In case you were wondering, I was taking issue with this statement.
"So no one does this."
People do do it without price gouging, and you are allowed to make a profit, just not a ridiculous one.
I'm not saying that price gouging should be outlawed (I happen to think legalizing gouging would reduce distribution, not increase it in extraordinary market conditions.)
"If you don't understand about pointers (or recursion), you probably will never be any good at programming."
This is unfair and misleading. If there's some kid out there having a hard time with pointers, he or she will read this and get the wrong impression. As simple as it seems after the fact, there's a mental leap involved with understanding pointers. If you graduate without making the leap, you've got problems, and so does your school, but many who haven't made the leap today will tomorrow.
Based on something observed? Who has observed an alternate universe??? There are probably billions of people with some sort of direct experience of God.
What I mean is that we've observed one universe. And the multi-universe theory just adds more of something that at least exists in one case. While billions of people experience something, there's no way to tell whether what they are experiencing is a god.
My basic point is that while both the "God did it" and "Huge numbers of universes means one is bound to be right" theories are right now untestable and unscientific, the latter proposes many of something for which we know one exists and can be examined, while the former proposes one of something for which we don't know if any exist. So it seems the "multiverse" has some prospect of being testable at some point in the future, whereas I see know prospect of God being defined well enough to be tested at any time.
and you have to be extremely careful with what you're imagining "logic" is telling you.
I agree, which is why conclusions should be tested against reality.
Understanding the pursuit of truth as something independent of a relationship with God is a recent invention which has not helped science, rather I believe that history will make it obvious that it has hindered it in crucial ways, and limited mankind's continued intellectual development.
That will be a hard argument to make since science really took off at the same time that doubting accepted theology, disbelieving in the concept of a relationship with God, and even disbelieving in God became popular among educated persons.
He's talking about framing. "in media res" is great (new term for me) and can accidentally improved stories. I missed the first part of "Gattica" and thought it was a cool, suspenseful mystery. I spent the movie trying to figure out who the characters were and what were their motives. My friends thought it was boring. Everything had been explained in the first half hour.
Doubtful, it more has to do with emotional stabilizing factor that religious deception has on human beings minds.
Even if we take that to be true, how does it lead to higher birthrates? I think you'll find in nations where the dominant religion does not have anything against contraception that the birthrate drops among the religious as much as the non-religious as contraception improves.
And what do many with an atheistic predisposition do? Run away from the evidence and towards an untestable multiverse hypothesis.
The God hypothesis is at least is unscientific as the multiverse hypothesis, which at least has the advantage of being based on something that we've observed. Of course, being a problem that's difficult to test, these two ideas are far from exhausting the possible reasons the universe is the way it is.
If atheists were consistent with their own atheism, that would leave us with absolutely no confidence in our own rational faculties to ascertain truth.
If you were honest with yourself, you'd have at least some doubt as to your ability to get at the truth, but there is room for some confidence since we cam test much of what we guess.
But they happen to use abstractions and immaterial laws of logic.
Either the universe is logical and we can reason about it, or it's not and we can't. So far, it seems to be pretty logical.
Faith in God, however, never provided much insight into the workings of the universe, though it dominated scientific thought for Millenia, and was actually a step backward from the Greek Pantheon, etc, which at least didn't plainly contradict everyday goings on.
We could even make a pretty good case that declining birthrates of whites for example is directly related to their lack of religiousity and return to individualistic primitive instincts.
While there is a inverse correlation between religion and low birth rate, I'm guessing it has to do with religion's opposition to modern contraceptives. The notion that humans in their primitive state exhibit low birthrates is stupid on it's face.
Also, this is a problem that will solve itself. The future of white people will be dominated by those who continue to be religious, and those who *want* to have kids. In the past, those who didn't want to have kids had them anyway, now they are going to die out.
Since you cannot know all evidence, it is possible that evidence exists that proves God's existence, or at least supports his existence. Therefore, it is possible that God exists.
This is circular reasoning. Either God exists or God doesn't exist. If God doesn't exist, it's not possible that evidence exists that proves God's existence.
I think you mean to say: "you don't know whether evidence exists that proves God's existence, therefore you don't know that whether God exists."
On the other hand, it's hard to believe that people can be THAT gullible.
The "hard to believe" argument is not very convincing. Anyone who has dealt with humans will tell you that, in general, it's hard to find a limit to their gullibility about events that they haven't experienced and haven't studied.
There seems to be a complete lack of understanding, at least where I live in America, that what you believe, what I believe, has no actual bearing on the truth. Perhaps, if you are a thinking person who surrenders to reason from time to time, the truth might have some bearing on what you believe.
It's an awkward twist to find motive for the sort of distortions of dogma that would be required to go from something believable to modern religion.
