If these children are so bright as you like to think, why can't they decide for themselves between evolution and creationism?
Sure they can. Still doesn't explain why just any random gobbledygook needs to be inserted in to a science class. Where do we stop then? There are hundreds, if not thousands of creation myths all over the world. The Christian creation myth has no more scientific weight than any of those. Discuss it by all means in a class on comparative religion or even bible studies if it's that sort of school. What the heck does it have to do with science?
You claim the answer is obvious enough.
Sure you're in the right thread? I never said that. Creationism has been debunked after all due consideration by many people and we've eventually become bored of the old cliche that keeps coming back every few years like a bad penny. If you really want a competing theory, digging up the proverbial horse and hitting it is not the way forward.
Also, you seem to have great faith in the unfailing accuracy of your scientists' speculations about the past.
Not at all. I do have some faith in the lack of credibility displayed by creationists down the ages when talking about creationism itself. The main difference however is rather dramatic - scientists' speculations on the past tend to get more accurate in that their models fit observations better and better while requiring lesser and lesser complexity in their axiom set.
What if they're wrong?
They tend to admit it (hint: religions don't or have to dragged kicking and screaming towards the truth) and other scientists tend to correct the errors over time. In fact, there's a strong incentive in science to try to prove accepted theories wrong - no better way of becoming famous.
We all know that archaeologists make mistakes about things that happened mere thousands of years ago.
So? Mistakes happen. Science is an evolving framework. We don't cling desperately to original dogma - we improve upon them and refine them. Making a mistake is natural, refusing to correct it and insisting that the mistaken idea is correct is criminal ignorance and will never be tolerated in science - someone always calls bullshit.
If the past is interpreted according to a single theory without competition, errors will go undetected as anything that does not fit the assumption is ignored or completely unnoticed.
Nonsense. That doesn't necessarily follow. Regardless, I'd welcome competing theories. Your mistake is in thinking that creationism is a competing theory.
Be glad you have creationists to pick off some of your unscientific flaws, frauds, and weak points.
'Fraud' is an ironic label considering we're discussing creationism. But, believe it or not, I actually am glad that there exists a cadre of skeptical (though only skeptical towards evolution) folks trying to find weak points in evolution. Creationists have no real theory of their own (old hackneyed rubbish does not a revolution make), but they are a good source of ideas for future graduate students in evolutionary biology or archaeology to address. Unlike them however, scientists realize that current theories are neither perfect nor complete. This is why they work in these fields. A complete field would be sterile, uninteresting. I find it amusing that creationists get oh so excited when they find an anomaly somewhere and start shouting "conspiracy" when it is not immediately explained. Overall, I believe that evolutionary theory gains much more in its confrontation with creationism than the other way around and it can only end up making the former much more robust. So, thanks for that =)
Sorry to butt in, but you do realize that the post you were replying to was a satirical masterpiece? And it did so while at the same time being potentially sincere (in that a true Christian would actually have to say that!)
Most religious texts, however, spend very little time at "explaining" natural phenomena, and I am yet to meet a single person who when asked "why do you believe in God?" responds "because I just couldn't explain a particular physical process".
You're absolutely right. So, why start now (with creationism trying to explain things that are properly explained by well-understood physical processes)? I'm glad you agree that ID'ers are misguided even by religious standards.
As to being despised and feared... well I never have been feared(except at a buffet maybe), but am normally despised because of my faith.
I'm afraid I didn't express that clearly ("So, you would rather be despised and feared instead of being (relatively mildly) disdained and laughed at?"). What I meant was that the latter (which is usually the attitude towards fundamentalist Christians) seems like a much better thing to have than the former (which is the attitude towards fundamentalist Muslims).
The point is that I would rather have my ideological opponents mock me fearlessly rather than fear me and keep quiet. The fear would imply that not only am I wrong (this is only my opponents' opinion and therefore debatable) but I am also so intolerant that you would have to fear for your life before thinking of saying anything against me. The latter attitude is something you would expect in a prison, where "respect" is the incorrect term used for "fear for my life".
