so ehm... they take a bunch of older students as the control group. is that a smart idea? i'd take a bunch of people already working for a while, who have been confronted with Real Life (tm) and have developed into Maturity
well i think article moderation is a bad idea... but i would be in favour of an option to mark an article as "dupe". that would prevent a lot of the "this is a dupe, tssk tssk editors" noise in the discussion.
anyone who criticises the editors should try to do their job for a week. i bet that would shut them up in 50 milliseconds;-)
your reply confuses me a bit. and irrefutable fact is something else as an observable.
nonetheless, i follow most of what you are saying and i don't think we disagree on anything significant (besides semantics *grin*)
i must've been unclear in my previous post. i really don't think the existence of a Deity has anything to do with science, we agree on this 100%.
science (at least the kind of science that studies evolution - based on functional explanation of phenomena) is just a system which we use to make sense of the world around us through observations and how we think they relate to one another. the causality we decribe is the most likely explanation. it's not guesswork... i'd like to see you argue just that (because that *is* what you are saying, right? it's a belief)
my feeling is that you are sticking with logical positivism a-la popper (all things must be verifyable else they are untrue). that's a choice.
within that frame of mind, of course nothing is *proven* to be causally related. scientists just go for the most likely explanation, and if the next scientist can come up with a more thorough way to explain what we observe, his theory will be the leading one. it's not as dependent on human failure as you suggest, though. there's thorough evaluation and peer review. more eyeballs, less bugs;-)
what i really don't follow is your argument about the unknowables in science, and how they would be comparable to deities...
nothing is provable... everything is relative. no scientist (except for the ones in mathematics - but that's an internally consistent system as you rightfully mention) in his right mind will ever claim to have found a truth. what we claim to find is models providing the most likely explanation on the phenomena we can observe around us. like the mechanisms involved in bee flight.
i recall that in your previous post you argued that a deity might be observable in times ahead, when our methods improve. well, great:-) i won't argue with that. it would be a disaster for believers, because then they would have to start *reasoning* in stead of believing *grin*. i doubt whether they'd be able to agree on the nature of this deity, though... but that's another fun discussion!
(practically) for now we have what we *did* observe so far, and it fits a hell of a lot better with the functional explanation within the theory of natural selection than it does with ID - which consists *only* of a huge collection of assumptions and invalidated "scientific" arguments about extreme unlikelihood of events.
argh. my head is spinning:-) thanks for the stimulating talk
warn me when the existence of God has been proven beyond reasonable doubt. i would mean that belief is not relevant anymore. that would have a huge impact on religion... if i were a Christian, i would pray that nobody ever finds a real proof of God.
as GP wrote, scientists do not oppose ID because they think God does not exist. some scientist are atheists (and i think they are being silly), some are believers (and they have every right to this), and some are agnostics like me. i have no clue and until i can see the proof i cannot acknowledge the existence of a God.
like in the courtroom, a scientific idea needs to be supported with sufficient evidence before it turns from concept into theory. this goes for the existence of God, this goes for ID, and this happened already for natural selection as proposed and argued by Darwin and his followers.
pride, ignorance and exclusion? mostly due to societal and religious pressure... and not even comparable to the exclusion, ignorance, and pride displayed in religious organisations.
even Darwin was struggling to not provoke the church and his beliefs. thank god (pun intended) we are mainly secularised nowadays, and can think more freely. at least, if our governments keep on allowing us to do so.
so yes, i agree. let's keep on following rigorous practice of the scientific method. as we did for a long long time already.
interestingly, it's an illusion to think that all data records will he completely correct and historically sound since the introduction of modern computers and electronic storage. the collective computer memory will maybe not be as fluid as human memory, but certainly not exact and complete. moreover, there will be easily accessible data and data that is hard to retrieve (say, for example, data in ms word documents in some 200 years or so:-P ).
i wouldn't be surprised if the AI of the future would reason pretty much like humans now (a bit faster maybe:-) ). after all, we create them in our own image
Why three scenarios that assume the existance of a God, Heaven, and Hell, and a whole system with punishment and having to repent your sins vs. only one scenario in which the existence of God, Heaven, or Hell is irrelevant? Wouldn't that kind of bias your outcome?
