I'm not sure I'd agree -- I think there are people who lack emotions because of a genetic/biological defect (or to use a less loaded term, evolutionary mutation). However they don't function will in society. This is all hazy, but I remember reading about it in "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat".... famous book about people with unusual brain function.
Maybe you'd say this is because they are in a society of emotional creatures, and so their evolutionary advantage can't demonstrate itself. And maybe you're right... hard to say.
I guess I believe that if there is no group of people who evolved in this direction than it can't be that useful (lack of emotions). I think our emotions probably still serve a useful function, though it may not be totally comprehensible to us. And really, so little is.
Maybe... but it seems to me that the most common repetitive tasks that numb people's minds are done by choice. Like watching TV. I don't think having a TV watching AI would help much:)
Your point is taken, though. I didn't mean to sound as though I think AI is useless. I think it's cool, and useful, and I've dabbled in it myself. I hope research continues. I hope great progress is made.
Howver, I also think that any machine with enough AI to do things that that computers of today can't do will be subject to all the same limitations that other intelligent systems have -- i.e. laziness, attention span, error prone, etc. In fact we already have machines with "some measure" of AI: animals. And training them is useful in many cases (search dogs and pigeons) but has it's limitations, too.
I guess my point is just that we're trying to create something we don't understand how to use all that well to start with. There's plenty of intelligence in the world. We just don't know how to harness it. If AI research teaches us about that, then that would be the real breakthrough.
Just replacing humans with all traits doesn't make sense to me.
I laugh about this sometimes... we've got 5 billion or so massively parallel neural networks, complete with self modifying software and amazingly intricate sensor arrays.... "humans" we call them. And we haven't figured out really how to get the most out of them. And we're looking to build (with our lack of knowledge) little crippled systems in hopes that they'll be "smarter" than us.
I think that the "I" part of "AI" is in need of research. There could be a lot more research into how to make the most of the hardware we have on hand.
Bringing quantum effects into it is something I've considered. And it's something I consider outside of analyzing the mind, too. I've read many times that the quantum effects of uncertainty only apply on a quantum level, i.e. when dealing with single particles/waves, and that on a larger scale these effects are cancelled out.
With nothing to really back this up at all, I'm going to say that I don't buy that. Even with billiard balls, the interactions at impact are taking place on a quantum level: the particles on the surface of one billiard ball are interacting with the particles on the surface of the other. All the uncertainty rules apply, I would think, and if you analyzed the angles and motions of the balls on a fine enough level, I think you'd see those same incertainties from the particular level played out. I just don't think we have the technology to measure these things.
Now, on a pool table where the number of balls is relatively small, and so are the distances and energies, these don't demonstrate themselves in changes that we'll notice. But in large systems with large amounts of feedback and energy there is a tendancy for miniscule changes to effect drastic changes on the output. So my theory is that these quantum effects do end up infuencing things like weather, the ocean waves, and the human mind.
Yes, the programmed neural nets today are, as far as I know, completely deterministic. They are like a snapshot of a brain (a very small brain) with the feedback loop disabled.
Is the brain deterministic? In a sense it seems so -- you can probably look at each neuron and it will act in a predictable way with a give set of input. I think the trick is in the feedback loops. Even with deterministic things, once you've got a few of them interacting with each other, the problem becomes non-deterministic in a sense -- for example, we can't even precisely solve Newton's three body problem: how three gravitational bodies in orbit will react, i.e. the sun, earth, and moon. It's because they each effect each other. This I think is the key distinction between natural brains and our current simulations. The feedback is missing or oversimplified to make the systems deterministic.
It is funny how people keep buying that if you can crunch just a few more billion numbers a second you'll suddenly have intelligent machines. I am sure of this: if we had a machine with _infinite_ processing power, it would still not be intelligent because we don't know how to write the software!
I do believe we'll see intelligent machines someday, but it will be a breakthrough in the understanding of neural networks with feedback or some such. And then we'll have a blank "brain" that will need to learn much like a human. It'll probably require years of positive reinforcement and careful dicipline to get it to be useful. I don't believe it'll be noticably smarter than the smartest humans, though it might be able to think faster to some degree since it's neural timing might be faster; our switches don't have quite the refresh rate:)
Just implemented SecurID at my job and so far it seems to be quite good. We require a username, password, and the token code. It was a little bit annoying at first, but I think people agree it's a lot less annoying than a overly agressive password policy (10 characters! letters numbers and symbols! change every two weeks! never reuse a password!) -- and probably more secure.
That's fine, as long as your definition of dangerous includes white collar punks who trash the retirements of thousands of people.
Absolutely. That's why I said "dangerous" and not "violent".
Indeed.. and it should not be a nice place as to disuade people from going there.
Losing your personal freedom and being kept captive from all that you love is more than enough disuasion for those who can be disuaded. By allowing prison to be a torture chamber we are encouraging violent behavior.
