Anyone who stands any significant chance of winning should be banned. If you don't do this, it's unfair to everyone else. Nondiscrimination means that athletes should be awarded medals based only on random number generation.
If you have some snide comments to make, they would be better directed at the elected officials that created their posts, not the grunts on the ground.
emkyooess is right but I'm going to try to spell it out more clearly (or at least more verbosely and less Godwiny):
If you are part of an organisation, and that organisation is doing something immoral, and you follow along, then you are part of the transgression. A member of any group is a part of that group. Duh, but people who are "just doing their job" are every bit as much part of what gets done as the people pulling the strings.
To put it another way: you are responsible for your actions even if you're getting paid.
In the USA and in many other countries, women/girls are getting fatter (so are men, but that's orthogonal to the discussion). Fatter has at times past meant more beautiful (at least to painters who appreciate curves) but by today's standards fat is bad. Of course, fat is also known to be unhealthy, and I'd love to know how intellectual knowledge of health plays into attraction.
I suspect that this has a great deal to do with wealth. When most people had to work the fields, white skin and fat and some other things were signs of wealth, and were therefore attractive. Now that everyone works indoors and only the educated and rich bother with food made of animals and plants rather than with growth hormones and hydrocarbons, sports, travel, active hobbies, or at least fake it with gym memberships, the poor get fat and white and the rich get thin and tanned. I know that men are supposed to appreciate "fitness to bear children" rather than "wealth", but I suspect that men are also attracted to upper-class women...?
Another thing occurs to me: the link between social class/education level and number of children is well established--the upper classes have many fewer children for reasons other than how attractive they are. Perhaps the measure of "how many children you have" has some serious problems. Did anyone here actually read the study and find out whether they normalised for education level?
Look at the state the world is in. Anyone who argues that humans are smart enough to run the place is seriously not paying attention. If we don't find someone that can do a better job than the standard human, we as a species, and probably as a biosphere, are dead.
I honestly don't know whether Paul's "argument" is better than what you call "blind faith".
He's at least trying. He makes an argument that is missing some pieces, and he touches upon what those pieces need to look like. It may be easier to refute "The mind is immortal because it's not in the same condition as the liver" than "We have souls." He even points out that he doesn't have that piece and suggests a future research direction, which is consistent with good science!
But then he goes on to say that while he can't prove his hypothesis, he still believes it, and moreover he wants to persuade others to believe it despite the glaring lack of evidence--because "there is no credible evidence to the contrary." That is unfortunate.
So after a bit of good observation, he resorts to making a more precise but still untestable claim, and asks people not to try to help him investigate this fascinating question further, but to accept the untestable claim because it's shiny. That's consistent with what I think of as faith.
It sounds to me like the core of your argument goes something like this:
Religions disagree. However, reasonable people all tend to be in it in order to find some reasonable spiritual guidance, and those who share this goal tend to be able to have intelligent conversations together rather than blowing each other up.
Is that the gist? If not, sorry!
That makes sense. But I take issue with people who claim to belong to some group that has a doctrine--for example, that if your child disobeys you then you should stone him to death--and then put qualifiers on it, like "oh, well, that wasn't meant to be taken literally--it's just a metaphor." If a religion has a doctrine and you pick and choose and interpret and modify, then how are you a part of that religion?
What you're doing there is having a brain. You are a spiritual person seeking some sort of guidance, and you read widely and think for yourself. You've decided that some of Catholicism is good and some of Zoroastrianism is good and some of FSM is good, and you're constructing your own personal spirituality with your brain. It's not coming from a religion; it's coming from your own thoughts, and religions are nothing but sources of inspiration.
Why then do you call yourself Christian? You're not Christian if you disagree with chunks of Christian doctrine. Not that it's really possible to write down what most kinds of Christianity's doctrines are, although with Catholics you can always ask the Pope--that religion was clever enough to include an oracle.
