostic's belief (as in motivation/faith): "I don't know if there is god" - the latter being more intellectually honest for many people. Some agnostics put their faith in god while acknowledging they don't know if god exists. That is intellectually honest for some meanings of the word "faith", but not others. A genuine atheist would not do that.
I admit the above explanation is a little messy, because I don't define the terms very well, and it's been a while since I thought about the topic. Sorry; I'm tired. The points are valid, but not so well explained in the above. Study theories of knowledge - epistemology - to gain clearer insights into the range of meanings assigned to the terms like "belief" and "know".
-- Jamie
Hint: this thread isn't about "Bush", psycho-boi.
Right under Dawkins (yes the first name I clicked) was this guy "KAI KRAUSE"
My first thought was: what if any really smart set of people really set their mind to it...how utterly and scarily trivial it would be, to disrupt the very fabric of life, to bring society to a dead stop?
The relative innocence and stable period of the last 50 years may spiral into a nearly inevitable exposure to real chaos. What if it isn't haphazard testosterone driven riots, where they cannibalize their own neighborhood, much like in L.A. in the 80s, but someone with real insight behind that criminal energy ? What if Slashdotters start musing aloud about "Gee, the L.A. water supply is rather simplistic, isn't it?" An Open Source crime web, a Wiki for real WTO opposition ? Hacking L.A. may be a lot easier than hacking IE.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
according to the new accurate data acquired from the old soviet intelligence service files only about 1.4 millions died because of stalin's repressions and about a million died because of famine in winter 1932/1933. that is kind of all.
but even if you hadn't that new data, stalin's victims never ever can number as high as 50 millions, because, adding the 20 millions soviet sitizens who were killed by germans in ww2 this would be 70 millions, exactly the half of the whole soviet population back those days.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
Everything since then is downhill.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Although interesting, the survey was slightly screwed up by lack of clarity of in the question. Some interpreted it as asking for something false which other people believe to be true, others as something true which other people believe to be false. (Thus both "there is a God" and "there is not a God" were posited as dangerous ideas by non-believers.)
A more interesting interpretation is an idea you _hope_ is false but are afraid might be true. I would suggest the following as a dangerous idea: the benefits of liberal democracy are wholly dependent on the immoral economic exploitation of the third world and the unsustainable exploitation of limited planetary resources.
I certainly hope it's false. I would like to believe that the prosperity of the West could be exported to the rest of the world and we could all live happily ever after. But I have this nagging, nasty fear that it's all a short-lived dream based on turning a blind-eye to ruthless economic imperialism and the laws of science.
It may be possible that 75% of our so-called "best and brightest" might in be nutty Marxists, closet fascists, and bombastic, narcissistic idiots.
you might want to watch this movie, it illustrates a similar idea.
Also, some time in the past I read a book by the Strugatski brothers, ah, I forgot the title; anyway, there was this state that placed special towers all over their territory, and the towers had an impact on the population's way of thinking. Therefore it was easier to control them. There were also a few people who were not affected by the towers, they had to get outta there, because the government kept searching and eliminating them, one by one.
Anyway, the point is that this idea has been explored multiple times.
The saddest poem
Kidnap one person and brainwash them, theach him how to brainwash people himself and get him to go out and brainwash 2 other people, he teaches those people how to brainwash and so on. Basicly the same idea as religion. Except you can control the brainwashed people through keywords and if they get caught they forget.
The fundies demanding special treatment for human beings in these posts have obviously never closely observed another reasonably advanced mammalian species. Our spaniel has a well developed sense of right and wrong and you can easily see the debate ranging in his little mind as he wonders whether he can or should do something he is not allowed to do but wants to. In a small compass he displays much of the typical human behaviour - you can see the roots of religion, society and inquisitiveness.
Unfortunately there is a sequence of ideas here with an evil end. "Mere animals" - "humans who aren't like me so are mere animals" - "it's OK to kill people who aren't like me because they are just animals." You find this thinking wherever you find fundamentalist Semitic religions (mainly Christianity and Islam- this is nothing to do with being Jewish), whereas many Eastern religions are less likely to suffer from this anthroposupremacist error.
Pining for the fjords
result of bad human choices.
And who gave humans the ability to make those bad choices? God! Why didn't he only give humans the ability to make good choices? Here are some possiblilites:
- The universe is an experiment (possibly one of many), and one of the things that he/she/it is testing is how badly free-choice-posessing entities can fuck up.
- God started the universe up with some rules, and just let it run, and one of the results is humans that have the ability to make bad choices.
- God is a sadistic asshole who gets great pleasure from watching his/her/its creations suffer.
Whatever the reason, if there is a god who created humans with free will, then he/she/it did a very bad thing, a vile, despicable thing, to everyone, by giving humans free will.not as Anonymously Coward.
I know that Dawkins sometimes plays the shock jock, but his own response to the question is indeed dangerous. It is a fantastically dangerous concept to believe that we are simply the sum of our parts. If a person does not function correctly (as measured by some powerful external social construct), then that person must be repaired. It strikes at the heart of the Holocaust, in which it was supposedly determined that a whole population was broken (and Dr. Dawkins is not so far off the mark, as he views religion of any sort as a mental virus) and the only practical solution was extermination. Dawkins' response fails to take into consideration any respect for individual human beings, hobbled or otherwise.
Just another bit of proof that scientists generally suck at philosophy.
If you want to live a happy life your only choice is "playing Russian roulette with an automatic" on the other hand if you are intent on suicide then by all means "install the latest Longhorn beta"
God does not exist.. oh for crying out loud.
No Free will.. yawn.
We are alone.. yawn.
Media violence induces real violence.. yawn.
WTF?!!!!!
Even the powerful & famous are timid.
I only found one dangerous existing technology, but the idea with which it is presented is not dangerous. which leads me to conclude that the tech is not as great as the following quote implies.
Never vote for an organic chemist.. no mater how much you trust her/him. :)
Here's my summary of the rest worth noting.
There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes.
"The rapture of the Nerds" explained well, but it's still bunk. If forgetting a bit of common knowledge is harmful to interaction then it will be relearned. If that bit of common knowledge is used often enough it will not be forgotten again. Ergo there will always be just enough common knowledge so that frequently interacting nodes will be able to interact.
The purpose of life is to disperse energy.
His logic is just plain faulty. The author is confused by the classical convection cell examples (oceanic, solar, lab) all of which are forms of self organized complexity (SOC) which form explicitly to transmit energy and do so in the most efficient manner. But life (an eg of SOC) is the exact opposite wrt energy usage, it conserves as much energy as possible. SOC requires energy gradients. Requiring and using a gradient do not imply purpose, let alone "purpose is to eliminate the gradient".
