Atheists today start with the dogma of no God, and then work backwards to find any possibility that such a being does not exist.
No, they don't. Don't be such an asshole.
You are left with either God, or a complete lack of causality
First, you don't need a complete lack of causality, you need a specific lack of causality, which is a huge difference. I know you're using this as a rhetorical device but you really need to be precise here.
That's not a dichotomy at all. Both options are a lack of causality. One has God as a specifically uncaused entity.
You can't have it both ways.
Choosing the uncaused God is having it both ways, so you're basically saying you can't believe in God.
The two actual options are:
1. Infinite regress 2. Uncaused cause
The two options are basically orthogonal to whether you believe in a creator. You could argue for an infinite regress of creators just like an infinite regress of time, and either way it's turtles all the way down. Uncaused cause is popular these days with Christians because it lines up with their religion, and many others because of entropy / arrow of time arguments. There are also some religious and nonreligious arguments for infinite regress.
Neither of those options are particularly satisfying to anybody who thinks about them hard enough, but I've never seen one that I wouldn't classify as one of the above. You could even argue that the infinite regress needs an uncaused meta-cause, collapsing it down to one option.
Counterfactual definiteness is, I think, a good example of a metaphysical position that physicists vastly prefer but cannot strictly justify, which is so ingrained that we sometimes think of Bell's inequality as simply disproving local hidden variables.
You seem to have drifted into a different discussion. He was listing out as fact that many machines require GPS. You may think that's stupid, and you may correctly point out that different machines could be made to accomplish the same thing without GPS, but you aren't arguing against his point at all that it is required.
I don't actually know how true this is so I'm not taking his side per se -- I grew up in a rural area but not on a farm and haven't lived there in almost a decade, but honestly this is the first I've heard of using GPS for these purposes, even if it does make perfect sense.
Well in that case the assertion that all research should have near-future applications is vacuous because one near-future application is "well, this doesn't work".
The study does not involve negotiating, and all data showed that males and females were equally suited because it was the same data. And if males are less likely to accept the first offer thrown their way, and hiring managers know this, wouldn't males get lower first offers? Booth babes are not a stable high-end job nor are they comparable to science work. Drawing a parallel between women in science and dwarfs in professional basketball makes you a dick on multiple levels.
You clearly didn't read even the summary, even though you wrote more than the summary. Which makes your entire post look like knee-jerk defense of the status quo rather than an unbiased look like you're trying to represent with your last line.
The only thing you said with any merit is the idea that maternity leave is being factored into the salary offer, but as it happens the difference in wages offered are greater than the legally required minimum length of US maternity leave even if she gets pregnant every damn year of her career, AND the US doesn't require you to be paid during that leave, so that's insufficient to explain things. I'd also argue that if it is a factor, it's one we should address as it's a systemic imbalance. An easy solution that also benefits men as a class is to mandate that men and women both get fully-funded parental leave, thus removing the economic incentive for men to work while women recover from pregnancy and eliminating that gender pay gap concern entirely.
You have to be kidding me. "No mention of whether it was done randomly or in a way that would maintain the reliability of the study?" They said it was a pilot. That's the mention.
Assuming that women are less qualified than men without meeting them is the very essence of sexism.
You can maybe do that for weightlifting and a couple very limited fields that aren't statistically significant hirers (any more than "paid surrogate mother" significantly skews pay toward women).
Then it's self-perpetuating. If women get lower offers as a class, then they can't accept higher offers, which means they accept lower offers, which means the people making the hiring decisions make lower offers....
Which is ultimately not reasonable, contrary to the GGP's proposed explanation. It's tautological.
The bug was that if you didn't see the choice screen before installing SP1, you would never see it. Most of those 400 million were sold with the original Windows 7 with no service pack, and got the choice screen as soon as they clicked the blue e.
That's the same argument Microsoft made. The utility company tried to call their bluff, Microsoft wasn't bluffing so they started their heaters, and the utility company folded.