Amongst people with brains, being able to say you believe something because it feels right, and maybe cite a few sources, is usually enough, but the fact that you're citing Christian sources doesn't make you Christian, does it? If you read the Qu'ran one night and suddenly start citing that instead but your beliefs haven't changed, are you now Muslim?
But is the core of their religion proving all the claims of historical continuity are correct, or is it in their relationship with nature and its feminine and masculine aspects?
Indeed. I've claimed above that being a part of a religion involves believing in and following its precepts. If one part of Wiccan doctrine is that their religion is old, then if you don't believe that, you are certainly less Wiccan. You may borrow from their doctrine in order to interpret your feelings, and you may order pizza with people who call themselves Wiccans--does that make you Wiccan?
Back to the real argument:
It's not like we're all in total lockstep, but then, neither is Science nor scientists, and that's a strength, not a weakness.
Completely different.
In the case of religion, we can all believe whatever we want (subject to the internal constraints of whatever brains we happen to have applied to the question, to whatever stuff society has taught us is right, etc...).
In sharp contrast, science is converging on the truth. It is absolutely provable that science is more correct now than it was at any (documented) time in the past. Why is this unquestionable? Because if you question it, then we can take some old science and some new science and make some measurements and see which predicts the data more accurately. Neat, huh? Try that with religion.
Saying that scientists are not in lockstep in the same way that religious thinkers are not in lockstep is disingenuous. In science, we're not in lockstep in the bleeding edge, and that's due to not having precise enough measurements, or powerful enough colliders, or the ability to gather enough data. Once enough quality data are available, we get into lockstep very quickly. For example, nobody believes that Newtonian gravitation is correct anymore, because we have very precise data showing that Einsteinian gravitation explains the data better, and we know our measurements are precise enough. There is no "I believe in Newtonia
Sorry, what is my opinion? That defending one untestable theory at the expense of another is bullshit? Given that there is no way to justify a preference between untestable theories besides wishful thinking, my "opinion" is just a pretty conventional definition of bullshit.
Apply this to Gravity, it goes down. But how? It's still just a theory. Sure we can "test" it, but other than showing what we already know (Things fall towards the bigger mass), it proves nothing.
Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. The theory of gravitation makes predictions. My alternative theory of gravitation is that you'll fall sideways--now go and figure out which is correct. Further, it's easy to test Newtonian gravity vs. Einsteinian gravity and determine which is more correct.
I can test my faith, and my opinion.
I don't understand. If you can demonstrate that it is correct, then how is it "faith"?
I'm glad you refer to religious experts--rather than invoking some random superbeing--as the good authority. That's the first step. The second step is understanding what makes someone a religious expert--it's not exactly divine inspiration. The third step is left as an exercise to the reader.
Religions do disagree. They can't all be right. If you have faith, then by definition your opinion is untestable (if you could test it it wouldn't be faith, but science). So any claim about which religion is correct is, by definition, bullshit.
Interesting! I suppose it's possible (but unlikely) that enough people were doing that to make the off-peak time the peak time. Off-peak discounts only work as long as some people don't take advantage of them: enough need to use it that it reduces peak demand a bit, but few enough that off-peak demand doesn't go up. I really need to go and figure out where the balance is.
Pah. In The Future when we're all Civilised, we'll all be on bicycles. Yeah, I wish!
Seriously, what we need is a way to use less energy. Why does entertaining kids require electricity? While bicycles could solve the national health crisis virtually overnight (among things), so could sending your kids out to play. Why do so many people need AC during the day? What's wrong with insulating the house and wearing less? Who really benefits from running a TV for hours? I'm still shocked at how many people here in Colorado, where the humidity sits below 30% most of the time, own dryers.
It seems to me that just increasing the price of electricity (eg. tax it and put the taxes into conservation incentives, or don't do that and just wait for prices to climb naturally on their own) will pretty much solve these problems. People are resourceful. Smart appliances are a convenience--they allow the dryer to start automatically rather than having a person say "Oh, it's 21:01, I can run the dryer and make phone calls more cheaply now." Kind of cool, but not really a big deal.
