In my mind I've always assumed there were inherit limits to the relatively dumb cellular information copying mechanisms. "Gods telomere hack" always seemed to me to be an evolutionary enforced educated bet against living longer or dieing much earlier of cancer that really requires fundemental changes to overcome.
Well, keep in mind that you're the product of the cellular copying mechanisms of your parents. We're capable of producing "fresh" cells with the clock reset.
Or to put it another way, from a certain point of view, there's only been one life form on Earth, and it's presently several billion years old. Parts of it die off periodically, of course, but all the parts came from the same whole.
and yet you know nothing about me or my experience and abilities
I do know something about your experience and abilities, based on your post. You made the claims, and only someone who hasn't done very significant projects could possibly believe what you posted. Sorry. Nothing personal -- you just have a very naive viewpoint.
What made you think that he is even interested in being A Master of C?
The point isn't the specific language, that's just an example.
Believe it or not, a lot of us are not remotely interested in learning languages any further then getting a job done.
Yes, but you fail to understand that "getting the job done" is not just banging out code to perform some function. Most of the expense of software development is in future bug fixes, enhancements, and being maintainable by future developers. That means understanding the language sufficiently to use the features effectively, as well as being able to modify other's code that may use any and all of the features and libraries.
Of course, it does make sense to specialize in a language if you are a language instructor. Other than that, it doesn't.
No one talked of specialization. This is about basic competence and professionalism. Unfortunately, I've worked with too many "bit slingers" such as yourself who come from the "poke and prod until it works" school, and then your crap has to be rewritten by the professionals.
Heck, I just talked to a company recently who had a web application developed using your methods. Because the idiot developer focused on "just making it work" and didn't understand at all how the web worked, it has to be totally thrown away. It's a perfect example of someone who clearly just experimented with stuff and didn't bother to learn how things worked to any depth.
A JVM doesn't have to be huge, it's only when you want Java to have half-way decent performance, along with all the security scanning, that you need all the extraneous crap. And you only need that when you want Java to compete with other languages in high performance applications. Java would be fine in low-demand things like, say, DVD players. Of course, you have to be careful with memory usage, as you do in all embedded applications.
Keep in mind that a JVM is fundamentally a bytecode interpreter. It doesn't have to be radically complex, especially in a non-programmable device.
Further, at this point, it doesn't matter that I don't 'know' Java. I do 'know' half a dozen languages and if I should ever come across a job that I can't get _because_ I don't 'know' Java, then I've simply vetted a company that I know I do not want to work for.
To be honest with you, I don't think you have as much experience as you think you do. You seem to think learning a new language is a matter of doing a "keyword substitution". It's not. It's about learning the idioms of the language, and particularly in the case of Java, the libraries. Becoming a true expert in a language takes years of everyday usage.
What brought this really home to me was after I had been programming for years in C, I hung out in the comp.lang.c newsgroup for awhile, and I realized how little I knew about the subtleties of the language definition -- which *matter*. I can almost guarantee that with your attitude, you don't have a clue about C, and I bet you think you're an expert in it (or would be after reading a book).
...while I distinctly remember hordes of posters on this very site only a few years ago, rabidly arguing that Java is the best thing ever and that nobody will be using anything but Java in the future.
You're going to have to pull a quote on that. I highly doubt anyone in the history of the universe has ever said that "Java is the best thing ever," much less that nobody will be using anything else. Even rabid Java advocates (hopefully) recognize the various levels of brain damage, especially in the libraries. I personally hate just about everything about the language, though I do recognize that it's a good fit in embedded device applications, which is what it was designed for in the first place.
As for Slashdot specifically, if anything, this site seems to be pretty hostile to Java.
The key phrase in my statement is "if Sun could do it." They gave it away because that's what it was worth to people in '95. Nobody was going to pay for a plugin browser architecture. They wanted market penetration so they gave it away. They would've charged for it if anyone wanted it.
