No. This isn't a glitch nor a problem with the machines. 98% of the voters got it right. That means that the directions were pretty clear.
If this is true, then a 2% failure rate would be extremely low in comparison to traditional paper ballot systems. Which is not to say that the result of an unaudited electronic voting system is actually trustworthy.
When simply voting the incumbent party out of office (or convincing oneself that the party, with its new candidate, has seriously reformed itself) would be a much more civilised response.
I'm sorry, I miswrote. "Convincing oneself" could have negative connotations that are best avoided in this political season. What I should have written is "satisfied oneself." I don't want to say "Bush sux, vote for Obama," in fact I want desperately, not to say it. What I do want to say is that we have in place mechanisms with which to express our political frustrations without resorting to joining a lynch mob.
In Bush's case, the mechanism is the Secret Service, and "the will of the people" is to tar and feather him. nd that's just for starters.
When simply voting the incumbent party out of office (or convincing oneself that the party, with its new candidate, has seriously reformed itself) would be a much more civilised response. The "tar and feather" bit is exactly what I'm afraid of, thanks.
Your statement is inaccurate and should be rephrased as "Every democracy currentlyworth living in"... we now have the means to devise a future democraciy that would have been unimaginable in times past.
Your statement is also capable of being rephrased. We now have the means to implementa future democraciy that would have been only imaginable in times past. I've imagined it for a number of decades now, and let me tell you it's not a pretty picture that gets conjured up in my mind. I'm not against change. But rather than ditching a system that has proved itself for several centuries in favor of the phantasm someone's imagination as implemented by Diebold, I'd prefer to reform representative democracy.
While it may be common sense that such a system will not work - it has worked in a number of places.
You did notice the subject of the post you are responding to?;)
Wikipedia was slated by many to fail, and it did not.
Wikipedia allows people who know something about something to write what they know, to have it corrected by other someones and ultimately to be subject intervention from on high. Direct democracy would involve getting people who know nothing about anything to decide everything. OK, that's hyperbole, but do read on.:)
I'm with Popper here. The strength of democracy does not lie in our ability to elect a government, but to dismiss one. We (you, I and every voter) are singularly unqualified to asses the strength of prospective governments. Firstly we can't believe what the candidates or the press or the smear campaigns etc etc tell us. Secondly we are not qualified in Economics && Law && Domestic Administration && Foreign Affairs && the countless other things governments must deal with. However, when incumbents get it wrong, there is no-one, but no-one, who is better informed than the people who are subject to that government's misrule.
We are, I submit, even less qualified to make a call on day-to-day administrative or legislative processes.
The courts will still be there to overrule unconstitutional legislation and protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority (as they do now) so there will not be that kind of danger.
The courts would be the very first thing to go. And what is this constitution that you speak of? Not the one you've thrown out the door to bring this about?
A common misconception. (I was tempted to write so is 'you').
The use of 'their' as a singular pronoun dates back to about 1420, so it has a bit of a pedigree. One can find it in constructions such as "Many a Sarazen lost their liffe." (Arth. & Merl. [Kölbing] 1533). More recently it has been applied as a gender neutral singlular pronoun. I'm a bit old-fashioned, so I avoid it by never describing an abstract class of people in the singular. (i.e. rather than writing "a user" I always write "users").
a government of the people, by the people, for the people, is not just a catchy phrase from the Gettysburg Address. if we want to continue to call ourselves a democracy, then we need to actually employ a democratic system of government that carries out the will of the people.
"Direct democracy," no matter how well intentioned, is a recipe for dystopia. Every democracy worth living in has mechanisms set up to protect individuals from "the will of the people."
We don't "need" to make radical changes, at all. Sorry to get all conservative on you, but given such a high level of complexity, a established system, incorporating countless bug-fixes, is preferable to a complete re-write. A similar principle applies to software developement.
Whether human CO2 emissions are drastically affecting the earths climate is a different question, and one which has not been settled with any degree of certainty.
Nonesense. The certainty has been quantified and is there for all to see in AR4, from memory it is 90%, but don't quote me on that. Also I think that was before the isotopic fingerprint work was done.
Science is always open for 'debate,' but the debate must be scientific, you have to come up with the math. Realistically though, now that even Lindzen has all but conceeded, the scientific debate is for all practical purposes settled. What is open for debate though are the implications the science has for policy. So lets advance the debate and stop pretending it's still 1990.
so "intelligent design" is to the right what "global climate change" is to the left
Not at all. Both issues involve the Right denying established science.
You know I'm old enough to remember when it was the Left, that did loony stuff like that. Remember when plate tectonics was judged to be inconsistent with historical materialism? Funny how times change.
Giving the OP the benefit of the doubt (s)he was perhaps drawing a distinction with the 'reference' in the page the refers to the footnote underneath? In any case that, what is relevant here is the 'reference' to external information. A hypertext reference pointing to an external document clearly is like a footnote.
