You are missing the point. If you have blind, unquestioning faith, then no empirical evidence can overturn your dogma, as it is true because you believe it is, any evidence otherwise can SOMEHOW be explained away if you try hard enough.
You can be sure you always making the right decision when you define 'right decision' as whatever is in accordance with what some book tells you the right decision is.
Don't confuse 'Being totally sure of yourself due to blind faith' with being 'right' in a rationalistic way.
Hmm, situational ethics you say. I have never heard that phrase, but in retrospect I think that this pretty closely matches my philosophy on life.
I believe in absolute relativism, to me the concept of absolute truth is a paradoxical statement with no meaning. Therefore decisions cannot be classified as 'Right' and 'Wrong' in any objective way, but only relative to what goals we set out to achieve.
So a person is an atheist if he believes in an absolute truth other than the traditional notion god?
I was under the impression that an atheist was someone who treats logical reasoning as the only source of truth. Please correct me if I was misinformed. Under my definition, how an earth could an atheist have a fixed moral compass? New arguments could be persuasive and lead to a changed moral compass.
Who said anything about 'valid'? If your moral compass is based on personal reasoning and logic rather than based on dogma, then it is open to debate, and anything open to debate is by definition not absolute truth, but rather an opinion.
How can you be sure that you are 'making the right decision' when your concept of right was defined by a process that might be subject to mistake?
Things sure are easier if you choose to believe unquestioningly in an absolute moral compass.
From what grounds would an atheist derive his fixed moral compass? A religious person can point to the bible as a source of Absolute Truth(tm) when it comes to moral matters. How is this not obvious?
We have been hearing about so called 'laster beams' ever since forward-thinking science fiction started using them, such as in Austin Powers. I never thought I would see one in my lifetime, glad to see them finally being tested. So assuming that the "laser" functions properly, does anybody know what it will be good for, other than vaporizing martians?
Yes it is. Two cars going 500mph each or one car going 1000mph are indistinguishable, as elementary physics teaches us.
When you put two cars close enough together (say within 1 foot of each other), they in fact merge into a single car moving at the combined speed. How do you think stretch limo's are made?
Moores law has numerous interpretations. It can be stated in terms of number of transistors, speed, cost, or amount of memory. If you have a link stating why the number of transistors is the preferred interpretation, I'd be interested to see it.
My original post was intended as a troll. In other words, a random stream of ideas that intentionally are incoherent, senseless, and maybe even offensive.
Remember when slashdot used to be a reputable news source? Clearly those days are long gone. Since when are web-comics a news source? Also, whats with those stupid links to elmer's glue and some rubics cube type puzzle doing up there?
I propose a new addition to the slashdot moderation system. There should be an option to moderate the STORY as '-1 Troll'.
I think that the idea of artificially enhancing ourselves with technology is the right approach, but the BORG technique of implanting high-tech computerized devices seems the wrong approach. Basically, this would open up our very bodies to hackers. By now we should all be aware how very difficult a problem computer security is. Personally I feel that computers and networks can never be made secure, and thus we should stop trying. Just imagine the inevitable result when some black-hat cracker breaks through the encryption protecting your enhanced liver, and proceeds to turn it into 'reverse', whereby it spews toxins into your bloodstream? Compound this with the fact that probably our bodies will be running Microsoft operating systems, and you see why this is the wrong approach.
The correct way to enhance ourselves is the technique outlined by Science Fiction Author Larry Niven. In variou Niven novels and short stories, the characters can live for hundreds of years by means of organ banks. If you lose an arm, use nanotechnology to put on a new arm. Of course, this will require two developments: improved nanotechnology, and the development of organ banks for all body parts. Probably this will lead to the death penalty becoming the standard punishmnent for every minor crime, so as to keep the organ banks full of fresh organs, allowing rich people to live forever at the expense of everybody else.
I hope this happens within my lifetime, as it is a Utopian scenario indeed.
