I can't even find the clock speed in that article, which means we're STILL probably stuck at 3.5 Ghz +/-.5 Ghz, which we've been stuck for what, three, four years? What the hell happened? If we're still shrinking components, why are we not seeing clock speed increases?
"That's how we plan to pass this limited version of the Turing test."
If it's a limited version of the Turing Test, then it's not the Turing Test. They don't actually define exactly what the limits are. But any open ended test is doomed to failure based on our state of the art in A.I. (read: there is no science of Artificial Intelligence, in the sense of artificial cognition).
"What do you think a typical mother would say if she found out her daughter was going to enter the porn industry."
"Why do you think children have emotional attachments to their parents?"
"Which is worse, racism or sexism?"
"Would you rather be a fireman or an astronaut, and why?"
Any sort of open-ended question that requires human cultural knowledge and asking it to support its conclusion is going to cause it to barf.
Now, if the point of this is whether you can fool someone into thinking the Avatar was human when they didn't know it was a test, well, who cares? Eliza was able to do that back in the 1970s.
Lastly, who says the Turing Test (or any A.I. test) needs to take place in real time? I would be impressed if they came back with a human-level answer in a month of processing time. That's equivalent to a computer 2.5 million times faster than a computer that could produce the answer in one second. That they can't even do that should tell people that speed is not the problem in A.I. research. We have absolutely no fundamental model of how it all works.
IMHO, George Martin, also known as the "5th Beatle" and his elite circle of musicologist friends, had a great deal to do with the sophistication of the Beatles best stuff... [etc]
I think that's too uncharitable to the Beatles. I believe George Martin was an integral part of their success, but I think in the case of the Beatles, you can't separate the parts and conclude "this was what made them special." It was *all* the parts (yes, including Ringo!) that made the whole thing. Paul's gift for melody and baselines, John's harder edge, the contrast between Paul's intrinsic optimism and John's intrinsic pessimism, George's guitar chops and spirituality, and Ringo's general "niceness" formed a lot of the glue that held the thing together (along with his underrated drumming and rock-solid timing).
It's not like George Martin only produced the Beatles. I believe he was an important part of things and his classical training added a lot. But it added a lot because the Beatles were geniuses enough to use the resource. For example, George didn't suggest the strings -- McCartney figured out the strings would work in Eleanor Rigby, from listening to Vivaldi. He composed the baseline and Martin arranged it.
Also listen to Martin's compositions on Yellow Submarine. They're not bad, but they don't point to any "hidden genius" that was fueling the Beatles. Nor do we see any of the same Beatlesque experimentation in other George Martin-produced groups.
The reason the solo efforts aren't as impressive as the Beatles is the same reason -- the magic depended on all of them together. Paul has admitted this many times. Imagine being Paul "freaking" McCartney (or Lennon) and wanting to experiment with stuff after the Beatles, but having no one around him who was equal enough to say, "Paul, that's utter crap. You can do better," as the other Beatles could.
Having said that, I think the Beatles' greatest strength was, like the Tamla Motown stuff in the same era, the finger they had on the pulse of 60's Yuppie love...
I agree with this, but I'd go further and say the Beatles' greatest strength was their willingness to experiment with all the various styles around them and synergize them into new things. A lot of artists, as you point out, came out of that era, but only one group utterly dominated.
And just to add one last point, I think an underrated factor in the Beatles success was that they played together for years and perfected their craft. Many people think the Beatles just exploded onto the scene, but that's not what happened. They paid their dues in really harsh conditions, which is also one of the reasons they had such charm -- they had been mixing in comedy to their stage act for a long time. If you haven't read the Anthology book, I recommend it. There's a lot of back story to the Beatles and what made them.
I agree with Michael Stipe of REM, who referred to their music as "elevator music". Maybe it was ground breaking at the time, but it doesn't hold up.
Elevator music? You clearly have not ever sat down and listened to the Beatles albums. Sure, they have some slower songs, but there isn't a rock style they didn't touch on or invent whole cloth. The Beatles pretty much invented heavy metal music. Listen to Helter Skelter (yeah, that's elevator music) or I Want You. I Feel Fine was the first song to use guitar distortion. Listen to the hard rock baseline on Hey Bulldog.
Do yourself a favor and really listen to their albums. The breadth of different styles they did is astounding and unmatched by any other band.
Distortion. A digital recording is an absolutely perfect reproduction of the input signal, clean and pure. But vinyl recordings (and tube amplifiers, for that matter) introduce subtle distortion. Some people like the effect of the distortion, which is okay... but then they start to convince themselves that it's truer to the source. But it's simply not.
