Does it? From my experience, Libertarians only have a few things in common with liberals. When it comes to economic issues, they are pretty far-right.In the real world (as opposed to America), liberalism includes economic policies; free markets, light or no government regulation, little or no subsidies. The economic policies are the inevitable result of the philosophy of personal freedom. Somehow in America, the word liberal has been redefined to mean left wing, closest in policy to social-democrat; socially liberal but fiscally social, as opposed to liberal.
The only area that Windows costs are cheaper in this study is "Labour".
Typically, your windows admin is a little cheaper. Typically apache can handle more virtual domains more reliably and requires fewer staff to manage. If you have 2 Windows staff and 2 Linux staff then Linux could be seen to be more expensive. The question is, do you really need 2 Linux staff, are they spending half their time idle? Are you using best infrastructure practice to manage your machines or are you installing each by hand? Are the Linux staff simply more senior within the organisation and therefore paid even higher? Or if you break it down by domain rather than by server, do the costs come out the same?
The study is deliberately oversimplified to hide the details of where the money's going. After all, it's propaganda.
You go through a load of questions to get it down to a finely weighted and nuanced picture of your political beliefs... Then... It collapses the answer down to either you are a democrat or you are a republican...
Which kind of points out how fucked up the electoral system is.
Oooh they've improved it, now I come up Libertarian, which means Liberal in the real world.
I think the recommender is a good idea, it wipes away the personality politics and tells you which parties have beliefs are closest to your own. You should probably go confirm any recommendation against the party manifesto.
However it really doesn't matter if your electoral system collapses any voting result to a two party state. Or if you can form a majority government with the support of just 36% of the population.
I guess I'm saying that science is not a wholly objective enterprise, and if we try and pretend that it is, we're deluding ourselves. (I'm doing a PhD in engineering/science - these opinions are based on my observations of academia)Ah well, I've never claimed that humans are objective, completely rational, without ego etc etc etc but they're not science. Science is an objective method of determining the truth. If you don't follow it, introducing personal bias you're not doing science and yeah, you may be deluding yourself.
For example, in the future we might refer to current science as "reductionism" but decide that because our understanding can be augmented with computer intelligence (whatever), that holistic approaches to understanding are more powerful. That would represent a shift in our belief systemYou're referring to a particular type of analysis, not science. Science is a process or methodology of proposing a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis against reality and then confirming or disproving the hypothesis. That'll work whether you use a holistic approach or a reductionist one.
"believe
verb 1 accept that (something) is true or (someone) is telling the truth. 2 (believe in) have faith in the truth or existence of. 3 have religious faith. 4 think or suppose."
To accept that something is true is to think it's true and not require proof. If you have proof you don't have to believe, you can know.
At the very least, science requires faith in our own senses and mental processes.Not in your senses. It'll allow you to analyse the truth about anything you can perceive and test, be it reality, computer simulation or whatever. Hence scientific instruments. No faith required.
Mental processes. Nope. One of the keystones of science is repeatability and verifiability. Someone else must be able to produce the same results as you under the same conditions. If you're loopy that's unlikely.
And you hit a good point science does start with nothing and builds from there. That's what makes it so powerful. Atheism also happens to start from nothing and build from there. If you start from assumptions, you'll never know if what you produce is the truth or just something based on the assumptions.
No, most people these days that call themselves atheists are really anti-theists.Some possibly. Atheist though is someone who disbelieves, disbelief being the lack of belief.
Sure there are some who are actively anti-theist and who will fall into the catchall of atheism. While I believe most believers in god are simply misguided or haven't really thought about it I also I happen to think that there are a lot of believers have a form of mental illness rather similar to schizophrenia. They can't tell the difference between reality and their theistic fantasies.
"Of course science is a belief system. It gives you a way to distinguish between what you should believe, and what you shouldn't.":) The best reply so far. However, to believe something is to think it's true without having the requisite proof. And science demands that proof. It isn't a belief system.
Science isn't a belief system. But what is a belief is that science is the only form of truth.Yeah, it sounds good but shows a lack of understanding of what science is. Science is a methodology for determining truth. It isn't truth itself.
I don't think it will be too long before a man made machine can provide the entire input to the brain. ..Irrelevant, using the scientific method you will be able to test any reality you happen to be in, the real world or a man/alien/whatever made simulation. You can then know things about the simulation or the real world.
As for proving something, it's simple. You test a hypothesis. You test it again (as many times as you care to) and you come to the conclusion that the hypothesis is proven to be correct or not.
