Your argument number 3. is not logically valid. For any case where the probability is greater than zero, the case may happen. Furthermore you DO NOT KNOW or even have any valid way of concluding that the probability is low. Even if we assume that the probability is low on earth, or low in the known universe, we have no basis for knowing whether this is the only universe that has ever been (or that currently exists).
For what we know there has been an infinite number of universes with slight variations, and the probability of life occuring on earth of all places might be extremely high.
It also does not make an argument either for or against evolution. Per definition we exist in a universe where life exists, and on a planet where life either came into existence or was placed.
If it hadn't happened on earth or life hadn't found it's way to earth, you wouldn't be here to take part in this discussion.
IF life only arose in one place and did not spread, no matter how unlikely, then any sentient observer would be present in (or having come from) the place it happened. As such, the odds of you finding yourself on a planet where life has gotten to a humanoid, intelligent stage either by developing or being "transplanted is exactly 1.
Yes, you can make the argument that life didn't originate here, and you may be able to turn that into a scientific theory by making concrete testable and falsifiable predictions that can't be explained by competing theories.
However until you do present such predictions, that idea is nothing more than a hypothesis.
But note that in this case, this theory would not compete with evolution - evolution says nothing about the origin of life on earth, just about how life is evolving, from which you can draw conclusions about the likely development in the past based on the fossil record. As such, that limits any involvement from a "designer" or otherwise to a very basic interference unless your hypothesis provides an explanation for why current empirical data is wrong or does not support the current theories.
As unlikely as I consider it, I find the idea of panspermia far more acceptable than intelligent design - it wouldn't be impossible to consider a space faring race finding the universe fairly empty and deciding to make it more interesting by "seeding" life in some form. After all humans show all the needed traits for taking on that role one day. And it is an idea that doesn't require any concepts that are untestable (thought any specific instance of the hypothesis could very well include such concepts).
That said, when it comes to the discussion of evolution vs intelligent design, it just pushes the discussion one step further back - it does not remove evolution as a valid model both for how development on earth have happened after that point, nor as a valid model for how development of this hypothetical space faring race happened. This is one of the fundamental problems with ID as well: Who designed the designer?
If anyone presents a concrete version of intelligent design that is testable and falsifiable, I would have no problem considering it a scientific theory. I would even be open to it being discussed in school because then it would be possible to discuss it's scientific merits properly and use it as a tool to let kids learn about the cientific method.
No matter how foolish I think ID is, it's main failing is exactly the absence of a clear set of falsifiable predictions - there's nothing wrong with putting forward scientific theories that seem foolish to people, or that has it's origin in faith. There is something wrong with trying to pass of faith as science.
>> How the hell are we supposed to be able to disprove that a supernatural being has had NO intervention in evolution?
Statistical measures.
If you ever go beyond the "mean, median, and mode" level of stats, you learn it is the Way to Truth. It's essentially the answer to epistemology: how do we know when we know something? Stats have much deeper implications than most people realize.
Doesn't work. The problem is that you are assuming that proponents of intelligent design are being rational, and that your highly santized version of ID is representative for most ID believers.
However if you first believe in a creator powerful enough to do what ID zealots believe, then it would certainly not be any big leap to assume that this creator set things up so that the process seems random.
That is the typical version of ID I've come across when talking to people who believe in it - I've not come across anyone who would change their mind "simply" by being shown evolution in action.
A classic "rebuttal" from ID people to this is that if we can't see signs of a designer, then either the designer just works that way, by subtle influences that are undistinguishable from random mutations or natural selection to us, or the designer "set things up" in such a way that evolution would proceed the way it has done.
Either way, those are unfalsifiable because no matter what observations we make their "theory" can explain it.
That in itself makes the entire thing pointless - it doesn't explain anything or provide any form of value to the science of evolution.
Proving specific sanitized instances of ID wrong is one thing, but proving the overall concepts of ID wrong doesn't work because it isn't a scientific theory, it isn't falsifiable, and it invariably changes whenever convenient.
I don't know about the other poster, but for my part I was thought from an early age to question everything, but that at present evolution is the only theory we have that explains the known facts. You don't need to indoctrinate people with evolution - teach them the basic principles of the scientific method and they'll be well equipped to make the local minister cry in agony if he tries to feed them any bullshit, and will easily understand the different between a scientific theory and blind faith.
