People don't like to have the concept of their free will undermined. That's why claims like this, true or false, are attacked by many not based on their evidence, but on the consequences of the conclusion. This kind of appeal to consequence is not valid. "X is false, because if it were true, then we wouldn't have free will."
The traditional notion of free will is incoherent, and could not be true regardless of whatever studies come out. Unless you believe in immaterial souls (which introduces a whole new set of incoherences) there must be something at the bottom. If it's not genetic determinism (which I doubt), it will be either physical determinism or physical (e.g. quantum) randomness at the bottom deciding every aspect of how the universe propagates, including our decisions.
Does this mean we can't have free will? Well if you are talking about the kind of free will that is defined as being uncaused or ungoverned by any lower process, then no we can't have that kind of free will. The question is: Why do we even want that kind of free will? What does it buy us? Everything you feel, experience, and decide is still real, it just doesn't work the way it seems. We can still hold people responsible for their decisions. In fact, it would be crazy not to.
I think the biggest reason for pushback against any attacks on the traditional idea of free will is that it undermines the idea that you could have an eternal soul. People are, I dare say, genetically determined, to avoid death. As a thinking species, one of our tools for dealing with death is denial. We don't *really* die. We have eternal life in the next life. See, no need to cry little Suzie, Grandma is in a better place now. We will all see her again one day. It's so tempting to embrace that point of view, especially if you have experienced a life with great hardship and tragedy. But there is literally no good reason to actually believe this if you care, about truth more than comfort, or simply can't tolerate cognitive dissonance.
I don't think you need to put the Koran in the "evil book section" of every book store. Information is the key to truth. The way to fight bad information is with good information, not censorship (or even making things harder to find). I think the best way to present the Koran is the following.
1. The Koran in the original Arabic.
2. Critiques and apologies of the Koran of all sorts by all sorts of authors.
3. Critiques and apologies of the critiques and apologies by all sorts of people.
4. The Koran translated into every language in as intellectually honest a way as humanly possible.
5. Other possible translations that are less likely to be true.
6. Critiques of all those translations.
7. Critiques of the critiques of the translations, etc.
Basically EVERYTHING.
My view is that lack of information has a much higher chance of doing harm than the availability of information (even bad information). It is important to see bad information, especially contrasted with good information, to help hone people's bullshit detection skills. Yes some people will believe bullshit anyway, but it's not because we didn't hide bad information well enough.
Yes I agree that it is important to be aware of weaknesses in the minds of young children.
I also think it is important to recognize the "strengths" of minds in general, whether young or old. Kids are wired to like food that is "bad" for them because it *was* good for them in the recent past. Human minds are amazing. They can seek out what triggers pleasure with uncanny ability. I don't think the minds of children will be fooled by less overt advertising. The overt advertising is for products to compete with eachother for popularity. Children will still seek out and find junk food even if all the advertising is gone, if their parents allow them to.
The advertising is not causing the children to eat junk food. It is a symptom of the high demand of children for junk food. All advertising does is pursuance children to prefer one junk food over another of the same caliber. No amount of advertising is going to make children crave carrots and peas in the same way they will crave high sugar foods. It's in our biology to seek out energy dense sources of food.
Nature used to restrict our ability to actually eat high energy foods all the time (without exercising to get it). Now parents must do this job.
I am not claiming that every aspect of pokemon is identical to real life cock fighting. I am saying that pokemon is the children's cartoon analog of cock fighting.
In both, humans capture (pokemon,roosters) and become their masters and command them to fight against other (pokemon,roosters).
While Ash may be the coach, he is in addition the master of his pokemon. He is a benevolent master in contrast to the antagonists, but their master nonetheless.
I do agree with PETA that pokemon if it where happening in real life would be animal subjugation and possibly also torture.
The difference between me and PETA is that I think pokemon is ok because of 2 reasons:
1. It's not real.
2. Animals are not entitled to the same rights as humans even if it where real.
It is precisely the fact that the protagonist is not depicted as cruel or causing suffering to his pokemon that makes it ok. In real life however, it is pretty hard to have animals fight against eachother without being cruel and causing suffering.
My point is that would shouldn't be defending pokemon on the grounds that it would not be bad if it where real. We should be defending it (and everything else like it) on the grounds that it is not real.
Not defending PETA or anything, but...
