None of these questions has an objective, factual answer like "Why do planets orbit the sun?" These questions are all human creations, and the only answer you get will be the one you make up for yourself or one that was shaped by your nature and/or behavioral input.
Theology is mental masturbation--nobody can be wrong, and everyone can feel like they're right and engaging in productive dialogue when they're not. Theology is -useless-.
Because questions of meaning and purpose (which is philosophical; to say they are theological is to just give those questions a religious flavor and to appeal to god on occasion) are non-questions. There is no meaning, purpose, no objective right or wrong. These are human concepts, human creations.
Asking what one's purpose is is about as objectively discussable as asking whether one should eat broccoli for dinner or not. That's the philosophical route. Theologically, the question would discuss whether God wants you to eat broccoli, and other nonsense like that.
Whenever someone says atheists don't understand theology they never go into depth about what it is they don't understand. They just handwave. If you are able to poke and prod deep enough you find out it's all about seeking non-answers to non-questions, revealing the reason they had to resort to handwaving to begin with.
Theology is useless. It is the least productive form of philosophy in a religious dress. Not only is it bad that they are looking for questions only oneself can give an answer to (if that), they are claiming that these questions are soley or at least more suited to analysis through religious dogma. Pure nonsense.
I think distinguishing hardware from software on a fundamental level is looking at the problem all wrong. Software really is just a function of hardware and physical changes made in hardware, whether it's magnetic or electrical states. The brain's software is really just hardware, hence his statement.
We do not think faster than the brain can physically change. Every "thought" (note the scare-quotes) has corresponding neural firings or such. These are just as important as increased neural connectivity or, say, increased release in neurotransmitters.
I find that the metaphor between "software" and "hardware" is a very limited one. The brain is nothing like a PC with a hard drive or RAM or such. That's not to say the brain isn't computational, merely that comparing the hardware/software on, say, a PC versus the brain is not (in my opinion) that apt an of analogy.
Indeed. Dualism is god-of-the-gaps of philosophy of mind, and anyone espousing it can probably be safely ignored in the manner that creationists can be safely ignored. Dualism just appeals to people's emotions or commonsense notions regarding cultural precepts of how things appear to be, but these are not good justifications.
A mind-is-brain solution (monism) is the only sensible one.
Absolute certainty is out of the question, and if you mean "know" in that case, sure.
I don't see how reason emerging from physicalism is any more of a problem than "reason" emerging from AI or similar. Reason cannot be absolutely trusted, but that's one reason we use more empirical criteria in the sciences for coming to (tentative) conclusions. I don't see how this at all refutes or poses a problem for physicalism. It only shows that that all beliefs must be tentative and that our understandings of things may be inherently flawed, and that absolute knowledge is out of the question.
Suddenly, everyone accused of rape fits the bill too!
Is it logical that Tom would rape the supermodel Tina? Yup. Would her friend Sheri cooperate with the police? Yup.
I have no problem believing Tom really did it. And have no problem believing he would LIE about it. It's really in his best interest.
With your logic there's no way for Last.fm to win. Simply because they were accused of it, and because the accusation was plausible, they are guilty. I know these are liberal times and all, but let's not jump the gun.
Really curious - can any slashdotters enlighten me as to why the Cuba / USA situation continues? I would have thought it's all long gone cold war history and both countries would benefit from getting over it. Or has the Cuban leadership said something that the USA doesn't find acceptable and won't back down until they apologise?
Why do politicians do anything? Political reasons. Gotta look tough 'n macho, or something. Tough on crime. Tough on communism. So on so forth. Yeah we trade with worse countries but Joe Voter is too stupid to know that and he knows that Cuba it the "enemy" of the good ol' USA so only a pinko liberal would end the embarge!*
*the vast majority of liberals don't support removing the trade embargo either. Oh...and I'm not a liberal.
I'm sure someone is going to step in with some "brilliant" apology for the behavior of the government (now, this applies to the US government now, but could also apply to any other government), but in reality these embargoes do little more than hurt the everyday people in both countries, as most people are completely innocent of whatever games their silly leaders play and this only denies them trade, communication, and sometimes a place to escape a worse regime (although sometimes I wonder if that "worse regime" could be the USA itself...)
The reason for the Cuba embargo is simply for political reasons. You can tell who the more honest politicians are in Congress by whether they'd end the Cuban embargo. How many of them are there, anyway? Two? Sounds about right.
