When atheists (via their government) kill religious people for their religion, then yeah, we can blame Atheism. If one wants to lump all "religious people" into those that "kill abortion doctors", then the reciprocal is also true. Unless of course your a hypocrite atheists that has one set of values for atheists, that aren't applied to everyone.
And I have run into more than a few militant atheists that DO condone violence against people of religion, simply for having religion (these are the same people persecuting Christians, Jews and Falung Gong in Atheist countries via government fiat). While YOU may not be one of them, I will lump you into that crowd for the same reason many atheists lump all Christians (and religions) in with the Abortion Doctor Killers. What is good for one ought to be good enough for all.
How does one defend against not believing in something? I do not feel compelled to defend against my non-belief in Pink Unicorns. How does that even work?
The idea that good people can be swayed by religion to do horrible things is almost impossible to refute. But so is the idea that good people can be swayed to do great things because of their religion. The comparison being made by many people is between the different actions someone takes because they are religious, not necessarily every action they take.
Would a good person donate more money to the poor because he is religious than he would have if he was more secular? Would someone turn the other cheek if he is religious but would have retaliated harshly if he was not? Would the crusades have happened based purely on nationalism and not because of religious fervor? Would as many people become suicide bombers if it weren't for religious demagogues?
The important part of each question is whether the suspension of rational thought (faith) and the surrender of your own judgement to religious scripture (obedience to God) is responsible for any of the proposed scenarios. If a psychopath is killing because he enjoys it, religion isn't to blame even if he is Christian. But if a misguided youth straps a bomb to his chest only because he thinks it is God's will, religion shares in the blame. It is hard to argue that religious thinking never causes problems, but it is very fair to argue that it does much more good than harm. If someone who would have been selfish instead decides to help his fellow man based only on his religious ideals, religion gets credit for that as well.
But then back to atheism. As your rightly pointed out, you can't do something in the name of nothing. But someone can surely do something against a religious person because they feel being religious harms society. Just like someone who bombs an abortion clinic does so to improve society, an atheist could kill a religious leader for the same reason. It isn't really atheism that is to blame, but you could make a case that a dogmatic belief that all blind faith is harmful shares in the blame. In the case of Stalin, for example, it was devotion to the communist state that caused violence against religious figures (not belief in rational thought).
Both sides of the spectrum would be appalled by both reactions. I am sure you are appalled by abortion clinic bombers, just as I would be appalled by the actions of a religious leader serial killer. The difference comes in how even the moderate people on both sides view each other's beliefs. I do not think that religion is morally wrong, and even zealots like Dawkins would agree with me. But large numbers of religious people do think many people who disagree with their faith are morally bankrupt in some way, whether it is because of abortion, homosexuality, or a number of other moral differences.
This is the reason why you see far more people doing bad things in the name of religion than you see people doing bad things in the name of rational thought. When deluded individuals can look to the opinions of even the moderates on their side of the debate for validation, it is far more likely that they will be reaffirmed in their beliefs and then eventually act on them.
"Can you refuse to pay for your meal at a restaurant because the owner funds a super PAC that is against gay marriage? Can you refuse to pay your car payment because the same bank that owns your loan also owns an insurance company which covers abortion?"
I don't know; did the government come in at gun point and force you to buy that chicken sandwich or new car? You see that's the issue here. The government came in with its monopoly on the coercive use of deadly force and required that the employers buy something that 1) they sincerely morally object to and, 2) they'd previously been exempt from buying.
That one part of my post was just pointing out how ridiculous it is to worry about how your money may be spent indirectly. If you read the entirely of my post, instead of taking a portion of it out of context, you can see I pointed out times where people are forced "by the gun" to pay for things they have moral opposition to (taxes to pay for war).
Ok, so you are an atheist. If you happen to be militant as well, it is completely correct to say your post was made by a militant atheist. Irrespective of which -ism the post was made in the name of.
Okay, I re-read the grand parent and he did use the words "created by militant atheists" so he was actually wrong because by some definitions of "militant atheists" it would apply to some communist countries.
Later in his post he makes it clear what he means: that there are no cultures where militant atheism is integral to the culture. There are ones where the state has tried to abolish all other strong social structures, like religion, but none where this was a central tenant of the society.
But I do concede that he chose his words poorly in the first sentence, and I did not catch that.
I really think the 250k house basically prevents you from retiring.
Living below your means is really important, but advice that uses actual numbers without context isn't very helpful. Where I live, $300k is just about as cheap as detached homes get in the best school districts. But you can also easily make $60k right out of college in STEM fields. Having a $300k house by your early 30s is very reasonable even if you are saving very well. And in my life quite a few of my biggest opportunities have come from the connections that came from rich neighbors that I wouldn't have had if I'd stayed in a $150k townhouse.
There are a number of failed societies: The USSR and North Korea come to mind. Also the PRC.
Doing something in the name of non-religious dogma such as Communism is not the same thing as doing something in the name of Atheism. When I root for my favorite football team I am not doing it in the name of Atheism just because I happen to be an atheist. But when I root for the US team in the Olympics I am doing it in the name of patriotism or nationalism.
What matters is why someone is doing what they are doing. My atheism is only responsible for things I do in the name of atheism, not everything I do just because I have no religion. And just about the only thing I do in the name of atheism is defend why it is the only rational viewpoint to have, or advocate why organized religion is no longer necessary (not trying to start that debate in this thread, just pointing out some actions I perform because of my atheist beliefs). These are the only things you can blame my atheism for.