The idea that the human/pokemon team can "accomplish anything together", still involves one individual capturing another against it's will and using it for it's own ends, which in the case of pokemon is to use them to fight eachother. The real life equivalent of pokemon is cock fighting.
This is quite different from the relationship between a boxer and his coach, where the boxer has decided to be on a team with his coach (hopefully) without coercion, either party is free to terminate the relationship, and the boxer isn't forced to live in a small red ball.
Of course there are differences. The obvious difference is that animals like chickens are lower life forms than people, and therefore principles like non-coercion do not apply to them because they don't have the same rights as people. PETA would disagree, and that's why they are a fringe group. Even though other animals are lower life forms, many modern societies have decided that using animals to fight is an unacceptable form of abuse. The other difference is that pokemon is not reality, and is therefore not subject to the same criticisms. For example, it doesn't seem like pokemon really die or are even subjected to excruciating pain as a result of being forced to fight (because it's a kids TV show). I don't see any reason that kids need to be exposed only to realistic depictions, so I don't have a problem with pokemon.
Look at something like star wars where the droids are basically slaves even on the good side of the conflict. They are clearly people in the sense that they have feelings, desires, can feel pain, etc. Their lives are not valued. They are used as means to an end (i.e. tools), even by primary protagonists. Why is star wars not criticized for promoting slavery? Because it's just a movie, and we are capable of suspending disbelief for 2 hours.
We don't need to justify the slavery in star wars by showing why droids are ok to objectify if they existed in real life.
We don't need to justify disney movies that have kings and queens and princesses by showing why real life autocracies are sometimes ok.
We don't need to justify vigilante justice movies by showing why it is ok to sometimes take the law into your own hands in real life.
It's ok for something in a movie to be ok, but be wrong in real life. We don't need to justify things that happen in the movies or tv shows we watch. If we did, PETA would be right.
He is lucky he isn't in jail where he belongs for his role in the financial collapse. This piece of shit was receiving benefits (i.e. bribes) from the mortgage industry in exchange for helping to pass laws to keep a corrupt system going as long as possible at taxpayer expense.
It's fitting that he is the head of the MPAA. I am not sure that this organization can be properly administered without a giant douchebag at the helm.
'Faults are everywhere. A lot of them are stuck, but if you pump water in there, it reduces friction and the fault slips a little."
So rather than massive earthquakes that result from massive energy releases that are stored in faults for long periods of no slipping, hydro fracking causes semi-continuous slipping resluting in smaller but more frequent earthquakes. I don't know about you, but I would rather have a bunch of small earthquakes than 1 massive one.
I don't even know if the claim proposed int the article is true. I am saying that if it is true, the fact that hydro fracking causes earthquakes (not the other possible negative effects) is a good thing.
The problem is the enforcement and adjudication of the laws. I don't blame private companies with shareholders for trying to do everything within the law to maximize profits. It is not their job to play fair. It is their job to win. It is the job of the referee (i.e. the government/people) to make sure the corporations are playing fair. Fair play benefits the people. It is our job to ensure that the easiest path to success is making the best product for the least cost, and not by making your better by comparison through making your competitors products worse by hindering them.
There is already a non-obvious clause in the current patent law. I feel like if that were just enforced that part of the law correctly, everything (while still not perfect) would be a lot better. In a system where everyone is allowed to cheat, even otherwise good actors must also cheat just to stay competitive. You need a massive stockpile of bogus patents to defend yourself, and now that you have it, you are more tempted to use it. It's an arms race without the mutually assured destruction of the atom bomb.
The only legitimate purpose for IP laws is to spur innovation. Every industry should have it's IP laws carefully tailored to maximize innovation (even if that means no IP laws at all). We should be using these kinds of laws sparingly for industries where it has been demonstrated to be essential to innovation, and with constant re-evaluation to insure they are adjusted when necessary.
Baptizing dead people is the least crazy part of the mormon religion. I think Christians should start doing it too. I think it shows that these people want everyone to go to heaven (or whetever good version of the afterlife they believe in). I find Mormons to be in general, thoughtful and nice people.
The Mormon religion is in fact batshit crazy, but no more so than any other religion. If you believe baptism does something positive for people, and you believe that it can be done postmortem, then it is not so crazy to then deduce that you should be baptizing dead people, if you like being nice.
The difference between Christians and Mormons on this issue is only about whether you think dead people *can* be baptized effectively. I don't think either point of view regarding how this imaginary mechanism functions is any more valid than the other. I do find one to be more inclusive and good-natured.