That's if people are being reasonably honest. It's also true that there is a gigantic amount of placebo effects. Do a Google search for "danceable cables" if you want to be really amused.
Your idea has already been tried twice: both WABI and OS/2 were attempts to build a "better Windows than Windows". There are not many companies better poised to take a run at Microsoft than IBM and Sun in their heydays.
Au contraire, particularly for OS/2. IBM specifically declined to implement Win32, and also made the device drivers incompatible. That was the kiss of death. OS/2 was forever application and device driver starved. In fact, I recall IBM shipping their computers with both OS/2 and Windows 3.1. You had to go through an extra step to actually delete OS/2 and install Windows 3.1... and nearly everyone did, because of compatibility issues.
The plan most companies have now is smarter: build layers like Java, Flash, HTML and Javascript that make the operating system irrelevant.
And all of those produce inferior applications to native apps. If they could truly look and operate like native apps, you might have a point, but they don't. And that doesn't address the device driver issues.
That must be some pretty prime real-estate if you're asking $43,560 per acre.
Prime? Where do you live that one can get an acre of "prime" real estate for $43K? Around where I live, an acre of crappy real estate (i.e., mostly unusable) is probably $1-2M. A "prime" lot (flat lot, view, nice area) is more like $5-10M.
Hmm, I'm not sure if it'd apply to Intel or not. Surely though it'd apply to operating systems since MS is a convicted monopolist. The solution is therefore for the government to subsidize linux.
The difference is that it takes billions of dollars just to start to compete with Intel. Someone could make a Windows clone and compete with Microsoft for, say, a couple tens of millions. That nobody does it is the stupidity of most of the industry, who don't understand the power of compatability. They just see the (relative) failures of MacOS, Linux, BeOS, etc, etc, and don't understand why they failed. But that's a different rant.:)
That a ragtag bunch of volunteers can get within some functional distance of this supposedly impossible task proves it can be done (not to mention the Wine project).
despite the fact that the only area in which many seem consistently motivated to attempt to do so is where it overlaps with religion.
What other areas of absolute scientific fact are being legislated against? In what other issues are school boards trying to add stickers to textbooks?
Indiana notoriously almost legislated the value of PI, and got considerable ridicule over it. It's the same thing here.
Now, that doesn't mean that we should always accept studies at face value. A lot of things are open to debate. But denying Evolution is in the same class as denying the round earth. They're using their religion to justify denying a round earth, and people are justifiably angry that they're putting these ideas in kid's heads. I won't go so far as to say it's child abuse, but I put in the same class as filling a kid's head with racism.
Yea, but the reason the Nazi's got so nasty in the first place is because no one was willing to stand up to them.
It's standing up to them once they had power -- as I asserted, yes, attack them when they try and legislate anything. But otherwise, ignore them. ANY attention gives them credibility.
Leave them their hysteria, leave them their irrationality, but don't allow their brainless assertions to go unanswered.
When a bum is ranting on the street corner that "they" are trying to control his brain, do you stop and debate it with him? Do you assure your children that the bum doesn't know what he's talking about? Or do you just roll your eyes and move on?
With Young Earth creationism, we should just roll our eyes and move on. Debating with the bum about mind control just annoys the bum, wastes your time, and raises the question of which one is correct in the minds of kids.
Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.
I wish we could get to the point where we don't give these people credibility via recognition. People don't feel the need to mention the Flat Earth Theory whenever the subject of the round earth comes up.
I know the Evolution Deniers / Young Earthers are more vocal than the Flat Earthers these days, so it's probably not possible. I think legislative insanity should be fought vehemently. But doing this everyday mocking just plants the idea in people's minds that there is some debate, both with equally valid viewpoints.
One of the best ways to combat crazyness is to ignore it. We have very few Nazis in the United States because they are ignored as lunatics. Europe has a lot of them because they are banned. School shootings are caused by the media publicity of past school shootings. Holocaust denial is done because it gets attention. And similarly, evolution denial is fueled because of the controversy. Some people just want to believe the opposite of the mainstream.
The best way to put evolution denial and young earth insanity in the grave is to ignore it, unless it raises its head and tries for force its views down the throats of children.
If, in a health class, teachers chose to teach faith healing as an alternative theory to the textbook information then so be it. It's at the teacher's discretion what they use for supplemental information.
Wait, so you're saying that a teacher should have a blank check to teach whatever they want? It's totally up to the teacher? So, if a teacher wanted to teach various sexual positions in health class, that's okay with you? If a teacher wanted to teach carve out some time to teach everything about Satanism in, say, history class, it should be totally at the "teacher's discretion"? Should they spend a whole slew of hours on the Flat Earth "alternative" theory in geography class, or do you think that time might be better spent elsewhere?
