None of the truly successful open source projects needed marketing. Those that do risk corporate interference, which so far has not helped any open source project.
That's precisely what I'm arguing against: OpenStack does NOT need a mouthpiece, and the article using Linus Torvalds as a supporting argument is completely cargo cult. Torvalds happens to be the mouthpiece for Linux because he's very good and very trusted and his track record on the things that matter is very consistently above most people.
OpenStack needs to be around a lot longer, and any "mouthpiece" for OpenStack must come up through the ranks if she/he is to be taken seriously by people on the inside. Otherwise, he/she would just be a hype machine and no one trusts them at all. Linus Torvalds has earned the trust of millions.
I think you've stumbled upon the answer: you are being self-reflecting. I find a lot of nerds aren't self-reflecting. They question everything but themselves and it's up to everyone else to prove them wrong, otherwise they must be right.
Mind you, anyone who is arrogant probably has not done any self-reflecting either, or believe they don't need to do any self-reflecting.
Linus specifically set up Linux development to not be dependent on him by creating git. People don't technically have to build from his own tree, but people do because they trust their experience with working with him.
You cannot just install a Torvalds into OpenStack. If there is no Torvalds of OpenStack, it's because no one is technically qualified or has the reputation for it.
This kind of reasoning is purely cargo cult management. You would think people have learnt to stop thinking in cargo cult ways by now.
I'm sure that you don't agree 100% with every single opinion that Dawkins had. If you did, I'd be worried. I'd be even more worried if Krauss did.
I agree more with Dawkins and Dennett than Hitchens and Harris. Dawkins gets a lot of criticism, but he's by far the most moderate of all of them. I have no problem saying I probably don't disagree that much with Dawkins. Personally, I had the beginnings of the idea that teaching children any religious belief or strong atheism as truth is a kind of abuse back in 2002 (I was in Year 10 then). It's been a while since I've read Delusion, but I can't remember much that I disagree with. I would have expressed some things a bit different, but I didn't take it as a book on philosophy as critics do in a strawman fashion.
For the record, the specific claim which embarrassed Krauss was "This could potentially be the most important scientific book with implications for supernaturalism since Darwin." That is an embarrassing statement to make.
That is not as serious of an "embarrassment" as you were trying to imply when you first mentioned it. I can see why Krauss would be embarrassed by such high praise. Most humble people would. However, Krauss himself thinks modern understanding of the Big Bang moment scientifically renders the question of "why is there something rather than nothing" moot. Even he thinks it's no longer a question of philosophy but one of testable science.
On the contrary, I'm saying that science has not superceded or replaced the humanities.
I used supercede strictly in the original context of this discussion of philosophy. Humanities has many other fields than philosophy and I daresay they could do with a lot more scientific input.
It only deals with that which is objectively testable. This is why it's so successful. This is why it's so reliable. This is why it only ever adds to our knowledge, and never takes away from it: science knows where it, even in principle, can't go.
Subjective experiences are also objectively testable. I disagree that science knows where it can't go and I'll go so far to say that no one knows where science can go. Science isn't a static thing. Science evolves as well and expands its boundaries either by disproving old theories, or rendering entire fields of philosophy moot as far as most people are concerned. Just like no one predicted computers could do so much when they were first invented, no one can say that the process of science can't self modify and allow us to study things no one thought was possible in a way that only makes sense after the fact. It has already happened with, as we know, Darwin, and then it happened again with Einstein.
The one thing about science that hasn't changed, and is probably the driver for changes in the scientific approach, is that science is what's left when you take into account all the ways you can be wrong. This is an ongoing process and there's nothing that can't be studied in objectively testable ways with that approach - unless being wrong and believing you are correct is an acceptable way of finding the truth.
If being wrong is unacceptable, then the only thing any field of study can become is a science.