SO what if they are baptizing people "against their will". If you aren't Mormon, then all they are doing is reading a name and swimming. They are trying to do something nice, but are actually doing nothing. Sounds like a more involved version of someone praying for me. I don't care if people want to waste their time praying for me. In fact even if I were offended, I don't think I have a right not to be offended. I think their religious freedom gives them the right to baptize me, as long as it doesn't actually involve me at all (like how it is done currently), just like it would be my right to baptize the whole world for Satan if I wanted to.
The only problem with that is by "limiting or removing those influences" in the way you are suggesting means that you are not just affecting yourself but also others who may not share your point of view.
Some people like fast food. Some people actually exercise enough to make fast food not as unhealthy for them. Should these people be hindered because others can't motivate themselves to exercise or have enough self control not to over indulge?
Does anyone seriously want to make potato chips and french fries illegal?
Do you really think that forcing bland packaging or banning corporate logos will provide any meaningful change?
Sure maybe the kids brains where lighting up when they saw a corporate logo. If they had been eating the same food from a chain with no flashy logo, but instead plain text of the name of the chain, wouldn't you expect their brains to light up at the sight of particular words like "macdonalds"?
maybe then we can ban words that seem to trigger appetite, like "macdonalds" and "burger king", and "chipotle". We can force these chains to change their names to less appetizing ones. Although I suspect that if their food is good, we can expect "turdburger" to be just as appetizing.
Maybe we should focus our time and energy on raising children to have self control and motivation to exercise. That way we aren't reliant on fast food chains to have less compelling logos and more healthy food, or the government to be intelligent enough to actually be able to regulate something like this effectively.
Yeah why should parents have to do that thing... what's it called?..."parenting"!
Anything that's bad for children should be illegal so the parents can spend their time on more important things than ensuring the health of their children. Why spend effort parenting when we can simply expand the justice system and spend time earning more money to pay the taxes necessary to keep it running.
We can pass laws making it illegal to sell sugary salted oily food to kids. Of course it can still be solt to adults. But if they give any of this food to their kids now they are responsible and must be punished. We can throw parents in jail without consequence because the government is in charge of parenting now.
It shouldn't be burned. Books contain truth. The Koran for example contains the truth of what the Koran says.
If we burned all the Korans (not even possible). Someone could say that the Koran did not contain a single advocation of violence. Obviously this is false. But how do we prove it? There are no Korans left. We burned them all.
Even malware should not be destroyed. If you were going to come up with a way to combat malware, don't you think you might want to see what it is you are combating? Wouldn't you want to see how it works so you might be able to combat other forms of malware with similar mechanisms?
Common sense is not what we should be striving for.
Common sense says that heavier objects fall faster and that relativity must be wrong. Common sense is probably what lead to religion in the first place. It sure does make *sense* to the *commoners* that "the universe can't exist without a creator, and my local elder has some great insight into exactly how it happened because he has an old book, or a long verbal history".
You might see people with common sense playing a slot machine because it's "hot".
Common sense is a kernel of logic, bundled with the spectrum of logical fallacies that humans commonly make, and the biases they seem wired to hold.
yes strictly speaking faith is a requirement because of lack of evidence. Lack of evidence is not the same thing as false. But even evidence for the lack of God would not be the same thing as false.
The proposition that the Christian God is real is less likely than the proposition that the holocaust was made up. It is equally likely as the proposition that undetectable purple unicorns control the weather. It is just about as close to being false as a claim can be (just above logically false claims).
If I can say Bill Clinton's claim of not having sexual relations with Monica Lewinski is false...
(I mean he could really have not had sexual relations, but just admitted to it for some reason we are unaware of)
then surely a a proposition "The christian God is real" orders of magnitude less likely can simply be labelled "false" by learned people just out of convenience. I would get tired of saying "false beyond a reasonable doubt" for every non logically false claim.
I am not a christian, but judging on the basis of moral superiority is really the foundation of our entire justice system.
We imprison people for life because of we are confident in the superiority of our moral belief that murder is wrong. In some states we even go one step further and perform state sanctioned executions for the crime of murder.
If moral superiority is not a good enough reason to judge people, then we may as well just have anarchy.
You can't take the bible as a whole because it is not coherent. The only way to get any sort of consistency from the Bible is to look at subsections.
The practice of picking out only the "love your enemy" stuff because you want people to be good, or picking out only the "god hates fags" stuff because you want to show everyone you are justified in your hatred of gays are of equal legitimacy.
Arguably the entire field of computation is about efficiency.
The field of computer science is getting computers to do mundane mental tasks so people don't have to. This goal has expanded to doing so many mundane mental tasks that all the humans living on earth couldn't do them if they wanted to, and also doing some not so mundane things pretty well.
Efficiency is still the name of the game. Whether it's minimizing time complexity, space complexity (i.e. making the machines more efficient), or maximizing scalability and maintainability (i.e. making the humans more efficient at making the machines more efficient), it's all about getting the biggest bang for your buck+second.
To force *everyone* to participate in programming violate this basic tenet of computation. If everyone does a little programming, why don't we also all do a little toilet cleaning, cooking, accounting, construction, farming, policing, firefighting, etc. One of the greatest advancements of human societies has been division of labor. It turns out that for most tasks, the cost of learning how to do them well is vastly outweighed by the benefit of the job being done better. Unfortunately there are too many things to learn in one human lifespan, so learning only a few things becomes the most efficient solution.
Every hour an HR person spends learning to programming, is an hour that he/she is not doing HR stuff. Now you need to hire more HR people (who will also be programming) to pick up the slack. So we can hire less programmers now right? Wrong. You can hire 1 good programmer, or 2 good programmers and 10 bad ones (1 good programmer to make the thing, and the other to undo everything the other 10 bad programmers did).
I don't see any difference between lumping all muslims together and lumping all religious people together.
They all (depending on the definition of religion) believe in a life beyond this one on earth, and they can not be counted on to behave rationally. I don't see the point in singling out muslims as more violent as a way to apologize for other religions. You could just as easily single out only the violent muslims. It makes much more sense to me to single out potentially violent people in general regardless of the particular brand of fantasy that motivates them.
I am perfectly content with leaving the peacefully deluded people alone.
It was not too long ago that Christians were mass murdering people in the name of Christianity. I don't see any reason that we can't treat the Muslims who manage to ignore the violence advocated by their religion with the same respect as we treat the Christians who manage to ignore the violence advocated by their equally violent religion.
Figuring out which religion is more violent is a bit like figuring out which race of people is more violent. It's not an impossible question to answer, there are just more meaningful questions to ask and answer.
China is actively stopping people from getting information. It is blocking access to websites that are administered by others. Google is not preventing anyone from uploading the video to other hosting services.
Freedom of speech does not mean you have the freedom to force others (i.e. google) to propagate your speech. It only implies that you are not hindering others from willingly conveying speech to each other or mediating it. Google doesn't want to mediate this particular speech. That is their right.
Google (nor any company) should be depended upon to protect our freedom of speech. They should only be treated as participants in the free market of ideas.
They are not enemies of free speech, any more than you are for not hosting the video in question on your dime.
Freedom of speech would only be a question if the US government tried to force youtube to block the video or threatened punishment to individuals who attempted to disseminate the video. Youtube is not obligated to disseminate your speech. They do so voluntarily in 99.9% of cases, even if they do not endorse the content. This happens to be one exception.
FTA:
"...but we forget that much of that speech is now hosted by third-parties who are under no obligation to protect it."
Free speech does not imply that others are required to help propagate your speech. It simply means that government and individuals are not allowed to hinder willing listeners from hearing and cinsuming your ideas.
Not only is youtube is under no obligation to promote any or all speech, their unwillingness to support certain forms of speech does not constitute an attack on freedom of speech in general.
I am quite glad that I am not required to host all kinds of videos (e.g. Islamic fundamentalist videos) to show my support for freedom of speech, unhypocritically.
Youtube is offering a free service of a semi-open forum for the general public, which you are free to use if you find their TOS agreeable or not use if you don't. No coercion of any sort takes place, and nearly all forms of speech are acceptable to them. ( a small minority of speech is prohibited) Even with their restrictions, I find their service to be a great boon to the cause of freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech only implies that neither youtube, nor the government, nor Islamic radicals, etc can legally stop you from hosting your videos yourself, or having a willing sponsor of your speech host your videos.
I don't think it is fair nor wise to rely on google as the protector of freedom of speech. We should treat them only as an honored participant and facilitator in the free market place of ideas.
