I'm sorry, but translating every story to Italian, Portuguese, "Swedish Chef", "Hick" or "Skript Kiddie" does not qualify as a "classy sense of humour". As other people have pointed out, the real trolls did a much better job at spicing up this April 1st than the faux-troll editors. Sure, "humour" is a subjective thing, but I'll be damned if there ever was a day with so many complains about/. as there were today.
Oh, nice behaviour. Yeah, go ahead, reproduce my translation of the stupid "Slashdot Marketing" story on the main page without giving me credit. Yeah, go ahead, post the Advogato and Google links without crediting the people who mentioned it on the site or tried to submit it, without success. Yeah, go ahead, post the FIN link without mentioning the guy who first brought it up last night. After all, it's not like we want to be moderated up or get Karma, right?
Estranho, sempre achei que você fosse alemão, não só pelo nome, mas por uns pontos de vista, em uma outra discussão.
Bem, o nome é judeu-alemão, mas eu sou brasileiro... carioca. E quanto aos pontos de vista - bem, eu não sei o que dizer... acho que já conheci alemães de toda e qualquer possível persuasão (sou muito amigo de um fascista ateu, em particular), mas fiquei curioso... de que modo meus pontos de vista te parecem caracteristicamente alemães?
Não acho muito respeitoso escrever em outro idioma que não o inglês aqui, mas como foram eles próprios que começaram esta baderna, vamos aderir, só por hoje.
Concordo... estou tentando tornar todos os meus posts hoje poliglotas... e um programa que, teoricamente, deve funcionar tanto em Scheme quanto em Perl...
A propósito, o que você quer dizer com resident no contexto acima?
"Frequentador", ou algo assim. Por quê?
(The obligatory translation for the skr1p7 k1dd13z follows.)
Yes they did... when they got bought out by Handover.net. So, not in that many words, but it's very clear by now that is more than just "CmdrTaco and a bunch of friends running a web site".
Since today seems to be the official Internationalisation Day at Slashdot, your post will be replied to in three languages: English, Portuguese... and Skr1p7 K1dd13.
* Generally I would agree with you, but all things considered, that translation was actually better than average (at least better than all else I've seen from Babblefish). I still don't know where the "conexão" came from, but the rest actually does make sense if you know what it means.
* Concordaria com você em geral, mas, se levarmos o óbvio em consideração, essa tradução realmente estava melhor que a média (ou ao menos melhor do que tudo o mais que eu já vi no Babblefish). Eu ainda não sei de onde veio esse "conexão", mas o resto faz sentido se você sabe o que estavam querendo dizer.
Being one of the resident Portuguese speakers, I present both an English translation and a proper Portuguese version (i.e., not that Babblefish crap).
streetlawyer submitted a completely surprising (connection?): apparently, unknown Andover.net staffers have been using slash's undocumented offtopic discussion feature to communicate in Slashdot Marketing. All the truth is suddenly revealed.
streetlawyer enviou uma (conexão?) completamente surpreendente: aparentemente, empregados desconhecidos da Andover.net têm usado a (feature) não-documentada de discussões fora de tópico do slash para se comunicar em Slashdot Marketing. Repentinamente, a verdade toda é revelada.
going from Pro/ENGINEER version 20.1 to Pro/ENGINEER 2000i to Pro/ENGINEER 2000i^2 (that's right, i-squared)
Uhrm, wouldn't that be Pro/ENGINEER -2000, then?
Re:Uh, doesn't seem very "rational" at all
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I'm glad that you seem to have recovered your "groove" and your willingness to debate in a rational fashion. However, this post of yours has brought open a few new points which I can't help but discuss... once and for all, so that we can all move on to the next 600-comment Slashdot story:)
First, "But to reach out to that intelligence requires faith": I don't see how that's true a priori; I can well envision an universe whose Creator is right at hand, ready to speak to its creation at any time (through means that are natural to them - i.e., that exist within the realm of what the creation considers "natural", and which don't require "tapping into another dimension" or any such things). In short, I can't see why a God couldn't have made his presence natural in his own universe.
Right afterwards, you bizarrely define faith as "taking an extrapolation of data at hand". Where I come from, faith is belief held without supporting evidence, and has nothing to do with the perfectly rational process of extrapolating. I have observed many theists try to claim, unsuccessfully, that their faith in God is of the same kind as a child's "faith" in her mother, or our "faith" that the sky won't fall on our heads. It's just not so.
Further on, "If you recieve laws (information of them) from a divine source, and indeed you find that obedience to them does make your life (not your neighbors or your uncle in slovenia) better then you must have recieved true information. The formulae works, it must be true." This not true at all. First, you only have evidence - and the flimsiest, at that - that said "laws" are "true" (inasmuch as a law can be considered "true" - i.e., in the sense that it's generally appliable and useful). If your mother-in-law is driving you crazy, and I come to you and tell you "you should kill your mother-in-law", and furthermore I give you the means and opportunity as to kill the old hag without leaving any trace, you might very well be happier (depending on what kind of ethic code you follow, you might not even feel bad about it at all). But does that mean that the "law" of "thou shalt kill your mother-in-law" is true? Does that mean that everyone should always kill their mothers-in-law whenever they have the opportunity? And second, even if those "laws" handed to you are "true", that doesn't necessarily tell you anything about their origin, does it? What one calls divine inspiration, another one might as well call a hallucination. (Likewise with many UFO claims.)
