Your post has a bunch of interesting points. Let me see if I can sort it all out, and apologies if I've misunderstood anything. Apologies also for the length of this post; I did not have time to make it shorter.
The problem is not that scientist conflicts with religion as a spiritual view of the world, but that it conflicts heavily with religion as a factual view of the world.... Science *is* about the factual view of the world, and anything inconsistent with the scientific view is deemed, duh, inconsistent and therefore most probably wrong. Biblical literalism... presents such a blatantly naive and anti-scientific view of the world... There is no chance in hell that a literal view of the bible... can be made consistent with everything we know about physics, chemistry and biology.
Fundamentally, it sounds like you're espousing an epistemology founded on consistency.
You seem to be saying that a proposition is true if it is consistent with the existing body of scientifically acquired knowledge. (This is my inference because you don't actually define this clearly; at one point you say "the scientific/factual view," at another, "everything we know," and third, "how we know stuff works.") But if the body of knowledge is what justifies new propositions, what justifies the existing propositions?
There are two solutions to this. The first is coherentism, which states, roughly, that propositions are justified by the collective of all other propositions together. The drawback of coherentism is that there is no formally valid way to associate the coherent system with the physical world (a system can be coherent but false) -- and you do seem to emphasize a factual correspondence with the world.
The second is by reduction; if the body of knowledge is built incrementally by adding consistent statements, then we can remove statements until we arrive at first principles that require no justification, such as logic and perception. Rationalism and empiricism fall into this category.
In both cases, religion has no inherent inconsistency with science. In the coherentist view, it is quite consistent to add the axiom "God exists," and once that is established, miraculous events are consistent also. In the rationalist/empiricist view, there's also no problem using "God exists" as an a priori first principle, and again miracles become consistent.
This is a roundabout way of saying that you've accidentally made a common circular argument: miracles are impossible because they're impossible. There is no logical conflict with natural law to say that an entity outside of the universe can occasionally interfere with it in a way not governed by the universe's laws. That entity does not even have to be as powerful as God; any sufficiently clever extrauniversal being will do. Divine intervention is preposterous only if you have philosophically, not scientifically, decided that it's preposterous. Under your terminology, that stance might be called "naive" as well.
You will notice also that this analysis does treat religious truth as a factual view of the world. I have little regard for the notion that religious truth is some kind of fuzzy non-fact that is "subjectively true." You do talk about truth and falsity, so I presume you agree that "subjective truth" is a postmodern fantasy. So, just to be clear, you're absolutely welcome to argue that my religion (and the miracles it records) is factually right or wrong; but I have no present interest in any arguments along the lines of "what you believe makes it true for you." If Christianity were so flimsy, I would discard it without your help. =)
It is important to note here that in the absence of truth, science does not lapse into faith, but lapses into the quest for consistency.... As biblical literalism doesn't seem to share
It's also dishonest to claim that evolution even claims to explain the origin of life. It's never made such a claim. It only claims to explain the origin of species.
Yes, in writing today's responses I regret my initial decision to capitulate to the common shorthand of naming evolution and abiogenesis together (my fault for writing late at night).
If it wasn't obvious, my stance is that the evidence for evolution is quite good and the evidence for abiogenesis is very much a work-in-progress. Yet my main point stands; evolution and abiogenesis are very often elevated beyond science into dogma, and I have heard exaggerated truth claims for both.
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation for the phenomenal world, but... we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes
That's not fundamentalism, that's inherent in the nature of science. Natural causes are those which can be theorized about, tested, get results back from, etc.
I see your point. I'm not sure that's exactly what Lewontin is talking about, though. In fact, he seems to be making the opposite point: that the scientific method does not inherently imply materialism, but that materialism is a distinguishable underlying philosophy. I would say that it is explicitly the philosophy that he is defending, though that may be an overinterpretation.
See my otherposts for a brief (maybe not so brief) discussion on a valid theistic philosophy of science -- in fact, the philosophy which arguably developed the scientific method.
Study the evidence of evolution yourself, not just the arguments. Evolution is extremely good at explaining many natural phenomenon, in the same way that Newton's theories were extremely good at explaining natural phenomenon. Neither did so perfectly at the extremities, but did so along the observable ranges of the time. Already the theory of a smooth evolution has given way to a theory of faster mutations...
Maybe you missed the bit where I said I've no problem with evolution? =) It is a well-considered opinion; I very nearly went into biology.
Again, I feel it's quite valid for me to write about evolutionary dogma while holding no objection to evolution itself. The party line in this debacle is that evolution/abiogenesis are unchallenged science -- yet, as you say, the model is still under development. Even Gould writes, "What good is half a jaw or half a wing?" (No surprise that he originated punctuated equilibrium.) So, I think it's valid to point out this double standard in the public sphere, particularly in the classroom. Other posters have written that any good biology teacher will cover the flaws in evolution; I agree, but I know it often doesn't happen. And it certainly does not happen in the popular press.
Then, when people overstate the case for evolution and then use that to challenge Christians, it gets a little silly. And so I point that out also.
As for the Miller experiments you quote, that is a case in point. Those experiments are a dead end, despite many decades of tweaking as well as constantly shifting notions on what the prebiotic soup was composed of. They are still quoted dogmatically, even though coacervation and RNA-world models have gotten much farther... and even those models are still far from producing sustainable replication. Again, I have no objection to the notion that a viable model of abiogenesis can arise, but it is sheer dogma to assert (and it has been!) that it is settled science.
Paul Davies has a fascinating article in New Scientist (subscription site, sorry) that speculates about entirely new laws for governing complexity, noting that the threshold where these laws emerge is the same complexity threshold that abiogenesis experiments are stuck trying to get past -- macromolecules larger than 60 units (of whatever, amino acids or nucleotides). Again, like panspermia, this is quite an admission of faith.
Yet, this admission was published in the popular press -- am I contradicting myself? Hardly; the press contradicts itself. That very magazine has breathlessly condemned any questioning of evolution, while publishing articles inconsistent with that position.
Not to be too explicit here, but the world is not flat, it is not 7,000 years old, Adam and Eve did not frolic with the dinosaurs.
Many hold evolution as dogma just as strongly as any religious belief. No dissent is permitted -- at least, not on the public stage.
This is obviously not true. There have been major public debates about evolution over the decades. (The Dawkins/Gould spat is a good example).
Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. I was referring more to the "party line" -- or perhaps the "battle line." One example I forgot to mention in the original post was this: even though evolution and abiogenesis are proclaimed as scientifically settled fact, plenty of respected research goes on to actually make this so -- such as this article in New Scientist (subscription site, sorry; and yes, I subscribe). Here we have Paul Davies himself writing enthusiastically about the possibility of discovering new natural laws to govern complexity, and one of this arguments is that the threshold where these laws might suddenly pop into effect coincides perfectly with the point where abiogenesis research is currently stuck trying to produce useful macromolecules through chance and selection.
This, I find, is a glaring double standard. (I also find it an amusing statement of faith. =)
I wrote about how Christians need to lay down their arms in this fight, but there are people playing dirty on both sides.
Evolution is not a weapon against Christianity.
Blink, blink. Umm. Since you are probably not Christian, I think you'll have to take my word for it. In the experience of myself, most of the Christians I know, most of the Christans I know of, and all of the Christians I teach, evolution has been used as an explicit challenge and as peer or superior pressure (of the "you must be an idiot" variety).
Surprise on them to hear that I have no problem with evolution -- although I don't mind critiquing its dogmatic adherents when they cross the line of overstating the case. (Granted, this happens much more with abiogenesis than evolution.)
I also regularly encounter people who tell me that evolution disproves religion, and then proceed to butcher the evidence for evolution -- I have some entertaining stories -- which often indicates that they are really more interested in evolution as an excuse rather than as science.
It the the other way around - religions are choosing evolution as a battleground against science.
It's interesting that the debate has been cast this way. As far as I can tell, the only thing the ID camp objects to is evolution/abiogenesis. What other science are they battling?
(Granted, the redefinition of "science" by the Kansas board is vicious stupidity.)
