You can do a lot to prevent loss of life. Compare the recent earthquakes in Haiti to Chili, for example. The one in Chile had a magniute of 8.8 and claimed something like 500 lives. The one in Haiti was a measely 7 and still claimed 200,000+ lives. I've heard from several sources that the lack of development and preparedness in Haiti contributed greatly to the horrible tragedy.
Convincing others that you're treating them well while all the time stealing more for yourself, and quietly impregnating your friends wives is a much better evolutionary strategy. Being nice most of the time, but backstabbing occasionally is also more rational, but less "moral".
It seems that we also have evolved a sense of cheating and fairness, so it's not necessarily like that. We have the capacity to understand that everyone backstabbing is less beneficial than everyone cooperating, and also the capacity to spot backstabbers.
I don't disagree completely with you, however. Altruism and egoism are present in everyone. A morality that acknownledges this and deals with it seems much more realistic, fair and productive than one that is hypocritical about it. It's very possible to act in self-interest and still be a benefit to others, and it's also possible to claim to be altruistic when you're really not, like Mother Theresa.
What makes it worse? If the physical is all there is, then all killing a person does is remove a roadblock/annoyance/competitor/aggressor. So what?
The above has been answered from a sociopath's point of view. I'd rather have a sociopath neighbor who believes in eternal punishment and reward than a sociopath neighbor who is unencumbered by those weights.
I'd rather not have a sociopath neighbor. A secular society that encourages altruism is likely much better to deal with that problem than a society based on superstition and punishment. Many negative behaviors have been condoned by religion and many sociopaths think they're doing god's work. If you're the wrong kind of person and the sociopath kills you for the right religious reason, you'd still be screwed and the sociopath would think he's being rewarded.
I don't think I have to explain why forever erasing your one and only existance is worse than not erasing your existance at all.
Finally, you reason based on a world filled with sociopaths? Usually atheists are the ones blamed for cynicism and a bleak world view...
Before you protest Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, imagine the following.
Me and my friends break into your house, trash your computer and theaten you and your family with death if you post your criticism of our holy Draw Mohammed Day. Do you still post your reply, or do you back down in consideration of our outrage or fear of our threats?
This is reality for many people. This is what we're protesting. Yes, it's a protest, not a provocation. I'm sure it's provoking, however.
There is a evolutionary basis. Altruism and the morality that comes from it is a beneficial trait to evolve.
There is also a rational basis. Treating others well makes it likely they will return the favor. Cooperation and selflessness creates a better, safer, more prosperous and kinder society for everyone.
What's the basis for following religious morality? Fear of eternal punishment? Hope of eternal reward?
If the physical world is all there is, you'd think killing or mistreating someone would be worse than in a world where an eternal soul exists. Kill someone in reality and you destroy that person forever. In the fantasy world of religion, the person continues to exist and so why it's such a big deal to kill remains unclear.
The Catholic church, as far as I know, doesn't have a monopoly on abuses. Most religions do good, many help save millions from famine, help educated countless poor children and generally bring together communities.
Their help is tainted by their views on condoms, among many things. Also, fighting poverty from the opulence of the Vatican is hypocritical when they have the teachings they do.
Priests are human and did fail - there are not very many left so you might see less and less problems here.
The priests are just as fallible as everyone else. That's not the issue here. The church claims to know and understand morality better than anyone else, which is clearly false when they're as fallible as everyone else.
If we apply the logic that "war is hell" that so many people are claiming here, it doesn't matter that you get additonal data from the video that leads to the killing of US soldiers. Soldiers die. War is hell, right.
Yes, I know it's only valid when the hell happens to the enemy or colored people. When war happens to you, it's a tragedy. I just wish these people weren't such hypocrites about it.
This is why the "it's war" argument is bullshit. If "it's war", why would it be such a bad thing to have your soldiers fired on and killed? I mean, come on, soldiers die. It's war.
The "we could do much worse" argument (i.e. carpet bombing) is even more bullshit, in ways that I'm hoping are obvious to everyone else.
Games (along with books, comics and films) taught me most of the English I know today. I would expect this effect to be significant in general, especially for kids today. But of course, for kids who already speak English, the effect is likely different.
Anyway, I'm sure you could find this effect for any two activities for kids. Games slow down studies, studies slow down athletic achievement, athletic achievement slows down something else. And as someone already pointed out, sex could potentially slow everything else down.
Classical denialist argumentation from ignorance. If very small amounts of something aren't danegrous, you wouldn't mind drinking a glass containing the same concentration of nerve toxin as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, would you?
There's so much evidence of our ability to affect the climate that it's just silly to ignore it. To get you started, read up on the haze of brown smog hanging over Asia. People are actually changing the climate by simply burning wood. Now imagine what a billion cars can do.
The merest hint of child porn usually puts anyone involved in a world of shit. Why doesn't spying on kids this way bring out the think-of-the-children brigade? There's plenty of opportunity to turn it into a peep show for perverted school officials.
How big or small the amount of CO2 seems to you as a person has no importance whatsoever. If you disagree, please drink a glass of water with 0.117% nerve toxin and see if small things can have big effects.
Water vapour is the most dominant greenhouse gas. Water vapour is also the dominant positive feedback in our climate system and amplifies any warming caused by changes in atmospheric CO2. This positive feedback is why climate is so sensitive to CO2 warming.
It's odd to me that religious types sometimes seem to put more emphasis on morality in fiction than they do in real life. It's not real. Why is this a thing to them? No one has ever demonstrated that violence in videogames or movies actually leads to desensitization for real-life violence, so that's not a valid reason. There's plenty of real-world violence going on, that should be higher priority.
Religious people think what happens inside your head is as real, or even more real, as what you can see and hear and touch. In follows that they think imagined things in games are real and that imagined sins are real sins.
Add to that a universal system of morality, and you get loud and passionate groups telling everyone how to live based on their own personal superstitions, regardless of their logic or if they share them at all.
I don't think this is necessarily such a big factor. Spending a few hours to learn a computer game is no different from spending a few hours to learning a card game, board game or sports game. They're better analogies than film, which is passive. People are happy to invest a little time in something that gives a return on that investment. For some reason, games aren't there yet for most.
My guess is that the themes of many games are still alien to people. A lot is kiddie fare or macho space marines. If you compare this to films or books, the variety isn't nearly on par, even if it's getting better.
The Climatic Research Unit holds many data series, provided to the Unit over a period of several decades, from a number of nationally-funded institutions and other research organisations around the world, with specific agreements made over restrictions in the dissemination of those original data. All of these individual series have been used in CRU’s analyses. It is a time-consuming process to attempt to gain approval from these organisations to release the data. Since some of them were provided decades ago, it has sometimes been necessary to track down the successors of the original organisations. It is clearly in the public interest that these data are released once we have succeeded in gaining the approval of collaborators. Some who have requested the data will have been aware of the scale of the exercise we have had to undertake. Much of these data are already available from the websites of the Global Historical Climate Data Network and the Goddard Institute for Space Science.
2. It's unusually warm where I am, so AGW must be true by your logic.
8. When you tell climate scientists they're wrong and you propose an alternative explanation, it's your job to prove the alternative. Climate scientists are busy proving their own stuff.
The problems is that people are saying "games are X". Games aren't one single thing. It's perfectly possible, even probable, that they are both good and bad at the same time — just like everything else. Hence games don't need any more special attention than, say, films or books.
You define harm, and see if you can find it more widespread here (Sweden) than in any place that doesn't provide daycare. I don't think you can. In fact, many indicators show the opposite from what I've seen.
Daycare personel should pick up on kids that are lonely, but of course they don't always have the time. That could just as well be an argument for better funding though.
You don't have to be hovering over your kid 24/7 to help them process what they pick up from the world. As long as you can talk and they trust you, they'll come to you at the end of the day. They will pick up things whether they go to daycare or not, unless you isolate them. I'm going to guess social isolation and overbearing parents is much more harmful than learning bad words or getting teased by other kids at daycare.
The first years are undoubtedly important for a child. I just don't buy that being away from the parents for part of the day is harmful after a certain young age (lower than seven). In fact, it seems to be a good thing, at least from the studies I've seen here. There's certainly no evidence from harm from the system of widespread free daycare we get here, afaik.
More importantly, if we accept your argument that being away from parents estranges the child from them, it should be a strong argument for equality. After all, if you spend all your time with mom and little with dad, as per the gender roles people think are so important, you'd be estranged from your father. This is especially true if he adopts a classical gender role and stays away from touchy feely bonding.
Slashdot Mirror
Look here! Talibans are killing civilians!
But don't look over there, because that's where we are killing civilians...
You can do a lot to prevent loss of life. Compare the recent earthquakes in Haiti to Chili, for example. The one in Chile had a magniute of 8.8 and claimed something like 500 lives. The one in Haiti was a measely 7 and still claimed 200,000+ lives. I've heard from several sources that the lack of development and preparedness in Haiti contributed greatly to the horrible tragedy.
Sorry, here's the link: Mother Teresa is a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.
Mother Teresa is a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud. Why she's upheld as a rolemodel for altruism I don't know.
It's been famously said that religious people are happier than non-religious people for the same reason drunks are happier than sober people.
Convincing others that you're treating them well while all the time stealing more for yourself, and quietly impregnating your friends wives is a much better evolutionary strategy. Being nice most of the time, but backstabbing occasionally is also more rational, but less "moral".
It seems that we also have evolved a sense of cheating and fairness, so it's not necessarily like that. We have the capacity to understand that everyone backstabbing is less beneficial than everyone cooperating, and also the capacity to spot backstabbers.
I don't disagree completely with you, however. Altruism and egoism are present in everyone. A morality that acknownledges this and deals with it seems much more realistic, fair and productive than one that is hypocritical about it. It's very possible to act in self-interest and still be a benefit to others, and it's also possible to claim to be altruistic when you're really not, like Mother Theresa.
What makes it worse? If the physical is all there is, then all killing a person does is remove a roadblock/annoyance/competitor/aggressor. So what? The above has been answered from a sociopath's point of view. I'd rather have a sociopath neighbor who believes in eternal punishment and reward than a sociopath neighbor who is unencumbered by those weights.
I'd rather not have a sociopath neighbor. A secular society that encourages altruism is likely much better to deal with that problem than a society based on superstition and punishment. Many negative behaviors have been condoned by religion and many sociopaths think they're doing god's work. If you're the wrong kind of person and the sociopath kills you for the right religious reason, you'd still be screwed and the sociopath would think he's being rewarded.
I don't think I have to explain why forever erasing your one and only existance is worse than not erasing your existance at all.
Finally, you reason based on a world filled with sociopaths? Usually atheists are the ones blamed for cynicism and a bleak world view...
Before you protest Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, imagine the following.
Me and my friends break into your house, trash your computer and theaten you and your family with death if you post your criticism of our holy Draw Mohammed Day. Do you still post your reply, or do you back down in consideration of our outrage or fear of our threats?
This is reality for many people. This is what we're protesting. Yes, it's a protest, not a provocation. I'm sure it's provoking, however.
There is a evolutionary basis. Altruism and the morality that comes from it is a beneficial trait to evolve.
There is also a rational basis. Treating others well makes it likely they will return the favor. Cooperation and selflessness creates a better, safer, more prosperous and kinder society for everyone.
What's the basis for following religious morality? Fear of eternal punishment? Hope of eternal reward?
If the physical world is all there is, you'd think killing or mistreating someone would be worse than in a world where an eternal soul exists. Kill someone in reality and you destroy that person forever. In the fantasy world of religion, the person continues to exist and so why it's such a big deal to kill remains unclear.
UNCROP!
The Catholic church, as far as I know, doesn't have a monopoly on abuses. Most religions do good, many help save millions from famine, help educated countless poor children and generally bring together communities.
Their help is tainted by their views on condoms, among many things. Also, fighting poverty from the opulence of the Vatican is hypocritical when they have the teachings they do.
Priests are human and did fail - there are not very many left so you might see less and less problems here.
The priests are just as fallible as everyone else. That's not the issue here. The church claims to know and understand morality better than anyone else, which is clearly false when they're as fallible as everyone else.
If we apply the logic that "war is hell" that so many people are claiming here, it doesn't matter that you get additonal data from the video that leads to the killing of US soldiers. Soldiers die. War is hell, right.
Yes, I know it's only valid when the hell happens to the enemy or colored people. When war happens to you, it's a tragedy. I just wish these people weren't such hypocrites about it.
This is why the "it's war" argument is bullshit. If "it's war", why would it be such a bad thing to have your soldiers fired on and killed? I mean, come on, soldiers die. It's war.
The "we could do much worse" argument (i.e. carpet bombing) is even more bullshit, in ways that I'm hoping are obvious to everyone else.
Games (along with books, comics and films) taught me most of the English I know today. I would expect this effect to be significant in general, especially for kids today. But of course, for kids who already speak English, the effect is likely different.
Anyway, I'm sure you could find this effect for any two activities for kids. Games slow down studies, studies slow down athletic achievement, athletic achievement slows down something else. And as someone already pointed out, sex could potentially slow everything else down.
Classical denialist argumentation from ignorance. If very small amounts of something aren't danegrous, you wouldn't mind drinking a glass containing the same concentration of nerve toxin as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, would you?
There's so much evidence of our ability to affect the climate that it's just silly to ignore it. To get you started, read up on the haze of brown smog hanging over Asia. People are actually changing the climate by simply burning wood. Now imagine what a billion cars can do.
The merest hint of child porn usually puts anyone involved in a world of shit. Why doesn't spying on kids this way bring out the think-of-the-children brigade? There's plenty of opportunity to turn it into a peep show for perverted school officials.
How big or small the amount of CO2 seems to you as a person has no importance whatsoever. If you disagree, please drink a glass of water with 0.117% nerve toxin and see if small things can have big effects.
"It's the water vapour" is an old argument that has been debunked and explained thouroughly:
Water vapour is the most dominant greenhouse gas. Water vapour is also the dominant positive feedback in our climate system and amplifies any warming caused by changes in atmospheric CO2. This positive feedback is why climate is so sensitive to CO2 warming.
It's odd to me that religious types sometimes seem to put more emphasis on morality in fiction than they do in real life. It's not real. Why is this a thing to them? No one has ever demonstrated that violence in videogames or movies actually leads to desensitization for real-life violence, so that's not a valid reason. There's plenty of real-world violence going on, that should be higher priority.
Religious people think what happens inside your head is as real, or even more real, as what you can see and hear and touch. In follows that they think imagined things in games are real and that imagined sins are real sins.
Add to that a universal system of morality, and you get loud and passionate groups telling everyone how to live based on their own personal superstitions, regardless of their logic or if they share them at all.
If only people had expected the Spanish Inquisition! Then perhaps they wouldn't have killed so many.
Maybe oil won't run out, but it can (and likely will) be superceded by something superior, regardless of whether there's still some left or not.
I think the same can be said for IPV6. It's not just more of the same, but something better.
I don't think this is necessarily such a big factor. Spending a few hours to learn a computer game is no different from spending a few hours to learning a card game, board game or sports game. They're better analogies than film, which is passive. People are happy to invest a little time in something that gives a return on that investment. For some reason, games aren't there yet for most.
My guess is that the themes of many games are still alien to people. A lot is kiddie fare or macho space marines. If you compare this to films or books, the variety isn't nearly on par, even if it's getting better.
1. Answered by CRU already:
The Climatic Research Unit holds many data series, provided to the Unit over a period of several decades, from a number of nationally-funded institutions and other research organisations around the world, with specific agreements made over restrictions in the dissemination of those original data. All of these individual series have been used in CRU’s analyses. It is a time-consuming process to attempt to gain approval from these organisations to release the data. Since some of them were provided decades ago, it has sometimes been necessary to track down the successors of the original organisations. It is clearly in the public interest that these data are released once we have succeeded in gaining the approval of collaborators. Some who have requested the data will have been aware of the scale of the exercise we have had to undertake. Much of these data are already available from the websites of the Global Historical Climate Data Network and the Goddard Institute for Space Science.
2. It's unusually warm where I am, so AGW must be true by your logic.
3. This is called the divergence problem and is explained here and has been discussed on Slashdot before.
7. The Medieval Warming Period is not eliminated, just nuanced.
8. When you tell climate scientists they're wrong and you propose an alternative explanation, it's your job to prove the alternative. Climate scientists are busy proving their own stuff.
The problems is that people are saying "games are X". Games aren't one single thing. It's perfectly possible, even probable, that they are both good and bad at the same time — just like everything else. Hence games don't need any more special attention than, say, films or books.
Games are good for your eyesight, social life, physical health, learning, stress, language skills and economy, among other things.
Oh, and gaming addiction is mostly bunk.
You define harm, and see if you can find it more widespread here (Sweden) than in any place that doesn't provide daycare. I don't think you can. In fact, many indicators show the opposite from what I've seen.
Daycare personel should pick up on kids that are lonely, but of course they don't always have the time. That could just as well be an argument for better funding though.
You don't have to be hovering over your kid 24/7 to help them process what they pick up from the world. As long as you can talk and they trust you, they'll come to you at the end of the day. They will pick up things whether they go to daycare or not, unless you isolate them. I'm going to guess social isolation and overbearing parents is much more harmful than learning bad words or getting teased by other kids at daycare.
The first years are undoubtedly important for a child. I just don't buy that being away from the parents for part of the day is harmful after a certain young age (lower than seven). In fact, it seems to be a good thing, at least from the studies I've seen here. There's certainly no evidence from harm from the system of widespread free daycare we get here, afaik.
More importantly, if we accept your argument that being away from parents estranges the child from them, it should be a strong argument for equality. After all, if you spend all your time with mom and little with dad, as per the gender roles people think are so important, you'd be estranged from your father. This is especially true if he adopts a classical gender role and stays away from touchy feely bonding.