It's strange that 200 years ago religion was allowed in schools and no one complained nor thought it was a violation of any amendment.
They also thought that slavery was acceptable. They also thought that woman not having the right to vote was acceptable. In any case, the constitution *specifically* bans the state from advocating a religion. That people ignored that part of the constitution 200 years ago just proves that people are imperfect.
The purpose of school is learning. It's not religious indoctrination. Regardless of whether you're religious or not, it astounds me that anyone would want class time taken away from academic subjects in favor of religion that can (and is) properly taught at home and at church. It doesn't hurt Christian kids to learn only secular subjects in school, but it does hurt non-Christian and atheist kids to have their time wasted with religion in schools.
Of course, the fundamental problem is that keeping religion where it belongs in home and in church is not good enough for many Christians. They have to have it permeate every level of society.
You make a good argument about basing your ideas on facts through the whole post and then make the unreasoned statement that there is no God.
I actually have plenty of reason behind my statement that there is no God. There are mountains of evidence for it. Of course, it's impossible to "prove" that God doesn't exist, but the probability is so low that it's about as certain as one can be about things.
But the lack of God is off-topic for this. There's plenty of truth out there for those who seek it.:)
All math is independent of God or anything. In all universes, and no matter what God desires, 1 + 1 will always equal 2.
At one point most people on earth believed that the earth was flat and that it explained many things. Now we know better. What if a few years from now we know better, that the theory of evolution was incorrect?
That theory of evolution will never be "incorrect" anymore than Newton's laws were "incorrect" just because Einstein came along. Einstein helped refine and enhance our understanding of the universe. Even though Newton was technically incorrect, it's still a very good model of how things work at normal velocities.
You have it backwards. At one point, everyone believed every storm was God being angry at people. Now we know better. Evolution is absolute truth. We may add refinements to how it all works, but the basic idea is irrefutable.
If stating competing facts and theories is already happening in other subjects (and I don't know if it is but it should be if not) then I don't see why a bill is required to allow the same thing to be done for this specific topic of evolution other than for those who have an agenda and push evolution no matter what the competing facts and theories state.
If Faith Healers wanted "balanced time" for their views in a health class, would you be in favor of that?
The reason this is different is because it's not "a valid alternative theory". It's trying to water down the separation of religion and school.
In a world of infinite time, you might be right -- it doesn't hurt to show every point of view, no matter how outlandish. But in our world, where classroom time is preciously limited, it's flat-out hurting the students to take away from teaching them real science and truth, to give them a sermon pushed by a very narrow subset of a particular religion.
first, we have to define terms. micro-evolution has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. macro-evolution has *not* been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
*if* you had the irrefutable evidence, you'd present it. you don't, so you, well, don't. you just proclaim it truth and fact as though that makes it so... such arrogance.
I suggest reading this site. But you know you won't. Because your conclusion is already preordained. You have too much of your entire life invested in believing in supernaturalism.
there is some evidence for, there is some evidence against... we really don't know. that's the truth that should be taught in school.
Ah, the final weapon of the creationists. If they can find any question, now matter how small, that doesn't have a rock-solid answer, then they loudly proclaim that "HA! YOU SEE?? YOU SEE?? NO ONE KNOWS FOR SURE!!" Any open questions means that every theory is equally valid. It's akin to saying, "Since the Earth's horizon makes it look like a flat disk, therefore, the flat Earth theory is just as valid as the round Earth theory."
Well, every theory ISN'T equally valid. First of all, there is ZERO -- ZERO -- evidence against evolution. ZERO. There are certainly open questions about how certain things may have evolved, but that means there is a neutral question, not that it's "evidence against" evolution. So you have a Mount Everest of evidence for evolution, a large number of open questions (just the diversity of life and genetics means we're going to have a lot of open questions), zero evidence against evolution, and absolutely ZERO evidence that supports creationism. And, just to top it off, we have an entire planet-sized volume of evidence against the Earth being only 10,000 years old.
THAT is the carved-on-stone-tablet (if you'll pardon the expression) truth. If there really is a God (there isn't, but let's say), he must be constantly slapping his hand against his forehead screaming, "The bible is full of allegory, you idiots! What, do you think I could've explained physics to the damn barbarians?? Will you people use the brains I gave you, already?? It's a SOCIAL book, not a freaking science book!!"
If you present all the relevant facts and let the students think for themselves, I don't see how this is a problem.