Additionally, Machine Learning often concentrates on one problem (OCR, internet search, etc.) rather than a truly self-aware entity that has to deal with a variety of tasks.
I think your field is still mis-named, if that's what your concerned with. "Artificial *intelligence*" should deal with intelligence (*not* necessarily self-awareness). Intelligence (to me) implies being able to design a plan from a set of facts in order to perform a task, without a preprogrammed set of plans (so, say, a SQL optimizer does not fit). In other words, an intelligent machine can write programs from a set of specifications. That does not imply sentience.
Machine Learning implies a machine that learns. That "feels" a bit diluted from true intelligence, but it still implies some amount of self-adjustment beyond simple algorithms. OCR and Internet Search are simple algorithms, not much different than a spreadsheet or web browser.
I'll recognize a computer that has some sort of "machine learning" when it gets faster and faster the more I use it, without any need for a programmer to make it that way. I know we have optimizing compilers that do profiling, but I'm thinking that the computer ought to be able to analyze the problem set and optimize the algorithms to qualify as learning.
I hope people recognize the scale and generosity of what Sun have done in GPL'ing their crown jewel.
What? Sun is a company, doing what benefits themselves. The last reason they're doing this is for "the good of the world". This is a simple business transaction, no appreciation required.
The reason they're doing it is that they fear the GPL'd version(s) of Java that are being rewritten, and fear being forked and irrelevent. This neatly cuts the other projects off at the knees and ensures they maintain control.
If Sun could do it, they would keep it tightly closed and charge everyone $1,000 per runtime and $10,000 / development license. Of course, for many reasons, they can't charge those rates. But you know they would if they could, which should tell you how altruistic they are with this move.
Even in the Old Days, supercomputers had multiple processors.
Those aren't the Old Days.:) In fact, that was around the beginning of the New Days, when companies began giving up on linear processors. See also: The Connection Machine.
I liked (back in the Old Days) when supercomputer rankings where based on linear, single processor performance. Now it's just how much money can you afford to put a lot of processors in a single place. That was a real test of engineering. By the current standards, Google (probably) has the largest supercomputer in the world.
Unfortunately, single core performance seems to have hit the wall.
By what stretch of the imagination do you think he won't carry those same obligations to higher office (as he already has as a senator; look at his voting record v. the demands of the state machinery).
Trust me, I am not under the "Obama Reality Distortion Field". I realize that you don't get to where he is without being somewhat in debt to the machine. The key word in my statement is "*somewhat* closer to a normal, honest citizen." Out of all the legitimate candidates running in the primaries, he feels the least insincere and corrupted (at least, short of Ron Paul, but he's batshit crazy on any number of issues and a creationist to boot).
Does Obama represent all my government ideals? Hell no. But at least he's relatively young and his brain hasn't fossilized into stone. At least there's some fighting chance that he'll walk in and want to make some positive changes, and won't just borrow more money to pay for all his new pet Democrat programs.
Ehh. McCain may be a turnaround. Wait at least for the convention; I'm pretty sure there will be a "look, you fuckers, we are playing this game MY WAY" moment there.
Maybe, but it's the congressional Republicans that are completely out of control. Even if McCain in the back of his mind wants to apply the brakes, I highly doubt he will stand up against his own party's pork spending. And he certainly won't reign in military spending. And I'm a big fan of a strong military, but we simply can't afford the mountains of money we're spending.
but he's got a good smile and a Shatnerian style of speaking in front of a camera to dredge him up some votes.
Well, McCain isn't exactly pure when it comes to putting on faces in front of the camera. The other thing that bugs me is what McCain did to his first wife when he got back from the war. He may have strong character when it comes to war, but he's a slimeball when it comes to his personal life.
Say what you want about Obama, but at least he's somewhat closer to a normal, honest citizen. He hasn't been there long enough to become completely subservient to the machine. Maybe he'll actually be able to see how financially wacked the country is, despite being a Democrat. I have no confidence McCain will do a damn thing about it.