Haven't you ever played Telephone? To pick on the Bible, it was codified some hundreds of years after the events of the New Testament and some thousands of years after the events of the Old Testament. Assuming even the best of motives, which is very generous, there's no chance the story wasn't greatly distorted.
First of all, there are women that can be won over with persistence and cunning trickery, and find it flattering.
Second, porn teaches you that all you have to do is let a woman suck your dick (she's dying to suck it and won't need any more prompting than getting a glimpse of it), and she'll soon be so hot she'll be begging you to put your dick inside her pussy, and eventually asshole, wherein you will reach the very peak of the sexual triumph, the best that life has to offer: pulling out and cumming all over her tits/face/ass.
To a clueless virgin, the ridiculousness of this is not at all obvious.
I think it's easy for people with experience with or education about sex to understand what's wrong with porn, and not easy for those without. It's equally easy for people with relationship experience or education to understand what's wrong with romances.
"Do you think you are?" No. And if you agree with me that Einstein probably wasn't, then it seems possible that he was an idiot about God.
In any case, what little Theology I've read only became interesting when it was rigorous, in which case it was really Philosophy, and any Philosophy I've read only became valuable when it delved into observation, in which case it was really Science.
Scientists haven't been turned into zealots, it's just that they aren't used to such an onslaught of propaganda against them that they've turned into incredulous, frustrated, annoying loud mouths.
Which means we shouldn't listen to them. After all, they want Global Warming just as much as the corporations don't want it, right?
"The last barrel of oil effectively has an infinite price. But it doesn't run out."
Either it has an infinite price and no one can buy it, therefore oil has run out in effect, or the price is finite and someone will buy it therefore the oil has run out in fact.
The price will be finite, since eventually, 1 year or 100 years later, some owner of the barrel will want the money for it.
Right. Then after a short time the supplier sells, and no more oil. The oil sells and you run out, or the oil doesn't sell and you might as well have run out.
What does economic theory tell us about the last tree on Easter Island?
Slashdot Mirror
You can stay and filter the cow shit. I'm going to go find the water trough or the creek.
In case you were wondering, I was taking issue with this statement.
"So no one does this."
People do do it without price gouging, and you are allowed to make a profit, just not a ridiculous one.
I'm not saying that price gouging should be outlawed (I happen to think legalizing gouging would reduce distribution, not increase it in extraordinary market conditions.)
Unless they have some humanity.
Are philanderers really deviants next to self-hating closeted homosexuals and self-righteous moralizing frequenters of prostitutes?
"If you don't understand about pointers (or recursion), you probably will never be any good at programming."
This is unfair and misleading. If there's some kid out there having a hard time with pointers, he or she will read this and get the wrong impression. As simple as it seems after the fact, there's a mental leap involved with understanding pointers. If you graduate without making the leap, you've got problems, and so does your school, but many who haven't made the leap today will tomorrow.
And Foley, and Haggard, and Vitter, and Swaggert and ...
Based on something observed? Who has observed an alternate universe??? There are probably billions of people with some sort of direct experience of God.
What I mean is that we've observed one universe. And the multi-universe theory just adds more of something that at least exists in one case. While billions of people experience something, there's no way to tell whether what they are experiencing is a god.
My basic point is that while both the "God did it" and "Huge numbers of universes means one is bound to be right" theories are right now untestable and unscientific, the latter proposes many of something for which we know one exists and can be examined, while the former proposes one of something for which we don't know if any exist. So it seems the "multiverse" has some prospect of being testable at some point in the future, whereas I see know prospect of God being defined well enough to be tested at any time.
and you have to be extremely careful with what you're imagining "logic" is telling you.
I agree, which is why conclusions should be tested against reality.
Understanding the pursuit of truth as something independent of a relationship with God is a recent invention which has not helped science, rather I believe that history will make it obvious that it has hindered it in crucial ways, and limited mankind's continued intellectual development.
That will be a hard argument to make since science really took off at the same time that doubting accepted theology, disbelieving in the concept of a relationship with God, and even disbelieving in God became popular among educated persons.
He's talking about framing. "in media res" is great (new term for me) and can accidentally improved stories. I missed the first part of "Gattica" and thought it was a cool, suspenseful mystery. I spent the movie trying to figure out who the characters were and what were their motives. My friends thought it was boring. Everything had been explained in the first half hour.
Doubtful, it more has to do with emotional stabilizing factor that religious deception has on human beings minds.
Even if we take that to be true, how does it lead to higher birthrates? I think you'll find in nations where the dominant religion does not have anything against contraception that the birthrate drops among the religious as much as the non-religious as contraception improves.
And what do many with an atheistic predisposition do? Run away from the evidence and towards an untestable multiverse hypothesis.
