Those are all good suggestions, I might add Anne McCaffrey to the list. I am confused however by the idea that it's bad to exceed a child's comprehension. Let his own reading material be age-appropriate if you must, but he will enjoy being read good stuff even if he doesn't completely understand it. What exactly is gained by reading unchallenging books?
The phrase was invented (recently) to serve the capitalists. "Capitalism doesn't concentrate wealth. Wealth isn't a guarantee of influence. That's, uh...that's bad capitalism." If true, then good capitalism involves social constraints, and I'll leave it to you to determine if there's a form of that which you won't call socialist.
The proper term, however, for "crony" capitalism is fascism.
There are two problems with this. The HTML5/CSS{2,3} specification is in places undefined. Two examples: in CSS, border-styles are basically left up to the browser. In HTML5, video codecs. Secondly, if your clients and users are the type that are mollified by things like, "Well, that's a browser bug -- my code conforms to the specs," then where can I find more of them? At the unicorn store perhaps?
Ad hominem? Sir, you mistake me, and your characterization of the movements as 'militant' is a slander.
I do not rely for my argument on your idiocy, never fear. Again, the goal is complete equality in matters of sex and sexuality. That has always been the goal, and neither have you offered a logical reason why it should not be so, nor do I believe that such a reason can exist. The capabilities of either sex, and the love between them, are equal in nature and kind. To say that while the progress towards a goal is a good thing, but that further progress is bad, is logically inconsistent, given no other premise.
So it falls to you to display your prejudices -- I mean, your premise. What exactly is it about equality in sex and/or sexuality that you find objectionable?
You may feel free not to respond, I will waste no time in calling your bigotry what it is.
In both cases the goal is full equality. You weren't involved in making America or Europe a better place than Iran, kindly do shut the fuck up about those whose progress you laud.
Also it's important to note that, as with the case of RMS and similarly Fox News, a few extremists can be very useful in shifting the Overton window.
They're perhaps a little nicer about their acquisitions than Microsoft.
Still, it's quite annoying. I now have five years of chat logs that differ slightly from the pidgin html format. There's an abandoned conversion program, but it lacks a makefile and I'm not keen on figuring out how to get it to compile. If anyone else is working on the same problem please do let me know.
The whole affair makes me really wary about switching to another online chat program, but rolling my own equivalent service seems a bit complex. For the moment I'm symlinking pidgin's history files to my dropbox account, which is probably going to be a viable solution if I feel like installing Pidgin and Dropbox on every computer I want to chat on, or perhaps carry portable versions on a thumb drive. It's too bad meebo isn't an open source project, maybe google can do us that favor.
The commentators on hacker news seem to be fewer in number and the focus and readership seems to be more about web technologies and startups. I could care less about your new jquery library for styling select boxes (or any reinventing-the-wheel-in-javascript project) and entrepreneurs are mostly failures waiting to happen.
As far as I'm concerned Hacker News has a higher SNR.
I have demonstrated otherwise. "Nope" is still not a refutation.
Which is another straw man saying things I have not
No, that's my argument. Your reading comprehension is low.
Repeating yourself in different words does not make you more right. You're relying on sophism -- truths are truths, "not in conflict" is different from "compatible". It has been formally shown that scientific truth and religious truth are not the same thing. You can't simply say, "No, that is not my opinion" if I have proved it, you have to refute the logic. I feel like we're probing a gap in your education here, and honestly, I didn't get into this to have some moron repeat the same fallacy at me in different words and ignore a counter-argument. It is fallacious however it's phrased, and however you define "not in conflict". The specific fallacy is "affirming the consequent".
If you have nothing further to add please consider wasting someone else's time.
[c] or move to someplace where your views are tolerated.
You said 'love it or leave it'. It's quite unambiguous.
And yet your quoted selection somehow manages to be the third of a list of alternatives, and neither of the first two are "Mindlessly repeat the majority position." Slandering my argument does not improve your position.
This only happens when the officials disregard [...]
False. People have been arguing against governments since their inception.
if, in a democracy, a lot of people are ready to go from the ballot box to the ammo box, the government has failed and has been failing for a long time.
False. Red herring.
Ok, when the law allows lots of/powerful/influential people to dictate what the minority can say, it quickly becomes a form of tyranny.
Don't powerful minorities usually dictate terms in tyrannies? An attempt to regulate speech does not necessarily require a majority or minority, and tyranny is not an automatic consequence.