Brilliant attempt at comparing the mobilisation of the entire country to industrialise at the cost of abandoning food production and other essential tasks with the building of cities that are by their very design intended to ensure a balanced approach.
The Great Leap had nothing to do about general self sufficiency and everything about trying to gain parity in industrialisation with the west. There's a huge difference.
The problem with the Great Leap was NOT trying to achieve self sufficiency, but trying to gain self sufficiency in only steel production at the cost of production in every other sector.
It's also pretty insulting to compare the building of a few cities in a country with one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world and who has built cities of this size several times over already, with an outdated policy that the entire current leadership as well as most past leaders and the vast majority of the people see as one of the largest mistakes ever made by their past leaders in general, and Mao in particular.
The Great Leap has been officially accepted as a mistake as far back as the early 60's.
The above just demonstrates that you are completely clueless about what most people of the left want. Next time, why don't you try asking people what they thing about those issues instead of putting words in peoples mouths and jump to unjustified conclusions? Or would that make you seem too reasonable?
Re:The press release is dated 24/8/2005 ...
on
Chinese Eco-Cities
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· Score: 1
Since dates are spoken in that order in english
That depends on local customs. I hear "1st of January" more often than I hear "January 1st".
Re:We can all breathe a bit easier
on
Chinese Eco-Cities
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Great job at presenting some of the most blatantly biased form of reporting I've seen in a long time.
Also great job in muddying up the discussion. Does the one child politcy cause suffering? Sure it does. But what is the alternative? China's population grew from around 300 million to above a billion in just a few decades, in a country that already had problem feeding it's population in the first place. Tens of millions died of starvation in the process.
As it is, China is still regularly close to disaster, and for all the problems of the one child policy, China is doing more or less the only thing it can to prevent it's population from growing out of control.
If anything, they should be applauded for being the only country willing to take action to halt population growth.
Your whining about abortions in the face of China's history of regular mass deaths due to famine is just plain disgusting.
If you seriously think Bollywood movies doesn't make it out of India much, you need to look again. Bollywood movies have a huge market in Russia, China, Africa, the Middle East, parts of Europe etc., and quite a few regions Bollywood movies regularly are among the top grossing.
But I'm sure some people would consider it great for the bathroom as an alternative for those magazines they always have to clear away when they get guests...
Seriously. If you're naive enough to thing it's 90% you seriously need to take a look at the sales numbers for the porn industry.
This article is quite enlightening, and as a bonus it summarises some of the research debunking the myth that porn contributes to violence.
You're the one that belongs to the freaky minority - deal with it.
Re:Try and stop it... it's so unfortunate.
on
No Porn for You, iPod
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Personally I think the Bible is soul destroying legal sh**. I'm not crying about the lack of a ban on that junk because I realise what the consequences of allowing censorship is.
In the case of Daniel Lyons I certainly hope to see more ad hominem attacks - his writing is so appalingly full of lies and misinterpretations that they aren't worth any attention, and the guy has proven himself to be such a major asshole he certainly deserves all the shit that's being written about it.
That said, I'd think most people would have a hard time finding blogs as full of tripe as Daniel Lyons articles. He's far worse than 99% of the bloggers he's criticising, and keeps writing blatant lies in his articles despite the number of times his errors have been pointed out (so it's not like he doesn't know better - he just refuses to face reality).
Seems like a very reasonable policy to me. Instead of a blanket ban they are just asking parents to take responsibility and making sure students are careful about what they post, and in particular when that includes pictures/information about other students or staff.
The first thing to realise is that most abuse is being conducted by family/close relatives and friends of the family. Focusing on predatory behaviour on the internet is stealing focus away from the real problem. In the UK the NSPCC (National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children) did research a few years ago where it was shown that only around 25% of abuse of children was carried out by people who were strangers to the child.
Stopping blogs or chatting or other online behaviour won't stop that. It will only teach them that they need to hide what is going on in their life from you - destroying trust may very well prove to do far more damage to their safety than not by stopping them from telling you about worrying things before it develops further.