The ideological purity tests are killing the party just like they killed the Republicans in the late 80s.
Unfortunately, the lack of any ideology has killed the Republicans over the last eight or so years. They've pretty much taken all the worst traits of Democrats (unrestrained spending) and combined it with the worst traits of Republicans (moral and religious legislation). The perfect storm of party corruption and suicide.
I pretty much hate both parties at this point, but for the first time in my life, I'm thinking of voting for a Democrat. I actually think they're more fiscally responsible at this point, and that just shows how low the Republicans have sunk.
How about you: are you willing to take responsibility for your part in tolerating racism within the LAPD...
Personally, no, because I have nothing to do with it. On behalf of white people, then I say, "to some extent". White people have already embraced more than enough guilt for past crimes. At this point, the black community and black leadership perpetuate the vast majority of racism. LAPD is mostly racist *because* the black community is so out of control and black leaders are so unwilling to hold people accountable. There's no physical law of the universe that black people should be persecuted by police. But when so many black people (and black leaders!) have embraced cultures of violence, then that's going to have an effect.
The police should not be racist. But they are human. When they are dealing everyday with a ingrained culture of violence, then they're going to go into a "bunker mentality". Which, of course, creates a circle of mistrust. Someone has to break the circle. And it has to begin with the diseased part of black culture and black leadership. Their used to be a white culture of violence in the south against blacks. That culture is pretty much dead (of course, it still happens, but it's not culturally acceptable like it once was). Now, things have been pretty much reversed. Black culture needs to heal itself before we can finally move forward.
whites overlook the undisputed fact that a non-neglible amount of the evidence seemed planted...
Name ONE piece of evidence that is "undisputed fact" that it was planted. Just one.
I don't blame black people for feeling like it was *possible* that evidence is planted (since that *is* done in poor communities on occasion), but you seriously have to turn off your brain to think OJ was innocent and it was just LAPD framing him. I mean, if they wanted frame someone, they wouldn't frame a superstar with huge money to fight it!
and so the country goes, divided by color refusing to listen to each other.
I refuse to listen to stupidity. I will (and have) listen to the idea that justice isn't given out fairly. But they did themselves no favors by embracing OJ. All that did was fuel the fires of racism and convince people on the fence that the racists have a point.
In other words, black people need to take responsibility for their part in perpetuating racism.
Glad I'm not in the US, getting life in prison for something that has way too many loose ends, just isn't right.
Loose ends? Only if you believe "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" means "guilty beyond all doubt". I can only assume you haven't actually seen the list of evidence against him.
Perhaps they need to sit back and take a look at the third world countries, homeless, sick, starving and uneducated people on our own rock before we start trying to live on others.
If mere money could solve all those problems, they would have been solved a long time ago. Money is useless without stable government, stable courts, stable trade and a stable economy. The root cause of poverty is not lack of money, it's the lack of infrastructure to create money.
In moderation it's not harmful, but excessive exposure can be damaging. [...] That's tautological. If it's not damaging, then it's not excessive.
No, it's not, in the conversational sense. The second phrase rephrases for emphasis the point that there is a level at which damage can happen. In a logic sense, you could make the argument, but in human conversation it's common to rephrase a point in different ways (yet technically making the same point) in order to enhance understanding. If we were out to lunch and I said, "I hate burgers with too much ketchup!" That's technically a tautology, but the point isn't to make a grand statement of logic regarding ketchup, the point is to bring up the subject of ketchup, because the burger probably has too much.
So, by saying that "Porn can't be harmful" is wrong, do you imply that porn will never be harmless?
Do I really need to point out how illogical this statement is? Try this: "So, by saying that 'getting hit in the head can't be[isn't] harmful' is wrong, do you imply that getting hit in the head will never be harmless?"
He's not saying porn can't be harmful, he's suggesting that if you are harmed by porn then you have already been harmed by something else.