Without the right to communicate unambiguously, it's impossible for grievances to be heard except couched in whatever newspeak terms the power elite allow.
You know that quote and link I gave you about 'begging the question'? You have rephrased it yet again. It's still an invalid argument, sorry.
Your last paragraph is self-serving non sequiturs. Fiery rhetoric is not in itself a valid argument either. I asked you to prove a position, not simply to expostulate on your biases. You clearly wouldn't know a logical argument if one bit you -- I'll thank you not to waste my time further by replying.
My theory is that fundamentally your disagreement with laws of this sort seems to stem from your belief that the rights of the individual are supreme over the rights of the group. If I have inferred incorrectly there, you may correct me. The two are certainly in opposition, but overall we have chosen to construct societies and not typically existed as rugged individualists. If individual welfare were the highest good it would not be necessary to have laws or government or society. The survival of the species, however, does not depend on the individual, and so we don't tend to optimize for it. Cognitive dissonance coming up in 3, 2, 1...
I think I'll refrain from sticking my nose in Randian circle jerks from here on out. It's fortunate that you can't tell you're a raving nutjob, otherwise I'm afraid someone might be in danger of believing you.
Science "attempts" to find nothing. In asserting that you are changing the definition of science. In "rephrasing" that I insist on proper definition of terms. I'd rather deal with comprehension problems than sophistry, thank you.
If you admit truths that are not scientific you have just redefined truth in a way that is not compatible with the scientific method.
[...]All that was said is that some truth are not currently observable. Being unobservable by current technology and understanding hardly makes something true or untrue.
Your first sentence contradicts the latter directly. Also you're verging on a 'God of the gaps' argument, which I would in your place avoid. You'll have better luck in researching the difference between empiricism and skepticism, as my argument relies on skepticism being a necessary condition of science.
A Formal Restatement: #1 I. Science is a method for determining truth. II. The scientific method can be applied to any empirical observations. >> The scientific method can determine any truths about the empirically observable universe.
#2 I. Religious believers postulate "truths" which cannot be determined by the scientific method. II. The scientific method can determine any truths about the empirically observable universe. >> Religious believers postulate "truths" which cannot be determined by empirical observations.
#3 I. Religious "truths" are the same thing as truths that can be obtained by using the scientific method. II. Religious believers postulate truths that cannot be determined using the scientific method. >> Contradiction. Religious truth cannot be the same thing as scientific truth. #4 I. Science is skeptical: it limits itself to calling true that which has been proven with the scientific method. II. Religious beliefs cannot be proven with the scientific method. >> Religious beliefs cannot be considered scientifically true, consequently they are false.
#5 I. Science and Religion are compatible. II. Scientific truth excludes religious truth. >> Contradiction.
To claim belief in two contradictory things is either hypocrisy or straight-up doublethink.
You have not disputed any of the premises above or pointed out a logical fallacy. Just saying "Nope!" is not a valid argument.
You're repeating yourself in the last paragraph, and you are unequivocally wrong. Also you can't tell a premise from a hole in the ground. Let's go back to school here:
Premise: If Science and Religion deal with different subjects, they are compatible. Premise: Some religions claim that they deal with different subjects. Therefore, Religion and Science are compatible.
This is affirming the consequent. So you conclusion can still be false even if your premises are both true.
Your argument is entirely fallacious. I have an argument that purports to prove the opposite. You must therefore both disprove my argument and construct an argument for yours that contains no fallacies. Quite frankly you seem to be an idiot; I won't hold my breath.
Nope, science only attempts to find *some* truths.
Science is a method for finding truth about the observable universe. If you admit truths that are not scientific you have just redefined truth in a way that is not compatible with the scientific method.
You've done a wonderful job proving my argument. It should be noted that you also fail at logic: the existence of a church with a certain set of beliefs is your premise, not a conclusion, and even were it true that any or all churches were compatible with science, you cannot logically conclude that no conflict exists. Most of your other sentences incorporate other fallacies. It would be tedious to list them; you may want to read up on the subject.
Science is an objective, empirical method of finding truth. Religious believers have either an alternate definition of truth, or an alternate method of determining it. The alternate method can be rational but is not generally empirical.
If Science and Religion are the same, believers are not consistent in claiming truths that are not scientific truths. If they are not the same, then they must vary as defined above. These are such fundamentally opposing axioms that any reconciliation of the two is best explained by cognitive dissonance.