"But people in the USA can download your copy. We're taking you down, pirate."
"So you're saying that Canadian citizens living in Canada are subject to USA law?"
"Oh, yes, we'd like that very much."
Careful what you do here--Disney could pretty much order the invasion of Canada.
Speaking of which, do private security companies operate across borders? Could Disney Security invade Canada? I'm sure that logistically they could... but would they? I'd rather not bet against them.
One of the key points is that driving the city streets causes more accidents than driving the freeway.
That sounds likely--but does it still hold when you normalise for seriousness of the accidents? Higher speeds ought to be much more injurious/deadly...?
But this is the INSURANCE COMPANY charging you for INSURANCE. They don't care which is more efficient for fuel use, only which is likely to cause more accidents (of course, bigger engines are likely to cause more accidents than smaller ones... but that's why different cars have different premiums). Yes, this could have a positive effect on the environment, but it's also worth remembering that that's a side-effect in a for-profit insurance company.
If you want to penalise people for polluting, then increase the tax on gasoline. This really isn't rocket science.
One more reason to get on a bike. If you're not going to be going 100km/h anyway, you may as well do something that won't slow you down, won't cost you money, won't cause congestion or pollution, lets you park wherever you want, keeps you healthy...
Since Pandora plays music based on user recommendations and a presumably good (and improving) similarity metric rather than advertising, this should work out well for the arts. Private labels and performers are just as likely to be played as the Evil Empire's stuff. Indeed, Pandora can drop the big players anytime their contract becomes onerous, as the music genome will have good coverage of the popular genres.
I'm in better shape than I've ever been because I carefully chose to live and work in locations with a good bike route between them. Yes, sometimes it's difficult--much like most high-reward endeavours. Sometimes it's an uphill battle against the fat, lazy slobs who for some inexplicable reason don't want you biking to work. But the trouble is worth it. Trust me.
Seriously, I'd like to open a discussion on the similarities between cars and the One Ring. Or will nobody except bike commuters even understand what I'm talking about?
Apparently fantasising about obviously sexually mature women with young faces is statutory rape. Or perhaps it's ok as long as you don't leave any evidence? Remember, kids: if you're gonna watch anime, wear a tinfoil hat!
If the contract that gives our government the authority to govern is ignored, then isn't that grounds for ignoring the laws illegally imposed? Of course, this means civil war... *sigh*
H1-B visa holders also tend to be highly educated by the very nature of the program. I fully support the notion of attracting the best and brightest minds to my country. It might make me less competitive in the job market, but will almost certainly be good for the country as a whole.
Great point, but I'm a little confused about this "the country as a whole" idea. A country isn't a whole--it's a small part of the world. If you do well at the expense of another country, you cause great problems further down the line.
It also seems to me that bringing in foreign workers for the cream of our workforce could be a useful way to encourage our own education system to get off its ass, but this will only work if politicians and the general public see what's happening and see that the solution isn't to close our borders or reduce the number of H1-Bs, but to see whether we can actually compete like honest capitalists.
Perhaps the biggest injustice of the system is the manner in which foreign graduate students are treated. We award a huge number of advanced Ph.D positions (often government funded) to foreign students, and force them to return home after they've received their degree! Not only are we depriving American citizens from educational opportunities, but we're also essentially educating other countries' workers for free.
Why is this bad? We also "free them from oppression" for free, and "bring them American culture" for free and "educate them on intellectual property law" for free. Since we are the world police, why shouldn't we do something that might actually benefit them--for free? I think it will ultimately help us in the end since the USA isn't a closed system, but even if it helps others and not us, is it a bad thing? What happened to pride in your country's generosity and nobility? Are we all so coldhearted that helping others is treasonous?
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Anyone who stands any significant chance of winning should be banned. If you don't do this, it's unfair to everyone else. Nondiscrimination means that athletes should be awarded medals based only on random number generation.
Is the question "Where do babies come from?" really a science question?