Anyway I believe your assumptions are not reasonable. I see no reason to assume parameters if many religions have very different views on these parameters.
science is more like "these things are causally related beyond reasonable doubt" (say, in 99% of the cases).
for example: when you cross a highway with a certain amount of cars passing in any of the lanes during a certain timeperiod, i can calculate the chance of you being hit by a car given the speed at which you walk and provided you walk with your eyes closed and ears plugged.
science offers defined answers within certain confidence limits, and with defined parameters. this is still a lot more than religion could ever offer me, since i should just accept it or not. i never felt, saw, heard, smelled, tasted, sensed a deity, directly or indirectly.
moreover, any doubt about a belief is reasonable. doubt about a scientific method is *testable*. compare the following sentences "apples are blue" "god exists". science can say "most apples are not blue (with probability x)", and "we have no clue whether a god exists or not" while religion says "god exists. apples are not blue. period" i can't explain it any simpler than this.
causality is a belief? perhaps. but a belief based on events one can *observe*. i can float in water but not in the air. when i drop something, it moves towards the ground at increasing speed. stuff like that.
blah blah blah! always the nagging about slashdot (oh yeah right i should grow a sense of humour, right?)
so far (shockingly!) slashdot at least verified whether this was a rumour or not. this is a proper newsreport, unlike the simple copy paste at digg.com for example. kudo's to/. this time.
very simple. because it's there, it worked well enough to push the web as far as it has gone, and it's hard to even imagine a workstation that does *not* have a webbrowser.
nice... first of all: i understand your point of view better now, based on the assumptions you're putting forward in this post. this is good:-)
okay... your claim on percentages defining how people are... i agree completely that actions define people. nonetheless, action is cumulative, and our (dis)regard of someone is mostly based on our impressions when we just meet that someone (if you don't like someone from the begining, you're less likely to give them a second chance). i like the idea of being unbiased and just look at the percentages in standardised time periods, evaluating behaviour constantly, but i'm afraid it doesn't work like that in practice.
in light of your definition (thinking versus talking) i can understand your prior posts. this is where the confusion came into play. in your definition i am an introvert. i know of nobody who would characterise me as an introvert, though.
maybe it would help if you could envision talk and thought as independent variables in the equation... or accept that different modes of thinking can exist (extraverted thinking - introverted thinking)... or take into the equation that extraverts score (by nature of their extravertness) higher in the "EQ" dept yet may still also have a high IQ. but, if you'll forgive me my joking, as an introvert you are probably not interested in anything else than your inner world of thoughts;-)
like you write in the ending, the "us" would be those who are cooporative instead of competing. here we are in complete agreement: in my opinion cooporation is the key to making the collective something better/more successful than the sum of individuals. but this is likely my opinion because i was confronted with more left-wing ideology in my life than the majority of slashdot visitors;-)
my personal conviction is that it's a choice indeed to be cooporative or not. but it's my personal choice to preferentially engage into cooporative efforts, thereby at least making the world around me a better place. competition breeds more competition. i noticed that i can make a difference around me by looking for ways to solve problems *together* instead of infighting.... so i don't think competiteveness is a given. i hope the expansion of this principle (by example) will be exponential and that this ideology will rule the world soon!
time will tell if i'm right or not. i'll write you a comment when i become the peaceful world leader, so you'll recognise me;-)
trumpetpower replied to jolande: > Not a single thing I listed can be proved. Any honest scientist will tell you that this is disturbing at some level, and would consider a proof on the matter one way or the other to be one of the greatest accomplishments of science ever. The fact that these are gaps that must (currently) be filled by faith is an embarrassment, not a point of pride.
do the words of a PhD and (former) postdoctoral researcher count for you? i always conducted my science in all honesty, and was never embarrased by the assumptions (leaps of faith if you wish) it required.
the difference is that it is allowed to question these assumptions. in fact, anything may be questioned. in religion some things are just not questionable (existence of a Deity and such).
i think it's smarter to be aware that science is NOT about fact at all. our knowledge is moving in some kind of direction, yet not neccessarily towards some kind of Truth.
big scientific discoveries are so big because they completely changed the direction of (a part of) science. was the science before that directed towards the Truth? i don't think so, but i'm not even sure... does the absence of recent big discoveries tell us that we are on the "right track" now, or that we are (ignorantly) filling in gaps and refuse to think outside the box? i'd like to dream the former option, but i think the latter.
to realise this is humbling, perhaps. but embarrasing? no way!