Libertarianism virtually doesn't exist outside of the United States. 'Left anarchism' isn't libertarianism as it's most widely understood and defined
Being outside the US, the only meaning of 'libertarian' I knew for many years, was a form communist who respects individual rights, more or less synonymous with anarcho-communist. The first time I heard the word used in regard to US libertarians as some sort of ultra-capitalists radical 'liberal' (which also means something completely different outside the US) was in an economics lecture. I presumed it was a marxist lecturer's specious attack on anarchists. Turns out there are 'libertarians' who fitted his description (in the US) and that, just because he was of the left, he wasn't necessarily a marxist either.
In any case OP is absolutely correct, outside the US 'libertarian' traditionally referred to left anarchists.
Just because a cat wears a label that says it's a dog, doesn't make it a dog.
'Gift' is the German word for poison. There is nothing inherent in the string of characters 'd-o-g' which refers for all time and in all places to a canine. Even within a single language like English there are many examples of words which have one meaning say in the US, and another elsewhere in the English speaking word. Take 'libertarian' for example...
Exactly when the original story broke, I went from about two hundred spams a day to over a thousand
Wierd, I went from about 50-75 to about 5! I haven't had so little spam in ages, I keep having to check that fetchmail is still running. I wondered why, and then thought, this spam bust? No. Surely busting a single operator isn't going to have a noticeable effect?!
Yes, and it is not only the cost of the trial (BTW physics experiments can eat into a budget too). It's that your subjects are humans. You can't lock them in a box, they lie about other treatments (especially quack treatments) they might be taking (who knows you could have just proved homeopathy works without even knowing), you can't control their diet, sleep cycles, blah blah blah. So it is difficult at times to flesh out the effect of the independent variable like you can even with animal experiments, a fortiori with 'simple' systems. But (sic) in biomedical science there is a further factor, namely that so much of the science (and presumably peer review) is being conducted by non-scientists. Yes I know, I'm arguing against my own position somewhat, and what's worse what follows is personal prejudice...
In a past lifetime (well in the 70s to be honest) I was a pharmacology major. We were trained to tear methodologies apart, looking for design errors, selection bias, inappropriate conclusions being draw from correlations, you know the usual stuff. It seemed, that the methodology was the weakest when the authors were MDs. So I guess it's no surprise that you have to wait around for the PhDs to clean up the mess:) in this field. I grew up in a family of medical lab scientists who referred to PhDs (in contradistinction to physicians) as real doctors, so I guess I was predisposed to this bias.
To be fair, Ioannidis' work has to be appreciated in the context of the discource of EBM (um, that's Evidence Based Medicine, not Electro Body Music), and if it is merely a call to lift the game in examining the actual efficacy of interventions, then I cannot, of course, object. His playing not only a scientist, but also an economist, however, leaves me underimpressed (I must be what he calls an "idealist" haha!).
Taken out of the context of EBM, and put up on a forum such as this one, with the implication that it has more general applicability to science in general, this work becomes FUD. Dangerous FUD! Oh, if it's published in a scientific journal it must be wrong! I already noted some denialist grasping at straws has tagged this story "globalwarming." 'Nuff said.
Moreover, we don't need economic 'science' dictating how to organise the scientific process, we really don't. Nothing Ioannidis writes convinces me that there is a real problem here. On the contrary, we are seeing science, even biomedical science, working very well thankyou.
[I]f you have 66% of published results being found to be wrong you have a huge problem!
I agree. Just as well that a mere 16% were outright refuted then isn't it?:P
With another 16% shown to have weaker effects than originally reported.
(Ioannidis P A, 'Contradicted and Initially Stronger Effects...', JAMA 2005;294:218-228.) Moreover,
the study was based on 45 papers, with an intentional selection bias, they were both highly cited and claimed
high efficacy. Now such citeria might address Dr Ioannidis' particular research interests, but they are hardly
representative of the literature over the 13 year period from which they were selected.
At the risk of being modded down to oblivion, I am still curious to how this effects popular theories like global warming.
This field was so controversial, and scientists (and non-scientists) have gone over the work here with so many fine-tooth combs, that you can probably take the work that has survived refutation here as being very solidly established. That might not be the answer you wanted.
I hasten to add that while the sceptical scientists have unfortunately been shown to be wrong, their contributions, questioning the mainstream at every turn, have actually served to make climate modelling and paleo-climatology far far more rigourous than they would have been had everyone agreed from day one.
We already has people claiming that the science is wrong and they are generally mocked and ignored because their works are published in major journals. Well, this story seems to indicate that publishing those claims will give them a larger change of it being incorrect.
Which is why this article is such dangerous FUD, not merely in regard to climate science.
