Trying to leave Islam can easily get you killed, depending on what country you live it. So Islam is a cult by that criteria. (I didn't vote for Obama, but I love the fact that he is an apostate.)
Christianity used to be worse than it is now about controlling information, prior to the King James translation for example.
Yes, Scientology is much worse than Christianity. It still all smells the same to me, just much different in degree.
It is often cited that crappy, broken or incomplete code is often shoved out the door by business in order to meet deadlines. Quality or even truth are sacrificed for business reasons.
Why would R&D be any different?
In a sense R&D is worse, in that its farther removed from corrective mechanisms. If you sell consumer tech that doesn't work, chances are fairly good that it will harm your business. Depending somwhat on your field, if you publish research that is arguably correct but meaningless or highly misleading, nobody will care. Your funding source doesn't even care, as long as it looks enough like real science that they can get away with continuing to support it.
There are Mormon teachings and ceremonies that are secret from people lower in the hierarchy, not merely obscure. But I agree that Scientology is a whole order of magnitude worse.
I still think that there are false pretenses in Christianity. The beliefs are not merely wrong - information has been intentionally hidden which would tend to expose the wrong. And motives are often lied about where money and power are involved. Yes, its nowhere near as severe as it is with Scientology. One of the main differences with Christianity is that the crimes were committed in the distant past. But the position of present day churches still depends in large part on the effects of past misdeeds, such as the burying of heretical scriptures that would put the existing scriptures in a different light.
By the way, I slandered Christian Scientists to say that they charge for healing. Actually the suggested payment is optional. Yes, this is meaningfully different from requiring payment. But the fact still remains that their gig is undermining people's trust in medical science then profiting from that, often to people's severe detriment.
Or rather, they are fixing it to an inertial reference frame that was centered near Cambridge at the appointed time in 2001? That still seems hard to nail down precisely over a long period of time.
Fixing the coordinate system to a point near Cambridge will obviously cause the "galactic coordinate system" to oscillate around the sun. And they would try to fix the coordinate system's rotation relative to what? Absolute, or the earth, or the quasars, which are moving relative to each other?
I think these arguments show there is no clear cut difference between a cult and a religion. Cults are more virulent, but whether a religion is a cult is a judgment call. Note that Mormonism has recently been moving from cult to religion status, due to its age and conservatism, though it also has strange secret teachings.
Christian churches also con people into joining under false pretenses. The church pretends to own the door to eternal life, something which it does not in fact have.
Cults are also very good at making thorough arguments about why other cults are cults but their organization is not. And they make the same kinds of distinctions that religions make in their arguments.
I'm not saying that religions are entirely bad by the way, or that their doctrines are 100% false. I am saying that religions are establishment cults.
By the way, I think Christian Science is a particularly nasty cult, and I wouldn't mind seeing it prosecuted. Religious people often treat prayer as a legitimate way of treating disease, and arguably it is. But after making it a sin to seek treatment, the Christian Science church charges money for its practitioners to pray for the desperately sick. This is pretty seriously wrong in my view, not a matter of religious freedom.
Are we off topic, or does your claim have a quantum angle?
It doesn't have a quantum angle.
Can you provide instructions on how to model my thought processes so as to not experience my will as free?
Yes, sort of. I wouldn't take it that far though.
Or does that require some psychological state - say paranoid delusional - which requires more than just a change in modeling assumptions to realize?
The 'model' is not entirely arbitrary, and is apparently involuntary to different degrees for different people. Changing your 'modeling assumptions' would be an exercise in voluntarily manipulating your psychological state. And I do think you would qualify as delusional at the point of experiencing yourself as having no free will.
I'm not trying to imply that people have no free will. I'm saying that what I experience as free will is largely imagined, and with effort I can alter it. And I've seen other people alter it, apparently, sometimes to their own detriment. By way of analogy, the objects in the room I'm in are real, but what I 'see' is a cartoon representation of those things. Most of us habitually think of the two as being the same, and tend not to recognize all the implications, even though on its face the point seems fairly obvious.