The problem is that there isn't a rational basis for not just allowing Microsoft to pay for $70k in power and not use it -- donate it for free back to the energy company, if you will. They have to actually waste the electricity to get lower prices. This situation isn't good for anybody.
- The environment loses because, although this utility is a hydro source, energy is fungible and it's likely that a fossil plant had to make up the difference somewhere in the grid. I could be wrong, it's possible it would just have been dissipated (or just not extracted from the plant in the first place). - The utility loses out on $140k. - Microsoft has to burn a bunch of energy to no end.
In this round, Microsoft got off easiest. Last round, the utility got off easiest. But there's no effective difference between this and Microsoft paying $70k and *not* consuming that power, except that the utility potentially can sell $70k of power elsewhere, which is actually good for them, or at worst, non-bad. Why is that not happening?
Electricity is somewhat fungible, within transmission limits. There likely was some power draw from non-hydro sources.
But anyway, it's difficult to understand how actually using energy is better for anybody than paying as if you used that energy (and not a cent more) while not actually using it. The only thing I can imagine is if there's some stress on the energy company to dissipate the excess power. I doubt very much that comes close to $140k to dissipate $70k worth of power, though.
Using a spoon to make a sandwich isn't a contradiction.
I think you can make the argument that any contradiction within a religion nixes that religion but implies the existence of two more religions: one for each possible contradictory statement that is dropped (with a possible third where people believe some set of other things unstated by the original religion that lets you weasel out of the contradiction).
As for observing directly, first, that's not entirely true, and second many religions make claims that are directly observable.
They do have public transportation and walking directions. Press the arrow that goes up then to the right, on the top-left corner of the iPhone, which gives you the start/end interface. There's a control very similar to the Google Maps control there.
I couldn't find it at first and I was pretty pissed because that's my main use case for the phone -- that and some games. If I couldn't get those directions (either natively or in a good 3rd party app), I'd get a different phone.
Occasionally I make calls I guess:). But any phone can do that and the iPhone isn't particularly special on that front.
This is Apple's product. Apple makes iPhones, not Google.
The context of this is somebody suggesting that Google is withholding a maps app as petty vengeance against Apple. Which is ridiculous. But even if true, if Apple gets hurt by this then that's nobody's problem or responsibility but Apple.
Your argument would make more sense if we were talking about Google losing map marketshare or something like that -- in that case, Google not having a solution ready in time is just biting themselves because people are forced to adapt either to iOS6 maps or some other alternative maps software. In that sense I agree with you that maybe Google could have been more prepared. But that's not the conversation they were having when you joined in.
Mozilla Foundation is non-profit. Mozilla Corporation is for-profit. The Foundation owns the Corporation. It's a sort of legal workaround as I understand it. I'd say it's closer to the truth that Mozilla is non-profit since the for-profit is owned by the non-profit.
Who's "our"? I can't really see how restricting myself to carbon-neutral energy leads to the betterment of anybody. I'm going to be dead before the oceans rise enough to affect me.
I value individuals -- every (or virtually every) member of the human species. I don't value the human species itself. Therefore, having insurance against species-level extinction is of no benefit unless I can be convinced that the species is worth saving from such an event. For the individual level -- really you're just *increasing* the chances of a catastrophic planetary extinction event killing a significant population (and it would have to be significant on Mars or else it's not really species-level insurance), and leaving the survivors shocked and hurt. Mars colony or no, a total human extinction event on Earth will suuuuuuuuck.
I think there are arguments for space colonies but hedging against human extinction always struck me as something that taps into an alien system of morality. Humanity as in the members that exist now and will in the future -- that's great, let's try the carbon-neutral things for their benefit. A Mars population? If Earth goes first, they'll be the lucky ones I guess. If Mars goes first, then that just blew up in our faces. Mars is smaller, so meteor impacts would likely be rarer, but then the thinner atmosphere means less protection, so I'm not sure what nets out as "safer" from the perspective of civilization-destroying meteor defense. Either way, not really seeing a big gain. Not a big loss either, except that Mars with current and near-future technology will be at best tolerable, and it will take resources that we can spend elsewhere (including still in space, even still with manned missions if that's your thing).