Why do you think they have to be implemented in a stacked way? There's nothing stopping the VFS and VM modules from co-existing in parallel and have both using eachothers services.
Re:Can common/civil law override these licenses?
on
End User License Gems
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· Score: 1
It clearly makes pragmatic sense not to allow this since it can be so difficult to tell if I gave away my right under duress or not. Better to make mistakes we can later remedy than ones we can't... once I'm dead, that's it. But if it's my decision, and I'm using the doctor as a tool - rather than him using me - then why should the law even consider his role?
You make the point yourself: It's hard to tell if it happens under duress or not. A lot of laws are centered around this on the assumption that certain consequences are bad enough and/or the balance of power is slanted in such a way that it is worth limiting certain actions to give additional protection.
In some cases that protection might be absolute - you can't sign it away no matter what. For instance you can't make yourself someones slave in any meaningful legal sense, and you can't (in most countries anyway) get someone to kill you on your behalf. Both because - apart from the moral objections some might have - the consequences are seen as severe enough to warrant that extra protection.
In some cases the protection just limits how you go about something.
Many employment related regulations are like that - they may not be enforcable if your prospective employer only slip them in there for a normal job, but may often be enforcable for senior management positions (because you're expected to be in a stronger negotiating position) or if the contract specifically grant you something in return.
Some jurisdictions might allow you to enter an enforcable contract that make you work longer hours than normally legal in return for more frequent and longer holidays, for instance (though the same jurisdictions may have upper limits that are absolute, because the consequences of someone being pushed to exceed them are seen as too severe)
This really boils down to what is the case for contract law in general in most countries: A contract can be ruled uneforcable in whole or in part if it is seen by a court as too one-sided.
You show a simply amazing lack of understanding of Marxism, which isn't really that surprising given the distorted version most people get served.
But the term "Marxist luddite" is an oxymoron.
If anything, one of the key focuses of Marxism and derivatives has been massive industrialisation in order to reduce the need for menial jobs as a pre-requisite for the further development of humanity.
Marx for instance, was very insistent that socialism and ultimately communism was dependent on a sufficient level of industrialisation to significantly reduce the size of the farming population to even be possible, as Marx' had very strong views on the farmers as a reactionary force in society.
Seeing as you bring in Lenin and Stalin, I'll comment on that too though both Lenin, and to a much greater extent Stalin bastardised Marxist ideas so much that there's not much that's even recognisable.
It was first Lenin that (in order to justify why Russia - a country that hardly met any of the criteria suggested by Marx' to be suitable for a Socialist revolution - should indeed be suitable) made the argument that landless farmers would largely share the political standpoints of the landless urban workers (the proletariat). As history has shown, he was very wrong - in fact the Bolcheviks almost exclusively built their support in the cities.
Both Lenin and Stalin after the revolution - regardless of all the other parts of Marx' theories they blatantly ignored - put a great deal of effort into transforming farming into an industrial process in part probably because they were acutely aware that they both needed to increase the effectiveness of farming and try bring the farm workers into the fold.
Stalin in particular forced through massive collectivisation combined with huge campaigns focusing on how new farm machinery etc. would bring factory-like effectiveness to farms.
If you ever get a chance to see Soviet propaganda films from the 30's for instance, then a the industrialisation of farming is a frequent theme.
If you are writing code that "represents the data in some kind of data structure that just needs to be displayed" that code is part of your presentation layer. Either that code is what decides what goes on the web page, in which case it's part of the presentation layer, or it doesn't, in which case logic somewhere else needs to decide what goes on the page.
Either way, unless all your applications always return static web pages, there - per definition - is logic in your presentation layer or there would be nothing there and it would be kind of useless to talk about "presentation layer".
In fact, parabolic cookers are widely available throughout the developing world. In many places they've been introduced in attempts to reduce deforestation from people collecting wood.
Fact is, it's incredibly hard to determine today what will have value tomorrow. Most of those thirteen year old girls (or 20-something geek guys) blogs will have no historical value. But some of those people will grow up to have a profound impact on the world (or they may not grow up, but still have a profound impact, as was the case with Anne Frank). It may be ten years from now. Or 50.