I do think that the subject of quantum mechanics is relevant to free will, though I wouldn't say that QM can "explain it". Its relevant in the sense that QM leaves space for will by leaving it out, by NOT explaining it. There would be no free will in a purely classical world. But then, as many posters have pointed out, atoms wouldn't even be possible in a purely classical world.
I don't think that saying something is "random", or that there may be "infinately many worlds" is really an explanation of anything. In a sense these are not really even "interpretations" of QM, which is quite specific and verifiable, as far as it goes. They are assertions at the boundary where QM stops, almost like answering questions with "God did it".
I realize I've left a lot of my thought here unexplained, and I didn't offer any 'instructions'. If you would like to discuss further, please suggest an e-mail adress.
Quantum mechanics says nothing about 'free will', or philosophical determinism for that matter. Quantum mechanics can be interpreted in either way, and has; e.g. the Copenhagen interpretation is nondeterministic, whereas the Bohm interpretation is.
Maybe stating the obvious...the reason two interpretations are possible, is the system defined by QM is incomplete or underdetermined. What's left is in fact "free", at least in terms of physics theory.
Of course, as you suggest, that may still have nothing to do with "free will", since a person can experience their own will as being "free" or not depending on how they model their own thought process.
Personally I don't think either the Copenhagen or Bohm interpretations are correct. Though of course neither is wrong within the scope of current physical theory, since they are outside of it.
The fact the central area is now accumulating snow points to warming and accompanying increased precipitation.
Sure, but many climate change alarmists, including Al Gore, have been hyping the threat of rising sea levels due to melting ice. So if global warming is going to cause ice to grow in some areas and shrink in others, as it will, then that still weakens their argument.
These machines, and the engineers who work on them, are evil.
Punitive action feels good, but objectively it has lousy effectiveness and efficiency. We do it because we like it, not because it works. Even I, with a deep-seated loathing of killing, can feel the draw of these machines.
I think you can't admit that lethal force is often effective and necessary, because you can't stand the tension between that and your moral sense. Some of the other people whom you call evil can't stand the tension either, so they blunt their awareness of the moral issues. They're not entirely wrong though, even though there's an important truth in your point also.
I don't think you are likely to make much headway with your argument unless you can speak to that better.
Re:not pleased with this review
on
The Rootkit Arsenal
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think your explanation of "presumption of innocence" is very good, even inspiring. And the reviewer seems to be on the same page with it.
If the reviewer's characterization of the book is accurate however, the book's author does not share this enlightened value. He's not saying "this is how people get killed, and I implicitly presume that you'll use this information innocently". He's saying "this is how people get killed, and whether you use it to protect or murder people is fine with me." That is an overtly amoral stance, and it is reasonable for people to criticize it. The value of the book may far outweigh this defect, but that's a judgment call.
I don't think the parent post deserved to be modded a troll.
Try coding for an 8 hour day in rubber gloves and a face mask!
Many semiconductor fab guys work in those conditions for years. But they can't flame you right now because they don't have net access during work hours. (Assuming of course that there are still fabs in business in the western hemisphere.)
Whatever Goldman Sachs is doing, it's going to get buried in a pile of stuff they aren't doing.
This is the same as Alien conspiracies in the 90's - So much bullshit and misinformation, interest eventually peaked, and then most people got bored and forgot about it.
OK, I'll bite....what was real about aliens in the 90's that was buried beneath all the bullshit?
You neglect to mention that government bureaucrats tend to be even more idle than business managers. So notwithstanding that people in the middle are getting screwed by their corporate overlords, they're also getting screwed by their taxes.
I agree there's legitimate arguments to be made pro and con about what the law should be regarding warrantless wiretaps. But people are responsible to follow what the law is now until it is changed. The thing that bothers me about the government position is the assertion that there are state "secrets" that would be exposed by lawsuits, and which can't be protected using the existing mechanisms.
A significant portion of the stuff that's classified as secret in the US doesn't actually need to be classified from an operational standpoint, but would be an embarrassment for incompetent bureaucrats if there were more visibility. Everyone knows about the "bridge to nowhere", but far fewer people know about the appalling waste and stupidity in classified programs.
That's not a direction I want to go in, and wind up like in China where people who expose government corruption are subject to being prosecuted for "spying".