Well, sure. Come up with a refutable hypothesis and test it. FOR SCIENCE!
If you have some snide comments to make, they would be better directed at the elected officials that created their posts, not the grunts on the ground.
emkyooess is right but I'm going to try to spell it out more clearly (or at least more verbosely and less Godwiny):
If you are part of an organisation, and that organisation is doing something immoral, and you follow along, then you are part of the transgression. A member of any group is a part of that group. Duh, but people who are "just doing their job" are every bit as much part of what gets done as the people pulling the strings.
To put it another way: you are responsible for your actions even if you're getting paid.
In the USA and in many other countries, women/girls are getting fatter (so are men, but that's orthogonal to the discussion). Fatter has at times past meant more beautiful (at least to painters who appreciate curves) but by today's standards fat is bad. Of course, fat is also known to be unhealthy, and I'd love to know how intellectual knowledge of health plays into attraction.
I suspect that this has a great deal to do with wealth. When most people had to work the fields, white skin and fat and some other things were signs of wealth, and were therefore attractive. Now that everyone works indoors and only the educated and rich bother with food made of animals and plants rather than with growth hormones and hydrocarbons, sports, travel, active hobbies, or at least fake it with gym memberships, the poor get fat and white and the rich get thin and tanned. I know that men are supposed to appreciate "fitness to bear children" rather than "wealth", but I suspect that men are also attracted to upper-class women...?
Another thing occurs to me: the link between social class/education level and number of children is well established--the upper classes have many fewer children for reasons other than how attractive they are. Perhaps the measure of "how many children you have" has some serious problems. Did anyone here actually read the study and find out whether they normalised for education level?
Look at the state the world is in. Anyone who argues that humans are smart enough to run the place is seriously not paying attention. If we don't find someone that can do a better job than the standard human, we as a species, and probably as a biosphere, are dead.
I honestly don't know whether Paul's "argument" is better than what you call "blind faith".
He's at least trying. He makes an argument that is missing some pieces, and he touches upon what those pieces need to look like. It may be easier to refute "The mind is immortal because it's not in the same condition as the liver" than "We have souls." He even points out that he doesn't have that piece and suggests a future research direction, which is consistent with good science!
But then he goes on to say that while he can't prove his hypothesis, he still believes it, and moreover he wants to persuade others to believe it despite the glaring lack of evidence--because "there is no credible evidence to the contrary." That is unfortunate.
So after a bit of good observation, he resorts to making a more precise but still untestable claim, and asks people not to try to help him investigate this fascinating question further, but to accept the untestable claim because it's shiny. That's consistent with what I think of as faith.
HTML FAIL!!!! Haha. For do I too not suck?
Religions disagree. However, reasonable people all tend to be in it in order to find some reasonable spiritual guidance, and those who share this goal tend to be able to have intelligent conversations together rather than blowing each other up.
Is that the gist? If not, sorry!
That makes sense. But I take issue with people who claim to belong to some group that has a doctrine--for example, that if your child disobeys you then you should stone him to death--and then put qualifiers on it, like "oh, well, that wasn't meant to be taken literally--it's just a metaphor." If a religion has a doctrine and you pick and choose and interpret and modify, then how are you a part of that religion?
What you're doing there is having a brain. You are a spiritual person seeking some sort of guidance, and you read widely and think for yourself. You've decided that some of Catholicism is good and some of Zoroastrianism is good and some of FSM is good, and you're constructing your own personal spirituality with your brain. It's not coming from a religion; it's coming from your own thoughts, and religions are nothing but sources of inspiration.
Why then do you call yourself Christian? You're not Christian if you disagree with chunks of Christian doctrine. Not that it's really possible to write down what most kinds of Christianity's doctrines are, although with Catholics you can always ask the Pope--that religion was clever enough to include an oracle.
Amongst people with brains, being able to say you believe something because it feels right, and maybe cite a few sources, is usually enough, but the fact that you're citing Christian sources doesn't make you Christian, does it? If you read the Qu'ran one night and suddenly start citing that instead but your beliefs haven't changed, are you now Muslim?