The article doesn't give any information about this particular MOOC so it is hard to trust any conclusions they are making. Was this a class that the students were paying for? Did they pay at full tuition rates, or just $100 or so? How many of the people who failed ever even logged in once? Or at least ten times?
I have signed up for dozens of MOOCs at Coursera, but have never kept up with the course while it is going on. I just want to watch the videos and sometimes do an assignment or two, but I never get a grade. I feel that I get quite a bit from these classes even though I am not getting any credit.
Religious people are not legislating anything, which is exactly the point. They don't want to be forced to buy contraceptives, and, if they choose not to, then what's wrong with that? Instead, the Obama administration is legislating that religious people be forced to buy it, even if they consider it to be wrong.
This is incorrect. The government is requiring them to offer coverage, but no one is forced to buy contraceptives. Like it has been mentioned before in this thread, it is no different than taking taxes from someone with a religious aversion to violence and using it to pay soldiers. It is simply a fact of life that the government is going to mandate you pay for things you don't like, whether it is indirect via taxes or more direct such as the ACA or car insurance mandates.
How far do we allow people to complain about indirectly paying for things they don't like? Can you refuse to pay for your meal at a restaurant because the owner funds a super PAC that is against gay marriage? Can you refuse to pay your car payment because the same bank that owns your loan also owns an insurance company which covers abortion? If you participate in our society you are always going to in some way indirectly support things you disagree with.
There is a difference between paying taxes things to the government which does unpopular things, and the government forcing someone to buy a particular type of product from a third party.
While I guess there is a slight difference, it is completely irrelevant. The government uses tax income to pay third parties all the time. In this case they just give the tax payers the freedom to choose their own private provider instead of the government taking their money choosing a private company for them.
No difference, if you believe the government and insurance companies are the same.
There is a difference between government and insurance companies, but there is no difference between government and the regulations they impose on those insurance companies. I do agree that the ACA really blurs the lines between government and private insurance because of the government's refusal to impose a single payer system, but that is an unrelated topic.
It's recognized that it is possible to join the army and not carry a weapon. For instance, medics. An exemption for pacifists. So exemptions do have precedent, including volunteer situations.
There are exceptions to the ACA for non-profit religious organizations too. But those exemptions seem to not be good enough for some people. There also were people who didn't like the government exemptions towards conscription in WW1&2, and they went to prison. So you are correct there is a precedent of being accommodating to a point but respecting the law in the end.
But this entire discussion is really off point, because the only issue is whether insurance premiums indirectly pay for undesirable drugs and procedures in the exact same way that taxes indirectly pay for undesired wars. And it is clear that they do. So paying taxes which may go towards things you don't like is no different than paying for insurance which may go for government mandated coverage that you don't like. (bolded for emphasis, not to yell)
Slight difference. Taxes are spent by the government. Pacifists are not being asked to directly pay soldiers. Insurance payments are made by the employer, not through the government.
In a striking parallel, pacifists are exempted from certain provision of serving in the military that would conflict with their moral belief.
How is that a slight difference at all?
Pacifist don't pay for soldiers, they pay taxes and some of that money goes to soldiers. Employees don't pay for contraceptives, they pay insurance premiums and some of that money goes towards contraceptives.
But as surely as you know God does not exist, I know that it does.
I don't believe this is true (and I only use the word believe because I don't know you or the parent poster). Most atheists who have put thought into their beliefs form them through the application of probability theory. They gather evidence and use it to form a probability model of the existence of divine beings. Different people have various reasons for not believing, but it usually boils down to them coming to the conclusion that the chance of God existing is around the same as Santa or the Tooth Fairy. For me it the main pieces of evidence are that there have been hundreds of gods in history and over 99% of them are now believed by everyone to be bunk, and that in a universe where all non-designed things are derived from something simpler (minerals from molecules, molecules from atoms, etc.) I find it doubtful that the first thing to have ever existed is also the most complex (an omnipotent sentient being). There are many others, but everyone has their own reasons so I don't want to pigeonhole anyone.
So to determine if your belief is similar to your average atheist, I would have to know what evidence you used to form your beliefs. It doesn't have to be perfect evidence, as even rolling a 6 twice in a row is evidence that a die is weighted (although it is very weak evidence). Whether or not atheists are correct, their reasoning is usually very rational. To determine if your beliefs are just as rational as your standard atheist we would need to know what evidence you used and then determine how rational the probabilities you assigned to that evidence are. For instance, if you said rolled a 6 twice in a row makes it 10% likely that the die is rigged, that would be very irrational.
I do admit that I find it very unlikely that you formed the opinions in your post by the use of rational thought; but I accept the possibility. There also is not some law of the universe that says rational thought is the only way to form beliefs, but your claim was that your belief in God is similar to an atheists belief that God almost certainly doesn't exist. I doubt that is true.
Don't you just love philosophizing about that which is truly unknowable?
Philosophizing requires actual discussion as to why the participants hold their beliefs. Just telling people what your beliefs are doesn't really accomplish anything. If your beliefs were similar to a large group of people, such as Christians or atheists, then we could make certain assumptions as to why you hold your beliefs. That is unless you informed us how and why you are different from the norm. But your beliefs are so unorthodox that it is hard to understand why you hold them.
The future of education is human teachers teaching human kids.
Please stop using prospective educational uses to justify technolust. There’s no harm in wanting better gadgets, but there is harm in fixing things that aren’t broken.