The U.S. nonviolent prisoner population is larger than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska.
Source:John Irwin, Ph. D., Vincent Schiraldi, and Jason Ziedenberg, America's One Million Nonviolent Prisoners (Washington, DC: Justice Policy Institute, 1999), pg. 4.
These are the people I'm talking about, not people shooting at the coast guard. I would support putting people who shoot at the coast guard in prison. They are dangerous.
If they think it should be legal, than they can do what you do, try to make it legal. Not just deal/smoke/snort/inject [insert drug] anyways.
If it were illegal to go down on my wife (don't laugh, it is in some states) I would most certainly continue doing it anyways in addition to trying to make it legal.
If a law is outrageously stupid it is our duty to change the law, but that doesn't mean we have to pay attention to it. Good ol' Rosa demonstrated that.
Amen. I am amazed that more people don't see what a problem this is. The problem is at least partly that we think prisons are for people who break the law. The word criminal is too broad. Prison should be for people who are dangerous.
Some may argue about non-violent drug users being dangerous on some level. But honestly: which do you think is more dangerous: a pot smoking hippie or anyone who just came out of maximum security prison? In general, being gang raped and subject to chronic violence tends to make a man more dangerous. Why would we want to apply a "solution" like that to someone who isn't violent in the first place?
I am strongly for the legalization of marijuana. I donate to NORML regularly. I've never smoked pot in my life.
Cheers.
PS - Another point nobody seems to like is that our prisons have become torture chambers. Sure, it's not our guards doing the torturing (usually) but they turn a blind eye. I don't have much sympathy for violent criminals, but again, we're processing these people to likely become more violent. This is stupid.
Just for context: my grandfather founded the pentecostal church in my hometown of Norwood, MA. He was a great man who lived a good life and followed his convictions. I have a great deal of respect for him. My mother is a born again Christian, and that was how I was rasied. My father is a tolerant agnostic.
I've read a good deal of both the old and new testaments. I have been taught Christianity by some of the most respectable people you would ever know. I sought Christ for many years, but eventually reading both the new and old testament left me cold. I felt they were not in touch with anything divine. They are obviously human books to me. I can stomach them just fine. I'm just not very impressed.
I strongly disagree with the CS Lewis comments. If a raving lunatic said "be kind to each other" it has just as much meaning to me as if the sone of god said it. I judge ideas based on thier own merit, not on who said it. So yes: I think Jesus was a madman. And he was a brilliant philosopher. Those two things are not at all exclusive and I think that history will show a great overlap, in fact, of those two traits. Lewis just doesn't like that I can dismiss as only human a man who said so many wise things.
Pure science is not a democracy, but since not every individual has the resources to do the research and testing themselves, science is, in practice, most certainly a democracy. Theories that are the most widely held are usually the most trusted.
Spontaneous generation has no observable evidence.
Microevolution does. Macroevolution is microevolution over time. What do you think happens to the small changes? They pile up. They snowball. Macroevolution also has supporting fossil records (i'm not talking about pig teeth here, I'm talking about the countless examples, starting with bacteria, moving through trilobites and on and on). Macroevolution also fits the picture of current living organisms -- flightless winged birds, blind cave fish with eyes, developed hand bone structures on sea mammals... sure, Creationism doesn't make these things impossible, but it sure doesn't explain them.
That said, I don't know that the theory of evolution is right. But it is plausible and I haven't heard anything better that matches the evidence.
I don't question whether Paul and the apostles existed, they most likely did. They were the ones who created the legends, after all. It had to start somewhere. And I don't claim they were evil men, in fact I think they had good intentions. But it is certainly not unthinkable that a group of people could start a religion in such a way based on mistaken beliefs and outright lies. It has in fact happened several times. You may notice there are several other religions in the world with ancient books espousing the immortality and power of their paticular messiah. No, starting a world chaning religion is not easy, but it's been done more than once.
It is a bit funny how you point out science isn't a democracy, then proceed to justify the truth of a man rising from the dead by saying thousands of (unknown) people saw it, and everyone believes them, so we should too. Unfortunately this is all completely unverifiable. Just as it is with all the religions and their claimed miracles.
However, the authenticity of the bible as a whole, particularly the old testament, is quite unknown. I know, Christians hate being bound to the first half of the bible, but thems the breaks -- Jesus came to fulfill the law, not to change it. Read the old testament from cover to cover sometime and tell me with a straight face and no hand-waving that it is a divinely inspired book. It is in fact reading the old testament that led me away from Christianity. The book is markedly human with barbaric ideas that cannot possibly be reconciled with a all loving, all knowing, all powerful god. Sorry: I know you'll have a non-reasonable argument for this, but I've heard them all and they all fail miserably.
