Science is DRIVEN by consensus. This can be shown easily, we don't listen to a hollow earther, but we do accept the current geologic model. Why? Consensus of experts. We accept evolution, but not the lunatic fringe of creation "scientists". Science, in the sense we're using it here is a body of knowledge, which by definition must be contained by a group of people. Your correct if we're talking about science as METHOD, but we're not.
If we remove the hoi polloi and focus on ONLY climatologists, we will find a majority consensus still, even ignoring the the non-climatologists. To tell the the truth, I don't think your specialty has much to do with your qualifications to hypothesize into other areas. The principle theory in geology (plate tectonics / continental drift) was NOT developed by a geologist, but (ironically) a climatologist. Granted this theory's bar to acceptance was higher, but what mattered in the end is it met a vigor of proof by the community of science. Hell, the molecular basis of inheritance was presented by a physicist. What matters in the end IS acceptance by a community (based on certain criteria, of course).
The problem is that we need to ignore the politicos on this, like all topics. Politicians, clergy, and the lay person are unable to make this judgment. Al Gore's opinion matters jack-all, but the data, and conclusions, he cites are not his own, and easily verified. It just becomes a matter of ignoring spin.
Perhaps because U.S. standard units make no sense what so ever, perhaps, also, because the rest of the world (okay, sans some backwards developing nations) use them, and we live in a time of globalization meaning increased exposure to units written to par with the rest of the world (sans some third world nations). Anyone with ANY exposure to the rest of the world quickly gets sick of having to rip out a unit converter, or quickly do ballpark estimates in their head, same goes with reading ANY technical literature. This latter in part bars the average American from being able to understand anything mildly technical.
May I repeat that U.S. units make no sense? I still (growing up in the US) don't know all of the handy conversions for the units I use daily, while with metric, this would NOT be a problem to anyone what-so-ever (unless dealing with certain third world nations).
I think the only reason the U.S. supports it's units is out of shear egotism, the only reason we do it is to be different.
You are absolutely correct. Like I said it has been awhile since I mucked with statistics, after posting I went through my old text books and found the same, I was talking about distributions and not probabilities.
Not to sound ignorant, its been awhile since I've been is stats (social sciences), but isn't significance generally a p of.5-.7 and up, depending on the strength your going for, at least in most psychological studies. Again, its been awhile, but it seems that a p of.01 wouldn't rule out random chance, especially with such a small n, with an n of 30 the significant p should be held to be higher, like.7.
I do agree, a low n can be deceptive, you can design very good experiments around low numbers of participants, and still get statistically valid (meaning generalizable) results, depending on the controls, selection, and various SD formula.
Actually your preferences in girls are entirely societal: I'm assuming you're a westerner who prefers slim, tall, magazine-cover-beautiful girls, but if you were an animal, you'd opt for a fat, squat, muscular-looking female who would be statistically more able to have your babies and care for them.
Actually your preferences in girls are entirely societal, based off of the more and popular PC line of "fat is beautiful", which is somewhat an evolutionary lie. A fairer assessment would to say that more "rubenesque" girls would be more attractive, being that a little more fat is a sign of health. That little extra fatty tissue says much, that the woman is healthy enough to hunt, has a good energy store in case of problems, has a healthy metabolism, etc... Fat, as in the 60% of Americans who are actually clinically obese, is NOT a sign of health, it is just the opposite. Then again so is the Twiggy / supermodel look, it shows either a famine, a cancer, or severe metabolic malfunction. Women with a moderate fat store could be said to be more apt to care for young, and by moderate I'm talking Marilyn Monroe-esque, not Rosie Oddonel (or however you spell her name).
This also would have something to do with your genetic stock, people from different (evolutionarily) climate zone would have different preferences. In an hot arid climate (such as the middle east) would much prefer more tall and slender girls, than people in cold arid climates, and people in climates more apt to drought and temperature extremes would prefer the shorter squatter girls you mention, its all about heat retention and surface area, along with fat retention for famine resistance.
But in the modern society I think it boils down to whatever you prefer, societal condition can over take genetic preference. I personally don't like either extreme, the "waif" look looks rather cadaverous and unhealthy to me (probably a sign of sever psychological disorders too), and the fat look is equally disgusting to me, and also probably a sign of psychological disorders. Where has the average gone, not 90 pounds, not 300 pounds, but just average?
Ouch... Generally I'm pretty pro-Apple, but this struck even me as a little fanish.
We're talking about a product that none of us have even used, so it is hard to say if it really is as good as sliced bread, or not. Also the iPhone (stop it with the "i-" prefix already!) isn't really a NEW thing, there are several products with its complete, or at least vast swaths of its features, like Blackberries, and other PDA/camera/phone/music player phones, all of which (most?) are much cheaper than this. The only really things I see going for it is the interface (it IS Apple, after all), and the fact it is made by Apple. Hey, it might be neat (okay, it is), but neatness alone does not warrant going out and spending 500 on something.
Frankly, I don't know what Microsoft was thinking when they completely replaced the user interface, with no way to return to the old one.
You hit the nail on the head, the change itself isn't bad, and it may indeed be better and more efficient, but the degree of change is the problem. Forcing people to adapt to a standard without a transition is what breaks it, and not the interface itself. Incremental change is generally better than quick change, since it allows users to adapt to new conventions. Even Windows XP with its "radically new" interface allowed you to make it more 95/98/NT like. OS X allowed a bit of that with classic mode. Office07 should have had an option to use conventional menus, etc.
