I think you underestimate what is at stake here. Isn't the background of this debate that creationism is getting serious foothold in science classes in certain partst of the US?
It seemed like this might be happening a few years ago. But since then it has been defeated in courts every time it comes up. Even in the most conservative states, creationists are having a very hard time getting it into science classrooms, due to people on the other side putting up a very good fight.
You have to understand: a lot of people judge the outcome purely based on the impression they got. Bill gave the impression of having a lot of facts and figures and spoke with a lot of authority.
As an atheist I got the impression that Bill had lots of facts and figures and not much understanding of what the debate was really about. I thought Ken knew what the debate was about, but he was just on the wrong side. If I were a creationist I think I would feel pretty bolstered by this.
What Bill did was simply pointing out: there is simply too much proof to ignore and your theory is not a theory at all. Its a story without any reasoning behind it.
I thought Ken actually did a really good job for his side on this topic. Ken wasn't saying that his position was right, he was saying that Bill's position was no more valid than his. Bill kept relying on radioactive isotope dating as proof of the age of the earth, and Ken said over and over again, that he does not consider the assumption that radioactive isotopes have always decayed at the same rate to be valid, upon which this evidence depends. Rather than giving a reason to believe in the constancy of natural laws, Bill just seemed like he didn't know why we should believe this, and just repeated himself, ignoring Ken's argument. To me this makes him look weak. It makes it look like science has no reasoning behind it (even though it does).
He made a much better impression than Ham.
I think he made a better impression on people who were already on his side. I think Ken probably made a better impression on people who might have been on the fence. He made a better impression on me, and I'm an atheist.
I think Bill knows which side of the argument is correct (i.e. science). I don't think he necessarily as a clear idea of why it's correct, and I think that's why he's a bad debater. He knows a lot of things, but I don't think he is a good critical thinker. As I said, if you want to see someone debate religious people you should see Dan Dennett do it. He doesn't just engage in a shouting match and try to be the loudest. He actually asks very poignant questions of people on the other side that they have trouble answering. He is very good at articulating points that plant seeds of doubt that are very hard to dismiss. He is even good at debating other atheists. This is the kind of person we need to be advocating our position.
So lets say I write an application that is pretty basic, but I need to do one trig function (sin). Should I include a math library for only 1 stupid function? Or should I write my own sin function using a Taylor series (that's what the math library does)?
I can probably write the taylor series in only a few lines of code:
I avoided jquery for a long time, because I would rather have my code not depend on a 3rd party library if possible. Eventually I succumbed. I just couldn't stand doing things in basic javascript anymore. jquery is a defacto standard now. It seems to offer better cross-browser compatibility than using html5. Try using the draggable feature of html5 in the 3 major browsers. You get 3 different behaviors. Maybe this will change one day.
Maybe jquery code runs slower than basic javascript. I really don't care. It runs on the client. At this point I consider some instances of using basic javascript when the jquery solution is more elegant (but maybe a bit slower) to be an optimization hack.
It would appear to the viewer then that believing in the existence of natuaral law is a question of opinion. That it simply is a point of view. And that is exactly what creationists are stating. They say: hey why don't we get the chance to represent our point of view in the classroom? Our ideas are just as valid and scientifically sound.
In this respect I thought it was good that Bill Nye brought up the difference that creationism really makes no useful predictions in the way that normal science does. I would have maybe attacked his assertions that creationism *has* made predictions that have come true, on the basis that these examples were made after the fact to try to fit the bible.
I would have also attacked the assertion that creationism and science are compatible because of all the examples of creationism and scientists. Just because you find an examples of creationist scientists doesn't mean that these two concepts are compatible. I agree with what you said:
Well the idea that natural laws ar constant is the very basis of science
And I might have "fallen into the trap" that Ken Ham would probably want me to in saying that Materialism, Naturalism, and constancy of natural laws is the religion of science. It is the axioms (i.e. the things we believe without evidence), analogous to how christians might believe the Bible, or muslims the Quran, as a starting axiom. In this qualitative respect I think religion and science are similar. Where I think they differ is the sheer quantity of utility. Science produces seemingly infinitely more useful predictions and discoveries compared with traditional religion. Does this mean it is "truth"? That is a philosophical question.
So if you go into debate about that it becomes (as you state correctly) a philosophical debate
I think this is the natural place for this debate to go. You are not going to convince a creationist based on a materialist argument, and you are not going to convince an atheist based on a theological argument. Let's go to the place where these ideas can actually be pitted against each other in a meaningful way. Philosophy is important for this very reason. We can do science or do religion, but I think philosophy provides clarity into why we should or shouldn't or want to do these things. I think my point of view is right, but I want to see it tested. Maybe it's wrong. Even if my point of view is essentially right, these sorts of debates can expose weaknesses and help to refine my point of view.
The only thing you can do as a scientist is to point to all those things are all consistent with natural law and totally inconsistent with the idea that natural law change over time. And then you force your opponent to say things like: "Ok, yes there are more than 6000 year rings in that tree but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's more 6000 years old!".
