Not only is there no actual proof that God exists there is also no actual proof that God doesn't exist - that's why these kinds of discussions are somewhat nonsensical and tend to be imbued with more in the way of emotion and feelings that any kind of hard logic.
There is no proof that god exists, so I lack a belief in god. This isn't difficult to understand, and I have a feeling you're the type of person who would claim to be "agnostic" or some other such thing. I'm an agnostic atheist, by the way.
There are somethings beyond "proof" but the lack of being able to grasp or accept that fact is why some atheists can't admit that they are true believers exactly like any religious true believer.
I lack a belief in a god. What is it that I truly believe? I don't even claim to know that god doesn't exist for sure. Do you also say the same thing about people who don't believe in flying spaghetti monsters and any other silly thing that people can dream up?
Why don't you put forth some arguments, rather than just linking to long, irrelevant blog posts?
I see no evidence that a god exists. It is rational for me to lack a belief in a god. If you're going to argue otherwise, then do so yourself. I have no interest in playing link games, unless you can link to a reputable scientific study that shows that a magical sky daddy exists, which would actually be interesting.
If you can convince yourself to believe in something that has no evidence that it exists just because it has some dubious psychological benefits, then I'd say you are well and truly fucked up. What I'm getting at is that, given no evidence that something exists, lacking a belief in that something is quite rational.
Ah, good, so no one *really* believes in a magical man who created everything. I was scared for a moment there. Good thing they all believe it's metaphorical.
If starting a social network that you'd consider "principled" would fix everyone else's behavior, then that's the tool that you'd use. It doesn't matter that you "don't care" about social networking, because a great mass of other people do.
Well, yes, *if* it would fix everyone's unprincipled behavior. But in practice, they'd use it for all the wrong reasons. Only education can fix this problem.
And certain tools can be objectionable, like proprietary software, so results aren't always the only thing on my mind.
You can rail against something that you don't like as much as you want, but it's not going to do any practical good.
I'm not only railing against it, I'm *not using it*. Facebook to me is useless and harmful, and the company is unethical.
Building an alternative would be a noble goal, but I don't care about 'social networking.' But there is a deeper problem: The willingness to sacrifice your privacy and ignore unethical decisions by companies for the sake of convenience. As long as the willingness to make these tradeoffs exists, we will continue to end up with things like Facebook, and also things like the NSA's mass surveillance, the TSA, and the numerous other things that violate our privacy and constitution. The problem is that people are not principled when it comes to liberty or privacy.
I use facebook strictly because it's the only way I can keep communication with people.
How can anyone be so ignorant as to suggest that Facebook is the only method of communication? It's not even the only method of long-distance communication. Not that it's even important to hear all of someone's mundane thoughts anyway.
I would expect Slashdotters to be smarter than this; come on.
If I didn't use things because of something they did, I'd be locked in a cardboard box behind a goodwill.
I don't see Facebook as a binary 'good/evil' service.
They have too many unethical practices to be worth using.
Much of it is useful
Only if you consider lots and lots of useless, mundane information to be useful, and don't know of any alternatives (phones, email, voice chat, and pretty much any method of communication).
but they are the conduit, not the source of the problem
They are the source of many problems.
Frankly, I worry more about my usenet history than I do Facebook.
I worry about the NSA more than I do Facebook, but that doesn't mean Facebook and their ilk aren't a problem. I just don't use it.
First, facebook is not the only problem. You're kidding yourself if you think it is. The list of technology companies that sucker their users are as long as the list of technology companies that sell 'the cloud'. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc.
Of course it's not the only evil. Don't deal with any of those companies, either.
Worse than this, the evil is not marketing. The real evil is the secret pact between the tech companies and the government's monopoly on the initiation of force, for the benefit of a minority of oligarch families.
Facebook's evil does not stop at mere marketing, though those practices are something I'm definitely against.
Do you see it yet? if you rule out the vast majority of the population based on internet usage, you're out of whack.
"rule them out"? What you can do is try to cure their ignorance.
How do you avoid facebook when any picture posted of you makes a stealth profile?
Assuming that happens to you, it's still no reason to get an account and likely give them even more information. And with how these unethical companies act, the TOS means very little.
So avoiding it is worse than accepting it.
Accepting it gives the appearance that the service is legitimate and that using it is inevitable, and that's something I am not willing to do.