I can't judge the new format, mind, since I've never used it, and am going to have to wait some time for it to get ported to Macs. Sadly office still rules, I've tried Apple's iWork thingy, and it sucks, I don't trust the.pages format, at least.doc (as proprietary as it is) is more universal. Sadly my current version of Office is unusable on mactel machines (damn rosseta), and openoffice is a 200 pound gorilla.
The ease, the vastness, the updating, the decentralized wikipedia (at least in its editors), the accuracy, what more can I say?
Yes, Wikipedia is good, yes most of us use it once a day. BUT... When your actually in need of a real reference, one that is actually authoritative (meaning you can find the author, and his name isn't "skittlesthepony10"), and one that isn't going to change once a week to match the whims of some egotistical inside group. I have found errors in several articles, and when you edit them you trounce on some idiots ego, and they revert it. Ego is more important than accuracy in some cases.
If you need a serious reference you still need a good specialty encyclopedia, a library, or even the Britannica.
That said Wikipedia is a great launchpad for research, and following links for hours is oddly cathartic. I generally waste more time on wikipedia then I even do on slashdot, come to think of it, it is like slashdot for the antisocial.
I really REALLY want to play ADOM I just got off a huge roguelike kick (yes, Nethack still won), but ADOM would not run on OSX no matter what tweaking I tried to give it. It wouldn't be a huge problem, but my Linux box is in the throws of a massive hardware revolt and is thus not dependable enough for using much over 10 minutes. The buzz makes it look good, but I wish I could play it on the most recent OSX (It seems to be compiled for 10.3.9, but poops out on 10.4+). I'm getting bored of zAngband, and Nethack needs a break before I through my keyboard through my monitor.
Same thing with Slash'Em, sadly. No OS X ports. Why do people only update rougelikes every 7 years?
You are correct, commuity standards (ala group think) can go terribly wrong. I didn't mean to present this as a good in itself, in this case, though, it is rather mundane and nonharmful. Especailly since their was no communications between users (unless hidden somewhere deep in Craigslist is a "flag the scalper" discussion), it was a wholly organic movement. I don't even think this could be group think, its more like many individuals defining the character of their community individually.
Okay... he was implicated by an in house audit, AND reported it. Later (after reporting it) it they find that he is innocent. If this was corporate wrong doing, then why would they report it in the first place, AND THEN do responsible action and admit a mistake, and try to fix it?
Yes, corporations can do evil things, and DO evil things. But that does not make everything evil, mistakes still happen, misdirected allegations still happen, just like in real life. Corporations are not intrinsically bad, and their officers are not necessarily corrupt. For every Enron, there is a million not-Enron's. Just because the media makes a big deal of something, does not mean its pervasive. And just because you think all corporations are evil, does not make them so. It is possible to be a good capitalist, and responsible, in fact I'm guessing its the status quo.
And no, I'm not the biggest fan of blatant capitalism, my history will show that. And no, I'm not an Apple fanboy, Apple is just another OS/Platform, and not worthy of a ideological base. Yes, I am using a Mac to type this, but I also have a laptop running Linux and box with XP.
On music, I think we're arguing at cross purposes. I meant that the Beatles/Elvis era let to the modern form of music distribution, and the current state of the music industry. It lead to the modern version of music "consumption" and identity. Yes, there is no arguing that the 12-tone scale, and "classical" music lead to the modern FORM of music as music.
If your parents have a large collection of LPs and 45s collected in that era, they were in a middle class minority. In the 60s, the majority of the population got music from the radio and from juke boxes. The "ownership" of recorded music by a large section of the community is, I think you will find, a very recent phenomenon. Which is part of my point, really.
That might be, I really don't know enough about that to argue, not being there myself. I do agree that it is a recent phenomena, though.
That was my main point in argument. iPods are for all sorts of things, and background noise is one of them, though there are exceptions. Anecdotally, I use my iPod for both background noise, and actually listening to music in environments that wouldn't allow it. Finding calm and quiet is the problem, and iPods (and their ilk) solve it by providing "pure" music, and masking background. But then again I can only speak anecdotally, and I doubt I'm the norm (or anyone on Slashdot either).
I do think there are metrics which would be applicable, and music might fall into it, but I don't think it would be (purely academic, of course) the best metric for the determination of interest in space (or science/technology in general). I would say that technical skill or curiosity in general would be better. Geeks (to generalize) seem to be advocates of space exploration, but also spend their time tinkering with the internals of many things (technical or not), and find technical documents oddly addictive, and I don't think this is age specific. Again a generalization, take with a large does of salt. I think the same level of correlation would be found in any techie, as it would be in audio reproduction (I, for example, have no clue about audio, but am obsessed with visual accuracy, spending hours calibrating monitors and TVs to get as close to real as possible, this also expands to actual art).
So a community of people decided that your behavior was unacceptable to their community standards? I fail to see anything unjust about that, in fact it gives me some deal of respect for the atmosphere of Craigslist. Next your going to complain that/. allows you to mod down trolls, since inflicting a community standard is unjust. There are more than one set of laws, don't you know, the codified ones, and a vaster collection of norms, mores, and values that vary from community to community, and are enforced more subtly and more forcibly than codified law. Thats Soc101 speaking, nothing too brilliant.
Communities self-regulate, and if Craigslist decided to buck the will of their community for the good of scalping, I'm sure they'd lose a large portion of their users.