Yes, he does. When he takes on, for example, the classical arguments for the existence of a deity, he is arguing philosophy. When he argues that to be "God" implies special creation, he's making a philosophical claim. Moreover, he's doing it far worse than most theistic critics of those arguments did, let alone the milennia of secular philosophers who tackled the same issues.
He mostly argues against the Design argument. It may have once been a philosophical argument, it is not longer in the that realm precisely because of theories like natural selection making an argument for or against design completely outdated and not even wrong. He argues against many other arguments that may have once been philosophical, but are rendered moot by science (eg morality, beauty, society).
And here's the main point you continue to miss: the average person who is religious DO NOT have a degree in philosophy. They don't know what epistemology is, or what ontology is. They are convinced by arguments from design, morality, beauty, etc. Dawkins is writing for those people. And for most people, it is the morality aspect of theism that keeps them believing - they couldn't care less about the philosophy and probably would think it is just all just splitting hairs. Most people are sensible enough to know that the advanced arguments in epistemology are complete bullshit and are only there to keep people who enjoy that kind of thing busy, because who knows what they'll get up to if they had time on their hands.
(And, by the way, I didn't even mention Dawkins' introduction to Lawrence Krauss' latest book, which even embarrassed Krauss.)
There's a few videos on Youtube of an open discussion between Dawkins and Krauss in front of a crowd in a theatre. There are other videos out there of Krauss, none of which indicates his embarrassment of Dawkins' views, let alone his introduction. Looks like you've just read a cherry-picked review with cherry-picked out of context quotes from Krauss. Go look at those videos. Krauss even admits to coming around more to Dawkins' way of thinking.
I don't think you actually understand what philosophers actually do, and I'm not sure that explaining it in any detail would actually help. So here's the bumper-sticker version: Philosophy is the field of human endeavour from which other fields of human endeavour are born.
Sorry, but that's what you philosophers tell each other to make yourselves seem more important than you actually are.
Once the "other fields of human endeavour are born", the philosophy that gave birth to them becomes useless and provides no other useful input. That's simply just what happens.
I'll give just one example: Semantics, the study of word meanings, was developed by philosophers, and graduated from the philosophy department to the linguistics department, with help from the computer science department. All of this happened after "the advent of relativity and quantum physics".
And philosophy now no longer plays any part in linguistics: only science. Anthropology studies languages and, or course, other human communications. Philosophical arguments have no place in linguistics.
It's disgusting that you're basically arguing a genetic fallacy, or worse, a master-slave analogy. Philosophy gave birth to new sciences, therefore philosophy is still the master. No. Wrong. Ridiculous. That's just trying to steal credit for other people's efforts. That's just saying "I gave birth to you, so I still own you, not by the virtue of continued achievement, but because of origins". This is the same kind of evil slavery thinking that justifies the doctrine of original sin that somehow we all have original sin purely from being born, and that original sin happened in the first place is because the creator owns the created.
What you're indicating is that everything that isn't science (and in particular, everything that is humanities) is
Dawkins knows nothing about philosophy, but still spent a lot of his book writing about it
And here lies the problem with your criticism and similar criticisms: you're arguing a straw man. Dawkins doesn't write about philosophy. There is no reason why we must even argue philosophy when it comes to religion when religion still makes non-philosophical, and very much testable, claims about the world. And they ACT on it.
His arguments (and Hitchens') aren't meant to be philosophical. They're meant to be realistic and pragmatic approaches to understanding the world. A lot of the "philosophical" problems Dawkins and Hitchens attack do not need philosophical rebuttals. They may have been philosophical back in the Middle Ages, but they are completely irrelevant given what we now know through science.
Philosophers are mostly useless these days and attack non-philosophical works as if they were intended as philosophical works to stay relevant. There has been no more useful philosophical development since the advent of relativity and quantum physics.