Democratizing access to the means of invention. (BTW: The id attribute on the link destination is currently wrong, so use this link until they fix the other one).
Not dangerous.. actually quite good. What makes this dangerous?
Open Source Currency.
Still trying to get my head around it.. A concrete example would help. How much for that dough naught?
The free market.
The idea is true, but what a ride.. oohhh shiny toys.. cheap plentiful food, plenty of circuses. It's the best of the worst (so far). Yeah, it is leading to the destruction of the world and we'll all die; que sera sera.
Actual dangerous ideas worth reading.
Laws requiring parental licensure.What a dystopian idea.. to bad it isn't novel. But he adds some stats to spice it up.
Actual dangerous ideas not worth reading.
Biotechnology will be thoroughly domesticated in the next fifty years, and Science may be 'running out of control'.
Again.. not novel. Apocalypse by sci/tech.
You assume "taking the dough by force" will work. It won't. You will either end up in jail yourself, or the baker will not repeat the process, and there won't be bread on any store shelves.
:-)
Thanks for the course on bread making. Already had that down, though. I'm still waiting for a course of action for a government to take.
As I said before, the government should not bake the bread. The government should protect the freedom of farmer, baker, and banker. Do you think the government should provide Slashdot moderators too?
I cleaned up a lot of puke.
And my thumb smelt like a strippers ass.
This is not funny. It's just sad.
/John Sjolander, project manager Contribio
If you have a BEC that consists of pure deuterium, use magnetic containment to prevent the BEC from expanding back out at all, raise the temperature as close to instantaneously as possible to the point where fusion can occur...
'kay. Got it. What next?
Indeed, the idea of soul as an emergent property of a human system is quite enough, even in a teleporter which just "copies the bits", and treating people as machines which process bits.
However, quantum physics provides additional support to the idea of teleportation, if it transports the quantum state, being fundamentally physically indistinguishable from simply moving the object in the ordinary way, no matter what is going on with the object. Philosophically, this allows for (but does not require) the idea of a soul which is attached to a specific human system, and which is properly transported by quantum teleportation.
Certain aspects of physical systems cannot be duplicated, due to fundamental principles of quantum physics. They can't be turned into ordinary binary information and back, either. They can't be copied, and they can't be analysed. It's simply physically impossible. Reality simply doesn't do that. That could mean there is no mechanism available, but it could equally mean that there is no difference between teleportation and ordinary motion, other than what other people watching see.
It is like the teleportation version of relativity: those outside the teleporter see an object that appears to move from one place to another. Those inside the teleporter see the outside world appear to move from one place to another. And neither is more valid than the other, in the same way that no reference frame is more valid than another in relativity.
A teleporter which transports quantum state cannot dissect, record, or recreate the quantum state of the physical object being teleported. It can only transform the state of the object to something which travels over space, and transform it back to material form at the other end.
From the perspective of the object being teleported, those transformations cannot violate the object's integrity at any time. So, for the object, the experience is no different, to being stretched, squashed, irradiated, accelerated, etc. Generally, mangled about a bit, but from the reference frame of the object being teleported, at no point is the object's structural integrity violated.
From the object's perspective, this is no different than ordinary physical motion in a field. This is fundamental, assuming the principle of quantum identity is upheld(*). It's not "as if", in the way that we might say that duplicating a computer to run elsewhere gives the computer the experience of being transported. It's more basic than that: as a result of quantum identity of physical systems, from the object's reference frame there is no difference between teleportation, and ordinary motion in a field. The field may of course be damaging - experienced from the object's reference frame as excessive acceleration, radiation, or other shocks. But not entirely damaging the object's physical integrity at any time, otherwise the quantum state is not transported.(*)
And so, quantum teleportation, provided the quantum state is transported sufficiently purely(*) will tell us nothing about whether the physical system transported has a soul or not. Because if a soul exists and moves when the object moves normally, well, there is really no difference when it's teleported like this.
(*) - All that said, we really don't know much about the quantum structure of large, complex systems like a human being. We don't know much about the myriad nuances of it's structure, nor it's relationship with the environment which would not be teleported. We don't know with what kind fidelity we can transport such a large quantum state. We know there will be some aspects of the state not transported, or modified in the process, and we don't know how those would manifest physically in the reference frame of the object being transported. For example, the equivalent of "data corruption" when transmitting a dematerialised quantum state might be experienced by the object itself as random, destructive radiation, or other weirder forces.
-- Jamie
The trouble is that the solution people offer to inequity is usually what caused the problem in the first place.
ok so let me guess... it's government, right! the old 'drown it in the bathtub' boogeyman. distribution of equity is _definitely_ the governments fault. bad government! bad! we surely shouldn't blame generation after generation of capital holders bleeding the GDP of the nation and gaining a greater and greater percentage of total wealth that has left the expanding population with less and less to go around, how should we?.
in the 70's wages was 70% of received GDP... now it's under %50. less money is being paid to more people while rich individuals and corporations further consolidate (and don't spend!) their wealth. governments, in general, spend in ways to reduce this inequality - e.g. social security. i can say that private capitalists are rapacious misers, and that eric raymond is a racist gun nut; and in the end me calling people names is just as childish as you crying tinfoil tears at the government.
hey, who needs causality! I can say 'dogs + chili = economics' but trying to pass it off as cause+effect is nonsense. at the very least, how about some evidential proof of a correlation?
the idea of the state (should be) to foster administration of the wider community for the good of all. the state should be as decentralized as possible; local community leaders should be invested with as much power as possible to determine their own affairs and the (incredibly difficult) job of prioritising the allocation of monies should be determined by a safeguarded, corruption-resistant regime - we call it the beauracracy. most public servants i have met are stout personalities with a sense of due diligence, fairness and social responsibilty. and yes the rest were slackers but the rate has been signicantly less than my experience in prviate organisations, where the majority (more name-calling) are greedy, self-centred ingrates.