I find the increasing emphasis on surveillance technology to be worrying. Aerial reconnaisance technology developed for use in Afghanistan will eventually be used domestically in my opinion. Surveillance satellites are already used that way, with hardly any public outcry. It seems the American left that's in power cares about equality, but not so much about protecting against abuse of government power. And I don't think the philosophy has been very good for the rest of the world either. Unmanned reconnaissance followed by poorly informed airstrikes has been a big part of the reason people in Afghanistan dislike and don't cooperate with the US-led coalition.
Theft of building materials, on mistaken accusation from a neighbor, southern Ohio.
They also confiscated the materials from my property and gave them to the alleged victim, who had no use for them and threw them out. That made it harder to demonstrate my innocence when I was picked up a month later. It wasn't really a conspiracy so much as indifference and stupidity.
Oh, and bail is refunded if you show up for court.
Not necessarily. I was arrested on a completely made-up charge a couple of years ago, and at the end of it all they kept 10% of my bail for no other reason than profit. It wasn't very much money compared to what I spent defending myself, or having to change jobs because of what the arrest did to my security clearance, but it still pissed me off.
On TV, the cops always interview the accused, to try to ascertain if they've got the right guy. Not necessarily so in real life. Never once did a police officer or prosecutor ever talk to me or look at the copious evidence I gathered in my defense. As far as their interaction with me, the process consisted of them showing up at my door at night with cuffs, then finally dropping the charges on the morning of the jury trial when the prosecutor realized they didn't have anything.
So is all this good for Sun, or is Sun still screwed? Why was IBM able to remain profitable after loosing many of its traditional markets, but not Sun?
Slashdot Mirror
Trying to leave Islam can easily get you killed, depending on what country you live it. So Islam is a cult by that criteria. (I didn't vote for Obama, but I love the fact that he is an apostate.)
Christianity used to be worse than it is now about controlling information, prior to the King James translation for example.
Yes, Scientology is much worse than Christianity. It still all smells the same to me, just much different in degree.
It is often cited that crappy, broken or incomplete code is often shoved out the door by business in order to meet deadlines. Quality or even truth are sacrificed for business reasons.
Why would R&D be any different?
In a sense R&D is worse, in that its farther removed from corrective mechanisms. If you sell consumer tech that doesn't work, chances are fairly good that it will harm your business. Depending somwhat on your field, if you publish research that is arguably correct but meaningless or highly misleading, nobody will care. Your funding source doesn't even care, as long as it looks enough like real science that they can get away with continuing to support it.
There are Mormon teachings and ceremonies that are secret from people lower in the hierarchy, not merely obscure. But I agree that Scientology is a whole order of magnitude worse.
I still think that there are false pretenses in Christianity. The beliefs are not merely wrong - information has been intentionally hidden which would tend to expose the wrong. And motives are often lied about where money and power are involved. Yes, its nowhere near as severe as it is with Scientology. One of the main differences with Christianity is that the crimes were committed in the distant past. But the position of present day churches still depends in large part on the effects of past misdeeds, such as the burying of heretical scriptures that would put the existing scriptures in a different light.
By the way, I slandered Christian Scientists to say that they charge for healing. Actually the suggested payment is optional. Yes, this is meaningfully different from requiring payment. But the fact still remains that their gig is undermining people's trust in medical science then profiting from that, often to people's severe detriment.
That explains it, thanks.
I tried to follow the link, but it seemed it just led to the abstract.
That statement doesn't seem to define the velocity, there being no absolute fixed space.
Or rather, they are fixing it to an inertial reference frame that was centered near Cambridge at the appointed time in 2001? That still seems hard to nail down precisely over a long period of time.
Fixing the coordinate system to a point near Cambridge will obviously cause the "galactic coordinate system" to oscillate around the sun. And they would try to fix the coordinate system's rotation relative to what? Absolute, or the earth, or the quasars, which are moving relative to each other?
I think these arguments show there is no clear cut difference between a cult and a religion. Cults are more virulent, but whether a religion is a cult is a judgment call. Note that Mormonism has recently been moving from cult to religion status, due to its age and conservatism, though it also has strange secret teachings.