Clearly you are not capable of making an argument. If you have an incomplete case of idiocy, you should spend a day reading the wikipedia articles on logical fallacies; what we call formal argument is simply a technique to try to avoid these fallacies. If you are a complete idiot, you may have to get used to being told so in latin.
I just spent a year learning PHP. Then I read your sig. My next project will be in a different language.
PHP is easy. For small scripts it's no worse than other languages. It definitely has a wider adoption on the Net than Perl, and if you want to work in New Delhi it's the way to go.
I don't exactly consider it wasted time, but I wish I'd seen your sig a year ago.
So when the "others" being incited against are government agents it is acceptable to disregard the principles upon which we have built our society? Your "love it or leave it" simplifies my statement to the point of absurdity. If you do not like your society, you must act to change it or change your locality -- either is acceptable. It is an obvious statement, if you're not inclined towards willful misinterpretation.
Your statements only follow each other sequentially, not logically. Please try again. On the topic of hate speech as described by common law, I asked: is there no line that can be drawn between holding an opinion and seeking harm to others? I admit to a bit of sophistry in equating legality and encouragement, but you should seek to demonstrate that there is greater harm in restricting the individual freedom of speech than restricting the freedom to seek harm to members of your own society. Secondarily you might tackle why the majority of nations seem to disagree with that.
How very interesting. Which one of those do you have a problem with now, citizen? One moment while I write this down... </black humor>
The government having the power to regulate those kinds of speech is preferable to vigilantism. No, that's not a binary choice, but I for one feel strongly enough about certain of those topics to make quite a point of it, if you take my meaning. You can argue against your culture's values, and hope to change them, but on these topics it is important to note that people have died for lesser causes. It seems reasonable to suggest that you may either [a] express yourself in terms that aren't going to be labeled as 'hate speech' (i.e. don't be a dick about it), [b] lobby to get the laws changed (which incidentally may promote your cause), [c] or move to someplace where your views are tolerated.
What is it exactly about inciting hatred that you think should be encouraged? Is there no line that can be crossed between holding an opinion and seeking harm to others? DHS and CP probably warrant separate discussion; suffice to say it's likely we don't disagree much there.
You're not a sucker. Well goodie joy. Is it possible that you could elaborate on that? Maybe, even, in the terms which I've been trying to establish? You know, the ones that everyone else uses? I know epistemology is a big one, but you can use little words if you like. How do you define truth? Because you're using a different fucking definition than scientists, that's for damn sure.
Don't believe everything a "scientist" says? Well, I don't. I trust peer-reviewed data to within the error bars though. Do note, that requires no 'belief'.
Did you know that "I'm not a sucker" is one of those phrases which only ever serves to indicate the opposite?
You do not have an understanding of basic scientific processes or terminology. You have a belief that what is not directly observable is unknowable. You have no better theory for our observations.
I have personally taken the time to track the progress of a 7.0 earthquake around the globe (it happened close to home). I saw the seismometer readings, traced out in ink around a rotating drum. The USGS publishes seismometer readings on a continual basis, and so do other national science bodies. Additionally, the largest earthquake in North America happened even closer to home (in 1964) and so was a point of local historical interest. I have personally seen direct evidence that *something* at the center of the earth is dense enough for seismic waves to bounce off of. Gravitational waves propagate at a basically linear speed, just like most other waves. We also have a massive magnetic field which appears to originate from the center of the earth -- how many elements are naturally magnetic?
Science is not about faith. It is not about belief. It is, to some extent about trust, and the reason we can have trust is because of verification -- the word means to determine truth. We have a process to determine truth (an epistemology), called science, which basically means we do things very carefully and double-check them independently.You are invited to participate in this process of double-checking. Please review the theories and observations, and determine if you find any methodological flaws, erroneous or spurious data, or a theory with greater explanatory power. To flatly deny the observations or theories is not something that increases knowledge -- it is not part of our epistemology. You are declining to participate in the process, and relying on rational, a priori knowledge. This is not empirical, though you seem to think it is. So: either participate in the process, examine the evidence, promote an alternate theory, or hell, even an alternate truth-seeking method. Start talking about Spinoza and rationality, or Nietzsche and nihilism, or whatever you like. Pick an epistemology, because what you're doing otherwise is saying that not only do you have some sort of superior truth finding method where science can be right in one field but not in another, and only you know the difference. I'll dice with you on any terms, but it is incumbent upon you to pick your axioms and let them be known.