Especially if you switched to maps from the original campaign, and turned cheats on that allowed people to spawn monsters. Nothing like killing someone only for them to spam the console command to spawn snarks. Hordes of snarks coming from the corpse in low-gravity mode made for some great hilarity.
Or spawning tons of Barneys and then shooting one.
Mod me down as a troll if you really want, but I feel like the intellectual zeitgeist in in Western countries is moving in a direction where this could very well happen.
Individualism, "personal responsibly" (often a bad buzzword, but whatever), individual rights, etc, are becoming more and more vilified in favor of "social responsibility" and "community values." Think I'm paranoid? You haven't been to a college campus recently. This applies to both the "left" and the "right" of course, but the "right" in American terms is losing ground particularly among youth so I'll just focus on left-wing politics.
It may yet still be over the horizon, but the notion of protecting people over the greater good is not new and I feel that the overall premise is whittling away at free speech. After all, if people can use rhetoric against hate crimes as having no "social value" or against guns in a similar fashion, what's the stop someone from also applying the same principles to speech and entertainment? They can just ask the same question, "what's the social value of video games?" and really your only answer is that "Well, I and others enjoy them" in which case you're a heartless selfish bastard that won't think of the poor kids. A misleading argument, since "social value" is always their OWN subjective determination of what's good and what's not, of course...
Source is just blogspam and image could easily have been faked in photoshop. The government is stupid and paranoid and not deserving of our love but this is might be just a wee bit over the top at this point in time...
People in MMOs believe the social context missing from their lives is real - that you actually have friends in the game. This is pretty far from the truth.
I still chat with some of the people I played WoW with. I don't regret playing WoW at all. It was definitely more enjoyable than the current grind of my real life--and it feels less rewarding, too.
Slashdot Mirror
None of these questions has an objective, factual answer like "Why do planets orbit the sun?" These questions are all human creations, and the only answer you get will be the one you make up for yourself or one that was shaped by your nature and/or behavioral input.
Theology is mental masturbation--nobody can be wrong, and everyone can feel like they're right and engaging in productive dialogue when they're not. Theology is -useless-.
Because questions of meaning and purpose (which is philosophical; to say they are theological is to just give those questions a religious flavor and to appeal to god on occasion) are non-questions. There is no meaning, purpose, no objective right or wrong. These are human concepts, human creations.
Asking what one's purpose is is about as objectively discussable as asking whether one should eat broccoli for dinner or not. That's the philosophical route. Theologically, the question would discuss whether God wants you to eat broccoli, and other nonsense like that.
Whenever someone says atheists don't understand theology they never go into depth about what it is they don't understand. They just handwave. If you are able to poke and prod deep enough you find out it's all about seeking non-answers to non-questions, revealing the reason they had to resort to handwaving to begin with.
Theology is useless. It is the least productive form of philosophy in a religious dress. Not only is it bad that they are looking for questions only oneself can give an answer to (if that), they are claiming that these questions are soley or at least more suited to analysis through religious dogma. Pure nonsense.
I think distinguishing hardware from software on a fundamental level is looking at the problem all wrong. Software really is just a function of hardware and physical changes made in hardware, whether it's magnetic or electrical states. The brain's software is really just hardware, hence his statement.
We do not think faster than the brain can physically change. Every "thought" (note the scare-quotes) has corresponding neural firings or such. These are just as important as increased neural connectivity or, say, increased release in neurotransmitters.
I find that the metaphor between "software" and "hardware" is a very limited one. The brain is nothing like a PC with a hard drive or RAM or such. That's not to say the brain isn't computational, merely that comparing the hardware/software on, say, a PC versus the brain is not (in my opinion) that apt an of analogy.
Indeed. Dualism is god-of-the-gaps of philosophy of mind, and anyone espousing it can probably be safely ignored in the manner that creationists can be safely ignored. Dualism just appeals to people's emotions or commonsense notions regarding cultural precepts of how things appear to be, but these are not good justifications.
A mind-is-brain solution (monism) is the only sensible one.
Absolute certainty is out of the question, and if you mean "know" in that case, sure.