Chances are, the Sun will become a red giant and destroy human life, before we colonize the galaxy
Considering there won't even be humans when that happens (thank you evolution), and our window for survival is closer than the 5 billion years before our sun goes red giant, thanks to the solar "comfort zone" moving away from us. But then again no other single species has ever lasted 5 (or even 1) billion years, it is presumptuous for one to think that we would.
That said, in the last 6,000 years humans have progressed technologically at a rate that boggles, from early agriculture to nuclear weapons and space travel. If you even hinted at what we can do now anytime in the past, you you'd be met with shear and utter disbelief. So its not hard to map that to our own ignorance of our mid-term future. Sure we're not going to see it, but there is a damn good chance it still could happen, its hard, though, to say either way.
And what exactly is the value of humanity anyway? If all humans were destroyed, would anybody else care? I mean, in the grand scheme of things, what exactly does humanity contribute?
That makes no sense, who cares if someone else cares? We are humans, and not someone else, so obviously WE care. Do you care about your own wellbeing in spite of the fact that 5 billion people don't care if you even exist? How does the opinion of a hypothetical outside observer matter to the ultimate fate of humanity? In the "grand scheme of things", like what universal time, geologic time, the scope of the massive universe we live in? No clue, since I didn't know they were capable of an opinion of us. Humanity does contribute an infinite amount to humanity though, and being that we cannot be anything other, I guess humanity must matter then.
I'm younger than you, significantly (teen years in the 90's), am interested in iPods, AND space exploration. But I do think that geeks (either cobbling physical stuff, or programming) will be much more interested in space exploration regardless of age. When we talk about the average Joe, there is a good difference between the so-called "iPod generation" and people born anytime before the 80's, the nationalism associated with the Cold War. Space was a point of pride because we had to be there before the U.S.S.R. Now we've "been there, done that", and we can't see tangible gains in space exploration.
eople built their own turntables, for the most part, to listen to Mozart and Wagner and (Richard) Strauss and perhaps Berio and Ligeti as I recall, not pop music which was beneath contempt; it was, after all, the product of multiple remixings from tape and there was no depth to bring out.
I disagree, perhaps YOU were, but the 60's were the rise of pop, it was when music started following the form it does today with an actual "recording industry", my folks huge collection of LP and 45's refute your account, as does the rise of Elvis in the late 50's and the Beatles in the 60's, both of which could be seen as the birth of modern music.
Regardless, I don't see what people's choice in music have to do with it.
I think literacy might play a role though, and not only in taste of reading, but actually reading. As probably does level of education. Both of which we're abject failures at now, starting around when the "iPod generation" was in school. I grew up loving science classes, and reading old pulp Sci-Fi, and I am an aberrant in the real world. Most people my age would rather not read a book, much less care what a bunch of disattactched men in lab coats are rambling about in vaguely confusing terms. I'm sure their is a high level of correlation between level of education and elective literacy and interest in space travel.
Not to sound like a troll, but I don't think that his reputation as a "thinker" has anything to do with his work in linguistics, besides it allowed him enough fame to get recognition of his Vietnam activities. His modern role as "thinker" is (in part) grounded in his political thought, and not his linguistics. Also his skill in linguistics has nothing to do with his skill in critiquing politics, they are separate domains. It's like discrediting Einstein's physics because he was a shitty carpenter.
Other allegations against him, brought up someplace above, are somewhat laughable. Especially calling him an anti-Semite, no where have I seen him attack Jews AS PEOPLE, which would be the definition of the term. Yes he doesn't like Israel, but that does not make one an anti-semite. I don't like the government of N. Korea, but I'm not against Koreans in general, hating the actions of a government does not preclude hating the people under that government, or the ethnic/religious group represented by the government. The Taliban was bad, but that does not necessarily mean I hate Persians.
That said I'm still out on Chomsky, I DO think he brings up valid points, and gets more than 50% of his historical facts rights, and he does fill a valuable role in debate (think of him as the anti-Coulter, or the Micheal Moore with an IQ). But his credibility is hurt by his.. er... "passion". Anyone that emotional about their thesis deserves a second look, emotions can overwhelm reason. Sometimes he seems a little to antsy to attack the U.S. only for the sake of attacking the U.S. Yes the U.S. has done some REALLY bad things (see South America for example), but Chomsky goes out of his way looking for evidence of wrong doing, and appoints blame where it isn't due, or where it should be shared.
I really tried to like did, but the discussion blows worse than here, both people wise, and technically. While/. is the libertarian bastion of the internet (annoying, but makes for some good conversation), Digg is the ultra-left-wing Bush conspiracy bastion of the internet, meaning most forms of actual conversation are completely impossible. Also the discussion system just sucks, no real way to make replies, or get notified of them (threading is your friend, Digg), and the comment digg system is even worse than/.s mod system. It is complete group think where you canget down to -30 for just saying something that someone doesn't like. Its more like burying things that deviate from groupthink rather than highlight better comments (which/. does somewhat well).
Also since they opened it up to everyone and every topic the level of crap and scams has made it almost a waste of time. I think I tag things with "Okay this is lame" 10 times a day, and inaccurate the rest.
That said, it is a subjective choice. Not my cup of tea, though I do visit once a day or so, and do comment from time to time. Mostly it is a good link farm, no need to ever actually read the comments.