That statement is contradictory. Anyway, he *IS* saying porn can't be harmful, and that is Just Plain Wrong.
If you have an addictive personality you can be addicted to literally anything. Porn addition is in much the same venue. If you weren't addicted to porn you would be addicted to something else allowing your life to be equally destroyed.
That is absolutely ridiculous and not backed up by anything at all. There are lots of people who are alcoholics but aren't addicted to anything else. The trivial example is cigarette smoking. The nicotine causes biochemical changes. That doesn't lead to addictions to everything.
There are people out there that have been so addicted to drinking water that they die from it. Should we get rid of water now?
So, because you can find one example out of billions that show that people can create addictions to anything, that means that every other addiction is exactly physically and psychologically similar to an addiction to water? That's just absurd.
There are many types of addiction. Some are psychological, some are physical, and some are both. Water addiction doesn't have a primitive-brain, animalistic pleasure impulse that gets triggered.
You seem to have some investment in believing that porn isn't addictive to a significant number of people. The key word in the latter is "significant". Water doesn't have a significant number of addicted people. Cigarettes do. Alcoholics do. And porn does as well.
Sheesh, whenever this subject comes up, it's like alcoholics in denial. "I can quit whenever I want!" "It's not affecting my life!"
People with anything resembling a healthy mental state are not moved to violent acts by pictures.
I didn't say it moves people to violent acts. But is often damaging to forming healthy relationships.
Having had a certain amount of exposure from the time I was 12, I feel qualified to comment that...
You are qualified to comment about yourself. That's like saying, "Having consumed alcohol since I was in High School, I feel qualified to conclude that alcohol is never harmful."
If masturbation strikes you as illegal and dangerous, perhaps porn is harmful.
Search for "porn addiction" and be educated. A lot of our brain wiring is devoted to seeking orgasms. Taken to excess, certain people basically can't get what they need anymore in real life and start living in a porn-fueled fantasy world that real life can never live up to, and that makes it very difficult to form real attachments. Porn is a relationship with all frosting and no cake.
I really wish people would understand this. Correctly, it's "Correlation is not necessarily Causation." Too many people think this is some magic mantra that proves (or disproves) something. Correlation may, and very often does, lead to conclude Causation. Correlation is evidence.
And if you think porn isn't harmful to some people, you are just delusional. Porn is similar to alcohol. In moderation it's not harmful, but excessive exposure can be damaging.
I ask, but funny enough, nothing happens. I also ask Ra and Zeus to appear, and the identical thing happens.
And you will definitely have your chance in the future.
Should that happen, I will definitely ask him why he set up such a stupid system. If he wanted to be worshipped, he shouldn't have set everything up to appear as though he doesn't exist, and he shouldn't have made religion so absurdly irrational. I'd also probably ask him why, if he's all powerful, why he cares whether we worship him or not. Does it hurt his feelings or something? Or maybe he needs the ego stroke? If I was setting up a universe as my plaything and/or experiment, I'd hardly care about whether the individual pawns are worshipping me. It's kind of like caring whether people in The Sims are aware that a god outside their universe is watching them.
Or maybe that's the point of the experiment -- give people intelligence, sprinkle a few hints early on in ancient history, then put mountains of contrary evidence around, and see how long people take to overcome the early conditioning that God existed.
In fact -- I bet that's it! God will reward those who don't believe in him, because they used the intelligence God gave them to overcome irrationality and the fear instilled by the church. The ones who will be punished are the ones who rejected the intelligence that God gave them. If I was God, that's how I would dole out rewards. And given that God is rational and intelligent (though, the Old Testament kind of argues against both those, but I digress), this is clearly what will happen, should there actually be an afterlife. Better repent your beliefs now, just in case I'm right!