Keep in mind that, since at least the agrarian revolution, it has been a beneficial trait to give at least one, admittedly estimated, tenth of a damn, about what other people think and why they think it.
Giving a damn about important events != needing to read their every worthless thought on Facebook. There are many, many alternatives to Facebook (email, blogs, phone, letters, etc.). People were fine before Facebook and such existed, and they'll be fine now.
More importantly, privacy is what matters. "too fucking bad" is an appropriate response.
But your reasoning is flawed, and your understanding destructively so.
My reasoning (Facebook is unethical and therefore you shouldn't use it) is not flawed, and I understand why people use Facebook, but privacy is more important.
While there will be a certain amount of collateral damage, Facebook users ultimately control what they post, and that is where they can manage what they reveal in on-line surveillance.
But they don't ultimately control what Facebook does with the data they have, which is to use it in privacy-violating ways. You shouldn't legitimize an unethical service by using it.
Admittedly recent tracking methods linking Amazon purchases to Facebook feeds are getting really creepy, but it would be hard for the NSA to have anything suspicious about me considering I post pictures of my kids and a few inoffensive jokes (not that there is anything suspicious).
Are you under the delusion that they need anything "suspicious" to flag you? You can get in trouble just by making a joke or using sarcasm that the authorities don't understand. It's not only malice that you must watch out for, but incompetence too. In addition, if you happen to post anything disagreeable, they could flag you and conduct surveillance on you more closely. Better hope you don't make any 'mistakes' (including posting something considered taboo or possibly illegal).
It includes many, where it is actually viable. It's trivial to avoid Facebook (and I would say the ones you listed, too) despite excuses of peer pressure or not knowing how else to communicate.
It means that I don't believe sacrificing privacy to a greedy company that has shown itself to be wildly unethical for convenience and/or enabling it by using the service is a very principled move.
To which degree? Providing a fake name, birthdate, and other information, blocking image tags, and posting untagged text information?
By even using Facebook, you grant their service legitimacy, and enable (albeit only slightly, but change has to start somewhere) their unethical behavior. You mention algorithms that Facebook uses to infer connections, which is yet another evil.
Being "social" is all about interacting. If you don't interact, you're not social and may as well not be a human.
Not much real interaction from Facebook, and certainly not of the sexual variety. Also, individuals are social to varying degrees.
Until humans figure out a way to reproduce asexually, we'll need to interact.
I guarantee you that the human race could survive without Facebook. You used the more general term "interacting," but the topic is about Facebook, so nice try.
I guess what I'm saying is that what others are doing is logical, you're the illogical one.
Incorrect. I'm only illogical if I'm violating my own principles, which I am not. There is nothing inherently logical about desiring to live, and nothing inherently illogical about desiring the opposite. Not that I do, since you rather missed the point of all these comments, but your statement itself was so illogical that I couldn't overlook it.
No, using Facebook isn't inherently logical or necessary. It certainly isn't principled, and giving an unethical company like Facebook attention is just enabling its behavior.
Which means a failure of those who didn't bother to do their duty as citizens and go out to vote to choose the type of people who would defend the constitution, even if that means ending their careers.
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
It means exactly what I think it means.
"Actual" principles being the principles that you hold, and no one else's principles being "actual", No True Scotsman style.
I don't consider sacrificing privacy for convenience to such a degree and enabling Facebook's behavior by using it to be a very principles move.
or you're just getting a kick out of trolling everyone.
Erm... I would hope that my opinion wouldn't anger anyone on a website for nerds like Slashdot. My opinion should be nearly universal given all the unethical things that Facebook does, and considering the nature of social networking trash.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only is there no actual proof that God exists there is also no actual proof that God doesn't exist - that's why these kinds of discussions are somewhat nonsensical and tend to be imbued with more in the way of emotion and feelings that any kind of hard logic.
There is no proof that god exists, so I lack a belief in god. This isn't difficult to understand, and I have a feeling you're the type of person who would claim to be "agnostic" or some other such thing. I'm an agnostic atheist, by the way.
There are somethings beyond "proof" but the lack of being able to grasp or accept that fact is why some atheists can't admit that they are true believers exactly like any religious true believer.
