"Does anyone else think "StrokeIt" is a really bad name for a product?"
Not in a world where UNIX is a common OS.
Re:is it so hard to believe?
on
Life on Pluto?
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· Score: 1
The problem with that argument is that there is no evidence to say that we don't have free will, and there's a whole lot of human experience to suggest that we do.
WHAT???? A species is extinct forever because it's ridiculously unlikely that it itself will evolve again, not because no other new species will ever come about. Also, species go extinct and don't leave a void, they go extinct because the niche they had been occupying no longer exists. Therefore, no void.
Sure.:) You do make some valid points, and in simpler times your view might be correct. For example, if you lived in a small town with a homogenous culture, you were never going to leave, and the basic thrust of your life was pretty much clear from the time you were born, learning the axioms of your little society might be adequate. That was basically the situation in say, ancient Hebrew society where a lot of these rules were formulated.
In today's world, though, things are too complicated to rely on simple axioms given in childhood. In a diverse country, it is harmful, for instance, to teach kids that "we" are good, and everybody else is bad, or unchosen, or is out to get you. Also, the world that a person reaches after college today is far different than his father's world was, and will be far different than his son's will be.
In such a complicated world, flexibility is a must. We must learn to be skeptics. We must question everything. We must consider that although America is a wonderful place, it's still possible for it to go in the wrong direction, and that if "just following orders" isn't a good excuse in other countries it isn't in ours either. We must consider that maybe primitive feelings against homosexuality are morally immature, and maybe our own feelings of "that's icky" aren't as important as allowing millions of people who fall in love with people of their own gender to live happy lives just as the rest of us do. We must look at new questions of morality -- such as stem-cell research -- from a fresh perspective. Etc. etc. etc. Hope you read this, I'm posting late.
You know, that's a very original argument. I've never heard that one before. (/sarcasm)
What if in reality, you're wrong, and you are wasting the only life you have worshipping emptiness. That's fine if that's what you want -- it is your life, after all -- but pretty silly if it isn't.
If God is so loving, why would he torture ANY of us forever? What would you think of a parent who put a disobediant son into a bathtub of molten lava?
It's any legitimate author's beef with pop-art that is much more commercially successful. You can look at it and see that it's not as good as "literary" stuff, but due to the way of the world, it gets all the glory. If Alicia Keys complained about Britney, it wouldn't be just jealousy -- there's a legitimate complaint there.
"Because how is God good to them? How many subtle ways might God have saved a person's life or changed it? Perhaps some hardship one faces is, in the long run, "better" for them."
That's why we randomize large groups of subjects. While we can't compare religious people to the people they would have been without religion, we can compare large enough numbers to non-religious people, so that if the hypothesis is true, their lives, on average, would be better. As for the afterlife, you're right, that's untestable.
Of course the only reason an afterlife is posited is to answer the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?"
"If someone is being sued/prosecuted over a bad law, and you feel they did nothing wrong, you, as a juror, do indeed have the power to have that law re-examined, and possibly repealed. The problem is, you need to get the other jurors to understand agree with you."
That's not actually true, at least where I served on a jury (in DC.) You have to swear to decide whether or not the defendant broke the laws as they are written. It is not up to you to determine if the laws are fair or not. You can of course pretty much make your decision based on whatever you want, but it's not really legal.
I don't know of an example, but I'd like to point out that sharp distinctions between species probably don't really exist. It's unlikely that a mother ever gives birth to a member of a new species. It's more that through tons of generations, an organism gets more and more different so that at some point, you can look back and say, this organism is of a different species than it's great-great-great-great-...-grandmother. The reason this isn't obvious is because there are usually not any organisms still around that are exactly that ancestor's species--they've either become the species of the descendant also, become different species, or died out.
In the lab, even with organisms that reproduce very frequently, it'd be hard to give them enough time (seeing that it generally takes millions of years) to actually witness macro evolution. However, by looking at comparative anatomy, embryology, DNA, mitochondria, etc. etc. etc., we certainly get a lot of evidence supporting the fact that we all have common ancestors. You can read books by Richard Dawkins, although he does have a pretty strong atheistic slant.
"I believe that human consciousness is the spiritual touch that makes us uniquely 'in the image of God.'"
What about other primate consciousness. Obviously it's not on the same level as ours, but does an ape really lack consciousness? They can communicate (with a subset of sign language even!,) use tools, and certainly feel emotion. Do they just have some Godly image? Or is there a qualitative difference between them and us, rather than a quantitative one?