Slashdot Mirror
In my mind I've always assumed there were inherit limits to the relatively dumb cellular information copying mechanisms. "Gods telomere hack" always seemed to me to be an evolutionary enforced educated bet against living longer or dieing much earlier of cancer that really requires fundemental changes to overcome.
Well, keep in mind that you're the product of the cellular copying mechanisms of your parents. We're capable of producing "fresh" cells with the clock reset.
Or to put it another way, from a certain point of view, there's only been one life form on Earth, and it's presently several billion years old. Parts of it die off periodically, of course, but all the parts came from the same whole.
and yet you know nothing about me or my experience and abilities
I do know something about your experience and abilities, based on your post. You made the claims, and only someone who hasn't done very significant projects could possibly believe what you posted. Sorry. Nothing personal -- you just have a very naive viewpoint.
What made you think that he is even interested in being A Master of C?
The point isn't the specific language, that's just an example.
Believe it or not, a lot of us are not remotely interested in learning languages any further then getting a job done.
Yes, but you fail to understand that "getting the job done" is not just banging out code to perform some function. Most of the expense of software development is in future bug fixes, enhancements, and being maintainable by future developers. That means understanding the language sufficiently to use the features effectively, as well as being able to modify other's code that may use any and all of the features and libraries.
Of course, it does make sense to specialize in a language if you are a language instructor. Other than that, it doesn't.
No one talked of specialization. This is about basic competence and professionalism. Unfortunately, I've worked with too many "bit slingers" such as yourself who come from the "poke and prod until it works" school, and then your crap has to be rewritten by the professionals.
Heck, I just talked to a company recently who had a web application developed using your methods. Because the idiot developer focused on "just making it work" and didn't understand at all how the web worked, it has to be totally thrown away. It's a perfect example of someone who clearly just experimented with stuff and didn't bother to learn how things worked to any depth.
Running a huge JVM on an embedded device?
A JVM doesn't have to be huge, it's only when you want Java to have half-way decent performance, along with all the security scanning, that you need all the extraneous crap. And you only need that when you want Java to compete with other languages in high performance applications. Java would be fine in low-demand things like, say, DVD players. Of course, you have to be careful with memory usage, as you do in all embedded applications.
Keep in mind that a JVM is fundamentally a bytecode interpreter. It doesn't have to be radically complex, especially in a non-programmable device.
Further, at this point, it doesn't matter that I don't 'know' Java. I do 'know' half a dozen languages and if I should ever come across a job that I can't get _because_ I don't 'know' Java, then I've simply vetted a company that I know I do not want to work for.
To be honest with you, I don't think you have as much experience as you think you do. You seem to think learning a new language is a matter of doing a "keyword substitution". It's not. It's about learning the idioms of the language, and particularly in the case of Java, the libraries. Becoming a true expert in a language takes years of everyday usage.
What brought this really home to me was after I had been programming for years in C, I hung out in the comp.lang.c newsgroup for awhile, and I realized how little I knew about the subtleties of the language definition -- which *matter*. I can almost guarantee that with your attitude, you don't have a clue about C, and I bet you think you're an expert in it (or would be after reading a book).
You're going to have to pull a quote on that. I highly doubt anyone in the history of the universe has ever said that "Java is the best thing ever," much less that nobody will be using anything else. Even rabid Java advocates (hopefully) recognize the various levels of brain damage, especially in the libraries. I personally hate just about everything about the language, though I do recognize that it's a good fit in embedded device applications, which is what it was designed for in the first place.
As for Slashdot specifically, if anything, this site seems to be pretty hostile to Java.
The key phrase in my statement is "if Sun could do it." They gave it away because that's what it was worth to people in '95. Nobody was going to pay for a plugin browser architecture. They wanted market penetration so they gave it away. They would've charged for it if anyone wanted it.
Additionally, Machine Learning often concentrates on one problem (OCR, internet search, etc.) rather than a truly self-aware entity that has to deal with a variety of tasks.