Except Daniel Dennett himself has more and more come down on the side of Dawkins' and Hitchens' view. Dennett may be a philosopher, but even he too is wary of the philosophical bullshit approach. Dawkins and Hitchens may not now anything about religious apologetics, but why should they? Most religious believers don't approach it from a philosophical standpoint but are convinced by bad reasons removed from readily observed reality, or really because they believe whatever makes them happy is truth. Dawkin's and Hitchens' target those people because religious apologetics is a losing game, and nothing but a stupid game.
Getting a degree in Theology is like getting a degree in the Twilight books: you are very good at arguing why Bella isn't in an abusive relationship, but you're still a useless twit. Books like The God Delusion and God is Not Great brings much needed honesty and plain speaking.
Except both the games and anime treat the trainer's pokemon as though they were equal to humans in many other ways. I no longer care for the games and anime, but when I did use to play them and watch them, the only message I got from it is that you should treat pets as lifelong friends. Take away to supranatural powers and narrative immortality part of the story and you necessarily remove the battling aspect and all you are left with is animal care - and most children can understand the difference.
If economy, material worth, is all that matters, why the fuck do we keep even a modicum of society or civilization? Why shouldn't we make the economy work for society? Why the fuck don't we just go back to tribalism and feudalism? Why the fuck don't we just abandon modern society and reinstigate the divine right of kings and nobles? Worship people with material worth as having some mystical quality that makes them above the rest of society.
Both theft and taxation happen with a threat of force.
What about using things that taxes pay for while refusing to pay taxes. Is that theft? If society allows you to opt out of tax, will you accept that you are forbidden to interact with society unless granted permission? Or will you force society to interact with you and force society to accept that you won't contribute anything to its maintainence?
Anyone that argues taxation is "force" in effect argue everything is force, making nothing unforced and thus an absolutely useless measure of ethical worth. If taxing people is force, then people wanting to use public roads without paying for them is forcing society to foot the bill for them.
Every libertarian is just a monarch waiting to happen.
This is the poetry of history. During the Enlightenment, Europeans were trying to emulate Chinese architecture and city planning principles, as well as everything Chinese.
First, you need to pick some creationist claim of mine,
Of yours? Nice of you trying to rewrite history. You didn't make a claim for yourself, you made a claim for ALL of creationism. So, in that spirit, here's a list of a hell of a lot of creationist claims that have been debunked:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
I must have read through this list five times. I've also looked up the sources of information for some of them.
My German friends were expected to be able to solve calculus problems in order to graduate high school. Calculus was considered college level when I went to high school, and still is.
Really? Wow. I went to school in Perth, Western Australia. If you are doing TEE (university requirements) in Year 11, there is "Introductory Calculus", which moves onto full blown Calculus in Year 12. You have to learn differentiation, integration, volumes of rotational solids, harmonics and I can't even remember the other stuff. There is a separate "Applicable Mathematics" class in which you learned probability distributions, matrices, combinatorics and a lot of other stuff as well. Curiously, there was no Number Theory...
Yet their remains persistent and valid questions posed by folks that you "know" are wrong that cannot be answered.
Persistent questions, yes. Not valid questions. Questions are only valid if they have something worthwhile. ALL creationist "questions" have been disproven on factual discoveries.
On what basis do you conclude that they are "wrong based on observational science"?
On the basis of observational evidence contradicting their claims?
What observations do they ignore or use incorrectly?
Google it. There are lists all over the place. Lists that even link to at least one source of creationist claims.
I'll wager all evolutionists interested in the science HAS engaged in thoughtful and honest investigation about creationism. You're on the internet. Have the intellectual honesty to look up the myriad examples of the debunking of creationist claims.
Slashdot Mirror
None of the truly successful open source projects needed marketing. Those that do risk corporate interference, which so far has not helped any open source project.
Calling all religious believers "delusional" by definition, meets your criteria fully.
No it doesn't. Applying a descriptive label is not bigotry.
As for "beheading", can you name something within Darwinian Naturalism that argues against it
What you're basically arguing is: if it doesn't argue against it, it must be for it. You're an idiot.