The God hypothesis is at least is unscientific as the multiverse hypothesis, which at least has the advantage of being based on something that we've observed. Of course, being a problem that's difficult to test, these two ideas are far from exhausting the possible reasons the universe is the way it is.
If atheists were consistent with their own atheism, that would leave us with absolutely no confidence in our own rational faculties to ascertain truth.
If you were honest with yourself, you'd have at least some doubt as to your ability to get at the truth, but there is room for some confidence since we cam test much of what we guess.
But they happen to use abstractions and immaterial laws of logic.
Either the universe is logical and we can reason about it, or it's not and we can't. So far, it seems to be pretty logical.
Faith in God, however, never provided much insight into the workings of the universe, though it dominated scientific thought for Millenia, and was actually a step backward from the Greek Pantheon, etc, which at least didn't plainly contradict everyday goings on.
We could even make a pretty good case that declining birthrates of whites for example is directly related to their lack of religiousity and return to individualistic primitive instincts.
While there is a inverse correlation between religion and low birth rate, I'm guessing it has to do with religion's opposition to modern contraceptives. The notion that humans in their primitive state exhibit low birthrates is stupid on it's face.
Also, this is a problem that will solve itself. The future of white people will be dominated by those who continue to be religious, and those who *want* to have kids. In the past, those who didn't want to have kids had them anyway, now they are going to die out.
Since you cannot know all evidence, it is possible that evidence exists that proves God's existence, or at least supports his existence. Therefore, it is possible that God exists.
This is circular reasoning. Either God exists or God doesn't exist. If God doesn't exist, it's not possible that evidence exists that proves God's existence.
I think you mean to say: "you don't know whether evidence exists that proves God's existence, therefore you don't know that whether God exists."
4. faith in things for which contradict our observations
These are called Republicans.
On the other hand, it's hard to believe that people can be THAT gullible.
The "hard to believe" argument is not very convincing. Anyone who has dealt with humans will tell you that, in general, it's hard to find a limit to their gullibility about events that they haven't experienced and haven't studied.
There seems to be a complete lack of understanding, at least where I live in America, that what you believe, what I believe, has no actual bearing on the truth. Perhaps, if you are a thinking person who surrenders to reason from time to time, the truth might have some bearing on what you believe.
It's an awkward twist to find motive for the sort of distortions of dogma that would be required to go from something believable to modern religion.
Haven't you ever played Telephone? To pick on the Bible, it was codified some hundreds of years after the events of the New Testament and some thousands of years after the events of the Old Testament. Assuming even the best of motives, which is very generous, there's no chance the story wasn't greatly distorted.
First of all, there are women that can be won over with persistence and cunning trickery, and find it flattering.
Second, porn teaches you that all you have to do is let a woman suck your dick (she's dying to suck it and won't need any more prompting than getting a glimpse of it), and she'll soon be so hot she'll be begging you to put your dick inside her pussy, and eventually asshole, wherein you will reach the very peak of the sexual triumph, the best that life has to offer: pulling out and cumming all over her tits/face/ass.
To a clueless virgin, the ridiculousness of this is not at all obvious.
I think it's easy for people with experience with or education about sex to understand what's wrong with porn, and not easy for those without. It's equally easy for people with relationship experience or education to understand what's wrong with romances.
Fuck the Wumpus was the critically acclaimed, though much less popular sequel to Hunt the Wumpus
It wasn't a rule, but a suggestion with the implication that +1 swords had to be rare or your world was out of balance.
"Do you think you are?" No. And if you agree with me that Einstein probably wasn't, then it seems possible that he was an idiot about God.
In any case, what little Theology I've read only became interesting when it was rigorous, in which case it was really Philosophy, and any Philosophy I've read only became valuable when it delved into observation, in which case it was really Science.
"There are no synonyms in the English language."
"I suggest that the only logical thing to do is to kill yourself. Now."
Most of us are a benefit, but some of us are just pricks.
You think he was smart about everything?
Scientists haven't been turned into zealots, it's just that they aren't used to such an onslaught of propaganda against them that they've turned into incredulous, frustrated, annoying loud mouths.
Which means we shouldn't listen to them. After all, they want Global Warming just as much as the corporations don't want it, right?
"The last barrel of oil effectively has an infinite price. But it doesn't run out."
Either it has an infinite price and no one can buy it, therefore oil has run out in effect, or the price is finite and someone will buy it therefore the oil has run out in fact.
The price will be finite, since eventually, 1 year or 100 years later, some owner of the barrel will want the money for it.
Right. Then after a short time the supplier sells, and no more oil. The oil sells and you run out, or the oil doesn't sell and you might as well have run out.
What does economic theory tell us about the last tree on Easter Island?
That's only because he abbreviated GRB.