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User: Kielistic

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Comments · 1,478

  1. Re:Solving this problem on UK Man Jailed For Being a Jerk On the Internet · · Score: 1

    Nobody is saying it should be okay to get into fist fights over a disagreement on what type of pitcher to buy (although maybe if it's consensual it should be?). It's people like the one in the article. The ones that lash out emotionally, or constant badgering. They do this because they know there is no repercussions to their actions. If all physical acts of violence are illegal then so must be all attacks on emotions otherwise you will create a power imbalance. Just like you would if the law of the land was "might makes right". The people who know they are untouchable will abuse that.

    Now I don't think either should be disallowed. A repressed society is unhealthy. Things should be judged on their merits and not with a zero-tolerance mindset.

  2. Re:Cue more irrational nuclear panic in 3...2... on Explosion At French Nuclear Site Kills One · · Score: 1

    Except coal numbers were listed for just the US as well and they were still a couple orders of magnitude higher than nuclear. Thinking outside the box is fine but you still have to stay within the confines of reality.

  3. Re:Cue more irrational nuclear panic in 3...2... on Explosion At French Nuclear Site Kills One · · Score: 1

    I know exactly what you are saying. If the number of coal workers magically reduces you are asserting that the ratio of workers dying will also decrease. Which, I guess might be true being as we've completely distanced ourselves from reality here anyway and might as well just claim anything. Unfortunately it's meaningless because those people are needed for the coal industry. Your reasoning is not that far off from saying "If less coal workers died then coal wouldn't be so bad and therefore this metric is useless". The fact is that all those coal workers are needed and all those coal workers do die per terawat produced.

  4. Re:Cue more irrational nuclear panic in 3...2... on Explosion At French Nuclear Site Kills One · · Score: 1

    So your point is: with a slight application of magic and ignoring some statistics coal is safer than nuclear?

  5. Re:Uh... silent system to run Dolphin? on Ask Slashdot: Passively Cooled Hardware For Game Emulation? · · Score: 1

    Sony knows the full specs of the PS1 and the PSP. The PS1 and PSP also run similar CPUs (instruction set wise). It's nice, but not super impressive. Somewhat like Windows 7 running Windows XP games.

  6. Re:Two questions: on $5M In Torrented Files Presented As Art · · Score: 1

    That's the parent's point.. Graffiti artists are still prosecuted even if they claim they're making art.

    Solicited graffiti is still art. That the term has evolved to mean something other than its original intent is more misuse of language than definition of art. And sometimes part of the artists message is in the unsolicited nature of it. You are too caught up in the noun and are missing the concept.

  7. Re:And they were on Steve Jobs, Before the iPad, On Why Tablets Suck · · Score: 1

    Thinkpad X220 Touch has a capacitive screen, a wacom digitizer, clitmouse, multi-touch pad and keyboard. You can get it in anywhere from an i3 to and i7. Wonderful machine.

  8. Re:Response from cops to Apple on Another Unreleased iPhone Lost by Employee In a Bar · · Score: 1

    This is the issue, you see. The police are not there to protect Apple's profits. If they're so afraid of knowledge of these super-secret phones (that just so happen to come out at the same time every year) then they should not be throwing them out to employees to run around to bars with.

    Again, for emphasis: it is not the job of a police force to make sure Apple's strategy of tricking customers (your opinion, apparently no one will buy an iphone if they know about the new one) into buying their products.

  9. Re:Dear Music Industry on Environmental Enforcement Agents Targeting Guitars · · Score: 1

    Have you listened to the top 40 the music industry pushes? I think it's safe to say they're not too worried about guitars being banned. There's no wood in autotune.

  10. Re:Fever? on Acer CEO Declares a Tablets Bubble · · Score: 1

    Lots of flash games support multiplayer on the same computer. I remember playing a whole lot of Worms with friends on the same computer back in the day too. Tablets didn't invent flash games or multiplayer games. They just used them as a marketing platform.

    Tablets are marketed and regarded as a gaming platform and a toy. That's what makes them more social than laptops.

  11. Re:God Particle on No Higgs Just Yet · · Score: 1

    Models of the universe make testable predictions. A disagreeing model can be tested. If they disagree on testable phenomena then one can be proven false. I never said morality was wrong, I was saying you can't use it in a logical argument. The fact that there are competing ethical codes none of which are testable, falsifiable or even objectifiable means that they cannot be used as logical "proof" of anything. Societies have esteemed murderers many many times in the past and still do today. Christian history included; they just called them crusaders instead of murderers. "Murder" is a loaded term showing just how fuzzy morality is. One person's murder is another's justice.

    Commonalities do not suggest the existence of a god in any case. It just additional evidence that we are, believe it or not, all the same species. No more than the fact that us all (mostly) having two hands suggests the existence of a god. Although I'm aware that christians claim that's because god also has two hands.