All it takes is for a different creationists to say "We redid the biblical calculations and it turns out the Bible predicts the world is 10,000 years old, so the tree rings make sense.". For me it is not enough to just attack these things based on evidence, because they will always just fit the evidence to their book and say that their book predicted everything correctly. We need to attack this way of thinking. We need to expose this old trick for what it is. And we need to go into philosophy to do it.
The people that cannot draw their own conclusion from that they are already convinced creationists and will never be converted anyway. The rest may have something to think about.
Lots of people can see through the bullshit and figure it out. Lots of people can't. I think that by clarifying and strengthening the argument, more people will be able to see that religion is bullshit. I think eventually this will happen on it's own, but I think the faster we reach this tipping point, the better off we w
I am very disappointed because I am an atheist and a science enthusiast, and I feel like Ken Ham actually won this debate. I don't think he is right about Christianity or the bible. I think he argued his point in a way that was better than Bill Nye. I think the points Ken Ham brought up were flawed, but I thought they at least attempted to answer the right questions. I felt Bill Nye's answers seemed to indicate that he didn't even really understand what Ken Ham was saying.
As an example, Ken Ham was forced to repeat over and over that he did not think that the assumption that natural laws were constant was correct. Bill Nye kept pooring on more examples of how science, which inherently makes this assumption (e.g. that radioactive decay rate has remained the same) shows that Ken Ham is wrong, but it doesn't. This debate should have taken a philosophical turn towards the question of whether it's reasonable to assume natural laws are constant. If Bill had said "I just don't accept that this could be possible", I would be ok with it, but it seemed like Bill Nye was unaware that this was where the debate was going.
I just don't think Bill Nye is a good debater, nor do I think he has the expertise to really make his points confidently. I saw Bill Nye debate Richard Lindzen in a short TV segment, and Bill Nye just seemed like a climate change believer/cheerleader rather than someone who actually knew anything about climate change.
There is nothing more frustrating than watching someone argue a position you hold badly.
All over the internet I see people proclaiming that Bill Nye won the debate, but that's only because he was on the side that they agree with (and presumably still agree with). He did not really present any arguments that, if I were a young earth creationist, I would find even remotely convincing or even thought provoking. He seemed just to regurgitate the same statements about how science is great without actually meeting Ken Ham's claims head on. He seemed to not even understand Ken Ham's attacks on a philosophical level.
If you want to see an example of how I think these debates should have been conducted (from the secular point of view), I would refer you to debates between Dan Dennett and various theologians. Dan is a really great thinker and the people he debates (while wrong), are people who would probably destroy Bill Nye in a debate.
I will say that at the end, I was satisfied with Bill Nye's answer to the question about Evolution and the 2nd law of thermodynamics. He correctly brought up the fact that earth is not a closed system. And I was happy that he ended by stressing the point that what makes "normal (i.e. secular) science" different from Ken Ham's brand of creationism in terms of "historical science", is that normal science makes predictions that turn out to be true. Ken Ham's citations of predictions made by creationism are only back formations. He can't come up with any examples of predictions that were not known to be true when they were made. It's easy to say that the Bible predicted everything we see today. The way to test a prediction is to make a new one that isn't known to be true yet.
I think Ken Ham is an interesting debater, and I'd love to see him debate someone a little more clever than Bill Nye
Not getting caught for murder is not a concern only for those living under law prohibiting murder. Once a person is known to be a murderer, a majority of people will refuse to deal with him and he will be at risk from those seeking revenge.
So you want vigilante justice?
How do we stop people from killing suspected murderers? It's not like everyone is a Crime scene investigator. More vigilante justice to kill the people who killed falsely accused murderers?
This will quickly degrade into no justice at all, but just people making enemies and killing their enemies, and feuds.
We know this is what will happen, because that's the way it was before we had governments take on the role of providing a legal system.
TheResilientFarter was asking me why greedy corporations aren't lobbying congress to privatize all the roads if it would be profitable for them. I never said all corporations are greedy.
Democracy is not the sole cause of increases in prosperity. China and India are democracies, as are other countries that have not prospered as the U.S. has.
I never said it was the sole reason. I said it was one of the reasons.
China and India are democracies, as are other countries that have not prospered as the U.S. has.
China is not a democracy. Parties opposed to the communist party are outlawed.
Furthermore, China is actually poised to overtake the USA in terms of production. Is China more prosperous than the USA? I wouldn't say so, but I certainly wouldn't use China as an example of a non-prosperous country.
You're right, I misread your statement. What you're actually stating is worse: regardless of how much better bridges would be if they were all private, it wouldn't be worth it. I really don't understand this.
Also not what I said. There is a limit to how much better bridges can be. At some point making a bridge "better" offers diminishing returns in terms of the benefit to society. Our bridges certainly have room for improvement. I am saying that the limited benefit to be gained by improving them would be outweighed by the disadvantages of having the bridges be private.