science is a progressive effort to understand the world around us. unlike religion, it does not claim to have found the once-and-for-all truth at the moment someone postulates something... no, a new discovery results in a new, and hopefully more accurate, model. this model will be rejected anytime some other scientist finds compelling enough evidence to build another model of how we view (part of) the world around us).
science is not about facts. it's about hypotheses. religion is about "facts", such as the existence of a Deity, afterlife, etc etc.
i just vented my opinion, and it had the right effect -> you reacted:-)
although i am an extravert (according to the -very crude- MBTI test), any statements about general characteristics, correlated to extraversion/introversion, are blanket statements, and therefore at least ignorant. the world is not black and white. many introverts are lousy thinkers. many extraverts are lousy salesmen. believe me, i met quite a few in both categories:-)
why would you pigeonhole people into "us" and "them", based on such crude criterea? wouldn't you agree that this is not exactly the best strategy to get the best out of interaction with others?
in fact, i was often *asked* to be involved in strategic planning, although i am an extravert pur sang. both my bosses so far were professors with a strong role in setting out strategies for the institutes they work for. both are quite extraverted. so i guess there must be something else that's important when it comes to planning strategy... like, for example, intelligence?
have a nice day:-)
ps. i declare war on no-one. war is a senseless option!
your comment is close to fascism, when i look at the blanket statements you make about introverts/extraverts. fill in race/genders/etc, instead of I/E, and you'll see my point.
there is no catch-22. there's a need to find out how people can be complementary in their character properties, yes. but no need to be grandstanding because you are such a smart introvert as opposed to "them salesmen who (according to you) know how to babble but not how to reason".
Slashdot Mirror
never thought i'd ask this :-D
please mod me (parent post) down! if you read the reply to my post, you will see i was reasoning from wrong assumptions
... which teaches me to not knee-jerk respond and rtfa carefully. thanks
(read with tongue in cheeck)
so ehm... they take a bunch of older students as the control group. is that a smart idea? i'd take a bunch of people already working for a while, who have been confronted with Real Life (tm) and have developed into Maturity
"-- ANYONE who claims more than months or even weeks uptime in XP isn't applying patches!"
;P
either that, or they are not online
well i think article moderation is a bad idea... but i would be in favour of an option to mark an article as "dupe". that would prevent a lot of the "this is a dupe, tssk tssk editors" noise in the discussion.
;-)
anyone who criticises the editors should try to do their job for a week. i bet that would shut them up in 50 milliseconds
i think the resolution isn't the biggest prob with digital camera's.... you cannot beat the dynamic range of film with the current CMOS sensors.
moreover, the chromatic abberations seen in digital images are quite ugly (although only visible when you really blow up the picture).
only if you shoot a lot of pictures, digital is the smarter choice. it's a lot cheaper
your reply confuses me a bit. and irrefutable fact is something else as an observable.
;-)
:-) i won't argue with that. it would be a disaster for believers, because then they would have to start *reasoning* in stead of believing *grin*. i doubt whether they'd be able to agree on the nature of this deity, though... but that's another fun discussion!
:-) thanks for the stimulating talk
nonetheless, i follow most of what you are saying and i don't think we disagree on anything significant (besides semantics *grin*)
i must've been unclear in my previous post. i really don't think the existence of a Deity has anything to do with science, we agree on this 100%.
science (at least the kind of science that studies evolution - based on functional explanation of phenomena) is just a system which we use to make sense of the world around us through observations and how we think they relate to one another. the causality we decribe is the most likely explanation. it's not guesswork... i'd like to see you argue just that (because that *is* what you are saying, right? it's a belief)
my feeling is that you are sticking with logical positivism a-la popper (all things must be verifyable else they are untrue). that's a choice.
within that frame of mind, of course nothing is *proven* to be causally related. scientists just go for the most likely explanation, and if the next scientist can come up with a more thorough way to explain what we observe, his theory will be the leading one. it's not as dependent on human failure as you suggest, though. there's thorough evaluation and peer review. more eyeballs, less bugs
what i really don't follow is your argument about the unknowables in science, and how they would be comparable to deities...
nothing is provable... everything is relative. no scientist (except for the ones in mathematics - but that's an internally consistent system as you rightfully mention) in his right mind will ever claim to have found a truth. what we claim to find is models providing the most likely explanation on the phenomena we can observe around us. like the mechanisms involved in bee flight.