I mean, for the least of examples: animal sacrafice to atone for wrongdoing? How in the world does that address anything? Might such an intelligent god given us more useful advice there? Stoning disobedient children (Dt 21:21)? Massacring towns where people don't believe in the same God (Dt 13:15-16)?
This is all so obviously barbarian law, written by people with no understanding of the divine... it's just apalling.
Yes, the teachings of Jesus are much more palatable. I would go so far as to say they are, for the most part, an excellent basis for a moral code. But unless you take the old testament as fact then he is just a brilliant philosopher for his day, not a messiah.
Oh, and what about his claim that the world was coming to an end? Judgement day was supposed to occur before all the diciples had died (Mt 16:27-28)?
Again -- if you stick to your faith you're fine. But if you take reason over faith and really search out the bible and the world, you will fall. Even the bible will tell you that.
So don't be so uncomfortable with your faith-over-reason position: it is the only way to be a Christian.
Oh, and I did read the post you linked to. But to me it is meaningless: I don't care how learned anyone is, if what they say doesn't have a clear explanation then I'm not going to believe it.
This was one of the key changes to take place during the renaissance: being knowledgable doesn't make you right. You have to _prove_ it. Thanks to this shift in thinking, mankind has seen an unprecedented improvement in the quality of life. So I try to model this type of thinking in my own life.
Specifically: nobody rises from the dead. Sorry. Lots of stories about this floating around in many religeons, but nobody has ever shown that it can happen. The ressurection of Christ is more or less a World Weekly News article from about 2000 years ago. I'm sure 2000 years from now someone will find all the "evidence" of Elvis being alive as indication that he too rose from the dead. Just because something is written down in more than once source doesn't make it true.
There are far more scientists who _do_ link micro to macro evolution. So again, if you're claiming to be reasoning, then the few exceptions you find in that case are not enough to outweigh the overwhelming consensus among the rest of the scientific community.
There is no evidence whatsoever for spontaneous generation. Can you site one example of spontaneous generation that can be observed in the world today? As for evolutionary evidence, there are a great many fossil records (far more elaborate than a pig's tooth) that indicate something very much like evolution took place. Combined with our witnessing of small evolutionary steps it is a fairly reasonable conclusion that over time these effects might snowball. Even if you think it's wrong, it certainly isn't as hairbrained as you claim. Your saying so implies that your objection is emotional rather than logical.
Christian faith is supported by reason only if you assume that the bible is completely true. This is the core of the Christian fallacy: the bible is used as evidence when the bible itself is of unknown veracity. The concept that a book of outrageous stories, written several thousand years ago by unknown sources, and edited and compiled by unknown hands -- that it could still be considered accurate is preposterous to me. I'm sure you'll claim you know who wrote the books and who edited them, but you don't: it's simply not possible for anyone to know. That information is lost to the shadow of time.
The fact is that you believe what you believe on faith. And that is fine. In fact, it's inevitable. I'll even admit that I believe in reason because I have faith in it. It would be a circular argument to claim that I believe in reason because it is reasonable:) Faith is the foundation of all human beliefs. I have faith in reason. And I have faith in the inherent goodness of man. You have faith in the bible, God, Jesus, and most likely the inherent sin of man. And after that you have faith in reason.
But it is obvious to me that you will discard reason if it contradicts, for example, the bible. Your faith in reason is secondary. That's why I don't count it. Any more than you would count my faith in Christ if I dropped it any time reason told me to. Which is, by the way, what I did.
I looked very deeply into things when I was a Christian. And I'm sorry if it bothers you, but what I found was emptiness. It is humbling to admit, but we are all we have. I'm sure you feel I missed something in my analysis. But I feel the same about you. It doesn't really matter -- I see no problem with your beliefs. I hope they help you to lead a noble and fulfilling life.
Um, humans have travelled millions of miles. We're not talking about a single liftime here, we're talking about the sum of countless lifetimes. That seems to be what you don't grasp. The evidence in favor of evolution is all around us, starting with microevolution. Evolution was simply conceieved to explain the mechanism by which the current situation came to be, based on actions we can actually _observe_.
If you believe in God, then you can assume he was the motivation behind that mechanism. But if you want to talk about evidence then you're out of luck because there is infinitely more evidence in favor of evolution than in spontanous genesis.
Look, you seem like a nice enough guy. You live based on faith. Good for you. I no longer have faith, so I live by reason. I'm not going to make a claim either is better, but it doesn't make sense for you to try and reason with me since reason is not why you believe what you believe. Be happy with your faith while it lasts, and leave logical arguments to the faithless people who according to your faith will end up in hell anyways, regardless of the quality of their souls.
The journey of a million miles begins with a single step. If microevolution is true, I don't see a strong argument that macroevolution isn't the same thing over time.
Having been a anti-evolution Christian in my early years, I think the problem is not understanding large time scales. Nobody can, really: one hundred million years is too much to fit in the brain. But apply microevolution over that span of time and there really is no other possibility than macroevolution. What do you think happens to all the "micro" changes as they pile up?