This, in my opinion, is something that is constantly misconstrued in social commentary today. Rational people do not waste their breath on those who are truly beyond reason (radical muslims) and who, further, would only reward us with a barbaric death. This is why I said (with utmost sincerity) that I do admire Christians in the US. For all their faults, they understand that words should only be countered with words (or perhaps a lawsuit or two =p). It's unlikely that my head will be chopped off for saying something bad about their religion =) and I appreciate that (I guess I might end up with a bullet if I got really stupid and mouthed off in a bar in the deep South. Good thing I have a fairly evolved (oops) survival instinct).
And you mention that the absence of a religion does not a rational person make, but too often the presence of religion labels us as nuts.
Yes. That is somewhat unfair (well, premature anyway). Personally, I try not to judge people based on their beliefs (I fail sometimes on message boards for obvious reasons), but on how those beliefs enter into their interactions with the universe (that includes people) at large. Besides, there's nothing wrong with being a little nutty if it doesn't hurt anyone =). As for mentioning creationism in science class, it's merely the (publicly stated) thin end of the wedge, which is why it's so important to stop it at the start.
Exactly. This is why ID proponents label their opponents are "Darwinists" - makes for a nice strawman. Gah! Science doesn't work that way. Darwin had a nice idea, a good start but we are wayyy past that now.
It is not scientific to solve a second order problem before you solve the first order problem.
I do agree with your suggested order of approaching the problem. Of course, all that means is that the proposed "solution" of the creator will have to wait an extra 5 seconds before it can be demolished.
You can't describe a programmer in terms of the programming languages and the code he has written.
If these artifacts (prog. languages, code) were ALL THAT EXISTED, you would have to. Of course, in that case, I wouldn't be surprised if marketing droids evolved religions based on the wise and omniscient programmer. Trivially false analogy.
Neither can you explain a painter in terms of the pigments and canvases he has used.
Again, if the pigments and canvases and the paintings were ALL THAT EXISTED, you would have to. If the creator created anything besides what's in the creation, or manifested any properties that did not require anything within the creation, THEN and only then would your analogy make any sense at all.
... to explain that Creator in terms of the Creation, which is utterly preposterous.
No one's putting that condition on the believers. Of course, since they also go on to argue that we can't really understand anything outside of "Creation", that's really a "because I said so, now shut up and don't ask questions" non-argument. Do you also let your kids get away with arguments like that when it comes to explaining how the window got broken?
This includes that just because we may have been created is no reason to surmise that the creator ALSO had to have been created.
Not for that reason. But the complexity argument DOES raise that question. If the creator did not need to have been created, why does life on Earth? It could have always existed too. Can't have it both ways.
There is no reason for the turtles all the way down argument.
Sure. Then again there is no reason for that first layer of absurd turtles either =)
You're remembering the origin of the cargo cult idea (fair 'nuff). Sagan might have been the first one to extend that idea bit further though in his The Demon haunted world. In the extended sense (I'm pretty sure but not dead certain) you can use that term in the sense of "people misunderstanding and then misusing the way a scientific tool is used (rather like "ghost hunters" who wave around their EM detectors, not knowing what it is that they are measuring). These religious movements are cargo cults in the sense that they are co-opting the language of science (but nothing else) in order to appear scientific (in much the same way as new age technobabble about crystals and "energy fields" - though all that stuff is actually less sophisticated than creationism).
It's like the original cargo cults where the people laid down the airstrips with 'coconut lights' and so on without really getting the connection between that and the airplanes coming with goodies. Does that make sense? I will say though that your idea of the ancients encountering advanced aliens is possible (more than a few books have been written on the subject). However, I haven't really found those arguments convincing - we are capable of quite a bit of irrationality all on our own =)
Is this really true? I really really hope so but that's not the kind of information I've been bombarded with on/. (and other places).