If you truly want equality, then you would support decentralization of power, and the reduction and/or elimination of the state. Inequality comes from violence...
decentralization of power=decentralized state. you know, city councils, first responders, utility managers; those awful people who do nothing for us. how about your local social security office, rape crisis centre, orphanage, school. we surely don't need any of _those_ now do we. and we surely shouldn't have rigid protections and assurances of these services via.. wait for it... _government_, now should we?
further decentralization comes from _expansion_ of the state; tribal/cultural leaders, church deacons, scout troops, little leaguers, big sister/brother etc. funding these and similar programs in order to foster them in communities which lack them will give more and more power to _local_ people to make a positive change in their _local_ communities.
and yes it costs more in taxes - so what? is it better that bill gates pays less tax so he can buy him and ballmer a double-headed dildo made of interleaved gold? or is it better that the money raised be given to social workers to help disadvantaged kids and battered women escape their nightmare existences?
oh no! I'm in america! i'm super rich in comparision to everyone in the world! even my poor, poor neighbor earns more than an african villiage! i have unlimited opportunities thanks to my business leaders raping and pillaging the natural resources and labour of poor peoples around the globe! and oh my god i have the lowest income tax rates in the OECD! how _dare_ they take my money from me! they are a wasteful, wasteful, evil beauracracy! excuse me while i drive my three ton truck to the woods so i can shoot near-extinct animals with my lovingly oiled fantasy
Can we please figure out what the fuck this means? I've seen these messages a few times now and it really pokes at my curiosity. We must have a few cryptographer's here who can comment on this.
I on the other hand, can program coherently in assembly while on acid.
his brain must have been very very basic, v1.02
my problem is that i don't believe it'll happen, not that i am thinking of it happening in a certain way. in some communities, the internet might be used to facilitate local planning decisions etc., but the bigger the government-handled-issue you talk about, the less faith i have that the internet will be involved in taking away from the government and putting decisions in the hands of the public.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
A democracy where the people get to vote on every decision.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Gotta like this one, if only for the term it uses : http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_6.html#rushkoff
:-)
I wish I'd seen it when I had this discussion.
Tonnes of other products NEED oil, such as fertilizers and plastics etc....
What are you gona do? use everyones toilets to mature the land to make the fuel?
Besides there are theories that there is infinite oil around, due to it being constantly fed up from the mantal.
Hydrocarbons are common in all asteroids too. Besides, I dont buy oil from plants ending up 10km below the surface
where those rocks have never seen the sun since 4bya when there was NO LIFE. If anything, all the shit inthe world
made from animals would produce more oil if 1% of all shit is part oil. Trillions of tonnes of droppings from
birds/dinos/insects could make more that sink down, but then again water sinks faster than oil.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Sad to say, but a random selection of the thinkers and scientists quoted here didn't do much for me. Many of the ideas seemed rather dull and occasionally pompous as well. These are not new ideas; they are simply ideas that are already in the air. I can come across them on TV, in an upmarket newspaper or good journal or in a hundred books in my local bookstore.
The trouble is that this is a very, very narrow selection of people. It would be more enlightening, perhaps, to choose a much broader selection of people (not only scientists and academic thinkers) from all over the world. It's rather silly to think that scientists can solve all our problems or even ask all the right questions. Even sillier is the notion that we - our culture - have all the answers and need ask no questions outside it. Whether that is also dangerous I cannot say.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
Bush/Cheney '08, yee-haw!
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
You should read the paper that the article you linked to references. Rieger et al had to do some incredible gymnastics to get from their data to their predetermined conclusion that male bisexuality doesn't exist. He was kind enough to send his original data to a friend who is also a professional psychologist, and any more straightforward analysis brings you to the conclusion that sexuality is a continuum and men lie all across it.
And that's only one of the flaws. Would research on female bisexuality assume that a women who didn't get turned on by watching gay male porn wasn't attracted to men? That's just the assumption Rieger's paper makes.
I don't think there can be any serious doubt that I'm attracted to both men and women, and I know lots of other counterexamples. In fact I've slept with them!
Xenu loves you!
In fact, we constantly do things for inexplicable reasons. We watch our own lives and imagine that we are making ourselves act, but in truth we're deluding ourselves. Our "will" is just a fantasy, no less of a reaction to what's going on around us than our emotions are.
Things we do repeatedly we imagine we do based on our inclinations and from these inclinations we construct personality, but in reality they are just things that happen to us more often than others.
Things we do that we don't like or can't explain we blame on "the unconscious," "insanity," "God's will" or some other mysticism where a nebulous force acts on us from beyond (or within). In truth, some of us have purposes that are quite unpleasant to experience in the context of society.
You, sir, are my hero.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Actually, if you give one man all of the power, you have complete and exact political equality with one outlier, which can be rejected as statistically irrelevant. Do I win? Do I get a cookie?
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
In summary, the very idea that "we are all created equal" is a mindless, pointless statement that speaks only to turning a blind eye to reality.
The method you used to disprove the statement can also be used in support of it. The statement does not mention in what way men(mankkind, humankind, whatever. I'm using the Declaration of Independence wording) are equal. All it says is that they are equal at their creation. This part of the statement actually eliminates at least one of your arguments(we aren't born with the same amount of consideration that we have when we mature).
One way that all people are equal at the moment of their birth is their experience. Newborn children have done neither good nor ill to anyone. This is actually the only way that I see people as being naturally equal upon their creation. Rights and opportunities are more dependent upon the actions of others.
Affording "equal opportunity to our fellows at each set of choices in life" is a somewhat narrowminded(or, perhaps, narrow-worded) idea. You brought up Dahmer and King: had not Dahmer in his infamous crimes unearned opportunities that King should have kept upon the realizing of his fame? Had Dahmer not forfeited rights that any decent person should have?
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"
--From Hamlet (II, ii, 115-117ish)
Most of the people who are, or will argue with you will likely cite art, and the appreciation of abstract beauty in their proofs. For me, I'd include those, and also that it is what I want to believe.
Why are you attached to the idea of setting us so low?
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Other definitions clearly state that atheism is a doctrine or belief that there is no god.
So you can take your pick which definition to use.
The ones that I and others choose to use is that atheism is the belief that god does not exist (i.e., that there is no god).
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
"Everyone's always in favour of saving Hitler's brain. But when you put it in the body of a great white shark, ooohh! Suddenly you've gone too far!" -- Professor Farnsworth
Spine World
"Every year The Edge asks over 100 top scientists and thinkers a question, and the responses are fascinating and widely quoted. This year, psychologist Steven Pinker suggested they ask "What is your most dangerous idea?" The 117 respondents include Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Daniel Dennett, Jared Diamond -- and that's just the D's! As you might expect, the submissions are brilliant and very controversial."
My "most dangerous idea": Perhaps this competition is baseless because it includes mostly US-American and English-speaking white persons, not really the edge of the scientific community. Many of these are braggarts. American eloquence beats human intelligence.
Tell it to Queen Doppelpopolos, doppelganger.
I'm surprised that no one here discussed Geoffrey Miller's entry, which IMO is the most brilliant in the article. Perhaps no one read this far down the list.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Did I miss something or were there no dark skinned people interviewed? A couple of Indians, a 'dread', no Africans, African Americans etc ...