By the way -- evolution is _not_ mutually exclusive from the story of biblical creation. There are many who believe that the seven days of creation, progressing from plants to animals to man is a metaphor. Who says that God couldn't have created the world via evolution? And before you say that the bible stories are not metaphors, read Jesus' words in Mark 4:10-12.
Evolution is not about turning your back on God, defining your own morality, or denying the biblical account. It's an attempt to explain fossil records and similarities between species and to explain the source of seemingly useless traits -- like wings on flightless birds and finger bones in dolphins and stuff like that.
Um, the article you link to seems to imply that it could be a renewable energy source. Yes: it would require some form mass farming on a scale far larger than what we do today. But considering farming is basically processing water and sunlight into plant matter... well, it seems theoretically possible. I mean, compared to our current fuel which takes millions of years to produce (and comes from plant matter anyways), this can be produced more or less in real time, which seems like a possible advantage.
All I'm wondering is if biodiesel will be less trouble to implement than hydrogen. Hydrogen isn't as easy to handle or as readily available. Ironic, being that it's the most common element in the universe, but that's how it is, no? Biodiesel wins on both those counts. And I think, unlike hydrogen, the net energy gain is higher... i.e. a biodiesel fuel based economy could create enough to power itself (by stealing from the sun, of course). Or maybe I'm wrong on that?
Hydrogen is basically a fuel transport mechanism, not a fuel source. And as a transport mechanism, it ain't that hot. No pun intended;)
I'm beginning to think that hydrogen is not the best "fuel of the future". Storing it just seems to be a big problem. What about less sexy options like biodiesel? Couldn't that be turned into a renewable energy source far more easily?
Did anyone else find the action in "The Bourne Supremacy" to be lacking? I thought the scenes were shot too close up and the editing too chopped up. Not enough flow to give a sense of what was going on. Lacking in impact.
Except for the car chase at the end, which was very well done.
No no... this problem is already solved conceptually. The machine doesn't actually tally the votes: it produces a paper ballot with both human and machine readable output (the candidates' names and a barcode, for example).
After you verify that the human readable portion is correct you put it in the ballot box. They can then be counted by a seperate machine using the machine readable part.
So -- what happens if the vote is contested? Well, at that point you can do a sampling of ballots to verify that in fact the human readable and the machine readable portions match, thus testing the voting machines. You can run them through the tallying machines to make sure those are all counting correctly. You can count them all again by hand using only the human readable portion which was voter verified. You have options.
This solves the problem of:
a) accessible voting machines (can even be a touchscreen) b) automated counting c) auditable
Dammit, I can't seem to find where I read about it now, but there are several groups pushing for this kind of thing. Why this simple system isn't going to be in place in every precinct by 2008 is beyond me. What could possibly be the rational for anyone to oppose an easy method to tally verifiable votes? We're spending money on new machines everywhere anyways, why not do it right?
Your example shows that scientific rigor, as it stands, will allow at least some revolutionary ideas to prove themselves. And I don't think I need to give examples of scientific rigor preventing bad ideas from being accepted as fact (just read the World Weekly News). Though on occasion some bad ideas still get through. In fact the scientific review process isn't all that different than the wikipedia process, it's just different in degree of rigor (lots vs. none).
It reminds me of the fraud detection system we use at work -- you have to strike a balance between catching all fraud and allowing all legitimate customers through. You can err in either direction, but even if you're too strict, and inconvenience some legitimate customers, some fraud will _still_ get through.
I wonder, though, how one would demonstrate that the scientific community isn't _too_ rigorous. How do we know there aren't many good ideas being shot down? I mean, eventually they might get through, but maybe they take much longer than they should.
An example that comes to mind is the medical community's understanding of cholestorol and heart disease. They definitely don't understand how it all works, but the established theories are so deeply entrenched that any attempt to find new understanding is blasted and torn down and "debunked".
As someone who brought their cholestorol from 270 to 170 by very much going against the official methods, this bugs me. I watch a good friend of mine struggling to lower a 300 cholestorol without luck -- she is a vegetarian and bikes 10 miles a day and takes statins.
And don't even get me started about whether high cholestorol is as linked to heart disease as they say... the jury is still out on that for all but the medical know-it-alls who enforce their rigor to the point of error.
I guess I just feel that these kind of errors are in all information mediums, and the strength of the internet is that a person can cross check things quite easily if they want. If they don't want to, well then, they're always going to risk being misinformed no matter where they get their information.
I agree that the Wikipedia has it's limits and shortcomings, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure I'd agree -- I think there are people who lack emotions because of a genetic/biological defect (or to use a less loaded term, evolutionary mutation). However they don't function will in society. This is all hazy, but I remember reading about it in "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat".... famous book about people with unusual brain function.
