Specifically the lizard people. It is true, i saw this guy talk about it. They are from the constellation Draco. It is real. I promise. Also: sarcasm - because you never know when someone saying something like that is serious.
Eww, wait... no, that came out wrong. GAH! No, it didn't come out wrong like that... Someone isn't getting laid tonight. Sheesh, I am terrible at pick-up lines.
Yes, actually, the burden of proof in the scientific process is on the person making the claim. The scientific process is, by its very nature, a skeptical one - it isn't "I want to believe" it is "I am willing to believe." They may seem, initially, to be similar statements, but there are undertones to each that are dramatically different. When you say "I want to believe" you are starting out from an initial position of belief in a claim regardless of supporting or refuting evidence; conversely, "I am willing to believe" should imply that certain conditions must be met in order for the claim to have merit. So to make a scientific claim one must also provide evidence that supports the claim, show how the evidence supports the claim AND show how the evidence DOESN'T support an alternative claim. Science doesn't conclusively prove things to be true, it proves things to be conclusively false. When you start from a position of "I want to believe" you start at the conclusion and work your evidence to support your claim. In fact, your open mindedness is inversely proportional to your want for believing. If you start from a conclusion and work your way backwards to a claim you must be willing to reject any evidence to the contrary of your conclusion. You have already implicitly stated that you are unwilling to accept explanations that refute your claim.
So, yes, the burden of proof is, in fact, on you as the claimant, but not only must you provide evidence to support your claim and demonstrate how that evidence supports your claim, you must also demonstrate how that evidence isn't the cause of some other phenomena.
And if you would like to maintain your courtroom analogy, then we can do this scientifically, anecdotal evidence carries little to no weight in the scientific process. Your stories will not pass muster, nor will unreliable source material. And I am sorry, but without those you do not do not have much of a case. Maybe you should have carried this out in a courtroom.
Or my response: "I haven't touched Windows since Window 2000, I don't know anything about fixing problems on Windows any more." Which is *mostly* true.
OH! Please tell me he had a pet elk that got drunk and fell down the stairs, he has a clairvoyant dwarf that sits under the table at dinner, he has an awesome mustache, and he lost his nose in a duel at college and made himself a new one out of gold. That would be the most awesome professor ever.
So they wouldn't like my fake band name: Tolkien Heads?
(Background: I enjoyed making fake band names combining something from fantasy or science fiction with a real band name, like Jefferson Starship Troopers)
How about increase education spending? People are more likely to come up with innovative technologies if they have a better understanding of existent technologies and ways that they could be improved. It isn't rocket surgery.
You mean they are making a new Duke Nukem? First I ever heard of it. I hope they don't do some rush job on it. May 3rd sounds like it would be too soon of a release date, that is a little over three months from now. I really think they should take their time on this one, spend some time developing it.
I think this is a good idea, to investigate someplace that is "haunted" as a skeptic with friends or family that believe the "hauntings" are real. Though I will not say that all Slashdot readers are smart, I will go out on a limb and say that the mean IQ here is higher than average. Chances are this guy is smart, and if he is willing to investigate a haunting with friends or family he is most likely a pretty nice guy; he is most likely someone that they are going to have a bit of respect for. It could be a great opportunity to go through the process of being skeptical with these people in an applicable context, not saying "this is how you do it, moron" but actually demonstrating the process of thinking skeptically in a valid and unpretentious way. At the very least it could teach them that being skeptical isn't just a knee-jerk reaction but a process of questioning and not drawing an unfounded conclusion. Who knows, it may even rub off, or at the very least garner a bit of respect for critical thinking. That said, they would have to be open to the idea of being skeptical, and there is the adage "you can't reason someone out of something that the didn't reason themselves into."
I designed a study to test precognition and psychic ability, could people read my mind in the future before i knew what i would be thinking? It was quite an elaborate test to set up, and I wouldn't know if their predictions were correct until later on. My findings determined that many people (much higher than what we would expect) were indeed able to read my mind before i knew what I was going to be thinking. We found that this ability was heightened around mid-morning. Many of the predictions were shockingly similar, and, unlike many alleged "predictions," were very specific. Of course, with the nature of the study, I was unaware of the results until around noon while correlating the data i began thinking, as was predicted, that it was time for lunch and I was rather hungry.
I am not trying to flame or anything, but this would be much cooler if it sounded good (subjective, I know). It sounds kind of like they just cranked everything... kind of muddy and hard to distinguish notes. Give it a nice wood body and neck. Cool, but could be better.
