You're evaluating whether a biology class is really a class or not based on the unrelated attribute of whether the students adopt a particular perspective afterward.
No, I'm evaluating the biology class based on whether the theory of evolution is accurately portrayed. How thoroughly ontogeny is discussed. What cellular differentiation is. What parts of the brain govern what function. And perhaps most importantly, whether they convey the fact that biologically humans are indistinguishable from animals.
If they do all that well, then the attentive student will adopt a particular perspective, just as a well instructed astronomy class will cause students to adopt the heliocentric perspective.
You're also defining "thinking critically" as "thinking like Hatta".
No, you have it the other way around. I strive to think critically about all topics at all times. If I am not thinking critically, I am being a bad person. Please help me out by presenting the arguments which I have overlooked.
There is no acknowledgement that you may me mistaken - no falsifiability, as all science must have.
How much acknowledgement of fallibility should astronomers offer when they discuss Ptolemy?
This is the point of my original comment: You're assuming your perspective is the only right one.
There is no assumption. I am always on the lookout for alternative perspectives that can explain the world as it is. Anti-abortionists have provided none. The strongest argument they have is to conflate "human life" with "a person", and hope that no one notices the difference. This is the perspective that any decent biology education will dispel.
If I'm mistaken, and they have a stronger argument, why aren't they using it? If you have a stronger argument, present it. I would love to be proven wrong. It makes me a better person.
I'd argue that if you haven't had a competent teacher that presents the facts fairly, then you haven't really had a class. Yes, I realise that's close to a Scotsman fallacy, but sometimes things aren't really what they claim they are.
The rest of the chain follows from thinking critically, which I agree I should have included in my statement. All you need is a competently instructed biology class and the ability to think critically, and the fact that abortion is not infanticide is plain as day.
What's the difference between a country where you can't speak against the government, and a country where you can't speak against the government effectively?
You realize that you're making the anti-abortionist claim, right? The life begins at conception (and not at birth), thus abortion is illegal because it's infanticide.
You read me wrong. If you're concerned about people killing babies, you don't have to worry about this election because infanticide is already illegal. Abortion is legal, but it has nothing to do with killing babies.
For the religious folk, it's a very important topic, and why the abortion debate has shifted long into when life begins, and whether or not aborting is the same as murder or infanticide.
All they have to do is take a biology class. Then they'd realize that "life" encompasses everying from the skin cells we shed to Abe Vigoda. Once you understand that, "where life begins" is an irrelevant question. We destroy human life every time we blow our nose or scratch an itch. What matters is when the human mind begins.
America is peculiar, in that unlike the rest of the world, it has the bizarre hyper-individualistic quasi-religion of virtually unlimited freedom without responsibility.
Not at all. When you infringe on the rights of others, you should be held accountable. Nothing about the production, possession, or consumption of Cannabis infringes on anyones rights.
Only a truly deluded Slashdot libertarian keyboard warrior would think that giving police powers to investigate suspicious activity would somehow violate their "rights" to break the law, be antisocial, and attack the common good, as if the "common good" didn't matter.
Only a truly deluded fascist would think that Cannabis prohibition has anything to do with the common good, as Cannabis has been repeatedly shown to be less harmful on every measure than substances we tolerate happily. It's less addictive than caffeine. Less toxic than aspirin. It's more weakly correlated with mental illness than cat ownership.
No, Cannabis prohibition has nothing to do with the common good, and everything to do with giving the authorities a blanket excuse to persecute undesirables. This is why the US has more black men in chains today than it ever had under slavery. This is why drug dogs magically get less accurate when the suspect is hispanic. And this is congruent with the historical record. Cannabis prohibition was sold to the public based on racism. It was racist in the thirties, and it's racist today.
What's morally bankrupt is promoting a policy for the "common good" when it's so demontrably harmful, and refusing to seriously consider alternatives to that policy.