Maybe one day though we make Mars, not just tolerable, but comfortable. That's a good time to pull the trigger on permanent habitation.
It's confusing as hell (for developers, anwyay; not so much for consumers). Nobody knows what RT stands for in the latter context, if anything. Wouldn't be the first time a sequence of meaningless letters was used for a brand name.
I think this warp drive doesn't go through the space that's occupied by that matter at all. My understanding is that it's moving in a bubble of finite dimensions with finite mass inside.
Imagining for a moment a different sort of warp drive where you were still in real space, I'm not sure that the grain of sand wouldn't just pass through you without you or the spaceship even noticing (not even leaving a hole) simply because it didn't have time to interact significantly.
Your intuitive counterexample is just splitting hairs on how I phrased that. I was trying to use accessible terminology because most people here don't understand why anybody brings up time travel in the context of FTL in the first place (some of those people are getting downright abusive).
Do you have a less-intuitive example of a non-Minkowski space-time that allows FTL but does not have causality issues, that does not fit into one of the counterfactual categories I listed?
1) Where relativity comes in is it implies some consequences of FTL travel -- time travel in particular. It doesn't outlaw either time travel or FTL though. 2) If you're talking about index of refaction 0 http://oliphant.science.org.au/photonic2002/speakers/soukoulis/paper_soukoulis_4.pdf
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Atheists today start with the dogma of no God, and then work backwards to find any possibility that such a being does not exist.
No, they don't. Don't be such an asshole.
You are left with either God, or a complete lack of causality
First, you don't need a complete lack of causality, you need a specific lack of causality, which is a huge difference. I know you're using this as a rhetorical device but you really need to be precise here.
That's not a dichotomy at all. Both options are a lack of causality. One has God as a specifically uncaused entity.
You can't have it both ways.
Choosing the uncaused God is having it both ways, so you're basically saying you can't believe in God.
The two actual options are:
1. Infinite regress
2. Uncaused cause
The two options are basically orthogonal to whether you believe in a creator. You could argue for an infinite regress of creators just like an infinite regress of time, and either way it's turtles all the way down. Uncaused cause is popular these days with Christians because it lines up with their religion, and many others because of entropy / arrow of time arguments. There are also some religious and nonreligious arguments for infinite regress.
Neither of those options are particularly satisfying to anybody who thinks about them hard enough, but I've never seen one that I wouldn't classify as one of the above. You could even argue that the infinite regress needs an uncaused meta-cause, collapsing it down to one option.
What on earth does that have to do with whether it's okay to be gay?
You seem to think that not only is being gay not okay, but also getting a vasectomy is a bad thing.
Why are you trying to turn the emergent behaviour that is biological evolution into a moral imperative?
Counterfactual definiteness is, I think, a good example of a metaphysical position that physicists vastly prefer but cannot strictly justify, which is so ingrained that we sometimes think of Bell's inequality as simply disproving local hidden variables.
You seem to have drifted into a different discussion. He was listing out as fact that many machines require GPS. You may think that's stupid, and you may correctly point out that different machines could be made to accomplish the same thing without GPS, but you aren't arguing against his point at all that it is required.
I don't actually know how true this is so I'm not taking his side per se -- I grew up in a rural area but not on a farm and haven't lived there in almost a decade, but honestly this is the first I've heard of using GPS for these purposes, even if it does make perfect sense.
You'll win a car from a contest you don't remember entering. And then it'll be covered in divine birdshit.
Well in that case the assertion that all research should have near-future applications is vacuous because one near-future application is "well, this doesn't work".
Your economic argument could be applied throughout history. Why then has the pay gap reduced over time? Are women randomly smarter this generation?
The high-school-level idealized free market does not exist and cannot exist because homo economicus does not exit, nor does perfect information.
