How, exactly, am I wrong? Repeating that you would like Hemos and Taco to do something is not an argument in its favor. If you could actually provide any reason for me to believe that those aren't direct quotes, or that Hemos is an editor, or that editing without notification is OK, I might be more inclined to agree.
Otherwise, you are, IMNSHO, little more than an above-average troll.
(1) It is unprofessional and unethical to edit sunmissions of any sort without clear notification that it may be edited. There is no such notification here, so I would be far more concerned if editing *were* taking place.
(2) I don't recall Hemos being an editor, anyway. He is allowed to post stories *without* being an editor, you know.
(3) The submissions posted in the stories are *not* submissions in the sense of articles in a journal. They are quotes taken from emails. Go try an test submission. The preview says something like:
James Lanfear wrote in to say "blah blah blah."
That is *not* a submitted article (which should probably be edited), but a quote from the text of my messege, which happens to contain a submission of some sort. Do you understand the difference?
(1) This isn't a matter of professionalism. In many situations (such as this one, IMO), it is *very* unprofessional to do what you've asked (editing quotes). Unethical, even.
(2) Given that there is no indication given on the submissions page that editing will be done, I would very disappointed if it were. Once again *that* would be unprofessional.
Yes and I don't expect submissions of this type to be edited. If you would actually read the submissions some time, you would see that they are *quoted* from the original text, thus the italics and "x wrote in to say...". It doesn't matter where something is being submitted, if you quote it, you don't edit it, except to make it match the original quote. This isn't like a Letter to the Editor; these are quotes within the body of a larger article (the story header itself). I'm getting tired of repeating myself....
That being said, it isn't stated anywhere that submissions will be edited. Regardless of what you think it correct, this is the way it is done, and the only way we have any reason to expect it to be done.
(1) You're talking about repairing previously existing functions, whereas he was talking about actually adding new ones. The former is simple enough, given time. The latter, however, is not. This is the reason that, e.g., 'feral' children never learn to speak, or people born blind can't suddenly 'regain' their sight.
The brain is extremely flexible at birth, and grows progrssively less so as you age. This is a necessary: performance is improved through specialization, which inevitably results in a more rigid system. An adult brain is still tremendously flexible, but seldom sufficiently so to make any drastic changes. Adding new features is very definiately a drastic change. Repairing damage, OTOH, is a matter of reversing drastic changes, so natural it works quite a bit better. (For a related example, phantom limb (partially) the result of the brain not being able to adapt to it's new state, sans limb. I'm not sure if/how you can recover from PL, but it takes a very long time to do so.)
(2) It's not a matter of new input in the case of super-retina's. There no input whatsoever, because there's no optic nerves connecting the added features to the brain. You's have to totally rebuild the visual system, at least up to the LGN, to make it work.
IIRC, Einstein was mostly influenced by Spinoza, so it is somewhat Jewish by default. OTOH, Spinoza's metaphysics are about as far from religion you can get while still using 'God' as a pronoun.
This is one of those places were I take issue with Sagan, the Skeptical Enquirer (sp? God I'm tired), etc.
I believe (notice that believe is a key word here!:) That everything has a rational explanation. This is why I mentioned "The Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark". It is very good reading, and could teach many people skeptical thinking skills.
Very often this is transformed from 'find a rational explanation' to 'any other explanation is irrational', with the explanation being hallucinations, usually. Regardless of whether that was the intention of the author (in some cases it certainly seems it was), I'm tired of seeing people use 'Sagan said you're demon haunted' as a justification for dismissing anything they don't like. (Note: I'm not at all accusing you of this, your mention of Sagan just triggered a rant reflex.)
My current favorite example involves several studies that seemed to provide evidence for ESP. These were recently disproven by a meta-analysis that showed the were most likely flukes. Fine, that's a perfectly resonable explanation; testing for ESP isn't really an exact science.
The problem was that in building the meta-analysis, several more recent studies weren't included even though the authors (of the meta-analysis) admit they would have the swung the results around toward 'something odd is happening'. The reasoning? None, except a handwave about the studies being too recent to be incorporated. I don't care whether ESP exists--I don't have it if it does--but this is an absurd defense of the 'reasonable explanation', methodological error.
(If that post made sense at all, someone give me a brownie point.)
Atheism: "disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of God" Reread that: disbelief in. This is sometimes called 'soft atheism'; if you disagree with the definition, call OED and let them know. I also happen to believe it is the more grammatically correct of the two:
a == 'without' the(os) == 'God' ism == 'belief' (according to some)
atheism == without (belief in) God
Either way, it makes no statement other than that the atheist is one who doesn't believe in God. Saying that God can't or doesn't exist is 'antitheism' (and idiotic); I trust I don't have to explain the difference between 'anti' and 'a'.