Citations? Legals opinions? Anything? *fingers crossed*
laugh away. Of course if we were Muslim you would be afraid.
So, you would rather be despised and feared instead of being (relatively mildly) disdained and laughed at? If I were you, I'd be happy with the status quo. Doesn't take long for fear to become hate and... well we've all heard Yoda. They (radical islamists) have a knack of pissing too many other cultures off. Someday they'll push the world too far. I hope I'm not around to see that day because it's bound to be epic.
If we were budhist you would think we were enlightened.
Nope. But keep f***king that chicken.
But We are just some hick bible thumpers so laugh away. Nothing to see here.
Isn't it nice when we can all laugh at each other? =) Frankly, on the scale of lunacy, Christians aren't all that bad. Doesn't mean you're gonna get a free ride. You see, we tend to have a higher standard for good behavior than just "well, he's no suicide bomber". The day people stop laughing at you is the day you might want to start worrying.
For that matter, there are plenty of us who also laugh with the same contempt at new age horseshit. We are fully aware that absence of big religion (or any religion at all) does not a rational person make. It's a necessary but insufficient condition.
LOL. Yes, you have a point. Though, in all fairness, if we allowed every single belief system followed (even in just the last century), the first semester would be spent solely in writing out the entire list =)
Spirituality is an exceptionally useful practice. You can ascribe spirituality to bare consciousness, if not an external factor such as "spiritual energy" or "the soul." In that sense, being mindful of your spiritual needs (those being peace, rest, enlightenment, love, etc) is extremely beneficial.
Seems like you're simply collecting all the emotional needs that have ambiguous satisfaction mechanisms and calling them spiritual. I don't necessarily object (the world would be far less irritating if you were right), but I suspect this is not what most people mean by spirituality. If what you say were all that "spiritual people" were interested in, NO ONE would have a problem with spirituality. Please don't fall for that sort of semantic misdirection.
Can we assume that what we observe in the world is an accurate representation of reality?
Until you can unambiguously define the latter without reference to the former, this question is at best a semantic clusterfark or at worst meaningless. It's a classic example of conveniently forgetting the roots of definitions halfway through an argument. The matrix would be the only reality if Zion did not exist. It takes the ability to step outside the matrix for the concept of "outside" to even make sense. We can debate for years about epistemological vs. ontological reality but the fact remains that only one of these is testable. Philosophical questions are interesting no doubt but I don't see why they are somehow exempt from the burden of proof (at least in principle) or why they are allowed to close their eyes to every single thing we actually have discovered about the nature of reality in the past century as if philosophy is somehow detached from the dictates of reality. Another pet peeve I have with philosophers is that they tend to get irritated with people who try to actually answer a question instead of leisurely dwelling on it with no eventual outcome. Reminds me of committees =)
Inquiring minds want to know. Healthy children ask questions like these all the time. Science is not merely society's genie, it is the best way we have found of actually satisfying our curiosity (instead of merely glorifying these questions and making them sacred). One goal of science class (like any other class) is to encourage curious minds to continue to be curious, something they may not be getting in too-religious households. Another goal is to teach students how to systematize their curiosity so that they can actually get or find answers to their questions instead of merely getting off on the questions themselves. A curious mind is a good start - one that is also trained to successfully find answers is what we call a scientist.
What part of believing that men came from apes in the past is required to understand how mutations, genetics, and natural selection work in the present day?
None at all. A science teacher who asks for belief is an asshole (you won't find many of these - well, except for the numbnuts teaching creationism). Besides, you're confusing theory with what it's trying to explain. Using the evolutionary paradigm, you can work backward in time to figure out how we got here or forward in time to predict what happens (the other things in your list). Ironically, it is religiosity projecting its own sins (of arrogant and unshakable belief) on science that creates such misunderstandings.