Science doesn't need to conflict with the Bible. It conflicts with itself enough - there are so many contradicting passages in the bible that to call it 'truth' is to misuse the word.
A common misconception, but this is getting offtopic. Short answer: the majority of "contradictions" trivially disappear in context; many more are resolved by cultural and historical data; and the difficulties that remain have steadily declined in number over time. So, it doesn't bother me. Yes, there is some faith involved here, but it is similar to the faith in a scientific model with difficulties that steadily decline in number over time.
As for truth, you may discover at some point that your own definition is somewhat more cultural than you realize. But that's way offtopic; feel welcome to continue this offline if you like.
Did you know that St. Thomas of Aquinas' greatest achievement was to demonstrate that Aristotelian principles were consistent with the Church's theology? Otherwise the Church would have branded Aristotle's teachings as heresy.
You're completely correct. I was trying for brevity, but I probably should've been more clear.
Speaking generally, the Greek civilization achieved astounding advances in science and mathematics -- all of your quoted examples are right on the mark. Plato, however, was the thinker who went on to have the greatest influence on Western thought throughout antiquity, up to the 13th century when Aristotle's works were rediscovered -- but more on that in a second.
Plato divided the world into Matter and Form, raw material ordered by rational ideas. Now, that certainly sounds scientific! But the funny thing is, Platonism denies that. In his philosophy, the world of ideal forms is superior to and in fact more real than the visible world of Matter -- this is the point of his famous shadow-puppet allegory. Matter is an inferior kind of stuff that, while ordered by Form, is never completely obedient. In Platonism, Matter is the source of chaos and irrationality, and the creator who set down the Forms was never able to completely restrain it.
As a result, intellectual inquiry into Form is an exalted pursuit (familiar today as mathematical platonism), while experimental inquiry into Matter is never quite reliable. This dualism was absorbed fully into the thinking of Augustine, and thereby became quite unchallenged for ten centuries.
The resurfacing of Aristotle's works was quite a turning point in Western thought and almost missed bringing about the Renaissance (it was 150 years too early; the 13th century might have been the Renaissance but for the Plague). It reached its fruition in Aquinas's mold, however. Aristotle did advocate investigation of the natural world, but his method was not entirely scientific; he posited Four Causes, three of which are empirical -- "material" (substance), "formal" (structure), "efficient" (forces) -- but the fourth and by far the most important was "telos" or purpose.
Aristotelian purpose was arbitrary, however. For example, the "purpose" of a seed is to achieve its ideal form of a zucchini. Aquinas reoriented this concept to a proper understanding of God as creator: the purpose of anything is ultimately the obedience of God. Humans with free will have difficulty with that, but matter has no such problems. Thus comes -- at least on the stage of pre-Renaisssance Europe -- the critical step of confining natural investigation within the scope of natural law.
Ironic, given the present discussion (which is why I brought it up to begin with).
Science on the other had, is not dependant upon faith. 2+2=4 is axiomatically true regardless of one's religious beliefs, or lack thereof.
This wasn't my point. I am saying that Christian theology motivated the development of rational inquiry into natural laws.
It's important to understand that the very concept of rational inquiry is something that had to be invented and is not inherent in the human brain. It reaches its familiar modern form as, well, Modernism, but there are billions of pre-Modern people living in the world today for whom this viewpoint is deeply foreign. Scientific inquiry occurs infrequently in primitive cultures, which is one reason they are able to remain primitive despite the world's progress.
I fail to see a connection between the two statements actually. Theology is something you choose to believe in. The decision to believe or not believe is based on faith.
True. But that does not mean theology is relative. It is either true or it's not, provability notwithstanding. I regard theology as axiomatically true. Obviously we disagree on our axioms -- so might anyone! =) But I do not relegate my religion to a fluffy realm of fairy-tale choice. If it were so flimsy, it would not deserve my belief.
As we see more and understand more of how our world works, that means (logically) that god is less and less powerful.
As others have pointed out, this does not logically follow. But the reason is because it depends on what "god" you're referring to.
Your conclusion is perfectly correct when it comes to most polytheistic belief systems, particularly ancient ones -- they were born out of a desire to explain natural phenomena.
The Bible speaks very little of natural phenomena, and much of it is poetic. Christianity's purpose is altogether different: it is a communication from God to us about the human condition, its infinite incompatibility with a perfect God... and the infinite hotfix he deployed to restore us.
As I mentioned in another post, the scientific method itself is an outgrowth of the Christian concept of a universe that's orderly and obeys laws created by God -- and therefore can be rationally investigated by humans. This may seem obvious to us but it was a monumental development in the history of Western science. It contradicted prevailing notions rooted in Platonism, and was driven by the devout faith of the early scientists like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton...
Science adds to our appreciation of God's power. This is not well understood by many of these Christian activists.
Ooh, nice flame. I'll bite. This may be fun. Even if you're trolling, I hope you don't mind if I soapbox a bit.
Why should there be any mention of God in society, other than in churches and other specifically religious forums?
Because in most democracies, there is some notion of free speech. Are you proposing, perhaps, that I should not be permitted to mention God anywhere except within special ghettoes where it is allowed?
On the contrary, if I think something is true, I will state it as a fact. I will tell people in no uncertain terms that homeopathy is a crock. I will also tell people in no uncertain terms that God is not only real but intellectually valid. And you know what? No one has to believe me. That's how the system works.
ObTopic: And that's how ID proponents should go about making their views heard -- by free speech, not legal coercion. Yet by the same token, those who wish to use evolution to attack Christianity should similarly refrain from preaching in class (which has happened to me and many others).
But it's interesting, isn't it, that when a Christian makes a moral statement on some issue, it's considered preaching at best and illegal at worst. Yet when Chris Rock makes a moral statement on the same issue in the same setting, it's "social commentary."
Why should my children be exposed to mediaeval superstitions, if I don't want them to?
Why should my children be exposed to modern superstitions?
Our children will be exposed to plenty of superstitions. My current pet peeve is the execrable popularity of homeopathy, which does real damage when people reject "Western medicine" and then proceed to die from treatable diseases. Again, somehow I don't think you are really advocating that suppression rather than education is the correct way to equip children to deal with the volumes of poor reasoning and bad information that have always existed -- and which is today available to any child who knows how to type the word "Google."
And that's why I teach my students (and later, my children) to identify the assumptions behind what appear to be neutral and objective statements.
For example, I suspect you would agree that a proposition is true only if it is either basic to knowledge (such as logic) or founded on evidence in accordance with that basis. Rationalism in a nutshell, as it were. Yet the interesting thing is that this definition of "true" does not rise to its own standards -- it is very purely a philosophical assumption.
And that means your following proposition about "the truth:"
It's not like the real things in the world, like business, education, health, etc, can't get along fine without poisonous religious fairy-tales being paraded around like "the truth".
...is actually a religious statement. =)
In fact, considering how much damage is done by religion,
You have that right. Throughout history, religion provided a great excuse for nasty people to do nasty things, who might otherwise have needed to invent other excuses. This doesn't change the fact that the rise of the first atheistic -- i.e. morally "neutral" -- governments in the 20th century led to around 75 million deaths in the name of the "greater good," an order of magnitude beyond all religious conflicts combined.
I'd say it would be a massive improvement if it disappeared completely.
Many have thought so. Research shows otherwise. This guy set out to write, in his words, "a defense of secular humanism and ethical relativism" and ended up writing the opposite book after finding that religion correlates with lower rates of crime, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and family breakdown. He concludes, "Contrary to the expectations of the Enlightenment, freeing individuals from the shackles of religion does not result in their moral uplift." Keep in mind that this author is still an athei
You can have all of the material critial of evolution you want in any biology class anywhere in the United States.
Preface: Yes, I am a Christian, and no, I don't have any problem with evolution.
That said, your statement is idealistic. Many hold evolution as dogma just as strongly as any religious belief. No dissent is permitted -- at least, not on the public stage. That is the part that I object to. This is not just shortsighted Christians pushing an agenda on poor, neutral science. This is a clash of agendas that are equally partisan.
Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin writes:
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation for the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes... Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
Not to say that Lewontin speaks for the scientific community, but he is certainly being honest about motives that many are unwilling to state outright. And I would argue that such dogma impedes the study of science very nearly as much as any religious dogma. On both sides of the debacle, there are those who will not lay down arms.
Why is deprecated evidence for evolution spoon-fed to children alongside real, valid results? Why do we tolerate this? (Granted, we are finally starting to fix this one.)
When honestquestioners (Christians or not!) raise valid issues, they are not answered but instead accused of being creationists. Why do we tolerate this?
In my high school physics class my teacher read aloud Bertrand Russell's essay, Why I am not a Christian. Why do we tolerate this?
Yet, for all the public grandstanding, where do things stand in the privacy of the research lab? Taking the origin of life, for example, all that the state of the art has to offer me are a multitude of wishfully speculative models, none complete and all vying for supremacy and grant money. Again, let me restate that as a Christian, I find no problem with the hope that a workable model may arise. In fact, I hope we find it! But it is dishonest in the extreme to claim that evolution has explained the origin of life when even Francis Crick gave up and threw in with the panspermia faction -- and if that's not faith I don't know what is.
Yet -- and yes, this happens regularly -- only ridicule meets anyone who has the temerity to wonder where all the good data is, and why we don't just go and build a cell and be done with it.
See, here's the thing. Nearly all of my students say that they are explicitly taught, or are pressured to accept (there's that ridicule thing again), that evolution contradicts religion -- and since evolution has been proven over and over again to be correct, religion must be incorrect. This is hardly separation of church and state, now is it? Consider, if evolution were not the favorite weapon against Christianity, there might be much less of this mouth-frothing resistance to it.
There is no conflict between the Bible and science. Truth cannot contradict truth.
As a Christian, I'd like to apologize for this new addition to the list of the many ways Christianity has wronged the world.
I am also a Christian, and I second this, with the exception of your terminology. None of the mistakes you list are caused by Christianity but by the church.
The difference is important, because there are no human institutions that are perfect. The church is no exception, and Jesus said as much ("it is not the healthy who need a doctor").
Generally speaking, it's no problem for a Christian to accept evolution. Even if some hold that there is a theological conflict (which I do not), it isn't a conflict that interferes with the central message of Christianity: that God created the universe, humans screwed up, and God fixed it -- not metaphorically, but historically in a cataclysmic act of generosity.
This whole "religion vs. science" debacle is a terrible shame. The dichotomy only exists for people who want it to exist -- not just the Christians engaging in wrongful coercion, but also those who hold tightly to evolution as a (fallacious) weapon against Christianity.
In truth, there is no conflict. Modern Western science owes its existence to Christian epistemology. The Platonism prevalent throughout the middle ages explicitly denied the possibility of a "scientific method." It was devout believers like Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler who shook off the pervasive Greek influence and took to heart the notion that a rational God would make a world that can be rationally understood. Today we take that notion for granted, but it's arguably the most important development in all of science.
...so that this sort of obscene wealth could be spent in a way that is democratically accountable...
Ooh, look, an idealist!
Democratic accountability is overrated. The US, as an entity, has pledged -- has actually committed -- about 1-2% of its GNP to foreign aid. Which doesn't sound like a huge number, but hey, it's a democracy. The funny thing is, it annually delivers around 0.05-0.10% instead. The rest simply doesn't get paid.
(BTW, these figures are very approximate, based on a statement I heard in class last year plus 5 minutes of Googling just now.)
Compaq Smart Array 5300 family uses a battery to accomplish this very thing. They advertise it too.
An AC already responded to this, but just for kicks I decided to look up the Smart Array 5300, knowing exactly what I would find.
First, these are controllers, not disks. Second, they do indeed have a battery, as they well should -- it's used for their nonvolatile cache, which keeps your data nice and safe in RAM while the power goes out. It is absolutely not used to flush the cache by running the disks on battery. This is a PCI card, fer crying out loud. There isn't even a physical power cable between it and the disks you seem to think it's powering!
Perhaps you didn't notice that I had already written:
Or use NVRAM for the cache, which is what good RAID controllers do.
I also don't understand why you say that [m]any drives have such a small on-disk cache that a few capacitors have enough power to flush the cache when I am specifically talking about those drives which do have a large cache. And which could take up to, oh, maybe a minute to completely flush out 8 megabytes of small, random writes.
But even in your case, please cite exactly how small a cache would have to be, and how large those capacitors would have to be, to guarantee a complete flush at power failure. I'm asking genuinely, since I don't know enough about such ancient beasts, except possibly that drives run around 8-12 watts when actively seeking around the platter.
Hogwash. Disks that have such a cache have no command that tells them to actually flush their cache. They simply flush the cache whenever convenient or when power supply is lost to the disk.
Hogwash. The [S]ATA spec allows the disk cache to be enabled or disabled by the user at any time. Disabling the cache cannot return "success" until there are no writes outstanding to the disk. A flush is a disable/enable sequence.
And no disk is able to flush a full cache of writes in the minuscule window available to it after a power failure. We're talking a few dozen milliseconds at best. It is not part of the spec, nor would any manufacturer be stupid enough to offer such a feature. Do you have any idea how long it would take to flush out even a megabyte of small random writes? You'd have to slap a battery on the disk, and a 12V battery at that. Or use NVRAM for the cache, which is what good RAID controllers do.
1. It goes into the OS filesystem cache. After 5 seconds the modified data gets flushed to the disk (sometimes set to 30 sec).
That's if the OS is completely unloaded. Sure, maybe after 5 seconds it becomes eligible to flush, and will wait in line right behind anyone else whose turn came up. Is the wait likely to be very long? No. Can it be very long? Bet your data.
2. It is written to the hard drive. Here, it sits in the hard drive controller's on-board cache until the head arrives at the write point, which is a fraction of a second.
That's if the disk is completely unloaded. Modern disk firmware is extremely intelligent about ordering, but they optimize for performance and do not care very much about getting your data out of cache right away. Using NCQ we have observed write latencies on the order of ten seconds. It could probably get even higher, but we'd force a flush rather than letting it get away with that.
Allow me to answer. Anyone that spends a year deliberately and repeatedly performing an action designed to damage themselves in any way would likely have a serious psychological problem beyond anything TMS-related.
You're missing the point, though I appreciate the humor. This is a hypothetical situation. When one proposes a hypothetical situation, you do not say, "That couldn't happen!" Of course not; that's why it's hypothetical. For the purpose of argument, the hypothesis is temporarily considered to be true. An example, "If Bush were not president, then..." Another example, "Suppose I had a unicorn..."
So, let's go back. My point was this:
(A) It is possible, in the artificial and contrived manner that I proposed, to physically damage my tendons and nerves in a way that leads to classic RSI. This disproves the claim that all RSI is TMS.
(B) Given point A, it is highly plausible that at least some cases of RSI are caused by accidentally mimicking the hypothetical actions. You may assert that typing doesn't do that; fine. I will not say what actions do or don't cause damage, but I will only assert that some actions provably must (by point A) cause damage, and therefore it's highly plausible that some set of people in the world unknowingly perform some of those actions some of the time, and some of them develop true RSI. Therefore, advising them that they instead have TMS is hurtful advice, not helpful advice.
I encourage you to actually read one of Dr. Sarno's books rather than the slanted summaries you've been exposed to thus far. It just might help you out.
I might actually do that, although I should point out that all of the summaries I've read are from John Sarno's proponents. Do you still wish to call them slanted? Because I won't challenge that claim if you make it. =)
And I don't need to be helped. As I said, I don't even qualify as a TMS case given Dr. Sarno's own diagnostic self-test. Accordingly, I have been completely cured of RSI after a trivial and commonsense chair adjustment.
Or just reading a book and not worrying about the bogus idea of "ergonomics." And yes, I'm basically saying your dad is profiting off of peoples' psychosomatic syndromes and not really helping them (in the case of "RSI" anyhow).
Sorry, I appreciate your desire to spread the word about something that's helped you out, but the parent page to the document you linked has it right:
Many RSI cases are curable by John Sarno's psychosomatic approach.
And many are not.