I know the IPCC looked at them, but they didn't validate any of the claims, they only looks at whether or not Humans were the cause (that was their charter and they acknowledged this in their reporting).
Nonsense! Their mandate is much general than that. The IPCC consists of 3 working groups, and the question of human causation formed only a fraction of the work undertaken by Working Group I (which reviews the physical scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change).
Really, whether you want to "tow the line" or not, before you make pronouncements about what the IPCC does or does not do or say, you owe it to yourself to inform yourself at least a little. It really doesn't take much time to read the Summary for Policy Makers, and only a little more to go the Technical Summary. You can find the various parts of the Report of Working Group I here. Of course reading the entire report is only for folks who don't have a life.:)
Now let's see who gets "modded down to oblivion.";)
Afterall how many times have we been told "don't eat X/do Y it is bad for you" only later to find out that actually it isn't half as bad as they thought and may even have benefits? Just because a lot of medical research is often flawed does not mean that all of science has the problem on the same scale.
The problem here is that the popular press always report the very latest 'finding' in what is a complex field. Yet we should know that not only in medicine, but in virtually all experimental sciences, a single paper is not sufficient to establish some new profound truth.
Dr Ioannidis' largest problem is that he thinks he has identified a problem. There isn't one. This is how science is supposed to work! We publish methodologies so that the work can be replicated by other teams. Some findings survive futher scrutiny, some don't. The "hotter" the field, the less you are going to rely on the latest single study, no?
So he's found 1/3 of studies were refuted, but later work. Great, they were refuted, what's the problem? And how do we move from that to the conclusion that "most" scientific papers (even outside the hotter fields of bio-medical research) are wrong. And what about looking at outcomes? The advances of medicine even in my lifetime are astounding, this is hardly the result of a system that isn't working!
Maybe I was a little trollish in saying, "It's in the bag,"
Maybe you were. However you were being insightful when you pointed out that the media have a pecuniary interest in portraying the race (indeed any race) as being much closer than it actually is.
The assumption your making here is that the only way to be creative and successful at it is to use a mac that is simply not true. Why should the eeepc have to run OSX why cant it run Linux or Windows?
Nope, I'm making no such assumption at all. Note what I wrote: he should be able to do his school work on it. The school he is at is using Macs. My assumption, perhaps unfounded, is that there is no Windows or Linux program able to open and edit GarageBand files etc.. Perhaps you would care to enlighten me? While we are at it, can you point me to a Linux program with the functionality of Logic Studio? The reason I orinally bought the Mac was that Linux just doesn't cut it for music production. I have not regretted that decision. Hell they even give me a terminal, it's almost like a real computer!
And how can you claim that this is the best option when you have no experience first or second hand with the results of giving children anything other than a Macbook?
Read my post carefully. Firstly I did not claim it was "the best option," but since you mention it, it probably is. Secondly, my son has access to a Linux box and an iMac at home and has accounts on both. The only application on the Linux box he regularly uses if Firefox. He's all over the Mac, to the point where I'm getting annoyed at him for using up several Gigs of disk space on my dedicated DAW machine. OK, it's got a 500G disk, but still! NO MORE PHOTOBOOTH MOVIES SUNSHINE!
How about he gets steered towards a playground with some outdoor implements instead?
So kids should be kept away from maths, reading or any other non-physical skills until... ? I'm sorry, but that's really, truly dumb. This is Australia, there really is no shortage of physical activity / sports development for children. Our problem is getting brains working.
I can't see any valid reason for a 7 year old to have a computer.
If you had spent some time away from the playground and had learnt to read before your teenage years (was it?), your vision might not be so impaired. Thankfully you are not an educationalist.
My nephew is a grade one student at a primary school in Victoria. The school uses macs so he has his heart set on a macbook for christmas.
My son is 7 and in year 2 in a NSW public school and they use Macs as well. He hasn't got his heart set on a Macbook for christmas because the school intends supplying all kids year 2 up with take-home / bring-to-school Macbooks. Years 4,5 and 6 have theirs already.
I can't see what a 7 year old will get out of a mac.
You would if you came to our school's open day, its amazing how creative these kids are on the right equipment. It would not have been my first choice (based on cost), but I have to confess the results speak for themselves. We have an iMac at home (which has left the poor *nix box a little neglected:( ), and our 7 year old taught his mother how to make a podcast on it last week. The little brat even solved a problem his grandmother was having on her macbook (something that needed to be set on the Dock of all places).
I have been trying to steering them towards an eeepc.
Well so long as you can get OSX running on it, he should be able to do his school work on it. It might be a little inconvenient working in GarageBand or iMovie with such a small screen though.
[T]he people would hold the communist party accountable--revolution would be in the streets and China would become be under new management by the end of the month.
I have two words for you: 'Tiananmen' and 'Square'.