I think your field is still mis-named, if that's what your concerned with. "Artificial *intelligence*" should deal with intelligence (*not* necessarily self-awareness). Intelligence (to me) implies being able to design a plan from a set of facts in order to perform a task, without a preprogrammed set of plans (so, say, a SQL optimizer does not fit). In other words, an intelligent machine can write programs from a set of specifications. That does not imply sentience.
Machine Learning implies a machine that learns. That "feels" a bit diluted from true intelligence, but it still implies some amount of self-adjustment beyond simple algorithms. OCR and Internet Search are simple algorithms, not much different than a spreadsheet or web browser.
I'll recognize a computer that has some sort of "machine learning" when it gets faster and faster the more I use it, without any need for a programmer to make it that way. I know we have optimizing compilers that do profiling, but I'm thinking that the computer ought to be able to analyze the problem set and optimize the algorithms to qualify as learning.
I hope people recognize the scale and generosity of what Sun have done in GPL'ing their crown jewel.
What? Sun is a company, doing what benefits themselves. The last reason they're doing this is for "the good of the world". This is a simple business transaction, no appreciation required.
The reason they're doing it is that they fear the GPL'd version(s) of Java that are being rewritten, and fear being forked and irrelevent. This neatly cuts the other projects off at the knees and ensures they maintain control.
If Sun could do it, they would keep it tightly closed and charge everyone $1,000 per runtime and $10,000 / development license. Of course, for many reasons, they can't charge those rates. But you know they would if they could, which should tell you how altruistic they are with this move.
Even in the Old Days, supercomputers had multiple processors.
Those aren't the Old Days. :) In fact, that was around the beginning of the New Days, when companies began giving up on linear processors. See also: The Connection Machine.
I liked (back in the Old Days) when supercomputer rankings where based on linear, single processor performance. Now it's just how much money can you afford to put a lot of processors in a single place. That was a real test of engineering. By the current standards, Google (probably) has the largest supercomputer in the world.
Unfortunately, single core performance seems to have hit the wall.
By what stretch of the imagination do you think he won't carry those same obligations to higher office (as he already has as a senator; look at his voting record v. the demands of the state machinery).
Trust me, I am not under the "Obama Reality Distortion Field". I realize that you don't get to where he is without being somewhat in debt to the machine. The key word in my statement is "*somewhat* closer to a normal, honest citizen." Out of all the legitimate candidates running in the primaries, he feels the least insincere and corrupted (at least, short of Ron Paul, but he's batshit crazy on any number of issues and a creationist to boot).
Does Obama represent all my government ideals? Hell no. But at least he's relatively young and his brain hasn't fossilized into stone. At least there's some fighting chance that he'll walk in and want to make some positive changes, and won't just borrow more money to pay for all his new pet Democrat programs.
Ehh. McCain may be a turnaround. Wait at least for the convention; I'm pretty sure there will be a "look, you fuckers, we are playing this game MY WAY" moment there.
Maybe, but it's the congressional Republicans that are completely out of control. Even if McCain in the back of his mind wants to apply the brakes, I highly doubt he will stand up against his own party's pork spending. And he certainly won't reign in military spending. And I'm a big fan of a strong military, but we simply can't afford the mountains of money we're spending.
but he's got a good smile and a Shatnerian style of speaking in front of a camera to dredge him up some votes.
Well, McCain isn't exactly pure when it comes to putting on faces in front of the camera. The other thing that bugs me is what McCain did to his first wife when he got back from the war. He may have strong character when it comes to war, but he's a slimeball when it comes to his personal life.
Say what you want about Obama, but at least he's somewhat closer to a normal, honest citizen. He hasn't been there long enough to become completely subservient to the machine. Maybe he'll actually be able to see how financially wacked the country is, despite being a Democrat. I have no confidence McCain will do a damn thing about it.
The ideological purity tests are killing the party just like they killed the Republicans in the late 80s.