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People don't like to have the concept of their free will undermined. That's why claims like this, true or false, are attacked by many not based on their evidence, but on the consequences of the conclusion. This kind of appeal to consequence is not valid. "X is false, because if it were true, then we wouldn't have free will." The traditional notion of free will is incoherent, and could not be true regardless of whatever studies come out. Unless you believe in immaterial souls (which introduces a whole new set of incoherences) there must be something at the bottom. If it's not genetic determinism (which I doubt), it will be either physical determinism or physical (e.g. quantum) randomness at the bottom deciding every aspect of how the universe propagates, including our decisions. Does this mean we can't have free will? Well if you are talking about the kind of free will that is defined as being uncaused or ungoverned by any lower process, then no we can't have that kind of free will. The question is: Why do we even want that kind of free will? What does it buy us? Everything you feel, experience, and decide is still real, it just doesn't work the way it seems. We can still hold people responsible for their decisions. In fact, it would be crazy not to. I think the biggest reason for pushback against any attacks on the traditional idea of free will is that it undermines the idea that you could have an eternal soul. People are, I dare say, genetically determined, to avoid death. As a thinking species, one of our tools for dealing with death is denial. We don't *really* die. We have eternal life in the next life. See, no need to cry little Suzie, Grandma is in a better place now. We will all see her again one day. It's so tempting to embrace that point of view, especially if you have experienced a life with great hardship and tragedy. But there is literally no good reason to actually believe this if you care, about truth more than comfort, or simply can't tolerate cognitive dissonance.
I don't think you need to put the Koran in the "evil book section" of every book store. Information is the key to truth. The way to fight bad information is with good information, not censorship (or even making things harder to find). I think the best way to present the Koran is the following. 1. The Koran in the original Arabic. 2. Critiques and apologies of the Koran of all sorts by all sorts of authors. 3. Critiques and apologies of the critiques and apologies by all sorts of people. 4. The Koran translated into every language in as intellectually honest a way as humanly possible. 5. Other possible translations that are less likely to be true. 6. Critiques of all those translations. 7. Critiques of the critiques of the translations, etc. Basically EVERYTHING. My view is that lack of information has a much higher chance of doing harm than the availability of information (even bad information). It is important to see bad information, especially contrasted with good information, to help hone people's bullshit detection skills. Yes some people will believe bullshit anyway, but it's not because we didn't hide bad information well enough.
Yes I agree that it is important to be aware of weaknesses in the minds of young children. I also think it is important to recognize the "strengths" of minds in general, whether young or old. Kids are wired to like food that is "bad" for them because it *was* good for them in the recent past. Human minds are amazing. They can seek out what triggers pleasure with uncanny ability. I don't think the minds of children will be fooled by less overt advertising. The overt advertising is for products to compete with eachother for popularity. Children will still seek out and find junk food even if all the advertising is gone, if their parents allow them to. The advertising is not causing the children to eat junk food. It is a symptom of the high demand of children for junk food. All advertising does is pursuance children to prefer one junk food over another of the same caliber. No amount of advertising is going to make children crave carrots and peas in the same way they will crave high sugar foods. It's in our biology to seek out energy dense sources of food. Nature used to restrict our ability to actually eat high energy foods all the time (without exercising to get it). Now parents must do this job.
I am not claiming that every aspect of pokemon is identical to real life cock fighting. I am saying that pokemon is the children's cartoon analog of cock fighting. In both, humans capture (pokemon,roosters) and become their masters and command them to fight against other (pokemon,roosters). While Ash may be the coach, he is in addition the master of his pokemon. He is a benevolent master in contrast to the antagonists, but their master nonetheless. I do agree with PETA that pokemon if it where happening in real life would be animal subjugation and possibly also torture. The difference between me and PETA is that I think pokemon is ok because of 2 reasons: 1. It's not real. 2. Animals are not entitled to the same rights as humans even if it where real. It is precisely the fact that the protagonist is not depicted as cruel or causing suffering to his pokemon that makes it ok. In real life however, it is pretty hard to have animals fight against eachother without being cruel and causing suffering. My point is that would shouldn't be defending pokemon on the grounds that it would not be bad if it where real. We should be defending it (and everything else like it) on the grounds that it is not real.
Not defending PETA or anything, but... SNIIIIIP....if we did, PETA would be right.
You sure did... SNIIIIIIP.....convince....SNIIIIP....... us.