I'm not for quotas or anything but this seems strange.
Skip the: racist jokes, assumptions (I'm a multicolored freak==white hippy)
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
The trouble is that the solution people offer to inequity is usually what caused the problem in the first place.
No, there is inequity because that is because people are different.
Government equals power. Remove any official government and all you end up with is the powerful people as government.
Government is a social technology that works. If it didn't, we would not have had it for 6000+ years. If it didn't work you would not notice it evolving, changing to better suit peoples need. More evolution still needs to happen but regressing to a single cell organism while a nice notion isn't going to solve any problems.
Government has gotten bigger over the last 6000 years, not smaller. One perspective of a democratic ideal would be for EVERYONE to be government, which i suppose from one perspective would count as completely decentralized.
I mod everyone down who says "I'll get modded down for this." I hate to disappoint.
Take the research that's been done to create a virus that causes sterility. Make it airborne or easily transmissible. The vast majority of the world's population would likely be rendered sterile.
Since the virus stimulates the woman's immune system to attack their own eggs, most in vivo fertilization techniques would fail. All faithful Catholics would be unable to reproduce. All countries without access to expensive technology would be unable to reproduce. The world's population would dramatically age and then plummet.
Freaks me out just posting it here.
Humans are simply animals. We're smarter, certainly, but there is zero evidence that we are different in any other way that makes any difference at all.
The very fact that you can ponder this question sets you apart from animals.
Since the first day I worked in a Esso, I always found that the access to the underground gas tanks wasn't really hard to go to - they're locked with a normal lock, easily cut with a chain cutter.
So, what if one opens one of those, then drops in an emergency FLARE, like those that you light up in the case of a car accident? Would the guy that dropped the flare have enough time to run away? I don't think so. And what would be the magnitude of the explosion? Would it be a big mushroom cloud explosion, or would it simply implode, or, what I wish, would it make a huge flame of fire that will burn slowly but steadily? I don't think there would be any difference with the type of gas, but maybe it would be different with diesel..
printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
-- myself
My dangerous idea: destroy the oil. You have to admit thats dangerous.
How would I do it? Simple. Pump oil-eating bacteria into the worlds oil
reserves. Use empty or capped wells, and pump a solution full of this bacteria
into the geological crevices that contain the stuff. It wouldn't take long.
Now thats dangerous.
Note, this is not a judgement on any of the answers given, just a general disappointment in the areas of which they cover.
Look at the whole picture, not just the hole in the picture.
Divide by zero
Look at the whole picture, not just the hole in the picture.
Nothing more dangerous than to tell your wife that you are leaving your day job to devote your time to playing World of Warcraft and then actually do it.
Nuclear terrorism, global warming, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. are nothing compared to the wrath of a pissed off woman.
A military industrial complex running the United States with Rupert Murdoch controlling all press releases.
A 2008 Presidential Win by some combination of Hillary and Nader...
How about these variations. Strong Agnosticism The view that the existence (or not) of a supernatural God (or gods) is not something that can be classified as knowledge. By this definition, a person can simultaneously be a strong agnostic and a theist (or atheist) if he believes that no kind of evidence justifies belief in the existence or nonexistence of God, but chooses believe that God exists (or not) anyhow as a matter of faith or principle. Weak Agnosticism The weak agnostic does not take a position on whether the existence of God is a possible subject of knowledge, but merely asserts that he is not aware of any evidence that justifies belief one way or the other. A weak agnostic could also be a theist or atheist, but will typically hold the position only tentatively on the basis that a proof one way or the other may show up eventually. Non-Agnostic ("Gnostic" not used because it is associated with an early quasi-Christian sect.) Someone who is not agnostic takes the position that there exists an acceptable proof either for or against the existence of God or gods. We might further categorise this as "weak" (the belief that such proof is possible in principle) or "strong" (the assertion that a specific argument constitutes valid proof). Strong Atheism A strict denial of all god-like entities. A bold assertion that no such thing exists. Weak Atheism Scepticism with regard to the proposition that there exists a God or god-like entities in general. Weak atheists feel that the non-existence of godlike beings is more likely to be true than the alternative, but aren't certain about it. Weak Theism Scepticism with regard to the proposition that no godlike beings exist. Symmetric opposite of weak atheism. Weak theists suspect that there is some kind of supernatural God, but lack assurance as to detail. Strong Theism A bold assertion that a specific God or gods exist. Also covers "deism", which is the position that God exists, but is disinterested and/or impersonal. If there is a genuinely neutral position between the weak forms of theism and atheism, I'm neither familiar with its name, nor sure how such a person would behave (although "erratically" springs to mind).
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
1. Patenting genes (if one can't see inherent dangers in giving a group / corporation control of a single piece of code for the building blocks of life then we are SOL)
2. A virus developed for gene therapy used to cary and insert a fatal genetic mutation into a specific target population ie race, gender, people, with a specific genetic disorder. Basically the most disgusting reincarnation of genecide possible.
Enough said
If you teach *everyone* up to the highest levels of science, pretty soon, everyone will be capable of designing ways to kill off everyone.
The ultimate cold war.
The difference between dogs and cats. Put a bowl of food in front of each.
The dog will think, "Hey! They're feeding me! They must be Gods!
The cat will think, "Hey! They're feeding me! I must be a God!
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
1. Time is infinate because is repeats (Loops) itself. That's why prophets/psychics/etc can see the future as it already happened and their subconscious remembered it from the last time through.
2. Humans didn't evolve from monkeys, they evolved from rodents. If you think about it many people fit into rodentia categories: That mousey girl at school, that weasel across the street, that rat that sold you out, and that badger who thinks you are his best friend.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
Agnosticism meant "I believe perhaps there may be a higher power, but I do not have any idea WTF it really is." Where Aetheism I believed meant "God? Gods? WTF are those? I don't need no steenking gods!"
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
There was a time before Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Therefore there is no reason to make assumptions about what life "would" be like without these institutions--we have decades of data about what it actually *was* like.
Here's the summary--there was greater relief in between the socio-economic classes. The successful and well-off were very successful and well-off because there was little economic or regulatory drag on their success. But the destitute and poor were really destitute and really poor, with no safety net to protect them or help them better their lot in life.
Providing such safety nets benefits everyone, including the captains of industry. An educated and healthy population is a productive population. And in fact the data bear this out--since enactment of many of the social programs, the U.S. has grown from a successful and influential nation to the most economically and militarily powerful nation on earth.