Maybe you'd say this is because they are in a society of emotional creatures, and so their evolutionary advantage can't demonstrate itself. And maybe you're right... hard to say.
I guess I believe that if there is no group of people who evolved in this direction than it can't be that useful (lack of emotions). I think our emotions probably still serve a useful function, though it may not be totally comprehensible to us. And really, so little is.
Cheers.
Maybe... but it seems to me that the most common repetitive tasks that numb people's minds are done by choice. Like watching TV. I don't think having a TV watching AI would help much :)
Your point is taken, though. I didn't mean to sound as though I think AI is useless. I think it's cool, and useful, and I've dabbled in it myself. I hope research continues. I hope great progress is made.
Howver, I also think that any machine with enough AI to do things that that computers of today can't do will be subject to all the same limitations that other intelligent systems have -- i.e. laziness, attention span, error prone, etc. In fact we already have machines with "some measure" of AI: animals. And training them is useful in many cases (search dogs and pigeons) but has it's limitations, too.
I guess my point is just that we're trying to create something we don't understand how to use all that well to start with. There's plenty of intelligence in the world. We just don't know how to harness it. If AI research teaches us about that, then that would be the real breakthrough.
Cheers.
Just replacing humans with all traits doesn't make sense to me.
I laugh about this sometimes... we've got 5 billion or so massively parallel neural networks, complete with self modifying software and amazingly intricate sensor arrays.... "humans" we call them. And we haven't figured out really how to get the most out of them. And we're looking to build (with our lack of knowledge) little crippled systems in hopes that they'll be "smarter" than us.
I think that the "I" part of "AI" is in need of research. There could be a lot more research into how to make the most of the hardware we have on hand.
Cheers.
(and I'll blame quantum fluctuations for the numerous gramattical and spelling errors in my post ;)
I haven't read Penrose but I should...
:)
Bringing quantum effects into it is something I've considered. And it's something I consider outside of analyzing the mind, too. I've read many times that the quantum effects of uncertainty only apply on a quantum level, i.e. when dealing with single particles/waves, and that on a larger scale these effects are cancelled out.
With nothing to really back this up at all, I'm going to say that I don't buy that. Even with billiard balls, the interactions at impact are taking place on a quantum level: the particles on the surface of one billiard ball are interacting with the particles on the surface of the other. All the uncertainty rules apply, I would think, and if you analyzed the angles and motions of the balls on a fine enough level, I think you'd see those same incertainties from the particular level played out. I just don't think we have the technology to measure these things.
Now, on a pool table where the number of balls is relatively small, and so are the distances and energies, these don't demonstrate themselves in changes that we'll notice. But in large systems with large amounts of feedback and energy there is a tendancy for miniscule changes to effect drastic changes on the output. So my theory is that these quantum effects do end up infuencing things like weather, the ocean waves, and the human mind.
Anyways... just thinking some more
thus completely deterministic
:)
Yes, the programmed neural nets today are, as far as I know, completely deterministic. They are like a snapshot of a brain (a very small brain) with the feedback loop disabled.
Is the brain deterministic? In a sense it seems so -- you can probably look at each neuron and it will act in a predictable way with a give set of input. I think the trick is in the feedback loops. Even with deterministic things, once you've got a few of them interacting with each other, the problem becomes non-deterministic in a sense -- for example, we can't even precisely solve Newton's three body problem: how three gravitational bodies in orbit will react, i.e. the sun, earth, and moon. It's because they each effect each other. This I think is the key distinction between natural brains and our current simulations. The feedback is missing or oversimplified to make the systems deterministic.
It is funny how people keep buying that if you can crunch just a few more billion numbers a second you'll suddenly have intelligent machines. I am sure of this: if we had a machine with _infinite_ processing power, it would still not be intelligent because we don't know how to write the software!
I do believe we'll see intelligent machines someday, but it will be a breakthrough in the understanding of neural networks with feedback or some such. And then we'll have a blank "brain" that will need to learn much like a human. It'll probably require years of positive reinforcement and careful dicipline to get it to be useful. I don't believe it'll be noticably smarter than the smartest humans, though it might be able to think faster to some degree since it's neural timing might be faster; our switches don't have quite the refresh rate
Anyways -- just some thoughts.
Cheers.
Just implemented SecurID at my job and so far it seems to be quite good. We require a username, password, and the token code. It was a little bit annoying at first, but I think people agree it's a lot less annoying than a overly agressive password policy (10 characters! letters numbers and symbols! change every two weeks! never reuse a password!) -- and probably more secure.
Cheers.
That's fine, as long as your definition of dangerous includes white collar punks who trash the retirements of thousands of people.
Absolutely. That's why I said "dangerous" and not "violent".
Indeed.. and it should not be a nice place as to disuade people from going there.
Losing your personal freedom and being kept captive from all that you love is more than enough disuasion for those who can be disuaded. By allowing prison to be a torture chamber we are encouraging violent behavior.