The best thinkers in history were educated by people. I see absolutely no reason to replace competent, compassionate humans with impersonal and inflexible machines.
After having used MOOCs fairly frequently over the past year, I see a strong reason to have a replacement for our current education system. MOOCs are by no means perfect in their current form, but the possibilities they open up are staggering. A single lecture could be watched by millions of students. You could create 1000 lectures, give each of them to 1000 students, and test them on the material to determine which lectures are more effective. You can find out which questions were missed so you can improve even the best lectures. You can quantitatively identify different learning styles (if they actually exist), and have different lectures for students who have different styles. Hopefully in the near future if you have a class of 20 students they will be watching 20 different lectures that are custom tailored to each student.
Human teachers will still be part of this new idyllic world, but they will be able to spend all of their time doing more useful tasks like tutoring students who are struggling. Or getting to know the students and figure out ways to motive and inspire them. Or grading assignments and tests delivered in ways that AI aren't good at grading yet (like essays). Teachers do all of these things today, but they could probably do 5-10 times more of it if they aren't wasting their time doing rote tasks like lecturing.
In short, computing tools don't help much when you still teach the same way but with a little technology. But once we actually use the technology we already have to transform our schools we will wonder why we wasted so much time before we started trying in earnest.
I just bought my first iPad last month, and now they are coming out with the actual device that I wanted (larger screen). Looks like my wife is about to get my iPad Air in about a year.
A 13" iPad Air would be amazing. It would probably be about the same weight as the iPad 3/4 (1.4 lb) and would make reading technical books much more enjoyable. I really hope this becomes a product in late 2014.
I don't care what others get paid, it is up to me to negociate a salary with my employer.
So you're perfectly happy to go into negotiations at a disadvantage, knowing that the employer has relevant information that you don't have? You sound like a shitty negotiator.
What your coworkers make has no bearing on what salary you are willing to work for.
When you go into negotiation there are only two relevant pieces of information. What your employer is willing to pay to keep you and what you need to be paid to not leave. These are complex pieces of information that are often very hard to determine, but they shouldn't have anything to do with your coworkers' salaries. The only thing that knowing your coworkers' salaries can do is make you resentful if you realize someone else was able to negotiate more money.
I am about to go into yearly salary negotiations in January, and I couldn't care less what my coworkers make. I know what I need to make to not start looking for work elsewhere, and that is all that matters.
Everyone thinks they work harder and better than they really do
I don't believe that. It has not been my experience that everyone in the workplace has an inflated view of their own value. If anything, it has been a hallmark of modern corporate life that the culture of management rewards those who devalue wage-earners. Remember, it's management that is creating the narrative. Always. And they benefit from the narrative you have described.
I think what you're trying to say is "Management doesn't want to pay people what they are worth, so it's better to keep workers guessing and fearful."
Illusory superiority is the cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and underestimate their negative abilities. The research behind this bias is pretty solid. People overestimate their own IQ, popularity, academic ability, job performance, etc. Just look up the term and you will find a large number of studies. 93% of US drivers think they are above average, 87% of Stanford MBA students rated their academic performance as above the median at their school, and the results go on and on. People even overestimate their own immunity to this bias.
One in particular that has bearing on this conversation about job performance was that 68% of University of Nebraska faculty members rated themselves in the top 25% of teaching ability at their university. So if their pay was based on ability and these calculations were public knowledge, 43% of these teachers would probably feel shafted (assuming 100% of the top teachers were part of the 68% who thought they were).
The one exception to this is that some findings have shown that women can underestimate themselves in business situations. I am not sure how widespread this is, because it only seems to come up in a few studies.
Transparency can only work up to a point before jealousy creeps in.
Jealousy is only a major factor when the salary determination is kept secret. If there is a set formula, like for public workers or other unions, the jealousy is not a big deal. Everyone knows that their coworker who has been there two years longer is paid a little more. Or someone with a Masters degree is paid a little bit more than someone with a Bachelors. And these calculations don't have to be as simplistic and questionable as most current unions as even complicated formulas that include performance metrics, salary at previous company, commuting considerations, etc. are okay as long as it is transparent.
But in the private sector your ability to negotiate has a big impact on salary. And I mean huge, I have routinely seen people make 20% more than their initial offer (at least $10k more) just because they were willing to walk away from the job offer. This means they are effectively making around 20% more than some of their equally qualified peers just because they negotiated from a position of strength.
Pay discrepancies because of this are what create jealousy.
Again with the bullshit term "UX designer". This is what I do not understand. Why does that position even exist? We did fine without it for decades, and then suddenly it became a huge issue right around the time people started inventing some really, really horrible crap.
The computer industry did fine for decades without the position of computer programmer too. They were electrical engineers who sometimes had to write a little bit of code. Eventually the field became mature enough that more specialization set in, so we gained a large number of new positions. Later it split into web developers, DBAs, etc. A job description doesn't have to be traced to the beginning of time to be relevant.
The rest of your post is just jibberish about how applications should just be hacked together without spending much time thinking about the user experience. The same could be said for spending time on the application architecture, data model, coding standards, etc. That is far too much to argue against on Slashdot, but I hope that the vast majority of developers deeply disagree with almost all of your post.
Maybe I'm getting more bitter as I age but this 'I wanted it tomorrow and it didn't make it, I don't give a shit about the massive volume of items from other procrastinators like myself or the ice storms and other weather, I WANT MY SHIT IT'S THE CARRIERS FAULT!' mentality is just so damn annoying.