Well, what makes you think that the world can be systematically analysed?Because I've done it and it worked... You can too.
Now we believe in science.ehm. nope. In science you follow the scientific method, test the hypotheses and your proposal about the way the universe works is either proven or disproven. You don't simply "believe".
I agree. It is very close to belief. It's the absence of belief, or the logical not of belief. If belief were a gas, atheism (I assume that's what your reference to "it" was) would be a vacuum, not another gas.
Maths is philosophy but I disagree that the reason kids have difficulty with it is because it's too abstract, it's generally just badly taught.
Not true. This might seem blatantly obvious (because it is!) but science definitely has belief attributes: Large claims require larger proof, and the default state for science is that things don't exist.
Belief attributes? In science, all claims require proof, large or small. You don't simply believe a claim, you demand proof. And "the default state for science is that things don't exist." which can be restated as the absence of belief... Please explain how the absence of belief can be a belief system.
But "God doesn't exist" is an equally large claimFor a start that isn't what is being claimed. What's being claimed is without that proof there is no reason to believe in god. For me (or anyone rational) to believe in god, you're going to have to prove it.
I'm a firm believer in the power of science, but I disagree with you. Science is a belief system
You're wrong. Science doesn't require belief, any hypothesis presented must be supported by verifiable evidence. Therefore it can't be a belief system. Simply saying it is a belief system doesn't make it so.
Of course atheists haven't resorted to some tactics used by people to proselytize their religion...
[Knock][Knock] Homeowner: Yes, hello? Atheist: Hello. Have you considered not believing in God?Actually... They have... AND they thoughtfully made a video of it for our entertainment...
No, but you do see teachers ridiculing and berating students to *do* have religious beliefs. Wanna try it out? Try stating in open class that you don't believe the theory of evolution is valid and watch the profs at your average University lay into you for being an idiot (or gullible, confused, brainwashed, etc...).
That might just be because they have direct evidence that evolution happens. In fact experiments have been performed which demonstrate evolution in action.
Perhaps you simply are an idiot, gullible, confused and/or brainwashed.
A trillion atoms bouncing around, randomly stuck together, formed a humanoid being and actually did write the complete works of Shakespeare! If that isn't evidence of Intelligent Design I don't know what is.
Slashdot Mirror
Does it? From my experience, Libertarians only have a few things in common with liberals. When it comes to economic issues, they are pretty far-right.In the real world (as opposed to America), liberalism includes economic policies; free markets, light or no government regulation, little or no subsidies. The economic policies are the inevitable result of the philosophy of personal freedom. Somehow in America, the word liberal has been redefined to mean left wing, closest in policy to social-democrat; socially liberal but fiscally social, as opposed to liberal.
The only area that Windows costs are cheaper in this study is "Labour".
Typically, your windows admin is a little cheaper. Typically apache can handle more virtual domains more reliably and requires fewer staff to manage. If you have 2 Windows staff and 2 Linux staff then Linux could be seen to be more expensive. The question is, do you really need 2 Linux staff, are they spending half their time idle? Are you using best infrastructure practice to manage your machines or are you installing each by hand? Are the Linux staff simply more senior within the organisation and therefore paid even higher? Or if you break it down by domain rather than by server, do the costs come out the same?
The study is deliberately oversimplified to hide the details of where the money's going. After all, it's propaganda.
You go through a load of questions to get it down to a finely weighted and nuanced picture of your political beliefs... Then... It collapses the answer down to either you are a democrat or you are a republican...
Which kind of points out how fucked up the electoral system is.
Oooh they've improved it, now I come up Libertarian, which means Liberal in the real world.
I think the recommender is a good idea, it wipes away the personality politics and tells you which parties have beliefs are closest to your own. You should probably go confirm any recommendation against the party manifesto.
However it really doesn't matter if your electoral system collapses any voting result to a two party state. Or if you can form a majority government with the support of just 36% of the population.
I guess I'm saying that science is not a wholly objective enterprise, and if we try and pretend that it is, we're deluding ourselves. (I'm doing a PhD in engineering/science - these opinions are based on my observations of academia)Ah well, I've never claimed that humans are objective, completely rational, without ego etc etc etc but they're not science. Science is an objective method of determining the truth. If you don't follow it, introducing personal bias you're not doing science and yeah, you may be deluding yourself.