Re:How would the world react. . .
on
Want Freedom?
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· Score: 1
It depends. If our totalitarian dictator was useful to the other countries, then they would support him. If he was a threat, they'd try to get rid of him. Rather like we treat other countries' dictators.
Of course, it's highly unlikely that it could happen here, and I think in that drastically unlikely event, we'd have a nice Second Civil War following it right up.
It is sort of a starvation diet. It's basically a way to make your body starve its fat while keeping its muscle. Besides the induction diet (first 2 weeks) it's not far off from what our ancestors could have eaten before farming. Lots of non-starchy veggies and animal flesh.
Before this sentence, there have been exactly 0 occurrences of the string of words: "radio bottle cheese opera horse sitting car." Therefore the chances of anyone ever puttig that string together was also a flat zero.
It's just ridiculous how much "news" time is devoted to following one story that really isn't remotely important on a national scale. Obviously any kidnapping/murder is a tragedy, but isn't there anything more significant to devote hours and hours of breathless reporting to? JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, whoever this little girl is -- these stories are not news, they're human interest.
You could argue that 24 hours of several different networks is just too much time to fill with real news, but surely they could use it for more in-depth reporting on real issues. Maybe they could actually educate the public somewhat. Didn't that use to be their job? News should not be entertainment, except in the sense that learning stuff is entertaining.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have a network or two just for little white girl stories if that's what people want to watch, but there should be SOMEBODY other than public radio/tv to provide actual news and important information.
It's like radio stations - okay, have a few top 40s stations. But can't we have a couple that play quality music too? Other than public radio?
I guess these are just ends that the free market goes to automatically, but it sure is depressing. There must be some way to correct the problem without introducing bigger ones.
Actually, in this context, Talmud refers to the vast tracts which interpret the Torah. Although it's pretty much the same word as student. It literally means "learning."
Piracy exists. Quit whining. Use it to help you instead of hurt you. Don't cripple your software. Let people "pirate" it. Big businesses will usually pay for software if they start using it, and lots of "pirates" wouldn't buy your product even if they couldn't get it for free. I know that every single piece of software I've ever bought, for myself or for the company I work for, I tried first. Often a "pirated" copy.
What really gets me are the companies I call for an evaluation version of their software so that my company can figure out if it wants to buy a bunch, and the software companies don't want to provide a working version! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Software companies: why not look at piracy as FREE marketting, and just focus on getting the big customers to pay?
Are you saying that The Daily Show and Tom Green aren't funny??????? Daily Show - smart and often funny. Tom Green - stupid but the only show ever to consistently make me laugh out loud until I hurt.
You said: "What you can do is look at an organism and evaluate the odds of arriving at that organism given the mechanisms one thinks account for evolution."
How is that different than evaluating the odds of getting HTTHHTHTTH or any other random thing. There is a HUGE space of possible organisms. The odds of reaching any one in specific are ridiculously small, so it doesn't really make sense to look back and say oh that's so unlikely to have happened.
1) Evolution doesn't have a goal. There are many many more possible descendants than if you were "trying" to reach just one (the sentence.) Flipping a coin multiple times, the probability of getting HHHHHHHHHH is 1 in 2^10. Very unlikely. Of course the probability of getting THHTHTHHTT is also 1 in 2^10. The dice are only "loaded" if you assume that humans and the rest of the animals on Earth today were the goal, when in fact there was (IS) no goal.
2) Dawkins was merely using a simplistic example to demonstrate the idea of cumulative evolution that builds on itself vs. instant evolution from the original to the final result. He was pointing out the fallacy of those who mistakenly believe that the theory of evolution implies single-step mutations from one species to the next. He wasn't trying to show a realistic model of evolution.
3) In that book, (I think) he also describes how some genes are turned on or off by the environment they're in. E.g. in a skin cell, the local environment is much different than in a neuron, so even though both cells have the same genes, they are very very different. Different genes are expressed in different orders with different results. A group of genes doesn't code for say, green eyes, it makes a certain protein in a certain circumstance, perhaps a different protein in a different circumstance. In one cell the protein might cause one action, in another cell, in the presence of some enzyme or what have you, it might cause a totally different one. So in the embryo, a gene in one place can easily hugely affect the outcome of the organism, since each subsequent descendant of that cell would be in a slightly different environment than it otherwise would have been in.