What a shock, each generation starts to take things for granted that the previous generations all had to work very hard for. 10,000 years ago when some young farmer complained about a bad crop I'm sure he had a grandparent complaining that in his day you had to forage for your food. A hundred years ago when some kid complained that the plumbing wasn't working his grandparent said that in his day they had to use an outhouse. And now when some young adult complains that his package took a week to deliver you have people calling them procrastinators because in their day you didn't have free two day shipping.
Although now technology changes so fast that even 25 year olds can remember a time that was wildly different than the world that teenagers live in today. So instead of taking for granted something we have used for decades, we take for granted something we have had for a few years. Immediate access to whatever you want is simply the norm now. It isn't the norm because we are becoming more narcissistic, it is because technology has advanced far enough to make it possible. Soon we will probably get used to same day shipping
The simple fact is that the commerce sites promised something they couldn't deliver on. The consumers have the right to be upset. They should probably be upset with Amazon and other retailers instead of UPS, but they have still been given poor service.
The real world does not work like this and I find the best work comes when the guy who will be writing the software actually collects the requirements and does a good job of that including a plan of how to test the code.
The worst code I see is written when the programmer is given some narrow requirements on some ticket and they code directly to those requirements with little to no knowledge of the overall system they are working on. In some magical world where all of your requirements are perfect this could work very well. But part of being a solid developer is knowing how to spot the "smell" of bad requirements. While sometimes you can do this without any knowledge of the overall system, you are much more likely to have the right insights if you have some relevant domain knowledge.
I have a current project that I am maintaining where I wrote most of the code in a vacuum without understanding the customer's real needs. It is a horrible mess and I would have done things completely differently if I was involved in meetings with the clients early on. I'm not saying my code would have been perfect, but there were some massive disconnects between the assumptions I drew from the written requirements and the explanations I got from the clients once I was given more access to them. Now there is no time or money for massive rewrites or refactorings, so it continues to be a thorn in my side.
TDD isn't the only time you have tests before the code is written. It is a common practice to create test cases for functionality that has not been completed or even started on. The status on the test case may be "Implementation Not Complete", which is just one type of test failure.
This way you can still have reports on development progress and show that large sections of functionality have not been tested yet (because they aren't finished).
In both cases, someone will come up with smart contact lenses (or something else that's pretty much undetectable) even faster
There's a hard limit on personal technology. It can't advance beyond the point where putting a pocket knife on someone's throat to steal it becomes a profitable job. That's why in most cyberpunk scenarios one of the technological advances is in self defense.
i.e.: There won't be ultra-tech glasses/contact lenses/etc unless someone thinks of a way of protecting the clients form increasingly profitable mugging.
An increased police state should take care of this, and that is also happening. Doesn't make much sense to mug someone if the second you approach them your face has been recorded to the cloud.
you can't make facial recognition technology disappear by punching people in the face.
No. But you can make one person at a time stop using it.
Seems pretty ineffective. A large fine and possible prison sentence to stop someone from using it long enough to get their replacement in the mail (paid for by you). And that prison sentence would become certain if you have done it repeatedly.
Perhaps you could get away with it for a short time until images are constantly uploaded to the cloud, but that won't be for long.
No, what I mean is, technology that's simple or natural enough, or hidden enough, will be used regardless of the law because the law is unenforceable.
It's already forbidden to share copyrighted files but people do it all the time because enforcing the ban is vastly more expensive and time-consuming for copyright holders than getting around it for file sharers. If the **AAs suddenly had the powers to become truly nasty, as you describe, people would encrypt their files. If encryption became illegal, people who use steganography.
What the parent post was saying is that if society wanted to legislate against it, we could. It would take measures that make Stalin look like a Nelson Mandela, but it could happen.
In the case of face recognition, how do you know if someone is recording you and processing the image? How do you know if a company does it secretly? If the law prohibits it, who's to say this or that guy does it anyway?
All it takes is laws that require all ISPs to actively monitor all downloads to any device, and enough government regulators to catch people who may be using facial recognition software on consumer hardware. And then laws that make the MPAA look tame. Device creators could be mandated to record the last few days of anything the user viewed, and the very fact that you downloaded images of faces to your device could become probable cause for a search warrant. And perhaps life in prison if you are ever caught scanning someone's face without their permission, or for anyone caught with software that is not regulated by the government.
I think it is incredibly unlikely that any society will ever become this draconic, but it is technically possible. The fact that large companies will probably like these technologies as a way to increase data collection and advertising streams will only make it less likely that regulations will stop it.
You do not want to be known as the creepy socio-path with Google glass.
Well good thing for privacy advocates that early technologies like Google glass can be noticed. But the next generation will not be as conspicuous. Just wait until regular glasses have this technology and are completely unnoticeable.
And beyond glasses we have artificial retinas. We have had artificial retinas for a while, and they keep getting better each year. Since 2010 researchers have been having success even intercepting the connection from the retina to the brain. I wouldn't be surprised if we are only a decade or two away from putting technologies like the Google glass directly into your eye. It won't need a camera, because it will just record what your eyes are actually seeing and inserting a HUD into your normal vision. It will start with blind patients, but it won't stop there.
The privacy concerns which arise from these technologies are real, but they are coming and will become a ubiquitous part of our society. Trying to stop constant recordings and facial recognition software from mainstream use will be harder than stopping pirated music.