I don't see how reason emerging from physicalism is any more of a problem than "reason" emerging from AI or similar. Reason cannot be absolutely trusted, but that's one reason we use more empirical criteria in the sciences for coming to (tentative) conclusions. I don't see how this at all refutes or poses a problem for physicalism. It only shows that that all beliefs must be tentative and that our understandings of things may be inherently flawed, and that absolute knowledge is out of the question.
What did you expect given Barack Obama's political philosophy and how he's acted in office?
Suddenly, everyone accused of rape fits the bill too!
Is it logical that Tom would rape the supermodel Tina? Yup. Would her friend Sheri cooperate with the police? Yup.
I have no problem believing Tom really did it. And have no problem believing he would LIE about it. It's really in his best interest.
With your logic there's no way for Last.fm to win. Simply because they were accused of it, and because the accusation was plausible, they are guilty. I know these are liberal times and all, but let's not jump the gun.
Just ask Bozo the Clown, Ph.D.
I see it just as valid as any other religion. Heh, heh, heh.
The biggest enablers are those that fork over money to these corporations in the first place. Without them, none of it would be possible.
Step 1. In Soviet Russia, Junis for one welcomes our [NO CARRIER] which is kind of like a car.
Step 2. ???
Step 3. PROFIT!
Kuchinich. I can't think of any others besides those two.
Why do politicians do anything? Political reasons. Gotta look tough 'n macho, or something. Tough on crime. Tough on communism. So on so forth. Yeah we trade with worse countries but Joe Voter is too stupid to know that and he knows that Cuba it the "enemy" of the good ol' USA so only a pinko liberal would end the embarge!*
*the vast majority of liberals don't support removing the trade embargo either. Oh...and I'm not a liberal.
I'm sure someone is going to step in with some "brilliant" apology for the behavior of the government (now, this applies to the US government now, but could also apply to any other government), but in reality these embargoes do little more than hurt the everyday people in both countries, as most people are completely innocent of whatever games their silly leaders play and this only denies them trade, communication, and sometimes a place to escape a worse regime (although sometimes I wonder if that "worse regime" could be the USA itself...)
The reason for the Cuba embargo is simply for political reasons. You can tell who the more honest politicians are in Congress by whether they'd end the Cuban embargo. How many of them are there, anyway? Two? Sounds about right.
Not a real big loss. After all, democracy doesn't really work anyway, just like all those other systems of government.
OP is a liberal, though.
One can try to piss in the ocean everyday as much as they like to try to turn it yellow, but even a lifetime's worth of work will likely do nothing.
Maybe you'll discover that you simply cannot win in any democratic system...?
Especially if you switched to maps from the original campaign, and turned cheats on that allowed people to spawn monsters. Nothing like killing someone only for them to spam the console command to spawn snarks. Hordes of snarks coming from the corpse in low-gravity mode made for some great hilarity.
Or spawning tons of Barneys and then shooting one.
Well, uh, I'm sure the sticker was made in photoshop. So I'm still right!
Mod me down as a troll if you really want, but I feel like the intellectual zeitgeist in in Western countries is moving in a direction where this could very well happen.
Individualism, "personal responsibly" (often a bad buzzword, but whatever), individual rights, etc, are becoming more and more vilified in favor of "social responsibility" and "community values." Think I'm paranoid? You haven't been to a college campus recently. This applies to both the "left" and the "right" of course, but the "right" in American terms is losing ground particularly among youth so I'll just focus on left-wing politics.
It may yet still be over the horizon, but the notion of protecting people over the greater good is not new and I feel that the overall premise is whittling away at free speech. After all, if people can use rhetoric against hate crimes as having no "social value" or against guns in a similar fashion, what's the stop someone from also applying the same principles to speech and entertainment? They can just ask the same question, "what's the social value of video games?" and really your only answer is that "Well, I and others enjoy them" in which case you're a heartless selfish bastard that won't think of the poor kids. A misleading argument, since "social value" is always their OWN subjective determination of what's good and what's not, of course...
Source is just blogspam and image could easily have been faked in photoshop. The government is stupid and paranoid and not deserving of our love but this is might be just a wee bit over the top at this point in time...
Mod AC up, funny.
I still chat with some of the people I played WoW with. I don't regret playing WoW at all. It was definitely more enjoyable than the current grind of my real life--and it feels less rewarding, too.
Even more people die in car accidents than due to gun violence.
I'll let you conclude that we should get rid of cars.