I lack a belief in a god. What is it that I truly believe? I don't even claim to know that god doesn't exist for sure. Do you also say the same thing about people who don't believe in flying spaghetti monsters and any other silly thing that people can dream up?
Why don't you put forth some arguments, rather than just linking to long, irrelevant blog posts?
I see no evidence that a god exists. It is rational for me to lack a belief in a god. If you're going to argue otherwise, then do so yourself. I have no interest in playing link games, unless you can link to a reputable scientific study that shows that a magical sky daddy exists, which would actually be interesting.
There most certainly are some reasons.
If you can convince yourself to believe in something that has no evidence that it exists just because it has some dubious psychological benefits, then I'd say you are well and truly fucked up. What I'm getting at is that, given no evidence that something exists, lacking a belief in that something is quite rational.
Ah, good, so no one *really* believes in a magical man who created everything. I was scared for a moment there. Good thing they all believe it's metaphorical.
Then you are irrational in this regard. There is no actual proof that a god exists, so there's no reason to believe in it.
"Intelligent"? Since when is "I don't know; therefore, god." intelligent?
If starting a social network that you'd consider "principled" would fix everyone else's behavior, then that's the tool that you'd use. It doesn't matter that you "don't care" about social networking, because a great mass of other people do.
Well, yes, *if* it would fix everyone's unprincipled behavior. But in practice, they'd use it for all the wrong reasons. Only education can fix this problem.
And certain tools can be objectionable, like proprietary software, so results aren't always the only thing on my mind.
You can rail against something that you don't like as much as you want, but it's not going to do any practical good.
I'm not only railing against it, I'm *not using it*. Facebook to me is useless and harmful, and the company is unethical.
Building an alternative would be a noble goal, but I don't care about 'social networking.' But there is a deeper problem: The willingness to sacrifice your privacy and ignore unethical decisions by companies for the sake of convenience. As long as the willingness to make these tradeoffs exists, we will continue to end up with things like Facebook, and also things like the NSA's mass surveillance, the TSA, and the numerous other things that violate our privacy and constitution. The problem is that people are not principled when it comes to liberty or privacy.
I use facebook strictly because it's the only way I can keep communication with people.
How can anyone be so ignorant as to suggest that Facebook is the only method of communication? It's not even the only method of long-distance communication. Not that it's even important to hear all of someone's mundane thoughts anyway.
I would expect Slashdotters to be smarter than this; come on.
If I didn't use things because of something they did, I'd be locked in a cardboard box behind a goodwill.
That makes no sense whatsoever.
I don't see Facebook as a binary 'good/evil' service.
They have too many unethical practices to be worth using.
Much of it is useful
Only if you consider lots and lots of useless, mundane information to be useful, and don't know of any alternatives (phones, email, voice chat, and pretty much any method of communication).
but they are the conduit, not the source of the problem
They are the source of many problems.
Frankly, I worry more about my usenet history than I do Facebook.
I worry about the NSA more than I do Facebook, but that doesn't mean Facebook and their ilk aren't a problem. I just don't use it.
First, facebook is not the only problem. You're kidding yourself if you think it is. The list of technology companies that sucker their users are as long as the list of technology companies that sell 'the cloud'. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc.
Of course it's not the only evil. Don't deal with any of those companies, either.
Worse than this, the evil is not marketing. The real evil is the secret pact between the tech companies and the government's monopoly on the initiation of force, for the benefit of a minority of oligarch families.
Facebook's evil does not stop at mere marketing, though those practices are something I'm definitely against.
Do you see it yet? if you rule out the vast majority of the population based on internet usage, you're out of whack.
"rule them out"? What you can do is try to cure their ignorance.
I would think that intelligent people would care more about privacy and ethics, is all, especially on a site supposedly for nerds.
But IMO, it's a pretty well understood trade, and one that I don't have a big problem with.
Okay, then, we're done. Good job enabling their unethical behavior.
How do you avoid facebook when any picture posted of you makes a stealth profile?
Assuming that happens to you, it's still no reason to get an account and likely give them even more information. And with how these unethical companies act, the TOS means very little.
So avoiding it is worse than accepting it.
Accepting it gives the appearance that the service is legitimate and that using it is inevitable, and that's something I am not willing to do.
You sound autistic.
You sound like an Internet psychologist.