Slashdot Mirror
When atheists (via their government) kill religious people for their religion, then yeah, we can blame Atheism. If one wants to lump all "religious people" into those that "kill abortion doctors", then the reciprocal is also true. Unless of course your a hypocrite atheists that has one set of values for atheists, that aren't applied to everyone.
And I have run into more than a few militant atheists that DO condone violence against people of religion, simply for having religion (these are the same people persecuting Christians, Jews and Falung Gong in Atheist countries via government fiat). While YOU may not be one of them, I will lump you into that crowd for the same reason many atheists lump all Christians (and religions) in with the Abortion Doctor Killers. What is good for one ought to be good enough for all.
How does one defend against not believing in something? I do not feel compelled to defend against my non-belief in Pink Unicorns. How does that even work?
The idea that good people can be swayed by religion to do horrible things is almost impossible to refute. But so is the idea that good people can be swayed to do great things because of their religion. The comparison being made by many people is between the different actions someone takes because they are religious, not necessarily every action they take.
Would a good person donate more money to the poor because he is religious than he would have if he was more secular?
Would someone turn the other cheek if he is religious but would have retaliated harshly if he was not?
Would the crusades have happened based purely on nationalism and not because of religious fervor?
Would as many people become suicide bombers if it weren't for religious demagogues?
The important part of each question is whether the suspension of rational thought (faith) and the surrender of your own judgement to religious scripture (obedience to God) is responsible for any of the proposed scenarios. If a psychopath is killing because he enjoys it, religion isn't to blame even if he is Christian. But if a misguided youth straps a bomb to his chest only because he thinks it is God's will, religion shares in the blame. It is hard to argue that religious thinking never causes problems, but it is very fair to argue that it does much more good than harm. If someone who would have been selfish instead decides to help his fellow man based only on his religious ideals, religion gets credit for that as well.
But then back to atheism. As your rightly pointed out, you can't do something in the name of nothing. But someone can surely do something against a religious person because they feel being religious harms society. Just like someone who bombs an abortion clinic does so to improve society, an atheist could kill a religious leader for the same reason. It isn't really atheism that is to blame, but you could make a case that a dogmatic belief that all blind faith is harmful shares in the blame. In the case of Stalin, for example, it was devotion to the communist state that caused violence against religious figures (not belief in rational thought).
Both sides of the spectrum would be appalled by both reactions. I am sure you are appalled by abortion clinic bombers, just as I would be appalled by the actions of a religious leader serial killer. The difference comes in how even the moderate people on both sides view each other's beliefs. I do not think that religion is morally wrong, and even zealots like Dawkins would agree with me. But large numbers of religious people do think many people who disagree with their faith are morally bankrupt in some way, whether it is because of abortion, homosexuality, or a number of other moral differences.
This is the reason why you see far more people doing bad things in the name of religion than you see people doing bad things in the name of rational thought. When deluded individuals can look to the opinions of even the moderates on their side of the debate for validation, it is far more likely that they will be reaffirmed in their beliefs and then eventually act on them.
"Can you refuse to pay for your meal at a restaurant because the owner funds a super PAC that is against gay marriage? Can you refuse to pay your car payment because the same bank that owns your loan also owns an insurance company which covers abortion?"
I don't know; did the government come in at gun point and force you to buy that chicken sandwich or new car? You see that's the issue here. The government came in with its monopoly on the coercive use of deadly force and required that the employers buy something that 1) they sincerely morally object to and, 2) they'd previously been exempt from buying.
That one part of my post was just pointing out how ridiculous it is to worry about how your money may be spent indirectly. If you read the entirely of my post, instead of taking a portion of it out of context, you can see I pointed out times where people are forced "by the gun" to pay for things they have moral opposition to (taxes to pay for war).
Ok, so you are an atheist. If you happen to be militant as well, it is completely correct to say your post was made by a militant atheist. Irrespective of which -ism the post was made in the name of.
Okay, I re-read the grand parent and he did use the words "created by militant atheists" so he was actually wrong because by some definitions of "militant atheists" it would apply to some communist countries.
Later in his post he makes it clear what he means: that there are no cultures where militant atheism is integral to the culture. There are ones where the state has tried to abolish all other strong social structures, like religion, but none where this was a central tenant of the society.
But I do concede that he chose his words poorly in the first sentence, and I did not catch that.
I really think the 250k house basically prevents you from retiring.
Living below your means is really important, but advice that uses actual numbers without context isn't very helpful. Where I live, $300k is just about as cheap as detached homes get in the best school districts. But you can also easily make $60k right out of college in STEM fields. Having a $300k house by your early 30s is very reasonable even if you are saving very well. And in my life quite a few of my biggest opportunities have come from the connections that came from rich neighbors that I wouldn't have had if I'd stayed in a $150k townhouse.
There are a number of failed societies: The USSR and North Korea come to mind. Also the PRC.
Doing something in the name of non-religious dogma such as Communism is not the same thing as doing something in the name of Atheism. When I root for my favorite football team I am not doing it in the name of Atheism just because I happen to be an atheist. But when I root for the US team in the Olympics I am doing it in the name of patriotism or nationalism.
What matters is why someone is doing what they are doing. My atheism is only responsible for things I do in the name of atheism, not everything I do just because I have no religion. And just about the only thing I do in the name of atheism is defend why it is the only rational viewpoint to have, or advocate why organized religion is no longer necessary (not trying to start that debate in this thread, just pointing out some actions I perform because of my atheist beliefs). These are the only things you can blame my atheism for.
