Re:"Gender Exploration?" That's like, totally gay!
on
Men Playing as Women
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· Score: 5
check out Baiting.org a site dedicated to pranksters posing as sexchat girls and then pulling the rug out from under the stupid guys who fall for it. Some of the logs are pretty damn funny.
Studying theology makes one a lot more credible when discussing theology, just as not studying the universe makes one very untrustworthy when it comes to discussing physics. That I believe in God (which I don't happen to) does not in any way make me more qualified to speak about the nature of physical reality. It's certainly possible that someone who believes in God could go out and study physical data, or that a scientist could get the idea of a hypothesis from a religious belief, but in neither case does the belief in God actually contribute one way or another to one's understanding- you still have to go out and study.
How can I make an ad hominem attack without mentioning a single name? The point is- actually going out and looking at the thing you are talking about is infinately more useful then presupposing religious or moral beliefs onto it. You have still failed utterly to give any example of how a theologian, working from knowledge of religious texts, could contribute to the discussion of the physical structure of the universe. It might be interesting to note that I happen study theology academically. I'm just not so pretentious that I think this qualifies me to talk about physics.
Tell me then, what extra info does a theologian have about the nature of the universe? Do theologians bother to go out and look at the universe? To study it? Science is not an absolutist faith, it's a method. In fact, when it comes to figuring out "if... then" statements, there is no better method. "should..." statements are the domain of philosophers nad theologians, because no amount of study can decide a first principle moral proposition. Your theories, for instance, simply ignore a lot of the data that's piled up. Like that the rate of expansion of the universe, and how it points back to a period when everything must have been at basically the same point. You take one or two ideas and abstract from it. That's just not a good method for figuring things out. Remember when all the Scientists thought the earth was flat No. I remember the Greeks knew it was round. It was theologians who thought the earth was flat, because they impose their opinions on reality, as opposed to actually studying it. I remember theologians scaring scientists into not releasing their findings that it was round. The scientific method has only been around since Bacon. And point of fact, not many people actually did believe the earth was flat. Columbus didn't, and neither did anyone he talked to. It was already pretty much accepted that the world was round because it was obvious to anyone who'd ever seen the earth's shadow on the moon, or measured time using a sundial in two different cities (which is how the greeks did it). Again, the idea that science "believes" anything is silly. Science is a method. But when it comes figuring out physical reality, give me one reason why a theologian has anything over actaully going out and experimenting?
I don't think scientists have been arguing with the Theologians and Philosophers, because the Theologians have nothing of interest to say, and the Philosophers can't prove anything. Larger and better telescopes don't mean farther and farther items, because we've already seen the beggining of the universe- its everywhere in the form of CBR. The universe isn't "infinate" because it has a finite amount of mass in it. It may exapnd forever, however, meaing that it's surface area is infinate. But that's nowhere near the same thing.
Well, I'm not sure that's true. At a certain point in distance/time, it becomes very hard to see, because the universe was a cloudy soup of energy/radiation. Depending on what methods we discover, we may be able to past and through it to very near the beggining, but its more likely that we never will. Maybe sometime WAY in the future we'll develop a method for seeing past into the very beggining. But even that wont tell us anything about the "edge" of the universe, because it wont be the edge- it'll be the beggining. I may be wrong, but I thought that the "edge" of the present universe is something that we'll never be able to see from earth. If there is one, it's been traveling away from us at an incredible rate, and its also, obviously, not luminescing anything for us to see.
I had a REALLY hard time understanding this, but there IS no center of the universe, at least not in the sense we think of "center" Every single direction we look in the sky, we can see the aftermath of the big bang. I.E., the "center"- the epicenter of the blast is 360 degrees in all directions. This "quasar" image is actually from a LONG time ago- near the beggining of the universe. During the time it existed, the universe was much much "smaller." The problem with finding a "center" is that EVERY point (in a realy macro sense) in the universe is moving away from every other point- and the farther the object the faster it's moving away from us. Every point may as well be the center, because at some time in the past, EVERYTHING in the universe was in the same point. It may seem that if things exploded outward there would still be a point in the middle- but remember that space itself exploded outwards. Its really friggin confusing- I've never heard a good explanation- the "expanding balloon" metaphor just doesn't cut it. In fact the actual shape of the universe, and what happens on the "edges" (which we'll probably never see) depends on whether the universe is open, closed, or stable.
not be a killjoy... but why? What's different? That's it's amny commerical sites. It's a really really simple form of attack- one person could have pulled it off. And even if they get caught (which they wouldn't if they did it right), it's a great publicity stunt. Perhaps if it's someone from another country? Osma Bin Laden on a laptop?