Keep in mind that, since at least the agrarian revolution, it has been a beneficial trait to give at least one, admittedly estimated, tenth of a damn, about what other people think and why they think it.
Giving a damn about important events != needing to read their every worthless thought on Facebook. There are many, many alternatives to Facebook (email, blogs, phone, letters, etc.). People were fine before Facebook and such existed, and they'll be fine now.
More importantly, privacy is what matters. "too fucking bad" is an appropriate response.
But your reasoning is flawed, and your understanding destructively so.
My reasoning (Facebook is unethical and therefore you shouldn't use it) is not flawed, and I understand why people use Facebook, but privacy is more important.
While there will be a certain amount of collateral damage, Facebook users ultimately control what they post, and that is where they can manage what they reveal in on-line surveillance.
But they don't ultimately control what Facebook does with the data they have, which is to use it in privacy-violating ways. You shouldn't legitimize an unethical service by using it.
Admittedly recent tracking methods linking Amazon purchases to Facebook feeds are getting really creepy, but it would be hard for the NSA to have anything suspicious about me considering I post pictures of my kids and a few inoffensive jokes (not that there is anything suspicious).
Are you under the delusion that they need anything "suspicious" to flag you? You can get in trouble just by making a joke or using sarcasm that the authorities don't understand. It's not only malice that you must watch out for, but incompetence too. In addition, if you happen to post anything disagreeable, they could flag you and conduct surveillance on you more closely. Better hope you don't make any 'mistakes' (including posting something considered taboo or possibly illegal).
It includes many, where it is actually viable. It's trivial to avoid Facebook (and I would say the ones you listed, too) despite excuses of peer pressure or not knowing how else to communicate.
It means that I don't believe sacrificing privacy to a greedy company that has shown itself to be wildly unethical for convenience and/or enabling it by using the service is a very principled move.
To which degree? Providing a fake name, birthdate, and other information, blocking image tags, and posting untagged text information?
By even using Facebook, you grant their service legitimacy, and enable (albeit only slightly, but change has to start somewhere) their unethical behavior. You mention algorithms that Facebook uses to infer connections, which is yet another evil.
Being "social" is all about interacting. If you don't interact, you're not social and may as well not be a human.
Not much real interaction from Facebook, and certainly not of the sexual variety. Also, individuals are social to varying degrees.
Until humans figure out a way to reproduce asexually, we'll need to interact.
I guarantee you that the human race could survive without Facebook. You used the more general term "interacting," but the topic is about Facebook, so nice try.
I guess what I'm saying is that what others are doing is logical, you're the illogical one.
Incorrect. I'm only illogical if I'm violating my own principles, which I am not. There is nothing inherently logical about desiring to live, and nothing inherently illogical about desiring the opposite. Not that I do, since you rather missed the point of all these comments, but your statement itself was so illogical that I couldn't overlook it.
No, using Facebook isn't inherently logical or necessary. It certainly isn't principled, and giving an unethical company like Facebook attention is just enabling its behavior.
Which means a failure of those who didn't bother to do their duty as citizens and go out to vote to choose the type of people who would defend the constitution, even if that means ending their careers.
I would still blame both.
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
It means exactly what I think it means.
"Actual" principles being the principles that you hold, and no one else's principles being "actual", No True Scotsman style.
I don't consider sacrificing privacy for convenience to such a degree and enabling Facebook's behavior by using it to be a very principles move.
or you're just getting a kick out of trolling everyone.
Erm... I would hope that my opinion wouldn't anger anyone on a website for nerds like Slashdot. My opinion should be nearly universal given all the unethical things that Facebook does, and considering the nature of social networking trash.
"This is just a fact". hmm. classic weasel words.
"classic weasel words". Hmm. Classic weasel words.
would you care to share which principles everyone must share that are violated by having a fb account?
It almost always comes at the cost of trading privacy for convenience, and enabling Facebook's privacy-invading behavior.
you have posted nothing so far that i can see could argue for your opinion.
Facebook's policies are well-known. If you don't know about them, then get out of your cave.
No, not really. Especially considering the article.
I'm sure you would think that of anything as long as it grows so big it becomes mainstream.
Popular or unpopular, evil is evil to me, so your confidence is misplaced.
every action taken by Big Corp is justifiable and reasonable.
I think about the larger picture, not necessarily about individuals, so again, no.