The article doesn't give any information about this particular MOOC so it is hard to trust any conclusions they are making. Was this a class that the students were paying for? Did they pay at full tuition rates, or just $100 or so? How many of the people who failed ever even logged in once? Or at least ten times?
I have signed up for dozens of MOOCs at Coursera, but have never kept up with the course while it is going on. I just want to watch the videos and sometimes do an assignment or two, but I never get a grade. I feel that I get quite a bit from these classes even though I am not getting any credit.
Religious people are not legislating anything, which is exactly the point. They don't want to be forced to buy contraceptives, and, if they choose not to, then what's wrong with that? Instead, the Obama administration is legislating that religious people be forced to buy it, even if they consider it to be wrong.
This is incorrect. The government is requiring them to offer coverage, but no one is forced to buy contraceptives. Like it has been mentioned before in this thread, it is no different than taking taxes from someone with a religious aversion to violence and using it to pay soldiers. It is simply a fact of life that the government is going to mandate you pay for things you don't like, whether it is indirect via taxes or more direct such as the ACA or car insurance mandates.
How far do we allow people to complain about indirectly paying for things they don't like? Can you refuse to pay for your meal at a restaurant because the owner funds a super PAC that is against gay marriage? Can you refuse to pay your car payment because the same bank that owns your loan also owns an insurance company which covers abortion? If you participate in our society you are always going to in some way indirectly support things you disagree with.
There is a difference between paying taxes things to the government which does unpopular things, and the government forcing someone to buy a particular type of product from a third party.
While I guess there is a slight difference, it is completely irrelevant. The government uses tax income to pay third parties all the time. In this case they just give the tax payers the freedom to choose their own private provider instead of the government taking their money choosing a private company for them.
No difference, if you believe the government and insurance companies are the same.
There is a difference between government and insurance companies, but there is no difference between government and the regulations they impose on those insurance companies. I do agree that the ACA really blurs the lines between government and private insurance because of the government's refusal to impose a single payer system, but that is an unrelated topic.
It's recognized that it is possible to join the army and not carry a weapon. For instance, medics. An exemption for pacifists. So exemptions do have precedent, including volunteer situations.
There are exceptions to the ACA for non-profit religious organizations too. But those exemptions seem to not be good enough for some people. There also were people who didn't like the government exemptions towards conscription in WW1&2, and they went to prison. So you are correct there is a precedent of being accommodating to a point but respecting the law in the end.
But this entire discussion is really off point, because the only issue is whether insurance premiums indirectly pay for undesirable drugs and procedures in the exact same way that taxes indirectly pay for undesired wars. And it is clear that they do. So paying taxes which may go towards things you don't like is no different than paying for insurance which may go for government mandated coverage that you don't like. (bolded for emphasis, not to yell)
Slight difference. Taxes are spent by the government. Pacifists are not being asked to directly pay soldiers. Insurance payments are made by the employer, not through the government.
In a striking parallel, pacifists are exempted from certain provision of serving in the military that would conflict with their moral belief.
How is that a slight difference at all?
Pacifist don't pay for soldiers, they pay taxes and some of that money goes to soldiers.
Employees don't pay for contraceptives, they pay insurance premiums and some of that money goes towards contraceptives.
There is no difference at all.
But as surely as you know God does not exist, I know that it does.
I don't believe this is true (and I only use the word believe because I don't know you or the parent poster). Most atheists who have put thought into their beliefs form them through the application of probability theory. They gather evidence and use it to form a probability model of the existence of divine beings. Different people have various reasons for not believing, but it usually boils down to them coming to the conclusion that the chance of God existing is around the same as Santa or the Tooth Fairy. For me it the main pieces of evidence are that there have been hundreds of gods in history and over 99% of them are now believed by everyone to be bunk, and that in a universe where all non-designed things are derived from something simpler (minerals from molecules, molecules from atoms, etc.) I find it doubtful that the first thing to have ever existed is also the most complex (an omnipotent sentient being). There are many others, but everyone has their own reasons so I don't want to pigeonhole anyone.
So to determine if your belief is similar to your average atheist, I would have to know what evidence you used to form your beliefs. It doesn't have to be perfect evidence, as even rolling a 6 twice in a row is evidence that a die is weighted (although it is very weak evidence). Whether or not atheists are correct, their reasoning is usually very rational. To determine if your beliefs are just as rational as your standard atheist we would need to know what evidence you used and then determine how rational the probabilities you assigned to that evidence are. For instance, if you said rolled a 6 twice in a row makes it 10% likely that the die is rigged, that would be very irrational.
I do admit that I find it very unlikely that you formed the opinions in your post by the use of rational thought; but I accept the possibility. There also is not some law of the universe that says rational thought is the only way to form beliefs, but your claim was that your belief in God is similar to an atheists belief that God almost certainly doesn't exist. I doubt that is true.
Don't you just love philosophizing about that which is truly unknowable?
Philosophizing requires actual discussion as to why the participants hold their beliefs. Just telling people what your beliefs are doesn't really accomplish anything. If your beliefs were similar to a large group of people, such as Christians or atheists, then we could make certain assumptions as to why you hold your beliefs. That is unless you informed us how and why you are different from the norm. But your beliefs are so unorthodox that it is hard to understand why you hold them.
The future of education is human teachers teaching human kids.
Please stop using prospective educational uses to justify technolust. There’s no harm in wanting better gadgets, but there is harm in fixing things that aren’t broken.