    I could easily reason that it is more taught than you give it credit for. Children want everything to be given to them (just watch them tantrum). They are taught they can't get everything they want and need a real reason to get what they want or they need to earn it. They don't want bad things to happen to them but they get punished for misbehaving. Sounds to me like they are cultured from the very beginning that everything is justified.

    You want to know what my rational basis for rejecting prophecies is? There is not, and has never been a prophet! No one has ever made statistically significant prophecies. Many people make prophetic claims but none of them do. Because of this the only rational response to a claimed prophet is doubt. Provide some historical evidence of this Habakkuk. I imagine if there were any, and if this book provided anything resembling a prophecy I'd have heard of it before.

    No one has ever provided evidence of any of the phenomena that you are describing. They tried, I went to a Catholic highschool, they tried. But I have never seen sound reasoning. No scientifically credible evidence.

    "They" was referring to Akinas and his five proofs.

  12. Re:God Particle on No Higgs Just Yet · · Score: 1

    Morality has proven to be fuzzy. Nobody agrees on morality nor can they show a reason for one thing to be more moral than another. You said a baby murderer is worse than a shoplifter. That is your opinion (mine as well) but it is not a universal opinion. There have been cultures that practiced infanticide. Sparta being one made popular by mass media. They would probably consider a shoplifter morally worse than a baby murderer(murderer being a loaded word here).

    A concept of "fair" (which could very easily be argued is taught behaviour and not inherent) does not prove the existence of a linear, objective ethical code. It just means people don't like bad things happening to them when they can't think of a cause for it. Morality has no place in a discussion of logic. You can reason out your moral choices using logic and reason but you cannot logic and reason with your moral choices.

    I don't really care if you want to claim some supernatural, unobservable actions by God. But you sure as hell don't get to try to assert legitimacy using logic and reason for it.

    A book I'm assuming was written well after all those events taking place? Theists love attributing what they perceive as just events to the will of their gods.

    The point they all fell down is exactly where I said. They get to a point they don't know the answer to and say "See God!".

  13. Re:God Particle on No Higgs Just Yet · · Score: 1

    I have never read the Pensees so I cannot really comment on them. I am very confident that they do not offer very good reasoning and fall into the same category as most arguments for god. The Wager however I am quite familiar with. I agree that it is not a proof for God and does not intend to be. So it is quite fair that it makes a terrible argument for god.

    Aquinas I won't accept. I'll start from the bottom up because the last two are the easiest. (I won't accept the argument that I can't understand them without context either).
    5 - We know today that nothing is being directed to its end. God doesn't instruct the clouds, the trees or the squirrels. They follow physical rules and simple(relative to ours) input/output systems.
    4 - Makes the jump from logic to morality and nobility then back to logic. Concepts of morality are, by definition, irrational. Irrational in that they are fuzzy by nature. What one person considers moral another will not. So we have no linear scale of morality; no morally best, no morally worst.
    3,2,1 - The first three make logical reasons but suffer the flaw of injecting the desired result into the reasoning. They are started from the end of God existing and worked backwards. They start with the assumption that God does what can't be defined (more appropriately: what the author doesn't understand). So start from a point and continue to a point you don't have an answer to then inject God. If I am proving that 1=2 then I cannot use that assumption in the proof such as:
    1 = 2
    1 = 1 + 1 (but! 1=2 so)
    2 = 1 + 1
    2 = 2 QED

    This isn't a valid proof. All they are proving is there is a point that they don't understand. At most that contemporary science hasn't found all the answers (a point clearly known to all scientists). Nothing there has to be done by a god that couldn't be done by something else, anything else.

    The logical misstep I found was jumping from logical statements to morality. You cannot do that because morality is not a logical method. It is a fuzzy method. Fuzzy methods are useful for a great many things but making logical arguments is not one of them.

  14. Re:God Particle on No Higgs Just Yet · · Score: 1

    The first paragraph constitutes a refutal of the refutal (ie showing why a particular refutal is flawed). But it was not a genuine defense. Thought I should clarify that before anyone tries to misrepresent that statement.

  15. Re:God Particle on No Higgs Just Yet · · Score: 1
    I didn't see any of that here. I saw two jumps from "morality", "good" and "evil" to "therefore there must be a god". The most famous idea from pascal's pensees seems to be Pascal's Wager which is one of the worst arguments for God I have ever heard.

    The wikipedia article for quinque viae reveals some pretty laugable "logic". "hot being hot and fire being the hottest of hot means that existence of good proves the existence of god because there must be a best". No where in there is there logic or even correctness. Now, and this I find hilarious, the second of two paragraphs in the "defense" section reads:

    More recently Edward Feser has argued in his book Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide that Dawkins, Hume, Kant, and most modern philosophers do not have a correct understanding of Aquinas at all; that the arguments are often difficult to translate into modern terms; and that the Five Ways are just a brief summary directed towards beginners and must be understood in the context of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Aquinas’ other writings. He argues that Aquinas’ five ways have never been adequately refuted when thus considered.