And it's funny you mention Switzerland after that rant, because they have a tightly regulated health care system with mandated universal coverage, a well-funded public education system, a well-funded social insurance program, and mandatory gun training. If we're going to emulate the Swiss, we ought to at least acknowledge, if not understand, their system as a whole.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Agnosticism originally meant the view that it's impossible to know if a god or gods exist or not.
"Strong" Atheism is having the belief that there are no gods.
"Weak" Atheism is just not having a belief that any gods exist. (Which, yes, corresponds to the way the term "agnosticism" is more commonly used today.)
-- dR.fuZZo
Seemed like a bunch of bitching about religion, not really "my most dangerous idea", but more like "hot topics that everyone is talking about these days that I want to intellectually wank off about in public, ooo lookit me I'm a perfessor!"
I think that you are correct--the outcomes will never be equal, because nothing that goes into making a human life can be perfectly duplicated; niether the nature nor the nurture. Even identical twins are "unequal" in this respect. But the phrase "All men are created equal" is pointing out equality under the law, not economic, physical, or mental equality.
The nub of the issue is that if we operate under the political fiction that everyone is equal, there's a greater chance for equality of opportunity and less chance for political repression. The real problem with rejecting "we are all created equal" isn't that it's not true (because as you have pointed out, economically, socially, physically, and mentally--it isn't) the problem lies in the area of deciding what will be done about it.
As soon as you decide that the little girl with Down's syndrome is "less equal" than the little boy genius, you're on a slippery slope. Should we "waste" precious resources on someone less equal? Does it mean that we provide less educational help for the girl, because it won't benefit her as much? If they both need a kidney transplant and there's only one available, who gets it?
But much more importantly, who decides? If you give the power to decide who is "more equal" to someone, you are giving them the power of life and death over others--a power that has been far too often abused.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Everything should run by electricity now, produced at zero cost by harnessing the Sun's power. Just place some big solar panels in high mountains above clouds, and have free electricity for all.
Google search:
virus filetype:wmf
"I'm Feeling Lucky".
If google recognized the type at all, that'd be pretty dangerous...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I especially liked Geoffery Miller's dangerous idea: the reason we haven't made contact with ET is that advanced alien civlizations become too self-absorbed in the virtual universe to pay any attention to the physical universe. I think it's especially applicable to those of us who spend way too much time browsing and posting to slashdot (go out an procreate instead!).
I suppose our only hope is that some of the leaders of our virtual world (Bezos, Carmack, Allen) are also the pioneers of space exploration. Maybe we're not as doomed as Miller proposes.
I guess it's a race then to see which Star Trek technology will destroy the world first then? It might not be photon torpedoes as some might have suspected.
The other day I was musing what it would be like if intoxication could be simulated through an electricly generated field, which would presumably be set up in bars, and people would consume a liquid that would be tagged to respond as alcohol does, but only when in the right proximity to the "drunk " generator. Imagine being completely drunk in the bar, but when you leave for your car, nothing is the matter with you.
Something could go arwy though, where a larger field could end up intoxicating people when they don't expect to be, sort of like the evil plot in Batman Begins.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Playing Russian roulette with a fully automatic would be no worse than with a revolver - the force required to eject a shell and advance to the next comes from the recoil, so if the first shot is a dud, there aren't any more after it.
Yes, but the solar system as a whole is indeed a closed system. Here, I can re-enact your argument:
"Dude, it's raining! What are you doing?"
"I'm standing under this tree to remain dry."
"But what are you going to do when the tree soaks through, and water starts falling on you again?"
"Oh, I'll just run under another tree."
With apologies to Asimov.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
That's utter drivel. My cat knows the difference between being cold and wet and miserable and scared and being cuddled up before the fire in a pair of loving arms. My cat will signal her appreciation in a completely unequivocal manner by purring and loving up. Her level of appreciation is different, but it is not lacking.
No matter how conciouss or enlightened your cat is, I doubt he/she has the ability to save all forms of sentient life.
Of course by some change of fate, your cat lives to see the singularity and its brain is fused with a super computer as an experient and he becomes sentient and figures out how to reverse the 2nd law of thermodynamics brining all forms of life in the universe peace and eternal life, but I'm getting side trakced.
Your cat nor any aninal (including man) without technology can prevent the sun from dying... Or a meteror from hitting nor maybe the second ice age from happening.
Your cat is simply ignorant of this fact and even if he is aware about the possiblity of Heat Death of the Universe, it isn't making strides to overcome this issue.
Then again... Neither is man at the present moment except save a handful of enlightened psysicists and a few ramblers on slashdot.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
You may not like or agree with the parent post, but it is not "flamebait". It is at least as valid a viewpoint as the GP.
Like 99.9% of slashdot's denizens, you've equated religion with a small subset of religion (although hopefully you are not also equating religion with fundamentist Xianity, or making the even worse mistake of redefining the nature of religion to suit American cultural biases).
Talk to a non-murtipujak Jain, or a Zen Bhuddist, or a Unitarian Universalist. Belief in deity is not required in any of those religions. Although belief in coffee is generally a UU requirement.
Some cars are unfixable and some people can't be rehabilitated. So, to remove the danger they present to society, we remove them from society.
If quantum mechanics is true -then 1) there is a possibility of a local big bang etc. 2) there are parallel universes where everything happens; you roll a (trully random) dice - then you (6 of "you") end up in 6 different parallel universes where each of you observes 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 respectively. Now take a revolver. Load 5 chambers, leave one empty. Spin the drum. Aim at your forhead and pull the trigger. In five parallel universes you are dead. In one - you survive and observe that result. Now repeat the experiment. You'll find out that you are still alive, after thousands attempts (you, of course cant find out that you are dead in all the other paralel universes). And the conclusion is? Events that kill all observers "appear" to never happen; chance intervenes. PS. This would have been the case even if all 6 chambers were loaded - then the gun would appear to constantly jam. You might even draw the conclusion that there is an universal law "guns dont fire". Laws of physics that lead to the extermination of all obsevers never manifest themselves..or happen to remain "never investigated".
Richard Dawkins has never said (or written) anything that was brilliant.
Seems like practically every other author in the article is a Psychologist. This cheapens the article by giving many more neuroscience ideas airplay than others. There also seem to be an over-representation of discussion of relativism in all its forms. Perhaps Psychologists have more time than most to answer survey questions like this?
-- IV
http://www.LinuxMedNews.com Revolutionizing Medical Education and Practice.