You decry science based on terms which you will not state clearly. You find fault with theories -- you will not refer to the observations except in terms which are so general as to be useless. I invite you to find fault with the observations, the conclusions, or the epistemology. You clearly have a basis for skepticism -- you must know something that I and those that profess to be seismologists, knowledgeable about the Earth, do not know. If you do not have a basis for disclaiming the knowledge of others, why do so? I feel that I'm repeating myself endlessly here just asking you to confirm your position. I linked to the wikipedia article for a summation of the observational evidence, and find myself having to drag up personal experience as if that were more reliable than centuries of science. If everything must be proved to you before it is real, what are your qualifications for proof? What in the evidence is lacking? A minor question might be why you're so colossally arrogant as to believe you are the arbiter of all truth, but it is just to accept that you are surely as capable as any individual.
There have been observations of the earth's interior. We call them seismology. What part of that is unclear? What part of indirect observation makes it invalid? Because we left the world of directly observable science behind about a century ago.
You're really not equipped for this discussion. Empiricism and mysticism are orthagonal, and many religions exist which are not fundamentalist. There are also many christian scientists who regard science as revealing God's work, i.e. dressing up science in mysticism. Newton was famous for both good science and kooky religious beliefs. Try to keep up.
There is no such thing as scientific belief ether. We don't even have a concept of right or wrong in terms of a theory, either: it's just how well it explains observations. So in disbelieving in a (simple) theory, you must be either challenging its explanatory power (how well it matches observations) or the observations themselves. Which is it? You don't get to throw out the facts and waffle about indirect observation. Certainly not while claiming to enjoy the topic of radiation.
You're still ignoring the observations we have made of the Earth's interior, and presenting no evidence of a Hollow Earth. Your skepticism is not scientific but blindly partisan. It does not require an act of faith to examine the evidence for our knowledge of the interior of the Earth, in point of fact it does not rely on anything more than an elementary education.
Further, if you really think that science would not 'pan out' if people treated it as a religion, you have not understood the process of science. A layer of mysticism would not impede empiricism; just ask Newton.
Now, specifically, what is it that causes you to doubt the fundamental basis of seismology?
From here we branch into a chicken-and-egg discussion on addictive behavior and cognitive effects. Yes, heavy marijuana abuse is correlated with negative cognitive affects and to some degree these are residual. There are many factors the play into addiction and addictive behavior, but I hold with Heraclitus in believing that "Character is fate". We can certainly say that there is little to no physiological dependence involved in marijuana use, less so than with caffeine. Thus I believe it follows readily that addictive behavior has more to do with the personality than with the substance, and I believe the scientific literature* tends to support that.
Your questions are frustrating. The information you are after is publicly accessible and relatively non-technical. In point of fact, you can probably obtain a fairly complete knowledge of the subject by reading the Wikipedia article on the Structure of the Earth. However, you are correct in asserting that we have little direct observation of the Earth's interior. It is even safe to say that we know relatively little about it, even in comparison to e.g. the interior of the Sun. That does not mean we know nothing, and to equivocate a lack of direct observations and complete ignorance is intellectually dishonest, bordering on overt prevarication. That's where the 'obstinate' comment arises. Skepticism has a place in science, but it does not mean discarding observations. Observations may be flawed, and they all carry a degree of uncertainty. They are the only facts we have, however: the only means for deriving scientific truth.
[It should be noted that 'proof' does not exist in a scientific sense. 'Disproof' is all we have to work with. Mathematics can be proven, within the system of axioms you choose, but much depends on your choice of axioms.]
To view the world in a scientific way, first discard the idea of absolute truth. For many people this is impossible. A full discussion is out of scope. Next is to ask, 'What can be known?'. Without entering into philosophy of science, the answer is 'empirical observations'. How may we trust observations? Practically, we carefully control the conditions of those observations, have other scientists review that work, and we repeat experiments. To discard observations is to attack the root of that entire epistemology. It is philosophically valid to have another method for finding truth; in most cases we call those 'religions'. We think we've got a pretty good thing going with this 'science' thing though: it seems to be panning out so far. Humans being what they are, it should not surprise you to find an emotional response to attacking anyone's method of seeking truth. Further, since the fruits of the scientific method are so patently obvious, then I am afraid that there are very few philosophic bases in which discarding science does not reflect upon your intelligence and sanity.
Obligatory XKCD, my condolences if you identify with my characterization of an unscientific person, and apologies for any resultant emotions in that event.