Other people are concerned about silly things like killing babies
If that actually happened, nerds would be as concerned about that as anyone else. But infanticide is already illegal.
whether they'll be able to retire
Which is directly related to income inequality and holding the rich accountable when they plunder funds the economy needs to keep running.
and what country hates us the most.
Which is directly related to how many drones we send to drop bombs on civilians in that country.
Of the 3 issues you claim normal people are worried about, one is obviously irrelevant to anyone with a high school biology education and the ability to think critically. The other two are directly related to issues I raised which no candidate has raised.
Nerds aren't a niche interest because we care about stupid things that no one else does. We care about the same things everyone else does, we're different because we're informed.
We don't rely on software fallback implementations of OpenGL. We literally have a specific software engine that is so fast that some developers spent weeks using it accidentally, not realizing they had software compositing on their setup."
How is that not a software fallback? Did they mean to say that they wrote their own software fallback?
Indeed. This election has been devoid of any discussion of any issues of importance. Neither major candidate has referenced the fact that the US imprisons more people than any other country in the world. Neither major candidate has noted that despite our love of incarceration, the criminals that caused the 2008 financial crisis still walk free. Drug policy has not made an appearance. Drone strikes have not made an appearance. The TSA has not made an appearance.
The only question in the presidential election is whether you want continued rule by someone who is owned by the corporate elite, or someone who is the corporate elite.
As much as I find it hard to motivate myself to defend the police, it isn't up to them to set the law or decide which laws they decide to enforce.
No one is forced to become a police officer. Any moral person, when faced with enforcing an unjust law, would quit rather than become an instrument of injustice.
Your government, and the general population, deserve the blame for anything wrong with that.
The general population has no say in the issue. How many times have you heard drug policy mentioned in this election? In any election?
Besides, even if the general population did agree drug prohibition is still a violation of our inalienable right to pursue happiness. Specifically it's a violation of the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution. The state has no legitimate interest whatsoever in regulating one of the safest pharmacological substances in existence.
If you're a law and order type, you need to understand that prohibition itself is a crime committed by the government against its people.
In the USA, the rights of the individual are protected unlike anywhere else in the world. Your attitude indicates you have never lived under a free system, because if you had, your own opinion would be repugnant to you.
And yet, the US imprisons more people than any other country in the world. That holds if you measure per capita, or even count the total. The US as a land of freedom and opportunity is a complete and utter myth today, if it was ever true.
I would rather see 100 guilty men go free than see one innocent person convicted, and that is precisely the way our system is designed - to place the importance of preserving an innocent man's freedom above the importance of taking away a guilty man's freedom.
Except that well over 90% of people charged with federal crimes ever see a trial. Is it because they are just that accurate? No, it's because they punish people for exercising their right to a trial, by cutting them breaks if they forfeit that right.
Face it, the US is an authoritarian hell hole with very little to recommend it above other authoritarian hell holes. The idea that the US is exceptional in any way when it somes to freedom, liberty, justice, the voice of the people, is all baseless jingoistic nonsense.
I would need a lot of convincing to understand why the government has any sort of legitimate state interest in controlling one of the most harmless pharmacologically active substances ever discovered. Either we're all free or we're not. If they can take away my right to persue happiness, they can take yours away too. Which side are you on, freedom or authority?
The government IS organized crime. They want organized crime to prosper, as long as it benefits the right people. The drug war is proof positive that government is not and never has been about protecting people.
A similar test often used is when a luggage band at an airport, where the dog must mark the specific bags containing explosives or narcotics. So the dogs and handlers certainly have to prove that they are able both to identify the substance and and that they know when it's not there.
That's all well and good in a training situation, but in the real world dogs learn how to please their handlers. Dogs are smart enough to fake a tell when their master really wants a search. We can see that this is true, because drug dog accuracy varies as a function of the suspect's race.
So take your "ignorant" comment and shove it up your ass, bootlicker. In actual practice, a K9 unit is a blank warrant to search anyone.
Put another way, give others the benefit of doubt.