Clearly you have never looked at crime stats [disastercenter.com]
There is a larger trend of crime rates have been gradually going down. That doesn't mean that crime never goes up. There was one day in New York a year or so ago with no murders. Obviously crime in New York has gone up since that day. What I am talking about is violence and crime going down in the long term since the advent of democracy (i.e. on the scale of decades).
So when you are talking about murder, you are talking about something that is so infinitesimal that it has very little bearing when comparing to arguments on things that affect 100% of the population
You know what else is infinitesimally small? The number of people in the US who want to privatize all the roads. And yet I find myself talking to you about it as if it matters.
A book I have not read, but have seen quoted many times, is The Not So Wild, Wild West [amazon.com], where the authors demonstrate that by every measure, the "wild west" was one of the most peaceful, least violent places in the history of the U.S., and it was mostly anarchy. However, even with that, I am not an anarchist
Why aren't you an anarchist if you think it works so well?
I don't know what kind of alternate reality you live in, but here on planet earth the affordable care act that passed in 2010 is not even remotely close to universal healthcare. All it did was make every person in this country into an obligate consumer for the health insurance industry, which still holds most of the power. It was the largest handout to big business in the history of the world.
The fact that you can now get health insurance (and therefore healthcare) if you had a pre-existing condition, seems pretty close to universal healthcare to me. You are not even required to pay for this insurance if you can't afford it.
I don't think Obamacare is perfect. In fact I was against it because I didn't think it was good enough. I would have preferred single payer. That doesn't change the fact that we went from a society where a large percentage of people did not have access to healthcare to one where nearly everybody does.
As for gay people, what has Obama actually done for gay people?
He has been the most pro-gay president in history in terms of his positions on issues and exercising his power as the president. He helped kill Don't ask don't tell, and the Defense of Marriage Act. These were the 2 biggest anti-gay policies in the Federal government.
The president doesn't actually get to pass or repeal laws. All he can do is sign congressional bills, or refuse to sign them. In terms of managing the executive branch, he refused to defend DOMA in court and stated that it was unconstitutional.
I'm not saying Obama should be considered a hero to the gay community or anything. But to say he is the most conservative president our country has ever had is pretty fucking ridiculous.
I didn't even vote for the guy. I am just calling out bullshit when I see it.
Since I am in the minority, I am never to have any representation? You consider this a just system?
If you are a small enough minority, then no you are not supposed not have representation in a representative democracy.
We have 535 representatives in the federal government. 537 if you count the POTUS and VP. These people represent about 300 million people. This means that each representative represents about half a million people on average.
If there are not half a million people that share your views, then providing you with representation would mean denying an even larger group of people representation.
Furthermore, having "representation" is different from "getting your way". Even if you manage to band together with all the people that think like you and manage to elect a congressman, that congressman will likely not be able to get legislation passed to privatize all roads. So you are still not going to get to privatize all the roads.
In a representative democracy, you are only guaranteed the right to vote. You are not guaranteed the right to win.
Laws against murder are always brought up, but I must point out that we still have murder, and the police pretty much never prevent it from happening (and do it themselves with impunity).
The legal system provides a deterrent to murder. The police are part of that legal system.
What prevents high prevalence of murder is that most people do not desire to murder others. Isn't that the reason you are not a murderer?
Even if 99% people have no desire to murder, I would consider 1% a pretty high murder rate.
If a law is the only thing preventing someone from being a murderer, then that person falls into an incredibly tiny percentage of the population, as most people would fall into the non murderer category and those in the murderer category probably aren't terribly concerned with laws.
On the contrary, a very large percentage of murderers put quite a bit of thought into not getting caught (i.e. subverting the legal system). And as I said, Even a 1% murder rate (a small percentage) would be a very high murder rate.
Dismissing a claim because it is not perfect is to dismiss it for no reason. I did not claim that private roads would create perfection. You are trying to insert something into my argument that doesn't exist.
I never claimed that you claimed that private roads would be perfect. You are trying to insert something into my argument that doesn't exist.
I only claimed that our current system would be better than the one you are suggesting. I didn't not claim either is perfect, and I did not claim that anybody suggested either was perfect.
Where is the evidence that lobbying Congress results and measurable improvements for society at large? Please, provide me with some evidence.
Are you talking about the benefits of a representative democracy, or our particular representative democracy? I would suggest you read Stephen Pinker's "The Better Angles of our Nature". He has some pretty compelling evidence that indicates democracy in general is one of the factors that has lead to the least violent time in human history. There are way fewer victims of wars, murders, rapes (violence in general) per capita now than at any time in the past. And the United States, even with all it's problems, is still one of the safest and prosperous places to live in the world. This is due in part to our system of government.
It is a lot of work to prove that our prosperity and general quality of life are helped by our government, so I am not going to bother. It is just as hard to prove that freedoms have a measurable improvements on society.
I never stated that I am an anarchist and it is very presumptuous of you to claim such.
I never said you were an anarchist. I said you prefer a society *closer* to anarchy (i.e. less government) than I would.