Unfortunately, the lack of any ideology has killed the Republicans over the last eight or so years. They've pretty much taken all the worst traits of Democrats (unrestrained spending) and combined it with the worst traits of Republicans (moral and religious legislation). The perfect storm of party corruption and suicide.
I pretty much hate both parties at this point, but for the first time in my life, I'm thinking of voting for a Democrat. I actually think they're more fiscally responsible at this point, and that just shows how low the Republicans have sunk.
Because /. is neither primarily political, nor a blog, while the mentioned sites are both?
You beat me to it. This site is a news aggregator with comments. It really makes me wonder what exactly Taco thinks this site is.
How about you: are you willing to take responsibility for your part in tolerating racism within the LAPD...
Personally, no, because I have nothing to do with it. On behalf of white people, then I say, "to some extent". White people have already embraced more than enough guilt for past crimes. At this point, the black community and black leadership perpetuate the vast majority of racism. LAPD is mostly racist *because* the black community is so out of control and black leaders are so unwilling to hold people accountable. There's no physical law of the universe that black people should be persecuted by police. But when so many black people (and black leaders!) have embraced cultures of violence, then that's going to have an effect.
The police should not be racist. But they are human. When they are dealing everyday with a ingrained culture of violence, then they're going to go into a "bunker mentality". Which, of course, creates a circle of mistrust. Someone has to break the circle. And it has to begin with the diseased part of black culture and black leadership. Their used to be a white culture of violence in the south against blacks. That culture is pretty much dead (of course, it still happens, but it's not culturally acceptable like it once was). Now, things have been pretty much reversed. Black culture needs to heal itself before we can finally move forward.
whites overlook the undisputed fact that a non-neglible amount of the evidence seemed planted...
Name ONE piece of evidence that is "undisputed fact" that it was planted. Just one.
I don't blame black people for feeling like it was *possible* that evidence is planted (since that *is* done in poor communities on occasion), but you seriously have to turn off your brain to think OJ was innocent and it was just LAPD framing him. I mean, if they wanted frame someone, they wouldn't frame a superstar with huge money to fight it!
and so the country goes, divided by color refusing to listen to each other.
I refuse to listen to stupidity. I will (and have) listen to the idea that justice isn't given out fairly. But they did themselves no favors by embracing OJ. All that did was fuel the fires of racism and convince people on the fence that the racists have a point.
In other words, black people need to take responsibility for their part in perpetuating racism.
Glad I'm not in the US, getting life in prison for something that has way too many loose ends, just isn't right.
Loose ends? Only if you believe "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" means "guilty beyond all doubt". I can only assume you haven't actually seen the list of evidence against him.
Perhaps they need to sit back and take a look at the third world countries, homeless, sick, starving and uneducated people on our own rock before we start trying to live on others.
If mere money could solve all those problems, they would have been solved a long time ago. Money is useless without stable government, stable courts, stable trade and a stable economy. The root cause of poverty is not lack of money, it's the lack of infrastructure to create money.
In moderation it's not harmful, but excessive exposure can be damaging. [...] That's tautological. If it's not damaging, then it's not excessive.
No, it's not, in the conversational sense. The second phrase rephrases for emphasis the point that there is a level at which damage can happen. In a logic sense, you could make the argument, but in human conversation it's common to rephrase a point in different ways (yet technically making the same point) in order to enhance understanding. If we were out to lunch and I said, "I hate burgers with too much ketchup!" That's technically a tautology, but the point isn't to make a grand statement of logic regarding ketchup, the point is to bring up the subject of ketchup, because the burger probably has too much.
So, by saying that "Porn can't be harmful" is wrong, do you imply that porn will never be harmless?
Do I really need to point out how illogical this statement is? Try this: "So, by saying that 'getting hit in the head can't be[isn't] harmful' is wrong, do you imply that getting hit in the head will never be harmless?"
He's not saying porn can't be harmful, he's suggesting that if you are harmed by porn then you have already been harmed by something else.