As the disconnected logic of believing that if something hasn't been proven, it doesn't exist?
I prefer the connected logic (tautology) of believing that if something hasn't been proven to exist, it hasn't been proven to exist. What could possibly motivate me to go the next step and positively assert that "Unicorns don't exist." In other words what possible reason could I have for accepting the onus of proof for the non-existence of Unicorns, where the onus otherwise resides with those asserting the existence of Unicorns? Unicorns are in the same position as a potentially infinite number other objects which cannot be proven to exist. To stress the non-existence of Unicorns, seems to me to place Unicorns in a privileged position relative to other members of the set of unproven things. I don't see why the concept 'Unicorn' deserves such special treatment and I simply don't have time to prove the non-existence (even were this logically possible) of an inifite number of things the existence of which cannot be proven.
Or to put this another way. Merely because a non-existent object cannot be proven not to exist, this does not make it logical to accept the existence (even putatively) of said object. Quite the opposite.
On a connected note, you will find very few philosphically minded atheists who would make the statement "the god(s) do(es) not exist." There's a vast difference between an atheist (lack of belief in the existence of the gods) from an assertion of the gods non-existence, rhetorical attempts (by people wishing to paint atheism as a 'belief') to push a distinction between "strong" vs "weak" atheists, notwithstanding.
People believe because they have to...
You don't have to believe in Unicorns, really you don't.
... and they have the right to believe what they want.
Absolutely. But that doesn't make the question of why so many people choose to exercise this right in such obvious defiance of reality one that shouldn't be put.
Nice try. Western science of course was born out of Christian religion - science being a way to understand more about the creation's of God and hence to get nearer to the creator.... The [Catholic] Church founded many of the first Universities...
You'll get no disagreement from me on these points. I'm a avid proponent of the
thesis that the Church played a major, if not the the major role, in forging
European Civilisation. Not only did it foster the sciences, but more
generally, nowhere has History thrown up a culture which more highly regards
both intellectual honesty and an
individual's right of conscience, as those emerging from Christian societies.
It need hardly be added that the Church was not for ever and always the
guardian of intellectual freedom, but the point is that something about Christian
culture appears to have fostered it.
Nietzche (not my favourite philospher) again, observed that the truth-seeking encouraged by
Christianity ends up eating Christianity itself. In the end we are led to
the realisation that the existence of God, hitherto accepted uncritically, can
no longer be honestly sustained, simply because it is a baseless claim.
Similarly, Science, which you nicely characterise as an attempt "to get
nearer to the creator," reveals that positing a humanoid 'creator' is neither
necessary nor pursuasive. Once we got close enough, the creator disappeared from
view.
And once Western thought approaches this level of maturity, we
must either surrender our belief, or at least our certitude, in the existence of gods,
or we must surrender our adherence to the accepted truth-testing techniques of Western
thought. At this stage Christianity tends instead to become a force for (self-)deception, of which the Big Lie of
Creationism is but one extreme example. I write 'tends' because Christianity is clearly too diverse a set of beliefs (where some even advocate the adoption of a "non-deistic theology") to be tarred with any single brush.
Err, I think you got that confused. How under an atheist world view how does a consciousness (which is usually under such a view a complex anomaly of brain chemistry) live for "all time"?
The confusion, I assure you, is all your own. I did not write, nor is it a
necessary implication of anything that I did write, that an individual
consciousness "lives" for all time. On the contrary, we have no basis for
believing such a claim. As you point out, your misapplication of the
word 'anomaly' notwithstanding, consciousness is associated with a functioning brain
(which is not to equate brain function with consciousness), and indeed
it has never been observed in the absence of a functioning brain.
Instead these marvellous, unique and irreplaceable consciousnesses that we all are, live for a cruelly short time, after which they are extinguished for all time. A full realisation of the gravity of this fact, a fortiori the gravity of prematurely ending such a consciousness, is not achievable in the absence of a rigorous intellectual honesty (which requires inter alia an atheistic stance). That is my contention!
Indeed as an atheist, not bound to an absolute morality, what is the problem with "snuffing out" anything, there is no wrong or right after all?
There is no need to ruin a perfectly good discussion with such
question-begging nonesense. Please! The post you are responding to already
pointed to the problem of ethical grounding in the absence of God and gave a famous
example of non-deistic grounding.
If you maintain that God can form the
only ground for morality then yes, since the claim that God exists is baseless,
there can be no wrong nor right. This is the problem posed by the "Death of
God" the madman in the marketplace was so furiously proclaiming. The question we
must now address becomes this, given that a God
grounded conception of morality is no longer sustainable how do we ground
mora
Slashdot Mirror
No. This isn't a glitch nor a problem with the machines. 98% of the voters got it right. That means that the directions were pretty clear.