If the universe is governed by regular quantum mechanics, say the Wheeler-De-Witt equation, and we started with the exact same initial conditions, then we would end up with the exact same universe. Assuming the universe comprises a closed system.
Potentially, yes. But there are other systems that would lead to different universes thanks to the probabilistic nature. At least certain aspects of QM are necessarily probabilistic (as in Bell's spin experiments), meaning irreducible. From this framework we might still be governed by deterministic processes (albeit random chance, instead of reductionist laws), but it does illustrate how there is some wiggle room in physics for something other than pure determinism. (mind I'm not a physicist, just an interested researcher)
A scientist might not be a reductionist, but science as a field of knowledge is. Reductionism is pretty much a given within the structure of science itself, X follows certain laws, X is made of Z, which follows certain laws, etc.
Part of my even bringing up science was mostly for discussing the parity between it, and what actually is (yes, a dry philosophical issue of little interest to most people). I view science as more of a model of the world, and as such is necessarily incomplete. Yes, it is a coherent model, which does have remarkable powers of predicting thing within science's purview, but it isn't the only meaningful system of knowing the world, just (perhaps) the most useful. I don't think science is arbitrary, mind, science is VERY good at what science does, but it is strange to think that one system could see everything, science sees what science is designed to see, and there might be something outside of its scope.
You cannot rewind the universe and find out. You feel the experience of a choice. You feel the various motivating factors. You weigh them accordingly. Then you make your choice. How can you possibly know if you really could have chosen differently? You cannot know because the initial conditions are unique. It is not a repeatable experiment.
That IS my point. All of us are mired in everyday experience primarily. Even you most hardline deterministic physicist chooses what color socks to wear, the afterthought might be "I didn't choose, I had to choose the penguin socks!", but it is an abstraction on top of the actual experience. Science, and thus much of this debate, is an abstraction in the sense that it comes after the experience of life. In our own experience the immediate world is real, he are human first and scientists only after. Thinking of your subjective choice to wear blue socks as a bad experiment is a rather odd idea, since it isn't science, it is merely you choosing socks.
Granted within this view we very might well be determined, I will grant that, but I don't think it actually matters since it doesn't, and can't, change our lives as we actually live it from day to day.
I guess we're arguing two premises, one of the value of science, and one of actual determinism "in our lives". Both of which are damn thorny.
As for scientism being mostly derogatory, I agree, I have come across the term used that way more than not. It might have been a bad choice, but it seemed to come closest to what I was going for. I could have said "naturalists", or such, but that seems rather archaic, and potentially misleading.
Yes, you could say that the next point might potentially fall within the curve, but you couldn't say it would definitely with any certainty. The sun will probably rise tomorrow, but it is not a necessary truth, to be overly simplistic. This is rather pedantic, I admit, I think I might have gotten to enthusiastic, no one claims (I hope) that science is 100% (it has been wrong many times in the past), but the general gist was to say that science is fallible.
Some chaotic phenomena (turbulence, etc) are irreducible. Actually the state of the universe is irreducable thanks to the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, if you started with the big bang again, and let it run, you would not end up with the same universe as now. If I took a single atom it would be hard to deduce the higher-level phenomena from it (or impossible), such as principles in biology, without foreknowledge of those phenomena. I'm also talking about more esoteric things, that are not completely scientific, but are nonetheless real features of the world we live in, such as beauty, etc...
Science should be open to analysis, it is ALSO a social system, as well as being a systematic method (of sorts). Being a social system the people involved, and their psychology, does play an issue. Also, ala Kuhn and Rorty (mostly), the current paradigm does limit the avenues of inquiry open to science, and ala Nagel, inquiry (anything using logic, in this case) is only as valid as the data entered, the weakness comes from the choice or selection of that data. We select data based on unscientific things (mostly), we are looking at a finite amount of possible theories (and data sets) out of a near infinite range of potentially valid ones. Right now the current paradigm requires reductionism (which is the key to determinism as it relates to human agency), so potential observations outside of this view are outside the realm of possibility (yes, eventually they might be).
In the "how can one live as determined" topic, I think we're arguing at cross purposes. I'm talking about subjective experience, when I choose, say, the blue sweater over the red one, it seems a free choice. I have the experience of choice.
With your robot example we enter a problematic realm, Searle's "Chinese Box", or at least we risk this. The problem, as it stands now, is that we are dealing with OBSERVING behavior, versus EXPERIENCING behavior. I experience agency, as opposed to merely observing it and deducing the experience.
I might be overstating my case, I don't mean to though. I've been working on this issue for some time, and it is a damn tricky issue, as is most philosophy of science issues. In the end I don't think it really matters since life does go on regardless, even with the tricky ethical issues involved, and the tricky science issues involved. I guess thats the best way of phrasing my existential argument, but it lacks rational completely.
I've always found it strange that no one criticized the people who PUBLISHED that information, for some reason all the people who actually acted on the information (the NYT journalists, for example) got sympathy for protecting their sources (ala journalistic "integrity"), while the "leak" is bad. The leak wouldn't have been bad if irresponsible journalists had actual integrity.
Just an observation. All rights are conditional to responsibility, sure you have the RIGHT to free speech, but that does not mean it is always the responsible action. The people who published the Plame information are as guilty as the people who leaked it.