You're welcome.
Not defending PETA or anything, but... The idea that the human/pokemon team can "accomplish anything together", still involves one individual capturing another against it's will and using it for it's own ends, which in the case of pokemon is to use them to fight eachother. The real life equivalent of pokemon is cock fighting. This is quite different from the relationship between a boxer and his coach, where the boxer has decided to be on a team with his coach (hopefully) without coercion, either party is free to terminate the relationship, and the boxer isn't forced to live in a small red ball. Of course there are differences. The obvious difference is that animals like chickens are lower life forms than people, and therefore principles like non-coercion do not apply to them because they don't have the same rights as people. PETA would disagree, and that's why they are a fringe group. Even though other animals are lower life forms, many modern societies have decided that using animals to fight is an unacceptable form of abuse. The other difference is that pokemon is not reality, and is therefore not subject to the same criticisms. For example, it doesn't seem like pokemon really die or are even subjected to excruciating pain as a result of being forced to fight (because it's a kids TV show). I don't see any reason that kids need to be exposed only to realistic depictions, so I don't have a problem with pokemon. Look at something like star wars where the droids are basically slaves even on the good side of the conflict. They are clearly people in the sense that they have feelings, desires, can feel pain, etc. Their lives are not valued. They are used as means to an end (i.e. tools), even by primary protagonists. Why is star wars not criticized for promoting slavery? Because it's just a movie, and we are capable of suspending disbelief for 2 hours. We don't need to justify the slavery in star wars by showing why droids are ok to objectify if they existed in real life. We don't need to justify disney movies that have kings and queens and princesses by showing why real life autocracies are sometimes ok. We don't need to justify vigilante justice movies by showing why it is ok to sometimes take the law into your own hands in real life. It's ok for something in a movie to be ok, but be wrong in real life. We don't need to justify things that happen in the movies or tv shows we watch. If we did, PETA would be right.
He is lucky he isn't in jail where he belongs for his role in the financial collapse. This piece of shit was receiving benefits (i.e. bribes) from the mortgage industry in exchange for helping to pass laws to keep a corrupt system going as long as possible at taxpayer expense. It's fitting that he is the head of the MPAA. I am not sure that this organization can be properly administered without a giant douchebag at the helm.
'Faults are everywhere. A lot of them are stuck, but if you pump water in there, it reduces friction and the fault slips a little." So rather than massive earthquakes that result from massive energy releases that are stored in faults for long periods of no slipping, hydro fracking causes semi-continuous slipping resluting in smaller but more frequent earthquakes. I don't know about you, but I would rather have a bunch of small earthquakes than 1 massive one. I don't even know if the claim proposed int the article is true. I am saying that if it is true, the fact that hydro fracking causes earthquakes (not the other possible negative effects) is a good thing.
The problem is the enforcement and adjudication of the laws. I don't blame private companies with shareholders for trying to do everything within the law to maximize profits. It is not their job to play fair. It is their job to win. It is the job of the referee (i.e. the government/people) to make sure the corporations are playing fair. Fair play benefits the people. It is our job to ensure that the easiest path to success is making the best product for the least cost, and not by making your better by comparison through making your competitors products worse by hindering them. There is already a non-obvious clause in the current patent law. I feel like if that were just enforced that part of the law correctly, everything (while still not perfect) would be a lot better. In a system where everyone is allowed to cheat, even otherwise good actors must also cheat just to stay competitive. You need a massive stockpile of bogus patents to defend yourself, and now that you have it, you are more tempted to use it. It's an arms race without the mutually assured destruction of the atom bomb. The only legitimate purpose for IP laws is to spur innovation. Every industry should have it's IP laws carefully tailored to maximize innovation (even if that means no IP laws at all). We should be using these kinds of laws sparingly for industries where it has been demonstrated to be essential to innovation, and with constant re-evaluation to insure they are adjusted when necessary.