Since it is implicit in agnosticism that the agnostic not believe on God (well, not necessarily, but in all cases I've heard of), agnosticism is the equivalent of atheism. It might help to remember that agnosticism involves knowledge whereas (a)theism involves belief. One can be both an atheist and agnostic--in fact, claiming to be anything other than agnostic is foolishness--but the latter can never replace the former.
Speaking as an atheist, I completely agree with much of what you said. I'm not terribly loyal to my colleagues. In fact, I spend the bulk of my time arguing with other atheists and defending theists from morons. I'm quite open to the possibility that God exists, and should proof present itself I will make a judgement; until then, I will happily continue being an agnostic atheist.
Every atheist I know, including myself, isn't some reactionary knee-jerker but someone well versed in religious ideology, doctrine, and history. Much more so than most believers and with the added bonus of being informed on more than one religion.
With the caveat that there are a lot of reactionary knee-jerk atheists who you don't know, this is absolutely correct. 'Believers' tend to be fairly poor at theology. Theologians on the other hand, make interesting adversaries.
I'm sure you do sound like a generic atheist to most Christians; you sound like a generic atheist to me as well, humble atheist that I am. Actually, you come across as excessively arrogant, irrational (later on) and a tad narow-minded--a rather poor example for the rest of our bretheren. Perhaps all my work in philosophy has raised my standards too far, but I can't see having a reasonable discussion on religion with you. This, however, is much more fun and reasonable.
But it isn't, so we have the Knuths of the world preaching their 'modern intelligent' views. To me its crap, to you it might be enlightenment.
This strikes me as being problematic. Presumably at least some of the modernizers (emphasis on 'some') are trying to find the truth of the matter; thus the modernization. This seems to me to be no different than physicists building new theories from old (except that physics works, of course;-). There's a fair number of religious people who don't even believe in God, for example. Would you say that a pagan stating that his 'gods' are simply psychological in nature is full of crap? That he's just attempting to cover his archaic beliefs with rationalizations and modernizations?
About that 99% mystical part, well thats fiction if I've ever seen any.
As is that. If you read 'mystically' rather loosely, as I did, you could drop virtually anything in that slot, e.g. for mathematicians it might be elegance (that's a stereotype, but it works here). For a (good) artist, it might be beauty or 'truth'. 'Mystical' is a very flexible word; I think you're reading it too narrowly.
Your post really reflects that an intelligent person will do their best to rationalize their emotional beliefs to their intellect.
I can't believe you would use that in this argument. It's so typical of atheists it's almost cliche. If nothing else, it can be turned back on you so easily.
Which seems very contradictory to the goal of religion in the first place - to find truth.
Hmmm, except that my 'religion' isn't about Truth. I firmly believe that we can't know the Truth about the world--definitely not through religion, but not through science, either. My religion is about nothing more than what I do: when I write, my religion is about expression and creation. When I'm study, it's about knowledge and understanding (not Truth, however). Simply stated, my religion is what I care about most. I apologize in advance if this doesn't mesh with your definition of religion.
I agree that Knuth isn't weak, in any tradition sense, but to me he is emotionally unable to deal with the world without a belief in a mystical supernatural force.
Knuth aside, this contradicts your statement above. Is religion about dealing with the world, or seeking truth? I'm more inclined to believe the former, but neither are complete explanations.
This also seems to be a ploy, carefully executed flamebait more than anything else. You probably actually believe that, but I'd love to see you prove it.
I've been dying to ask a more vocal atheist about this: how do you view the 'Philosopher's God'? That is, the God whose purpose is not to comfort or create, but to fill an ontological gap in the world. Whitehead, for example, created a God, in the loosest possible sense of the word, because physics does allow mathematics a place in the universe, even though it clearly (to him and others) exerts an influence. (This is the oft stated curious tendency for mathematics to work everywhere, from molecular biology to cosmology.) He's wasn't particularly fond of his God--he was an avowed atheist most his life--but it seemed the only logical conclusion. Was he emotionally unable to deal with the world?
Actually, he inadvertently (I assume) brought up an actual problem: the epistemology of science. Of course, since most people are completely philosophically illiterate, I don't expect you to know this.
We can, in principle, if not in practice (at the moment) know that the mantle is there. Just dig a really deep, look down, and scream the result before you die.
You cannot do the same with particles, however. Or most fields (EM fields, not fields of science). We rely completely on our instruments to tell us whether they exist, what they are like, to confirm or theories, and so on. Our knowledge, therefore, extends no further than the front panel of the machines; we cannot know, for example, that molecules are not actually small groups of gnomes holding hands. We can only know that the machine doesn't indicate that.