Who knows what the writing they do now might tell us about what brought them wherever they end up? When people write diaries on paper chances are reasonable they'll survive and show up in an attic somewhere. But as more and more content get online, we also risk facing the loss of entire generations worth of many types of information to bit rot and simple lack of foresight.
People use Gimp because there isn't a good free alternative. Inkscape is NOT an alternative if you're looking for a paint style program - it's a vector graphics package, and despite what you might think people still want shapes etc. in a paint program.
I still wish I had a useable updated paint program with a DeluxePaint style interface (the Amiga version, not the PC abomination). For me, it's the complexity of the Gimp interface that's a pain. I loved having just what I needed always on the screen and just a keypress to go full screen with no menus etc.
I more or less stopped drawing once I switched to Linux from my trusty old Amiga, as I've yet to find a decent replacement (and it's been about 10 years).
MBNA - one of the worlds largest credit card issuers - sends out e-mails at least to their UK customers, with links. Their "security" feature is that the e-mail include the customers postal code and make a big deal out of how this means the customer can trust the e-mail to be from them.
So now all the bad guys need to do is to set up a website and holding a "price draw" for anyone who enters their e-mail address and postal code, and spend a few grand on advertising it online. Then they can fire off an e-mail to all those users using their postal code to make the mail look like an authentic MBNA e-mail, and give them a link to go to in order to confirm their security details...
Slashdot Mirror
For what we know there has been an infinite number of universes with slight variations, and the probability of life occuring on earth of all places might be extremely high.
It also does not make an argument either for or against evolution. Per definition we exist in a universe where life exists, and on a planet where life either came into existence or was placed.
If it hadn't happened on earth or life hadn't found it's way to earth, you wouldn't be here to take part in this discussion.
IF life only arose in one place and did not spread, no matter how unlikely, then any sentient observer would be present in (or having come from) the place it happened. As such, the odds of you finding yourself on a planet where life has gotten to a humanoid, intelligent stage either by developing or being "transplanted is exactly 1.
Yes, you can make the argument that life didn't originate here, and you may be able to turn that into a scientific theory by making concrete testable and falsifiable predictions that can't be explained by competing theories.
However until you do present such predictions, that idea is nothing more than a hypothesis.
But note that in this case, this theory would not compete with evolution - evolution says nothing about the origin of life on earth, just about how life is evolving, from which you can draw conclusions about the likely development in the past based on the fossil record. As such, that limits any involvement from a "designer" or otherwise to a very basic interference unless your hypothesis provides an explanation for why current empirical data is wrong or does not support the current theories.
As unlikely as I consider it, I find the idea of panspermia far more acceptable than intelligent design - it wouldn't be impossible to consider a space faring race finding the universe fairly empty and deciding to make it more interesting by "seeding" life in some form. After all humans show all the needed traits for taking on that role one day. And it is an idea that doesn't require any concepts that are untestable (thought any specific instance of the hypothesis could very well include such concepts).
That said, when it comes to the discussion of evolution vs intelligent design, it just pushes the discussion one step further back - it does not remove evolution as a valid model both for how development on earth have happened after that point, nor as a valid model for how development of this hypothetical space faring race happened. This is one of the fundamental problems with ID as well: Who designed the designer?
If anyone presents a concrete version of intelligent design that is testable and falsifiable, I would have no problem considering it a scientific theory. I would even be open to it being discussed in school because then it would be possible to discuss it's scientific merits properly and use it as a tool to let kids learn about the cientific method.
No matter how foolish I think ID is, it's main failing is exactly the absence of a clear set of falsifiable predictions - there's nothing wrong with putting forward scientific theories that seem foolish to people, or that has it's origin in faith. There is something wrong with trying to pass of faith as science.
Statistical measures.
If you ever go beyond the "mean, median, and mode" level of stats, you learn it is the Way to Truth. It's essentially the answer to epistemology: how do we know when we know something? Stats have much deeper implications than most people realize.
Doesn't work. The problem is that you are assuming that proponents of intelligent design are being rational, and that your highly santized version of ID is representative for most ID believers.
However if you first believe in a creator powerful enough to do what ID zealots believe, then it would certainly not be any big leap to assume that this creator set things up so that the process seems random.