Slashdot Mirror
Those are all good suggestions, I might add Anne McCaffrey to the list. I am confused however by the idea that it's bad to exceed a child's comprehension. Let his own reading material be age-appropriate if you must, but he will enjoy being read good stuff even if he doesn't completely understand it. What exactly is gained by reading unchallenging books?
The phrase was invented (recently) to serve the capitalists. "Capitalism doesn't concentrate wealth. Wealth isn't a guarantee of influence. That's, uh...that's bad capitalism." If true, then good capitalism involves social constraints, and I'll leave it to you to determine if there's a form of that which you won't call socialist.
The proper term, however, for "crony" capitalism is fascism.
There are two problems with this. The HTML5/CSS{2,3} specification is in places undefined. Two examples: in CSS, border-styles are basically left up to the browser. In HTML5, video codecs.
Secondly, if your clients and users are the type that are mollified by things like, "Well, that's a browser bug -- my code conforms to the specs," then where can I find more of them? At the unicorn store perhaps?
Ad hominem? Sir, you mistake me, and your characterization of the movements as 'militant' is a slander.
I do not rely for my argument on your idiocy, never fear. Again, the goal is complete equality in matters of sex and sexuality. That has always been the goal, and neither have you offered a logical reason why it should not be so, nor do I believe that such a reason can exist. The capabilities of either sex, and the love between them, are equal in nature and kind. To say that while the progress towards a goal is a good thing, but that further progress is bad, is logically inconsistent, given no other premise.
So it falls to you to display your prejudices -- I mean, your premise. What exactly is it about equality in sex and/or sexuality that you find objectionable?
You may feel free not to respond, I will waste no time in calling your bigotry what it is.
In both cases the goal is full equality. You weren't involved in making America or Europe a better place than Iran, kindly do shut the fuck up about those whose progress you laud.
Also it's important to note that, as with the case of RMS and similarly Fox News, a few extremists can be very useful in shifting the Overton window.
They're perhaps a little nicer about their acquisitions than Microsoft.
Still, it's quite annoying. I now have five years of chat logs that differ slightly from the pidgin html format. There's an abandoned conversion program, but it lacks a makefile and I'm not keen on figuring out how to get it to compile. If anyone else is working on the same problem please do let me know.
The whole affair makes me really wary about switching to another online chat program, but rolling my own equivalent service seems a bit complex. For the moment I'm symlinking pidgin's history files to my dropbox account, which is probably going to be a viable solution if I feel like installing Pidgin and Dropbox on every computer I want to chat on, or perhaps carry portable versions on a thumb drive. It's too bad meebo isn't an open source project, maybe google can do us that favor.
Thank you for correcting my use of the term.
The commentators on hacker news seem to be fewer in number and the focus and readership seems to be more about web technologies and startups. I could care less about your new jquery library for styling select boxes (or any reinventing-the-wheel-in-javascript project) and entrepreneurs are mostly failures waiting to happen.
As far as I'm concerned Hacker News has a higher SNR.
Nope. Truths are truths.
I have demonstrated otherwise. "Nope" is still not a refutation.
Which is another straw man saying things I have not
No, that's my argument. Your reading comprehension is low.
Repeating yourself in different words does not make you more right. You're relying on sophism -- truths are truths, "not in conflict" is different from "compatible". It has been formally shown that scientific truth and religious truth are not the same thing. You can't simply say, "No, that is not my opinion" if I have proved it, you have to refute the logic. I feel like we're probing a gap in your education here, and honestly, I didn't get into this to have some moron repeat the same fallacy at me in different words and ignore a counter-argument. It is fallacious however it's phrased, and however you define "not in conflict". The specific fallacy is "affirming the consequent".
If you have nothing further to add please consider wasting someone else's time.
Sound principles. Good argument. You haven't fully addressed the question but I don't feel like continuing to play devil's advocate.
Cheers
[c] or move to someplace where your views are tolerated.
You said 'love it or leave it'. It's quite unambiguous.
And yet your quoted selection somehow manages to be the third of a list of alternatives, and neither of the first two are "Mindlessly repeat the majority position." Slandering my argument does not improve your position.
This only happens when the officials disregard [...]
False. People have been arguing against governments since their inception.
if, in a democracy, a lot of people are ready to go from the ballot box to the ammo box, the government has failed and has been failing for a long time.
False. Red herring.
Ok, when the law allows lots of/powerful/influential people to dictate what the minority can say, it quickly becomes a form of tyranny.