That statement is contradictory. Anyway, he *IS* saying porn can't be harmful, and that is Just Plain Wrong.
If you have an addictive personality you can be addicted to literally anything. Porn addition is in much the same venue. If you weren't addicted to porn you would be addicted to something else allowing your life to be equally destroyed.
That is absolutely ridiculous and not backed up by anything at all. There are lots of people who are alcoholics but aren't addicted to anything else. The trivial example is cigarette smoking. The nicotine causes biochemical changes. That doesn't lead to addictions to everything.
There are people out there that have been so addicted to drinking water that they die from it. Should we get rid of water now?
So, because you can find one example out of billions that show that people can create addictions to anything, that means that every other addiction is exactly physically and psychologically similar to an addiction to water? That's just absurd.
There are many types of addiction. Some are psychological, some are physical, and some are both. Water addiction doesn't have a primitive-brain, animalistic pleasure impulse that gets triggered.
You seem to have some investment in believing that porn isn't addictive to a significant number of people. The key word in the latter is "significant". Water doesn't have a significant number of addicted people. Cigarettes do. Alcoholics do. And porn does as well.
Sheesh, whenever this subject comes up, it's like alcoholics in denial. "I can quit whenever I want!" "It's not affecting my life!"
Um, sez who? You and your baptist minister?
I'm an atheist. But nice bigotry.
People with anything resembling a healthy mental state are not moved to violent acts by pictures.
I didn't say it moves people to violent acts. But is often damaging to forming healthy relationships.
Having had a certain amount of exposure from the time I was 12, I feel qualified to comment that...
You are qualified to comment about yourself. That's like saying, "Having consumed alcohol since I was in High School, I feel qualified to conclude that alcohol is never harmful."
If masturbation strikes you as illegal and dangerous, perhaps porn is harmful.
Search for "porn addiction" and be educated. A lot of our brain wiring is devoted to seeking orgasms. Taken to excess, certain people basically can't get what they need anymore in real life and start living in a porn-fueled fantasy world that real life can never live up to, and that makes it very difficult to form real attachments. Porn is a relationship with all frosting and no cake.
Correlation != Causation.
I really wish people would understand this. Correctly, it's "Correlation is not necessarily Causation." Too many people think this is some magic mantra that proves (or disproves) something. Correlation may, and very often does, lead to conclude Causation. Correlation is evidence.
And if you think porn isn't harmful to some people, you are just delusional. Porn is similar to alcohol. In moderation it's not harmful, but excessive exposure can be damaging.
You have your chance to ask now.
I ask, but funny enough, nothing happens. I also ask Ra and Zeus to appear, and the identical thing happens.
And you will definitely have your chance in the future.
Should that happen, I will definitely ask him why he set up such a stupid system. If he wanted to be worshipped, he shouldn't have set everything up to appear as though he doesn't exist, and he shouldn't have made religion so absurdly irrational. I'd also probably ask him why, if he's all powerful, why he cares whether we worship him or not. Does it hurt his feelings or something? Or maybe he needs the ego stroke? If I was setting up a universe as my plaything and/or experiment, I'd hardly care about whether the individual pawns are worshipping me. It's kind of like caring whether people in The Sims are aware that a god outside their universe is watching them.
Or maybe that's the point of the experiment -- give people intelligence, sprinkle a few hints early on in ancient history, then put mountains of contrary evidence around, and see how long people take to overcome the early conditioning that God existed.
In fact -- I bet that's it! God will reward those who don't believe in him, because they used the intelligence God gave them to overcome irrationality and the fear instilled by the church. The ones who will be punished are the ones who rejected the intelligence that God gave them. If I was God, that's how I would dole out rewards. And given that God is rational and intelligent (though, the Old Testament kind of argues against both those, but I digress), this is clearly what will happen, should there actually be an afterlife. Better repent your beliefs now, just in case I'm right!