For example, in the future we might refer to current science as "reductionism" but decide that because our understanding can be augmented with computer intelligence (whatever), that holistic approaches to understanding are more powerful. That would represent a shift in our belief systemYou're referring to a particular type of analysis, not science. Science is a process or methodology of proposing a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis against reality and then confirming or disproving the hypothesis. That'll work whether you use a holistic approach or a reductionist one.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/believe
and from OED:
"believe
verb 1 accept that (something) is true or (someone) is telling the truth. 2 (believe in) have faith in the truth or existence of. 3 have religious faith. 4 think or suppose."
To accept that something is true is to think it's true and not require proof. If you have proof you don't have to believe, you can know.
lol. The guy with the lens says "look, see", the guy with the corpse on a stick says "believe what I say".
At the very least, science requires faith in our own senses and mental processes.Not in your senses. It'll allow you to analyse the truth about anything you can perceive and test, be it reality, computer simulation or whatever. Hence scientific instruments. No faith required.
Mental processes. Nope. One of the keystones of science is repeatability and verifiability. Someone else must be able to produce the same results as you under the same conditions. If you're loopy that's unlikely.
And you hit a good point science does start with nothing and builds from there. That's what makes it so powerful. Atheism also happens to start from nothing and build from there. If you start from assumptions, you'll never know if what you produce is the truth or just something based on the assumptions.
No, most people these days that call themselves atheists are really anti-theists.Some possibly. Atheist though is someone who disbelieves, disbelief being the lack of belief.
Sure there are some who are actively anti-theist and who will fall into the catchall of atheism. While I believe most believers in god are simply misguided or haven't really thought about it I also I happen to think that there are a lot of believers have a form of mental illness rather similar to schizophrenia. They can't tell the difference between reality and their theistic fantasies.
"Of course science is a belief system. It gives you a way to distinguish between what you should believe, and what you shouldn't." :) The best reply so far. However, to believe something is to think it's true without having the requisite proof. And science demands that proof. It isn't a belief system.
Science isn't a belief system. But what is a belief is that science is the only form of truth.Yeah, it sounds good but shows a lack of understanding of what science is. Science is a methodology for determining truth. It isn't truth itself.
I don't think it will be too long before a man made machine can provide the entire input to the brain. . .Irrelevant, using the scientific method you will be able to test any reality you happen to be in, the real world or a man/alien/whatever made simulation. You can then know things about the simulation or the real world.
As for proving something, it's simple. You test a hypothesis. You test it again (as many times as you care to) and you come to the conclusion that the hypothesis is proven to be correct or not.
Well, what makes you think that the world can be systematically analysed?Because I've done it and it worked... You can too. Now we believe in science.ehm. nope. In science you follow the scientific method, test the hypotheses and your proposal about the way the universe works is either proven or disproven. You don't simply "believe".
I agree. It is very close to belief. It's the absence of belief, or the logical not of belief. If belief were a gas, atheism (I assume that's what your reference to "it" was) would be a vacuum, not another gas.
Maths is philosophy but I disagree that the reason kids have difficulty with it is because it's too abstract, it's generally just badly taught.
Belief attributes? In science, all claims require proof, large or small. You don't simply believe a claim, you demand proof. And "the default state for science is that things don't exist." which can be restated as the absence of belief... Please explain how the absence of belief can be a belief system. But "God doesn't exist" is an equally large claimFor a start that isn't what is being claimed. What's being claimed is without that proof there is no reason to believe in god. For me (or anyone rational) to believe in god, you're going to have to prove it.
You're wrong. Science doesn't require belief, any hypothesis presented must be supported by verifiable evidence. Therefore it can't be a belief system. Simply saying it is a belief system doesn't make it so.
youtube link with better flash player.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRmC0DaE6rE
Of course atheists haven't resorted to some tactics used by people to proselytize their religion...
r mons.html
[Knock][Knock]
Homeowner: Yes, hello?
Atheist: Hello. Have you considered not believing in God?Actually... They have... AND they thoughtfully made a video of it for our entertainment...
http://throwawayyourtv.com/2006/11/atheists-vs-mo
That might just be because they have direct evidence that evolution happens. In fact experiments have been performed which demonstrate evolution in action.
Perhaps you simply are an idiot, gullible, confused and/or brainwashed.
Actually it isn't. Science demands proof, evidence for every assertion. Atheism is the the lack of belief, so it isn't a belief system either.
With video evidence.
So fire him. Problem solved.
A trillion atoms bouncing around, randomly stuck together, formed a humanoid being and actually did write the complete works of Shakespeare! If that isn't evidence of Intelligent Design I don't know what is.
They're expensive because they are permitted a government mandated monopoly on practice.
You can tell them there is a better way, based on reason and evidence, there's even a philosophy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism