I can't figure out which one Alva Noë has less understanding of - atheism, science, or Star Trek.
Apparently Noë's conclusion is that science does not make a very good religion. Since science is not a religion at all, that is unsurprising.
Atheism is not a religion. People who are atheists do not believe the same thing, they are people who lack a certain kind of belief. And they are certainly not people who have adopted science as their religion.
Atheism is a belief that there are no supernatural deities. Some atheists are fine with religious metaphors, they simply accept them as metaphors with no supernatural reality behind them. Atheism is not a rejection of values. In fact, atheists embrace the challenge of living lives that they must make meaningful on their own without having a religion tell them what that meaning is supposed to be ahead of time.
It's certainly a worthy area of computational linguistic research. But the reason for that is that it's a very hard problem. Automated language processing, with very smart people and very motivated spy agencies working very hard at it, has taken 60 years to get to a point not quite at the level of high school language speakers.
The privacy concerns are irrelevant. The deaf will demand this, and as long as there are weak-willed politicians and judges more interested in making political statements than dispensing justice, the whims of a special interest group will always trump the rights of the majority.
Most people in the US are blinded by their national mythology, in which a people threw off a foreign tyranny and created democracy and rule of law from scratch in a single day.
In reality, the American provinces were already democracies living with more freedom and less taxation than practically anywhere else in the world, and the British really didn't want to fight beyond the point of making a show of defending the loyalists. The only meaningful change was the shift from a mercantilist to a capitalist economy and currency reform.
When terrorists hate Americans "because of their freedoms", it's not about Americans having freedoms, it's because Americans believe freedoms are theirs and no-one else's. If someone thinks your freedoms don't count for anything, you become annoyed at them.
But with Americans falling over themselves to give up their freedoms, maybe that issue will resolve itself.
This illustrates how new technologies enable phenomena which are not as revolutionary as some people like to claim.
True, they are making an impact and they can be important, and from time to time there are genuine novelties, but most things that are nauseatingly overhyped these days are something old but "on a computer!".
Social media, for example, was trumpeted as enabling the Arab Spring, and, yes, it's role was significant, but it was not qualitatively different from movements that in the past used audio tape, telegraph, letters, printing press, people sailing, people walking, etc.
US foreign policy towards Iran is based on Iran having a revolution that asserted its independence, rather than meekly accepting being a pseudo-colony.
This shows that the claims of Google have been overhyped, but while I have no reason to trust Google, I have to wonder if the fault is Google or the people who pretend to be journalists.
The problem with the science surrounding nutrition is that for a long time the people investigating nutrition were not scientists, and later actual scientists were handicapped by the poor state of the art. So studies would compare diets where one had a higher salt content than the other, but simply put variables were not controlled, and as it turns out the other differences between the samples vastly outweighed the supposed independent variable.
High-salt foods are typically, but not exclusively, unhealthy highly processed foods of poor nutritional value. That is a real statistical correlation even though the salt itself is not the issue.
Sometimes it's just a title, but a project manager who is actually doing project management has a very busy and vital job with well-defined responsibilities.
The purpose of the policy is not economic or ideological, it is to punish a country that chose to stop being an US colony and actually exercise the independence that was only supposed to be on paper.
Cuba is hardly a model of economic progress or human rights, but that's not the reason.
The constitution says no, in black and white, but unfortunately Canadian courts like to make up the constitution as they go, so much so that they themselves have no idea what is constitutional and what is not.
...is for software to do one thing, and do it well.
A computer does not (usually) need to be both a server and a desktop, though perhaps desktop versus server is more a matter of the windows manager rather than the whole distribution.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't figure out which one Alva Noë has less understanding of - atheism, science, or Star Trek.
Apparently Noë's conclusion is that science does not make a very good religion. Since science is not a religion at all, that is unsurprising.
Atheism is not a religion. People who are atheists do not believe the same thing, they are people who lack a certain kind of belief. And they are certainly not people who have adopted science as their religion.
Atheism is a belief that there are no supernatural deities. Some atheists are fine with religious metaphors, they simply accept them as metaphors with no supernatural reality behind them. Atheism is not a rejection of values. In fact, atheists embrace the challenge of living lives that they must make meaningful on their own without having a religion tell them what that meaning is supposed to be ahead of time.
Spock is a fictional character.
...evolution isn't going to let people get away with being sloths.
Evolution "isn't going to let people get away with being sloths" and simultaneously be successful at propagating their genes.
A lot of the slothful are fine with that.
So, interstellar Twitter is *not* a sign of an advanced civilization.
(Though that would have been my guess all along.)
It's certainly a worthy area of computational linguistic research. But the reason for that is that it's a very hard problem. Automated language processing, with very smart people and very motivated spy agencies working very hard at it, has taken 60 years to get to a point not quite at the level of high school language speakers.
The privacy concerns are irrelevant. The deaf will demand this, and as long as there are weak-willed politicians and judges more interested in making political statements than dispensing justice, the whims of a special interest group will always trump the rights of the majority.
What moral authority does the state have
It's called being a democracy. You appear to be unfamiliar with the concept.
Most people in the US are blinded by their national mythology, in which a people threw off a foreign tyranny and created democracy and rule of law from scratch in a single day.
In reality, the American provinces were already democracies living with more freedom and less taxation than practically anywhere else in the world, and the British really didn't want to fight beyond the point of making a show of defending the loyalists. The only meaningful change was the shift from a mercantilist to a capitalist economy and currency reform.
When terrorists hate Americans "because of their freedoms", it's not about Americans having freedoms, it's because Americans believe freedoms are theirs and no-one else's. If someone thinks your freedoms don't count for anything, you become annoyed at them.
But with Americans falling over themselves to give up their freedoms, maybe that issue will resolve itself.
This illustrates how new technologies enable phenomena which are not as revolutionary as some people like to claim.
True, they are making an impact and they can be important, and from time to time there are genuine novelties, but most things that are nauseatingly overhyped these days are something old but "on a computer!".
Social media, for example, was trumpeted as enabling the Arab Spring, and, yes, it's role was significant, but it was not qualitatively different from movements that in the past used audio tape, telegraph, letters, printing press, people sailing, people walking, etc.
No, his response should have been proportional.
Bullying is always cowardice, not retribution or even justice.
Health care unavailable due to cost might as well not exist at all.
The oil would be liberated. Why would the embargo be affected?
US foreign policy towards Iran is based on Iran having a revolution that asserted its independence, rather than meekly accepting being a pseudo-colony.
This shows that the claims of Google have been overhyped, but while I have no reason to trust Google, I have to wonder if the fault is Google or the people who pretend to be journalists.
Self-interest. Nothing more.
I doubt he even understands what remorse is, only that a guilty plea is a good strategy when there's very little hope of acquittal.
The problem with the science surrounding nutrition is that for a long time the people investigating nutrition were not scientists, and later actual scientists were handicapped by the poor state of the art. So studies would compare diets where one had a higher salt content than the other, but simply put variables were not controlled, and as it turns out the other differences between the samples vastly outweighed the supposed independent variable.
High-salt foods are typically, but not exclusively, unhealthy highly processed foods of poor nutritional value. That is a real statistical correlation even though the salt itself is not the issue.
his unemployment is not a mystery.
We'd see more of this if people were given a basic salary just for existing
That just doesn't work from a PR perspective. Many people's value system will reject any kind of overt entitlement.
Call it a dividend, on the basis that a citizen is a kind of shareholder in the national economy. Which has the added benefit of being correct.
Sometimes it's just a title, but a project manager who is actually doing project management has a very busy and vital job with well-defined responsibilities.
The purpose of the policy is not economic or ideological, it is to punish a country that chose to stop being an US colony and actually exercise the independence that was only supposed to be on paper.
Cuba is hardly a model of economic progress or human rights, but that's not the reason.
Very much like Iran.
Plants might not be intelligent enough to realize that until too late (for us).
But... but... I saw it on TV once!
This is a city where cars are at risk of being run down by pedestrians - a "one way" street has a lot of pedestrian flow in both directions.
The constitution says no, in black and white, but unfortunately Canadian courts like to make up the constitution as they go, so much so that they themselves have no idea what is constitutional and what is not.
...is for software to do one thing, and do it well.
A computer does not (usually) need to be both a server and a desktop, though perhaps desktop versus server is more a matter of the windows manager rather than the whole distribution.
The biggest scams happen on Wall Street - start there.