Fuck those little bastards. They think they can sing whatever song they want and get away with it? What gives them the right? They are pretty much stealing from music industry executives. I say make them pay, retroactively even. And if I ever hear any of you so much as hum a single bar of the theme song for the show The Greatest American Hero, I will be reporting you to the proper authorities! A free education while they leach off the system and their parents isn't enough for them, oh no, they will not be satisfied until they are able to sing any song they wish without paying the publishing company that owns the song. You see, the world isn't going to end now, it is going to end when those little rug rats grow up and it will be all because they thought they could sing someone else's song for free. Well guess what, not on my watch!
I fail to see how these quandaries would be, as i suppose you feel they are, unreasonable to bring to light. I also neither see clarification as to why you feel these questions are invalid nor do I see solutions to their inherent problems. The primitive brain, id est, the brain stem, is not where the higher level thought centers that are able to ask these questions are located. Evolution is a continual process, there is no pinnacle nor ultimate goal; there is no grand design. There are most certainly people smarter than me, though I am highly intelligent.
Maybe you, my fellow Slashdotters, can offer insight. When people ask me if I believe we have been visited by creatures from other planets I point out that nowhere in the Universe will you find a place with unlimited resources and interstellar space travel would require a great deal of resources. To devote the time and energy into a project as massive as visiting another star system would be a massive undertaking which would need specific goals and a high probability of the mission being successful.
A few days ago I was thinking that having cattle prods at each seat would be a good idea. You could have a release switch in the flight attendant's area or in the cockpit so no one can just pull them out whenever they liked. How could the "you can have my gun when you pry it out of my cold, dead hand" set be opposed to that? Seriously, why not?
The government of Rhea is pressing charges against Julian Assange for espionage for the releasing of thousands of their classified diplomatic documents.
Slashdot Mirror
Specifically the lizard people. It is true, i saw this guy talk about it. They are from the constellation Draco. It is real. I promise. Also: sarcasm - because you never know when someone saying something like that is serious.
Hey, baby, want to make virological history?
Eww, wait... no, that came out wrong. GAH! No, it didn't come out wrong like that... Someone isn't getting laid tonight. Sheesh, I am terrible at pick-up lines.
Yes, actually, the burden of proof in the scientific process is on the person making the claim. The scientific process is, by its very nature, a skeptical one - it isn't "I want to believe" it is "I am willing to believe." They may seem, initially, to be similar statements, but there are undertones to each that are dramatically different. When you say "I want to believe" you are starting out from an initial position of belief in a claim regardless of supporting or refuting evidence; conversely, "I am willing to believe" should imply that certain conditions must be met in order for the claim to have merit. So to make a scientific claim one must also provide evidence that supports the claim, show how the evidence supports the claim AND show how the evidence DOESN'T support an alternative claim. Science doesn't conclusively prove things to be true, it proves things to be conclusively false. When you start from a position of "I want to believe" you start at the conclusion and work your evidence to support your claim. In fact, your open mindedness is inversely proportional to your want for believing. If you start from a conclusion and work your way backwards to a claim you must be willing to reject any evidence to the contrary of your conclusion. You have already implicitly stated that you are unwilling to accept explanations that refute your claim.
So, yes, the burden of proof is, in fact, on you as the claimant, but not only must you provide evidence to support your claim and demonstrate how that evidence supports your claim, you must also demonstrate how that evidence isn't the cause of some other phenomena.
And if you would like to maintain your courtroom analogy, then we can do this scientifically, anecdotal evidence carries little to no weight in the scientific process. Your stories will not pass muster, nor will unreliable source material. And I am sorry, but without those you do not do not have much of a case. Maybe you should have carried this out in a courtroom.
/me baffled
Can anyone tell me what just happened? When did Ross Perot go crazy? Nothing makes sense anymore, yet I understand everything.
Ernest Goes To Foreign Websites And Tells People Good Things About America. It is certainly no Ernest Goes To Jail, but then again, what is?
This is certainly a better waste^H^H^H^H^H^H use of money than NASA or, I don't know... education?
Or my response: "I haven't touched Windows since Window 2000, I don't know anything about fixing problems on Windows any more." Which is *mostly* true.
OH! Please tell me he had a pet elk that got drunk and fell down the stairs, he has a clairvoyant dwarf that sits under the table at dinner, he has an awesome mustache, and he lost his nose in a duel at college and made himself a new one out of gold. That would be the most awesome professor ever.
So they wouldn't like my fake band name: Tolkien Heads?
(Background: I enjoyed making fake band names combining something from fantasy or science fiction with a real band name, like Jefferson Starship Troopers)
Oh, I don't disagree, but Joe & Mary Anyman would certainly take exception.