That's precisely what I'm arguing against: OpenStack does NOT need a mouthpiece, and the article using Linus Torvalds as a supporting argument is completely cargo cult. Torvalds happens to be the mouthpiece for Linux because he's very good and very trusted and his track record on the things that matter is very consistently above most people.
OpenStack needs to be around a lot longer, and any "mouthpiece" for OpenStack must come up through the ranks if she/he is to be taken seriously by people on the inside. Otherwise, he/she would just be a hype machine and no one trusts them at all. Linus Torvalds has earned the trust of millions.
I think you've stumbled upon the answer: you are being self-reflecting. I find a lot of nerds aren't self-reflecting. They question everything but themselves and it's up to everyone else to prove them wrong, otherwise they must be right.
Mind you, anyone who is arrogant probably has not done any self-reflecting either, or believe they don't need to do any self-reflecting.
Linus specifically set up Linux development to not be dependent on him by creating git. People don't technically have to build from his own tree, but people do because they trust their experience with working with him.
You cannot just install a Torvalds into OpenStack. If there is no Torvalds of OpenStack, it's because no one is technically qualified or has the reputation for it.
This kind of reasoning is purely cargo cult management. You would think people have learnt to stop thinking in cargo cult ways by now.
I'm sure that you don't agree 100% with every single opinion that Dawkins had. If you did, I'd be worried. I'd be even more worried if Krauss did.
I agree more with Dawkins and Dennett than Hitchens and Harris. Dawkins gets a lot of criticism, but he's by far the most moderate of all of them. I have no problem saying I probably don't disagree that much with Dawkins. Personally, I had the beginnings of the idea that teaching children any religious belief or strong atheism as truth is a kind of abuse back in 2002 (I was in Year 10 then). It's been a while since I've read Delusion, but I can't remember much that I disagree with. I would have expressed some things a bit different, but I didn't take it as a book on philosophy as critics do in a strawman fashion.
For the record, the specific claim which embarrassed Krauss was "This could potentially be the most important scientific book with implications for supernaturalism since Darwin." That is an embarrassing statement to make.
That is not as serious of an "embarrassment" as you were trying to imply when you first mentioned it. I can see why Krauss would be embarrassed by such high praise. Most humble people would. However, Krauss himself thinks modern understanding of the Big Bang moment scientifically renders the question of "why is there something rather than nothing" moot. Even he thinks it's no longer a question of philosophy but one of testable science.
On the contrary, I'm saying that science has not superceded or replaced the humanities.
I used supercede strictly in the original context of this discussion of philosophy. Humanities has many other fields than philosophy and I daresay they could do with a lot more scientific input.
It only deals with that which is objectively testable. This is why it's so successful. This is why it's so reliable. This is why it only ever adds to our knowledge, and never takes away from it: science knows where it, even in principle, can't go.
Subjective experiences are also objectively testable. I disagree that science knows where it can't go and I'll go so far to say that no one knows where science can go. Science isn't a static thing. Science evolves as well and expands its boundaries either by disproving old theories, or rendering entire fields of philosophy moot as far as most people are concerned. Just like no one predicted computers could do so much when they were first invented, no one can say that the process of science can't self modify and allow us to study things no one thought was possible in a way that only makes sense after the fact. It has already happened with, as we know, Darwin, and then it happened again with Einstein. The one thing about science that hasn't changed, and is probably the driver for changes in the scientific approach, is that science is what's left when you take into account all the ways you can be wrong. This is an ongoing process and there's nothing that can't be studied in objectively testable ways with that approach - unless being wrong and believing you are correct is an acceptable way of finding the truth. If being wrong is unacceptable, then the only thing any field of study can become is a science.
Yes, he does. When he takes on, for example, the classical arguments for the existence of a deity, he is arguing philosophy. When he argues that to be "God" implies special creation, he's making a philosophical claim. Moreover, he's doing it far worse than most theistic critics of those arguments did, let alone the milennia of secular philosophers who tackled the same issues.
He mostly argues against the Design argument. It may have once been a philosophical argument, it is not longer in the that realm precisely because of theories like natural selection making an argument for or against design completely outdated and not even wrong. He argues against many other arguments that may have once been philosophical, but are rendered moot by science (eg morality, beauty, society). And here's the main point you continue to miss: the average person who is religious DO NOT have a degree in philosophy. They don't know what epistemology is, or what ontology is. They are convinced by arguments from design, morality, beauty, etc. Dawkins is writing for those people. And for most people, it is the morality aspect of theism that keeps them believing - they couldn't care less about the philosophy and probably would think it is just all just splitting hairs. Most people are sensible enough to know that the advanced arguments in epistemology are complete bullshit and are only there to keep people who enjoy that kind of thing busy, because who knows what they'll get up to if they had time on their hands.
(And, by the way, I didn't even mention Dawkins' introduction to Lawrence Krauss' latest book, which even embarrassed Krauss.)
There's a few videos on Youtube of an open discussion between Dawkins and Krauss in front of a crowd in a theatre. There are other videos out there of Krauss, none of which indicates his embarrassment of Dawkins' views, let alone his introduction. Looks like you've just read a cherry-picked review with cherry-picked out of context quotes from Krauss. Go look at those videos. Krauss even admits to coming around more to Dawkins' way of thinking.
I don't think you actually understand what philosophers actually do, and I'm not sure that explaining it in any detail would actually help. So here's the bumper-sticker version: Philosophy is the field of human endeavour from which other fields of human endeavour are born.
Sorry, but that's what you philosophers tell each other to make yourselves seem more important than you actually are. Once the "other fields of human endeavour are born", the philosophy that gave birth to them becomes useless and provides no other useful input. That's simply just what happens.
I'll give just one example: Semantics, the study of word meanings, was developed by philosophers, and graduated from the philosophy department to the linguistics department, with help from the computer science department. All of this happened after "the advent of relativity and quantum physics".
And philosophy now no longer plays any part in linguistics: only science. Anthropology studies languages and, or course, other human communications. Philosophical arguments have no place in linguistics. It's disgusting that you're basically arguing a genetic fallacy, or worse, a master-slave analogy. Philosophy gave birth to new sciences, therefore philosophy is still the master. No. Wrong. Ridiculous. That's just trying to steal credit for other people's efforts. That's just saying "I gave birth to you, so I still own you, not by the virtue of continued achievement, but because of origins". This is the same kind of evil slavery thinking that justifies the doctrine of original sin that somehow we all have original sin purely from being born, and that original sin happened in the first place is because the creator owns the created.
What you're indicating is that everything that isn't science (and in particular, everything that is humanities) is
Dawkins knows nothing about philosophy, but still spent a lot of his book writing about it
And here lies the problem with your criticism and similar criticisms: you're arguing a straw man. Dawkins doesn't write about philosophy. There is no reason why we must even argue philosophy when it comes to religion when religion still makes non-philosophical, and very much testable, claims about the world. And they ACT on it. His arguments (and Hitchens') aren't meant to be philosophical. They're meant to be realistic and pragmatic approaches to understanding the world. A lot of the "philosophical" problems Dawkins and Hitchens attack do not need philosophical rebuttals. They may have been philosophical back in the Middle Ages, but they are completely irrelevant given what we now know through science. Philosophers are mostly useless these days and attack non-philosophical works as if they were intended as philosophical works to stay relevant. There has been no more useful philosophical development since the advent of relativity and quantum physics.
Except Daniel Dennett himself has more and more come down on the side of Dawkins' and Hitchens' view. Dennett may be a philosopher, but even he too is wary of the philosophical bullshit approach. Dawkins and Hitchens may not now anything about religious apologetics, but why should they? Most religious believers don't approach it from a philosophical standpoint but are convinced by bad reasons removed from readily observed reality, or really because they believe whatever makes them happy is truth. Dawkin's and Hitchens' target those people because religious apologetics is a losing game, and nothing but a stupid game. Getting a degree in Theology is like getting a degree in the Twilight books: you are very good at arguing why Bella isn't in an abusive relationship, but you're still a useless twit. Books like The God Delusion and God is Not Great brings much needed honesty and plain speaking.
Devices! Devices! Devices!
Except both the games and anime treat the trainer's pokemon as though they were equal to humans in many other ways. I no longer care for the games and anime, but when I did use to play them and watch them, the only message I got from it is that you should treat pets as lifelong friends. Take away to supranatural powers and narrative immortality part of the story and you necessarily remove the battling aspect and all you are left with is animal care - and most children can understand the difference.
Finally, now I'll be able to phone my friend and listen to her play the world's smallest violin.
Good thing you can't overload the apostrophe in C++
The 10,000 yuan man.
Zuckerberg, let my people go.
The research is talking about USA you fucking retard.
In order to stop their motions being tracked, those censors need to censor their actions by not doing them at all. That'll teach us.
If economy, material worth, is all that matters, why the fuck do we keep even a modicum of society or civilization? Why shouldn't we make the economy work for society? Why the fuck don't we just go back to tribalism and feudalism? Why the fuck don't we just abandon modern society and reinstigate the divine right of kings and nobles? Worship people with material worth as having some mystical quality that makes them above the rest of society.
Both theft and taxation happen with a threat of force.
What about using things that taxes pay for while refusing to pay taxes. Is that theft? If society allows you to opt out of tax, will you accept that you are forbidden to interact with society unless granted permission? Or will you force society to interact with you and force society to accept that you won't contribute anything to its maintainence? Anyone that argues taxation is "force" in effect argue everything is force, making nothing unforced and thus an absolutely useless measure of ethical worth. If taxing people is force, then people wanting to use public roads without paying for them is forcing society to foot the bill for them. Every libertarian is just a monarch waiting to happen.
But the average person understands climate, that's like the polar caps melting, right?
The average person doesn't think the polar ice caps are melting. The average person thinks they're just moving further and further away.
This is the poetry of history. During the Enlightenment, Europeans were trying to emulate Chinese architecture and city planning principles, as well as everything Chinese.
First, you need to pick some creationist claim of mine,
Of yours? Nice of you trying to rewrite history. You didn't make a claim for yourself, you made a claim for ALL of creationism. So, in that spirit, here's a list of a hell of a lot of creationist claims that have been debunked: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html I must have read through this list five times. I've also looked up the sources of information for some of them.
My German friends were expected to be able to solve calculus problems in order to graduate high school. Calculus was considered college level when I went to high school, and still is.
Really? Wow. I went to school in Perth, Western Australia. If you are doing TEE (university requirements) in Year 11, there is "Introductory Calculus", which moves onto full blown Calculus in Year 12. You have to learn differentiation, integration, volumes of rotational solids, harmonics and I can't even remember the other stuff. There is a separate "Applicable Mathematics" class in which you learned probability distributions, matrices, combinatorics and a lot of other stuff as well. Curiously, there was no Number Theory...
Yet their remains persistent and valid questions posed by folks that you "know" are wrong that cannot be answered.
Persistent questions, yes. Not valid questions. Questions are only valid if they have something worthwhile. ALL creationist "questions" have been disproven on factual discoveries.
On what basis do you conclude that they are "wrong based on observational science"?
On the basis of observational evidence contradicting their claims?
What observations do they ignore or use incorrectly?
Google it. There are lists all over the place. Lists that even link to at least one source of creationist claims.
I'll wager all evolutionists interested in the science HAS engaged in thoughtful and honest investigation about creationism. You're on the internet. Have the intellectual honesty to look up the myriad examples of the debunking of creationist claims.
No. I did not expect this atoll.