First you use the derogatory term "scientism" against those you disagree with. And their crime is that they have "unbridled faith" in science. Already I can't take you seriously. Belief in determinism is simply belief that one can effectively model the universe with a deterministic theory, differential equations for instance. Given that this kind of thinking has been so overwhelmingly successful so far (you are using a transistor computer aren't you?), it is hardly "unbridled faith" that one would have to have to imagine that this property might extend to all of existence.
I see no problem with the term "scientism" nor do I see it as derogatory, it is a philosophy of the world that one can take, like idealism, materialism, etc. As Wikipedia says, it is merely the view "that science has primacy over other interpretations of life (e.g., religious, mythical, spiritual, or humanistic explanations). The term has also been applied to the view that natural sciences have primacy over other fields of inquiry such as social sciences." Doesn't seem derogatory to me. Perhaps it does verge on being a strawman, I admit, but in most other views determinism doesn't arise (except in some rather archaic Christian doctrines), and thus this wouldn't be a topic for debate.
Yes determinism has shown itself useful in science, I would not argue otherwise. But this does not make it true in all cases, we cannot generalize that because it works in A-Y that it must be true in Z since our sciences are based (mostly) on inductive principles. It might hold true for everything, but we run into the problem that most determinism is of the reductionalist kind. but we do encounter unreductable natural phenomena too in the form of emergent behavior.
Then you talk about how science is fallible because humans are fallible. Well of course science is fallible. Science doesn't espouse absolute truth. But it's also naturally self correcting. You wouldn't know that science is fallible if it weren't for science. And moreover, science is constantly improving. This is all a red herring and doesn't prove or even support anything.
Science has its own stack of problems, but that is largely another debate. The fact that we're talking about CURRENT science makes my point nontrivial, your talking about science as process, and I'm talking about science as the current standing of human knowledge. Perhaps in 10/20/100 years there will be a better answer, but right now I think we're on shaky ground.
Science doesn't care about the philosophic jury..... You cannot argue and philosophize against the achievements of science. Science is self proving.
The fact that science (which has somehow become a proper noun) holds itself above analysis is troubling, and I think that this fact leads to potential problems. As Kuhn demonstrated, there is more at work in science (as activity) than pure science, there is more too it than just men in white lab coats plugging away at "truth". Your second position is begging the question, and holds as much truth as me saying "the Bible says the Bible is true, therefore the bible is true". Science is self-proving within the system of science, it is coherent, but this does not ensure a full mapping to the world. Yes, it has done a fair job, but this does not make it flawless, nor does it make it even perfectable.
Oh and your existential counter example is also incorrect. Determinism is not incompatible with subjective experience, even the subjective experience of free will.
How so? How can one live as if one was determined?
I am rather enjoying this debate. Thanks for the discussion!
I though long and hard about this. I Sure, I can (and to be honest, did) have all of the NES and SNES games I want for free and with somewhat upped graphics instead of buying them. But I still ended up in the end buying the original Zelda, Sonic, and Mario 64.
Why "waste" the money? For several reasons. I'd like to support Nintendo, since they really haven't disappointed me yet, and I thus support their products. I'd like also to convince them to release some older games, so I can actually OWN them, and not just steal them. Here's hoping they release the original 8-bit Final Fantasies (sure, I could get the revamped copies, but they lose something in the pimped graphics, and I do own FF1 on the NES, but am getting sick of blowing on the cart/having it plugged in), Mario RPG, Chronotrigger (have it on PS1, but it isn't the same...), Earthbound (Mother PLEASE!!!), the Shining Force games (beats Fire Emblem / FF Tactics any day), Phantasy Star, Alisa Dragoon, and such. On this vein, it is nice to play old games on the TV, with a real controller, without the fuss of adapters, wires, and ghetto PC controllers, or having to view things in a TEENY window to play on your PC in the original 8-16bit glory.
Also I support the VC for the same reason I support iTunes, they try for something legal instead of just suing. There really is no excuse for piracy when it is offered cheap, easy, and legally.
Where is the line between "can't know", and "don't know". How can we know if "yet" s possible until we already know. You operate under the assumption that we can know everything, but how can one offer proof of this position?
You then have problems that enter in such as Godel's theorum, and Turing's halting problem, systems where it is impossible to know certain aspects of the system fully.
No offense, but i think your framing the argument wrong. Your loading it towards a view you accept. You verge on begging the question.
Freewill would not necessarily lead to antiscience or supernaturalism. You take determinism for granted when presenting that as a consequence. It would not necissarily represent something "outside" of the universe, it could be a structural facet of the universe. It would, though, represent something outside of our current model of the universe, meaning it is more a reflection of our knowledge, and not of physicality. I see no problem in excepting the fact that the universe is far more complex than we could comprehend, our knowledge is by no means complete. I see determinism (in all shades) as problematic since it relies on reductionism (and some other remnants of positivism), which seems to fail to account of some complex phenomena, and other emergent traits. Is water purely the sum of atomic structure, or is there something more? Are the poetic phrases "water is dangerous", "water is beautiful", etc... more or less true than "water is H2O"?
Slashdot Mirror
Science is DRIVEN by consensus. This can be shown easily, we don't listen to a hollow earther, but we do accept the current geologic model. Why? Consensus of experts. We accept evolution, but not the lunatic fringe of creation "scientists". Science, in the sense we're using it here is a body of knowledge, which by definition must be contained by a group of people. Your correct if we're talking about science as METHOD, but we're not.