These are the people I'm talking about, not people shooting at the coast guard. I would support putting people who shoot at the coast guard in prison. They are dangerous.
If they think it should be legal, than they can do what you do, try to make it legal. Not just deal/smoke/snort/inject [insert drug] anyways.
If it were illegal to go down on my wife (don't laugh, it is in some states) I would most certainly continue doing it anyways in addition to trying to make it legal.
If a law is outrageously stupid it is our duty to change the law, but that doesn't mean we have to pay attention to it. Good ol' Rosa demonstrated that.
Cheers.
Amen. I am amazed that more people don't see what a problem this is. The problem is at least partly that we think prisons are for people who break the law. The word criminal is too broad. Prison should be for people who are dangerous.
Some may argue about non-violent drug users being dangerous on some level. But honestly: which do you think is more dangerous: a pot smoking hippie or anyone who just came out of maximum security prison? In general, being gang raped and subject to chronic violence tends to make a man more dangerous. Why would we want to apply a "solution" like that to someone who isn't violent in the first place?
I am strongly for the legalization of marijuana. I donate to NORML regularly. I've never smoked pot in my life.
Cheers.
PS - Another point nobody seems to like is that our prisons have become torture chambers. Sure, it's not our guards doing the torturing (usually) but they turn a blind eye. I don't have much sympathy for violent criminals, but again, we're processing these people to likely become more violent. This is stupid.
You've never actually tried to get a web page looking the same in all browsers, have you :)
Cheers.
I just don't believe it. Anything -- even an exploit -- working in all browsers would be unprecedented!
Just for context: my grandfather founded the pentecostal church in my hometown of Norwood, MA. He was a great man who lived a good life and followed his convictions. I have a great deal of respect for him. My mother is a born again Christian, and that was how I was rasied. My father is a tolerant agnostic.
I've read a good deal of both the old and new testaments. I have been taught Christianity by some of the most respectable people you would ever know. I sought Christ for many years, but eventually reading both the new and old testament left me cold. I felt they were not in touch with anything divine. They are obviously human books to me. I can stomach them just fine. I'm just not very impressed.
I strongly disagree with the CS Lewis comments. If a raving lunatic said "be kind to each other" it has just as much meaning to me as if the sone of god said it. I judge ideas based on thier own merit, not on who said it. So yes: I think Jesus was a madman. And he was a brilliant philosopher. Those two things are not at all exclusive and I think that history will show a great overlap, in fact, of those two traits. Lewis just doesn't like that I can dismiss as only human a man who said so many wise things.
Cheers.
Pure science is not a democracy, but since not every individual has the resources to do the research and testing themselves, science is, in practice, most certainly a democracy. Theories that are the most widely held are usually the most trusted.
Spontaneous generation has no observable evidence.
Microevolution does. Macroevolution is microevolution over time. What do you think happens to the small changes? They pile up. They snowball. Macroevolution also has supporting fossil records (i'm not talking about pig teeth here, I'm talking about the countless examples, starting with bacteria, moving through trilobites and on and on). Macroevolution also fits the picture of current living organisms -- flightless winged birds, blind cave fish with eyes, developed hand bone structures on sea mammals... sure, Creationism doesn't make these things impossible, but it sure doesn't explain them.
That said, I don't know that the theory of evolution is right. But it is plausible and I haven't heard anything better that matches the evidence.
I don't question whether Paul and the apostles existed, they most likely did. They were the ones who created the legends, after all. It had to start somewhere. And I don't claim they were evil men, in fact I think they had good intentions. But it is certainly not unthinkable that a group of people could start a religion in such a way based on mistaken beliefs and outright lies. It has in fact happened several times. You may notice there are several other religions in the world with ancient books espousing the immortality and power of their paticular messiah. No, starting a world chaning religion is not easy, but it's been done more than once.
It is a bit funny how you point out science isn't a democracy, then proceed to justify the truth of a man rising from the dead by saying thousands of (unknown) people saw it, and everyone believes them, so we should too. Unfortunately this is all completely unverifiable. Just as it is with all the religions and their claimed miracles.
However, the authenticity of the bible as a whole, particularly the old testament, is quite unknown. I know, Christians hate being bound to the first half of the bible, but thems the breaks -- Jesus came to fulfill the law, not to change it. Read the old testament from cover to cover sometime and tell me with a straight face and no hand-waving that it is a divinely inspired book. It is in fact reading the old testament that led me away from Christianity. The book is markedly human with barbaric ideas that cannot possibly be reconciled with a all loving, all knowing, all powerful god. Sorry: I know you'll have a non-reasonable argument for this, but I've heard them all and they all fail miserably.
I mean, for the least of examples: animal sacrafice to atone for wrongdoing? How in the world does that address anything? Might such an intelligent god given us more useful advice there? Stoning disobedient children (Dt 21:21)? Massacring towns where people don't believe in the same God (Dt 13:15-16)?
This is all so obviously barbarian law, written by people with no understanding of the divine... it's just apalling.
Yes, the teachings of Jesus are much more palatable. I would go so far as to say they are, for the most part, an excellent basis for a moral code. But unless you take the old testament as fact then he is just a brilliant philosopher for his day, not a messiah.
Oh, and what about his claim that the world was coming to an end? Judgement day was supposed to occur before all the diciples had died (Mt 16:27-28)?
Again -- if you stick to your faith you're fine. But if you take reason over faith and really search out the bible and the world, you will fall. Even the bible will tell you that.
So don't be so uncomfortable with your faith-over-reason position: it is the only way to be a Christian.
Cheers.
Oh, and I did read the post you linked to. But to me it is meaningless: I don't care how learned anyone is, if what they say doesn't have a clear explanation then I'm not going to believe it.
This was one of the key changes to take place during the renaissance: being knowledgable doesn't make you right. You have to _prove_ it. Thanks to this shift in thinking, mankind has seen an unprecedented improvement in the quality of life. So I try to model this type of thinking in my own life.
Specifically: nobody rises from the dead. Sorry. Lots of stories about this floating around in many religeons, but nobody has ever shown that it can happen. The ressurection of Christ is more or less a World Weekly News article from about 2000 years ago. I'm sure 2000 years from now someone will find all the "evidence" of Elvis being alive as indication that he too rose from the dead. Just because something is written down in more than once source doesn't make it true.
Cheers.
There are far more scientists who _do_ link micro to macro evolution. So again, if you're claiming to be reasoning, then the few exceptions you find in that case are not enough to outweigh the overwhelming consensus among the rest of the scientific community.
:) Faith is the foundation of all human beliefs. I have faith in reason. And I have faith in the inherent goodness of man. You have faith in the bible, God, Jesus, and most likely the inherent sin of man. And after that you have faith in reason.
There is no evidence whatsoever for spontaneous generation. Can you site one example of spontaneous generation that can be observed in the world today? As for evolutionary evidence, there are a great many fossil records (far more elaborate than a pig's tooth) that indicate something very much like evolution took place. Combined with our witnessing of small evolutionary steps it is a fairly reasonable conclusion that over time these effects might snowball. Even if you think it's wrong, it certainly isn't as hairbrained as you claim. Your saying so implies that your objection is emotional rather than logical.
Christian faith is supported by reason only if you assume that the bible is completely true. This is the core of the Christian fallacy: the bible is used as evidence when the bible itself is of unknown veracity. The concept that a book of outrageous stories, written several thousand years ago by unknown sources, and edited and compiled by unknown hands -- that it could still be considered accurate is preposterous to me. I'm sure you'll claim you know who wrote the books and who edited them, but you don't: it's simply not possible for anyone to know. That information is lost to the shadow of time.
The fact is that you believe what you believe on faith. And that is fine. In fact, it's inevitable. I'll even admit that I believe in reason because I have faith in it. It would be a circular argument to claim that I believe in reason because it is reasonable
But it is obvious to me that you will discard reason if it contradicts, for example, the bible. Your faith in reason is secondary. That's why I don't count it. Any more than you would count my faith in Christ if I dropped it any time reason told me to. Which is, by the way, what I did.
I looked very deeply into things when I was a Christian. And I'm sorry if it bothers you, but what I found was emptiness. It is humbling to admit, but we are all we have. I'm sure you feel I missed something in my analysis. But I feel the same about you. It doesn't really matter -- I see no problem with your beliefs. I hope they help you to lead a noble and fulfilling life.
Cheers.
Um, humans have travelled millions of miles. We're not talking about a single liftime here, we're talking about the sum of countless lifetimes. That seems to be what you don't grasp. The evidence in favor of evolution is all around us, starting with microevolution. Evolution was simply conceieved to explain the mechanism by which the current situation came to be, based on actions we can actually _observe_.
If you believe in God, then you can assume he was the motivation behind that mechanism. But if you want to talk about evidence then you're out of luck because there is infinitely more evidence in favor of evolution than in spontanous genesis.
Look, you seem like a nice enough guy. You live based on faith. Good for you. I no longer have faith, so I live by reason. I'm not going to make a claim either is better, but it doesn't make sense for you to try and reason with me since reason is not why you believe what you believe. Be happy with your faith while it lasts, and leave logical arguments to the faithless people who according to your faith will end up in hell anyways, regardless of the quality of their souls.
Cheers.
The journey of a million miles begins with a single step. If microevolution is true, I don't see a strong argument that macroevolution isn't the same thing over time.
Having been a anti-evolution Christian in my early years, I think the problem is not understanding large time scales. Nobody can, really: one hundred million years is too much to fit in the brain. But apply microevolution over that span of time and there really is no other possibility than macroevolution. What do you think happens to all the "micro" changes as they pile up?