The best thinkers in history were educated by people. I see absolutely no reason to replace competent, compassionate humans with impersonal and inflexible machines.
After having used MOOCs fairly frequently over the past year, I see a strong reason to have a replacement for our current education system. MOOCs are by no means perfect in their current form, but the possibilities they open up are staggering. A single lecture could be watched by millions of students. You could create 1000 lectures, give each of them to 1000 students, and test them on the material to determine which lectures are more effective. You can find out which questions were missed so you can improve even the best lectures. You can quantitatively identify different learning styles (if they actually exist), and have different lectures for students who have different styles. Hopefully in the near future if you have a class of 20 students they will be watching 20 different lectures that are custom tailored to each student.
Human teachers will still be part of this new idyllic world, but they will be able to spend all of their time doing more useful tasks like tutoring students who are struggling. Or getting to know the students and figure out ways to motive and inspire them. Or grading assignments and tests delivered in ways that AI aren't good at grading yet (like essays). Teachers do all of these things today, but they could probably do 5-10 times more of it if they aren't wasting their time doing rote tasks like lecturing.
In short, computing tools don't help much when you still teach the same way but with a little technology. But once we actually use the technology we already have to transform our schools we will wonder why we wasted so much time before we started trying in earnest.
I just bought my first iPad last month, and now they are coming out with the actual device that I wanted (larger screen). Looks like my wife is about to get my iPad Air in about a year.
A 13" iPad Air would be amazing. It would probably be about the same weight as the iPad 3/4 (1.4 lb) and would make reading technical books much more enjoyable. I really hope this becomes a product in late 2014.
So you're perfectly happy to go into negotiations at a disadvantage, knowing that the employer has relevant information that you don't have?
You sound like a shitty negotiator.
What your coworkers make has no bearing on what salary you are willing to work for.
When you go into negotiation there are only two relevant pieces of information. What your employer is willing to pay to keep you and what you need to be paid to not leave. These are complex pieces of information that are often very hard to determine, but they shouldn't have anything to do with your coworkers' salaries. The only thing that knowing your coworkers' salaries can do is make you resentful if you realize someone else was able to negotiate more money.
I am about to go into yearly salary negotiations in January, and I couldn't care less what my coworkers make. I know what I need to make to not start looking for work elsewhere, and that is all that matters.
I don't believe that. It has not been my experience that everyone in the workplace has an inflated view of their own value. If anything, it has been a hallmark of modern corporate life that the culture of management rewards those who devalue wage-earners. Remember, it's management that is creating the narrative. Always. And they benefit from the narrative you have described.
I think what you're trying to say is "Management doesn't want to pay people what they are worth, so it's better to keep workers guessing and fearful."
Illusory superiority is the cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and underestimate their negative abilities. The research behind this bias is pretty solid. People overestimate their own IQ, popularity, academic ability, job performance, etc. Just look up the term and you will find a large number of studies. 93% of US drivers think they are above average, 87% of Stanford MBA students rated their academic performance as above the median at their school, and the results go on and on. People even overestimate their own immunity to this bias.
One in particular that has bearing on this conversation about job performance was that 68% of University of Nebraska faculty members rated themselves in the top 25% of teaching ability at their university. So if their pay was based on ability and these calculations were public knowledge, 43% of these teachers would probably feel shafted (assuming 100% of the top teachers were part of the 68% who thought they were).
The one exception to this is that some findings have shown that women can underestimate themselves in business situations. I am not sure how widespread this is, because it only seems to come up in a few studies.
Transparency can only work up to a point before jealousy creeps in.
Jealousy is only a major factor when the salary determination is kept secret. If there is a set formula, like for public workers or other unions, the jealousy is not a big deal. Everyone knows that their coworker who has been there two years longer is paid a little more. Or someone with a Masters degree is paid a little bit more than someone with a Bachelors. And these calculations don't have to be as simplistic and questionable as most current unions as even complicated formulas that include performance metrics, salary at previous company, commuting considerations, etc. are okay as long as it is transparent.
But in the private sector your ability to negotiate has a big impact on salary. And I mean huge, I have routinely seen people make 20% more than their initial offer (at least $10k more) just because they were willing to walk away from the job offer. This means they are effectively making around 20% more than some of their equally qualified peers just because they negotiated from a position of strength.
Pay discrepancies because of this are what create jealousy.
Again with the bullshit term "UX designer". This is what I do not understand. Why does that position even exist? We did fine without it for decades, and then suddenly it became a huge issue right around the time people started inventing some really, really horrible crap.
The computer industry did fine for decades without the position of computer programmer too. They were electrical engineers who sometimes had to write a little bit of code. Eventually the field became mature enough that more specialization set in, so we gained a large number of new positions. Later it split into web developers, DBAs, etc. A job description doesn't have to be traced to the beginning of time to be relevant.
The rest of your post is just jibberish about how applications should just be hacked together without spending much time thinking about the user experience. The same could be said for spending time on the application architecture, data model, coding standards, etc. That is far too much to argue against on Slashdot, but I hope that the vast majority of developers deeply disagree with almost all of your post.
Sounds like you just described /. And every other website that allows comments.
Well, every website that only allows comments of 140 characters or less anyway.
Maybe I'm getting more bitter as I age but this 'I wanted it tomorrow and it didn't make it, I don't give a shit about the massive volume of items from other procrastinators like myself or the ice storms and other weather, I WANT MY SHIT IT'S THE CARRIERS FAULT!' mentality is just so damn annoying.