Sorry- I didn't even think that was spolier or much of a mystery since it is explained early on. Dumb of me- moderators- please moderate my above spolier into oblivion so people don't read it accidentally- I've got plenty of karma to spare.
Neat fact: you can usually tell a truly random sequence from one generated by a human trying to make it look random. Why? Take coin flips again: most people think that runs, say of heads, are far less likely then thay actually are. So human generated sequences usually include far fewer "runs" than an actual random sequence is likely to have.
I think you missed what I was saying (as I look back, it does seem a little poorly worded)- I wasn't saying that "imaginary number" or "topolgy" are meaningless terms, but that the way that they are used in many literary theorists make no sense in context. I'm not sure at all, however, why you are refering to Freud's theories, as I DIDN'T bring them up. I brought up Lacan, a Fruedian to be sure, but far more irresponsible than Frued. Laplace determinism was always a bit of a simplification, but you're right- there has been a shift. Unfortunately, the shift has actually been in the opposite direction that many theologians wanted it to go when breaking down determinism. It's looking more and more like not only is there no role for God to play, but that he himself would be subject to undeterminism. (There's actually an interesting thread in chaos logic about the self-contradictions that exist in the very claim of omnipotence and omnipotence.) A lot of people misunderstand QM in that thinking it rules out determinism. It doesn't necesarrily- it simply destroyed the conventional model of how determinism could be proven and completely understood.
Just a note: Punctuated equilibrium is not a fruity ad-hoc theory used to explain holes in our knowledge. We do have real evidence that species tend to stagnate for long periods of time, and then suddenly explode with diversity. It makes sense as well, because enviromental changes, exposing speicies to different niches, are sudden compared to gradual evolutionary changes. The "we don't know how old the earth is" idea is also pretty weak. We know how old the universe is from how fast it is expanding. We know how old our sun is from studying its chemical burn rate compared to other stars like it. We know the period in our sun's life when planets had to have collasced. These sorts of independant calculations match up fairly well with geological study. We're pretty damn sure about the age of the earth- and it's definately in the billions. Carbon dating also certainly isn't as unreliable as you (by way of Milton) state. In the short term yes- that's why the police don't carbon date a crime scene- the decay rate early on is very unstable. But in the long run it's VERY stable. Lamarkian inheritance just isn't- "acquired" characteristics are almost always something that can be more easily explained by genetic potential for acquisition. Just because speicies categories aren't solid is no refutation of Darwinism in and of itself. Your example of DNA similarity is a rather choice and unrepresentative one-there's a very good argument that been around for a long time that dinosaurs are best grouped with birds and vice versa, instead of the conventional reptile kingdom (crocs are dino descendants, snakes are not). In fact, it was mostly neo-darwinists who had this theory- you present this example of them being wrong when actually, it's a confirmation of their assumptions that the original TAXONOMY was wrong. The reason they weren't initially grouped has nothing to do with the failure of Darwinism or even neo-Darwinism- it was simply because early taxonomists simply grouped things by external traits instead of genetic similarity. There is a lot of interesting and very productive work being done in this field, and the people who are doing it are neo-darwinists themselves. Milton totally misrepresents it as outsiders proving neo-Darwinists wrong- it's neo-darwinists who are refining their own assumptions. And none of it denies the core facts of how darwinism works- it just shows that those that applied taxonomy to it were less than careful, or that outward appearence isn't enough for proper taxonomy. You, and Milton, vastly misrepresent natural selection when you describe it simply as leaving the most offspring. It's leaving the most _successful_ and viable offspring for available niches, and in fact it's much more complex than that because of mutation. But it actually doesn't even REQUIRE genetic mutation to work- genetic diversity is enough to make the neccesary adjustments (though not vast species shifts).
Yeah, and quantum mechanics would tend to suggest that things wouldn't be the same, because nothing is making them be. You wanna know a really fruity book about QM? Quarentine- the plot is basically that human observation has been nailing down indefinate states, and so observers on Earth are causing mass genocide of indefinate-state races just by looking out into space. So Earth's solar system is shut off in a black hole force feild.
Quantum mechanics is describable, yes. Understandable, never. I'm not exactly sure I see the distinction here, or else I'm not quite sure how it differs from any other scientific knowledge. Science describes phyiscal phenomena by positing certain rules that allow us to perdict (or, in the case of QM, explain quite lucidly why we can't perdict) how certain phyiscal interactions will turn out. But no one claims that science can answer "why" these rules are ultimately that way, hence that we understand their purpose for being that way.
If anyone loves these sorts of controversies, you should check out "Fashionable Nonsense" by Alan Sokal and some French guy. It's all about how critical theorists use large and meaningless terms, coupled with references to science, to present their literary and social critiques. Only, Sokal and his co-author demonstrate most of science terms and concepts they use are mangled and meaningless even to the scientists that invented them. Is the phallus a imaginary number (like the square root of -1)? Does consciousness have topagrahy of a mobius object? Lacan seems to think so, but his explainations demonstrate that he has no idea what these concepts mean. Along that same line, I know something about chaos theory, which is quite relevant here. Despite the confusing name, which theologists and wacko's use it as proof that science's used to be rigidly deterministic, and these embarrasing discoveries of chaos have proved that things are simply too complex to be viewed by humans, the cheif mathematical insight in the field is that in many situations, order is actually a lot more likely than randomness. Many of the coincidences that people think are mystical turn out to be occurances which are simply much more mathematically likely than people assume they are. Like- how many different people have to be in a room before there's a 50% chance of 2 having the same birthday? Most people guess something like 134- the actual answer is 23.
Wow, that was some fast moderation. I'm amazed that you actually passed up a chance to add your own comments to this extremely valuable and exiciting topic to simply moderate away some of my vast karma reserves. I have more than you can ever take away girly boy. Bwahahaha!
Maybe if you punched yourself in the nuts enough while wearing an Etrade T-shirt and being accompanied by the two youngest Republican Senators you'd amuse me enough to make up for the valuable Nethack time I wasted reading your comment.
You raise some excellent points, and I'd love to sit down and debate them with you if I hadn't already smashed your little face in and left you a mangled, teeth-sticking-every-which-way drooling dent-headed retard. You notice I didn't talk about fucking that new orifice that I made by rending your flesh so that your ears, mouth, eyes and nostrils all became one giant, wet, bloody, mucousy, teary hole, right? That's because you disgust me.
Everything of value that sports promoters create you can have better, in your own backyard, for free, with a couple of your best friends. Is it wrong that I think the Superbowl and professional sports in general is a lousy cultural institution? I don't think it makes me superior, it just pisses me off that so many cities have been screwed over. In fact, without the practice I just refered to, GWBush would still be living with his mommy and daddy instead of convincing a city to litterally hand him and his partners millions of dollars in tax money and free land deeds for a staduim that has HURT the local economy. Is it wrong that I think that's sick, and that the values that support it suck?
I'm confused- you used the time during the superbowl to take a nice warm nap, or you used the time spent writing your comment to take a nice warm nap?:) Anyway- if you're refering to the claim that women are physically abused more on SuperBowl sunday, that was shown to be a hoax of a study a long time ago. I dislike football in general, and really don't understand anyone who'd rather watch a bunch of cocaine addicts pummel each other instead of just going outside and playing games themselves. If your husband ignores you or otherwise annoys you during the Superbowl- get another husband. Nothing is worth ignoring your wife's feelings.
Yeah, it's even more amusing when the teams that are playing deserve to burn in hell. Both of them stabbed their hometowns in the back less than 5 years ago. They're the worst thing about modern professional sports. They represent the team owners today who bilk cities for millions of dollars in blackmail tax subsidies, do nothing to hepl the local economies, and have no city loyalty, even though they themselves depend on hometown loyalty to fill stadium seats. I hope fans one day will wise up, realize that playing sports is a lot more fun then rooting for a bunch of steroid showboys bought and sold like racehorses.
Slashdot Mirror
check out Baiting.org a site dedicated to pranksters posing as sexchat girls and then pulling the rug out from under the stupid guys who fall for it. Some of the logs are pretty damn funny.
Studying theology makes one a lot more credible when discussing theology, just as not studying the universe makes one very untrustworthy when it comes to discussing physics. That I believe in God (which I don't happen to) does not in any way make me more qualified to speak about the nature of physical reality. It's certainly possible that someone who believes in God could go out and study physical data, or that a scientist could get the idea of a hypothesis from a religious belief, but in neither case does the belief in God actually contribute one way or another to one's understanding- you still have to go out and study.
How can I make an ad hominem attack without mentioning a single name? The point is- actually going out and looking at the thing you are talking about is infinately more useful then presupposing religious or moral beliefs onto it. You have still failed utterly to give any example of how a theologian, working from knowledge of religious texts, could contribute to the discussion of the physical structure of the universe. It might be interesting to note that I happen study theology academically. I'm just not so pretentious that I think this qualifies me to talk about physics.
Tell me then, what extra info does a theologian have about the nature of the universe? Do theologians bother to go out and look at the universe? To study it? Science is not an absolutist faith, it's a method. In fact, when it comes to figuring out "if... then" statements, there is no better method. "should..." statements are the domain of philosophers nad theologians, because no amount of study can decide a first principle moral proposition. Your theories, for instance, simply ignore a lot of the data that's piled up. Like that the rate of expansion of the universe, and how it points back to a period when everything must have been at basically the same point. You take one or two ideas and abstract from it. That's just not a good method for figuring things out. Remember when all the Scientists thought the earth was flat No. I remember the Greeks knew it was round. It was theologians who thought the earth was flat, because they impose their opinions on reality, as opposed to actually studying it. I remember theologians scaring scientists into not releasing their findings that it was round. The scientific method has only been around since Bacon. And point of fact, not many people actually did believe the earth was flat. Columbus didn't, and neither did anyone he talked to. It was already pretty much accepted that the world was round because it was obvious to anyone who'd ever seen the earth's shadow on the moon, or measured time using a sundial in two different cities (which is how the greeks did it). Again, the idea that science "believes" anything is silly. Science is a method. But when it comes figuring out physical reality, give me one reason why a theologian has anything over actaully going out and experimenting?
I don't think scientists have been arguing with the Theologians and Philosophers, because the Theologians have nothing of interest to say, and the Philosophers can't prove anything. Larger and better telescopes don't mean farther and farther items, because we've already seen the beggining of the universe- its everywhere in the form of CBR. The universe isn't "infinate" because it has a finite amount of mass in it. It may exapnd forever, however, meaing that it's surface area is infinate. But that's nowhere near the same thing.
eh? why?
Well, I'm not sure that's true. At a certain point in distance/time, it becomes very hard to see, because the universe was a cloudy soup of energy/radiation. Depending on what methods we discover, we may be able to past and through it to very near the beggining, but its more likely that we never will. Maybe sometime WAY in the future we'll develop a method for seeing past into the very beggining. But even that wont tell us anything about the "edge" of the universe, because it wont be the edge- it'll be the beggining. I may be wrong, but I thought that the "edge" of the present universe is something that we'll never be able to see from earth. If there is one, it's been traveling away from us at an incredible rate, and its also, obviously, not luminescing anything for us to see.
I had a REALLY hard time understanding this, but there IS no center of the universe, at least not in the sense we think of "center" Every single direction we look in the sky, we can see the aftermath of the big bang. I.E., the "center"- the epicenter of the blast is 360 degrees in all directions. This "quasar" image is actually from a LONG time ago- near the beggining of the universe. During the time it existed, the universe was much much "smaller." The problem with finding a "center" is that EVERY point (in a realy macro sense) in the universe is moving away from every other point- and the farther the object the faster it's moving away from us. Every point may as well be the center, because at some time in the past, EVERYTHING in the universe was in the same point. It may seem that if things exploded outward there would still be a point in the middle- but remember that space itself exploded outwards. Its really friggin confusing- I've never heard a good explanation- the "expanding balloon" metaphor just doesn't cut it. In fact the actual shape of the universe, and what happens on the "edges" (which we'll probably never see) depends on whether the universe is open, closed, or stable.
Good Lord. That gave me a good belly laugh. Thanks for going through the trouble of registering the name and all.
not be a killjoy... but why? What's different? That's it's amny commerical sites. It's a really really simple form of attack- one person could have pulled it off. And even if they get caught (which they wouldn't if they did it right), it's a great publicity stunt. Perhaps if it's someone from another country? Osma Bin Laden on a laptop?
Sorry- I didn't even think that was spolier or much of a mystery since it is explained early on. Dumb of me- moderators- please moderate my above spolier into oblivion so people don't read it accidentally- I've got plenty of karma to spare.
Neat fact: you can usually tell a truly random sequence from one generated by a human trying to make it look random. Why? Take coin flips again: most people think that runs, say of heads, are far less likely then thay actually are. So human generated sequences usually include far fewer "runs" than an actual random sequence is likely to have.
I think you missed what I was saying (as I look back, it does seem a little poorly worded)- I wasn't saying that "imaginary number" or "topolgy" are meaningless terms, but that the way that they are used in many literary theorists make no sense in context. I'm not sure at all, however, why you are refering to Freud's theories, as I DIDN'T bring them up. I brought up Lacan, a Fruedian to be sure, but far more irresponsible than Frued. Laplace determinism was always a bit of a simplification, but you're right- there has been a shift. Unfortunately, the shift has actually been in the opposite direction that many theologians wanted it to go when breaking down determinism. It's looking more and more like not only is there no role for God to play, but that he himself would be subject to undeterminism. (There's actually an interesting thread in chaos logic about the self-contradictions that exist in the very claim of omnipotence and omnipotence.) A lot of people misunderstand QM in that thinking it rules out determinism. It doesn't necesarrily- it simply destroyed the conventional model of how determinism could be proven and completely understood.
Just a note: Punctuated equilibrium is not a fruity ad-hoc theory used to explain holes in our knowledge. We do have real evidence that species tend to stagnate for long periods of time, and then suddenly explode with diversity. It makes sense as well, because enviromental changes, exposing speicies to different niches, are sudden compared to gradual evolutionary changes. The "we don't know how old the earth is" idea is also pretty weak. We know how old the universe is from how fast it is expanding. We know how old our sun is from studying its chemical burn rate compared to other stars like it. We know the period in our sun's life when planets had to have collasced. These sorts of independant calculations match up fairly well with geological study. We're pretty damn sure about the age of the earth- and it's definately in the billions. Carbon dating also certainly isn't as unreliable as you (by way of Milton) state. In the short term yes- that's why the police don't carbon date a crime scene- the decay rate early on is very unstable. But in the long run it's VERY stable. Lamarkian inheritance just isn't- "acquired" characteristics are almost always something that can be more easily explained by genetic potential for acquisition. Just because speicies categories aren't solid is no refutation of Darwinism in and of itself. Your example of DNA similarity is a rather choice and unrepresentative one-there's a very good argument that been around for a long time that dinosaurs are best grouped with birds and vice versa, instead of the conventional reptile kingdom (crocs are dino descendants, snakes are not). In fact, it was mostly neo-darwinists who had this theory- you present this example of them being wrong when actually, it's a confirmation of their assumptions that the original TAXONOMY was wrong. The reason they weren't initially grouped has nothing to do with the failure of Darwinism or even neo-Darwinism- it was simply because early taxonomists simply grouped things by external traits instead of genetic similarity. There is a lot of interesting and very productive work being done in this field, and the people who are doing it are neo-darwinists themselves. Milton totally misrepresents it as outsiders proving neo-Darwinists wrong- it's neo-darwinists who are refining their own assumptions. And none of it denies the core facts of how darwinism works- it just shows that those that applied taxonomy to it were less than careful, or that outward appearence isn't enough for proper taxonomy. You, and Milton, vastly misrepresent natural selection when you describe it simply as leaving the most offspring. It's leaving the most _successful_ and viable offspring for available niches, and in fact it's much more complex than that because of mutation. But it actually doesn't even REQUIRE genetic mutation to work- genetic diversity is enough to make the neccesary adjustments (though not vast species shifts).
Yeah, and quantum mechanics would tend to suggest that things wouldn't be the same, because nothing is making them be. You wanna know a really fruity book about QM? Quarentine- the plot is basically that human observation has been nailing down indefinate states, and so observers on Earth are causing mass genocide of indefinate-state races just by looking out into space. So Earth's solar system is shut off in a black hole force feild.