By the way -- evolution is _not_ mutually exclusive from the story of biblical creation. There are many who believe that the seven days of creation, progressing from plants to animals to man is a metaphor. Who says that God couldn't have created the world via evolution? And before you say that the bible stories are not metaphors, read Jesus' words in Mark 4:10-12.
Evolution is not about turning your back on God, defining your own morality, or denying the biblical account. It's an attempt to explain fossil records and similarities between species and to explain the source of seemingly useless traits -- like wings on flightless birds and finger bones in dolphins and stuff like that.
Think about it.
Cheers.
Um, the article you link to seems to imply that it could be a renewable energy source. Yes: it would require some form mass farming on a scale far larger than what we do today. But considering farming is basically processing water and sunlight into plant matter... well, it seems theoretically possible. I mean, compared to our current fuel which takes millions of years to produce (and comes from plant matter anyways), this can be produced more or less in real time, which seems like a possible advantage.
;)
All I'm wondering is if biodiesel will be less trouble to implement than hydrogen. Hydrogen isn't as easy to handle or as readily available. Ironic, being that it's the most common element in the universe, but that's how it is, no? Biodiesel wins on both those counts. And I think, unlike hydrogen, the net energy gain is higher... i.e. a biodiesel fuel based economy could create enough to power itself (by stealing from the sun, of course). Or maybe I'm wrong on that?
Hydrogen is basically a fuel transport mechanism, not a fuel source. And as a transport mechanism, it ain't that hot. No pun intended
Cheers.
I'm beginning to think that hydrogen is not the best "fuel of the future". Storing it just seems to be a big problem. What about less sexy options like biodiesel? Couldn't that be turned into a renewable energy source far more easily?
Cheers.
Did anyone else find the action in "The Bourne Supremacy" to be lacking? I thought the scenes were shot too close up and the editing too chopped up. Not enough flow to give a sense of what was going on. Lacking in impact.
Except for the car chase at the end, which was very well done.
Am I the only one who thought this?
Cheers.
From the article:
The Google-Microsoft competition is good news for consumers because it means more choices and better products
Ah, right. Thanks. Just like the browser wars!
Cheers.
No no... this problem is already solved conceptually. The machine doesn't actually tally the votes: it produces a paper ballot with both human and machine readable output (the candidates' names and a barcode, for example).
After you verify that the human readable portion is correct you put it in the ballot box. They can then be counted by a seperate machine using the machine readable part.
So -- what happens if the vote is contested? Well, at that point you can do a sampling of ballots to verify that in fact the human readable and the machine readable portions match, thus testing the voting machines. You can run them through the tallying machines to make sure those are all counting correctly. You can count them all again by hand using only the human readable portion which was voter verified. You have options.
This solves the problem of:
a) accessible voting machines (can even be a touchscreen)
b) automated counting
c) auditable
Dammit, I can't seem to find where I read about it now, but there are several groups pushing for this kind of thing. Why this simple system isn't going to be in place in every precinct by 2008 is beyond me. What could possibly be the rational for anyone to oppose an easy method to tally verifiable votes? We're spending money on new machines everywhere anyways, why not do it right?
Cheers.
Your example shows that scientific rigor, as it stands, will allow at least some revolutionary ideas to prove themselves. And I don't think I need to give examples of scientific rigor preventing bad ideas from being accepted as fact (just read the World Weekly News). Though on occasion some bad ideas still get through. In fact the scientific review process isn't all that different than the wikipedia process, it's just different in degree of rigor (lots vs. none).
It reminds me of the fraud detection system we use at work -- you have to strike a balance between catching all fraud and allowing all legitimate customers through. You can err in either direction, but even if you're too strict, and inconvenience some legitimate customers, some fraud will _still_ get through.
I wonder, though, how one would demonstrate that the scientific community isn't _too_ rigorous. How do we know there aren't many good ideas being shot down? I mean, eventually they might get through, but maybe they take much longer than they should.
An example that comes to mind is the medical community's understanding of cholestorol and heart disease. They definitely don't understand how it all works, but the established theories are so deeply entrenched that any attempt to find new understanding is blasted and torn down and "debunked".
As someone who brought their cholestorol from 270 to 170 by very much going against the official methods, this bugs me. I watch a good friend of mine struggling to lower a 300 cholestorol without luck -- she is a vegetarian and bikes 10 miles a day and takes statins.
And don't even get me started about whether high cholestorol is as linked to heart disease as they say... the jury is still out on that for all but the medical know-it-alls who enforce their rigor to the point of error.
Anyways...
I guess I just feel that these kind of errors are in all information mediums, and the strength of the internet is that a person can cross check things quite easily if they want. If they don't want to, well then, they're always going to risk being misinformed no matter where they get their information.
I agree that the Wikipedia has it's limits and shortcomings, though.
Cheers.