If we remove the hoi polloi and focus on ONLY climatologists, we will find a majority consensus still, even ignoring the the non-climatologists. To tell the the truth, I don't think your specialty has much to do with your qualifications to hypothesize into other areas. The principle theory in geology (plate tectonics / continental drift) was NOT developed by a geologist, but (ironically) a climatologist. Granted this theory's bar to acceptance was higher, but what mattered in the end is it met a vigor of proof by the community of science. Hell, the molecular basis of inheritance was presented by a physicist. What matters in the end IS acceptance by a community (based on certain criteria, of course).
The problem is that we need to ignore the politicos on this, like all topics. Politicians, clergy, and the lay person are unable to make this judgment. Al Gore's opinion matters jack-all, but the data, and conclusions, he cites are not his own, and easily verified. It just becomes a matter of ignoring spin.
Perhaps because U.S. standard units make no sense what so ever, perhaps, also, because the rest of the world (okay, sans some backwards developing nations) use them, and we live in a time of globalization meaning increased exposure to units written to par with the rest of the world (sans some third world nations). Anyone with ANY exposure to the rest of the world quickly gets sick of having to rip out a unit converter, or quickly do ballpark estimates in their head, same goes with reading ANY technical literature. This latter in part bars the average American from being able to understand anything mildly technical.
May I repeat that U.S. units make no sense? I still (growing up in the US) don't know all of the handy conversions for the units I use daily, while with metric, this would NOT be a problem to anyone what-so-ever (unless dealing with certain third world nations).
I think the only reason the U.S. supports it's units is out of shear egotism, the only reason we do it is to be different.
You are absolutely correct. Like I said it has been awhile since I mucked with statistics, after posting I went through my old text books and found the same, I was talking about distributions and not probabilities.
Thanks for the clarification, though.
Not to sound ignorant, its been awhile since I've been is stats (social sciences), but isn't significance generally a p of .5-.7 and up, depending on the strength your going for, at least in most psychological studies. Again, its been awhile, but it seems that a p of .01 wouldn't rule out random chance, especially with such a small n, with an n of 30 the significant p should be held to be higher, like .7.
I do agree, a low n can be deceptive, you can design very good experiments around low numbers of participants, and still get statistically valid (meaning generalizable) results, depending on the controls, selection, and various SD formula.
Actually your preferences in girls are entirely societal, based off of the more and popular PC line of "fat is beautiful", which is somewhat an evolutionary lie. A fairer assessment would to say that more "rubenesque" girls would be more attractive, being that a little more fat is a sign of health. That little extra fatty tissue says much, that the woman is healthy enough to hunt, has a good energy store in case of problems, has a healthy metabolism, etc... Fat, as in the 60% of Americans who are actually clinically obese, is NOT a sign of health, it is just the opposite. Then again so is the Twiggy / supermodel look, it shows either a famine, a cancer, or severe metabolic malfunction. Women with a moderate fat store could be said to be more apt to care for young, and by moderate I'm talking Marilyn Monroe-esque, not Rosie Oddonel (or however you spell her name).
This also would have something to do with your genetic stock, people from different (evolutionarily) climate zone would have different preferences. In an hot arid climate (such as the middle east) would much prefer more tall and slender girls, than people in cold arid climates, and people in climates more apt to drought and temperature extremes would prefer the shorter squatter girls you mention, its all about heat retention and surface area, along with fat retention for famine resistance.
But in the modern society I think it boils down to whatever you prefer, societal condition can over take genetic preference. I personally don't like either extreme, the "waif" look looks rather cadaverous and unhealthy to me (probably a sign of sever psychological disorders too), and the fat look is equally disgusting to me, and also probably a sign of psychological disorders. Where has the average gone, not 90 pounds, not 300 pounds, but just average?
Ouch... Generally I'm pretty pro-Apple, but this struck even me as a little fanish.
We're talking about a product that none of us have even used, so it is hard to say if it really is as good as sliced bread, or not. Also the iPhone (stop it with the "i-" prefix already!) isn't really a NEW thing, there are several products with its complete, or at least vast swaths of its features, like Blackberries, and other PDA/camera/phone/music player phones, all of which (most?) are much cheaper than this. The only really things I see going for it is the interface (it IS Apple, after all), and the fact it is made by Apple. Hey, it might be neat (okay, it is), but neatness alone does not warrant going out and spending 500 on something.
You hit the nail on the head, the change itself isn't bad, and it may indeed be better and more efficient, but the degree of change is the problem. Forcing people to adapt to a standard without a transition is what breaks it, and not the interface itself. Incremental change is generally better than quick change, since it allows users to adapt to new conventions. Even Windows XP with its "radically new" interface allowed you to make it more 95/98/NT like. OS X allowed a bit of that with classic mode. Office07 should have had an option to use conventional menus, etc.
I can't judge the new format, mind, since I've never used it, and am going to have to wait some time for it to get ported to Macs. Sadly office still rules, I've tried Apple's iWork thingy, and it sucks, I don't trust the
The ease, the vastness, the updating, the decentralized wikipedia (at least in its editors), the accuracy, what more can I say?
Yes, Wikipedia is good, yes most of us use it once a day. BUT... When your actually in need of a real reference, one that is actually authoritative (meaning you can find the author, and his name isn't "skittlesthepony10"), and one that isn't going to change once a week to match the whims of some egotistical inside group. I have found errors in several articles, and when you edit them you trounce on some idiots ego, and they revert it. Ego is more important than accuracy in some cases.
If you need a serious reference you still need a good specialty encyclopedia, a library, or even the Britannica.