Quantum mechanics is describable, yes. Understandable, never. I'm not exactly sure I see the distinction here, or else I'm not quite sure how it differs from any other scientific knowledge. Science describes phyiscal phenomena by positing certain rules that allow us to perdict (or, in the case of QM, explain quite lucidly why we can't perdict) how certain phyiscal interactions will turn out. But no one claims that science can answer "why" these rules are ultimately that way, hence that we understand their purpose for being that way.
If anyone loves these sorts of controversies, you should check out "Fashionable Nonsense" by Alan Sokal and some French guy. It's all about how critical theorists use large and meaningless terms, coupled with references to science, to present their literary and social critiques. Only, Sokal and his co-author demonstrate most of science terms and concepts they use are mangled and meaningless even to the scientists that invented them. Is the phallus a imaginary number (like the square root of -1)? Does consciousness have topagrahy of a mobius object? Lacan seems to think so, but his explainations demonstrate that he has no idea what these concepts mean. Along that same line, I know something about chaos theory, which is quite relevant here. Despite the confusing name, which theologists and wacko's use it as proof that science's used to be rigidly deterministic, and these embarrasing discoveries of chaos have proved that things are simply too complex to be viewed by humans, the cheif mathematical insight in the field is that in many situations, order is actually a lot more likely than randomness. Many of the coincidences that people think are mystical turn out to be occurances which are simply much more mathematically likely than people assume they are. Like- how many different people have to be in a room before there's a 50% chance of 2 having the same birthday? Most people guess something like 134- the actual answer is 23.
Wow, that was some fast moderation. I'm amazed that you actually passed up a chance to add your own comments to this extremely valuable and exiciting topic to simply moderate away some of my vast karma reserves. I have more than you can ever take away girly boy. Bwahahaha!
Maybe if you punched yourself in the nuts enough while wearing an Etrade T-shirt and being accompanied by the two youngest Republican Senators you'd amuse me enough to make up for the valuable Nethack time I wasted reading your comment.
You raise some excellent points, and I'd love to sit down and debate them with you if I hadn't already smashed your little face in and left you a mangled, teeth-sticking-every-which-way drooling dent-headed retard. You notice I didn't talk about fucking that new orifice that I made by rending your flesh so that your ears, mouth, eyes and nostrils all became one giant, wet, bloody, mucousy, teary hole, right? That's because you disgust me.
Everything of value that sports promoters create you can have better, in your own backyard, for free, with a couple of your best friends. Is it wrong that I think the Superbowl and professional sports in general is a lousy cultural institution? I don't think it makes me superior, it just pisses me off that so many cities have been screwed over. In fact, without the practice I just refered to, GWBush would still be living with his mommy and daddy instead of convincing a city to litterally hand him and his partners millions of dollars in tax money and free land deeds for a staduim that has HURT the local economy. Is it wrong that I think that's sick, and that the values that support it suck?
I'm confused- you used the time during the superbowl to take a nice warm nap, or you used the time spent writing your comment to take a nice warm nap? :) Anyway- if you're refering to the claim that women are physically abused more on SuperBowl sunday, that was shown to be a hoax of a study a long time ago. I dislike football in general, and really don't understand anyone who'd rather watch a bunch of cocaine addicts pummel each other instead of just going outside and playing games themselves. If your husband ignores you or otherwise annoys you during the Superbowl- get another husband. Nothing is worth ignoring your wife's feelings.
Yeah, it's even more amusing when the teams that are playing deserve to burn in hell. Both of them stabbed their hometowns in the back less than 5 years ago. They're the worst thing about modern professional sports. They represent the team owners today who bilk cities for millions of dollars in blackmail tax subsidies, do nothing to hepl the local economies, and have no city loyalty, even though they themselves depend on hometown loyalty to fill stadium seats. I hope fans one day will wise up, realize that playing sports is a lot more fun then rooting for a bunch of steroid showboys bought and sold like racehorses.
they probably didn't even use mod_perl
:)
I knew I shouldn't have USEnet cross-posted that long dissertation about how to kill the president. Or used so many swear words in it...