:s/Google/Facebook and Farmville/
Fixed it for you.
How about increase education spending? People are more likely to come up with innovative technologies if they have a better understanding of existent technologies and ways that they could be improved. It isn't rocket surgery.
You mean they are making a new Duke Nukem? First I ever heard of it. I hope they don't do some rush job on it. May 3rd sounds like it would be too soon of a release date, that is a little over three months from now. I really think they should take their time on this one, spend some time developing it.
I think this is a good idea, to investigate someplace that is "haunted" as a skeptic with friends or family that believe the "hauntings" are real. Though I will not say that all Slashdot readers are smart, I will go out on a limb and say that the mean IQ here is higher than average. Chances are this guy is smart, and if he is willing to investigate a haunting with friends or family he is most likely a pretty nice guy; he is most likely someone that they are going to have a bit of respect for. It could be a great opportunity to go through the process of being skeptical with these people in an applicable context, not saying "this is how you do it, moron" but actually demonstrating the process of thinking skeptically in a valid and unpretentious way. At the very least it could teach them that being skeptical isn't just a knee-jerk reaction but a process of questioning and not drawing an unfounded conclusion. Who knows, it may even rub off, or at the very least garner a bit of respect for critical thinking. That said, they would have to be open to the idea of being skeptical, and there is the adage "you can't reason someone out of something that the didn't reason themselves into."
I designed a study to test precognition and psychic ability, could people read my mind in the future before i knew what i would be thinking? It was quite an elaborate test to set up, and I wouldn't know if their predictions were correct until later on. My findings determined that many people (much higher than what we would expect) were indeed able to read my mind before i knew what I was going to be thinking. We found that this ability was heightened around mid-morning. Many of the predictions were shockingly similar, and, unlike many alleged "predictions," were very specific. Of course, with the nature of the study, I was unaware of the results until around noon while correlating the data i began thinking, as was predicted, that it was time for lunch and I was rather hungry.
I bet there is, but I also feel it may require being super rich.
But that is pretty interesting, worth looking into at least. I too would like to bet against this.
I am not trying to flame or anything, but this would be much cooler if it sounded good (subjective, I know). It sounds kind of like they just cranked everything... kind of muddy and hard to distinguish notes. Give it a nice wood body and neck. Cool, but could be better.
In other news, the recent lunar eclipse happened during a full moon.
Fuck those little bastards. They think they can sing whatever song they want and get away with it? What gives them the right? They are pretty much stealing from music industry executives. I say make them pay, retroactively even. And if I ever hear any of you so much as hum a single bar of the theme song for the show The Greatest American Hero, I will be reporting you to the proper authorities! A free education while they leach off the system and their parents isn't enough for them, oh no, they will not be satisfied until they are able to sing any song they wish without paying the publishing company that owns the song. You see, the world isn't going to end now, it is going to end when those little rug rats grow up and it will be all because they thought they could sing someone else's song for free. Well guess what, not on my watch!
I fail to see how these quandaries would be, as i suppose you feel they are, unreasonable to bring to light. I also neither see clarification as to why you feel these questions are invalid nor do I see solutions to their inherent problems. The primitive brain, id est, the brain stem, is not where the higher level thought centers that are able to ask these questions are located. Evolution is a continual process, there is no pinnacle nor ultimate goal; there is no grand design. There are most certainly people smarter than me, though I am highly intelligent.
Maybe you, my fellow Slashdotters, can offer insight. When people ask me if I believe we have been visited by creatures from other planets I point out that nowhere in the Universe will you find a place with unlimited resources and interstellar space travel would require a great deal of resources. To devote the time and energy into a project as massive as visiting another star system would be a massive undertaking which would need specific goals and a high probability of the mission being successful.
That's no ordinary website, that's the most foul, cruel and bad tempered online store you ever set your browser to.
YOU tit! I soiled my internet botnet I was so scared.
Look, That online store has free shipping on eligable orders over $25.
CHAAAAAARG!!!!!
...
RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!
Where was Tim The Enchanter during all of this? And is it wrong that this is the first thing I thought when I read the summary?
My new goth band, Moon Death Spiral. Who wants to be in it with me? We can sing goth songs about astronomy, physics and math.
A few days ago I was thinking that having cattle prods at each seat would be a good idea. You could have a release switch in the flight attendant's area or in the cockpit so no one can just pull them out whenever they liked. How could the "you can have my gun when you pry it out of my cold, dead hand" set be opposed to that? Seriously, why not?
The government of Rhea is pressing charges against Julian Assange for espionage for the releasing of thousands of their classified diplomatic documents.