If this was actually done ("all" the evidence), then no one would have the slightest doubt about evolution, anymore than someone looking at the Earth from space would still question a flat earth. The problem is that most people don't want to look at the all the facts, because reality would conflict with their world view. Therefore, they ignore the facts.
The way some people freak out about this, you'd think evolution was a religion.
People "freak out" because it's the forces of ignorance attacking the forces of truth.
I don't know how I used Windows for my whole life until now. Nothing works! Everything crashes, games just choke to the point of hard shutdowns being a requirement despite having enough processing power, RAM, video card power etc (I invested a lot into my system). I just can't deal with it anymore because I feel like kicking the thing everytime I turn it on.
If you have that many problems, you have hardware issues. My XP system (which I run endless numbers of things on) is rock solid.
Now, a few months I noticed I was getting a lot of hard lockups... then ran a memory test, and lo and behold, I had fault memory. Ever since then, back to rock solid.
I have a feeling the vast majority of people running into Windows issues are really running into hardware issues, and blame it on the software. Especially when you consider how so many people gravitate to the lowest cost hardware.
You've just made the argument that life is impossible. Im sorry, but all human beings are in fact, living nanotechnology. What exactly do you think every baby on earth is? An incredible feat of engineering.
Life, indeed, is very flexible. If you want to argue that someday we'll be able to roll DNA that constructs just about any organic shape, I would accept that. But --
1) Even organic life doesn't do construction at the molecular level. Cells are mega-sized machines and construction materials compared to molecules.
2) The nanobot freaks imagine little machines that literally move around molecules of nearly any material. At that scale, we're not talking about mechanics, we're talking about chemistry, and all the rules that apply to that.
Speed is great, speed is fine. I like speed. But how doing something about the fact that Firefox was that 550 megabytes of memory with only about 10 windows / tabs open? And I don't want to hear any nonsense about caching. Sorry, but I have NOT downloaded 550 megabytes of data today, and even if I had, I don't want it ALL cached.
This has to be the #1 complaint about Firefox -- that it's such a memory pig. Is the design so brain damaged that it just can't be fixed? Or do the developers just not care?
Yeah, my computer has a lot of memory, but I'd like to devote that to VMWare, Photoshop, video editing, etc. Not a browser!
We also already know that it's possible to arrange molecules with a scanning-tunneling microscope.
One single molecule.
Why is it such a leap to imagine that process for complex structures could be automated?
Now figure out how many molecules make up, say, a 10 cm cube of your favorite material. Sure, you could do it if you want to wait a million years.
The only way things like this are even remotely possible would be with self-replicating robots, to do parallel assembly. But then you have the problem of a) self-replication, b) communication between trillions, if not quadrillions of robots, c) a power source, d) a precision way to move, e) the "sticky finger" problem, f) a useable machine at the scale of a single molecule that has to be MADE of molecules, eh, I'm sure I could keep going, but this is just off the cuff.
Nanotech robots are actually less practical that Star Trek teleportation. At least with teleportation, you can wave your hand at an as-yet-undiscovered physics principal, but nanobots are just physically ridiculous. I suppose you could wave your hand and speculate about robots made of subatomic particles.
Really, when you talk about nanobots and molecular-level assembly, you're talking about magic dragons.
which was my questioning of this assumption that we shouldn't try building other kernels, that all kernels must function like the Unix kernel.
Sheesh, if that's your point, then you're arguing from false premises. I never said we "shouldn't try" building other kernels, I said that Unix-style operating systems are the best reasonable option we have right now, and they are certainly better than the rat's nest NT represents.
So, when MS' OS dominate a market, it's because they have a monopoly or "got lucky" at the right time. When Unix does, its because its superior and we shouldn't bother developing other kernels?
Microsoft dominated the desktop market because 1) they had the best upward compatibility from DOS, 2) went out and wooed developers to develop for Windows, and 3) went out and wooed hardware developers. With the compatibility path in their pocket, they then leveraged that to "encourage" hardware manufacturers to only sell Windows.
Unix dominated the server market primarily because it was the first operating system written in a high-level language (C). That allowed it to be ported to a wide variety of hardware, giving it broad-based support. Over the years, it got continually upgraded with new features and standards.
No one it out there forcing people to adopt Unix -- when it comes to embedded systems or supercomputers, the operating system is of second concern. Yet, Unix is consistently chosen because of its flexibility.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't even find the clock speed in that article, which means we're STILL probably stuck at 3.5 Ghz +/- .5 Ghz, which we've been stuck for what, three, four years? What the hell happened? If we're still shrinking components, why are we not seeing clock speed increases?
Simple. If the machine can tell the difference between a question and a joke, then it has attained intelligence. This is what we should be aiming for.