Calling them ignorant is giving them the benefit of doubt. The only other options are stupid, crazy, or malicious. Ignorant is by far the kindest way to describe creationists.
of course there's some selection bias because I'm a stoner, but I find the overlap to be too significant to explain away by that fact alone. What's your take on this?
A non-drug user will see the opposite pattern because the best people who use drugs are also the most discreet.
Of course, this argument can be used against any and all progress regardless as merit. But we wouldn't want to think critically, would we. Anyone who thinks "We have always discriminated against homosexuals, therefore we should always discriminate against homosexuals" is to disgusting an individual to describe.
Yes, but it seems to me that it mostly manifests as avoiding difficult topics. If we're already debating about God, we're well past that.
As a general statement, insulting. For a specific claim, NOT insulting ONLY if you prove the ignorance; but if you can prove the ignorance, you don't need to say this
But Dawkins did make a specific claim. He claimed that creationists are largely ignorant of evolution. Being an evolutionary biologist who has debated many creationists, he's better qualified than anyone to make that assertion.
There is a place for insults in communication in jest and in public debate. But in a 1 to 1 dialogue, insults communicate one thing: "You're not worth my time to correct." If they're not worth your time, why be surprised they feel you're not worth their time, either? If they're really not worth your time, why do you care if you come across as insulting?
How about, "You're ignorant of evolution, so let's take some of our time and go over the basics."?
Holy Tradition is that aspect of the Church's teaching revealed by the Holy Spirit starting from the day of Pentecost.
Is this teaching written down? If so, in what way does that differ from scripture? 2000 year old written records of revealed teaching, sounds like another book of scripture to me.
If it's not written down, it only takes one game of "telephone" to prove its unreliability.
Slashdot Mirror
Please mind your infinitive. "This needs to be modded up"
You're evaluating whether a biology class is really a class or not based on the unrelated attribute of whether the students adopt a particular perspective afterward.
No, I'm evaluating the biology class based on whether the theory of evolution is accurately portrayed. How thoroughly ontogeny is discussed. What cellular differentiation is. What parts of the brain govern what function. And perhaps most importantly, whether they convey the fact that biologically humans are indistinguishable from animals.
If they do all that well, then the attentive student will adopt a particular perspective, just as a well instructed astronomy class will cause students to adopt the heliocentric perspective.
You're also defining "thinking critically" as "thinking like Hatta".
No, you have it the other way around. I strive to think critically about all topics at all times. If I am not thinking critically, I am being a bad person. Please help me out by presenting the arguments which I have overlooked.
There is no acknowledgement that you may me mistaken - no falsifiability, as all science must have.
How much acknowledgement of fallibility should astronomers offer when they discuss Ptolemy?
This is the point of my original comment: You're assuming your perspective is the only right one.
There is no assumption. I am always on the lookout for alternative perspectives that can explain the world as it is. Anti-abortionists have provided none. The strongest argument they have is to conflate "human life" with "a person", and hope that no one notices the difference. This is the perspective that any decent biology education will dispel.
If I'm mistaken, and they have a stronger argument, why aren't they using it? If you have a stronger argument, present it. I would love to be proven wrong. It makes me a better person.
And they'd be factually wrong on that.
I'd argue that if you haven't had a competent teacher that presents the facts fairly, then you haven't really had a class. Yes, I realise that's close to a Scotsman fallacy, but sometimes things aren't really what they claim they are.
The rest of the chain follows from thinking critically, which I agree I should have included in my statement. All you need is a competently instructed biology class and the ability to think critically, and the fact that abortion is not infanticide is plain as day.
What's the difference between a country where you can't speak against the government, and a country where you can't speak against the government effectively?
You realize that you're making the anti-abortionist claim, right? The life begins at conception (and not at birth), thus abortion is illegal because it's infanticide.
You read me wrong. If you're concerned about people killing babies, you don't have to worry about this election because infanticide is already illegal. Abortion is legal, but it has nothing to do with killing babies.
For the religious folk, it's a very important topic, and why the abortion debate has shifted long into when life begins, and whether or not aborting is the same as murder or infanticide.
All they have to do is take a biology class. Then they'd realize that "life" encompasses everying from the skin cells we shed to Abe Vigoda. Once you understand that, "where life begins" is an irrelevant question. We destroy human life every time we blow our nose or scratch an itch. What matters is when the human mind begins.
America is peculiar, in that unlike the rest of the world, it has the bizarre hyper-individualistic quasi-religion of virtually unlimited freedom without responsibility.
Not at all. When you infringe on the rights of others, you should be held accountable. Nothing about the production, possession, or consumption of Cannabis infringes on anyones rights.
Only a truly deluded Slashdot libertarian keyboard warrior would think that giving police powers to investigate suspicious activity would somehow violate their "rights" to break the law, be antisocial, and attack the common good, as if the "common good" didn't matter.
Only a truly deluded fascist would think that Cannabis prohibition has anything to do with the common good, as Cannabis has been repeatedly shown to be less harmful on every measure than substances we tolerate happily. It's less addictive than caffeine. Less toxic than aspirin. It's more weakly correlated with mental illness than cat ownership.
No, Cannabis prohibition has nothing to do with the common good, and everything to do with giving the authorities a blanket excuse to persecute undesirables. This is why the US has more black men in chains today than it ever had under slavery. This is why drug dogs magically get less accurate when the suspect is hispanic. And this is congruent with the historical record. Cannabis prohibition was sold to the public based on racism. It was racist in the thirties, and it's racist today.
What's morally bankrupt is promoting a policy for the "common good" when it's so demontrably harmful, and refusing to seriously consider alternatives to that policy.
Most D&D players look at their shoes. The extraverted D&D player looks at the GM's shoes.
Other people are concerned about silly things like killing babies
If that actually happened, nerds would be as concerned about that as anyone else. But infanticide is already illegal.
whether they'll be able to retire
Which is directly related to income inequality and holding the rich accountable when they plunder funds the economy needs to keep running.
and what country hates us the most.
Which is directly related to how many drones we send to drop bombs on civilians in that country.
Of the 3 issues you claim normal people are worried about, one is obviously irrelevant to anyone with a high school biology education and the ability to think critically. The other two are directly related to issues I raised which no candidate has raised.
Nerds aren't a niche interest because we care about stupid things that no one else does. We care about the same things everyone else does, we're different because we're informed.
We don't rely on software fallback implementations of OpenGL. We literally have a specific software engine that is so fast that some developers spent weeks using it accidentally, not realizing they had software compositing on their setup."
How is that not a software fallback? Did they mean to say that they wrote their own software fallback?
Indeed. This election has been devoid of any discussion of any issues of importance. Neither major candidate has referenced the fact that the US imprisons more people than any other country in the world. Neither major candidate has noted that despite our love of incarceration, the criminals that caused the 2008 financial crisis still walk free. Drug policy has not made an appearance. Drone strikes have not made an appearance. The TSA has not made an appearance.
The only question in the presidential election is whether you want continued rule by someone who is owned by the corporate elite, or someone who is the corporate elite.
As much as I find it hard to motivate myself to defend the police, it isn't up to them to set the law or decide which laws they decide to enforce.
No one is forced to become a police officer. Any moral person, when faced with enforcing an unjust law, would quit rather than become an instrument of injustice.
Your government, and the general population, deserve the blame for anything wrong with that.
The general population has no say in the issue. How many times have you heard drug policy mentioned in this election? In any election?
Besides, even if the general population did agree drug prohibition is still a violation of our inalienable right to pursue happiness. Specifically it's a violation of the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution. The state has no legitimate interest whatsoever in regulating one of the safest pharmacological substances in existence.
If you're a law and order type, you need to understand that prohibition itself is a crime committed by the government against its people.
In the USA, the rights of the individual are protected unlike anywhere else in the world. Your attitude indicates you have never lived under a free system, because if you had, your own opinion would be repugnant to you.