That is the typical version of ID I've come across when talking to people who believe in it - I've not come across anyone who would change their mind "simply" by being shown evolution in action.
A classic "rebuttal" from ID people to this is that if we can't see signs of a designer, then either the designer just works that way, by subtle influences that are undistinguishable from random mutations or natural selection to us, or the designer "set things up" in such a way that evolution would proceed the way it has done.
Either way, those are unfalsifiable because no matter what observations we make their "theory" can explain it.
That in itself makes the entire thing pointless - it doesn't explain anything or provide any form of value to the science of evolution.
Proving specific sanitized instances of ID wrong is one thing, but proving the overall concepts of ID wrong doesn't work because it isn't a scientific theory, it isn't falsifiable, and it invariably changes whenever convenient.
I don't know about the other poster, but for my part I was thought from an early age to question everything, but that at present evolution is the only theory we have that explains the known facts. You don't need to indoctrinate people with evolution - teach them the basic principles of the scientific method and they'll be well equipped to make the local minister cry in agony if he tries to feed them any bullshit, and will easily understand the different between a scientific theory and blind faith.
The Great Leap had nothing to do about general self sufficiency and everything about trying to gain parity in industrialisation with the west. There's a huge difference.
The problem with the Great Leap was NOT trying to achieve self sufficiency, but trying to gain self sufficiency in only steel production at the cost of production in every other sector.
It's also pretty insulting to compare the building of a few cities in a country with one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world and who has built cities of this size several times over already, with an outdated policy that the entire current leadership as well as most past leaders and the vast majority of the people see as one of the largest mistakes ever made by their past leaders in general, and Mao in particular.
The Great Leap has been officially accepted as a mistake as far back as the early 60's.
The above just demonstrates that you are completely clueless about what most people of the left want. Next time, why don't you try asking people what they thing about those issues instead of putting words in peoples mouths and jump to unjustified conclusions? Or would that make you seem too reasonable?
That depends on local customs. I hear "1st of January" more often than I hear "January 1st".
Also great job in muddying up the discussion. Does the one child politcy cause suffering? Sure it does. But what is the alternative? China's population grew from around 300 million to above a billion in just a few decades, in a country that already had problem feeding it's population in the first place. Tens of millions died of starvation in the process.
As it is, China is still regularly close to disaster, and for all the problems of the one child policy, China is doing more or less the only thing it can to prevent it's population from growing out of control.
If anything, they should be applauded for being the only country willing to take action to halt population growth.
Your whining about abortions in the face of China's history of regular mass deaths due to famine is just plain disgusting.
If you seriously think Bollywood movies doesn't make it out of India much, you need to look again. Bollywood movies have a huge market in Russia, China, Africa, the Middle East, parts of Europe etc., and quite a few regions Bollywood movies regularly are among the top grossing.
But I'm sure some people would consider it great for the bathroom as an alternative for those magazines they always have to clear away when they get guests...
Seriously. If you're naive enough to thing it's 90% you seriously need to take a look at the sales numbers for the porn industry.
This article is quite enlightening, and as a bonus it summarises some of the research debunking the myth that porn contributes to violence.
You're the one that belongs to the freaky minority - deal with it.
Personally I think the Bible is soul destroying legal sh**. I'm not crying about the lack of a ban on that junk because I realise what the consequences of allowing censorship is.
In the case of Daniel Lyons I certainly hope to see more ad hominem attacks - his writing is so appalingly full of lies and misinterpretations that they aren't worth any attention, and the guy has proven himself to be such a major asshole he certainly deserves all the shit that's being written about it.
He has no credibility left, if he ever had any.
What's the problem?
Stopping blogs or chatting or other online behaviour won't stop that. It will only teach them that they need to hide what is going on in their life from you - destroying trust may very well prove to do far more damage to their safety than not by stopping them from telling you about worrying things before it develops further.
Why do you think they have to be implemented in a stacked way? There's nothing stopping the VFS and VM modules from co-existing in parallel and have both using eachothers services.
You make the point yourself: It's hard to tell if it happens under duress or not. A lot of laws are centered around this on the assumption that certain consequences are bad enough and/or the balance of power is slanted in such a way that it is worth limiting certain actions to give additional protection.