Your assertion about the "necessity" to "learn moral laws before we learn scientific ones" also seems very unfounded. In its entirety it sounds extremely obscurantist and reeks of the moralist, pseudo-humanist discourse about "people before technology" of which I believe we're all sick and tired. First of all, it confuses knowledge and science with its application - technology; it also confuses reason and good judgement with morality. It is, in its essence, a bet in the essential evil of mankind, and an assertion that we're not good enough to be allowed this forbidden knowledge. Shades of Genesis... (as in the Old Testament, not as in Peter Gabriel!)
As an atheist and a scientificist, I found this really strange: "Self Restraint and Temper are moral laws we learn from Religion and can see evidence of it scientificaly. Nuclear laws are found out scientificaly, and even show evidence or a correspondance (abstractly) with moral laws." Are you claiming that religion is th only possible source of morals? That I, as an atheist, cannot be self-restrained or well-tempered? That self-restraint and temper are absolute "laws", as opposed to being merely useful guidelines for behaviour in civilised society? Furthermore, what do you consider to be scientific evidence for the "laws" of self-restraint and temper? Are you counting sociology and psychology as sciences, or are you asserting something more profound? Finally, just what is this correspondence between nuclear and moral "laws"?
"There is a need for both is what I'm saying. The Grand Intelligence in the Universe who you mock does have lines of information open. Science is one of them, and religion is one of them but they both require personal discovery and faith." I'm sorry, but I can't consider that anything other than a personal, subjective opinion - and a poor one at that - at least until you explain in minute detail how it is that science requires "personal discovery and faith". (When you do, keep in mind my previous point about the meaning of the word "faith".)
Finally, as for your "request for truths" - frankly, I can't claim to have any deep insights regarding the nature of mankind and the universe; all I have is my opinion, and it was once said that opinions are like asses. In this spirit, I can only translate a Brazilian saying: "if advice was any good, it would be sold, not given.":)
Re:Uh, doesn't seem very "rational" at all
on
The Mind of God
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· Score: 2
I'm forwarding this to your email; thankfully it seems we've only two points left to clear out (as opposed to On Lawn's enormous rant, which will take me yet another day to respond...).
Just last night (after I got tired of discussing philosophy with On Lawn on Slashdot... and went to discuss philosophy with the #atheism crowd on IRC) I made that exact same argument about Occam's Razor, although it hadn't occurred to me that it would apply in this case. It does seem now that using Occam's Razor would be a circular argument. So maybe there isn't any default position. Okay.
Regarding the request for evidence: I do tend to follow along the general lines for skeptics (you can look at the sci.skeptic FAQ). So, I consider historical evidence often acceptable, depending on the source and reliability (although I'm not really in much of a position to judge myself, not being a professional); OTOH, testimony from the Bible, a book which claims that pi = 3, is much less so. (And yes, I do know about all the historical stuff in the Bible that was found to be true, but I think that only proves that it's not entirely fictional; having been raised in the Jewish culture, I personally consider the Bible to be a fascinating account of the religious and cultural traditions of our ancestors throughout the ages... and that's all.)
Eyewitness testimony isn't much relied upon even by courts of law (human fallibility); much less so "testimony" about answered prayers; taking into account the witnesses' predisposition for believing in these explanations for their claims, as well as the emotional need for beliefs to support their mental state... well, I think you get my point.
(Re. evidence for evolution, well, of course you can't replicate the evolutionary history of the Earth in a lab, but I think we know enough about the fossil record to make a solid claim that either they are records of evolution in process, or the Almighty is a really clever guy who's trying to mess with our little heads.)
Re:Uh, doesn't seem very "rational" at all
on
The Mind of God
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The discussion of reason itself requires the use of reason (unless you've discovered another, incredible new way to think). Either reason is not valid and nothing you think is of any value (including any arguments about why reason must have value), or reason is valid - which we can only affirm by use of reason, and by doing so we're already presupposing that reason is valid. So either way, it must be axiomatic. In the end, we're just left to choose in the grounds of usefulness. And I happen to think that rational thought is damned useful.
Blairgh.
Re:Uh, doesn't seem very "rational" at all
on
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· Score: 2
First, it is significant that this comes near the end of the book. In other words, this is a conclusion that has been reached by examination of the questions at hand. Thus, the implication that this cannot be rational because of its barest interpretation is lazy and misplaced.
Okay, maybe you're right - I must admit I haven't read this book. However, as said sentence seems to stand alone and, by the way it's presented, seems to represent the entirety of the author's feelings on the subject, I'd say that, if my analysis was in fact lacking, JonKatz' poor quoting certainly would deserve some of the blame...
Second, the burden of proof does NOT lie upon the party making the affirmative claim. It lies upon the party making the claim, regardless of its being affirmative or negative.
Again, my fault.
In this case, Davies is making an ontological claim that he must support. If he fails, then that is all that has happened!! It does not show that his case is unsalvagable, nor does it automatically lend support to whatever position you believe. Failure to prove a case means just that; trying to extend the implications beyond that is tricky and requires additional work.
Did I say otherwise? Quite frankly, I think I'd be glad to find that there is a purpose to us being here, and I'm always willing to hear on it, even though to my knowledge previous attempts at proving such claims have always failed.
In other words, folks, THERE IS NO DEFAULT POSITION!
Whoa. That's a non-sequitur! I'm sorry, I may be missing something, but how does that assertion follow from the previous paragraph? I'd have to say that, in this case, the default position is established by Occam's Razor.