Christian churches also con people into joining under false pretenses. The church pretends to own the door to eternal life, something which it does not in fact have.
Cults are also very good at making thorough arguments about why other cults are cults but their organization is not. And they make the same kinds of distinctions that religions make in their arguments.
I'm not saying that religions are entirely bad by the way, or that their doctrines are 100% false. I am saying that religions are establishment cults.
By the way, I think Christian Science is a particularly nasty cult, and I wouldn't mind seeing it prosecuted. Religious people often treat prayer as a legitimate way of treating disease, and arguably it is. But after making it a sin to seek treatment, the Christian Science church charges money for its practitioners to pray for the desperately sick. This is pretty seriously wrong in my view, not a matter of religious freedom.
tempting Eve to try anal.
Not believing in free will could negatively impact the potential to exercise it.
Yes, definately. Over-believing in it can cause pretty serious problems also. Try flying off a building.
Are we off topic, or does your claim have a quantum angle?
It doesn't have a quantum angle.
Can you provide instructions on how to model my thought processes so as to not experience my will as free?
Yes, sort of. I wouldn't take it that far though.
Or does that require some psychological state - say paranoid delusional - which requires more than just a change in modeling assumptions to realize?
The 'model' is not entirely arbitrary, and is apparently involuntary to different degrees for different people. Changing your 'modeling assumptions' would be an exercise in voluntarily manipulating your psychological state. And I do think you would qualify as delusional at the point of experiencing yourself as having no free will.
I'm not trying to imply that people have no free will. I'm saying that what I experience as free will is largely imagined, and with effort I can alter it. And I've seen other people alter it, apparently, sometimes to their own detriment. By way of analogy, the objects in the room I'm in are real, but what I 'see' is a cartoon representation of those things. Most of us habitually think of the two as being the same, and tend not to recognize all the implications, even though on its face the point seems fairly obvious.
I do think that the subject of quantum mechanics is relevant to free will, though I wouldn't say that QM can "explain it". Its relevant in the sense that QM leaves space for will by leaving it out, by NOT explaining it. There would be no free will in a purely classical world. But then, as many posters have pointed out, atoms wouldn't even be possible in a purely classical world.
I don't think that saying something is "random", or that there may be "infinately many worlds" is really an explanation of anything. In a sense these are not really even "interpretations" of QM, which is quite specific and verifiable, as far as it goes. They are assertions at the boundary where QM stops, almost like answering questions with "God did it".
I realize I've left a lot of my thought here unexplained, and I didn't offer any 'instructions'. If you would like to discuss further, please suggest an e-mail adress.
Quantum mechanics says nothing about 'free will', or philosophical determinism for that matter. Quantum mechanics can be interpreted in either way, and has; e.g. the Copenhagen interpretation is nondeterministic, whereas the Bohm interpretation is.
Maybe stating the obvious...the reason two interpretations are possible, is the system defined by QM is incomplete or underdetermined. What's left is in fact "free", at least in terms of physics theory.
Of course, as you suggest, that may still have nothing to do with "free will", since a person can experience their own will as being "free" or not depending on how they model their own thought process.
Personally I don't think either the Copenhagen or Bohm interpretations are correct. Though of course neither is wrong within the scope of current physical theory, since they are outside of it.
The fact the central area is now accumulating snow points to warming and accompanying increased precipitation.
Sure, but many climate change alarmists, including Al Gore, have been hyping the threat of rising sea levels due to melting ice. So if global warming is going to cause ice to grow in some areas and shrink in others, as it will, then that still weakens their argument.
These machines, and the engineers who work on them, are evil.
Punitive action feels good, but objectively it has lousy effectiveness and efficiency. We do it because we like it, not because it works. Even I, with a deep-seated loathing of killing, can feel the draw of these machines.
I think you can't admit that lethal force is often effective and necessary, because you can't stand the tension between that and your moral sense. Some of the other people whom you call evil can't stand the tension either, so they blunt their awareness of the moral issues. They're not entirely wrong though, even though there's an important truth in your point also.