Baptizing dead people is the least crazy part of the mormon religion. I think Christians should start doing it too. I think it shows that these people want everyone to go to heaven (or whetever good version of the afterlife they believe in). I find Mormons to be in general, thoughtful and nice people. The Mormon religion is in fact batshit crazy, but no more so than any other religion. If you believe baptism does something positive for people, and you believe that it can be done postmortem, then it is not so crazy to then deduce that you should be baptizing dead people, if you like being nice. The difference between Christians and Mormons on this issue is only about whether you think dead people *can* be baptized effectively. I don't think either point of view regarding how this imaginary mechanism functions is any more valid than the other. I do find one to be more inclusive and good-natured. SO what if they are baptizing people "against their will". If you aren't Mormon, then all they are doing is reading a name and swimming. They are trying to do something nice, but are actually doing nothing. Sounds like a more involved version of someone praying for me. I don't care if people want to waste their time praying for me. In fact even if I were offended, I don't think I have a right not to be offended. I think their religious freedom gives them the right to baptize me, as long as it doesn't actually involve me at all (like how it is done currently), just like it would be my right to baptize the whole world for Satan if I wanted to.
The only problem with that is by "limiting or removing those influences" in the way you are suggesting means that you are not just affecting yourself but also others who may not share your point of view. Some people like fast food. Some people actually exercise enough to make fast food not as unhealthy for them. Should these people be hindered because others can't motivate themselves to exercise or have enough self control not to over indulge? Does anyone seriously want to make potato chips and french fries illegal? Do you really think that forcing bland packaging or banning corporate logos will provide any meaningful change? Sure maybe the kids brains where lighting up when they saw a corporate logo. If they had been eating the same food from a chain with no flashy logo, but instead plain text of the name of the chain, wouldn't you expect their brains to light up at the sight of particular words like "macdonalds"? maybe then we can ban words that seem to trigger appetite, like "macdonalds" and "burger king", and "chipotle". We can force these chains to change their names to less appetizing ones. Although I suspect that if their food is good, we can expect "turdburger" to be just as appetizing. Maybe we should focus our time and energy on raising children to have self control and motivation to exercise. That way we aren't reliant on fast food chains to have less compelling logos and more healthy food, or the government to be intelligent enough to actually be able to regulate something like this effectively.
Yeah why should parents have to do that thing... what's it called?..."parenting"! Anything that's bad for children should be illegal so the parents can spend their time on more important things than ensuring the health of their children. Why spend effort parenting when we can simply expand the justice system and spend time earning more money to pay the taxes necessary to keep it running. We can pass laws making it illegal to sell sugary salted oily food to kids. Of course it can still be solt to adults. But if they give any of this food to their kids now they are responsible and must be punished. We can throw parents in jail without consequence because the government is in charge of parenting now.
It shouldn't be burned. Books contain truth. The Koran for example contains the truth of what the Koran says. If we burned all the Korans (not even possible). Someone could say that the Koran did not contain a single advocation of violence. Obviously this is false. But how do we prove it? There are no Korans left. We burned them all. Even malware should not be destroyed. If you were going to come up with a way to combat malware, don't you think you might want to see what it is you are combating? Wouldn't you want to see how it works so you might be able to combat other forms of malware with similar mechanisms?
Common sense is not what we should be striving for. Common sense says that heavier objects fall faster and that relativity must be wrong. Common sense is probably what lead to religion in the first place. It sure does make *sense* to the *commoners* that "the universe can't exist without a creator, and my local elder has some great insight into exactly how it happened because he has an old book, or a long verbal history". You might see people with common sense playing a slot machine because it's "hot". Common sense is a kernel of logic, bundled with the spectrum of logical fallacies that humans commonly make, and the biases they seem wired to hold.
yes strictly speaking faith is a requirement because of lack of evidence. Lack of evidence is not the same thing as false. But even evidence for the lack of God would not be the same thing as false. The proposition that the Christian God is real is less likely than the proposition that the holocaust was made up. It is equally likely as the proposition that undetectable purple unicorns control the weather. It is just about as close to being false as a claim can be (just above logically false claims). If I can say Bill Clinton's claim of not having sexual relations with Monica Lewinski is false... (I mean he could really have not had sexual relations, but just admitted to it for some reason we are unaware of) then surely a a proposition "The christian God is real" orders of magnitude less likely can simply be labelled "false" by learned people just out of convenience. I would get tired of saying "false beyond a reasonable doubt" for every non logically false claim.
I am not a christian, but judging on the basis of moral superiority is really the foundation of our entire justice system. We imprison people for life because of we are confident in the superiority of our moral belief that murder is wrong. In some states we even go one step further and perform state sanctioned executions for the crime of murder. If moral superiority is not a good enough reason to judge people, then we may as well just have anarchy.