Kaufmann may "believe otherwise", and he may tell us what that position is as a matter of sharing information about his current mental states. Once he makes statements about the way the world is as opposed to what's in his head, HE has to prove his case. Whether or not Davies can prove his case makes no difference as to whether Kaufmann is justified or unjustified in his position. That becomes important only when Davies' position is analyzed and its premises, true or false, can be used in a separate argument attacking or defending Kaufmann's position, whatever it may be.
That's all nice and fine, but - here's the rub - I don't remember actually making any statements. I only said I believed otherwise, and as you said, my position and Davies' are independent until either are analysed. My position, personally, is that we do exist by chance; I believe that this position is well funded. However, my position could be entirely different - I might as well be a solipsist, or a Randroid, or merely believe in the "chance" position by faith, as it seems that Davies does for the "purpose" position. That makes no difference regarding my attack of Davies' position.
Considering that above I merely restated the second paragraph of your message, where I think we differ is that you assert that there is no default position, while I consider that Occam's Razor applies (as it does in my ongoing discussion with On Lawn (?) re. the existence of God). However, although I stand by what I consider to be the default position (and although I think it is a well-fundamented position), I'm not inflexible.
As for "actual evidence", I suspect that demand is spurious. I rather suspect Kaufmann would submit any such evidence to a Procrustean bed. I'll go ahead and read his responses and see if my hunch plays out.
Not true. I like to consider myself very open-minded on all-matters - not in that I'm gullible, but in that I'm willing to change my mind if suitable motivation for doing so is presented.
Finally, I'd like to thank you for presenting a good counterpoint to my post.
Re:Uh, doesn't seem very "rational" at all
on
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It's very strange to see you try to be conciliatory and reasonable, and then turn around and, violently, just throw around the exact same unreasonable arguments that I've been hearing for years now, for example on DALNet #atheism. Quite frankly, because I claim no supernaturally obtained knowledge of any sort, I do not know whether there actually is a God or not; but I definitely know that there must be better arguments for his existence than those that you've given; in general, your entire line of reasoning is extremely poor and ignores a lot of previous debate. So I'll just respond to a few, more indicative paragraphs in your message. Here we go:
(P. 3) All I see in the way of disproving the world around us is what amounts to "There is no God, therefore that is not evidence." In other words, you are accusing me of using circular logic. How fresh!
(P. 4) The evidence you present is not very earth-shattering, nor does it by itself indicate design, seeing as though there are better ways to fit our model around them then by introducing a deity into it. It's the kind of evidence that would only be accepted as such by someone already inclined to believe in a God and who would see this as confirmation of their beliefs. Quite frankly, considering that you are making the ultimate extraordinary claim - that there is an omni-everything deity of some sort or the other - I would expect, likewise, that you would present extraordinary evidence. (A 10 mile high cross hovering over Ithaca would suffice.)
(Of course, I should also point out that, even if your "evidence" represented serious contradictions in the modern theory of evolution by natural selection as it stands, that still wouldn't be enough to make creationism - design of any kind, much less of your preferred brand - automatically true. Evidently, Neo-Darwinism and creationism aren't the only two possibilities.)
(P. 7) Your comparison of atheists with the blind also doesn't follow. The blind have plenty of rational reasons for acknowledging the existence of light and the sense of sight (I believe it's not necessary to enumerate it), even though they aren't able to directly experience it with their own sensory apparatus. The same isn't true of atheists regarding God or the "sense of God" that many theists claim to perceive. In the end, of course, it boils down to Occam's Razor.
Also, I must reiterate that I am making no assertions in this discussion, regarding the issue of whether God exists. There's an enormous difference between not actively believing in the existence of a God (so-called weak atheism, which is the case for me, just as I don't believe in pink fluffy elephants that can read minds) and actively believing in the non-existence of a God (so-called strong atheism). So your accusation of "belief of blindness" would be erroneous even if the general comparison between atheists and the blind did apply.
(P. 8) I can declare what I know is true. Now, this has made me curious. Pray tell, where did you obtain your knowledge of the truth? Divine revelation? I guess that's one of the perks in being a believer, eh? I mean, why subject yourself to murking around in this vast sea of relative thoughts and subjective experience, when you've got direct access to the latest scoop on the objective nature of the universe, straight from the head of the Creator?
Re:Uh, doesn't seem very "rational" at all
on
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Kaufmann obligingly follows on to the Termination Center, and, after presenting his Troubleshooter ID, steps into a booth where a disintegration apparatus zaps him, leaving only ashes on the floor. Almost instantly afterwards, said apparatus zaps a new Kaufmann-clone into existence; he dons his Troubleshooter-suit and Troubleshooter-gun, and goes back to the streets, ever intent on... uh, shooting trouble... or whatever it is that Troubleshooters do.
(Sorry for the pointless Paranoia reference... just hope I won't get moderated down...:])
Re:Uh, doesn't seem very "rational" at all
on
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My loss? Care to explain what it is exactly that I'm "losing"? (Honest question, not meant as a flame.)
Re:Uh, doesn't seem very "rational" at all
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LOL! You are one of those people who see evidence for God in anything, aren't you? How can I argue with circular logic like that? You've just declared your own beliefs to be true, pal, and there's nothing I can (or will) do about it. Have fun believing in whatever it is that you believe... but don't expect other people to blindly agree. (Look ma, split infinitives!)