If this is true, then a 2% failure rate would be extremely low in comparison to traditional paper ballot systems. Which is not to say that the result of an unaudited electronic voting system is actually trustworthy.
When simply voting the incumbent party out of office (or convincing oneself that the party, with its new candidate, has seriously reformed itself) would be a much more civilised response.
I'm sorry, I miswrote. "Convincing oneself" could have negative connotations that are best avoided in this political season. What I should have written is "satisfied oneself." I don't want to say "Bush sux, vote for Obama," in fact I want desperately, not to say it. What I do want to say is that we have in place mechanisms with which to express our political frustrations without resorting to joining a lynch mob.
In Bush's case, the mechanism is the Secret Service, and "the will of the people" is to tar and feather him. nd that's just for starters.
When simply voting the incumbent party out of office (or convincing oneself that the party, with its new candidate, has seriously reformed itself) would be a much more civilised response. The "tar and feather" bit is exactly what I'm afraid of, thanks.
Your statement is inaccurate and should be rephrased as "Every democracy currentlyworth living in" ... we now have the means to devise a future democraciy that would have been unimaginable in times past.
Your statement is also capable of being rephrased. We now have the means to implementa future democraciy that would have been only imaginable in times past. I've imagined it for a number of decades now, and let me tell you it's not a pretty picture that gets conjured up in my mind. I'm not against change. But rather than ditching a system that has proved itself for several centuries in favor of the phantasm someone's imagination as implemented by Diebold, I'd prefer to reform representative democracy.
While it may be common sense that such a system will not work - it has worked in a number of places.
You did notice the subject of the post you are responding to? ;)
Wikipedia was slated by many to fail, and it did not.
Wikipedia allows people who know something about something to write what they know, to have it corrected by other someones and ultimately to be subject intervention from on high. Direct democracy would involve getting people who know nothing about anything to decide everything. OK, that's hyperbole, but do read on. :)
I'm with Popper here. The strength of democracy does not lie in our ability to elect a government, but to dismiss one. We (you, I and every voter) are singularly unqualified to asses the strength of prospective governments. Firstly we can't believe what the candidates or the press or the smear campaigns etc etc tell us. Secondly we are not qualified in Economics && Law && Domestic Administration && Foreign Affairs && the countless other things governments must deal with. However, when incumbents get it wrong, there is no-one, but no-one, who is better informed than the people who are subject to that government's misrule.
We are, I submit, even less qualified to make a call on day-to-day administrative or legislative processes.
The courts will still be there to overrule unconstitutional legislation and protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority (as they do now) so there will not be that kind of danger.
The courts would be the very first thing to go. And what is this constitution that you speak of? Not the one you've thrown out the door to bring this about?
"Their" is plural.
A common misconception. (I was tempted to write so is 'you').
The use of 'their' as a singular pronoun dates back to about 1420, so it has a bit of a pedigree. One can find it in constructions such as "Many a Sarazen lost their liffe." (Arth. & Merl. [Kölbing] 1533). More recently it has been applied as a gender neutral singlular pronoun. I'm a bit old-fashioned, so I avoid it by never describing an abstract class of people in the singular. (i.e. rather than writing "a user" I always write "users").
a government of the people, by the people, for the people, is not just a catchy phrase from the Gettysburg Address. if we want to continue to call ourselves a democracy, then we need to actually employ a democratic system of government that carries out the will of the people.
"Direct democracy," no matter how well intentioned, is a recipe for dystopia. Every democracy worth living in has mechanisms set up to protect individuals from "the will of the people."
We don't "need" to make radical changes, at all. Sorry to get all conservative on you, but given such a high level of complexity, a established system, incorporating countless bug-fixes, is preferable to a complete re-write. A similar principle applies to software developement.
Whether human CO2 emissions are drastically affecting the earths climate is a different question, and one which has not been settled with any degree of certainty.
Nonesense. The certainty has been quantified and is there for all to see in AR4, from memory it is 90%, but don't quote me on that. Also I think that was before the isotopic fingerprint work was done.
Science is always open for 'debate,' but the debate must be scientific, you have to come up with the math. Realistically though, now that even Lindzen has all but conceeded, the scientific debate is for all practical purposes settled. What is open for debate though are the implications the science has for policy. So lets advance the debate and stop pretending it's still 1990.
so "intelligent design" is to the right what "global climate change" is to the left
Not at all. Both issues involve the Right denying established science.
You know I'm old enough to remember when it was the Left, that did loony stuff like that. Remember when plate tectonics was judged to be inconsistent with historical materialism? Funny how times change.
What exactly do you think footnotes are?
Giving the OP the benefit of the doubt (s)he was perhaps drawing a distinction with the 'reference' in the page the refers to the footnote underneath? In any case that, what is relevant here is the 'reference' to external information. A hypertext reference pointing to an external document clearly is like a footnote.