Don't powerful minorities usually dictate terms in tyrannies? An attempt to regulate speech does not necessarily require a majority or minority, and tyranny is not an automatic consequence.
Without the right to communicate unambiguously, it's impossible for grievances to be heard except couched in whatever newspeak terms the power elite allow.
You know that quote and link I gave you about 'begging the question'? You have rephrased it yet again. It's still an invalid argument, sorry.
Your last paragraph is self-serving non sequiturs. Fiery rhetoric is not in itself a valid argument either. I asked you to prove a position, not simply to expostulate on your biases. You clearly wouldn't know a logical argument if one bit you -- I'll thank you not to waste my time further by replying.
My theory is that fundamentally your disagreement with laws of this sort seems to stem from your belief that the rights of the individual are supreme over the rights of the group. If I have inferred incorrectly there, you may correct me. The two are certainly in opposition, but overall we have chosen to construct societies and not typically existed as rugged individualists. If individual welfare were the highest good it would not be necessary to have laws or government or society. The survival of the species, however, does not depend on the individual, and so we don't tend to optimize for it. Cognitive dissonance coming up in 3, 2, 1...
I think I'll refrain from sticking my nose in Randian circle jerks from here on out. It's fortunate that you can't tell you're a raving nutjob, otherwise I'm afraid someone might be in danger of believing you.
Science "attempts" to find nothing. In asserting that you are changing the definition of science. In "rephrasing" that I insist on proper definition of terms. I'd rather deal with comprehension problems than sophistry, thank you.
If you admit truths that are not scientific you have just redefined truth in a way that is not compatible with the scientific method.
[...]All that was said is that some truth are not currently observable. Being unobservable by current technology and understanding hardly makes something true or untrue.
Your first sentence contradicts the latter directly. Also you're verging on a 'God of the gaps' argument, which I would in your place avoid. You'll have better luck in researching the difference between empiricism and skepticism, as my argument relies on skepticism being a necessary condition of science.
You have not disputed any of the premises above or pointed out a logical fallacy. Just saying "Nope!" is not a valid argument.
You're repeating yourself in the last paragraph, and you are unequivocally wrong. Also you can't tell a premise from a hole in the ground. Let's go back to school here:
Premise: If Science and Religion deal with different subjects, they are compatible.
Premise: Some religions claim that they deal with different subjects.
Therefore, Religion and Science are compatible.
This is affirming the consequent. So you conclusion can still be false even if your premises are both true.
Your argument is entirely fallacious. I have an argument that purports to prove the opposite. You must therefore both disprove my argument and construct an argument for yours that contains no fallacies. Quite frankly you seem to be an idiot; I won't hold my breath.
Nope, science only attempts to find *some* truths.
Science is a method for finding truth about the observable universe. If you admit truths that are not scientific you have just redefined truth in a way that is not compatible with the scientific method.
You've done a wonderful job proving my argument. It should be noted that you also fail at logic: the existence of a church with a certain set of beliefs is your premise, not a conclusion, and even were it true that any or all churches were compatible with science, you cannot logically conclude that no conflict exists. Most of your other sentences incorporate other fallacies. It would be tedious to list them; you may want to read up on the subject.
Tu quoque.
Science is an objective, empirical method of finding truth. Religious believers have either an alternate definition of truth, or an alternate method of determining it. The alternate method can be rational but is not generally empirical.
If Science and Religion are the same, believers are not consistent in claiming truths that are not scientific truths. If they are not the same, then they must vary as defined above. These are such fundamentally opposing axioms that any reconciliation of the two is best explained by cognitive dissonance.
"Inciting to harm" should not be a crime. Doing harm is the crime.
You seem to have forgotten to include your argument. In point of fact I must be generous to assume that you have one. So far, I gather, it goes something like this: "To allow every man an unbounded freedom of speech must always be, on the whole, advantageous to the State, for it is highly conducive to the interests of the community that each individual should enjoy a liberty perfectly unlimited of expressing his sentiments."
In order for your analogy to apply to hate speech we must assume that there is some thing that is analogous to 'battery' in speech. Presumably it is that analogous quality which would be targeted in hate speech laws.
Clearly you are not capable of making an argument. If you have an incomplete case of idiocy, you should spend a day reading the wikipedia articles on logical fallacies; what we call formal argument is simply a technique to try to avoid these fallacies. If you are a complete idiot, you may have to get used to being told so in latin.
I just spent a year learning PHP. Then I read your sig. My next project will be in a different language.
PHP is easy. For small scripts it's no worse than other languages. It definitely has a wider adoption on the Net than Perl, and if you want to work in New Delhi it's the way to go.
I don't exactly consider it wasted time, but I wish I'd seen your sig a year ago.
So when the "others" being incited against are government agents it is acceptable to disregard the principles upon which we have built our society? Your "love it or leave it" simplifies my statement to the point of absurdity. If you do not like your society, you must act to change it or change your locality -- either is acceptable. It is an obvious statement, if you're not inclined towards willful misinterpretation.
Your statements only follow each other sequentially, not logically. Please try again. On the topic of hate speech as described by common law, I asked: is there no line that can be drawn between holding an opinion and seeking harm to others? I admit to a bit of sophistry in equating legality and encouragement, but you should seek to demonstrate that there is greater harm in restricting the individual freedom of speech than restricting the freedom to seek harm to members of your own society. Secondarily you might tackle why the majority of nations seem to disagree with that.
How very interesting. Which one of those do you have a problem with now, citizen? One moment while I write this down...
</black humor>
The government having the power to regulate those kinds of speech is preferable to vigilantism. No, that's not a binary choice, but I for one feel strongly enough about certain of those topics to make quite a point of it, if you take my meaning. You can argue against your culture's values, and hope to change them, but on these topics it is important to note that people have died for lesser causes. It seems reasonable to suggest that you may either [a] express yourself in terms that aren't going to be labeled as 'hate speech' (i.e. don't be a dick about it), [b] lobby to get the laws changed (which incidentally may promote your cause), [c] or move to someplace where your views are tolerated.
What is it exactly about inciting hatred that you think should be encouraged? Is there no line that can be crossed between holding an opinion and seeking harm to others? DHS and CP probably warrant separate discussion; suffice to say it's likely we don't disagree much there.
Uh, huh. And this in this IDE you will be able to code fluently from second 0?
Why do you think people will be able to code fluently from second 0 in this IDE?
ELIZA program detected!
You're not a sucker. Well goodie joy. Is it possible that you could elaborate on that? Maybe, even, in the terms which I've been trying to establish? You know, the ones that everyone else uses? I know epistemology is a big one, but you can use little words if you like. How do you define truth? Because you're using a different fucking definition than scientists, that's for damn sure.
Don't believe everything a "scientist" says? Well, I don't. I trust peer-reviewed data to within the error bars though. Do note, that requires no 'belief'.
Did you know that "I'm not a sucker" is one of those phrases which only ever serves to indicate the opposite?
You do not have an understanding of basic scientific processes or terminology. You have a belief that what is not directly observable is unknowable. You have no better theory for our observations.
I have personally taken the time to track the progress of a 7.0 earthquake around the globe (it happened close to home). I saw the seismometer readings, traced out in ink around a rotating drum. The USGS publishes seismometer readings on a continual basis, and so do other national science bodies. Additionally, the largest earthquake in North America happened even closer to home (in 1964) and so was a point of local historical interest. I have personally seen direct evidence that *something* at the center of the earth is dense enough for seismic waves to bounce off of. Gravitational waves propagate at a basically linear speed, just like most other waves. We also have a massive magnetic field which appears to originate from the center of the earth -- how many elements are naturally magnetic?
Science is not about faith. It is not about belief. It is, to some extent about trust, and the reason we can have trust is because of verification -- the word means to determine truth. We have a process to determine truth (an epistemology), called science, which basically means we do things very carefully and double-check them independently.You are invited to participate in this process of double-checking. Please review the theories and observations, and determine if you find any methodological flaws, erroneous or spurious data, or a theory with greater explanatory power. To flatly deny the observations or theories is not something that increases knowledge -- it is not part of our epistemology. You are declining to participate in the process, and relying on rational, a priori knowledge. This is not empirical, though you seem to think it is. So: either participate in the process, examine the evidence, promote an alternate theory, or hell, even an alternate truth-seeking method. Start talking about Spinoza and rationality, or Nietzsche and nihilism, or whatever you like. Pick an epistemology, because what you're doing otherwise is saying that not only do you have some sort of superior truth finding method where science can be right in one field but not in another, and only you know the difference. I'll dice with you on any terms, but it is incumbent upon you to pick your axioms and let them be known.