You are doing a major disservice to those who have a physical case of RSI. You cannot logically, statistically, or empirically defend the claim that every single case of RSI on Earth is psychosomatic.
The other respondent to your post spoke in detail about nerve damage and that it's quite easy to measure it (when it does indeed exist).
Instead I'll take another tack. We agree -- you were cured by Dr. Sarno. Now, your story should be held up against mine. I had RSI. I know this because I was an exact match to the classic RSI symptoms. Yet the diagnosis was very simple: tendonitis and carpal tunnel, caused by weakened wrists from a childhood injury. One month of light exercises (squeezing a ball) and a 4" adjustment to my office chair had me cured rapidly and completely.
There is a diagnostic quiz on the Harvard page, presumably from Sarno's book. I do not pass that quiz, so I do not have "TMS" (readers: this is Sarno's name for psychosomatic RSI). Yet I did have RSI. That is because, you see, they are sometimes different.
Let me ask you a question. If I spent a year deliberately and repeatedly performing actions designed to damage my median nerve, would you claim that my resulting pain would be purely psychological?
Trouble is, every application from 'cat' to 'Matlab R14' today is equipped to do it that way, and ONLY that way.
There's no reason the string "/home/foo/mp3/titles/mahnamahna.mp3" could not be interpreted by the filesystem as a string of tags, so long as it resolves to a unique file.
The string "/tmp/archive/artists/henson/mahnamahna.mp3" could resolve to exactly the same physical file, and the legacy application would be none the wiser.
What the legacy application would be unable to process is the query "artists+simon-garfunkel". If it did, it would show you a "directory" containing the files you asked for.
Of course, this isn't perfect. If the application asked for "/" it might get the whole world, which is clearly not correct -- except when you do, in fact, want the whole world. I'm sure someone will have (or has already had) some clever solution though.
Of course a dbfs will generate little inconvenient quirks all its own. Maybe I'll hate them once they become available. But who knows?
Heirarchies are good for simplfiying multiuser access control.
The DB model subsumes this functionality in many ways, I think. If every file I create is tagged with my username, this seems pretty similar to giving me a "home directory" which, purely incidentally, tends to be named using one's username.
Groups can be handled the same way. And hey look, now a file can be shared between two groups.
And what about network filesystems? How do you handle namespace collisions?
As I said in the other post, my brief description isn't meant to be a design. It's a wishlist. And these kinds of objections are irrelevant to my reasons for wanting the wishlist. They are quite relevant to the practicality and adoption of the wishlist, which is not unimportant but is a different topic.
That said, how are namespace collisions handled today? Mainly by glomming extra identifiers onto each object, no? I don't have collisions with my server's filesystem because everything the mount point acts as the namespace uniquifier. I don't see this being any different in a dbfs.
But files are shared between applications - how does this handle dependencies?
Clearly, my two-line description won't address all the nuances that surface when you work out the full design of any large system.
But dependency is just another kind of metadata. (Except that today it's not metadata, it's just luck, and is one of my biggest peeves in both Linux and Windows). One solution might be to allow some types of tags to act like hardlinks, in that the file doesn't get deleted until it has no more hard references.
An application-owned shared library (like libgimp.so) should have only "gimp" as its default hardlink. Another application that wants to use it can add its own hardlink. The library would live until both applications are uninstalled.
On the other hand, a system-owned library like libz.so would have a stable identity of its own (like, say, "libz") that persists even after its clients get uninstalled.
Well, what I want to know is: How do I get to this metadata? Some extra tool? Some right-click option that I have to select every time I create a file?
Anytime you save a file today, you're already manually specifying several pieces of metadata: the filename and the location.
Anytime you access a file today, you're already manually specifying that metadata also.
Consider how many clicks it takes to (graphically) navigate to a file from the root directory. That is exactly the number of metadata labels that you yourself supplied for that unique file's creation.
So, the obvious generalization of this is to get rid of the hierarchy concept entirely. Then, as an earlier poster described, I can naturally tag my music by artist and by genre, instead of using symlinks to cut across trees.
More practically, it would allow applications to install themselves using a unique tag, so that uninstalling (or moving, or archiving) the application requires just one query on just one tag, and is guaranteed to turn up any associated file regardless of its "location."
odds are... you'll take more than one career zig or zag in your lifetime
The odds are, in fact, 9 out of 10. At least in the USA.
For this reason alone, I strongly and persistently encourage my students to take an education that grants them lifetime skills in learning, thinking, and communication.
Here's another statistic: in 1982, a poll was conducted among the Yale class of 1957 (25 years after graduation). Two-thirds of them were employed in jobs that did not exist in 1957.
Or, put another way, job skills become obsolete nearly as fast as CPUs and video cards.
I disagree with you. College should prepare you for a job.... [I]f you aren't preparing for a job, why go to college? There are "jobs" out there for people who aren't educated ("You want fries with that?") and then there are jobs for people that are educated.
The fallacy is confusing "job training" with "education." As many posters have already pointed out, "education" is gaining the ability to think and analyze anything, to write and communicate anything, and to independently learn anything.
Job training is not less important, but it is secondary to education.
A graduate who focuses on job training will find it easier to land a job and will be immediately more productive than a graduate who focuses on liberal arts. But after six months, who's more productive? After a year, who gets a raise? After five years, who gets the promotion? The one who learns the job faster.
After your first job, the college on your resume counts for pretty much nothing. Again echoing other posters, many college students tragically believe they're training for a career when they're only training for only the first job. They are being ripped off.
So yes, I would say that KU students should be "kind of PO-ed" for paying $80,000 if all they get is job training.
That said, I'm not familiar with KU's program. Maybe you're getting a formal classical education alongside your co-op job training. My experience as both an engineer and a teacher strongly argues that this is a powerful combination.
For the record, the 60GXP's had pretty horrid failure rates too.
Yup, yup. I lost a 75GXP and two 60GXPs (all purchased before I'd heard about the problems).
However, the recent drives, particularly the 400GB SATA, are worth a look. I posted in an earlier thread about this. Should've read further before writing that...
> Too bad it's Deskstar. "Now lose more data than ever!"
I was burned by three Deskstars, when they were produced by IBM. However, the new drives are not as bad. My company makes storage hardware, and we use these. Drives go through a months-long qualification before we decide a model is worth shipping.
The original Hitachi 250GB drives were pretty good.
The Hitachi 400GB drives are extraordinarily good. Our failure rates on these drives are the lowest we've seen among all capacities and manufacturers. It turns out that the 400GB SATA drive is internally identical to their top-end 400GB SCSI/Fibre-channel units (including, I think, the high-quality actuators that are usually reserved for FC drives). This is not true for their other models. This is the drive to get.
The jury is still out on the new 500GB drives.
The refresh of the 250GB line, however, is stinking awful. The platters are even denser than the 500GB drives (so they can use fewer platters) and lose data even under minimal server workloads. Do not get these.
Yup, that something is called "life." Cancerous mutations occur all the time as a result of DNA copying mistakes during cell replication. Our immune systems catch most of these before they become disease. This is why people with immune suppression (AIDS patients, organ donor recipients) get a LOT of cancer.
Carcinogens cause DNA damage at a much higher rate than the body can cope with. But even without carcinogens, everybody will get cancer sooner or later unless they die of something else. It's a probability game -- one which earlier cultures didn't have to deal with because their life expectancy was too low.
Everything we consume can give us cancer, all the veggies and fruits have pesticides
This is true too, but not for the reasons you think. Plants have been producing their own, natural pesticides long before we thought of spraying them with our own. It's not like they want to be eaten by bugs either. There are 10,000 known natural pesticides, which makes all-natural vegetables the highest concentration of carcinogens that most people regularly consume.
Why don't we get cancer from vegatables? Because they have nutrients whose benefit exceeds the risk of eating these hostile plants.
Doctors and scientists are so quick to point at ketosis as a dangerous thing... But, is ketosis dangerous? Has there been a single case of someone being hospitalized or killed by excessive ketones in the blood?
Thank you for your learned discourse on ketones. You sure showed those "doctors and scientists." Your common-sense approach is so much easier to understand than their high-and-mighty "scientific method" and "evidence-based" attitude.