By that standard, most of Slashdot must be composed of inferior A.I. machines. That would explain a lot, actually.
"That's how we plan to pass this limited version of the Turing test."
If it's a limited version of the Turing Test, then it's not the Turing Test. They don't actually define exactly what the limits are. But any open ended test is doomed to failure based on our state of the art in A.I. (read: there is no science of Artificial Intelligence, in the sense of artificial cognition).
"What do you think a typical mother would say if she found out her daughter was going to enter the porn industry."
"Why do you think children have emotional attachments to their parents?"
"Which is worse, racism or sexism?"
"Would you rather be a fireman or an astronaut, and why?"
Any sort of open-ended question that requires human cultural knowledge and asking it to support its conclusion is going to cause it to barf.
Now, if the point of this is whether you can fool someone into thinking the Avatar was human when they didn't know it was a test, well, who cares? Eliza was able to do that back in the 1970s.
Lastly, who says the Turing Test (or any A.I. test) needs to take place in real time? I would be impressed if they came back with a human-level answer in a month of processing time. That's equivalent to a computer 2.5 million times faster than a computer that could produce the answer in one second. That they can't even do that should tell people that speed is not the problem in A.I. research. We have absolutely no fundamental model of how it all works.
IMHO, George Martin, also known as the "5th Beatle" and his elite circle of musicologist friends, had a great deal to do with the sophistication of the Beatles best stuff... [etc]
I think that's too uncharitable to the Beatles. I believe George Martin was an integral part of their success, but I think in the case of the Beatles, you can't separate the parts and conclude "this was what made them special." It was *all* the parts (yes, including Ringo!) that made the whole thing. Paul's gift for melody and baselines, John's harder edge, the contrast between Paul's intrinsic optimism and John's intrinsic pessimism, George's guitar chops and spirituality, and Ringo's general "niceness" formed a lot of the glue that held the thing together (along with his underrated drumming and rock-solid timing).
It's not like George Martin only produced the Beatles. I believe he was an important part of things and his classical training added a lot. But it added a lot because the Beatles were geniuses enough to use the resource. For example, George didn't suggest the strings -- McCartney figured out the strings would work in Eleanor Rigby, from listening to Vivaldi. He composed the baseline and Martin arranged it.
Also listen to Martin's compositions on Yellow Submarine. They're not bad, but they don't point to any "hidden genius" that was fueling the Beatles. Nor do we see any of the same Beatlesque experimentation in other George Martin-produced groups.
The reason the solo efforts aren't as impressive as the Beatles is the same reason -- the magic depended on all of them together. Paul has admitted this many times. Imagine being Paul "freaking" McCartney (or Lennon) and wanting to experiment with stuff after the Beatles, but having no one around him who was equal enough to say, "Paul, that's utter crap. You can do better," as the other Beatles could.
Having said that, I think the Beatles' greatest strength was, like the Tamla Motown stuff in the same era, the finger they had on the pulse of 60's Yuppie love...
I agree with this, but I'd go further and say the Beatles' greatest strength was their willingness to experiment with all the various styles around them and synergize them into new things. A lot of artists, as you point out, came out of that era, but only one group utterly dominated.
And just to add one last point, I think an underrated factor in the Beatles success was that they played together for years and perfected their craft. Many people think the Beatles just exploded onto the scene, but that's not what happened. They paid their dues in really harsh conditions, which is also one of the reasons they had such charm -- they had been mixing in comedy to their stage act for a long time. If you haven't read the Anthology book, I recommend it. There's a lot of back story to the Beatles and what made them.
I agree with Michael Stipe of REM, who referred to their music as "elevator music". Maybe it was ground breaking at the time, but it doesn't hold up.
Elevator music? You clearly have not ever sat down and listened to the Beatles albums. Sure, they have some slower songs, but there isn't a rock style they didn't touch on or invent whole cloth. The Beatles pretty much invented heavy metal music. Listen to Helter Skelter (yeah, that's elevator music) or I Want You. I Feel Fine was the first song to use guitar distortion. Listen to the hard rock baseline on Hey Bulldog.
Do yourself a favor and really listen to their albums. The breadth of different styles they did is astounding and unmatched by any other band.
If there is what is the nature of this warmness?
Distortion. A digital recording is an absolutely perfect reproduction of the input signal, clean and pure. But vinyl recordings (and tube amplifiers, for that matter) introduce subtle distortion. Some people like the effect of the distortion, which is okay... but then they start to convince themselves that it's truer to the source. But it's simply not.
That's if people are being reasonably honest. It's also true that there is a gigantic amount of placebo effects. Do a Google search for "danceable cables" if you want to be really amused.
Your idea has already been tried twice: both WABI and OS/2 were attempts to build a "better Windows than Windows". There are not many companies better poised to take a run at Microsoft than IBM and Sun in their heydays.
Au contraire, particularly for OS/2. IBM specifically declined to implement Win32, and also made the device drivers incompatible. That was the kiss of death. OS/2 was forever application and device driver starved. In fact, I recall IBM shipping their computers with both OS/2 and Windows 3.1. You had to go through an extra step to actually delete OS/2 and install Windows 3.1... and nearly everyone did, because of compatibility issues.
The plan most companies have now is smarter: build layers like Java, Flash, HTML and Javascript that make the operating system irrelevant.
And all of those produce inferior applications to native apps. If they could truly look and operate like native apps, you might have a point, but they don't. And that doesn't address the device driver issues.
That must be some pretty prime real-estate if you're asking $43,560 per acre.
Prime? Where do you live that one can get an acre of "prime" real estate for $43K? Around where I live, an acre of crappy real estate (i.e., mostly unusable) is probably $1-2M. A "prime" lot (flat lot, view, nice area) is more like $5-10M.
Hmm, I'm not sure if it'd apply to Intel or not. Surely though it'd apply to operating systems since MS is a convicted monopolist. The solution is therefore for the government to subsidize linux.
The difference is that it takes billions of dollars just to start to compete with Intel. Someone could make a Windows clone and compete with Microsoft for, say, a couple tens of millions. That nobody does it is the stupidity of most of the industry, who don't understand the power of compatability. They just see the (relative) failures of MacOS, Linux, BeOS, etc, etc, and don't understand why they failed. But that's a different rant. :)
That a ragtag bunch of volunteers can get within some functional distance of this supposedly impossible task proves it can be done (not to mention the Wine project).
despite the fact that the only area in which many seem consistently motivated to attempt to do so is where it overlaps with religion.
What other areas of absolute scientific fact are being legislated against? In what other issues are school boards trying to add stickers to textbooks?
Indiana notoriously almost legislated the value of PI, and got considerable ridicule over it. It's the same thing here.
Now, that doesn't mean that we should always accept studies at face value. A lot of things are open to debate. But denying Evolution is in the same class as denying the round earth. They're using their religion to justify denying a round earth, and people are justifiably angry that they're putting these ideas in kid's heads. I won't go so far as to say it's child abuse, but I put in the same class as filling a kid's head with racism.
Yea, but the reason the Nazi's got so nasty in the first place is because no one was willing to stand up to them.
It's standing up to them once they had power -- as I asserted, yes, attack them when they try and legislate anything. But otherwise, ignore them. ANY attention gives them credibility.
Leave them their hysteria, leave them their irrationality, but don't allow their brainless assertions to go unanswered.
When a bum is ranting on the street corner that "they" are trying to control his brain, do you stop and debate it with him? Do you assure your children that the bum doesn't know what he's talking about? Or do you just roll your eyes and move on?
With Young Earth creationism, we should just roll our eyes and move on. Debating with the bum about mind control just annoys the bum, wastes your time, and raises the question of which one is correct in the minds of kids.
Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.
I wish we could get to the point where we don't give these people credibility via recognition. People don't feel the need to mention the Flat Earth Theory whenever the subject of the round earth comes up.
I know the Evolution Deniers / Young Earthers are more vocal than the Flat Earthers these days, so it's probably not possible. I think legislative insanity should be fought vehemently. But doing this everyday mocking just plants the idea in people's minds that there is some debate, both with equally valid viewpoints.
One of the best ways to combat crazyness is to ignore it. We have very few Nazis in the United States because they are ignored as lunatics. Europe has a lot of them because they are banned. School shootings are caused by the media publicity of past school shootings. Holocaust denial is done because it gets attention. And similarly, evolution denial is fueled because of the controversy. Some people just want to believe the opposite of the mainstream.
The best way to put evolution denial and young earth insanity in the grave is to ignore it, unless it raises its head and tries for force its views down the throats of children.
A Calculator that doesn't suck: RPN and trig functions etc. No more Dollar store Calc.
Reason enough to own an iPhone: Pick your poison.
If, in a health class, teachers chose to teach faith healing as an alternative theory to the textbook information then so be it. It's at the teacher's discretion what they use for supplemental information.
Wait, so you're saying that a teacher should have a blank check to teach whatever they want? It's totally up to the teacher? So, if a teacher wanted to teach various sexual positions in health class, that's okay with you? If a teacher wanted to teach carve out some time to teach everything about Satanism in, say, history class, it should be totally at the "teacher's discretion"? Should they spend a whole slew of hours on the Flat Earth "alternative" theory in geography class, or do you think that time might be better spent elsewhere?
It's strange that 200 years ago religion was allowed in schools and no one complained nor thought it was a violation of any amendment.
They also thought that slavery was acceptable. They also thought that woman not having the right to vote was acceptable. In any case, the constitution *specifically* bans the state from advocating a religion. That people ignored that part of the constitution 200 years ago just proves that people are imperfect.
The purpose of school is learning. It's not religious indoctrination. Regardless of whether you're religious or not, it astounds me that anyone would want class time taken away from academic subjects in favor of religion that can (and is) properly taught at home and at church. It doesn't hurt Christian kids to learn only secular subjects in school, but it does hurt non-Christian and atheist kids to have their time wasted with religion in schools.
Of course, the fundamental problem is that keeping religion where it belongs in home and in church is not good enough for many Christians. They have to have it permeate every level of society.
You make a good argument about basing your ideas on facts through the whole post and then make the unreasoned statement that there is no God.
I actually have plenty of reason behind my statement that there is no God. There are mountains of evidence for it. Of course, it's impossible to "prove" that God doesn't exist, but the probability is so low that it's about as certain as one can be about things.
But the lack of God is off-topic for this. There's plenty of truth out there for those who seek it. :)
even Math...
All math is independent of God or anything. In all universes, and no matter what God desires, 1 + 1 will always equal 2.
At one point most people on earth believed that the earth was flat and that it explained many things. Now we know better. What if a few years from now we know better, that the theory of evolution was incorrect?
That theory of evolution will never be "incorrect" anymore than Newton's laws were "incorrect" just because Einstein came along. Einstein helped refine and enhance our understanding of the universe. Even though Newton was technically incorrect, it's still a very good model of how things work at normal velocities.
You have it backwards. At one point, everyone believed every storm was God being angry at people. Now we know better. Evolution is absolute truth. We may add refinements to how it all works, but the basic idea is irrefutable.
If stating competing facts and theories is already happening in other subjects (and I don't know if it is but it should be if not) then I don't see why a bill is required to allow the same thing to be done for this specific topic of evolution other than for those who have an agenda and push evolution no matter what the competing facts and theories state.
If Faith Healers wanted "balanced time" for their views in a health class, would you be in favor of that?
The reason this is different is because it's not "a valid alternative theory". It's trying to water down the separation of religion and school.
In a world of infinite time, you might be right -- it doesn't hurt to show every point of view, no matter how outlandish. But in our world, where classroom time is preciously limited, it's flat-out hurting the students to take away from teaching them real science and truth, to give them a sermon pushed by a very narrow subset of a particular religion.
first, we have to define terms. micro-evolution has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. macro-evolution has *not* been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
If only creationists *would* define terms. Most creationists use "Macroevolution" to mean any evolution for which we can't provide direct living or fossil evidence. In any case, Macro evolution is just accumulated micro-evolutionary steps.
*if* you had the irrefutable evidence, you'd present it. you don't, so you, well, don't. you just proclaim it truth and fact as though that makes it so... such arrogance.
I suggest reading this site. But you know you won't. Because your conclusion is already preordained. You have too much of your entire life invested in believing in supernaturalism.
there is some evidence for, there is some evidence against... we really don't know. that's the truth that should be taught in school.
Ah, the final weapon of the creationists. If they can find any question, now matter how small, that doesn't have a rock-solid answer, then they loudly proclaim that "HA! YOU SEE?? YOU SEE?? NO ONE KNOWS FOR SURE!!" Any open questions means that every theory is equally valid. It's akin to saying, "Since the Earth's horizon makes it look like a flat disk, therefore, the flat Earth theory is just as valid as the round Earth theory."
Well, every theory ISN'T equally valid. First of all, there is ZERO -- ZERO -- evidence against evolution. ZERO. There are certainly open questions about how certain things may have evolved, but that means there is a neutral question, not that it's "evidence against" evolution. So you have a Mount Everest of evidence for evolution, a large number of open questions (just the diversity of life and genetics means we're going to have a lot of open questions), zero evidence against evolution, and absolutely ZERO evidence that supports creationism. And, just to top it off, we have an entire planet-sized volume of evidence against the Earth being only 10,000 years old.
THAT is the carved-on-stone-tablet (if you'll pardon the expression) truth. If there really is a God (there isn't, but let's say), he must be constantly slapping his hand against his forehead screaming, "The bible is full of allegory, you idiots! What, do you think I could've explained physics to the damn barbarians?? Will you people use the brains I gave you, already?? It's a SOCIAL book, not a freaking science book!!"