"...the eternal God has slain and annihilated these lands and peoples, because they neither adhered to Ghengis Khan, nor to the Khagan, both of whom have been sent to make known God's command." --Guyuk Khan, 1246, letter to Pope Innocent IV
Suppose feynman's "many universes" explanation of quantum phenomena is true, and that we could, at some point blow ourselves up completely and totaly. But, if there are parallel universes where everything happens; then you roll a (trully random) dice - then you (6 of "you") end up in 6 different parallel universes where each of you observes 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 respectively. Now take a revolver. Load 5 chambers, leave one empty. Spin the drum. Aim at your forhead and pull the trigger. In five parallel universes you are dead. In one - you survive and observe that result. Now repeat the experiment. You'll find out that you are still alive, after thousands attempts (you, of course cant find out that you are dead in all the other paralel universes). And the conclusion is? Events that kill all observers "appear" to never happen; chance intervenes. PS. This would have been the case even if all 6 chambers were loaded - then the gun would appear to constantly jam. You might even draw the conclusion that there is an universal law "guns dont fire". Laws of physics that lead to the extermination of all obsevers never manifest themselves..or happen to remain "never investigated". Or you can derive the same result by induction. Do we know of a time where we (an inteligent life form) were "extinct"? No. Have we observed another inteligent life form going extinct? No. (We havent observed other observers (alien civilizations) at all). Therefore, by induction, we will never die out... uhm, as long as we are alone in the universe :)
Most any lawyer will take your case, if any of those people you mentioned truly deprived you of being able to work, sell, or save.
On second reflection, your comments all sound like whiny excuses for justifing ones own inexcusable behaviors. "Wah, that meanie baker expects me to freely pay him THIS month, not next year." or "Wah, that meanie baker controls 90% of the bread he makes, I guess I'll have to steal it as there's no rice or other foods I could cook."
Oh, wait, you guys control all the armed forces of the western hemisphere. D'OH!
If you need me, I'll be down the street wailing and gnashing my teeth.
I think you've identified a few symptoms of the basic problem.
Our current dilemma is that we have created a modern slave economy and, like any slave economy, once the slaves can no longer perform the economy goes right into the crapper. So much of civilization depends upon oil that it's frightening to contemplate. It's become a toss-up as to what will destroy us first: running out of oil or not running out of oil.
So, like any slave economy, we design our civilization around our slaves. It only makes sense to use alternative fuels because without some fuel we can't use our slaves and because any alternative to the use of slaves is unthinkable. If the slaves need food and the food is running out then go find new food.
So I think the real question is, "How do we move away from a slave economy without destroying civilization?" And maybe that question will be solved technologically by some miracle fuel. Or by some pandemic.
Maybe the invention of agriculture was our biggest mistake after all.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
JAMES O'DONNELL
Classicist; Cultural Historian; Provost, Georgetown University; Author, Avatars of the Word
From the earliest Babylonian and Chinese moments of "civilization", we have agreed that human affairs depend on an organizing power in the hands of a few people (usually with religious charisma to undergird their authority) who reside in a functionally central location. "Political science" assumes in its etymology the "polis" or city-state of Greece as the model for community and government.
But it is remarkable how little of human excellence and achievement has ever taken place in capital cities and around those elites, whose cultural history is one of self-mockery and implicit acceptance of the marginalization of the powerful. Borderlands and frontiers (and even suburbs) are where the action is.
Said conclusion financed by tax dollars collected and distributed by a strong nation-state.
You install a computer in a "safe place" that accepts wagers on how and when someone will die. Public key cryptography is used to keep betters anonymous yet able to collect if they win the bet. While funds transfers are a bit more difficult to keep anonymous, there remain countries with rather strict banking secrecy laws.
The idea of course, is that if sufficient money is bet that a certain person will die, it will eventually be worthwhile for someone to make a wager that they can "guarantee" they will win -- by killing the object of the wager. Obviously most of the betters aren't really betting -- they are pooling their resources (anonymously) to contract a "hit".
ROBERT R. PROVINE
Psychologist and Neuroscientist, University of Maryland; Author, Laughter
The empirically testable idea that the here and now is all there is and that life begins at birth and ends at death is so dangerous that it has cost the lives of millions and threatens the future of civilization.
I won't address the question of whether or not the idea that "the here and now is all there is" is testable, because I frankly don't know whether it's testable or not, and agree with your conclusion that it's a true statement.
However, the second question you tried to lump together as a single one, that "life begins at birth and ends at death" is either meaningless or wrong, depending on how you define "birth" and "death". If you define "birth" as "when life begins", then your statement is meaningless. If, however, you define "birth" as "when the baby exits the birth canal entirely", then your statement is demonstrably wrong; there is no quantitative difference between a fetus halfway down the birth canal and one that has exited it other than relative position. Please don't attempt to argue that the intake of breath is a quantitative difference present only after birth, because I have two weeks of my life spent in a hospital to demonstrate that sometimes this occurs while still inside the mother.
Similarly, if death is defined as "when life ends", then again, you've tacked on meaningless words. But if it's defined as almost anything else commonly used by the medical profession, there are examples of people resuming function after these conditions have passed.
The reason the fight between your point of view on this question and the point of view of the other side is so acrimonious isn't because they cling to a demonstrably-false proposition; it's because you claim your side is demonstrably true when it's just as much a religious belief as theirs.
Precisely. Justifications happen after the fact. I can guarantee you that the common European farmer at the time didn't go sign up for the crusades, because he thought God wanted him to. There might have been maybe 3% of the population that thought that. The others heard that there was going to be plunder, women to rape, and bragging rights. Just like most people sign up for the military today for the benefits and so they can tell everyone they're a badass. After all, no one wanted to look like a sissy when his bud was bragging about those 10 moslems he killed single handedly. Probably a few where persuaded by their women at home to defend their country. I'm sure the rulers of the day asserted that the moslems were just waiting for their chance.
Are you channeling Aquinas or something?
I only read the responses from the first page of eggheads, and only one of them sounded like he didn't a) just eat a dictionary or b) just eat a clown (and still had that funny taste in his mouth.)
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
I think that one of the most detrimental notions of all time has been the supposition that we exist for some purpose, to fulfill some design, and that if we could only find it and align ourselves with it we would find happiness.
Too many young men and women kill themselves in despair when their search for this "purpose" has failed. Swindlers and megalomaniacs have exploited masses of people for the dubious "comfort of knowing".
It would be more noble to say to our children, "I don't know exactly how we got here, but here we are; free to think, to make and to do whatever we dare."
Of course this philosophy might work against the type of person who would be more inclined to say, "Hold my beer and watch this!"
Scientists should get on with their experiments and leave metaphysics alone.
There is no good reason for scientists to be taking their work as an excuse to tell us whether or not we have free will or souls, how to govern societies, where the universe Came From (in a strictly metaphysical sense), or how to raise our children. When they do so they make science into a religion, and this religion has an unfortunate history of becoming the state religion ("Let's kill the Jews because they believe humans are metaphysically better than mere animals!" was Hitlers main reason for wanting them dead).
A very easy, dangerous, thought, is that Scientology works ...
TFA has the title:
What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty
One of the oft-repeated important points about scientific methodology is that science very rarely, if ever, actually proves anything. Rather, science mostly gives us results in the form of a double negative: We've tried, and found that we can't disprove a hypothesis. After sufficiently many such tries, such an "undisprovable" hypothesis graduates to the class of theory, which really just means that it's tentatively accepted as the best exlanation so far, until something better comes along.
I'd expect that any purported Leading Thinkers on Science would happily agree that they can't really prove anything that they believe. Proof is for mathematicians, not scientists.
But some of their comments are well worth reading and thinking about.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
It is pretty radical to say that freedom matters at all. Look at any public debate in which safety is at issue. The proponents of a law say "Banning X will save N lives."; can the opponents respond "Well that would be quite an instrusive law, being free would be worth M lives"? In public debate today M=0 and N > 0 carries the day.
Could you quantify the ratio of energy we get from the sun compared to energy we get from that cosmic background radiation? Now, it's quite true that the sun is radiating its energy into the black, but I don't think you'll be extracting much usable energy from CBR, which was the original point of this thread.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Okay, they make insulin via some bacteria that was genetically modified to create that particular chemical, right? So instead of splicing that gene, splice the one that makes THC, and then make the bacteria highly (heh) contagious.
And civilization collapses.
CowboyNeal!
OTOH, it _is_ about dangerous ideas ... oh. Never mind.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
The question deliberately seeks to incite an emotional reply. I am curious. How do you choose to allocate your own financial resources? Do you choose based upon return-on-investment, or social concience?
If you want true equality, consider this: Doesn't equality demand the boy genius receive his "equal share" of finite educational resources despite the fact that the girl with Down's Syndrome necessarily consumes more resources? (i.e. money and labor)
Egalitarians often confuse equal opportunity with equal outcome. I don't understand how they can reconcile things like how Dave Thomas, who started with nothing, built a fast food empire, but Rodney King, after winning the lawsuit lottery, is now bankrupt.
Free people from a giant, violent, centralized authority like a government, and equality, prosperity, and peace are the natural result.
Not necessarily. Instead, you get many competing violent authorities who pile up a lot of bodies fulfilling the natural human desires to get higher in the pecking order until peace is established by one of them becoming the single giant, centralized authority.
Of course, this is technically a straw man argument about anarchy since you haven't truly argued for statelessness, but constant references to violence in minarchist arguments tend to lead one to the natural assumption that you are arguing against any sort of government violence against the people instead of just the law standing behind the tax collectors.
In a minarchist's perfect world, government only exists to keep men from pursuing direct violence against one another and from misappropriating legally owned private property. This world in and of itself does not guarantee utopia. It all rests on one assumption which you voice right here:
Inequality comes from violence... it comes from situations where people are not allowed to make decisions for themselves and instead are forced to do something under the threat of violence.
Not always. Sometimes people are forced to do things to avoid starvation or lesser problems. The only reason we have a market for menial labor is because it is the only way that uneducated people can feed and clothes themselves and their children. You need to read "Nickled and Dimed" to see how desperate the situation is for the working majority of poor people. There honestly isn't a lot of freedom when you don't have enough money to put down the first month's rent for an apartment and have to instead take the more expensive and less secure option of renting week-to-week at a motel. You can't take time off from work to go to the doctor (even if you could afford it) because you wouldn't earn enough money to feed yourself. You won't tell a cruel boss to shove it and go look for a new job because you don't have the money to survive multiple weeks of unemployment. You can't afford to take time off to retrain and get better skills because you;re working 11-15 hours a day on multiple jobs.
These people already are economically subjugated but not by government. They're subjugated by a largely distributed private sector instead of a centralized government. They don't have opportunities because opportunity requires the ability to have a period of self-sufficiency and free time that aren't available to people in their economic state. Without government or enough private charity funding (which would probably indicate enough of a public sentiment to have government handle it), these people would have no future. If you took away public education, social security, and medicare & medicaid, they wouldn't received back nearly enough taxes to make up the difference to pay for these essential services themselves. Without labor laws, unemployment laws, the minimum wage (which has already atrophied almost to the point of uselessness thanks to inflation), these people would be little more than slaves with the ability to choose their master.
It doesn't take violence to grind away a person's spirit and to make them a slave. The callous apathy of society at large and financial desperation are more than enough. I remember from History what the so-called "Gilded Age" was like, and I personally don't want to see a return of those days when the only law of business was that of the contract and the life of labor was cheap and expendable.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The crusades are extremely well documented. The "common European farmer" did not sign up for the crusades at all. The people who signed up were mostly religious fanatics, although there was a very large minority of unlanded nobility - third sons of the aristocracy are a chestnut of period literature - who were not always religiously motivated.
Don't try to put the motivations and rationalizations of modern people into a medieval setting - having read hundreds of first-person manuscripts written at the time, I can tell you that's a mistake.
Most crusaders went to the Holy Land because charismatic leaders (like Peter the Hermit for example) told them to. Most of these leaders were insane religious fruitcakes by modern standards, who promised total absolution for crusaders regardless of what atrocities they committed, and eternal fiery damnation for those who "disregarded the call of the Lord".
We could have a slashcode government! You go to a site with news, comment threads and the usual, and laws could be started like articles, being debated online and eventually voted on... with only the really high karma folks (virtual politicians) being able to vote :)
Well, it certainly addresses what I see as one of the biggest flaws in modern government: stupid, uneducated voters. In a way...
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
a hs-witn/msg/d7aef3818e7ab1e6?dmode=source&hl=en .
- Albert Einstein
If you read that quote in context ( http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/einbucky.htm ) you'll see that it's highly misleading quoted alone. By "religion" he seems to mean "admiration for the mysteries of the universe". (My attempt at a summary, not a direct quote.) Einstein's ideas about "religion" aren't exactly mainstream.
A Usenet post (via Google) with some interesting quotes: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.jehov
Samples:
"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature." -- Albert Einstein, "The World as I See It"
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." -- "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", Princeton University Press.
actually, the only dangerous thing about the idea is that it is off topic and the rest of the slashdot crowd will flame me for it :) but i just wanted to float the idea, and maybe someone else will have a suggestion of how to make it dangerous.