    Which is exactly how I said these arguments are defended. Claiming the refuter just doesn't understand them. Just get your mindset into the beliefs of these backwards people (ignore logic). Mind you the first paragraph may actually constitute a real refutal.

    These are not "understood" to be logical arguments. They haven't been since people have been able to apply logic without shoe-horning it into a model that is done by god. Of those five proofs there wasn't a single one that didn't make me chuckle. I know that is extremely pompous but the "logic" in those arguments is at about the same level as the Holy Grail's "She's a Witch" scene.

    I can give reasons for why all of these so called "arguments" are flawed but so many before me have already. But from cursory glance they all break down to needing the person to go outside logic for a second (assume there is an objective scale of morality or something similar) then jump to a conclusion from there.

  16. Re:Last time I checked on MK-1 Robotic Arm Capable of Near-Human Dexterity, Dancing · · Score: 1

    And he didn't have metal arms until MK3

  17. Re:God Particle on No Higgs Just Yet · · Score: 1

    What I was attacking was the "consider these arguments falsified" statement. I have looked at the arguments, put on my thinking cap, understood why they are fallacies. All of the provided "arguments" have had people explain why they are incorrect. The credible response from that would be to either explain why the refutes are incorrect or to fix the arguments. This never happens, however. Instead what happens is the same exact arguments are made again ignoring any attempts at refuting them. Then attack the people making the refute saying things like "they can't see another point of view" and "Analyze it for its own merits"(despite the merits being refuted)"rather than through the mantra 'religion bad, science good'".

    The means have been provided. If you want to say the belief is rational then you have to use reason to show that.

  18. Re:God Particle on No Higgs Just Yet · · Score: 1

    The fallacy in your reasoning, as unbalanced parentheses above you pointed out, is your definition of the "beginning of the universe". The Big Bang was the beginning of physics as we know them and we label this the universe. Defining existence and anything that applies to the physical rules of our existence becomes problematic before the big bang. Time as you define it existed before the big bang; time as science defines it did not.

  19. Re:God Particle on No Higgs Just Yet · · Score: 1

    People consider these arguments falsified because they have been falsified! sFurbo pointed out many ways in which they have been falsified. No one will be convinced when your argument boils down to "Just ignore logic for a second and you'll see what I'm saying". It is not a mantra to believe in reason. If you can't provide unfalsified reasoning then you aren't going to convince anyone in your belief. Especially after an assertion like "There are indeed rational reasons for anyone who cares to look". A lot of people have looked and are happy to look but I've never heard of one that survives even the most basic of scrutiny.

  20. Re:Texas Police Are Pretty Bad on When Schools Are the Police · · Score: 2

    How can you consider yourself a free individual if your only legal response to an altercation is to flee?

  21. Re:Result of Truancy Laws on When Schools Are the Police · · Score: 2

    I would also like to point out that "truancy" is a pretty bad indicator of wanting to learn or not. I skipped all the time in highschool and undergrad but that didn't stop me from wanting to learn or succeeding. Throwing people like me into a social underclass because we don't conform to your "standard" of education will not make education more effective. But it will create a whole lot more intelligent criminals.

  22. Re:I prefer Apple's model on New RIM Streaming Music: $5 For 50 Songs? · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't it have been better if you had have instead asked: "Is there some way to get more functionality out of a youtube playlist that I don't know about?" Or even "Youtube playlists do not offer the functionality that I want". Both would have indicated that you knew that Youtube had playlists, unlike your actual comment. The first would have the added benefit of keeping with your statement that people on slashdot should ask more questions instead of making statement trying to get insightful mods. You are correct though; simply posing that statement in the form of a question or more informatively would have avoided that whole argument.

  23. Re:So make the road less monotonous on Car Makers Explore EEG Headrests · · Score: 1

    Until, of course, you get behind someone driving very slow (because it's a dangerous winding road) and you cannot pass them because it is a winding road with no visibility. Give me straight and flat over winding any day.

  24. Re:Whining Little Bitches on AT&T Kills $10 Texting Plan, Pushes $20 Plan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Lack of carriers makes switching difficult at times. If there is only a couple and all of them are assholes on some level. The title was also "Whining Little Bitches" indicating the GP believes they should not be voicing their opinions. What's so hard about having people express their dislike for a company's actions? Why are people "bitches" for calling out a company's bullshit actions? People have every right, and the obligation, to point out companies acting in bad faith. They do not have to silently take it or hope that they can move on to an alternative.

  25. Re:Whining Little Bitches on AT&T Kills $10 Texting Plan, Pushes $20 Plan · · Score: 0

    In other words: shut up and take it. And if you insist on not taking it then do so silently. Can't have lowly people talking about scummy business practices interfering with the corporate marketing machine!