Google is your friend. Karl Popper, who originated this concept:
Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
The idea of falsifiability is simply that there must (at least in principle) exist some test, which can refute the theory if the test produces a certain result. This is where creationism and similar cargo cults fail - there is no conceivable test that can be performed on these hypotheses that has AT LEAST one possible (doesn't have to be probable) outcome that could refute the theory. The idea (it's subtle, which is why it is misunderstood so often) is that if every test you could possibly perform to test a hypothesis supports the theory no matter what the outcome of the test, is there really any point to the tests? Creationism is like the self-esteem movement for social conservatives =).
[From the same source as the last quote] One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.
Meh. Saying that something is the norm is not the same as condoning that fact. Facts do not cease to be simply because they are unpalatable. If GP was advising us to stop trying to change that reality (which he wasn't), THAT would justify your accusation. Otherwise, the first step to changing reality is understanding and accepting what it is.
Work usually sucked throughout human history. Non-suckful working conditions are not the norm.
This is quite accurate. Not since the advent of a truly technological society has leisure time to the extent we are accustomed to been even remotely available to most of humanity (and MOST Of humanity has had to engage in physical labor until quite recently on the timescale of civilizations).
A Faraday cage isn't good enough. The Earth's magnetic field will still get through. The only way to be properly protected is to live in a Faraday cage with superconducting walls.
Extremely slowly varying fields like the Earth's field are dangerous to immortal beings perhaps but not to Earth life =). Why would you want to shield yourself from it? The only time researchers (like me) use superconducting shields (for cryogenic experiments usually) is when even static fields can ruin things for us. A Faraday cage and perhaps a mu-metal shield if you're really paranoid would be sufficient. Of course, mu-metal shields are a bit dicey at best since a good knock with your knuckle can reduce its effectiveness considerably (which means you'd have to test the shit out of it first every few days to make sure it still works =)).
Since speculation seems to be the rule here, let's try to imagine how blackened the skies would be if we didn't have the environmentalists demanding that these industries clean up their act a little. Maybe if you lived fifty or a hundred years earlier you might understand... IOW "you had to be there". You had to see what Lake Michigan or the Chicago river used to look and smell like.
I actually agree with this. And given my instinctive exasperation with the environmental lobby; at the end of the day, I'd still want it to exist as a counterbalance to the corporate lobby (which is ALWAYS trying to deregulate itself). The problem is that we happen to live in a time when these two are not exactly lined up in opposition so that each one is doing some harm due to that mismatch.
Very interesting article. It has changed my perspective somewhat, but there is a large part of the cost per book listed that is a still vague. Everything except the printing and royalty (and retailer profit) is pre-production and a lump sum amount that seems to have been amortized over... how many sales? It's not mentioned. Surely that would very a lot based on the book we are talking about.
Also, I keep coming back to the example of Baen (a large publisher with a substantial popular author cadre), which regularly (not on sale) sells its ebooks at $5 or $6 and frequently does so for free as carrots for spurring series sales. They have been doing so for several years now, which tells me they have a robust business model. The authors seem quite happy with the royalties they're getting. The ebook sales are in addition to regular paperback and hardback sales on their own as well as at popular retailers (B&N, Amazon). I just wonder what their price breakdown is.
Basically, I think most publishers appear to be suffering from a bloated business model (too much fluff perhaps, I dunno). They're acting like movie studios in that sense, trying to recoup their entire investment in... what? A year? A few months? Considering that their size is their only real advantage, they should be able to do so over a few years at least, considering how long paperback sales and ebook sales go on for good books. Or maybe that's it - with all the single-shot authors out there (every last minor celebrity writing a book about their every last fart), they have forced themselves into this weird model.
Anyway, thanks for the article. Good to have some numbers to look at.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent post, well argued!
If these children are so bright as you like to think, why can't they decide for themselves between evolution and creationism?
Sure they can. Still doesn't explain why just any random gobbledygook needs to be inserted in to a science class. Where do we stop then? There are hundreds, if not thousands of creation myths all over the world. The Christian creation myth has no more scientific weight than any of those. Discuss it by all means in a class on comparative religion or even bible studies if it's that sort of school. What the heck does it have to do with science?
You claim the answer is obvious enough.
Sure you're in the right thread? I never said that. Creationism has been debunked after all due consideration by many people and we've eventually become bored of the old cliche that keeps coming back every few years like a bad penny. If you really want a competing theory, digging up the proverbial horse and hitting it is not the way forward.
Also, you seem to have great faith in the unfailing accuracy of your scientists' speculations about the past.
Not at all. I do have some faith in the lack of credibility displayed by creationists down the ages when talking about creationism itself. The main difference however is rather dramatic - scientists' speculations on the past tend to get more accurate in that their models fit observations better and better while requiring lesser and lesser complexity in their axiom set.
What if they're wrong?
They tend to admit it (hint: religions don't or have to dragged kicking and screaming towards the truth) and other scientists tend to correct the errors over time. In fact, there's a strong incentive in science to try to prove accepted theories wrong - no better way of becoming famous.
We all know that archaeologists make mistakes about things that happened mere thousands of years ago.
So? Mistakes happen. Science is an evolving framework. We don't cling desperately to original dogma - we improve upon them and refine them. Making a mistake is natural, refusing to correct it and insisting that the mistaken idea is correct is criminal ignorance and will never be tolerated in science - someone always calls bullshit.
If the past is interpreted according to a single theory without competition, errors will go undetected as anything that does not fit the assumption is ignored or completely unnoticed.
Nonsense. That doesn't necessarily follow. Regardless, I'd welcome competing theories. Your mistake is in thinking that creationism is a competing theory.
Be glad you have creationists to pick off some of your unscientific flaws, frauds, and weak points.
'Fraud' is an ironic label considering we're discussing creationism. But, believe it or not, I actually am glad that there exists a cadre of skeptical (though only skeptical towards evolution) folks trying to find weak points in evolution. Creationists have no real theory of their own (old hackneyed rubbish does not a revolution make), but they are a good source of ideas for future graduate students in evolutionary biology or archaeology to address. Unlike them however, scientists realize that current theories are neither perfect nor complete. This is why they work in these fields. A complete field would be sterile, uninteresting. I find it amusing that creationists get oh so excited when they find an anomaly somewhere and start shouting "conspiracy" when it is not immediately explained. Overall, I believe that evolutionary theory gains much more in its confrontation with creationism than the other way around and it can only end up making the former much more robust. So, thanks for that =)
Sorry to butt in, but you do realize that the post you were replying to was a satirical masterpiece? And it did so while at the same time being potentially sincere (in that a true Christian would actually have to say that!)
Most religious texts, however, spend very little time at "explaining" natural phenomena, and I am yet to meet a single person who when asked "why do you believe in God?" responds "because I just couldn't explain a particular physical process".
You're absolutely right. So, why start now (with creationism trying to explain things that are properly explained by well-understood physical processes)? I'm glad you agree that ID'ers are misguided even by religious standards.
As to being despised and feared... well I never have been feared(except at a buffet maybe), but am normally despised because of my faith.
I'm afraid I didn't express that clearly ("So, you would rather be despised and feared instead of being (relatively mildly) disdained and laughed at?"). What I meant was that the latter (which is usually the attitude towards fundamentalist Christians) seems like a much better thing to have than the former (which is the attitude towards fundamentalist Muslims).
The point is that I would rather have my ideological opponents mock me fearlessly rather than fear me and keep quiet. The fear would imply that not only am I wrong (this is only my opponents' opinion and therefore debatable) but I am also so intolerant that you would have to fear for your life before thinking of saying anything against me. The latter attitude is something you would expect in a prison, where "respect" is the incorrect term used for "fear for my life".
This, in my opinion, is something that is constantly misconstrued in social commentary today. Rational people do not waste their breath on those who are truly beyond reason (radical muslims) and who, further, would only reward us with a barbaric death. This is why I said (with utmost sincerity) that I do admire Christians in the US. For all their faults, they understand that words should only be countered with words (or perhaps a lawsuit or two =p). It's unlikely that my head will be chopped off for saying something bad about their religion =) and I appreciate that (I guess I might end up with a bullet if I got really stupid and mouthed off in a bar in the deep South. Good thing I have a fairly evolved (oops) survival instinct).
And you mention that the absence of a religion does not a rational person make, but too often the presence of religion labels us as nuts.
Yes. That is somewhat unfair (well, premature anyway). Personally, I try not to judge people based on their beliefs (I fail sometimes on message boards for obvious reasons), but on how those beliefs enter into their interactions with the universe (that includes people) at large. Besides, there's nothing wrong with being a little nutty if it doesn't hurt anyone =). As for mentioning creationism in science class, it's merely the (publicly stated) thin end of the wedge, which is why it's so important to stop it at the start.
Exactly. This is why ID proponents label their opponents are "Darwinists" - makes for a nice strawman. Gah! Science doesn't work that way. Darwin had a nice idea, a good start but we are wayyy past that now.
It is not scientific to solve a second order problem before you solve the first order problem.
I do agree with your suggested order of approaching the problem. Of course, all that means is that the proposed "solution" of the creator will have to wait an extra 5 seconds before it can be demolished.
You can't describe a programmer in terms of the programming languages and the code he has written.
If these artifacts (prog. languages, code) were ALL THAT EXISTED, you would have to. Of course, in that case, I wouldn't be surprised if marketing droids evolved religions based on the wise and omniscient programmer. Trivially false analogy.
Neither can you explain a painter in terms of the pigments and canvases he has used.
Again, if the pigments and canvases and the paintings were ALL THAT EXISTED, you would have to. If the creator created anything besides what's in the creation, or manifested any properties that did not require anything within the creation, THEN and only then would your analogy make any sense at all.
... to explain that Creator in terms of the Creation, which is utterly preposterous.
No one's putting that condition on the believers. Of course, since they also go on to argue that we can't really understand anything outside of "Creation", that's really a "because I said so, now shut up and don't ask questions" non-argument. Do you also let your kids get away with arguments like that when it comes to explaining how the window got broken?
This includes that just because we may have been created is no reason to surmise that the creator ALSO had to have been created.
Not for that reason. But the complexity argument DOES raise that question. If the creator did not need to have been created, why does life on Earth? It could have always existed too. Can't have it both ways.
There is no reason for the turtles all the way down argument.
Sure. Then again there is no reason for that first layer of absurd turtles either =)
You're remembering the origin of the cargo cult idea (fair 'nuff). Sagan might have been the first one to extend that idea bit further though in his The Demon haunted world. In the extended sense (I'm pretty sure but not dead certain) you can use that term in the sense of "people misunderstanding and then misusing the way a scientific tool is used (rather like "ghost hunters" who wave around their EM detectors, not knowing what it is that they are measuring). These religious movements are cargo cults in the sense that they are co-opting the language of science (but nothing else) in order to appear scientific (in much the same way as new age technobabble about crystals and "energy fields" - though all that stuff is actually less sophisticated than creationism).
It's like the original cargo cults where the people laid down the airstrips with 'coconut lights' and so on without really getting the connection between that and the airplanes coming with goodies. Does that make sense? I will say though that your idea of the ancients encountering advanced aliens is possible (more than a few books have been written on the subject). However, I haven't really found those arguments convincing - we are capable of quite a bit of irrationality all on our own =)
Is this really true? I really really hope so but that's not the kind of information I've been bombarded with on /. (and other places).