There is unbelievable complexity in all this. Tiny changes here and there have the potential to make big differences.
Slashdot Mirror
"Does anyone else think "StrokeIt" is a really bad name for a product?"
Not in a world where UNIX is a common OS.
The problem with that argument is that there is no evidence to say that we don't have free will, and there's a whole lot of human experience to suggest that we do.
WHAT???? A species is extinct forever because it's ridiculously unlikely that it itself will evolve again, not because no other new species will ever come about. Also, species go extinct and don't leave a void, they go extinct because the niche they had been occupying no longer exists. Therefore, no void.
"Any takers?"
:) You do make some valid points, and in simpler times your view might be correct. For example, if you lived in a small town with a homogenous culture, you were never going to leave, and the basic thrust of your life was pretty much clear from the time you were born, learning the axioms of your little society might be adequate. That was basically the situation in say, ancient Hebrew society where a lot of these rules were formulated.
Sure.
In today's world, though, things are too complicated to rely on simple axioms given in childhood. In a diverse country, it is harmful, for instance, to teach kids that "we" are good, and everybody else is bad, or unchosen, or is out to get you. Also, the world that a person reaches after college today is far different than his father's world was, and will be far different than his son's will be.
In such a complicated world, flexibility is a must. We must learn to be skeptics. We must question everything. We must consider that although America is a wonderful place, it's still possible for it to go in the wrong direction, and that if "just following orders" isn't a good excuse in other countries it isn't in ours either. We must consider that maybe primitive feelings against homosexuality are morally immature, and maybe our own feelings of "that's icky" aren't as important as allowing millions of people who fall in love with people of their own gender to live happy lives just as the rest of us do. We must look at new questions of morality -- such as stem-cell research -- from a fresh perspective. Etc. etc. etc. Hope you read this, I'm posting late.
You know, that's a very original argument. I've never heard that one before. (/sarcasm)
What if in reality, you're wrong, and you are wasting the only life you have worshipping emptiness. That's fine if that's what you want -- it is your life, after all -- but pretty silly if it isn't.
If God is so loving, why would he torture ANY of us forever? What would you think of a parent who put a disobediant son into a bathtub of molten lava?
It's any legitimate author's beef with pop-art that is much more commercially successful. You can look at it and see that it's not as good as "literary" stuff, but due to the way of the world, it gets all the glory. If Alicia Keys complained about Britney, it wouldn't be just jealousy -- there's a legitimate complaint there.
Must be you really be (technically) wiley to miss it? I don't think so.
Mozart's work itself is... too bad there aren't too many recordings of him actually playing.
You can't prove ANYTHING doesn't exist. Prove that unicorns don't exist. Prove that invisible undetectable aliens aren't living among us right now.
That's why we randomize large groups of subjects. While we can't compare religious people to the people they would have been without religion, we can compare large enough numbers to non-religious people, so that if the hypothesis is true, their lives, on average, would be better. As for the afterlife, you're right, that's untestable.
Of course the only reason an afterlife is posited is to answer the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?"
"If someone is being sued/prosecuted over a bad law, and you feel they did nothing wrong, you, as a juror, do indeed have the power to have that law re-examined, and possibly repealed. The problem is, you need to get the other jurors to understand agree with you."
That's not actually true, at least where I served on a jury (in DC.) You have to swear to decide whether or not the defendant broke the laws as they are written. It is not up to you to determine if the laws are fair or not. You can of course pretty much make your decision based on whatever you want, but it's not really legal.
I don't know of an example, but I'd like to point out that sharp distinctions between species probably don't really exist. It's unlikely that a mother ever gives birth to a member of a new species. It's more that through tons of generations, an organism gets more and more different so that at some point, you can look back and say, this organism is of a different species than it's great-great-great-great-...-grandmother. The reason this isn't obvious is because there are usually not any organisms still around that are exactly that ancestor's species--they've either become the species of the descendant also, become different species, or died out.
In the lab, even with organisms that reproduce very frequently, it'd be hard to give them enough time (seeing that it generally takes millions of years) to actually witness macro evolution. However, by looking at comparative anatomy, embryology, DNA, mitochondria, etc. etc. etc., we certainly get a lot of evidence supporting the fact that we all have common ancestors. You can read books by Richard Dawkins, although he does have a pretty strong atheistic slant.