This is where epistemological pragmatism comes in. We don't know what photons actually are, but we can take a good guess; that guess happens to mesh with physics and works well in practice. So, practically speaking, our theories may as well be true. This is sort of an engineering approach to science.
As long as you believe that truth has some relation to reality, you'll always be disappointed in this case. OTOH, if you take truth to be 'the best truth we have', you don't have a problem.
I consider the argument of "I know He exists" to be valid as long as the discussion doesn't involve converting me or telling me I'm mistaken because of that revelation. I'm not going to believe in God simply because someone else does, but likewise I consider that argument to be sufficient grounds for belief for the person making that statement.
AFA atheism: Having read most of the evidence of God's nonexistence, I'm not terribly impressed. Of course, I have never believed He could be proven (not) to exist objectively, anyway. Since the only proof of His existence I take seriously is the experience of his His existence (which, as stated above, only works for the experiencer), I am immune to disproof, as well.
agnostics are often the worst of all (!) because they often simply state that you can't know, or that they don't know, and expect that their statement is enough.
Actually agnosticism is terrible simply because it doesn't fit into the logical spectrum for position about God. All (well, almost all) agnostics don't believe in God (or they wouldn't be agnostic) which should make them atheists. The problem is that in many people's minds atheism == antitheism, and many agnostics don't want to be associated with blatant antitheists. (I'm an atheist, incidentally; the insidious sound of antitheism is purely accidental.)
The problem with religion is that these experiences aren't reproducible - you gotta take on faith that some dude in the mountain saw visions.
True, but that's not the point. Religious experience is a proof to the person who experiences it; no one else has any obligation to take them seriously, and usually few do. If someone says they heard God speak to them, I certainly don't take it to mean anything significant; if I heard God speak, you be bet I'd become a believer real quick (or go to the hospital, depending on the circumstances).
But no...that would be heresy...we must accept the "word" on faith.
First, that is not the attitude of Religion, per se, but of certain religions. There are a lot of religious people who are not thoroughly soaked in dogma, running around whacking scientists on the head with Bibles. If you could prove God didn't exist, there'd be a lot of people who would affected--even crippled--but who would accept it as true.
The problem with science is that you have to reproduce it, or be ridiculed like the cold fusion guys.
Very true. And once we understand more about the mind, we may be able to reproduce religious experience. OTOH, science simply may not be the appropriate way to go about this. And cold fusion works, kinda.
Do you see the contrast?
Yeah. He made an intelligent and correct statement, which you didn't understand. Don't feel bad, you aren't alone.
According to the Programmer's Intro, you can get direct access to the hardware via keys. Very direct in fact; the kernel just confirms that it won't get toasted, then lets you loose. I'm not sure how close to real-time it gets--the key itself is still in the way--but it's better than nothing.
Sure, but we can define "blue" as light with a wavelength from XXX to YYY nanometers.
True, with the caveat (which I needed as well for my own post) that we don't see light at all; at best, blue is a pattern of activation in the brain, often, but not always, triggered by light of x wavelength striking the retina.
More problematic is experience itself, which was the subject of post. You *can't* explain experience in terms of anything else; it's atomic and cannot be reduced. You can explain the physical (re)actions that accompany experience, but that tells you nothing about the experience itself. Saying that blue light is x nanometers tells me a lot about light and gives me a working definition of 'blue', but tells me nothing about the experience of blueness. This is the dreaded qualia problem that philosophy has thoughtfully dropped on our heads just as we were getting a handle on neurology.
The problem is that at this point we have a lot of people who've had religious experiences, but no physical correlate to those experiences, and no objective evidence that God exists. Objectively speaking, we can't say God exists; subjectively, those who have had such experiences have all the evidence they need. It's very possible that this will all be explained in the coming decades (I'm not foolish enough to say years), but it is also possible that it will not. Should that happen, we would be faced with the possibility that God exists, but is only accessable through direct experience and beyond the reach of science as traditionally formulated.
You missed the point (or the important point, anyway). He stated, correctly, the religious experience is proof to the person who experiences it. Whether it can be proof to others is not at issue: it can't be, at least not directly. Your example points out one reason why. But since that was never in question, it is irrelevant.
"Science cannnot deal with God, the supernatural, or anything else non-observable."
... neither can anything else
I believe (or hope) he meant 'non-observable' in the objective sense: colors are 'non-observable' because objectively there are only wavelengths of light or neural activation patterns. Nevertheless, color exists. If God's existence is purely subjective (e.g., 'God' is a feeling instead of being) then he is non-observable in this sense. Of course, he's not really much of a God then, but it's never bothered psychologists, so who am I to complain....
God is irrelevant because it is unknowable. Even if you claim to "know god", your experience is unintelligible to me (and everyone else).
(1) You can't argue that God is unknowable without knowing that he is unknowable. See the problem? Logical silliness aside, if those who 'know god' actually know anything (a big 'if', but one that is rather difficult to disprove) then god isn't unknowable. Either way your statement is incorrect.
(2) That religious experience is unintelligible proves nothing whatsoever. *All* experience is unintelligible; try explaining 'blue' to a blind man. While this makes it an increadible pain in the ass to study, you can't just dismiss it, as the behaviorists learned a few decades ago.
Intel had already announced they were switching to socket 4xx for the PIII+ when the BP6 was released. In fact, I knew about it back in May, which I opted for dual slotkets instead of the forthcoming dual 370 boards; at least there's a good chance I'll just have to buy $20 worth of risers to upgrade.
The point being, Intel may have made the change for evil reasons, but everyone knew this was coming. Not that Abit or the rest were eager to point it out to their customers.
Re:Does it really matter?
on
No Next Q3Test
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· Score: 1
An Athlong with a TNT2 Ultra on it performs as well as the high end graphical workstations of TODAY.
Er, no. A PIII/GeForce is just about equal to SGI's lower end Onyx2 (comparison recently published), which puts it well below, eg, SGI's other workstations, and many, many HP's, Alpha's and Sun's. You may not realise this, but real time 3D includes engineering, where their is a *big* demand for powerful engines and hardware.
NAME SOME SOFTWARE
Unreal, for one, though that's mostly personal preference.
If engines not-yet-finished but demo'ed count (since Q3 isn't finished, I don't see why they shouldn't) then you have Halo and Oni from Bungie, the former especially. Evolution seems quite nice, as does whatever's driving a few of those PS2 demos (I suppose that doesn't count). I know there are at least two more, but the games didn't look interesting so I've forgotten.
The GUI and Mice, for instance, were developed back in the 60's AFAIK by individuals (their names escape me at the moment).
...who relocated to PARC soon after, and refined the technology while there. To that extent, they are PARC ideas. (I'm not at all sure, but I believe the mouse was a PARC invention, at least as a replacement for less useful pointer.)
And the Alta and Star were not a 'limited implementations'. In many ways, they were (and in fewer ways, still are) superior to the MacOS (and Windows, and X...).
It's definitely complex and inconsistent, but the point was that it's explicit--eg, instead of inflection you use prepositions and auxiliary verbs--and to that extent superior to many languages for scientific purposes. (Incidentally, Whitehead was a logician/mathematician, arguably the greatest of this century; I feel inclined to believe him when he says English offers an advantage in his own field.) You're absolutely correct, but I don't think that invalidates his statement.
(And many people would argue that the body of English literature is no greater than that of, for example, German or Japanese.)
I agree, but I'd like to toss this goody in: AN Whitehead's Science and the Modern World included a section about language (as an analogy for mathematics, IIRC). One of the points he made was that while English is a shallow language, even compared to other Germanic languages, it makes up for it, in some ways, by being utterly explicit. Nothing is implied or masked by, eg. inflection; the entire language open, simple, and, to some extent, precise. (That a bit of an exaggeration, of course.) I believe his argument was that that made English a superior language for science, where ambiguity is a Bad Thing, but I can see who it could be extended to this, in the form of using English as the lowest-level of the metalanguage, then building protocols for the other languages on top, in a hierarchy of language features.
Of course, this would probably ruin the entire project, but I'm not very confident that it will succeed anyway.
Bipolar disorder does appear to be genetic. It's certainly hereditary--one of the better established hereditary mental illnesses, in fact--and children of bipolar parents who are later adopted by normals have almost the same incidence of the disease as those who aren't. (That sentence was a bit convoluted....) This implies, rather strongly, that it is genetic, though I could be creative and come up with other explanations.
AFAIK, it's fairly strictly genetic, as well. The diagnostic requirements place environmentally-induced disorders (eg, bipolar due to head-trauma or stress) in a different category, so true Bipolar I/II should be entirely genetic, though the extreme variation in responses to drugs implies that it's either (i) very complex, genetically, or (ii) has a genetic trigger, but is not itself genetic.
(For some reason, this post sucked. I shouldn't try to write just after getting up.)
Amazon's one-click ordering has to be manually activated at each site now (that is, every machine, user account/profile, etc). That requires entering your password to access you account config. Ordering w/o 1-C also requires a password. That's hardly 'secure', but its as good as you'll find on the web.
Slashdot Mirror
How, exactly, am I wrong? Repeating that you would like Hemos and Taco to do something is not an argument in its favor. If you could actually provide any reason for me to believe that those aren't direct quotes, or that Hemos is an editor, or that editing without notification is OK, I might be more inclined to agree.
Otherwise, you are, IMNSHO, little more than an above-average troll.
*smashes head on keyboard*
ARGH! Did you even read my previous post?
(1) It is unprofessional and unethical to edit sunmissions of any sort without clear notification that it may be edited. There is no such notification here, so I would be far more concerned if editing *were* taking place.
(2) I don't recall Hemos being an editor, anyway. He is allowed to post stories *without* being an editor, you know.
(3) The submissions posted in the stories are *not* submissions in the sense of articles in a journal. They are quotes taken from emails. Go try an test submission. The preview says something like:
James Lanfear wrote in to say "blah blah blah."
That is *not* a submitted article (which should probably be edited), but a quote from the text of my messege, which happens to contain a submission of some sort. Do you understand the difference?
(1) This isn't a matter of professionalism. In many situations (such as this one, IMO), it is *very* unprofessional to do what you've asked (editing quotes). Unethical, even.
(2) Given that there is no indication given on the submissions page that editing will be done, I would very disappointed if it were. Once again *that* would be unprofessional.
Yes and I don't expect submissions of this type to be edited. If you would actually read the submissions some time, you would see that they are *quoted* from the original text, thus the italics and "x wrote in to say...". It doesn't matter where something is being submitted, if you quote it, you don't edit it, except to make it match the original quote. This isn't like a Letter to the Editor; these are quotes within the body of a larger article (the story header itself). I'm getting tired of repeating myself....
That being said, it isn't stated anywhere that submissions will be edited. Regardless of what you think it correct, this is the way it is done, and the only way we have any reason to expect it to be done.
No, it isn't. That was a direct quote (note the italics); changing quotes is a no-no. The most he should have done is drop a '(sic)' after "proofed".
There's two differences.
(1) You're talking about repairing previously existing functions, whereas he was talking about actually adding new ones. The former is simple enough, given time. The latter, however, is not. This is the reason that, e.g., 'feral' children never learn to speak, or people born blind can't suddenly 'regain' their sight.
The brain is extremely flexible at birth, and grows progrssively less so as you age. This is a necessary: performance is improved through specialization, which inevitably results in a more rigid system. An adult brain is still tremendously flexible, but seldom sufficiently so to make any drastic changes. Adding new features is very definiately a drastic change. Repairing damage, OTOH, is a matter of reversing drastic changes, so natural it works quite a bit better. (For a related example, phantom limb (partially) the result of the brain not being able to adapt to it's new state, sans limb. I'm not sure if/how you can recover from PL, but it takes a very long time to do so.)
(2) It's not a matter of new input in the case of super-retina's. There no input whatsoever, because there's no optic nerves connecting the added features to the brain. You's have to totally rebuild the visual system, at least up to the LGN, to make it work.
IIRC, Einstein was mostly influenced by Spinoza, so it is somewhat Jewish by default. OTOH, Spinoza's metaphysics are about as far from religion you can get while still using 'God' as a pronoun.
This is one of those places were I take issue with Sagan, the Skeptical Enquirer (sp? God I'm tired), etc.
:) That everything has a rational explanation. This is why I mentioned "The Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark". It is very good reading, and could teach many people skeptical thinking skills.
I believe (notice that believe is a key word here!
Very often this is transformed from 'find a rational explanation' to 'any other explanation is irrational', with the explanation being hallucinations, usually. Regardless of whether that was the intention of the author (in some cases it certainly seems it was), I'm tired of seeing people use 'Sagan said you're demon haunted' as a justification for dismissing anything they don't like. (Note: I'm not at all accusing you of this, your mention of Sagan just triggered a rant reflex.)
My current favorite example involves several studies that seemed to provide evidence for ESP. These were recently disproven by a meta-analysis that showed the were most likely flukes. Fine, that's a perfectly resonable explanation; testing for ESP isn't really an exact science.
The problem was that in building the meta-analysis, several more recent studies weren't included even though the authors (of the meta-analysis) admit they would have the swung the results around toward 'something odd is happening'. The reasoning? None, except a handwave about the studies being too recent to be incorporated. I don't care whether ESP exists--I don't have it if it does--but this is an absurd defense of the 'reasonable explanation', methodological error.
(If that post made sense at all, someone give me a brownie point.)
*sigh*
Atheism: "disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of God" Reread that: disbelief in. This is sometimes called 'soft atheism'; if you disagree with the definition, call OED and let them know. I also happen to believe it is the more grammatically correct of the two:
a == 'without'
the(os) == 'God'
ism == 'belief' (according to some)
atheism == without (belief in) God
Either way, it makes no statement other than that the atheist is one who doesn't believe in God. Saying that God can't or doesn't exist is 'antitheism' (and idiotic); I trust I don't have to explain the difference between 'anti' and 'a'.
Since it is implicit in agnosticism that the agnostic not believe on God (well, not necessarily, but in all cases I've heard of), agnosticism is the equivalent of atheism. It might help to remember that agnosticism involves knowledge whereas (a)theism involves belief. One can be both an atheist and agnostic--in fact, claiming to be anything other than agnostic is foolishness--but the latter can never replace the former.
Speaking as an atheist, I completely agree with much of what you said. I'm not terribly loyal to my colleagues. In fact, I spend the bulk of my time arguing with other atheists and defending theists from morons. I'm quite open to the possibility that God exists, and should proof present itself I will make a judgement; until then, I will happily continue being an agnostic atheist.
Let's see here:
;-). There's a fair number of religious people who don't even believe in God, for example. Would you say that a pagan stating that his 'gods' are simply psychological in nature is full of crap? That he's just attempting to cover his archaic beliefs with rationalizations and modernizations?
Every atheist I know, including myself, isn't some reactionary knee-jerker but someone well versed in religious ideology, doctrine, and history. Much more so than most believers and with the added bonus of being informed on more than one religion.
With the caveat that there are a lot of reactionary knee-jerk atheists who you don't know, this is absolutely correct. 'Believers' tend to be fairly poor at theology. Theologians on the other hand, make interesting adversaries.
I'm sure you do sound like a generic atheist to most Christians; you sound like a generic atheist to me as well, humble atheist that I am. Actually, you come across as excessively arrogant, irrational (later on) and a tad narow-minded--a rather poor example for the rest of our bretheren. Perhaps all my work in philosophy has raised my standards too far, but I can't see having a reasonable discussion on religion with you. This, however, is much more fun and reasonable.
But it isn't, so we have the Knuths of the world preaching their 'modern intelligent' views. To me its crap, to you it might be enlightenment.
This strikes me as being problematic. Presumably at least some of the modernizers (emphasis on 'some') are trying to find the truth of the matter; thus the modernization. This seems to me to be no different than physicists building new theories from old (except that physics works, of course
About that 99% mystical part, well thats fiction if I've ever seen any.
As is that. If you read 'mystically' rather loosely, as I did, you could drop virtually anything in that slot, e.g. for mathematicians it might be elegance (that's a stereotype, but it works here). For a (good) artist, it might be beauty or 'truth'. 'Mystical' is a very flexible word; I think you're reading it too narrowly.
Your post really reflects that an intelligent person will do their best to rationalize their emotional beliefs to their intellect.
I can't believe you would use that in this argument. It's so typical of atheists it's almost cliche. If nothing else, it can be turned back on you so easily.
Which seems very contradictory to the goal of religion in the first place - to find truth.
Hmmm, except that my 'religion' isn't about Truth. I firmly believe that we can't know the Truth about the world--definitely not through religion, but not through science, either. My religion is about nothing more than what I do: when I write, my religion is about expression and creation. When I'm study, it's about knowledge and understanding (not Truth, however). Simply stated, my religion is what I care about most. I apologize in advance if this doesn't mesh with your definition of religion.
I agree that Knuth isn't weak, in any tradition sense, but to me he is emotionally unable to deal with the world without a belief in a mystical supernatural force.
Knuth aside, this contradicts your statement above. Is religion about dealing with the world, or seeking truth? I'm more inclined to believe the former, but neither are complete explanations.
This also seems to be a ploy, carefully executed flamebait more than anything else. You probably actually believe that, but I'd love to see you prove it.
I've been dying to ask a more vocal atheist about this: how do you view the 'Philosopher's God'? That is, the God whose purpose is not to comfort or create, but to fill an ontological gap in the world. Whitehead, for example, created a God, in the loosest possible sense of the word, because physics does allow mathematics a place in the universe, even though it clearly (to him and others) exerts an influence. (This is the oft stated curious tendency for mathematics to work everywhere, from molecular biology to cosmology.) He's wasn't particularly fond of his God--he was an avowed atheist most his life--but it seemed the only logical conclusion. Was he emotionally unable to deal with the world?
But some would argue that beauty itelf is mystical, regardless of whether there is a God.
Actually, he inadvertently (I assume) brought up an actual problem: the epistemology of science. Of course, since most people are completely philosophically illiterate, I don't expect you to know this.
We can, in principle, if not in practice (at the moment) know that the mantle is there. Just dig a really deep, look down, and scream the result before you die.
You cannot do the same with particles, however. Or most fields (EM fields, not fields of science). We rely completely on our instruments to tell us whether they exist, what they are like, to confirm or theories, and so on. Our knowledge, therefore, extends no further than the front panel of the machines; we cannot know, for example, that molecules are not actually small groups of gnomes holding hands. We can only know that the machine doesn't indicate that.
This is where epistemological pragmatism comes in. We don't know what photons actually are, but we can take a good guess; that guess happens to mesh with physics and works well in practice. So, practically speaking, our theories may as well be true. This is sort of an engineering approach to science.
As long as you believe that truth has some relation to reality, you'll always be disappointed in this case. OTOH, if you take truth to be 'the best truth we have', you don't have a problem.
I consider the argument of "I know He exists" to be valid as long as the discussion doesn't involve converting me or telling me I'm mistaken because of that revelation. I'm not going to believe in God simply because someone else does, but likewise I consider that argument to be sufficient grounds for belief for the person making that statement.
AFA atheism: Having read most of the evidence of God's nonexistence, I'm not terribly impressed. Of course, I have never believed He could be proven (not) to exist objectively, anyway. Since the only proof of His existence I take seriously is the experience of his His existence (which, as stated above, only works for the experiencer), I am immune to disproof, as well.
agnostics are often the worst of all (!) because they often simply state that you can't know, or that they don't know, and expect that their statement is enough.
Actually agnosticism is terrible simply because it doesn't fit into the logical spectrum for position about God. All (well, almost all) agnostics don't believe in God (or they wouldn't be agnostic) which should make them atheists. The problem is that in many people's minds atheism == antitheism, and many agnostics don't want to be associated with blatant antitheists. (I'm an atheist, incidentally; the insidious sound of antitheism is purely accidental.)
(I wonder if I could get paid for this....)
The problem with religion is that these experiences aren't reproducible - you gotta take on faith that some dude in the mountain saw visions.
True, but that's not the point. Religious experience is a proof to the person who experiences it; no one else has any obligation to take them seriously, and usually few do. If someone says they heard God speak to them, I certainly don't take it to mean anything significant; if I heard God speak, you be bet I'd become a believer real quick (or go to the hospital, depending on the circumstances).
But no...that would be heresy...we must accept the "word" on faith.
First, that is not the attitude of Religion, per se, but of certain religions. There are a lot of religious people who are not thoroughly soaked in dogma, running around whacking scientists on the head with Bibles. If you could prove God didn't exist, there'd be a lot of people who would affected--even crippled--but who would accept it as true.
The problem with science is that you have to reproduce it, or be ridiculed like the cold fusion guys.
Very true. And once we understand more about the mind, we may be able to reproduce religious experience. OTOH, science simply may not be the appropriate way to go about this. And cold fusion works, kinda.
Do you see the contrast?
Yeah. He made an intelligent and correct statement, which you didn't understand. Don't feel bad, you aren't alone.
According to the Programmer's Intro, you can get direct access to the hardware via keys. Very direct in fact; the kernel just confirms that it won't get toasted, then lets you loose. I'm not sure how close to real-time it gets--the key itself is still in the way--but it's better than nothing.
Sure, but we can define "blue" as light with a wavelength from XXX to YYY nanometers.
True, with the caveat (which I needed as well for my own post) that we don't see light at all; at best, blue is a pattern of activation in the brain, often, but not always, triggered by light of x wavelength striking the retina.
More problematic is experience itself, which was the subject of post. You *can't* explain experience in terms of anything else; it's atomic and cannot be reduced. You can explain the physical (re)actions that accompany experience, but that tells you nothing about the experience itself. Saying that blue light is x nanometers tells me a lot about light and gives me a working definition of 'blue', but tells me nothing about the experience of blueness. This is the dreaded qualia problem that philosophy has thoughtfully dropped on our heads just as we were getting a handle on neurology.
The problem is that at this point we have a lot of people who've had religious experiences, but no physical correlate to those experiences, and no objective evidence that God exists. Objectively speaking, we can't say God exists; subjectively, those who have had such experiences have all the evidence they need. It's very possible that this will all be explained in the coming decades (I'm not foolish enough to say years), but it is also possible that it will not. Should that happen, we would be faced with the possibility that God exists, but is only accessable through direct experience and beyond the reach of science as traditionally formulated.
You missed the point (or the important point, anyway). He stated, correctly, the religious experience is proof to the person who experiences it. Whether it can be proof to others is not at issue: it can't be, at least not directly. Your example points out one reason why. But since that was never in question, it is irrelevant.
"Science cannnot deal with God, the supernatural, or anything else non-observable."
... neither can anything else
I believe (or hope) he meant 'non-observable' in the objective sense: colors are 'non-observable' because objectively there are only wavelengths of light or neural activation patterns. Nevertheless, color exists. If God's existence is purely subjective (e.g., 'God' is a feeling instead of being) then he is non-observable in this sense. Of course, he's not really much of a God then, but it's never bothered psychologists, so who am I to complain....
God is irrelevant because it is unknowable. Even if you claim to "know god", your experience is unintelligible to me (and everyone else).
(1) You can't argue that God is unknowable without knowing that he is unknowable. See the problem? Logical silliness aside, if those who 'know god' actually know anything (a big 'if', but one that is rather difficult to disprove) then god isn't unknowable. Either way your statement is incorrect.
(2) That religious experience is unintelligible proves nothing whatsoever. *All* experience is unintelligible; try explaining 'blue' to a blind man. While this makes it an increadible pain in the ass to study, you can't just dismiss it, as the behaviorists learned a few decades ago.
Intel had already announced they were switching to socket 4xx for the PIII+ when the BP6 was released. In fact, I knew about it back in May, which I opted for dual slotkets instead of the forthcoming dual 370 boards; at least there's a good chance I'll just have to buy $20 worth of risers to upgrade.
The point being, Intel may have made the change for evil reasons, but everyone knew this was coming. Not that Abit or the rest were eager to point it out to their customers.
An Athlong with a TNT2 Ultra on it performs as well as the high end graphical workstations of TODAY.
Er, no. A PIII/GeForce is just about equal to SGI's lower end Onyx2 (comparison recently published), which puts it well below, eg, SGI's other workstations, and many, many HP's, Alpha's and Sun's. You may not realise this, but real time 3D includes engineering, where their is a *big* demand for powerful engines and hardware.
NAME SOME SOFTWARE
Unreal, for one, though that's mostly personal preference.
If engines not-yet-finished but demo'ed count (since Q3 isn't finished, I don't see why they shouldn't) then you have Halo and Oni from Bungie, the former especially. Evolution seems quite nice, as does whatever's driving a few of those PS2 demos (I suppose that doesn't count). I know there are at least two more, but the games didn't look interesting so I've forgotten.
Not gonna let this one go ;-)
The GUI and Mice, for instance, were developed back in the 60's AFAIK by individuals (their names escape me at the moment).
...who relocated to PARC soon after, and refined the technology while there. To that extent, they are PARC ideas. (I'm not at all sure, but I believe the mouse was a PARC invention, at least as a replacement for less useful pointer.)
And the Alta and Star were not a 'limited implementations'. In many ways, they were (and in fewer ways, still are) superior to the MacOS (and Windows, and X...).
It's definitely complex and inconsistent, but the point was that it's explicit--eg, instead of inflection you use prepositions and auxiliary verbs--and to that extent superior to many languages for scientific purposes. (Incidentally, Whitehead was a logician/mathematician, arguably the greatest of this century; I feel inclined to believe him when he says English offers an advantage in his own field.) You're absolutely correct, but I don't think that invalidates his statement.
(And many people would argue that the body of English literature is no greater than that of, for example, German or Japanese.)
I agree, but I'd like to toss this goody in: AN Whitehead's Science and the Modern World included a section about language (as an analogy for mathematics, IIRC). One of the points he made was that while English is a shallow language, even compared to other Germanic languages, it makes up for it, in some ways, by being utterly explicit. Nothing is implied or masked by, eg. inflection; the entire language open, simple, and, to some extent, precise. (That a bit of an exaggeration, of course.) I believe his argument was that that made English a superior language for science, where ambiguity is a Bad Thing, but I can see who it could be extended to this, in the form of using English as the lowest-level of the metalanguage, then building protocols for the other languages on top, in a hierarchy of language features.
Of course, this would probably ruin the entire project, but I'm not very confident that it will succeed anyway.
Bipolar disorder does appear to be genetic. It's certainly hereditary--one of the better established hereditary mental illnesses, in fact--and children of bipolar parents who are later adopted by normals have almost the same incidence of the disease as those who aren't. (That sentence was a bit convoluted....) This implies, rather strongly, that it is genetic, though I could be creative and come up with other explanations.
AFAIK, it's fairly strictly genetic, as well. The diagnostic requirements place environmentally-induced disorders (eg, bipolar due to head-trauma or stress) in a different category, so true Bipolar I/II should be entirely genetic, though the extreme variation in responses to drugs implies that it's either (i) very complex, genetically, or (ii) has a genetic trigger, but is not itself genetic.
(For some reason, this post sucked. I shouldn't try to write just after getting up.)
Amazon's one-click ordering has to be manually activated at each site now (that is, every machine, user account/profile, etc). That requires entering your password to access you account config. Ordering w/o 1-C also requires a password. That's hardly 'secure', but its as good as you'll find on the web.