Citations? Legals opinions? Anything? *fingers crossed*
laugh away. Of course if we were Muslim you would be afraid.
So, you would rather be despised and feared instead of being (relatively mildly) disdained and laughed at? If I were you, I'd be happy with the status quo. Doesn't take long for fear to become hate and ... well we've all heard Yoda. They (radical islamists) have a knack of pissing too many other cultures off. Someday they'll push the world too far. I hope I'm not around to see that day because it's bound to be epic.
If we were budhist you would think we were enlightened.
Nope. But keep f***king that chicken.
But We are just some hick bible thumpers so laugh away. Nothing to see here.
Isn't it nice when we can all laugh at each other? =) Frankly, on the scale of lunacy, Christians aren't all that bad. Doesn't mean you're gonna get a free ride. You see, we tend to have a higher standard for good behavior than just "well, he's no suicide bomber". The day people stop laughing at you is the day you might want to start worrying.
For that matter, there are plenty of us who also laugh with the same contempt at new age horseshit. We are fully aware that absence of big religion (or any religion at all) does not a rational person make. It's a necessary but insufficient condition.
LOL. Yes, you have a point. Though, in all fairness, if we allowed every single belief system followed (even in just the last century), the first semester would be spent solely in writing out the entire list =)
Otherwise they pretty accepted most of regular tenants like long-time and natural selection.
What an enlightened landlord =)
\sorry, couldn't resist
\\NOT a spelling Nazi, really =)
Hellz. Still logged in with AC unchecked but for some reason that one got posted as AC. ~thrawn_aj
Spirituality is an exceptionally useful practice. You can ascribe spirituality to bare consciousness, if not an external factor such as "spiritual energy" or "the soul." In that sense, being mindful of your spiritual needs (those being peace, rest, enlightenment, love, etc) is extremely beneficial.
Seems like you're simply collecting all the emotional needs that have ambiguous satisfaction mechanisms and calling them spiritual. I don't necessarily object (the world would be far less irritating if you were right), but I suspect this is not what most people mean by spirituality. If what you say were all that "spiritual people" were interested in, NO ONE would have a problem with spirituality. Please don't fall for that sort of semantic misdirection.
Can we assume that what we observe in the world is an accurate representation of reality?
Until you can unambiguously define the latter without reference to the former, this question is at best a semantic clusterfark or at worst meaningless. It's a classic example of conveniently forgetting the roots of definitions halfway through an argument. The matrix would be the only reality if Zion did not exist. It takes the ability to step outside the matrix for the concept of "outside" to even make sense. We can debate for years about epistemological vs. ontological reality but the fact remains that only one of these is testable. Philosophical questions are interesting no doubt but I don't see why they are somehow exempt from the burden of proof (at least in principle) or why they are allowed to close their eyes to every single thing we actually have discovered about the nature of reality in the past century as if philosophy is somehow detached from the dictates of reality. Another pet peeve I have with philosophers is that they tend to get irritated with people who try to actually answer a question instead of leisurely dwelling on it with no eventual outcome. Reminds me of committees =)
Why is the origin of the planet such a big deal?
Inquiring minds want to know. Healthy children ask questions like these all the time. Science is not merely society's genie, it is the best way we have found of actually satisfying our curiosity (instead of merely glorifying these questions and making them sacred). One goal of science class (like any other class) is to encourage curious minds to continue to be curious, something they may not be getting in too-religious households. Another goal is to teach students how to systematize their curiosity so that they can actually get or find answers to their questions instead of merely getting off on the questions themselves. A curious mind is a good start - one that is also trained to successfully find answers is what we call a scientist.
What part of believing that men came from apes in the past is required to understand how mutations, genetics, and natural selection work in the present day?
None at all. A science teacher who asks for belief is an asshole (you won't find many of these - well, except for the numbnuts teaching creationism). Besides, you're confusing theory with what it's trying to explain. Using the evolutionary paradigm, you can work backward in time to figure out how we got here or forward in time to predict what happens (the other things in your list). Ironically, it is religiosity projecting its own sins (of arrogant and unshakable belief) on science that creates such misunderstandings.
Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
The idea of falsifiability is simply that there must (at least in principle) exist some test, which can refute the theory if the test produces a certain result. This is where creationism and similar cargo cults fail - there is no conceivable test that can be performed on these hypotheses that has AT LEAST one possible (doesn't have to be probable) outcome that could refute the theory. The idea (it's subtle, which is why it is misunderstood so often) is that if every test you could possibly perform to test a hypothesis supports the theory no matter what the outcome of the test, is there really any point to the tests? Creationism is like the self-esteem movement for social conservatives =).
[From the same source as the last quote] One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.
Every time science answers a question "why's that, then?" god gets a little slimmer.
*sigh* If only that worked for me =(
Work usually sucked throughout human history. Non-suckful working conditions are not the norm.
This is quite accurate. Not since the advent of a truly technological society has leisure time to the extent we are accustomed to been even remotely available to most of humanity (and MOST Of humanity has had to engage in physical labor until quite recently on the timescale of civilizations).
Laughter shall destroy the tyrant.
- old jungle saying
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extra credit for guessing the source =)
A Faraday cage isn't good enough. The Earth's magnetic field will still get through. The only way to be properly protected is to live in a Faraday cage with superconducting walls.
Extremely slowly varying fields like the Earth's field are dangerous to immortal beings perhaps but not to Earth life =). Why would you want to shield yourself from it? The only time researchers (like me) use superconducting shields (for cryogenic experiments usually) is when even static fields can ruin things for us. A Faraday cage and perhaps a mu-metal shield if you're really paranoid would be sufficient. Of course, mu-metal shields are a bit dicey at best since a good knock with your knuckle can reduce its effectiveness considerably (which means you'd have to test the shit out of it first every few days to make sure it still works =)).
I'll just leave this here: link =)
Since speculation seems to be the rule here, let's try to imagine how blackened the skies would be if we didn't have the environmentalists demanding that these industries clean up their act a little. Maybe if you lived fifty or a hundred years earlier you might understand... IOW "you had to be there". You had to see what Lake Michigan or the Chicago river used to look and smell like.
I actually agree with this. And given my instinctive exasperation with the environmental lobby; at the end of the day, I'd still want it to exist as a counterbalance to the corporate lobby (which is ALWAYS trying to deregulate itself). The problem is that we happen to live in a time when these two are not exactly lined up in opposition so that each one is doing some harm due to that mismatch.
LMAO
That would make life so much easier eh?
Very interesting article. It has changed my perspective somewhat, but there is a large part of the cost per book listed that is a still vague. Everything except the printing and royalty (and retailer profit) is pre-production and a lump sum amount that seems to have been amortized over ... how many sales? It's not mentioned. Surely that would very a lot based on the book we are talking about.
Also, I keep coming back to the example of Baen (a large publisher with a substantial popular author cadre), which regularly (not on sale) sells its ebooks at $5 or $6 and frequently does so for free as carrots for spurring series sales. They have been doing so for several years now, which tells me they have a robust business model. The authors seem quite happy with the royalties they're getting. The ebook sales are in addition to regular paperback and hardback sales on their own as well as at popular retailers (B&N, Amazon). I just wonder what their price breakdown is.
Basically, I think most publishers appear to be suffering from a bloated business model (too much fluff perhaps, I dunno). They're acting like movie studios in that sense, trying to recoup their entire investment in ... what? A year? A few months? Considering that their size is their only real advantage, they should be able to do so over a few years at least, considering how long paperback sales and ebook sales go on for good books. Or maybe that's it - with all the single-shot authors out there (every last minor celebrity writing a book about their every last fart), they have forced themselves into this weird model.
Anyway, thanks for the article. Good to have some numbers to look at.