If you present all the relevant facts and let the students think for themselves, I don't see how this is a problem.
If this was actually done ("all" the evidence), then no one would have the slightest doubt about evolution, anymore than someone looking at the Earth from space would still question a flat earth. The problem is that most people don't want to look at the all the facts, because reality would conflict with their world view. Therefore, they ignore the facts.
The way some people freak out about this, you'd think evolution was a religion.
People "freak out" because it's the forces of ignorance attacking the forces of truth.
I don't know how I used Windows for my whole life until now. Nothing works! Everything crashes, games just choke to the point of hard shutdowns being a requirement despite having enough processing power, RAM, video card power etc (I invested a lot into my system). I just can't deal with it anymore because I feel like kicking the thing everytime I turn it on.
If you have that many problems, you have hardware issues. My XP system (which I run endless numbers of things on) is rock solid.
Now, a few months I noticed I was getting a lot of hard lockups... then ran a memory test, and lo and behold, I had fault memory. Ever since then, back to rock solid.
I have a feeling the vast majority of people running into Windows issues are really running into hardware issues, and blame it on the software. Especially when you consider how so many people gravitate to the lowest cost hardware.
You've just made the argument that life is impossible. Im sorry, but all human beings are in fact, living nanotechnology. What exactly do you think every baby on earth is? An incredible feat of engineering.
Life, indeed, is very flexible. If you want to argue that someday we'll be able to roll DNA that constructs just about any organic shape, I would accept that. But --
1) Even organic life doesn't do construction at the molecular level. Cells are mega-sized machines and construction materials compared to molecules.
2) The nanobot freaks imagine little machines that literally move around molecules of nearly any material. At that scale, we're not talking about mechanics, we're talking about chemistry, and all the rules that apply to that.
Speed is great, speed is fine. I like speed. But how doing something about the fact that Firefox was that 550 megabytes of memory with only about 10 windows / tabs open? And I don't want to hear any nonsense about caching. Sorry, but I have NOT downloaded 550 megabytes of data today, and even if I had, I don't want it ALL cached.
This has to be the #1 complaint about Firefox -- that it's such a memory pig. Is the design so brain damaged that it just can't be fixed? Or do the developers just not care?
Yeah, my computer has a lot of memory, but I'd like to devote that to VMWare, Photoshop, video editing, etc. Not a browser!
We also already know that it's possible to arrange molecules with a scanning-tunneling microscope.
One single molecule.
Why is it such a leap to imagine that process for complex structures could be automated?
Now figure out how many molecules make up, say, a 10 cm cube of your favorite material. Sure, you could do it if you want to wait a million years.
The only way things like this are even remotely possible would be with self-replicating robots, to do parallel assembly. But then you have the problem of a) self-replication, b) communication between trillions, if not quadrillions of robots, c) a power source, d) a precision way to move, e) the "sticky finger" problem, f) a useable machine at the scale of a single molecule that has to be MADE of molecules, eh, I'm sure I could keep going, but this is just off the cuff.
Nanotech robots are actually less practical that Star Trek teleportation. At least with teleportation, you can wave your hand at an as-yet-undiscovered physics principal, but nanobots are just physically ridiculous. I suppose you could wave your hand and speculate about robots made of subatomic particles.
Really, when you talk about nanobots and molecular-level assembly, you're talking about magic dragons.
which was my questioning of this assumption that we shouldn't try building other kernels, that all kernels must function like the Unix kernel.
Sheesh, if that's your point, then you're arguing from false premises. I never said we "shouldn't try" building other kernels, I said that Unix-style operating systems are the best reasonable option we have right now, and they are certainly better than the rat's nest NT represents.
So, when MS' OS dominate a market, it's because they have a monopoly or "got lucky" at the right time. When Unix does, its because its superior and we shouldn't bother developing other kernels?
Microsoft dominated the desktop market because 1) they had the best upward compatibility from DOS, 2) went out and wooed developers to develop for Windows, and 3) went out and wooed hardware developers. With the compatibility path in their pocket, they then leveraged that to "encourage" hardware manufacturers to only sell Windows.
Unix dominated the server market primarily because it was the first operating system written in a high-level language (C). That allowed it to be ported to a wide variety of hardware, giving it broad-based support. Over the years, it got continually upgraded with new features and standards.
No one it out there forcing people to adopt Unix -- when it comes to embedded systems or supercomputers, the operating system is of second concern. Yet, Unix is consistently chosen because of its flexibility.