That said Wikipedia is a great launchpad for research, and following links for hours is oddly cathartic. I generally waste more time on wikipedia then I even do on slashdot, come to think of it, it is like slashdot for the antisocial.
I really REALLY want to play ADOM I just got off a huge roguelike kick (yes, Nethack still won), but ADOM would not run on OSX no matter what tweaking I tried to give it. It wouldn't be a huge problem, but my Linux box is in the throws of a massive hardware revolt and is thus not dependable enough for using much over 10 minutes. The buzz makes it look good, but I wish I could play it on the most recent OSX (It seems to be compiled for 10.3.9, but poops out on 10.4+). I'm getting bored of zAngband, and Nethack needs a break before I through my keyboard through my monitor.
Same thing with Slash'Em, sadly. No OS X ports. Why do people only update rougelikes every 7 years?
You are correct, commuity standards (ala group think) can go terribly wrong. I didn't mean to present this as a good in itself, in this case, though, it is rather mundane and nonharmful. Especailly since their was no communications between users (unless hidden somewhere deep in Craigslist is a "flag the scalper" discussion), it was a wholly organic movement. I don't even think this could be group think, its more like many individuals defining the character of their community individually.
Okay... he was implicated by an in house audit, AND reported it. Later (after reporting it) it they find that he is innocent. If this was corporate wrong doing, then why would they report it in the first place, AND THEN do responsible action and admit a mistake, and try to fix it?
Yes, corporations can do evil things, and DO evil things. But that does not make everything evil, mistakes still happen, misdirected allegations still happen, just like in real life. Corporations are not intrinsically bad, and their officers are not necessarily corrupt. For every Enron, there is a million not-Enron's. Just because the media makes a big deal of something, does not mean its pervasive. And just because you think all corporations are evil, does not make them so. It is possible to be a good capitalist, and responsible, in fact I'm guessing its the status quo.
And no, I'm not the biggest fan of blatant capitalism, my history will show that. And no, I'm not an Apple fanboy, Apple is just another OS/Platform, and not worthy of a ideological base. Yes, I am using a Mac to type this, but I also have a laptop running Linux and box with XP.
That might be, I really don't know enough about that to argue, not being there myself. I do agree that it is a recent phenomena, though.
That was my main point in argument. iPods are for all sorts of things, and background noise is one of them, though there are exceptions. Anecdotally, I use my iPod for both background noise, and actually listening to music in environments that wouldn't allow it. Finding calm and quiet is the problem, and iPods (and their ilk) solve it by providing "pure" music, and masking background. But then again I can only speak anecdotally, and I doubt I'm the norm (or anyone on Slashdot either).
I do think there are metrics which would be applicable, and music might fall into it, but I don't think it would be (purely academic, of course) the best metric for the determination of interest in space (or science/technology in general). I would say that technical skill or curiosity in general would be better. Geeks (to generalize) seem to be advocates of space exploration, but also spend their time tinkering with the internals of many things (technical or not), and find technical documents oddly addictive, and I don't think this is age specific. Again a generalization, take with a large does of salt. I think the same level of correlation would be found in any techie, as it would be in audio reproduction (I, for example, have no clue about audio, but am obsessed with visual accuracy, spending hours calibrating monitors and TVs to get as close to real as possible, this also expands to actual art).
So a community of people decided that your behavior was unacceptable to their community standards? I fail to see anything unjust about that, in fact it gives me some deal of respect for the atmosphere of Craigslist. Next your going to complain that /. allows you to mod down trolls, since inflicting a community standard is unjust. There are more than one set of laws, don't you know, the codified ones, and a vaster collection of norms, mores, and values that vary from community to community, and are enforced more subtly and more forcibly than codified law. Thats Soc101 speaking, nothing too brilliant.
Communities self-regulate, and if Craigslist decided to buck the will of their community for the good of scalping, I'm sure they'd lose a large portion of their users.
Considering there won't even be humans when that happens (thank you evolution), and our window for survival is closer than the 5 billion years before our sun goes red giant, thanks to the solar "comfort zone" moving away from us. But then again no other single species has ever lasted 5 (or even 1) billion years, it is presumptuous for one to think that we would.
That said, in the last 6,000 years humans have progressed technologically at a rate that boggles, from early agriculture to nuclear weapons and space travel. If you even hinted at what we can do now anytime in the past, you you'd be met with shear and utter disbelief. So its not hard to map that to our own ignorance of our mid-term future. Sure we're not going to see it, but there is a damn good chance it still could happen, its hard, though, to say either way.
That makes no sense, who cares if someone else cares? We are humans, and not someone else, so obviously WE care. Do you care about your own wellbeing in spite of the fact that 5 billion people don't care if you even exist? How does the opinion of a hypothetical outside observer matter to the ultimate fate of humanity? In the "grand scheme of things", like what universal time, geologic time, the scope of the massive universe we live in? No clue, since I didn't know they were capable of an opinion of us. Humanity does contribute an infinite amount to humanity though, and being that we cannot be anything other, I guess humanity must matter then.
I disagree, perhaps YOU were, but the 60's were the rise of pop, it was when music started following the form it does today with an actual "recording industry", my folks huge collection of LP and 45's refute your account, as does the rise of Elvis in the late 50's and the Beatles in the 60's, both of which could be seen as the birth of modern music.
Regardless, I don't see what people's choice in music have to do with it.