i recall that in your previous post you argued that a deity might be observable in times ahead, when our methods improve. well, great
(practically) for now we have what we *did* observe so far, and it fits a hell of a lot better with the functional explanation within the theory of natural selection than it does with ID - which consists *only* of a huge collection of assumptions and invalidated "scientific" arguments about extreme unlikelihood of events.
argh. my head is spinning
fine
warn me when the existence of God has been proven beyond reasonable doubt. i would mean that belief is not relevant anymore. that would have a huge impact on religion... if i were a Christian, i would pray that nobody ever finds a real proof of God.
as GP wrote, scientists do not oppose ID because they think God does not exist. some scientist are atheists (and i think they are being silly), some are believers (and they have every right to this), and some are agnostics like me. i have no clue and until i can see the proof i cannot acknowledge the existence of a God.
like in the courtroom, a scientific idea needs to be supported with sufficient evidence before it turns from concept into theory. this goes for the existence of God, this goes for ID, and this happened already for natural selection as proposed and argued by Darwin and his followers.
pride, ignorance and exclusion? mostly due to societal and religious pressure... and not even comparable to the exclusion, ignorance, and pride displayed in religious organisations.
even Darwin was struggling to not provoke the church and his beliefs. thank god (pun intended) we are mainly secularised nowadays, and can think more freely. at least, if our governments keep on allowing us to do so.
so yes, i agree. let's keep on following rigorous practice of the scientific method. as we did for a long long time already.
interestingly, it's an illusion to think that all data records will he completely correct and historically sound since the introduction of modern computers and electronic storage. the collective computer memory will maybe not be as fluid as human memory, but certainly not exact and complete. moreover, there will be easily accessible data and data that is hard to retrieve (say, for example, data in ms word documents in some 200 years or so :-P ).
:-) ). after all, we create them in our own image
i wouldn't be surprised if the AI of the future would reason pretty much like humans now (a bit faster maybe
Why three scenarios that assume the existance of a God, Heaven, and Hell, and a whole system with punishment and having to repent your sins vs. only one scenario in which the existence of God, Heaven, or Hell is irrelevant? Wouldn't that kind of bias your outcome?
Anyway I believe your assumptions are not reasonable. I see no reason to assume parameters if many religions have very different views on these parameters.
science is more like "these things are causally related beyond reasonable doubt" (say, in 99% of the cases).
for example: when you cross a highway with a certain amount of cars passing in any of the lanes during a certain timeperiod, i can calculate the chance of you being hit by a car given the speed at which you walk and provided you walk with your eyes closed and ears plugged.
science offers defined answers within certain confidence limits, and with defined parameters. this is still a lot more than religion could ever offer me, since i should just accept it or not. i never felt, saw, heard, smelled, tasted, sensed a deity, directly or indirectly.
moreover, any doubt about a belief is reasonable. doubt about a scientific method is *testable*. compare the following sentences "apples are blue" "god exists". science can say "most apples are not blue (with probability x)", and "we have no clue whether a god exists or not" while religion says "god exists. apples are not blue. period" i can't explain it any simpler than this.
causality is a belief? perhaps. but a belief based on events one can *observe*. i can float in water but not in the air. when i drop something, it moves towards the ground at increasing speed. stuff like that.
thank you for making the effort. now i would like to hear the response from grandparent.
nice paradox in your post - stupid people, created in his own image.
that is, if the designer did not use absolute values for their font size, right?
blah blah blah! always the nagging about slashdot (oh yeah right i should grow a sense of humour, right?)
/. this time.
so far (shockingly!) slashdot at least verified whether this was a rumour or not. this is a proper newsreport, unlike the simple copy paste at digg.com for example. kudo's to
if we would all give up on our privacy, we would be ultimately free...
you go first!
"Why are we even using HTML still?"
very simple. because it's there, it worked well enough to push the web as far as it has gone, and it's hard to even imagine a workstation that does *not* have a webbrowser.
i don't know what a fact is. that's the point exactly.