Oh, incidentally, most people who have Type I diabetes discover it when, one day, they are rushed to the hospital after turning blue and collapsing from ketoacidosis.
Slashdot Mirror
Your post has a bunch of interesting points. Let me see if I can sort it all out, and apologies if I've misunderstood anything. Apologies also for the length of this post; I did not have time to make it shorter.
... Science *is* about the factual view of the world, and anything inconsistent with the scientific view is deemed, duh, inconsistent and therefore most probably wrong. Biblical literalism ... presents such a blatantly naive and anti-scientific view of the world... There is no chance in hell that a literal view of the bible ... can be made consistent with everything we know about physics, chemistry and biology.
... As biblical literalism doesn't seem to share
The problem is not that scientist conflicts with religion as a spiritual view of the world, but that it conflicts heavily with religion as a factual view of the world.
Fundamentally, it sounds like you're espousing an epistemology founded on consistency.
You seem to be saying that a proposition is true if it is consistent with the existing body of scientifically acquired knowledge. (This is my inference because you don't actually define this clearly; at one point you say "the scientific/factual view," at another, "everything we know," and third, "how we know stuff works.") But if the body of knowledge is what justifies new propositions, what justifies the existing propositions?
There are two solutions to this. The first is coherentism, which states, roughly, that propositions are justified by the collective of all other propositions together. The drawback of coherentism is that there is no formally valid way to associate the coherent system with the physical world (a system can be coherent but false) -- and you do seem to emphasize a factual correspondence with the world.
The second is by reduction; if the body of knowledge is built incrementally by adding consistent statements, then we can remove statements until we arrive at first principles that require no justification, such as logic and perception. Rationalism and empiricism fall into this category.
In both cases, religion has no inherent inconsistency with science. In the coherentist view, it is quite consistent to add the axiom "God exists," and once that is established, miraculous events are consistent also. In the rationalist/empiricist view, there's also no problem using "God exists" as an a priori first principle, and again miracles become consistent.
This is a roundabout way of saying that you've accidentally made a common circular argument: miracles are impossible because they're impossible. There is no logical conflict with natural law to say that an entity outside of the universe can occasionally interfere with it in a way not governed by the universe's laws. That entity does not even have to be as powerful as God; any sufficiently clever extrauniversal being will do. Divine intervention is preposterous only if you have philosophically, not scientifically, decided that it's preposterous. Under your terminology, that stance might be called "naive" as well.
You will notice also that this analysis does treat religious truth as a factual view of the world. I have little regard for the notion that religious truth is some kind of fuzzy non-fact that is "subjectively true." You do talk about truth and falsity, so I presume you agree that "subjective truth" is a postmodern fantasy. So, just to be clear, you're absolutely welcome to argue that my religion (and the miracles it records) is factually right or wrong; but I have no present interest in any arguments along the lines of "what you believe makes it true for you." If Christianity were so flimsy, I would discard it without your help. =)
It is important to note here that in the absence of truth, science does not lapse into faith, but lapses into the quest for consistency.
It's also dishonest to claim that evolution even claims to explain the origin of life. It's never made such a claim. It only claims to explain the origin of species.
Yes, in writing today's responses I regret my initial decision to capitulate to the common shorthand of naming evolution and abiogenesis together (my fault for writing late at night).
If it wasn't obvious, my stance is that the evidence for evolution is quite good and the evidence for abiogenesis is very much a work-in-progress. Yet my main point stands; evolution and abiogenesis are very often elevated beyond science into dogma, and I have heard exaggerated truth claims for both.
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Dum de dum.
That's not fundamentalism, that's inherent in the nature of science. Natural causes are those which can be theorized about, tested, get results back from, etc.
I see your point. I'm not sure that's exactly what Lewontin is talking about, though. In fact, he seems to be making the opposite point: that the scientific method does not inherently imply materialism, but that materialism is a distinguishable underlying philosophy. I would say that it is explicitly the philosophy that he is defending, though that may be an overinterpretation.
See my other posts for a brief (maybe not so brief) discussion on a valid theistic philosophy of science -- in fact, the philosophy which arguably developed the scientific method.
Study the evidence of evolution yourself, not just the arguments. Evolution is extremely good at explaining many natural phenomenon, in the same way that Newton's theories were extremely good at explaining natural phenomenon. Neither did so perfectly at the extremities, but did so along the observable ranges of the time. Already the theory of a smooth evolution has given way to a theory of faster mutations...
Maybe you missed the bit where I said I've no problem with evolution? =) It is a well-considered opinion; I very nearly went into biology.
Again, I feel it's quite valid for me to write about evolutionary dogma while holding no objection to evolution itself. The party line in this debacle is that evolution/abiogenesis are unchallenged science -- yet, as you say, the model is still under development. Even Gould writes, "What good is half a jaw or half a wing?" (No surprise that he originated punctuated equilibrium.) So, I think it's valid to point out this double standard in the public sphere, particularly in the classroom. Other posters have written that any good biology teacher will cover the flaws in evolution; I agree, but I know it often doesn't happen. And it certainly does not happen in the popular press.
Then, when people overstate the case for evolution and then use that to challenge Christians, it gets a little silly. And so I point that out also.
As for the Miller experiments you quote, that is a case in point. Those experiments are a dead end, despite many decades of tweaking as well as constantly shifting notions on what the prebiotic soup was composed of. They are still quoted dogmatically, even though coacervation and RNA-world models have gotten much farther... and even those models are still far from producing sustainable replication. Again, I have no objection to the notion that a viable model of abiogenesis can arise, but it is sheer dogma to assert (and it has been!) that it is settled science.
Paul Davies has a fascinating article in New Scientist (subscription site, sorry) that speculates about entirely new laws for governing complexity, noting that the threshold where these laws emerge is the same complexity threshold that abiogenesis experiments are stuck trying to get past -- macromolecules larger than 60 units (of whatever, amino acids or nucleotides). Again, like panspermia, this is quite an admission of faith.
Yet, this admission was published in the popular press -- am I contradicting myself? Hardly; the press contradicts itself. That very magazine has breathlessly condemned any questioning of evolution, while publishing articles inconsistent with that position.
Not to be too explicit here, but the world is not flat, it is not 7,000 years old, Adam and Eve did not frolic with the dinosaurs.
Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. I was referring more to the "party line" -- or perhaps the "battle line." One example I forgot to mention in the original post was this: even though evolution and abiogenesis are proclaimed as scientifically settled fact, plenty of respected research goes on to actually make this so -- such as this article in New Scientist (subscription site, sorry; and yes, I subscribe). Here we have Paul Davies himself writing enthusiastically about the possibility of discovering new natural laws to govern complexity, and one of this arguments is that the threshold where these laws might suddenly pop into effect coincides perfectly with the point where abiogenesis research is currently stuck trying to produce useful macromolecules through chance and selection.
This, I find, is a glaring double standard. (I also find it an amusing statement of faith. =)
I wrote about how Christians need to lay down their arms in this fight, but there are people playing dirty on both sides.
Evolution is not a weapon against Christianity.
Blink, blink. Umm. Since you are probably not Christian, I think you'll have to take my word for it. In the experience of myself, most of the Christians I know, most of the Christans I know of, and all of the Christians I teach, evolution has been used as an explicit challenge and as peer or superior pressure (of the "you must be an idiot" variety).
Surprise on them to hear that I have no problem with evolution -- although I don't mind critiquing its dogmatic adherents when they cross the line of overstating the case. (Granted, this happens much more with abiogenesis than evolution.)
I also regularly encounter people who tell me that evolution disproves religion, and then proceed to butcher the evidence for evolution -- I have some entertaining stories -- which often indicates that they are really more interested in evolution as an excuse rather than as science.
It the the other way around - religions are choosing evolution as a battleground against science.
It's interesting that the debate has been cast this way. As far as I can tell, the only thing the ID camp objects to is evolution/abiogenesis. What other science are they battling?
(Granted, the redefinition of "science" by the Kansas board is vicious stupidity.)