Libertarianism virtually doesn't exist outside of the United States. 'Left anarchism' isn't libertarianism as it's most widely understood and defined
Being outside the US, the only meaning of 'libertarian' I knew for many years, was a form communist who respects individual rights, more or less synonymous with anarcho-communist. The first time I heard the word used in regard to US libertarians as some sort of ultra-capitalists radical 'liberal' (which also means something completely different outside the US) was in an economics lecture. I presumed it was a marxist lecturer's specious attack on anarchists. Turns out there are 'libertarians' who fitted his description (in the US) and that, just because he was of the left, he wasn't necessarily a marxist either.
In any case OP is absolutely correct, outside the US 'libertarian' traditionally referred to left anarchists.
Just because a cat wears a label that says it's a dog, doesn't make it a dog.
'Gift' is the German word for poison. There is nothing inherent in the string of characters 'd-o-g' which refers for all time and in all places to a canine. Even within a single language like English there are many examples of words which have one meaning say in the US, and another elsewhere in the English speaking word. Take 'libertarian' for example ...
Exactly when the original story broke, I went from about two hundred spams a day to over a thousand
Wierd, I went from about 50-75 to about 5! I haven't had so little spam in ages, I keep having to check that fetchmail is still running. I wondered why, and then thought, this spam bust? No. Surely busting a single operator isn't going to have a noticeable effect?!
So I guess it all depends on whose lists you are?
Yes, and it is not only the cost of the trial (BTW physics experiments can eat into a budget too). It's that your subjects are humans. You can't lock them in a box, they lie about other treatments (especially quack treatments) they might be taking (who knows you could have just proved homeopathy works without even knowing), you can't control their diet, sleep cycles, blah blah blah. So it is difficult at times to flesh out the effect of the independent variable like you can even with animal experiments, a fortiori with 'simple' systems. But (sic) in biomedical science there is a further factor, namely that so much of the science (and presumably peer review) is being conducted by non-scientists. Yes I know, I'm arguing against my own position somewhat, and what's worse what follows is personal prejudice ...
In a past lifetime (well in the 70s to be honest) I was a pharmacology major. We were trained to tear methodologies apart, looking for design errors, selection bias, inappropriate conclusions being draw from correlations, you know the usual stuff. It seemed, that the methodology was the weakest when the authors were MDs. So I guess it's no surprise that you have to wait around for the PhDs to clean up the mess :) in this field. I grew up in a family of medical lab scientists who referred to PhDs (in contradistinction to physicians) as real doctors, so I guess I was predisposed to this bias.
To be fair, Ioannidis' work has to be appreciated in the context of the discource of EBM (um, that's Evidence Based Medicine, not Electro Body Music), and if it is merely a call to lift the game in examining the actual efficacy of interventions, then I cannot, of course, object. His playing not only a scientist, but also an economist, however, leaves me underimpressed (I must be what he calls an "idealist" haha!).
Taken out of the context of EBM, and put up on a forum such as this one, with the implication that it has more general applicability to science in general, this work becomes FUD. Dangerous FUD! Oh, if it's published in a scientific journal it must be wrong! I already noted some denialist grasping at straws has tagged this story "globalwarming." 'Nuff said.
Moreover, we don't need economic 'science' dictating how to organise the scientific process, we really don't. Nothing Ioannidis writes convinces me that there is a real problem here. On the contrary, we are seeing science, even biomedical science, working very well thankyou.
[I]f you have 66% of published results being found to be wrong you have a huge problem!
I agree. Just as well that a mere 16% were outright refuted then isn't it? :P
With another 16% shown to have weaker effects than originally reported.
(Ioannidis P A, 'Contradicted and Initially Stronger Effects ...', JAMA 2005;294:218-228.) Moreover,
the study was based on 45 papers, with an intentional selection bias, they were both highly cited and claimed
high efficacy. Now such citeria might address Dr Ioannidis' particular research interests, but they are hardly
representative of the literature over the 13 year period from which they were selected.
At the risk of being modded down to oblivion, I am still curious to how this effects popular theories like global warming.
This field was so controversial, and scientists (and non-scientists) have gone over the work here with so many fine-tooth combs, that you can probably take the work that has survived refutation here as being very solidly established. That might not be the answer you wanted.
I hasten to add that while the sceptical scientists have unfortunately been shown to be wrong, their contributions, questioning the mainstream at every turn, have actually served to make climate modelling and paleo-climatology far far more rigourous than they would have been had everyone agreed from day one.
We already has people claiming that the science is wrong and they are generally mocked and ignored because their works are published in major journals. Well, this story seems to indicate that publishing those claims will give them a larger change of it being incorrect.
Which is why this article is such dangerous FUD, not merely in regard to climate science.