But is the core of their religion proving all the claims of historical continuity are correct, or is it in their relationship with nature and its feminine and masculine aspects?
Indeed. I've claimed above that being a part of a religion involves believing in and following its precepts. If one part of Wiccan doctrine is that their religion is old, then if you don't believe that, you are certainly less Wiccan. You may borrow from their doctrine in order to interpret your feelings, and you may order pizza with people who call themselves Wiccans--does that make you Wiccan?
Back to the real argument:
It's not like we're all in total lockstep, but then, neither is Science nor scientists, and that's a strength, not a weakness.
Completely different.
In the case of religion, we can all believe whatever we want (subject to the internal constraints of whatever brains we happen to have applied to the question, to whatever stuff society has taught us is right, etc...).
In sharp contrast, science is converging on the truth. It is absolutely provable that science is more correct now than it was at any (documented) time in the past. Why is this unquestionable? Because if you question it, then we can take some old science and some new science and make some measurements and see which predicts the data more accurately. Neat, huh? Try that with religion.
Saying that scientists are not in lockstep in the same way that religious thinkers are not in lockstep is disingenuous. In science, we're not in lockstep in the bleeding edge, and that's due to not having precise enough measurements, or powerful enough colliders, or the ability to gather enough data. Once enough quality data are available, we get into lockstep very quickly. For example, nobody believes that Newtonian gravitation is correct anymore, because we have very precise data showing that Einsteinian gravitation explains the data better, and we know our measurements are precise enough. There is no "I believe in Newtonia
So this would be your opinion.
Sorry, what is my opinion? That defending one untestable theory at the expense of another is bullshit? Given that there is no way to justify a preference between untestable theories besides wishful thinking, my "opinion" is just a pretty conventional definition of bullshit.
Apply this to Gravity, it goes down. But how? It's still just a theory. Sure we can "test" it, but other than showing what we already know (Things fall towards the bigger mass), it proves nothing.
Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. The theory of gravitation makes predictions. My alternative theory of gravitation is that you'll fall sideways--now go and figure out which is correct. Further, it's easy to test Newtonian gravity vs. Einsteinian gravity and determine which is more correct.
I can test my faith, and my opinion.
I don't understand. If you can demonstrate that it is correct, then how is it "faith"?
I'm glad you refer to religious experts--rather than invoking some random superbeing--as the good authority. That's the first step. The second step is understanding what makes someone a religious expert--it's not exactly divine inspiration. The third step is left as an exercise to the reader.
Religions do disagree. They can't all be right. If you have faith, then by definition your opinion is untestable (if you could test it it wouldn't be faith, but science). So any claim about which religion is correct is, by definition, bullshit.
Interesting! I suppose it's possible (but unlikely) that enough people were doing that to make the off-peak time the peak time. Off-peak discounts only work as long as some people don't take advantage of them: enough need to use it that it reduces peak demand a bit, but few enough that off-peak demand doesn't go up. I really need to go and figure out where the balance is.
Pah. In The Future when we're all Civilised, we'll all be on bicycles. Yeah, I wish!
Seriously, what we need is a way to use less energy. Why does entertaining kids require electricity? While bicycles could solve the national health crisis virtually overnight (among things), so could sending your kids out to play. Why do so many people need AC during the day? What's wrong with insulating the house and wearing less? Who really benefits from running a TV for hours? I'm still shocked at how many people here in Colorado, where the humidity sits below 30% most of the time, own dryers.
It seems to me that just increasing the price of electricity (eg. tax it and put the taxes into conservation incentives, or don't do that and just wait for prices to climb naturally on their own) will pretty much solve these problems. People are resourceful. Smart appliances are a convenience--they allow the dryer to start automatically rather than having a person say "Oh, it's 21:01, I can run the dryer and make phone calls more cheaply now." Kind of cool, but not really a big deal.
"Are you aware that I have not broken any laws?"
"But people in the USA can download your copy. We're taking you down, pirate."
"So you're saying that Canadian citizens living in Canada are subject to USA law?"
"Oh, yes, we'd like that very much."
Careful what you do here--Disney could pretty much order the invasion of Canada.
Speaking of which, do private security companies operate across borders? Could Disney Security invade Canada? I'm sure that logistically they could... but would they? I'd rather not bet against them.
One of the key points is that driving the city streets causes more accidents than driving the freeway.
That sounds likely--but does it still hold when you normalise for seriousness of the accidents? Higher speeds ought to be much more injurious/deadly...?
But this is the INSURANCE COMPANY charging you for INSURANCE. They don't care which is more efficient for fuel use, only which is likely to cause more accidents (of course, bigger engines are likely to cause more accidents than smaller ones... but that's why different cars have different premiums). Yes, this could have a positive effect on the environment, but it's also worth remembering that that's a side-effect in a for-profit insurance company.
If you want to penalise people for polluting, then increase the tax on gasoline. This really isn't rocket science.
One more reason to get on a bike. If you're not going to be going 100km/h anyway, you may as well do something that won't slow you down, won't cost you money, won't cause congestion or pollution, lets you park wherever you want, keeps you healthy...
Since Pandora plays music based on user recommendations and a presumably good (and improving) similarity metric rather than advertising, this should work out well for the arts. Private labels and performers are just as likely to be played as the Evil Empire's stuff. Indeed, Pandora can drop the big players anytime their contract becomes onerous, as the music genome will have good coverage of the popular genres.
I'm in better shape than I've ever been because I carefully chose to live and work in locations with a good bike route between them. Yes, sometimes it's difficult--much like most high-reward endeavours. Sometimes it's an uphill battle against the fat, lazy slobs who for some inexplicable reason don't want you biking to work. But the trouble is worth it. Trust me.
This is America, where violating the Constitution is illegal. Stop, or we'll say "stop" again!
Just make thinking about sex illegal, period. Otherwise you're just encouraging the godless masturbating perverts. Think of the children!
Seriously, I'd like to open a discussion on the similarities between cars and the One Ring. Or will nobody except bike commuters even understand what I'm talking about?
Apparently fantasising about obviously sexually mature women with young faces is statutory rape. Or perhaps it's ok as long as you don't leave any evidence? Remember, kids: if you're gonna watch anime, wear a tinfoil hat!
It would be pretty close to an admission of guilt if our legal system worked properly... and we all had unlimited free time...
If the contract that gives our government the authority to govern is ignored, then isn't that grounds for ignoring the laws illegally imposed? Of course, this means civil war... *sigh*
H1-B visa holders also tend to be highly educated by the very nature of the program. I fully support the notion of attracting the best and brightest minds to my country. It might make me less competitive in the job market, but will almost certainly be good for the country as a whole.
Great point, but I'm a little confused about this "the country as a whole" idea. A country isn't a whole--it's a small part of the world. If you do well at the expense of another country, you cause great problems further down the line.
It also seems to me that bringing in foreign workers for the cream of our workforce could be a useful way to encourage our own education system to get off its ass, but this will only work if politicians and the general public see what's happening and see that the solution isn't to close our borders or reduce the number of H1-Bs, but to see whether we can actually compete like honest capitalists.
Perhaps the biggest injustice of the system is the manner in which foreign graduate students are treated. We award a huge number of advanced Ph.D positions (often government funded) to foreign students, and force them to return home after they've received their degree! Not only are we depriving American citizens from educational opportunities, but we're also essentially educating other countries' workers for free.
Why is this bad? We also "free them from oppression" for free, and "bring them American culture" for free and "educate them on intellectual property law" for free. Since we are the world police, why shouldn't we do something that might actually benefit them--for free? I think it will ultimately help us in the end since the USA isn't a closed system, but even if it helps others and not us, is it a bad thing? What happened to pride in your country's generosity and nobility? Are we all so coldhearted that helping others is treasonous?