In some cases that protection might be absolute - you can't sign it away no matter what. For instance you can't make yourself someones slave in any meaningful legal sense, and you can't (in most countries anyway) get someone to kill you on your behalf. Both because - apart from the moral objections some might have - the consequences are seen as severe enough to warrant that extra protection.
In some cases the protection just limits how you go about something.
Many employment related regulations are like that - they may not be enforcable if your prospective employer only slip them in there for a normal job, but may often be enforcable for senior management positions (because you're expected to be in a stronger negotiating position) or if the contract specifically grant you something in return.
Some jurisdictions might allow you to enter an enforcable contract that make you work longer hours than normally legal in return for more frequent and longer holidays, for instance (though the same jurisdictions may have upper limits that are absolute, because the consequences of someone being pushed to exceed them are seen as too severe)
This really boils down to what is the case for contract law in general in most countries: A contract can be ruled uneforcable in whole or in part if it is seen by a court as too one-sided.
But the term "Marxist luddite" is an oxymoron.
If anything, one of the key focuses of Marxism and derivatives has been massive industrialisation in order to reduce the need for menial jobs as a pre-requisite for the further development of humanity.
Marx for instance, was very insistent that socialism and ultimately communism was dependent on a sufficient level of industrialisation to significantly reduce the size of the farming population to even be possible, as Marx' had very strong views on the farmers as a reactionary force in society.
Seeing as you bring in Lenin and Stalin, I'll comment on that too though both Lenin, and to a much greater extent Stalin bastardised Marxist ideas so much that there's not much that's even recognisable.
It was first Lenin that (in order to justify why Russia - a country that hardly met any of the criteria suggested by Marx' to be suitable for a Socialist revolution - should indeed be suitable) made the argument that landless farmers would largely share the political standpoints of the landless urban workers (the proletariat). As history has shown, he was very wrong - in fact the Bolcheviks almost exclusively built their support in the cities.
Both Lenin and Stalin after the revolution - regardless of all the other parts of Marx' theories they blatantly ignored - put a great deal of effort into transforming farming into an industrial process in part probably because they were acutely aware that they both needed to increase the effectiveness of farming and try bring the farm workers into the fold.
Stalin in particular forced through massive collectivisation combined with huge campaigns focusing on how new farm machinery etc. would bring factory-like effectiveness to farms.
If you ever get a chance to see Soviet propaganda films from the 30's for instance, then a the industrialisation of farming is a frequent theme.
Either way, unless all your applications always return static web pages, there - per definition - is logic in your presentation layer or there would be nothing there and it would be kind of useless to talk about "presentation layer".
You mean like PHP-GTK?
The rodents would take great offence at that.
In fact, parabolic cookers are widely available throughout the developing world. In many places they've been introduced in attempts to reduce deforestation from people collecting wood.
Like Anne Frank's?
Fact is, it's incredibly hard to determine today what will have value tomorrow. Most of those thirteen year old girls (or 20-something geek guys) blogs will have no historical value. But some of those people will grow up to have a profound impact on the world (or they may not grow up, but still have a profound impact, as was the case with Anne Frank). It may be ten years from now. Or 50.
Who knows what the writing they do now might tell us about what brought them wherever they end up? When people write diaries on paper chances are reasonable they'll survive and show up in an attic somewhere. But as more and more content get online, we also risk facing the loss of entire generations worth of many types of information to bit rot and simple lack of foresight.
I still wish I had a useable updated paint program with a DeluxePaint style interface (the Amiga version, not the PC abomination). For me, it's the complexity of the Gimp interface that's a pain. I loved having just what I needed always on the screen and just a keypress to go full screen with no menus etc.
I more or less stopped drawing once I switched to Linux from my trusty old Amiga, as I've yet to find a decent replacement (and it's been about 10 years).
So now all the bad guys need to do is to set up a website and holding a "price draw" for anyone who enters their e-mail address and postal code, and spend a few grand on advertising it online. Then they can fire off an e-mail to all those users using their postal code to make the mail look like an authentic MBNA e-mail, and give them a link to go to in order to confirm their security details...