We are also not any better off since Carter was elected. Looks like those liberal policies sure fucked us over. When will socialism start to work? I feel like it could be any day now.
Wow, oversimplifying a complex system was really easy
Are you sure you're not confusing polygamy with incest? Polygamy has been the dominant system throughout human history. It is only sort of recently that monogamy is gaining in popularity.
It may not be. It depends what you value. Laws against murder are not in the interests of murderers. The tradeoff for giving murderers the freedom to murder is not a good tradeoff for society. I'm not saying you are a murderer. I am just saying that it is in the best interest of the majority to have limited individual liberty, (as opposed to anarchy). Clearly you would rather we have something closer to anarchy, but no one ever said life was fair.
You state that if, overall, bridges would be in better shape under private control, you still don't think it is a good tradeoff for society? This seems a good example of cognitive dissonance.
Obviously bridges in better shape is a good thing. I am saying that there are disadvantages to having all bridges be private that would outweigh the potential advantage of having bridges be in slightly better condition.
Your reasoning seems to be "since a few bridges might be managed irresponsibly, we should default to a system where nearly all bridges are managed irresponsibly."
No my reasoning is that trying to fix the system so that bridges are managed better by the government is a simpler and better solution than completely privatizing infrastructure.
And if privatizing roads were a way for greedy corporations to make a quick buck, how come none of them are lobbying Congress to pass a law forbidding government intrusion in the transportation infrastructure?
Greedy corporations take the path of least resistance to profit. If there is an existing government loophole they will exploit it. If they think they can create an exploitable loophole they will lobby for it. Something like privatizing all the roads has a 0% chance of ever succeeding, so it is not surprising that greedy corporations have spent $0 trying to promote it. 0% * $100 trillion = $0.
I am not arguing for net neutrality. I am saying that your characterization of it is not correct. I am saying you *could* charge different customers of different sizes the same data rate without any disastrous consequences.
The government has no solid plan to repair bridges.
We are the government. We get to vote for our government.
I am not convinced that private corporations would do a better job maintaining bridges. If you own a bridge for the profit, some people will take the strategy of keeping their bridges well maintained to protect their revenue source, others will try to cut costs by not keeping their bridges well maintained.
Even if it were true that overall bridges would be in better shape under private control, I don't think this is a good tradeoff for society as a whole. I am all for privatizing things, but I would rather live in a society with public roads.
I'm not saying that having all private roads is impossible. I think we could do it. I just think it would be worse than what we have now.
Unlike some libertarians, I do think the government is likely to be the best solution in a small set of circumstances.
Net neutrality is about treating packets on the internet equally, regardless if who is sending them. Whatever resources you used to create infrastructure to relay youtube packets, could just as easily be used to relay packets from any other source. From a technical standpoint it makes no difference where the packets come from. From a business standpoint there probably is an incentive for time warner to discriminate against netflix packets.
If the government owns the overwhelming majority of the bridges, then we would expect that the "government bridges" to be the ones that are in disrepair. We would also expect the "government bridges" to be the bridges that are in excellent shape too.
Go find a bunch of bridges in very good shape, and they will no doubt also be government bridges.
The argument you are making could just as easily be applied to any public property, like roads.
If you are one of these people that believes all the roads should be privately owned, then I would have to disagree with you, and I am a libertarian.
Presumably they would be forced to charge the same price for the same product (i.e. bandwidth, data usage, etc). If a small business uses less bandwidth, then it is not going to be charged to same price as youtube. If you charged all customers the same rate for data usage (e.g. $1/gigabyte), then this would actually scale pretty well for both large and small businesses. You can charge $10/stapler, to both large and small companies without hindering either.
I think there are good reasons not to support net neutralty, but I don;t think this is one of them.
I totally agree that it is not in people's interest to vote for republicans. But it is easy to sympathize if you share a common experience. For example, if you voted for a democrat, you have also probably voted against your interests.
That's like saying that happy people live longer, because the happy person that I gave an antibiotic lived longer than the sad person I left to fend with the plague on their own.
I am not aware of anything that I said that could be related to this example. Maybe you inferred some position that I never actually took.
If you want to measure the effects of happiness on productivity then you need to control all the other variables.
And the easiest way to do that would be to compare productivity and happiness of workers that are in close temporal and geographical proximity.
Comparing productivity and happiness of workers today with slaves in the 1800s or feudal serfs in the middle ages, or cavemen seems pretty pointless
Slashdot Mirror
For profit corporations are greedy?!
I think you underestimate what is at stake here. Isn't the background of this debate that creationism is getting serious foothold in science classes in certain partst of the US?
It seemed like this might be happening a few years ago. But since then it has been defeated in courts every time it comes up. Even in the most conservative states, creationists are having a very hard time getting it into science classrooms, due to people on the other side putting up a very good fight.
You have to understand: a lot of people judge the outcome purely based on the impression they got. Bill gave the impression of having a lot of facts and figures and spoke with a lot of authority.