(By the way, when you claim that "The evidence you look for is all around you, especialy in physics. The line of extrapolation clearly points to God", I hope that you either (a) meant that purely as personal opinion or (b) have very good, previously unknown, completely conclusive, scientifically sound evidence... because otherwise you're just another theist with an extraordinary claim, and we've already got enough of those.)
OTOH how much can you really learn through rational and reasoned discourse on the subject of pink fluffy elephants?
LOL! So you did read my reply to that post!;)
Uh, doesn't seem very "rational" at all
on
The Mind of God
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· Score: 5
"I cannot believe," writes Davies near the end of the book, "that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate. The physical species Homo may count for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here."
Um, I'm sorry, but coming from an alleged supporter of rational thought, this sounds very out of place. "This can be no trivial detail" - says who, exactly? The burden of proof lies upon the one who makes the affirmative claim, so until this guy can produce actual evidence that we are "meant" to be here (aside from his nigh-religious clinging to this somehow mysterious and supernatural "meaning of existence"), I shall continue to believe otherwise.
Just because your only knowledge of me is bits on a screen does not quantifiably prove that I do not exist. I may, I may not, but you can not prove that I do not exist because of a lack of evidence or perception.
Uhrm, didn't anyone ever tell you that the burden of proof lies upon the one who makes the positive claim? As far as I'm concerned, your existence isn't established a priori; the only evidence do I have of it is these pixels on the screen. And I may very well decide that it's not evidence enough; as far as I know, you might as well be a postbot, or the byproduct of a Slashdot bug, or just an all-out hallucination. But I don't do that; I accept your objective existence, because it's the rational decision.
And while we're at it, it's impossible to prove an existential negative; I may spend my entire life looking for pink elephants and find none, and yet I will not have proved that pink elephants don't exist. Same with you. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
Uhrm. I'm alcohol-free, so I won't have much use for that wine... but what the heck - I'll raise: a signed copy of The Art of Computer Programming... all five volumes (that is, assuming that Knuth has already finished it by then), leather cover (synthetic, of course... because nobody kills cows anymore in the 21st century:]).
I'll take that bet, thank you. And I'll also make a meta-bet that I'll be alive for as long as it takes for either event to take place (pessimistic estimate, 2100; optimistic estimate, 2020 or less!). Now, how much money will you put where your mouth is? (Will money even exist when all this takes place? When/if nanotech comes along, who will care about dead trees painted green anyway?)
(Disclaimer: I am not a sucker. While I recognise that we tend to be overtly optimistic about the short-term, I also recognise that we tend to be overtly pessimistic about the long-term. Also, I don't believe that human exploration of the solar system has a big future - believing in uploading as well. So there you go.)
Wow, that's nasty. Weren't we "computer guys" supposed to be rational? (OTOH, Slashdot is the perfect counterexample...:]) Minsky may have been wrong, but we're all wrong one time or the other; I don't believe he should be shunned or treated as anything other than what he is: an outstanding researcher and one of the forefathers of the field. (Were it not for Minsky, maybe none of the connectionist guys would be working on AI at all!)
For a long time, Einstein opposed the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics ("God doesn't play dice" and all that). Still I doubt that, say, Feynman's generation would have booed and hissed him, were he to speak at a conference on QM at the time. See my point?
(For the uninformed reader: A Long Time Ago, Marvin Minsky, then one of the most proheminent AI researchers, pretty much declared that research on artificial neural networks - "connectionist AI" - was a dead end. Most people took his word for it, and research ground to a halt, turning exclusively to Minsky's favoured symbolic paradigm for the next couple of decades or so. (Caveat: this is all IIRC-status. I haven't even thought about this for a long time, so I may have gotten something wrong. Let me know.))
That's a non-argument. It assumes that all that humans and Turing machines can do to a program is try to execute it, which the human mind would be able to do by some magical and as of yet undiscovered mechanism. This in itself contradicts all research done so far, which strongly indicates that human high-level thought is entirely computational, although heavily parallel. Humans merely have an edge in that they are able to perform analysis of a given problem before they go try to compute it; a Turing machine would be able to do the same if it were so programmed - that's the whole premise behind GPS-type symbolic AI programs. That does not in any way denote that the human mind is in any way special.
Most of Penrose's arguments from "The Emperor's New Mind" have been debunked in a thousand different ways ever since publication; his crusade to prove that humans are "special" (shades of creationism?) and AI is impossible has so far produced no results.
Wow... when the Slashdot Effect becomes more than even.mil sites can handle, you know you've got a world power in the making... can you say "Geek Nation"? I can see it already... Rob as the Benevolent Dictator, Jeff as the Consultant for Kewl Nanotech Stuff. JonKatz would be in charge of the State Religion, of course. I think I'd be very happy there, as long as the Moderation Militia kept all the hot grits people away from my pants... and as long as federal law made sure that Bjarne Stroustroup would be shot at sight!
Seriously, is the site actually slashdotted (of course, it may not be when you read this) or is it my DNS's fault?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but translating every story to Italian, Portuguese, "Swedish Chef", "Hick" or "Skript Kiddie" does not qualify as a "classy sense of humour". As other people have pointed out, the real trolls did a much better job at spicing up this April 1st than the faux-troll editors. Sure, "humour" is a subjective thing, but I'll be damned if there ever was a day with so many complains about /. as there were today.
Oh, nice behaviour. Yeah, go ahead, reproduce my translation of the stupid "Slashdot Marketing" story on the main page without giving me credit. Yeah, go ahead, post the Advogato and Google links without crediting the people who mentioned it on the site or tried to submit it, without success. Yeah, go ahead, post the FIN link without mentioning the guy who first brought it up last night. After all, it's not like we want to be moderated up or get Karma, right?
Blargh.
Estranho, sempre achei que você fosse alemão, não só pelo nome, mas por uns pontos de vista, em uma outra discussão.
Bem, o nome é judeu-alemão, mas eu sou brasileiro... carioca. E quanto aos pontos de vista - bem, eu não sei o que dizer... acho que já conheci alemães de toda e qualquer possível persuasão (sou muito amigo de um fascista ateu, em particular), mas fiquei curioso... de que modo meus pontos de vista te parecem caracteristicamente alemães?
Não acho muito respeitoso escrever em outro idioma que não o inglês aqui, mas como foram eles próprios que começaram esta baderna, vamos aderir, só por hoje.
Concordo... estou tentando tornar todos os meus posts hoje poliglotas... e um programa que, teoricamente, deve funcionar tanto em Scheme quanto em Perl...
A propósito, o que você quer dizer com resident no contexto acima?
"Frequentador", ou algo assim. Por quê?
(The obligatory translation for the skr1p7 k1dd13z follows.)
j00 m@m@ $0 ph@+ h3r b31+ $1z3 1$ +h3 3kw@+0r!!!!!!
0h y34h? ph34r my 4w3$0m3 h4x0r p0w3r!!!!!
n0 w@y!!!!!!!!!! m3$$ w1+ d@ b3$+, d13 l1k3 +h3 r3$+!!!!!!!!!!!
d00dz, y0w b10 l1k3z kmdr7@k0!!!
j00 $ux!!!!!!!!!
n0 w4y d00dz, Y0W $ux!!!!!!!!!!!!
Did they ever announce that intention anywhere?
Yes they did... when they got bought out by Handover.net. So, not in that many words, but it's very clear by now that is more than just "CmdrTaco and a bunch of friends running a web site".
See, this is the kind of thing the Internet was meant for... so that a bunch of Brazilians can come together to troll at Slashdot :)
Translation (to all skr1pt k1dd13z out there):
r0b sux d1k!!!!!!!!! lun1x kn k1$$ my @$$!!!!!!!!!!!!! $l@$hd0t 1z @ bunch 0f luz3rz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Since today seems to be the official Internationalisation Day at Slashdot, your post will be replied to in three languages: English, Portuguese... and Skr1p7 K1dd13.
* Generally I would agree with you, but all things considered, that translation was actually better than average (at least better than all else I've seen from Babblefish). I still don't know where the "conexão" came from, but the rest actually does make sense if you know what it means.
* Concordaria com você em geral, mas, se levarmos o óbvio em consideração, essa tradução realmente estava melhor que a média (ou ao menos melhor do que tudo o mais que eu já vi no Babblefish). Eu ainda não sei de onde veio esse "conexão", mas o resto faz sentido se você sabe o que estavam querendo dizer.
* 1'11 r00t j00r @$$, m@1d@ j00 sux (@nd h3m0s kn k1$$ my @$$)!!! 1 m l337 h4x0r "conexão", @nd I'll b0 j00 @$$h0l3!!!
Being one of the resident Portuguese speakers, I present both an English translation and a proper Portuguese version (i.e., not that Babblefish crap).
streetlawyer submitted a completely surprising (connection?): apparently, unknown Andover.net staffers have been using slash's undocumented offtopic discussion feature to communicate in Slashdot Marketing. All the truth is suddenly revealed.
streetlawyer enviou uma (conexão?) completamente surpreendente: aparentemente, empregados desconhecidos da Andover.net têm usado a (feature) não-documentada de discussões fora de tópico do slash para se comunicar em Slashdot Marketing. Repentinamente, a verdade toda é revelada.
going from Pro/ENGINEER version 20.1 to Pro/ENGINEER 2000i to Pro/ENGINEER 2000i^2 (that's right, i-squared)
Uhrm, wouldn't that be Pro/ENGINEER -2000, then?
I'm glad that you seem to have recovered your "groove" and your willingness to debate in a rational fashion. However, this post of yours has brought open a few new points which I can't help but discuss... once and for all, so that we can all move on to the next 600-comment Slashdot story :)
:)
First, "But to reach out to that intelligence requires faith": I don't see how that's true a priori; I can well envision an universe whose Creator is right at hand, ready to speak to its creation at any time (through means that are natural to them - i.e., that exist within the realm of what the creation considers "natural", and which don't require "tapping into another dimension" or any such things). In short, I can't see why a God couldn't have made his presence natural in his own universe.
Right afterwards, you bizarrely define faith as "taking an extrapolation of data at hand". Where I come from, faith is belief held without supporting evidence, and has nothing to do with the perfectly rational process of extrapolating. I have observed many theists try to claim, unsuccessfully, that their faith in God is of the same kind as a child's "faith" in her mother, or our "faith" that the sky won't fall on our heads. It's just not so.
Further on, "If you recieve laws (information of them) from a divine source, and indeed you find that obedience to them does make your life (not your neighbors or your uncle in slovenia) better then you must have recieved true information. The formulae works, it must be true." This not true at all. First, you only have evidence - and the flimsiest, at that - that said "laws" are "true" (inasmuch as a law can be considered "true" - i.e., in the sense that it's generally appliable and useful). If your mother-in-law is driving you crazy, and I come to you and tell you "you should kill your mother-in-law", and furthermore I give you the means and opportunity as to kill the old hag without leaving any trace, you might very well be happier (depending on what kind of ethic code you follow, you might not even feel bad about it at all). But does that mean that the "law" of "thou shalt kill your mother-in-law" is true? Does that mean that everyone should always kill their mothers-in-law whenever they have the opportunity? And second, even if those "laws" handed to you are "true", that doesn't necessarily tell you anything about their origin, does it? What one calls divine inspiration, another one might as well call a hallucination. (Likewise with many UFO claims.)
Your assertion about the "necessity" to "learn moral laws before we learn scientific ones" also seems very unfounded. In its entirety it sounds extremely obscurantist and reeks of the moralist, pseudo-humanist discourse about "people before technology" of which I believe we're all sick and tired. First of all, it confuses knowledge and science with its application - technology; it also confuses reason and good judgement with morality. It is, in its essence, a bet in the essential evil of mankind, and an assertion that we're not good enough to be allowed this forbidden knowledge. Shades of Genesis... (as in the Old Testament, not as in Peter Gabriel!)
As an atheist and a scientificist, I found this really strange: "Self Restraint and Temper are moral laws we learn from Religion and can see evidence of it scientificaly. Nuclear laws are found out scientificaly, and even show evidence or a correspondance (abstractly) with moral laws." Are you claiming that religion is th only possible source of morals? That I, as an atheist, cannot be self-restrained or well-tempered? That self-restraint and temper are absolute "laws", as opposed to being merely useful guidelines for behaviour in civilised society? Furthermore, what do you consider to be scientific evidence for the "laws" of self-restraint and temper? Are you counting sociology and psychology as sciences, or are you asserting something more profound? Finally, just what is this correspondence between nuclear and moral "laws"?
"There is a need for both is what I'm saying. The Grand Intelligence in the Universe who you mock does have lines of information open. Science is one of them, and religion is one of them but they both require personal discovery and faith." I'm sorry, but I can't consider that anything other than a personal, subjective opinion - and a poor one at that - at least until you explain in minute detail how it is that science requires "personal discovery and faith". (When you do, keep in mind my previous point about the meaning of the word "faith".)
Finally, as for your "request for truths" - frankly, I can't claim to have any deep insights regarding the nature of mankind and the universe; all I have is my opinion, and it was once said that opinions are like asses. In this spirit, I can only translate a Brazilian saying: "if advice was any good, it would be sold, not given."
I'm forwarding this to your email; thankfully it seems we've only two points left to clear out (as opposed to On Lawn's enormous rant, which will take me yet another day to respond...).
Just last night (after I got tired of discussing philosophy with On Lawn on Slashdot... and went to discuss philosophy with the #atheism crowd on IRC) I made that exact same argument about Occam's Razor, although it hadn't occurred to me that it would apply in this case. It does seem now that using Occam's Razor would be a circular argument. So maybe there isn't any default position. Okay.
Regarding the request for evidence: I do tend to follow along the general lines for skeptics (you can look at the sci.skeptic FAQ). So, I consider historical evidence often acceptable, depending on the source and reliability (although I'm not really in much of a position to judge myself, not being a professional); OTOH, testimony from the Bible, a book which claims that pi = 3, is much less so. (And yes, I do know about all the historical stuff in the Bible that was found to be true, but I think that only proves that it's not entirely fictional; having been raised in the Jewish culture, I personally consider the Bible to be a fascinating account of the religious and cultural traditions of our ancestors throughout the ages... and that's all.)
Eyewitness testimony isn't much relied upon even by courts of law (human fallibility); much less so "testimony" about answered prayers; taking into account the witnesses' predisposition for believing in these explanations for their claims, as well as the emotional need for beliefs to support their mental state... well, I think you get my point.
(Re. evidence for evolution, well, of course you can't replicate the evolutionary history of the Earth in a lab, but I think we know enough about the fossil record to make a solid claim that either they are records of evolution in process, or the Almighty is a really clever guy who's trying to mess with our little heads.)
The discussion of reason itself requires the use of reason (unless you've discovered another, incredible new way to think). Either reason is not valid and nothing you think is of any value (including any arguments about why reason must have value), or reason is valid - which we can only affirm by use of reason, and by doing so we're already presupposing that reason is valid. So either way, it must be axiomatic. In the end, we're just left to choose in the grounds of usefulness. And I happen to think that rational thought is damned useful.
Blairgh.
First, it is significant that this comes near the end of the book. In other words, this is a conclusion that has been reached by examination of the questions at hand. Thus, the implication that this cannot be rational because of its barest interpretation is lazy and misplaced.
Okay, maybe you're right - I must admit I haven't read this book. However, as said sentence seems to stand alone and, by the way it's presented, seems to represent the entirety of the author's feelings on the subject, I'd say that, if my analysis was in fact lacking, JonKatz' poor quoting certainly would deserve some of the blame...
Second, the burden of proof does NOT lie upon the party making the affirmative claim. It lies upon the party making the claim, regardless of its being affirmative or negative.
Again, my fault.
In this case, Davies is making an ontological claim that he must support. If he fails, then that is all that has happened!! It does not show that his case is unsalvagable, nor does it automatically lend support to whatever position you believe. Failure to prove a case means just that; trying to extend the implications beyond that is tricky and requires additional work.
Did I say otherwise? Quite frankly, I think I'd be glad to find that there is a purpose to us being here, and I'm always willing to hear on it, even though to my knowledge previous attempts at proving such claims have always failed.
In other words, folks, THERE IS NO DEFAULT POSITION!
Whoa. That's a non-sequitur! I'm sorry, I may be missing something, but how does that assertion follow from the previous paragraph? I'd have to say that, in this case, the default position is established by Occam's Razor.
Kaufmann may "believe otherwise", and he may tell us what that position is as a matter of sharing information about his current mental states. Once he makes statements about the way the world is as opposed to what's in his head, HE has to prove his case. Whether or not Davies can prove his case makes no difference as to whether Kaufmann is justified or unjustified in his position. That becomes important only when Davies' position is analyzed and its premises, true or false, can be used in a separate argument attacking or defending Kaufmann's position, whatever it may be.
That's all nice and fine, but - here's the rub - I don't remember actually making any statements. I only said I believed otherwise, and as you said, my position and Davies' are independent until either are analysed. My position, personally, is that we do exist by chance; I believe that this position is well funded. However, my position could be entirely different - I might as well be a solipsist, or a Randroid, or merely believe in the "chance" position by faith, as it seems that Davies does for the "purpose" position. That makes no difference regarding my attack of Davies' position.
Considering that above I merely restated the second paragraph of your message, where I think we differ is that you assert that there is no default position, while I consider that Occam's Razor applies (as it does in my ongoing discussion with On Lawn (?) re. the existence of God). However, although I stand by what I consider to be the default position (and although I think it is a well-fundamented position), I'm not inflexible.
As for "actual evidence", I suspect that demand is spurious. I rather suspect Kaufmann would submit any such evidence to a Procrustean bed. I'll go ahead and read his responses and see if my hunch plays out.
Not true. I like to consider myself very open-minded on all-matters - not in that I'm gullible, but in that I'm willing to change my mind if suitable motivation for doing so is presented.
Finally, I'd like to thank you for presenting a good counterpoint to my post.
It's very strange to see you try to be conciliatory and reasonable, and then turn around and, violently, just throw around the exact same unreasonable arguments that I've been hearing for years now, for example on DALNet #atheism. Quite frankly, because I claim no supernaturally obtained knowledge of any sort, I do not know whether there actually is a God or not; but I definitely know that there must be better arguments for his existence than those that you've given; in general, your entire line of reasoning is extremely poor and ignores a lot of previous debate. So I'll just respond to a few, more indicative paragraphs in your message. Here we go:
(P. 3) All I see in the way of disproving the world around us is what amounts to "There is no God, therefore that is not evidence." In other words, you are accusing me of using circular logic. How fresh!
(P. 4) The evidence you present is not very earth-shattering, nor does it by itself indicate design, seeing as though there are better ways to fit our model around them then by introducing a deity into it. It's the kind of evidence that would only be accepted as such by someone already inclined to believe in a God and who would see this as confirmation of their beliefs. Quite frankly, considering that you are making the ultimate extraordinary claim - that there is an omni-everything deity of some sort or the other - I would expect, likewise, that you would present extraordinary evidence. (A 10 mile high cross hovering over Ithaca would suffice.)
(Of course, I should also point out that, even if your "evidence" represented serious contradictions in the modern theory of evolution by natural selection as it stands, that still wouldn't be enough to make creationism - design of any kind, much less of your preferred brand - automatically true. Evidently, Neo-Darwinism and creationism aren't the only two possibilities.)
(P. 7) Your comparison of atheists with the blind also doesn't follow. The blind have plenty of rational reasons for acknowledging the existence of light and the sense of sight (I believe it's not necessary to enumerate it), even though they aren't able to directly experience it with their own sensory apparatus. The same isn't true of atheists regarding God or the "sense of God" that many theists claim to perceive. In the end, of course, it boils down to Occam's Razor.
Also, I must reiterate that I am making no assertions in this discussion, regarding the issue of whether God exists. There's an enormous difference between not actively believing in the existence of a God (so-called weak atheism, which is the case for me, just as I don't believe in pink fluffy elephants that can read minds) and actively believing in the non-existence of a God (so-called strong atheism). So your accusation of "belief of blindness" would be erroneous even if the general comparison between atheists and the blind did apply.
(P. 8) I can declare what I know is true. Now, this has made me curious. Pray tell, where did you obtain your knowledge of the truth? Divine revelation? I guess that's one of the perks in being a believer, eh? I mean, why subject yourself to murking around in this vast sea of relative thoughts and subjective experience, when you've got direct access to the latest scoop on the objective nature of the universe, straight from the head of the Creator?
Kaufmann obligingly follows on to the Termination Center, and, after presenting his Troubleshooter ID, steps into a booth where a disintegration apparatus zaps him, leaving only ashes on the floor. Almost instantly afterwards, said apparatus zaps a new Kaufmann-clone into existence; he dons his Troubleshooter-suit and Troubleshooter-gun, and goes back to the streets, ever intent on... uh, shooting trouble... or whatever it is that Troubleshooters do.
:])
(Sorry for the pointless Paranoia reference... just hope I won't get moderated down...
My loss? Care to explain what it is exactly that I'm "losing"? (Honest question, not meant as a flame.)