I know the IPCC looked at them, but they didn't validate any of the claims, they only looks at whether or not Humans were the cause (that was their charter and they acknowledged this in their reporting).
Nonsense! Their mandate is much general than that. The IPCC consists of 3 working groups, and the question of human causation formed only a fraction of the work undertaken by Working Group I (which reviews the physical scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change).
Really, whether you want to "tow the line" or not, before you make pronouncements about what the IPCC does or does not do or say, you owe it to yourself to inform yourself at least a little. It really doesn't take much time to read the Summary for Policy Makers, and only a little more to go the Technical Summary. You can find the various parts of the Report of Working Group I here. Of course reading the entire report is only for folks who don't have a life. :)
Now let's see who gets "modded down to oblivion." ;)
Afterall how many times have we been told "don't eat X/do Y it is bad for you" only later to find out that actually it isn't half as bad as they thought and may even have benefits? Just because a lot of medical research is often flawed does not mean that all of science has the problem on the same scale.
The problem here is that the popular press always report the very latest 'finding' in what is a complex field. Yet we should know that not only in medicine, but in virtually all experimental sciences, a single paper is not sufficient to establish some new profound truth.
Dr Ioannidis' largest problem is that he thinks he has identified a problem. There isn't one. This is how science is supposed to work! We publish methodologies so that the work can be replicated by other teams. Some findings survive futher scrutiny, some don't. The "hotter" the field, the less you are going to rely on the latest single study, no?
So he's found 1/3 of studies were refuted, but later work. Great, they were refuted, what's the problem? And how do we move from that to the conclusion that "most" scientific papers (even outside the hotter fields of bio-medical research) are wrong. And what about looking at outcomes? The advances of medicine even in my lifetime are astounding, this is hardly the result of a system that isn't working!
Maybe I was a little trollish in saying, "It's in the bag,"
Maybe you were. However you were being insightful when you pointed out that the media have a pecuniary interest in portraying the race (indeed any race) as being much closer than it actually is.
The assumption your making here is that the only way to be creative and successful at it is to use a mac that is simply not true. Why should the eeepc have to run OSX why cant it run Linux or Windows?
Nope, I'm making no such assumption at all. Note what I wrote: he should be able to do his school work on it. The school he is at is using Macs. My assumption, perhaps unfounded, is that there is no Windows or Linux program able to open and edit GarageBand files etc.. Perhaps you would care to enlighten me? While we are at it, can you point me to a Linux program with the functionality of Logic Studio? The reason I orinally bought the Mac was that Linux just doesn't cut it for music production. I have not regretted that decision. Hell they even give me a terminal, it's almost like a real computer!
And how can you claim that this is the best option when you have no experience first or second hand with the results of giving children anything other than a Macbook?
Read my post carefully. Firstly I did not claim it was "the best option," but since you mention it, it probably is. Secondly, my son has access to a Linux box and an iMac at home and has accounts on both. The only application on the Linux box he regularly uses if Firefox. He's all over the Mac, to the point where I'm getting annoyed at him for using up several Gigs of disk space on my dedicated DAW machine. OK, it's got a 500G disk, but still! NO MORE PHOTOBOOTH MOVIES SUNSHINE!
How about he gets steered towards a playground with some outdoor implements instead?
So kids should be kept away from maths, reading or any other non-physical skills until ... ? I'm sorry, but that's really, truly dumb. This is Australia, there really is no shortage of physical activity / sports development for children. Our problem is getting brains working.
I can't see any valid reason for a 7 year old to have a computer.
If you had spent some time away from the playground and had learnt to read before your teenage years (was it?), your vision might not be so impaired. Thankfully you are not an educationalist.
My nephew is a grade one student at a primary school in Victoria. The school uses macs so he has his heart set on a macbook for christmas.
My son is 7 and in year 2 in a NSW public school and they use Macs as well. He hasn't got his heart set on a Macbook for christmas because the school intends supplying all kids year 2 up with take-home / bring-to-school Macbooks. Years 4,5 and 6 have theirs already.
I can't see what a 7 year old will get out of a mac.
You would if you came to our school's open day, its amazing how creative these kids are on the right equipment. It would not have been my first choice (based on cost), but I have to confess the results speak for themselves. We have an iMac at home (which has left the poor *nix box a little neglected :( ), and our 7 year old taught his mother how to make a podcast on it last week. The little brat even solved a problem his grandmother was having on her macbook (something that needed to be set on the Dock of all places).
I have been trying to steering them towards an eeepc.
Well so long as you can get OSX running on it, he should be able to do his school work on it. It might be a little inconvenient working in GarageBand or iMovie with such a small screen though.
The economic collapse that would follow losing the U.S. as a trading partner would see buy-in from hundreds of millions among the masses
Dream on!
AND people with money who were smart enough to see which way the wind was blowing
My point exactly.