What a shock, each generation starts to take things for granted that the previous generations all had to work very hard for. 10,000 years ago when some young farmer complained about a bad crop I'm sure he had a grandparent complaining that in his day you had to forage for your food. A hundred years ago when some kid complained that the plumbing wasn't working his grandparent said that in his day they had to use an outhouse. And now when some young adult complains that his package took a week to deliver you have people calling them procrastinators because in their day you didn't have free two day shipping.
Although now technology changes so fast that even 25 year olds can remember a time that was wildly different than the world that teenagers live in today. So instead of taking for granted something we have used for decades, we take for granted something we have had for a few years. Immediate access to whatever you want is simply the norm now. It isn't the norm because we are becoming more narcissistic, it is because technology has advanced far enough to make it possible. Soon we will probably get used to same day shipping
The simple fact is that the commerce sites promised something they couldn't deliver on. The consumers have the right to be upset. They should probably be upset with Amazon and other retailers instead of UPS, but they have still been given poor service.
The real world does not work like this and I find the best work comes when the guy who will be writing the software actually collects the requirements and does a good job of that including a plan of how to test the code.
The worst code I see is written when the programmer is given some narrow requirements on some ticket and they code directly to those requirements with little to no knowledge of the overall system they are working on. In some magical world where all of your requirements are perfect this could work very well. But part of being a solid developer is knowing how to spot the "smell" of bad requirements. While sometimes you can do this without any knowledge of the overall system, you are much more likely to have the right insights if you have some relevant domain knowledge.
I have a current project that I am maintaining where I wrote most of the code in a vacuum without understanding the customer's real needs. It is a horrible mess and I would have done things completely differently if I was involved in meetings with the clients early on. I'm not saying my code would have been perfect, but there were some massive disconnects between the assumptions I drew from the written requirements and the explanations I got from the clients once I was given more access to them. Now there is no time or money for massive rewrites or refactorings, so it continues to be a thorn in my side.
Are mixing it up with unit testing?
TDD isn't the only time you have tests before the code is written. It is a common practice to create test cases for functionality that has not been completed or even started on. The status on the test case may be "Implementation Not Complete", which is just one type of test failure.
This way you can still have reports on development progress and show that large sections of functionality have not been tested yet (because they aren't finished).
In both cases, someone will come up with smart contact lenses (or something else that's pretty much undetectable) even faster
There's a hard limit on personal technology. It can't advance beyond the point where putting a pocket knife on someone's throat to steal it becomes a profitable job. That's why in most cyberpunk scenarios one of the technological advances is in self defense.
i.e.: There won't be ultra-tech glasses/contact lenses/etc unless someone thinks of a way of protecting the clients form increasingly profitable mugging.
An increased police state should take care of this, and that is also happening. Doesn't make much sense to mug someone if the second you approach them your face has been recorded to the cloud.
you can't make facial recognition technology disappear by punching people in the face.
No. But you can make one person at a time stop using it.
Seems pretty ineffective. A large fine and possible prison sentence to stop someone from using it long enough to get their replacement in the mail (paid for by you). And that prison sentence would become certain if you have done it repeatedly.
Perhaps you could get away with it for a short time until images are constantly uploaded to the cloud, but that won't be for long.
No, what I mean is, technology that's simple or natural enough, or hidden enough, will be used regardless of the law because the law is unenforceable.
It's already forbidden to share copyrighted files but people do it all the time because enforcing the ban is vastly more expensive and time-consuming for copyright holders than getting around it for file sharers. If the **AAs suddenly had the powers to become truly nasty, as you describe, people would encrypt their files. If encryption became illegal, people who use steganography.
What the parent post was saying is that if society wanted to legislate against it, we could. It would take measures that make Stalin look like a Nelson Mandela, but it could happen.
In the case of face recognition, how do you know if someone is recording you and processing the image? How do you know if a company does it secretly? If the law prohibits it, who's to say this or that guy does it anyway?
All it takes is laws that require all ISPs to actively monitor all downloads to any device, and enough government regulators to catch people who may be using facial recognition software on consumer hardware. And then laws that make the MPAA look tame. Device creators could be mandated to record the last few days of anything the user viewed, and the very fact that you downloaded images of faces to your device could become probable cause for a search warrant. And perhaps life in prison if you are ever caught scanning someone's face without their permission, or for anyone caught with software that is not regulated by the government.
I think it is incredibly unlikely that any society will ever become this draconic, but it is technically possible. The fact that large companies will probably like these technologies as a way to increase data collection and advertising streams will only make it less likely that regulations will stop it.
You do not want to be known as the creepy socio-path with Google glass.
Well good thing for privacy advocates that early technologies like Google glass can be noticed. But the next generation will not be as conspicuous. Just wait until regular glasses have this technology and are completely unnoticeable.
And beyond glasses we have artificial retinas. We have had artificial retinas for a while, and they keep getting better each year. Since 2010 researchers have been having success even intercepting the connection from the retina to the brain. I wouldn't be surprised if we are only a decade or two away from putting technologies like the Google glass directly into your eye. It won't need a camera, because it will just record what your eyes are actually seeing and inserting a HUD into your normal vision. It will start with blind patients, but it won't stop there.
The privacy concerns which arise from these technologies are real, but they are coming and will become a ubiquitous part of our society. Trying to stop constant recordings and facial recognition software from mainstream use will be harder than stopping pirated music.