LOL! You are one of those people who see evidence for God in anything, aren't you? How can I argue with circular logic like that? You've just declared your own beliefs to be true, pal, and there's nothing I can (or will) do about it. Have fun believing in whatever it is that you believe... but don't expect other people to blindly agree. (Look ma, split infinitives!)
(By the way, when you claim that "The evidence you look for is all around you, especialy in physics. The line of extrapolation clearly points to God", I hope that you either (a) meant that purely as personal opinion or (b) have very good, previously unknown, completely conclusive, scientifically sound evidence... because otherwise you're just another theist with an extraordinary claim, and we've already got enough of those.)
OTOH how much can you really learn through rational and reasoned discourse on the subject of pink fluffy elephants?
;)
LOL! So you did read my reply to that post!
"I cannot believe," writes Davies near the end of the book, "that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate. The physical species Homo may count for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here."
Um, I'm sorry, but coming from an alleged supporter of rational thought, this sounds very out of place. "This can be no trivial detail" - says who, exactly? The burden of proof lies upon the one who makes the affirmative claim, so until this guy can produce actual evidence that we are "meant" to be here (aside from his nigh-religious clinging to this somehow mysterious and supernatural "meaning of existence"), I shall continue to believe otherwise.
Just because your only knowledge of me is bits on a screen does not quantifiably prove that I do not exist. I may, I may not, but you can not prove that I do not exist because of a lack of evidence or perception.
Uhrm, didn't anyone ever tell you that the burden of proof lies upon the one who makes the positive claim? As far as I'm concerned, your existence isn't established a priori; the only evidence do I have of it is these pixels on the screen. And I may very well decide that it's not evidence enough; as far as I know, you might as well be a postbot, or the byproduct of a Slashdot bug, or just an all-out hallucination. But I don't do that; I accept your objective existence, because it's the rational decision.
And while we're at it, it's impossible to prove an existential negative; I may spend my entire life looking for pink elephants and find none, and yet I will not have proved that pink elephants don't exist. Same with you. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
Uhrm. I'm alcohol-free, so I won't have much use for that wine... but what the heck - I'll raise: a signed copy of The Art of Computer Programming... all five volumes (that is, assuming that Knuth has already finished it by then), leather cover (synthetic, of course... because nobody kills cows anymore in the 21st century :]).
I'll take that bet, thank you. And I'll also make a meta-bet that I'll be alive for as long as it takes for either event to take place (pessimistic estimate, 2100; optimistic estimate, 2020 or less!). Now, how much money will you put where your mouth is? (Will money even exist when all this takes place? When/if nanotech comes along, who will care about dead trees painted green anyway?)
(Disclaimer: I am not a sucker. While I recognise that we tend to be overtly optimistic about the short-term, I also recognise that we tend to be overtly pessimistic about the long-term. Also, I don't believe that human exploration of the solar system has a big future - believing in uploading as well. So there you go.)
Wow, that's nasty. Weren't we "computer guys" supposed to be rational? (OTOH, Slashdot is the perfect counterexample... :]) Minsky may have been wrong, but we're all wrong one time or the other; I don't believe he should be shunned or treated as anything other than what he is: an outstanding researcher and one of the forefathers of the field. (Were it not for Minsky, maybe none of the connectionist guys would be working on AI at all!)
For a long time, Einstein opposed the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics ("God doesn't play dice" and all that). Still I doubt that, say, Feynman's generation would have booed and hissed him, were he to speak at a conference on QM at the time. See my point?
(For the uninformed reader: A Long Time Ago, Marvin Minsky, then one of the most proheminent AI researchers, pretty much declared that research on artificial neural networks - "connectionist AI" - was a dead end. Most people took his word for it, and research ground to a halt, turning exclusively to Minsky's favoured symbolic paradigm for the next couple of decades or so. (Caveat: this is all IIRC-status. I haven't even thought about this for a long time, so I may have gotten something wrong. Let me know.))
Also, computers are (now) lacking aura, I mean the thing we can look at with 'kirlian effect'. Usually, it indicates life...
You mean somebody still believes in that absurd chunk of pseudoscience? Wow.
That's a non-argument. It assumes that all that humans and Turing machines can do to a program is try to execute it, which the human mind would be able to do by some magical and as of yet undiscovered mechanism. This in itself contradicts all research done so far, which strongly indicates that human high-level thought is entirely computational, although heavily parallel. Humans merely have an edge in that they are able to perform analysis of a given problem before they go try to compute it; a Turing machine would be able to do the same if it were so programmed - that's the whole premise behind GPS-type symbolic AI programs. That does not in any way denote that the human mind is in any way special.
Most of Penrose's arguments from "The Emperor's New Mind" have been debunked in a thousand different ways ever since publication; his crusade to prove that humans are "special" (shades of creationism?) and AI is impossible has so far produced no results.
Wow... when the Slashdot Effect becomes more than even .mil sites can handle, you know you've got a world power in the making... can you say "Geek Nation"? I can see it already... Rob as the Benevolent Dictator, Jeff as the Consultant for Kewl Nanotech Stuff. JonKatz would be in charge of the State Religion, of course. I think I'd be very happy there, as long as the Moderation Militia kept all the hot grits people away from my pants... and as long as federal law made sure that Bjarne Stroustroup would be shot at sight!
Seriously, is the site actually slashdotted (of course, it may not be when you read this) or is it my DNS's fault?