As an atheist I got the impression that Bill had lots of facts and figures and not much understanding of what the debate was really about. I thought Ken knew what the debate was about, but he was just on the wrong side. If I were a creationist I think I would feel pretty bolstered by this.
What Bill did was simply pointing out: there is simply too much proof to ignore and your theory is not a theory at all. Its a story without any reasoning behind it.
I thought Ken actually did a really good job for his side on this topic. Ken wasn't saying that his position was right, he was saying that Bill's position was no more valid than his. Bill kept relying on radioactive isotope dating as proof of the age of the earth, and Ken said over and over again, that he does not consider the assumption that radioactive isotopes have always decayed at the same rate to be valid, upon which this evidence depends. Rather than giving a reason to believe in the constancy of natural laws, Bill just seemed like he didn't know why we should believe this, and just repeated himself, ignoring Ken's argument. To me this makes him look weak. It makes it look like science has no reasoning behind it (even though it does).
He made a much better impression than Ham.
I think he made a better impression on people who were already on his side. I think Ken probably made a better impression on people who might have been on the fence. He made a better impression on me, and I'm an atheist.
I think Bill knows which side of the argument is correct (i.e. science). I don't think he necessarily as a clear idea of why it's correct, and I think that's why he's a bad debater. He knows a lot of things, but I don't think he is a good critical thinker. As I said, if you want to see someone debate religious people you should see Dan Dennett do it. He doesn't just engage in a shouting match and try to be the loudest. He actually asks very poignant questions of people on the other side that they have trouble answering. He is very good at articulating points that plant seeds of doubt that are very hard to dismiss. He is even good at debating other atheists. This is the kind of person we need to be advocating our position.
I wasn't talking about javascript specifically. I was actually using a C example.
So lets say I write an application that is pretty basic, but I need to do one trig function (sin). Should I include a math library for only 1 stupid function? Or should I write my own sin function using a Taylor series (that's what the math library does)?
I can probably write the taylor series in only a few lines of code:
double sin(double angle) {
__double result = angle;
__int sign = -1;
__for (i = 3; true; i += 2) {
____double term = pow(angle, i) / factorial(i);
____if (term == 0)
______break;
____result += sign * term;
____sign = (sign == 1) ? -1 : 1;
__}
__return result;
}
I guess it turns out I also needed the pow function, but I could probably write that as well.
Is it better to include an entire math library to do this simple thing? Why or why not?
I avoided jquery for a long time, because I would rather have my code not depend on a 3rd party library if possible. Eventually I succumbed. I just couldn't stand doing things in basic javascript anymore. jquery is a defacto standard now. It seems to offer better cross-browser compatibility than using html5. Try using the draggable feature of html5 in the 3 major browsers. You get 3 different behaviors. Maybe this will change one day.
Maybe jquery code runs slower than basic javascript. I really don't care. It runs on the client. At this point I consider some instances of using basic javascript when the jquery solution is more elegant (but maybe a bit slower) to be an optimization hack.
It would appear to the viewer then that believing in the existence of natuaral law is a question of opinion. That it simply is a point of view. And that is exactly what creationists are stating. They say: hey why don't we get the chance to represent our point of view in the classroom? Our ideas are just as valid and scientifically sound.
In this respect I thought it was good that Bill Nye brought up the difference that creationism really makes no useful predictions in the way that normal science does. I would have maybe attacked his assertions that creationism *has* made predictions that have come true, on the basis that these examples were made after the fact to try to fit the bible.
I would have also attacked the assertion that creationism and science are compatible because of all the examples of creationism and scientists. Just because you find an examples of creationist scientists doesn't mean that these two concepts are compatible. I agree with what you said:
Well the idea that natural laws ar constant is the very basis of science
And I might have "fallen into the trap" that Ken Ham would probably want me to in saying that Materialism, Naturalism, and constancy of natural laws is the religion of science. It is the axioms (i.e. the things we believe without evidence), analogous to how christians might believe the Bible, or muslims the Quran, as a starting axiom. In this qualitative respect I think religion and science are similar. Where I think they differ is the sheer quantity of utility. Science produces seemingly infinitely more useful predictions and discoveries compared with traditional religion. Does this mean it is "truth"? That is a philosophical question.
So if you go into debate about that it becomes (as you state correctly) a philosophical debate
I think this is the natural place for this debate to go. You are not going to convince a creationist based on a materialist argument, and you are not going to convince an atheist based on a theological argument. Let's go to the place where these ideas can actually be pitted against each other in a meaningful way. Philosophy is important for this very reason. We can do science or do religion, but I think philosophy provides clarity into why we should or shouldn't or want to do these things. I think my point of view is right, but I want to see it tested. Maybe it's wrong. Even if my point of view is essentially right, these sorts of debates can expose weaknesses and help to refine my point of view.
The only thing you can do as a scientist is to point to all those things are all consistent with natural law and totally inconsistent with the idea that natural law change over time. And then you force your opponent to say things like: "Ok, yes there are more than 6000 year rings in that tree but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's more 6000 years old!".
All it takes is for a different creationists to say "We redid the biblical calculations and it turns out the Bible predicts the world is 10,000 years old, so the tree rings make sense.". For me it is not enough to just attack these things based on evidence, because they will always just fit the evidence to their book and say that their book predicted everything correctly. We need to attack this way of thinking. We need to expose this old trick for what it is. And we need to go into philosophy to do it.
The people that cannot draw their own conclusion from that they are already convinced creationists and will never be converted anyway. The rest may have something to think about.
Lots of people can see through the bullshit and figure it out. Lots of people can't. I think that by clarifying and strengthening the argument, more people will be able to see that religion is bullshit. I think eventually this will happen on it's own, but I think the faster we reach this tipping point, the better off we w
I am very disappointed because I am an atheist and a science enthusiast, and I feel like Ken Ham actually won this debate. I don't think he is right about Christianity or the bible. I think he argued his point in a way that was better than Bill Nye. I think the points Ken Ham brought up were flawed, but I thought they at least attempted to answer the right questions. I felt Bill Nye's answers seemed to indicate that he didn't even really understand what Ken Ham was saying.
As an example, Ken Ham was forced to repeat over and over that he did not think that the assumption that natural laws were constant was correct. Bill Nye kept pooring on more examples of how science, which inherently makes this assumption (e.g. that radioactive decay rate has remained the same) shows that Ken Ham is wrong, but it doesn't. This debate should have taken a philosophical turn towards the question of whether it's reasonable to assume natural laws are constant. If Bill had said "I just don't accept that this could be possible", I would be ok with it, but it seemed like Bill Nye was unaware that this was where the debate was going.
I just don't think Bill Nye is a good debater, nor do I think he has the expertise to really make his points confidently. I saw Bill Nye debate Richard Lindzen in a short TV segment, and Bill Nye just seemed like a climate change believer/cheerleader rather than someone who actually knew anything about climate change.
There is nothing more frustrating than watching someone argue a position you hold badly.
All over the internet I see people proclaiming that Bill Nye won the debate, but that's only because he was on the side that they agree with (and presumably still agree with). He did not really present any arguments that, if I were a young earth creationist, I would find even remotely convincing or even thought provoking. He seemed just to regurgitate the same statements about how science is great without actually meeting Ken Ham's claims head on. He seemed to not even understand Ken Ham's attacks on a philosophical level.
If you want to see an example of how I think these debates should have been conducted (from the secular point of view), I would refer you to debates between Dan Dennett and various theologians. Dan is a really great thinker and the people he debates (while wrong), are people who would probably destroy Bill Nye in a debate.
I will say that at the end, I was satisfied with Bill Nye's answer to the question about Evolution and the 2nd law of thermodynamics. He correctly brought up the fact that earth is not a closed system. And I was happy that he ended by stressing the point that what makes "normal (i.e. secular) science" different from Ken Ham's brand of creationism in terms of "historical science", is that normal science makes predictions that turn out to be true. Ken Ham's citations of predictions made by creationism are only back formations. He can't come up with any examples of predictions that were not known to be true when they were made. It's easy to say that the Bible predicted everything we see today. The way to test a prediction is to make a new one that isn't known to be true yet.
I think Ken Ham is an interesting debater, and I'd love to see him debate someone a little more clever than Bill Nye
Not getting caught for murder is not a concern only for those living under law prohibiting murder. Once a person is known to be a murderer, a majority of people will refuse to deal with him and he will be at risk from those seeking revenge.
So you want vigilante justice?
How do we stop people from killing suspected murderers? It's not like everyone is a Crime scene investigator. More vigilante justice to kill the people who killed falsely accused murderers?
This will quickly degrade into no justice at all, but just people making enemies and killing their enemies, and feuds.
We know this is what will happen, because that's the way it was before we had governments take on the role of providing a legal system.
TheResilientFarter was asking me why greedy corporations aren't lobbying congress to privatize all the roads if it would be profitable for them. I never said all corporations are greedy.
It's quite easy to prove that freedom measurably improves society. Just compare the east and west sides of the Iron Curtain circa 1960.
There was also more pantyhose in the west. Prove that it wasn't the pantyhose making the west better.
I agree that freedom makes societies better. Proving this (i.e. proving causation when there is only a correlation), is actually very hard.
That was basically my point.
Ok...
My point was that technological improvements don't just increase perceived productivity, but increases in *actual* productivity.
Democracy is not the sole cause of increases in prosperity. China and India are democracies, as are other countries that have not prospered as the U.S. has.
I never said it was the sole reason. I said it was one of the reasons.
China and India are democracies, as are other countries that have not prospered as the U.S. has.
China is not a democracy. Parties opposed to the communist party are outlawed.
Furthermore, China is actually poised to overtake the USA in terms of production. Is China more prosperous than the USA? I wouldn't say so, but I certainly wouldn't use China as an example of a non-prosperous country.
You're right, I misread your statement. What you're actually stating is worse: regardless of how much better bridges would be if they were all private, it wouldn't be worth it. I really don't understand this.
Also not what I said. There is a limit to how much better bridges can be. At some point making a bridge "better" offers diminishing returns in terms of the benefit to society. Our bridges certainly have room for improvement. I am saying that the limited benefit to be gained by improving them would be outweighed by the disadvantages of having the bridges be private.
Clearly you have never looked at crime stats [disastercenter.com]
There is a larger trend of crime rates have been gradually going down. That doesn't mean that crime never goes up. There was one day in New York a year or so ago with no murders. Obviously crime in New York has gone up since that day. What I am talking about is violence and crime going down in the long term since the advent of democracy (i.e. on the scale of decades).
So when you are talking about murder, you are talking about something that is so infinitesimal that it has very little bearing when comparing to arguments on things that affect 100% of the population
You know what else is infinitesimally small? The number of people in the US who want to privatize all the roads. And yet I find myself talking to you about it as if it matters.
A book I have not read, but have seen quoted many times, is The Not So Wild, Wild West [amazon.com], where the authors demonstrate that by every measure, the "wild west" was one of the most peaceful, least violent places in the history of the U.S., and it was mostly anarchy. However, even with that, I am not an anarchist
Why aren't you an anarchist if you think it works so well?
I don't know what kind of alternate reality you live in, but here on planet earth the affordable care act that passed in 2010 is not even remotely close to universal healthcare. All it did was make every person in this country into an obligate consumer for the health insurance industry, which still holds most of the power. It was the largest handout to big business in the history of the world.
The fact that you can now get health insurance (and therefore healthcare) if you had a pre-existing condition, seems pretty close to universal healthcare to me. You are not even required to pay for this insurance if you can't afford it.
I don't think Obamacare is perfect. In fact I was against it because I didn't think it was good enough. I would have preferred single payer. That doesn't change the fact that we went from a society where a large percentage of people did not have access to healthcare to one where nearly everybody does.
As for gay people, what has Obama actually done for gay people?
He has been the most pro-gay president in history in terms of his positions on issues and exercising his power as the president. He helped kill Don't ask don't tell, and the Defense of Marriage Act. These were the 2 biggest anti-gay policies in the Federal government.
The president doesn't actually get to pass or repeal laws. All he can do is sign congressional bills, or refuse to sign them. In terms of managing the executive branch, he refused to defend DOMA in court and stated that it was unconstitutional.
I'm not saying Obama should be considered a hero to the gay community or anything. But to say he is the most conservative president our country has ever had is pretty fucking ridiculous.
I didn't even vote for the guy. I am just calling out bullshit when I see it.
Since I am in the minority, I am never to have any representation? You consider this a just system?
If you are a small enough minority, then no you are not supposed not have representation in a representative democracy.
We have 535 representatives in the federal government. 537 if you count the POTUS and VP. These people represent about 300 million people. This means that each representative represents about half a million people on average.
If there are not half a million people that share your views, then providing you with representation would mean denying an even larger group of people representation.
Furthermore, having "representation" is different from "getting your way". Even if you manage to band together with all the people that think like you and manage to elect a congressman, that congressman will likely not be able to get legislation passed to privatize all roads. So you are still not going to get to privatize all the roads.
In a representative democracy, you are only guaranteed the right to vote. You are not guaranteed the right to win.
Laws against murder are always brought up, but I must point out that we still have murder, and the police pretty much never prevent it from happening (and do it themselves with impunity).
The legal system provides a deterrent to murder. The police are part of that legal system.
What prevents high prevalence of murder is that most people do not desire to murder others. Isn't that the reason you are not a murderer?
Even if 99% people have no desire to murder, I would consider 1% a pretty high murder rate.
If a law is the only thing preventing someone from being a murderer, then that person falls into an incredibly tiny percentage of the population, as most people would fall into the non murderer category and those in the murderer category probably aren't terribly concerned with laws.
On the contrary, a very large percentage of murderers put quite a bit of thought into not getting caught (i.e. subverting the legal system). And as I said, Even a 1% murder rate (a small percentage) would be a very high murder rate.
Dismissing a claim because it is not perfect is to dismiss it for no reason. I did not claim that private roads would create perfection. You are trying to insert something into my argument that doesn't exist.
I never claimed that you claimed that private roads would be perfect. You are trying to insert something into my argument that doesn't exist.
I only claimed that our current system would be better than the one you are suggesting. I didn't not claim either is perfect, and I did not claim that anybody suggested either was perfect.
Where is the evidence that lobbying Congress results and measurable improvements for society at large? Please, provide me with some evidence.
Are you talking about the benefits of a representative democracy, or our particular representative democracy? I would suggest you read Stephen Pinker's "The Better Angles of our Nature". He has some pretty compelling evidence that indicates democracy in general is one of the factors that has lead to the least violent time in human history. There are way fewer victims of wars, murders, rapes (violence in general) per capita now than at any time in the past. And the United States, even with all it's problems, is still one of the safest and prosperous places to live in the world. This is due in part to our system of government.