YOu need to read up at www.fsf.org, because clearly you don't know what free software is.
free software is better than open source because, by definition, the updates must also be free, whereas in the world of open source, the scenario you described might actually happen, as derivative works of merely open source software might be proprietary.
I look forward to the day when telephone service as we know it today is completely gone, replaced by wireless IP technology.
Instead of a phone, you carry a palm-pc type device that might happen to look a lot like the cell-phones of today. Instead of having phone service, you have internet service.
The problem here is not that cool software is being sold instead of given away for free.
The problem is that some of use use linux
because we want to avoid proprietary software,
and this product doesn't help us any there,
but rather takes away from the incentive to produce a free product to do the same thing,
because some of the people who would push for
a free version will just use the proprietary version and be happy. Misrepresentations
of the sort you are purporting only show
your only ignorance and stupidity.
There was a dragons lair on floppy disk,
back before cdroms were popular. It was terrible.
The same awful gameplay, but with equally
awful graphics. Plus, it had a complex copy protection scheme
requiring you to search through these tables to find the right numbers to type in.
Dragons lair has a serious history of lameness.
I hate to post a simple 'me too' kind of message,
but i will anyway.
I must congratulate you on having the courage to state the truth in such plain and simple terms. 'Evil' is exactly the right word, thank you for not shying away from using it in all its glory.
Interesting to see microsoft providing something free,
that doesn't require the purchase of windows. Surely this is laden with horrible horrible advertising, and only works with windows.
How else and why else would ms do such a thing?
Heheheheheh. TCL is a command interpreter,
where commands have the form commandname arg1 arg2 arg3 etc
and some various kinds of quoting. Its not exactly a language;)
Slashdot Mirror
You are missing the point. If you have blind, unquestioning faith, then no empirical evidence can overturn your dogma, as it is true because you believe it is, any evidence otherwise can SOMEHOW be explained away if you try hard enough.
You can be sure you always making the right decision when you define 'right decision' as whatever is in accordance with what some book tells you the right decision is.
Don't confuse 'Being totally sure of yourself due to blind faith' with being 'right' in a rationalistic way.
Hmm, situational ethics you say. I have never heard that phrase, but in retrospect I think that this pretty closely matches my philosophy on life.
I believe in absolute relativism, to me the concept of absolute truth is a paradoxical statement with no meaning. Therefore decisions cannot be classified as 'Right' and 'Wrong' in any objective way, but only relative to what goals we set out to achieve.
So a person is an atheist if he believes in an absolute truth other than the traditional notion god?
I was under the impression that an atheist was someone who treats logical reasoning as the only source of truth. Please correct me if I was misinformed. Under my definition, how an earth could an atheist have a fixed moral compass? New arguments could be persuasive and lead to a changed moral compass.
Who said anything about 'valid'? If your moral compass is based on personal reasoning and logic rather than based on dogma, then it is open to debate, and anything open to debate is by definition not absolute truth, but rather an opinion.
How can you be sure that you are 'making the right decision' when your concept of right was defined by a process that might be subject to mistake?
Things sure are easier if you choose to believe unquestioningly in an absolute moral compass.
From what grounds would an atheist derive his fixed moral compass? A religious person can point to the bible as a source of Absolute Truth(tm) when it comes to moral matters. How is this not obvious?
We have been hearing about so called 'laster beams' ever since forward-thinking science fiction started using them, such as in Austin Powers. I never thought I would see one in my lifetime, glad to see them finally being tested. So assuming that the "laser" functions properly, does anybody know what it will be good for, other than vaporizing martians?
Cg is a language for writing shaders
that run in hardware on your nvidia graphics cards, for use in opengl games.
Renderman is the offline rendering technology
run on server-farms to render things like 'finding nemo'.
I stand corrected.
Thanks for the link!
Yes it is. Two cars going 500mph each
or one car going 1000mph are indistinguishable,
as elementary physics teaches us.
When you put two cars close enough together
(say within 1 foot of each other), they in fact merge into a single car moving at the combined speed. How do you think stretch limo's are made?
Moores law has numerous interpretations.
It can be stated in terms of number of transistors, speed, cost, or amount of memory. If you have a link stating why the number of transistors is the preferred interpretation, I'd be interested to see it.
I have to say, Mr. Anonymous Coward,
that your story is perhaps the most entertaining
and ingenious thing I've seen in many months.
Congrats, says I!
If only I had been blessed with some mod points
today, I would have modded you up '+5 Informative'
My original post was intended as a troll.
In other words, a random stream of ideas that intentionally are incoherent, senseless, and maybe even offensive.
Remember when slashdot used to be a reputable news source? Clearly those days are long gone.
Since when are web-comics a news source? Also, whats with those stupid links to elmer's glue and some rubics cube type puzzle doing up there?
I propose a new addition to the slashdot moderation system. There should be an option to moderate the STORY as '-1 Troll'.
I think that the idea of artificially enhancing ourselves with technology is the right approach, but the BORG technique of implanting high-tech computerized devices seems the wrong approach. Basically, this would open up our very bodies to hackers. By now we should all be aware how very difficult a problem computer security is. Personally I feel that computers and networks can never be made secure, and thus we should stop trying. Just imagine the inevitable result when some black-hat cracker breaks through the encryption protecting your enhanced liver, and proceeds to turn it into 'reverse', whereby it spews toxins into your bloodstream? Compound this with the fact that probably our bodies will be running Microsoft operating systems, and you see why this is the wrong approach.
The correct way to enhance ourselves is the technique outlined by Science Fiction Author Larry Niven. In variou Niven novels and short stories, the characters can live for hundreds of years by means of organ banks. If you lose an arm, use nanotechnology to put on a new arm. Of course, this will require two developments: improved nanotechnology, and the development of organ banks for all body parts. Probably this will lead to the death penalty becoming the standard punishmnent for every minor crime, so as to keep the organ banks full of fresh organs, allowing rich people to live forever at the expense of everybody else.
I hope this happens within my lifetime, as it is a Utopian scenario indeed.
If I had some mod points, I would mod this guy up +5 "hilarious".
YOu need to read up at www.fsf.org,
because clearly you don't know what
free software is.
free software is better than open source
because, by definition, the updates
must also be free, whereas in the world
of open source, the scenario you described
might actually happen, as derivative works
of merely open source software might be proprietary.
Dude, I couldn't pass up the chance
to have the first post ever!
I mean...> DUUUDE DUDE
I look forward to the day when telephone
service as we know it today is completely gone,
replaced by wireless IP technology.
Instead of a phone, you carry a palm-pc
type device that might happen to look a lot
like the cell-phones of today. Instead of
having phone service, you have internet service.
The information superhighway is here at last!
Seems ridiculous to integrate ECMAScript
in there, when we could instead use
python.
The problem here is not that cool software is being sold instead of given away for free.
The problem is that some of use use linux
because we want to avoid proprietary software,
and this product doesn't help us any there,
but rather takes away from the incentive to produce a free product to do the same thing,
because some of the people who would push for
a free version will just use the proprietary version and be happy. Misrepresentations
of the sort you are purporting only show
your only ignorance and stupidity.
There was a dragons lair on floppy disk,
back before cdroms were popular. It was terrible.
The same awful gameplay, but with equally
awful graphics. Plus, it had a complex copy protection scheme
requiring you to search through these tables to find the right numbers to type in.
Dragons lair has a serious history of lameness.
I hate to post a simple 'me too' kind of message,
but i will anyway.
I must congratulate you on having the courage to state the truth in such plain and simple terms. 'Evil' is exactly the right word, thank you for not shying away from using it in all its glory.
Interesting to see microsoft providing something free,
that doesn't require the purchase of windows. Surely this is laden with horrible horrible advertising, and only works with windows.
How else and why else would ms do such a thing?
Heheheheheh. TCL is a command interpreter, ;)
where commands have the form commandname arg1 arg2 arg3 etc
and some various kinds of quoting. Its not exactly a language
Good point.