The study does not involve negotiating, and all data showed that males and females were equally suited because it was the same data. And if males are less likely to accept the first offer thrown their way, and hiring managers know this, wouldn't males get lower first offers? Booth babes are not a stable high-end job nor are they comparable to science work. Drawing a parallel between women in science and dwarfs in professional basketball makes you a dick on multiple levels.
You clearly didn't read even the summary, even though you wrote more than the summary. Which makes your entire post look like knee-jerk defense of the status quo rather than an unbiased look like you're trying to represent with your last line.
The only thing you said with any merit is the idea that maternity leave is being factored into the salary offer, but as it happens the difference in wages offered are greater than the legally required minimum length of US maternity leave even if she gets pregnant every damn year of her career, AND the US doesn't require you to be paid during that leave, so that's insufficient to explain things. I'd also argue that if it is a factor, it's one we should address as it's a systemic imbalance. An easy solution that also benefits men as a class is to mandate that men and women both get fully-funded parental leave, thus removing the economic incentive for men to work while women recover from pregnancy and eliminating that gender pay gap concern entirely.
You have to be kidding me. "No mention of whether it was done randomly or in a way that would maintain the reliability of the study?" They said it was a pilot. That's the mention.
Assuming that women are less qualified than men without meeting them is the very essence of sexism.
You can maybe do that for weightlifting and a couple very limited fields that aren't statistically significant hirers (any more than "paid surrogate mother" significantly skews pay toward women).
Then it's self-perpetuating. If women get lower offers as a class, then they can't accept higher offers, which means they accept lower offers, which means the people making the hiring decisions make lower offers....
Which is ultimately not reasonable, contrary to the GGP's proposed explanation. It's tautological.
The bug was that if you didn't see the choice screen before installing SP1, you would never see it. Most of those 400 million were sold with the original Windows 7 with no service pack, and got the choice screen as soon as they clicked the blue e.
And actually, according to this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/technology/data-centers-in-rural-washington-state-gobble-power.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www
That's the same argument Microsoft made. The utility company tried to call their bluff, Microsoft wasn't bluffing so they started their heaters, and the utility company folded.
The problem is that there isn't a rational basis for not just allowing Microsoft to pay for $70k in power and not use it -- donate it for free back to the energy company, if you will. They have to actually waste the electricity to get lower prices. This situation isn't good for anybody.
- The environment loses because, although this utility is a hydro source, energy is fungible and it's likely that a fossil plant had to make up the difference somewhere in the grid. I could be wrong, it's possible it would just have been dissipated (or just not extracted from the plant in the first place).
- The utility loses out on $140k.
- Microsoft has to burn a bunch of energy to no end.
In this round, Microsoft got off easiest. Last round, the utility got off easiest. But there's no effective difference between this and Microsoft paying $70k and *not* consuming that power, except that the utility potentially can sell $70k of power elsewhere, which is actually good for them, or at worst, non-bad. Why is that not happening?
Electricity is somewhat fungible, within transmission limits. There likely was some power draw from non-hydro sources.
But anyway, it's difficult to understand how actually using energy is better for anybody than paying as if you used that energy (and not a cent more) while not actually using it. The only thing I can imagine is if there's some stress on the energy company to dissipate the excess power. I doubt very much that comes close to $140k to dissipate $70k worth of power, though.
Using a spoon to make a sandwich isn't a contradiction.
I think you can make the argument that any contradiction within a religion nixes that religion but implies the existence of two more religions: one for each possible contradictory statement that is dropped (with a possible third where people believe some set of other things unstated by the original religion that lets you weasel out of the contradiction).
As for observing directly, first, that's not entirely true, and second many religions make claims that are directly observable.
They do have public transportation and walking directions. Press the arrow that goes up then to the right, on the top-left corner of the iPhone, which gives you the start/end interface. There's a control very similar to the Google Maps control there.