It is a lot of work to prove that our prosperity and general quality of life are helped by our government, so I am not going to bother. It is just as hard to prove that freedoms have a measurable improvements on society.
I never stated that I am an anarchist and it is very presumptuous of you to claim such.
I never said you were an anarchist. I said you prefer a society *closer* to anarchy (i.e. less government) than I would.
We are also not any better off since Carter was elected. Looks like those liberal policies sure fucked us over. When will socialism start to work? I feel like it could be any day now.
Wow, oversimplifying a complex system was really easy
Are you sure you're not confusing polygamy with incest? Polygamy has been the dominant system throughout human history. It is only sort of recently that monogamy is gaining in popularity.
Because we all know how much conservatives love gay people and universal healthcare.
Really? Nobody I ever voted for has been elected
You are clearly in the minority
How is it they are representing my interests?
It may not be. It depends what you value. Laws against murder are not in the interests of murderers. The tradeoff for giving murderers the freedom to murder is not a good tradeoff for society. I'm not saying you are a murderer. I am just saying that it is in the best interest of the majority to have limited individual liberty, (as opposed to anarchy). Clearly you would rather we have something closer to anarchy, but no one ever said life was fair.
You state that if, overall, bridges would be in better shape under private control, you still don't think it is a good tradeoff for society? This seems a good example of cognitive dissonance.
Obviously bridges in better shape is a good thing. I am saying that there are disadvantages to having all bridges be private that would outweigh the potential advantage of having bridges be in slightly better condition.
Your reasoning seems to be "since a few bridges might be managed irresponsibly, we should default to a system where nearly all bridges are managed irresponsibly."
No my reasoning is that trying to fix the system so that bridges are managed better by the government is a simpler and better solution than completely privatizing infrastructure.
And if privatizing roads were a way for greedy corporations to make a quick buck, how come none of them are lobbying Congress to pass a law forbidding government intrusion in the transportation infrastructure?
Greedy corporations take the path of least resistance to profit. If there is an existing government loophole they will exploit it. If they think they can create an exploitable loophole they will lobby for it. Something like privatizing all the roads has a 0% chance of ever succeeding, so it is not surprising that greedy corporations have spent $0 trying to promote it. 0% * $100 trillion = $0.
I am not arguing for net neutrality. I am saying that your characterization of it is not correct. I am saying you *could* charge different customers of different sizes the same data rate without any disastrous consequences.
The government has no solid plan to repair bridges.
We are the government. We get to vote for our government.
I am not convinced that private corporations would do a better job maintaining bridges. If you own a bridge for the profit, some people will take the strategy of keeping their bridges well maintained to protect their revenue source, others will try to cut costs by not keeping their bridges well maintained.
Even if it were true that overall bridges would be in better shape under private control, I don't think this is a good tradeoff for society as a whole. I am all for privatizing things, but I would rather live in a society with public roads.
I'm not saying that having all private roads is impossible. I think we could do it. I just think it would be worse than what we have now.
Unlike some libertarians, I do think the government is likely to be the best solution in a small set of circumstances.
Net neutrality is about treating packets on the internet equally, regardless if who is sending them. Whatever resources you used to create infrastructure to relay youtube packets, could just as easily be used to relay packets from any other source. From a technical standpoint it makes no difference where the packets come from. From a business standpoint there probably is an incentive for time warner to discriminate against netflix packets.
If the government owns the overwhelming majority of the bridges, then we would expect that the "government bridges" to be the ones that are in disrepair. We would also expect the "government bridges" to be the bridges that are in excellent shape too.
Go find a bunch of bridges in very good shape, and they will no doubt also be government bridges.
The argument you are making could just as easily be applied to any public property, like roads.
If you are one of these people that believes all the roads should be privately owned, then I would have to disagree with you, and I am a libertarian.
Presumably they would be forced to charge the same price for the same product (i.e. bandwidth, data usage, etc). If a small business uses less bandwidth, then it is not going to be charged to same price as youtube. If you charged all customers the same rate for data usage (e.g. $1/gigabyte), then this would actually scale pretty well for both large and small businesses. You can charge $10/stapler, to both large and small companies without hindering either.
I think there are good reasons not to support net neutralty, but I don;t think this is one of them.
I totally agree that it is not in people's interest to vote for republicans. But it is easy to sympathize if you share a common experience. For example, if you voted for a democrat, you have also probably voted against your interests.
That's like saying that happy people live longer, because the happy person that I gave an antibiotic lived longer than the sad person I left to fend with the plague on their own.
I am not aware of anything that I said that could be related to this example. Maybe you inferred some position that I never actually took.
If you want to measure the effects of happiness on productivity then you need to control all the other variables.
And the easiest way to do that would be to compare productivity and happiness of workers that are in close temporal and geographical proximity.
Comparing productivity and happiness of workers today with slaves in the 1800s or feudal serfs in the middle ages, or cavemen seems pretty pointless