Science doesn't need to conflict with the Bible. It conflicts with itself enough - there are so many contradicting passages in the bible that to call it 'truth' is to misuse the word.
A common misconception, but this is getting offtopic. Short answer: the majority of "contradictions" trivially disappear in context; many more are resolved by cultural and historical data; and the difficulties that remain have steadily declined in number over time. So, it doesn't bother me. Yes, there is some faith involved here, but it is similar to the faith in a scientific model with difficulties that steadily decline in number over time.
As for truth, you may discover at some point that your own definition is somewhat more cultural than you realize. But that's way offtopic; feel welcome to continue this offline if you like.
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Dum de dum.
Did you know that St. Thomas of Aquinas' greatest achievement was to demonstrate that Aristotelian principles were consistent with the Church's theology? Otherwise the Church would have branded Aristotle's teachings as heresy.
You're completely correct. I was trying for brevity, but I probably should've been more clear.
Speaking generally, the Greek civilization achieved astounding advances in science and mathematics -- all of your quoted examples are right on the mark. Plato, however, was the thinker who went on to have the greatest influence on Western thought throughout antiquity, up to the 13th century when Aristotle's works were rediscovered -- but more on that in a second.
Plato divided the world into Matter and Form, raw material ordered by rational ideas. Now, that certainly sounds scientific! But the funny thing is, Platonism denies that. In his philosophy, the world of ideal forms is superior to and in fact more real than the visible world of Matter -- this is the point of his famous shadow-puppet allegory. Matter is an inferior kind of stuff that, while ordered by Form, is never completely obedient. In Platonism, Matter is the source of chaos and irrationality, and the creator who set down the Forms was never able to completely restrain it.
As a result, intellectual inquiry into Form is an exalted pursuit (familiar today as mathematical platonism), while experimental inquiry into Matter is never quite reliable. This dualism was absorbed fully into the thinking of Augustine, and thereby became quite unchallenged for ten centuries.
The resurfacing of Aristotle's works was quite a turning point in Western thought and almost missed bringing about the Renaissance (it was 150 years too early; the 13th century might have been the Renaissance but for the Plague). It reached its fruition in Aquinas's mold, however. Aristotle did advocate investigation of the natural world, but his method was not entirely scientific; he posited Four Causes, three of which are empirical -- "material" (substance), "formal" (structure), "efficient" (forces) -- but the fourth and by far the most important was "telos" or purpose.
Aristotelian purpose was arbitrary, however. For example, the "purpose" of a seed is to achieve its ideal form of a zucchini. Aquinas reoriented this concept to a proper understanding of God as creator: the purpose of anything is ultimately the obedience of God. Humans with free will have difficulty with that, but matter has no such problems. Thus comes -- at least on the stage of pre-Renaisssance Europe -- the critical step of confining natural investigation within the scope of natural law.
Ironic, given the present discussion (which is why I brought it up to begin with).
Science on the other had, is not dependant upon faith. 2+2=4 is axiomatically true regardless of one's religious beliefs, or lack thereof.
This wasn't my point. I am saying that Christian theology motivated the development of rational inquiry into natural laws.
It's important to understand that the very concept of rational inquiry is something that had to be invented and is not inherent in the human brain. It reaches its familiar modern form as, well, Modernism, but there are billions of pre-Modern people living in the world today for whom this viewpoint is deeply foreign. Scientific inquiry occurs infrequently in primitive cultures, which is one reason they are able to remain primitive despite the world's progress.
I fail to see a connection between the two statements actually. Theology is something you choose to believe in. The decision to believe or not believe is based on faith.
True. But that does not mean theology is relative. It is either true or it's not, provability notwithstanding. I regard theology as axiomatically true. Obviously we disagree on our axioms -- so might anyone! =) But I do not relegate my religion to a fluffy realm of fairy-tale choice. If it were so flimsy, it would not deserve my belief.
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Dum de dum.
As we see more and understand more of how our world works, that means (logically) that god is less and less powerful.
As others have pointed out, this does not logically follow. But the reason is because it depends on what "god" you're referring to.
Your conclusion is perfectly correct when it comes to most polytheistic belief systems, particularly ancient ones -- they were born out of a desire to explain natural phenomena.
The Bible speaks very little of natural phenomena, and much of it is poetic. Christianity's purpose is altogether different: it is a communication from God to us about the human condition, its infinite incompatibility with a perfect God... and the infinite hotfix he deployed to restore us.
As I mentioned in another post, the scientific method itself is an outgrowth of the Christian concept of a universe that's orderly and obeys laws created by God -- and therefore can be rationally investigated by humans. This may seem obvious to us but it was a monumental development in the history of Western science. It contradicted prevailing notions rooted in Platonism, and was driven by the devout faith of the early scientists like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton...
Science adds to our appreciation of God's power. This is not well understood by many of these Christian activists.
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Dum de dum.
Ooh, nice flame. I'll bite. This may be fun. Even if you're trolling, I hope you don't mind if I soapbox a bit.
Why should there be any mention of God in society, other than in churches and other specifically religious forums?
Because in most democracies, there is some notion of free speech. Are you proposing, perhaps, that I should not be permitted to mention God anywhere except within special ghettoes where it is allowed?
On the contrary, if I think something is true, I will state it as a fact. I will tell people in no uncertain terms that homeopathy is a crock. I will also tell people in no uncertain terms that God is not only real but intellectually valid. And you know what? No one has to believe me. That's how the system works.
ObTopic: And that's how ID proponents should go about making their views heard -- by free speech, not legal coercion. Yet by the same token, those who wish to use evolution to attack Christianity should similarly refrain from preaching in class (which has happened to me and many others).
But it's interesting, isn't it, that when a Christian makes a moral statement on some issue, it's considered preaching at best and illegal at worst. Yet when Chris Rock makes a moral statement on the same issue in the same setting, it's "social commentary."
Why should my children be exposed to mediaeval superstitions, if I don't want them to?
Why should my children be exposed to modern superstitions?
Our children will be exposed to plenty of superstitions. My current pet peeve is the execrable popularity of homeopathy, which does real damage when people reject "Western medicine" and then proceed to die from treatable diseases. Again, somehow I don't think you are really advocating that suppression rather than education is the correct way to equip children to deal with the volumes of poor reasoning and bad information that have always existed -- and which is today available to any child who knows how to type the word "Google."
And that's why I teach my students (and later, my children) to identify the assumptions behind what appear to be neutral and objective statements.
For example, I suspect you would agree that a proposition is true only if it is either basic to knowledge (such as logic) or founded on evidence in accordance with that basis. Rationalism in a nutshell, as it were. Yet the interesting thing is that this definition of "true" does not rise to its own standards -- it is very purely a philosophical assumption.
And that means your following proposition about "the truth:"
It's not like the real things in the world, like business, education, health, etc, can't get along fine without poisonous religious fairy-tales being paraded around like "the truth".
...is actually a religious statement. =)
In fact, considering how much damage is done by religion,
You have that right. Throughout history, religion provided a great excuse for nasty people to do nasty things, who might otherwise have needed to invent other excuses. This doesn't change the fact that the rise of the first atheistic -- i.e. morally "neutral" -- governments in the 20th century led to around 75 million deaths in the name of the "greater good," an order of magnitude beyond all religious conflicts combined.
I'd say it would be a massive improvement if it disappeared completely.
Many have thought so. Research shows otherwise. This guy set out to write, in his words, "a defense of secular humanism and ethical relativism" and ended up writing the opposite book after finding that religion correlates with lower rates of crime, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and family breakdown. He concludes, "Contrary to the expectations of the Enlightenment, freeing individuals from the shackles of religion does not result in their moral uplift." Keep in mind that this author is still an athei
Preface: Yes, I am a Christian, and no, I don't have any problem with evolution.
That said, your statement is idealistic. Many hold evolution as dogma just as strongly as any religious belief. No dissent is permitted -- at least, not on the public stage. That is the part that I object to. This is not just shortsighted Christians pushing an agenda on poor, neutral science. This is a clash of agendas that are equally partisan.
Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin writes:Not to say that Lewontin speaks for the scientific community, but he is certainly being honest about motives that many are unwilling to state outright. And I would argue that such dogma impedes the study of science very nearly as much as any religious dogma. On both sides of the debacle, there are those who will not lay down arms.
Yet, for all the public grandstanding, where do things stand in the privacy of the research lab? Taking the origin of life, for example, all that the state of the art has to offer me are a multitude of wishfully speculative models, none complete and all vying for supremacy and grant money. Again, let me restate that as a Christian, I find no problem with the hope that a workable model may arise. In fact, I hope we find it! But it is dishonest in the extreme to claim that evolution has explained the origin of life when even Francis Crick gave up and threw in with the panspermia faction -- and if that's not faith I don't know what is.
Yet -- and yes, this happens regularly -- only ridicule meets anyone who has the temerity to wonder where all the good data is, and why we don't just go and build a cell and be done with it.
See, here's the thing. Nearly all of my students say that they are explicitly taught, or are pressured to accept (there's that ridicule thing again), that evolution contradicts religion -- and since evolution has been proven over and over again to be correct, religion must be incorrect. This is hardly separation of church and state, now is it? Consider, if evolution were not the favorite weapon against Christianity, there might be much less of this mouth-frothing resistance to it.
There is no conflict between the Bible and science. Truth cannot contradict truth.
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Dum de dum.
As a Christian, I'd like to apologize for this new addition to the list of the many ways Christianity has wronged the world.
I am also a Christian, and I second this, with the exception of your terminology. None of the mistakes you list are caused by Christianity but by the church.
The difference is important, because there are no human institutions that are perfect. The church is no exception, and Jesus said as much ("it is not the healthy who need a doctor").
Generally speaking, it's no problem for a Christian to accept evolution. Even if some hold that there is a theological conflict (which I do not), it isn't a conflict that interferes with the central message of Christianity: that God created the universe, humans screwed up, and God fixed it -- not metaphorically, but historically in a cataclysmic act of generosity.
This whole "religion vs. science" debacle is a terrible shame. The dichotomy only exists for people who want it to exist -- not just the Christians engaging in wrongful coercion, but also those who hold tightly to evolution as a (fallacious) weapon against Christianity.
In truth, there is no conflict. Modern Western science owes its existence to Christian epistemology. The Platonism prevalent throughout the middle ages explicitly denied the possibility of a "scientific method." It was devout believers like Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler who shook off the pervasive Greek influence and took to heart the notion that a rational God would make a world that can be rationally understood. Today we take that notion for granted, but it's arguably the most important development in all of science.
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Dum de dum.
...so that this sort of obscene wealth could be spent in a way that is democratically accountable...
Ooh, look, an idealist!
Democratic accountability is overrated. The US, as an entity, has pledged -- has actually committed -- about 1-2% of its GNP to foreign aid. Which doesn't sound like a huge number, but hey, it's a democracy. The funny thing is, it annually delivers around 0.05-0.10% instead. The rest simply doesn't get paid.
(BTW, these figures are very approximate, based on a statement I heard in class last year plus 5 minutes of Googling just now.)
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Dum de dum.
Compaq Smart Array 5300 family uses a battery to accomplish this very thing. They advertise it too.
An AC already responded to this, but just for kicks I decided to look up the Smart Array 5300, knowing exactly what I would find.
First, these are controllers, not disks. Second, they do indeed have a battery, as they well should -- it's used for their nonvolatile cache, which keeps your data nice and safe in RAM while the power goes out. It is absolutely not used to flush the cache by running the disks on battery. This is a PCI card, fer crying out loud. There isn't even a physical power cable between it and the disks you seem to think it's powering!
Perhaps you didn't notice that I had already written:
Or use NVRAM for the cache, which is what good RAID controllers do.
I also don't understand why you say that [m]any drives have such a small on-disk cache that a few capacitors have enough power to flush the cache when I am specifically talking about those drives which do have a large cache. And which could take up to, oh, maybe a minute to completely flush out 8 megabytes of small, random writes.
But even in your case, please cite exactly how small a cache would have to be, and how large those capacitors would have to be, to guarantee a complete flush at power failure. I'm asking genuinely, since I don't know enough about such ancient beasts, except possibly that drives run around 8-12 watts when actively seeking around the platter.
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Dum de dum.
Hogwash. Disks that have such a cache have no command that tells them to actually flush their cache. They simply flush the cache whenever convenient or when power supply is lost to the disk.
Hogwash. The [S]ATA spec allows the disk cache to be enabled or disabled by the user at any time. Disabling the cache cannot return "success" until there are no writes outstanding to the disk. A flush is a disable/enable sequence.
And no disk is able to flush a full cache of writes in the minuscule window available to it after a power failure. We're talking a few dozen milliseconds at best. It is not part of the spec, nor would any manufacturer be stupid enough to offer such a feature. Do you have any idea how long it would take to flush out even a megabyte of small random writes? You'd have to slap a battery on the disk, and a 12V battery at that. Or use NVRAM for the cache, which is what good RAID controllers do.
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Dum de dum.
Close, but still no cigar.
1. It goes into the OS filesystem cache. After 5 seconds the modified data gets flushed to the disk (sometimes set to 30 sec).
That's if the OS is completely unloaded. Sure, maybe after 5 seconds it becomes eligible to flush, and will wait in line right behind anyone else whose turn came up. Is the wait likely to be very long? No. Can it be very long? Bet your data.
2. It is written to the hard drive. Here, it sits in the hard drive controller's on-board cache until the head arrives at the write point, which is a fraction of a second.
That's if the disk is completely unloaded. Modern disk firmware is extremely intelligent about ordering, but they optimize for performance and do not care very much about getting your data out of cache right away. Using NCQ we have observed write latencies on the order of ten seconds. It could probably get even higher, but we'd force a flush rather than letting it get away with that.
3. It is written to disk.
Yup.
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Dum de dum.
Allow me to answer. Anyone that spends a year deliberately and repeatedly performing an action designed to damage themselves in any way would likely have a serious psychological problem beyond anything TMS-related.
You're missing the point, though I appreciate the humor. This is a hypothetical situation. When one proposes a hypothetical situation, you do not say, "That couldn't happen!" Of course not; that's why it's hypothetical. For the purpose of argument, the hypothesis is temporarily considered to be true. An example, "If Bush were not president, then..." Another example, "Suppose I had a unicorn..."
So, let's go back. My point was this:
(A) It is possible, in the artificial and contrived manner that I proposed, to physically damage my tendons and nerves in a way that leads to classic RSI. This disproves the claim that all RSI is TMS.
(B) Given point A, it is highly plausible that at least some cases of RSI are caused by accidentally mimicking the hypothetical actions. You may assert that typing doesn't do that; fine. I will not say what actions do or don't cause damage, but I will only assert that some actions provably must (by point A) cause damage, and therefore it's highly plausible that some set of people in the world unknowingly perform some of those actions some of the time, and some of them develop true RSI. Therefore, advising them that they instead have TMS is hurtful advice, not helpful advice.
I encourage you to actually read one of Dr. Sarno's books rather than the slanted summaries you've been exposed to thus far. It just might help you out.
I might actually do that, although I should point out that all of the summaries I've read are from John Sarno's proponents. Do you still wish to call them slanted? Because I won't challenge that claim if you make it. =)
And I don't need to be helped. As I said, I don't even qualify as a TMS case given Dr. Sarno's own diagnostic self-test. Accordingly, I have been completely cured of RSI after a trivial and commonsense chair adjustment.
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Dum de dum.
Sorry, I appreciate your desire to spread the word about something that's helped you out, but the parent page to the document you linked has it right:
- Many RSI cases are curable by John Sarno's psychosomatic approach.
- And many are not.
You are doing a major disservice to those who have a physical case of RSI. You cannot logically, statistically, or empirically defend the claim that every single case of RSI on Earth is psychosomatic.The other respondent to your post spoke in detail about nerve damage and that it's quite easy to measure it (when it does indeed exist).