I don't think you are likely to make much headway with your argument unless you can speak to that better.
I think your explanation of "presumption of innocence" is very good, even inspiring. And the reviewer seems to be on the same page with it.
If the reviewer's characterization of the book is accurate however, the book's author does not share this enlightened value. He's not saying "this is how people get killed, and I implicitly presume that you'll use this information innocently". He's saying "this is how people get killed, and whether you use it to protect or murder people is fine with me." That is an overtly amoral stance, and it is reasonable for people to criticize it. The value of the book may far outweigh this defect, but that's a judgment call.
I don't think the parent post deserved to be modded a troll.
Try coding for an 8 hour day in rubber gloves and a face mask!
Many semiconductor fab guys work in those conditions for years. But they can't flame you right now because they don't have net access during work hours. (Assuming of course that there are still fabs in business in the western hemisphere.)
Whatever Goldman Sachs is doing, it's going to get buried in a pile of stuff they aren't doing.
This is the same as Alien conspiracies in the 90's - So much bullshit and misinformation, interest eventually peaked, and then most people got bored and forgot about it.
OK, I'll bite....what was real about aliens in the 90's that was buried beneath all the bullshit?
You neglect to mention that government bureaucrats tend to be even more idle than business managers. So notwithstanding that people in the middle are getting screwed by their corporate overlords, they're also getting screwed by their taxes.
I agree there's legitimate arguments to be made pro and con about what the law should be regarding warrantless wiretaps. But people are responsible to follow what the law is now until it is changed. The thing that bothers me about the government position is the assertion that there are state "secrets" that would be exposed by lawsuits, and which can't be protected using the existing mechanisms.
A significant portion of the stuff that's classified as secret in the US doesn't actually need to be classified from an operational standpoint, but would be an embarrassment for incompetent bureaucrats if there were more visibility. Everyone knows about the "bridge to nowhere", but far fewer people know about the appalling waste and stupidity in classified programs.
That's not a direction I want to go in, and wind up like in China where people who expose government corruption are subject to being prosecuted for "spying".
I find the increasing emphasis on surveillance technology to be worrying. Aerial reconnaisance technology developed for use in Afghanistan will eventually be used domestically in my opinion. Surveillance satellites are already used that way, with hardly any public outcry. It seems the American left that's in power cares about equality, but not so much about protecting against abuse of government power. And I don't think the philosophy has been very good for the rest of the world either. Unmanned reconnaissance followed by poorly informed airstrikes has been a big part of the reason people in Afghanistan dislike and don't cooperate with the US-led coalition.
There are maps from the 1500s that show california as an island.
Those are maps from the FUTURE, when the ice caps have melted and Los Angeles is Arizona Bay.
What were you arrested for?
What geographical area?
Theft of building materials, on mistaken accusation from a neighbor, southern Ohio.
They also confiscated the materials from my property and gave them to the alleged victim, who had no use for them and threw them out. That made it harder to demonstrate my innocence when I was picked up a month later. It wasn't really a conspiracy so much as indifference and stupidity.
I presume you dealt with a bail bonds corporation?
They are a third party to the whole situation, and their product is getting you released from jail if the court allows this, and sets a bail amount.
No. Bail wasn't more than about $1000, and my wife bailed me out with our money. The police kept the 10%. Like I said, it wasn't a large amount.
Oh, and bail is refunded if you show up for court.
Not necessarily. I was arrested on a completely made-up charge a couple of years ago, and at the end of it all they kept 10% of my bail for no other reason than profit. It wasn't very much money compared to what I spent defending myself, or having to change jobs because of what the arrest did to my security clearance, but it still pissed me off.
On TV, the cops always interview the accused, to try to ascertain if they've got the right guy. Not necessarily so in real life. Never once did a police officer or prosecutor ever talk to me or look at the copious evidence I gathered in my defense. As far as their interaction with me, the process consisted of them showing up at my door at night with cuffs, then finally dropping the charges on the morning of the jury trial when the prosecutor realized they didn't have anything.
So is all this good for Sun, or is Sun still screwed? Why was IBM able to remain profitable after loosing many of its traditional markets, but not Sun?