You can't take the bible as a whole because it is not coherent. The only way to get any sort of consistency from the Bible is to look at subsections. The practice of picking out only the "love your enemy" stuff because you want people to be good, or picking out only the "god hates fags" stuff because you want to show everyone you are justified in your hatred of gays are of equal legitimacy.
Arguably the entire field of computation is about efficiency. The field of computer science is getting computers to do mundane mental tasks so people don't have to. This goal has expanded to doing so many mundane mental tasks that all the humans living on earth couldn't do them if they wanted to, and also doing some not so mundane things pretty well. Efficiency is still the name of the game. Whether it's minimizing time complexity, space complexity (i.e. making the machines more efficient), or maximizing scalability and maintainability (i.e. making the humans more efficient at making the machines more efficient), it's all about getting the biggest bang for your buck+second. To force *everyone* to participate in programming violate this basic tenet of computation. If everyone does a little programming, why don't we also all do a little toilet cleaning, cooking, accounting, construction, farming, policing, firefighting, etc. One of the greatest advancements of human societies has been division of labor. It turns out that for most tasks, the cost of learning how to do them well is vastly outweighed by the benefit of the job being done better. Unfortunately there are too many things to learn in one human lifespan, so learning only a few things becomes the most efficient solution. Every hour an HR person spends learning to programming, is an hour that he/she is not doing HR stuff. Now you need to hire more HR people (who will also be programming) to pick up the slack. So we can hire less programmers now right? Wrong. You can hire 1 good programmer, or 2 good programmers and 10 bad ones (1 good programmer to make the thing, and the other to undo everything the other 10 bad programmers did).
I don't see any difference between lumping all muslims together and lumping all religious people together. They all (depending on the definition of religion) believe in a life beyond this one on earth, and they can not be counted on to behave rationally. I don't see the point in singling out muslims as more violent as a way to apologize for other religions. You could just as easily single out only the violent muslims. It makes much more sense to me to single out potentially violent people in general regardless of the particular brand of fantasy that motivates them. I am perfectly content with leaving the peacefully deluded people alone. It was not too long ago that Christians were mass murdering people in the name of Christianity. I don't see any reason that we can't treat the Muslims who manage to ignore the violence advocated by their religion with the same respect as we treat the Christians who manage to ignore the violence advocated by their equally violent religion. Figuring out which religion is more violent is a bit like figuring out which race of people is more violent. It's not an impossible question to answer, there are just more meaningful questions to ask and answer.
China is actively stopping people from getting information. It is blocking access to websites that are administered by others. Google is not preventing anyone from uploading the video to other hosting services. Freedom of speech does not mean you have the freedom to force others (i.e. google) to propagate your speech. It only implies that you are not hindering others from willingly conveying speech to each other or mediating it. Google doesn't want to mediate this particular speech. That is their right. Google (nor any company) should be depended upon to protect our freedom of speech. They should only be treated as participants in the free market of ideas. They are not enemies of free speech, any more than you are for not hosting the video in question on your dime. Freedom of speech would only be a question if the US government tried to force youtube to block the video or threatened punishment to individuals who attempted to disseminate the video. Youtube is not obligated to disseminate your speech. They do so voluntarily in 99.9% of cases, even if they do not endorse the content. This happens to be one exception.
FTA: "...but we forget that much of that speech is now hosted by third-parties who are under no obligation to protect it." Free speech does not imply that others are required to help propagate your speech. It simply means that government and individuals are not allowed to hinder willing listeners from hearing and cinsuming your ideas. Not only is youtube is under no obligation to promote any or all speech, their unwillingness to support certain forms of speech does not constitute an attack on freedom of speech in general. I am quite glad that I am not required to host all kinds of videos (e.g. Islamic fundamentalist videos) to show my support for freedom of speech, unhypocritically. Youtube is offering a free service of a semi-open forum for the general public, which you are free to use if you find their TOS agreeable or not use if you don't. No coercion of any sort takes place, and nearly all forms of speech are acceptable to them. ( a small minority of speech is prohibited) Even with their restrictions, I find their service to be a great boon to the cause of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech only implies that neither youtube, nor the government, nor Islamic radicals, etc can legally stop you from hosting your videos yourself, or having a willing sponsor of your speech host your videos. I don't think it is fair nor wise to rely on google as the protector of freedom of speech. We should treat them only as an honored participant and facilitator in the free market place of ideas.