You decry science based on terms which you will not state clearly. You find fault with theories -- you will not refer to the observations except in terms which are so general as to be useless. I invite you to find fault with the observations, the conclusions, or the epistemology. You clearly have a basis for skepticism -- you must know something that I and those that profess to be seismologists, knowledgeable about the Earth, do not know. If you do not have a basis for disclaiming the knowledge of others, why do so? I feel that I'm repeating myself endlessly here just asking you to confirm your position. I linked to the wikipedia article for a summation of the observational evidence, and find myself having to drag up personal experience as if that were more reliable than centuries of science. If everything must be proved to you before it is real, what are your qualifications for proof? What in the evidence is lacking? A minor question might be why you're so colossally arrogant as to believe you are the arbiter of all truth, but it is just to accept that you are surely as capable as any individual.
There have been observations of the earth's interior. We call them seismology. What part of that is unclear? What part of indirect observation makes it invalid? Because we left the world of directly observable science behind about a century ago.
You're really not equipped for this discussion. Empiricism and mysticism are orthagonal, and many religions exist which are not fundamentalist. There are also many christian scientists who regard science as revealing God's work, i.e. dressing up science in mysticism. Newton was famous for both good science and kooky religious beliefs. Try to keep up.
There is no such thing as scientific belief ether. We don't even have a concept of right or wrong in terms of a theory, either: it's just how well it explains observations. So in disbelieving in a (simple) theory, you must be either challenging its explanatory power (how well it matches observations) or the observations themselves. Which is it? You don't get to throw out the facts and waffle about indirect observation. Certainly not while claiming to enjoy the topic of radiation.
So, seismology is invalid because...?
You're still ignoring the observations we have made of the Earth's interior, and presenting no evidence of a Hollow Earth. Your skepticism is not scientific but blindly partisan. It does not require an act of faith to examine the evidence for our knowledge of the interior of the Earth, in point of fact it does not rely on anything more than an elementary education.
Further, if you really think that science would not 'pan out' if people treated it as a religion, you have not understood the process of science. A layer of mysticism would not impede empiricism; just ask Newton.
Now, specifically, what is it that causes you to doubt the fundamental basis of seismology?
From here we branch into a chicken-and-egg discussion on addictive behavior and cognitive effects. Yes, heavy marijuana abuse is correlated with negative cognitive affects and to some degree these are residual. There are many factors the play into addiction and addictive behavior, but I hold with Heraclitus in believing that "Character is fate". We can certainly say that there is little to no physiological dependence involved in marijuana use, less so than with caffeine. Thus I believe it follows readily that addictive behavior has more to do with the personality than with the substance, and I believe the scientific literature* tends to support that.
* To the degree to which social psych qualifies :P
Your questions are frustrating. The information you are after is publicly accessible and relatively non-technical. In point of fact, you can probably obtain a fairly complete knowledge of the subject by reading the Wikipedia article on the Structure of the Earth. However, you are correct in asserting that we have little direct observation of the Earth's interior. It is even safe to say that we know relatively little about it, even in comparison to e.g. the interior of the Sun. That does not mean we know nothing, and to equivocate a lack of direct observations and complete ignorance is intellectually dishonest, bordering on overt prevarication. That's where the 'obstinate' comment arises. Skepticism has a place in science, but it does not mean discarding observations. Observations may be flawed, and they all carry a degree of uncertainty. They are the only facts we have, however: the only means for deriving scientific truth.
[It should be noted that 'proof' does not exist in a scientific sense. 'Disproof' is all we have to work with. Mathematics can be proven, within the system of axioms you choose, but much depends on your choice of axioms.]
To view the world in a scientific way, first discard the idea of absolute truth. For many people this is impossible. A full discussion is out of scope. Next is to ask, 'What can be known?'. Without entering into philosophy of science, the answer is 'empirical observations'. How may we trust observations? Practically, we carefully control the conditions of those observations, have other scientists review that work, and we repeat experiments. To discard observations is to attack the root of that entire epistemology. It is philosophically valid to have another method for finding truth; in most cases we call those 'religions'. We think we've got a pretty good thing going with this 'science' thing though: it seems to be panning out so far. Humans being what they are, it should not surprise you to find an emotional response to attacking anyone's method of seeking truth. Further, since the fruits of the scientific method are so patently obvious, then I am afraid that there are very few philosophic bases in which discarding science does not reflect upon your intelligence and sanity.
Obligatory XKCD, my condolences if you identify with my characterization of an unscientific person, and apologies for any resultant emotions in that event.