;-)
you don't either, by-the-way. you are clearly stating (combinations of) definitions.
and that's a fact
give me one verifiable fact, and i'll never argue with anyone again
(in other words: let's not get stuck in logical positivism and such, shall we?)
nice... first of all: i understand your point of view better now, based on the assumptions you're putting forward in this post. this is good :-)
;-)
;-)
;-)
okay... your claim on percentages defining how people are... i agree completely that actions define people. nonetheless, action is cumulative, and our (dis)regard of someone is mostly based on our impressions when we just meet that someone (if you don't like someone from the begining, you're less likely to give them a second chance). i like the idea of being unbiased and just look at the percentages in standardised time periods, evaluating behaviour constantly, but i'm afraid it doesn't work like that in practice.
in light of your definition (thinking versus talking) i can understand your prior posts. this is where the confusion came into play. in your definition i am an introvert. i know of nobody who would characterise me as an introvert, though.
maybe it would help if you could envision talk and thought as independent variables in the equation... or accept that different modes of thinking can exist (extraverted thinking - introverted thinking)... or take into the equation that extraverts score (by nature of their extravertness) higher in the "EQ" dept yet may still also have a high IQ. but, if you'll forgive me my joking, as an introvert you are probably not interested in anything else than your inner world of thoughts
like you write in the ending, the "us" would be those who are cooporative instead of competing. here we are in complete agreement: in my opinion cooporation is the key to making the collective something better/more successful than the sum of individuals. but this is likely my opinion because i was confronted with more left-wing ideology in my life than the majority of slashdot visitors
my personal conviction is that it's a choice indeed to be cooporative or not. but it's my personal choice to preferentially engage into cooporative efforts, thereby at least making the world around me a better place. competition breeds more competition. i noticed that i can make a difference around me by looking for ways to solve problems *together* instead of infighting.... so i don't think competiteveness is a given. i hope the expansion of this principle (by example) will be exponential and that this ideology will rule the world soon!
time will tell if i'm right or not. i'll write you a comment when i become the peaceful world leader, so you'll recognise me
trumpetpower replied to jolande:
> Not a single thing I listed can be proved.
Any honest scientist will tell you that this is disturbing at some level, and would consider a proof on the matter one way or the other to be one of the greatest accomplishments of science ever. The fact that these are gaps that must (currently) be filled by faith is an embarrassment, not a point of pride.
do the words of a PhD and (former) postdoctoral researcher count for you? i always conducted my science in all honesty, and was never embarrased by the assumptions (leaps of faith if you wish) it required.
the difference is that it is allowed to question these assumptions. in fact, anything may be questioned. in religion some things are just not questionable (existence of a Deity and such).
i think it's smarter to be aware that science is NOT about fact at all. our knowledge is moving in some kind of direction, yet not neccessarily towards some kind of Truth.
big scientific discoveries are so big because they completely changed the direction of (a part of) science. was the science before that directed towards the Truth? i don't think so, but i'm not even sure...
does the absence of recent big discoveries tell us that we are on the "right track" now, or that we are (ignorantly) filling in gaps and refuse to think outside the box? i'd like to dream the former option, but i think the latter.
to realise this is humbling, perhaps. but embarrasing? no way!
you're funny! :-)
science is a progressive effort to understand the world around us. unlike religion, it does not claim to have found the once-and-for-all truth at the moment someone postulates something... no, a new discovery results in a new, and hopefully more accurate, model. this model will be rejected anytime some other scientist finds compelling enough evidence to build another model of how we view (part of) the world around us).
science is not about facts. it's about hypotheses. religion is about "facts", such as the existence of a Deity, afterlife, etc etc.
my dear man, i am very calm.
:-)
:-)
:-)
i just vented my opinion, and it had the right effect -> you reacted
although i am an extravert (according to the -very crude- MBTI test), any statements about general characteristics, correlated to extraversion/introversion, are blanket statements, and therefore at least ignorant. the world is not black and white. many introverts are lousy thinkers. many extraverts are lousy salesmen. believe me, i met quite a few in both categories
why would you pigeonhole people into "us" and "them", based on such crude criterea? wouldn't you agree that this is not exactly the best strategy to get the best out of interaction with others?
in fact, i was often *asked* to be involved in strategic planning, although i am an extravert pur sang. both my bosses so far were professors with a strong role in setting out strategies for the institutes they work for. both are quite extraverted. so i guess there must be something else that's important when it comes to planning strategy... like, for example, intelligence?
have a nice day
ps. i declare war on no-one. war is a senseless option!
your comment is close to fascism, when i look at the blanket statements you make about introverts/extraverts. fill in race/genders/etc, instead of I/E, and you'll see my point.
there is no catch-22. there's a need to find out how people can be complementary in their character properties, yes. but no need to be grandstanding because you are such a smart introvert as opposed to "them salesmen who (according to you) know how to babble but not how to reason".
(many great artists were introverts by-the-way)
ceci n'est past un page design