Instead I'll take another tack. We agree -- you were cured by Dr. Sarno. Now, your story should be held up against mine. I had RSI. I know this because I was an exact match to the classic RSI symptoms. Yet the diagnosis was very simple: tendonitis and carpal tunnel, caused by weakened wrists from a childhood injury. One month of light exercises (squeezing a ball) and a 4" adjustment to my office chair had me cured rapidly and completely.
There is a diagnostic quiz on the Harvard page, presumably from Sarno's book. I do not pass that quiz, so I do not have "TMS" (readers: this is Sarno's name for psychosomatic RSI). Yet I did have RSI. That is because, you see, they are sometimes different.
Let me ask you a question. If I spent a year deliberately and repeatedly performing actions designed to damage my median nerve, would you claim that my resulting pain would be purely psychological?
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Dum de dum.
Trouble is, every application from 'cat' to 'Matlab R14' today is equipped to do it that way, and ONLY that way.
There's no reason the string "/home/foo/mp3/titles/mahnamahna.mp3" could not be interpreted by the filesystem as a string of tags, so long as it resolves to a unique file.
The string "/tmp/archive/artists/henson/mahnamahna.mp3" could resolve to exactly the same physical file, and the legacy application would be none the wiser.
What the legacy application would be unable to process is the query "artists+simon-garfunkel". If it did, it would show you a "directory" containing the files you asked for.
Of course, this isn't perfect. If the application asked for "/" it might get the whole world, which is clearly not correct -- except when you do, in fact, want the whole world. I'm sure someone will have (or has already had) some clever solution though.
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Dum de dum.
Of course a dbfs will generate little inconvenient quirks all its own. Maybe I'll hate them once they become available. But who knows?
Heirarchies are good for simplfiying multiuser access control.
The DB model subsumes this functionality in many ways, I think. If every file I create is tagged with my username, this seems pretty similar to giving me a "home directory" which, purely incidentally, tends to be named using one's username.
Groups can be handled the same way. And hey look, now a file can be shared between two groups.
And what about network filesystems? How do you handle namespace collisions?
As I said in the other post, my brief description isn't meant to be a design. It's a wishlist. And these kinds of objections are irrelevant to my reasons for wanting the wishlist. They are quite relevant to the practicality and adoption of the wishlist, which is not unimportant but is a different topic.
That said, how are namespace collisions handled today? Mainly by glomming extra identifiers onto each object, no? I don't have collisions with my server's filesystem because everything the mount point acts as the namespace uniquifier. I don't see this being any different in a dbfs.
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But files are shared between applications - how does this handle dependencies?
Clearly, my two-line description won't address all the nuances that surface when you work out the full design of any large system.
But dependency is just another kind of metadata. (Except that today it's not metadata, it's just luck, and is one of my biggest peeves in both Linux and Windows). One solution might be to allow some types of tags to act like hardlinks, in that the file doesn't get deleted until it has no more hard references.
An application-owned shared library (like libgimp.so) should have only "gimp" as its default hardlink. Another application that wants to use it can add its own hardlink. The library would live until both applications are uninstalled.
On the other hand, a system-owned library like libz.so would have a stable identity of its own (like, say, "libz") that persists even after its clients get uninstalled.
Or something.
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Dum de dum.
Well, what I want to know is: How do I get to this metadata? Some extra tool? Some right-click option that I have to select every time I create a file?
Anytime you save a file today, you're already manually specifying several pieces of metadata: the filename and the location.
Anytime you access a file today, you're already manually specifying that metadata also.
Consider how many clicks it takes to (graphically) navigate to a file from the root directory. That is exactly the number of metadata labels that you yourself supplied for that unique file's creation.
So, the obvious generalization of this is to get rid of the hierarchy concept entirely. Then, as an earlier poster described, I can naturally tag my music by artist and by genre, instead of using symlinks to cut across trees.
More practically, it would allow applications to install themselves using a unique tag, so that uninstalling (or moving, or archiving) the application requires just one query on just one tag, and is guaranteed to turn up any associated file regardless of its "location."
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Dum de dum.
odds are ... you'll take more than one career zig or zag in your lifetime
The odds are, in fact, 9 out of 10. At least in the USA.
For this reason alone, I strongly and persistently encourage my students to take an education that grants them lifetime skills in learning, thinking, and communication.
Here's another statistic: in 1982, a poll was conducted among the Yale class of 1957 (25 years after graduation). Two-thirds of them were employed in jobs that did not exist in 1957.
Or, put another way, job skills become obsolete nearly as fast as CPUs and video cards.
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I disagree with you. College should prepare you for a job. ... [I]f you aren't preparing for a job, why go to college? There are "jobs" out there for people who aren't educated ("You want fries with that?") and then there are jobs for people that are educated.
The fallacy is confusing "job training" with "education." As many posters have already pointed out, "education" is gaining the ability to think and analyze anything, to write and communicate anything, and to independently learn anything.
Job training is not less important, but it is secondary to education.
A graduate who focuses on job training will find it easier to land a job and will be immediately more productive than a graduate who focuses on liberal arts. But after six months, who's more productive? After a year, who gets a raise? After five years, who gets the promotion? The one who learns the job faster.
After your first job, the college on your resume counts for pretty much nothing. Again echoing other posters, many college students tragically believe they're training for a career when they're only training for only the first job. They are being ripped off.
So yes, I would say that KU students should be "kind of PO-ed" for paying $80,000 if all they get is job training.
That said, I'm not familiar with KU's program. Maybe you're getting a formal classical education alongside your co-op job training. My experience as both an engineer and a teacher strongly argues that this is a powerful combination.
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Dum de dum.
For the record, the 60GXP's had pretty horrid failure rates too.
Yup, yup. I lost a 75GXP and two 60GXPs (all purchased before I'd heard about the problems).
However, the recent drives, particularly the 400GB SATA, are worth a look. I posted in an earlier thread about this. Should've read further before writing that...
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> Too bad it's Deskstar. "Now lose more data than ever!"
I was burned by three Deskstars, when they were produced by IBM. However, the new drives are not as bad. My company makes storage hardware, and we use these. Drives go through a months-long qualification before we decide a model is worth shipping.
The original Hitachi 250GB drives were pretty good.
The Hitachi 400GB drives are extraordinarily good. Our failure rates on these drives are the lowest we've seen among all capacities and manufacturers. It turns out that the 400GB SATA drive is internally identical to their top-end 400GB SCSI/Fibre-channel units (including, I think, the high-quality actuators that are usually reserved for FC drives). This is not true for their other models. This is the drive to get.
The jury is still out on the new 500GB drives.
The refresh of the 250GB line, however, is stinking awful. The platters are even denser than the 500GB drives (so they can use fewer platters) and lose data even under minimal server workloads. Do not get these.
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SOMETHING is giving us cancer.
Yup, that something is called "life." Cancerous mutations occur all the time as a result of DNA copying mistakes during cell replication. Our immune systems catch most of these before they become disease. This is why people with immune suppression (AIDS patients, organ donor recipients) get a LOT of cancer.
Carcinogens cause DNA damage at a much higher rate than the body can cope with. But even without carcinogens, everybody will get cancer sooner or later unless they die of something else. It's a probability game -- one which earlier cultures didn't have to deal with because their life expectancy was too low.
Everything we consume can give us cancer, all the veggies and fruits have pesticides
This is true too, but not for the reasons you think. Plants have been producing their own, natural pesticides long before we thought of spraying them with our own. It's not like they want to be eaten by bugs either. There are 10,000 known natural pesticides, which makes all-natural vegetables the highest concentration of carcinogens that most people regularly consume.
Why don't we get cancer from vegatables? Because they have nutrients whose benefit exceeds the risk of eating these hostile plants.
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Dum de dum.
Doctors and scientists are so quick to point at ketosis as a dangerous thing... But, is ketosis dangerous? Has there been a single case of someone being hospitalized or killed by excessive ketones in the blood?
Thank you for your learned discourse on ketones. You sure showed those "doctors and scientists." Your common-sense approach is so much easier to understand than their high-and-mighty "scientific method" and "evidence-based" attitude.
Oh, incidentally, most people who have Type I diabetes discover it when, one day, they are rushed to the hospital after turning blue and collapsing from ketoacidosis.
Hope this helps.
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Dum de dum.