I have three words for you; it's (sic.): Tian anmen Square
Square?
[T]he people would hold the communist party accountable--revolution would be in the streets and China would become be under new management by the end of the month.
I have two words for you: 'Tiananmen' and 'Square'.
Perl/Windows shops? WTF?
You want to use Windows without Perl, Python or some similar language?!
As the disconnected logic of believing that if something hasn't been proven, it doesn't exist?
I prefer the connected logic (tautology) of believing that if something hasn't been proven to exist, it hasn't been proven to exist. What could possibly motivate me to go the next step and positively assert that "Unicorns don't exist." In other words what possible reason could I have for accepting the onus of proof for the non-existence of Unicorns, where the onus otherwise resides with those asserting the existence of Unicorns? Unicorns are in the same position as a potentially infinite number other objects which cannot be proven to exist. To stress the non-existence of Unicorns, seems to me to place Unicorns in a privileged position relative to other members of the set of unproven things. I don't see why the concept 'Unicorn' deserves such special treatment and I simply don't have time to prove the non-existence (even were this logically possible) of an inifite number of things the existence of which cannot be proven.
Or to put this another way. Merely because a non-existent object cannot be proven not to exist, this does not make it logical to accept the existence (even putatively) of said object. Quite the opposite.
On a connected note, you will find very few philosphically minded atheists who would make the statement "the god(s) do(es) not exist." There's a vast difference between an atheist (lack of belief in the existence of the gods) from an assertion of the gods non-existence, rhetorical attempts (by people wishing to paint atheism as a 'belief') to push a distinction between "strong" vs "weak" atheists, notwithstanding.
People believe because they have to ...
You don't have to believe in Unicorns, really you don't.
Absolutely. But that doesn't make the question of why so many people choose to exercise this right in such obvious defiance of reality one that shouldn't be put.
Nice try. Western science of course was born out of Christian religion - science being a way to understand more about the creation's of God and hence to get nearer to the creator. ... The [Catholic] Church founded many of the first Universities ...
You'll get no disagreement from me on these points. I'm a avid proponent of the thesis that the Church played a major, if not the the major role, in forging European Civilisation. Not only did it foster the sciences, but more generally, nowhere has History thrown up a culture which more highly regards both intellectual honesty and an individual's right of conscience, as those emerging from Christian societies. It need hardly be added that the Church was not for ever and always the guardian of intellectual freedom, but the point is that something about Christian culture appears to have fostered it.
Nietzche (not my favourite philospher) again, observed that the truth-seeking encouraged by Christianity ends up eating Christianity itself. In the end we are led to the realisation that the existence of God, hitherto accepted uncritically, can no longer be honestly sustained, simply because it is a baseless claim. Similarly, Science, which you nicely characterise as an attempt "to get nearer to the creator," reveals that positing a humanoid 'creator' is neither necessary nor pursuasive. Once we got close enough, the creator disappeared from view.
And once Western thought approaches this level of maturity, we must either surrender our belief, or at least our certitude, in the existence of gods, or we must surrender our adherence to the accepted truth-testing techniques of Western thought. At this stage Christianity tends instead to become a force for (self-)deception, of which the Big Lie of Creationism is but one extreme example. I write 'tends' because Christianity is clearly too diverse a set of beliefs (where some even advocate the adoption of a "non-deistic theology") to be tarred with any single brush.
Err, I think you got that confused. How under an atheist world view how does a consciousness (which is usually under such a view a complex anomaly of brain chemistry) live for "all time"?
The confusion, I assure you, is all your own. I did not write, nor is it a necessary implication of anything that I did write, that an individual consciousness "lives" for all time. On the contrary, we have no basis for believing such a claim. As you point out, your misapplication of the word 'anomaly' notwithstanding, consciousness is associated with a functioning brain (which is not to equate brain function with consciousness), and indeed it has never been observed in the absence of a functioning brain.
Instead these marvellous, unique and irreplaceable consciousnesses that we all are, live for a cruelly short time, after which they are extinguished for all time. A full realisation of the gravity of this fact, a fortiori the gravity of prematurely ending such a consciousness, is not achievable in the absence of a rigorous intellectual honesty (which requires inter alia an atheistic stance). That is my contention!
Indeed as an atheist, not bound to an absolute morality, what is the problem with "snuffing out" anything, there is no wrong or right after all?
There is no need to ruin a perfectly good discussion with such question-begging nonesense. Please! The post you are responding to already pointed to the problem of ethical grounding in the absence of God and gave a famous example of non-deistic grounding.
If you maintain that God can form the only ground for morality then yes, since the claim that God exists is baseless, there can be no wrong nor right. This is the problem posed by the "Death of God" the madman in the marketplace was so furiously proclaiming. The question we must now address becomes this, given that a God grounded conception of morality is no longer sustainable how do we ground mora