"I believe that human consciousness is the spiritual touch that makes us uniquely 'in the image of God.'"
What about other primate consciousness. Obviously it's not on the same level as ours, but does an ape really lack consciousness? They can communicate (with a subset of sign language even!,) use tools, and certainly feel emotion. Do they just have some Godly image? Or is there a qualitative difference between them and us, rather than a quantitative one?
It depends. If our totalitarian dictator was useful to the other countries, then they would support him. If he was a threat, they'd try to get rid of him. Rather like we treat other countries' dictators.
Of course, it's highly unlikely that it could happen here, and I think in that drastically unlikely event, we'd have a nice Second Civil War following it right up.
As far as I know, Jewish law entirely permits transplantation if a life will be saved.
It is sort of a starvation diet. It's basically a way to make your body starve its fat while keeping its muscle. Besides the induction diet (first 2 weeks) it's not far off from what our ancestors could have eaten before farming. Lots of non-starchy veggies and animal flesh.
Before this sentence, there have been exactly 0 occurrences of the string of words: "radio bottle cheese opera horse sitting car." Therefore the chances of anyone ever puttig that string together was also a flat zero.
It's just ridiculous how much "news" time is devoted to following one story that really isn't remotely important on a national scale. Obviously any kidnapping/murder is a tragedy, but isn't there anything more significant to devote hours and hours of breathless reporting to? JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, whoever this little girl is -- these stories are not news, they're human interest.
You could argue that 24 hours of several different networks is just too much time to fill with real news, but surely they could use it for more in-depth reporting on real issues. Maybe they could actually educate the public somewhat. Didn't that use to be their job? News should not be entertainment, except in the sense that learning stuff is entertaining.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have a network or two just for little white girl stories if that's what people want to watch, but there should be SOMEBODY other than public radio/tv to provide actual news and important information.
It's like radio stations - okay, have a few top 40s stations. But can't we have a couple that play quality music too? Other than public radio?
I guess these are just ends that the free market goes to automatically, but it sure is depressing. There must be some way to correct the problem without introducing bigger ones.
Actually, in this context, Talmud refers to the vast tracts which interpret the Torah. Although it's pretty much the same word as student. It literally means "learning."
Good Will Hunting rocked. sheesh.
What really gets me are the companies I call for an evaluation version of their software so that my company can figure out if it wants to buy a bunch, and the software companies don't want to provide a working version! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Software companies: why not look at piracy as FREE marketting, and just focus on getting the big customers to pay?
Guess humor's in the eye of the beholder.
Ok, I went to your site (talk about bait-and-switch.) Your font is way too freaking small. And in IE at least, it won't let me enlarge it.
How is that different than evaluating the odds of getting HTTHHTHTTH or any other random thing. There is a HUGE space of possible organisms. The odds of reaching any one in specific are ridiculously small, so it doesn't really make sense to look back and say oh that's so unlikely to have happened.
1) Evolution doesn't have a goal. There are many many more possible descendants than if you were "trying" to reach just one (the sentence.) Flipping a coin multiple times, the probability of getting HHHHHHHHHH is 1 in 2^10. Very unlikely. Of course the probability of getting THHTHTHHTT is also 1 in 2^10. The dice are only "loaded" if you assume that humans and the rest of the animals on Earth today were the goal, when in fact there was (IS) no goal.
2) Dawkins was merely using a simplistic example to demonstrate the idea of cumulative evolution that builds on itself vs. instant evolution from the original to the final result. He was pointing out the fallacy of those who mistakenly believe that the theory of evolution implies single-step mutations from one species to the next. He wasn't trying to show a realistic model of evolution.
3) In that book, (I think) he also describes how some genes are turned on or off by the environment they're in. E.g. in a skin cell, the local environment is much different than in a neuron, so even though both cells have the same genes, they are very very different. Different genes are expressed in different orders with different results. A group of genes doesn't code for say, green eyes, it makes a certain protein in a certain circumstance, perhaps a different protein in a different circumstance. In one cell the protein might cause one action, in another cell, in the presence of some enzyme or what have you, it might cause a totally different one. So in the embryo, a gene in one place can easily hugely affect the outcome of the organism, since each subsequent descendant of that cell would be in a slightly different environment than it otherwise would have been in.
There is unbelievable complexity in all this. Tiny changes here and there have the potential to make big differences.