Anyway, the idea is said balloon would be able change shape to:
- be squeezed to expell all the gas inside downwards to provide thrust, once the ballon has risen as high into the atmosphere as possible, and to leave a planets gravity.
- be deployed as a solar sail
- be spread out as a parachute to land on planets with atmospheres
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
I'm not sure if that post should be modded down for content, or up because it makes fun of the point. :)
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
...was in an excellent science fiction novel "The Dark Cloud", by Sir Fred Hoyle. It won't spoil anything if I said that part of the novel dealt with super-intelligent aliens spontaneously exploding whenever they advanced beyond a certain point.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
> Bottom line: Stalin's atheism had nothing at all to do with his murderous tendencies - his mental state did.
And why can the religious not use the same excuse? By what right do you condemn only the one side while excusing those who believe as you do? Perhaps the root of this is their mental state: religion is often considered by atheists to indicate mental illness, so perhaps we should kill those we consider mentally ill.
Oh wait, Stalin tried that, among other things... Funny that.
It should not be so surprising to you that an atheist would not use a religious reason as their justification to kill anyone. There are billions of religious folk who have never killed a single person. And there are two atheists who outdid them all in less than 100 years.
Go figure?
...made by Microsoft?
$5 says it doesn't suck.
No genius! Bicycles are not required to grow crops. Crops do not require bicycles!
But America DOES require more exercise and less dependency on fossil fuels. It's not something we've tried lately.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Uhhhh.... Sorry about that. I didn't realize you weren't the original guy. :)
Ah, well, no harm no foul.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
This is my response to "Science Must Destroy Religion," posted on Page 7
While your argument is well intentioned and rational on the surface, its fatal flaw is the presumption that society is capable of behaving rationally rather than emotionally. You might as well argue that people stop eating candy. Further, the benefits of science versus religion are not as clear-cut as you presume.
Firstly, and most importantly, I'll address the aspect of human behavior. To assert that religion is dangerous is to imply that religion is an impetus for negative behavior rather than a channel through which such behavior may be expressed. Religion may be yet another division of people into groups who plot against one another, but to believe that such division would cease to exist without religion is fantastical. Religion exists because people form groups, not the other way around. Religion is a result, or at least a byproduct, of the human condition.
If religion is a symptom of the human psyche, then the elimination of religion is an exercise in futility, and the benefits of such elimination would be nonexistent. People will continue to create artificial divides, and conflict will result. Further, since religion predicates, or at least coincides with, the existence of science, it would appear to be one of the most basic of human constructs. Therefore, we can presume that new individuals will continue to invent the idea of a supreme being, regardless of what we teach them. In fact, many ideas spring from the opposition of established concepts and beliefs, so it's likely that any suppression of religion would only be a finger in the dyke, so to speak, since eliminating one source would only cause it to spring up elsewhere. The same creative power which fuels art will eventually convince someone, somewhere, that they have had contact with such a supreme being, and others will be inclined to believe them, because people are inclined to believe charismatic individuals. It is unrealistic to believe that the void in "knowledge," left by the absense of religion would remain unfilled.
Religion is, by definition, a non-disprovable idea. Further, by definition, it is impossible to eliminate a non-disprovable idea through logic. You may not directly promote, or even consciously acknowledge, that the elimination of religion would be violent, but such a scenario would be inevitable. Since religion is a belief, it is immune to the effects of logic and reason. If one cannot use reason to counter an opposing idea, the only alternative is to eliminate the source of that idea, which is the person harboring it. Therefore, the only way to deliberately eliminate religion is through force, which would be a greater wrong than allowing it to exist; to criminalize religion is to criminalize free thought. In addition, the use of force is, of course, a form of oppression, and oppression has historically resulted in a massive backlash through direct and sympathetic resistance. Of course, some religious groups are attempting to use force to further their cause, but that's their own mistake; there's no need to follow them on the path of failure.
You assert that the danger of religious fanatics obtaining nuclear weaponry is grounds for the elimination of religion, however a more accurate interpretation would be that it's grounds to keep nuclear weaponry out of the hands of fanatics, whether they support religion, democracy, communism, or purple dinosaurs. Using fanaticism as a basis to reject religion is a non sequitur. The fact is that religious fanaticism is a subset of fanaticism, not the other way around. Fanatics will always exist, and some will always adopt an attitude of "victory at all costs." Whether they are fighting for mindshare, land, oil, fissionable material, women, or clothes is irrelevant. Irrational behavior cannot be eliminated by eliminating irrational etablished belief systems, even if such a thing was possible.
To extol the benefits
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
- That page was written by someone that I don't know, and he states in his opening paragraph that it represents "only one viewpoint" -- his own.
- The last time that I was in a church was sometime in the 1990s, and that was only to attend a wedding.
- I'm agnostic (definition 1b) (or a "weak" atheist, to use your definition of atheist).
- It's spelled "heard", not "heared", and "Sunday" should be capitalized.
I am a bit surprised that you seem to think that I am religious.I prefer more authoritative sources, such as the ones at dictionary.com
In the 1980s, I went maybe 3 or 4 times, to weddings and funeral services.
I've never been to a "Sunday service" in my entire life, that I can recall.
Actually, to be more accurate, I'm an "agnostic apatheist", which is a term that I made up.
An agnostic apatheist is a person who is skeptical (UK: sceptical) about the existence of a god or gods, and furthermore doesn't care whether or not a god or gods exist.
Nowhere in my post did I indicate that I was religious, nor did my post advocate any religious viewpoint.
The fact that I didn't capitalize the word "god" (except when quoting dictionary.com) should have clued you in that I'm not a religious person.
Considering the current state of our universe, if a god or creator does exist, then I don't really have a very high opinion of him/her/it.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
No, not really. Nothing I've said requires the existence of a soul.
"The Essential Quality of being human" is pretty wordy, but you could have figured out I wasn't talking about a soul and moved on to actually, y'know, debating, after the first post. You probably did.
Hence why arguing semantics is little more than trolling.
Very well... My personal space by my own definition now extends for one square mile. The second you enter that region of space, you violate my claim to it. If you drive your vehicle within my personal space, I may be injured by it, therefore the government must ban all motor traffic within a one square mile area around me. Since I cannot be sure of your intentions as to whether you are travelling innocently or attempting to run me over, this is a sound policy decision to prevent aggression toward me. Endangering the lives of others is most certainly a violation of their rights.
Any time you cede a right, privilege, or freedom to the government, you can guarantee you will never receive it back. And I have noticed that those without an "obsession" over property usually have none.
"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves." -- Thomas Jefferson