And yet, the US imprisons more people than any other country in the world. That holds if you measure per capita, or even count the total. The US as a land of freedom and opportunity is a complete and utter myth today, if it was ever true.
I would rather see 100 guilty men go free than see one innocent person convicted, and that is precisely the way our system is designed - to place the importance of preserving an innocent man's freedom above the importance of taking away a guilty man's freedom.
Except that well over 90% of people charged with federal crimes ever see a trial. Is it because they are just that accurate? No, it's because they punish people for exercising their right to a trial, by cutting them breaks if they forfeit that right.
Face it, the US is an authoritarian hell hole with very little to recommend it above other authoritarian hell holes. The idea that the US is exceptional in any way when it somes to freedom, liberty, justice, the voice of the people, is all baseless jingoistic nonsense.
I would need a lot of convincing to understand why the government has any sort of legitimate state interest in controlling one of the most harmless pharmacologically active substances ever discovered. Either we're all free or we're not. If they can take away my right to persue happiness, they can take yours away too. Which side are you on, freedom or authority?
The government IS organized crime. They want organized crime to prosper, as long as it benefits the right people. The drug war is proof positive that government is not and never has been about protecting people.
A similar test often used is when a luggage band at an airport, where the dog must mark the specific bags containing explosives or narcotics. So the dogs and handlers certainly have to prove that they are able both to identify the substance and and that they know when it's not there.
That's all well and good in a training situation, but in the real world dogs learn how to please their handlers. Dogs are smart enough to fake a tell when their master really wants a search. We can see that this is true, because drug dog accuracy varies as a function of the suspect's race.
So take your "ignorant" comment and shove it up your ass, bootlicker. In actual practice, a K9 unit is a blank warrant to search anyone.
Disney's acquisition of Pixar, Marvel, and the Muppets just worked out so well before. Although, they could hardly do worse than Lucas has.
Which is as circular as reasoning comes. But again, I guess we can't expect critical thinking.
Put another way, give others the benefit of doubt.
Calling them ignorant is giving them the benefit of doubt. The only other options are stupid, crazy, or malicious. Ignorant is by far the kindest way to describe creationists.
of course there's some selection bias because I'm a stoner, but I find the overlap to be too significant to explain away by that fact alone. What's your take on this?
A non-drug user will see the opposite pattern because the best people who use drugs are also the most discreet.
historically the Church has never approved of
Of course, this argument can be used against any and all progress regardless as merit. But we wouldn't want to think critically, would we. Anyone who thinks "We have always discriminated against homosexuals, therefore we should always discriminate against homosexuals" is to disgusting an individual to describe.
Ever heard of "tact"?
Yes, but it seems to me that it mostly manifests as avoiding difficult topics. If we're already debating about God, we're well past that.
As a general statement, insulting. For a specific claim, NOT insulting ONLY if you prove the ignorance; but if you can prove the ignorance, you don't need to say this
But Dawkins did make a specific claim. He claimed that creationists are largely ignorant of evolution. Being an evolutionary biologist who has debated many creationists, he's better qualified than anyone to make that assertion.
There is a place for insults in communication in jest and in public debate. But in a 1 to 1 dialogue, insults communicate one thing: "You're not worth my time to correct." If they're not worth your time, why be surprised they feel you're not worth their time, either? If they're really not worth your time, why do you care if you come across as insulting?
How about, "You're ignorant of evolution, so let's take some of our time and go over the basics."?
Shame on you. They're not making any more of these.
So how does one be convincing when the truth is insulting? How do you spare someone's feelings without being dishonest? Please use examples.
Holy Tradition is that aspect of the Church's teaching revealed by the Holy Spirit starting from the day of Pentecost.
Is this teaching written down? If so, in what way does that differ from scripture? 2000 year old written records of revealed teaching, sounds like another book of scripture to me.
If it's not written down, it only takes one game of "telephone" to prove its unreliability.