I couldn't find it at first and I was pretty pissed because that's my main use case for the phone -- that and some games. If I couldn't get those directions (either natively or in a good 3rd party app), I'd get a different phone.
Occasionally I make calls I guess :). But any phone can do that and the iPhone isn't particularly special on that front.
This is Apple's product. Apple makes iPhones, not Google.
The context of this is somebody suggesting that Google is withholding a maps app as petty vengeance against Apple. Which is ridiculous. But even if true, if Apple gets hurt by this then that's nobody's problem or responsibility but Apple.
Your argument would make more sense if we were talking about Google losing map marketshare or something like that -- in that case, Google not having a solution ready in time is just biting themselves because people are forced to adapt either to iOS6 maps or some other alternative maps software. In that sense I agree with you that maybe Google could have been more prepared. But that's not the conversation they were having when you joined in.
Mozilla Foundation is non-profit. Mozilla Corporation is for-profit. The Foundation owns the Corporation. It's a sort of legal workaround as I understand it. I'd say it's closer to the truth that Mozilla is non-profit since the for-profit is owned by the non-profit.
Who's "our"? I can't really see how restricting myself to carbon-neutral energy leads to the betterment of anybody. I'm going to be dead before the oceans rise enough to affect me.
I value individuals -- every (or virtually every) member of the human species. I don't value the human species itself. Therefore, having insurance against species-level extinction is of no benefit unless I can be convinced that the species is worth saving from such an event. For the individual level -- really you're just *increasing* the chances of a catastrophic planetary extinction event killing a significant population (and it would have to be significant on Mars or else it's not really species-level insurance), and leaving the survivors shocked and hurt. Mars colony or no, a total human extinction event on Earth will suuuuuuuuck.
I think there are arguments for space colonies but hedging against human extinction always struck me as something that taps into an alien system of morality. Humanity as in the members that exist now and will in the future -- that's great, let's try the carbon-neutral things for their benefit. A Mars population? If Earth goes first, they'll be the lucky ones I guess. If Mars goes first, then that just blew up in our faces. Mars is smaller, so meteor impacts would likely be rarer, but then the thinner atmosphere means less protection, so I'm not sure what nets out as "safer" from the perspective of civilization-destroying meteor defense. Either way, not really seeing a big gain. Not a big loss either, except that Mars with current and near-future technology will be at best tolerable, and it will take resources that we can spend elsewhere (including still in space, even still with manned missions if that's your thing).
Maybe one day though we make Mars, not just tolerable, but comfortable. That's a good time to pull the trigger on permanent habitation.
WinRT is the name of the runtime, but that's not the term we were using. Windows RT is the name for Windows on the ARM platform.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_RT
It's confusing as hell (for developers, anwyay; not so much for consumers). Nobody knows what RT stands for in the latter context, if anything. Wouldn't be the first time a sequence of meaningless letters was used for a brand name.
Right, that wouldn't violate causality because it wouldn't be FTL. But in principle the warp drive could let you travel at sublight velocity.
I think this warp drive doesn't go through the space that's occupied by that matter at all. My understanding is that it's moving in a bubble of finite dimensions with finite mass inside.
Imagining for a moment a different sort of warp drive where you were still in real space, I'm not sure that the grain of sand wouldn't just pass through you without you or the spaceship even noticing (not even leaving a hole) simply because it didn't have time to interact significantly.
Your intuitive counterexample is just splitting hairs on how I phrased that. I was trying to use accessible terminology because most people here don't understand why anybody brings up time travel in the context of FTL in the first place (some of those people are getting downright abusive).
Do you have a less-intuitive example of a non-Minkowski space-time that allows FTL but does not have causality issues, that does not fit into one of the counterfactual categories I listed?
1) Where relativity comes in is it implies some consequences of FTL travel -- time travel in particular. It doesn't outlaw either time travel or FTL though.
2) If you're talking about index of refaction 0 http://oliphant.science.org.au/photonic2002/speakers/soukoulis/paper_soukoulis_4.pdf