I think literacy might play a role though, and not only in taste of reading, but actually reading. As probably does level of education. Both of which we're abject failures at now, starting around when the "iPod generation" was in school. I grew up loving science classes, and reading old pulp Sci-Fi, and I am an aberrant in the real world. Most people my age would rather not read a book, much less care what a bunch of disattactched men in lab coats are rambling about in vaguely confusing terms. I'm sure their is a high level of correlation between level of education and elective literacy and interest in space travel.
Not to sound like a troll, but I don't think that his reputation as a "thinker" has anything to do with his work in linguistics, besides it allowed him enough fame to get recognition of his Vietnam activities. His modern role as "thinker" is (in part) grounded in his political thought, and not his linguistics. Also his skill in linguistics has nothing to do with his skill in critiquing politics, they are separate domains. It's like discrediting Einstein's physics because he was a shitty carpenter.
Other allegations against him, brought up someplace above, are somewhat laughable. Especially calling him an anti-Semite, no where have I seen him attack Jews AS PEOPLE, which would be the definition of the term. Yes he doesn't like Israel, but that does not make one an anti-semite. I don't like the government of N. Korea, but I'm not against Koreans in general, hating the actions of a government does not preclude hating the people under that government, or the ethnic/religious group represented by the government. The Taliban was bad, but that does not necessarily mean I hate Persians.
That said I'm still out on Chomsky, I DO think he brings up valid points, and gets more than 50% of his historical facts rights, and he does fill a valuable role in debate (think of him as the anti-Coulter, or the Micheal Moore with an IQ). But his credibility is hurt by his.. er... "passion". Anyone that emotional about their thesis deserves a second look, emotions can overwhelm reason. Sometimes he seems a little to antsy to attack the U.S. only for the sake of attacking the U.S. Yes the U.S. has done some REALLY bad things (see South America for example), but Chomsky goes out of his way looking for evidence of wrong doing, and appoints blame where it isn't due, or where it should be shared.
I really tried to like did, but the discussion blows worse than here, both people wise, and technically. While /. is the libertarian bastion of the internet (annoying, but makes for some good conversation), Digg is the ultra-left-wing Bush conspiracy bastion of the internet, meaning most forms of actual conversation are completely impossible. Also the discussion system just sucks, no real way to make replies, or get notified of them (threading is your friend, Digg), and the comment digg system is even worse than /.s mod system. It is complete group think where you canget down to -30 for just saying something that someone doesn't like. Its more like burying things that deviate from groupthink rather than highlight better comments (which /. does somewhat well).
Also since they opened it up to everyone and every topic the level of crap and scams has made it almost a waste of time. I think I tag things with "Okay this is lame" 10 times a day, and inaccurate the rest.
That said, it is a subjective choice. Not my cup of tea, though I do visit once a day or so, and do comment from time to time. Mostly it is a good link farm, no need to ever actually read the comments.
Potentially, yes. But there are other systems that would lead to different universes thanks to the probabilistic nature. At least certain aspects of QM are necessarily probabilistic (as in Bell's spin experiments), meaning irreducible. From this framework we might still be governed by deterministic processes (albeit random chance, instead of reductionist laws), but it does illustrate how there is some wiggle room in physics for something other than pure determinism. (mind I'm not a physicist, just an interested researcher)
A scientist might not be a reductionist, but science as a field of knowledge is. Reductionism is pretty much a given within the structure of science itself, X follows certain laws, X is made of Z, which follows certain laws, etc.
Part of my even bringing up science was mostly for discussing the parity between it, and what actually is (yes, a dry philosophical issue of little interest to most people). I view science as more of a model of the world, and as such is necessarily incomplete. Yes, it is a coherent model, which does have remarkable powers of predicting thing within science's purview, but it isn't the only meaningful system of knowing the world, just (perhaps) the most useful. I don't think science is arbitrary, mind, science is VERY good at what science does, but it is strange to think that one system could see everything, science sees what science is designed to see, and there might be something outside of its scope.
As for scientism being mostly derogatory, I agree, I have come across the term used that way more than not. It might have been a bad choice, but it seemed to come closest to what I was going for. I could have said "naturalists", or such, but that seems rather archaic, and potentially misleading.
Yes, you could say that the next point might potentially fall within the curve, but you couldn't say it would definitely with any certainty. The sun will probably rise tomorrow, but it is not a necessary truth, to be overly simplistic. This is rather pedantic, I admit, I think I might have gotten to enthusiastic, no one claims (I hope) that science is 100% (it has been wrong many times in the past), but the general gist was to say that science is fallible.
Some chaotic phenomena (turbulence, etc) are irreducible. Actually the state of the universe is irreducable thanks to the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, if you started with the big bang again, and let it run, you would not end up with the same universe as now. If I took a single atom it would be hard to deduce the higher-level phenomena from it (or impossible), such as principles in biology, without foreknowledge of those phenomena. I'm also talking about more esoteric things, that are not completely scientific, but are nonetheless real features of the world we live in, such as beauty, etc...
Science should be open to analysis, it is ALSO a social system, as well as being a systematic method (of sorts). Being a social system the people involved, and their psychology, does play an issue. Also, ala Kuhn and Rorty (mostly), the current paradigm does limit the avenues of inquiry open to science, and ala Nagel, inquiry (anything using logic, in this case) is only as valid as the data entered, the weakness comes from the choice or selection of that data. We select data based on unscientific things (mostly), we are looking at a finite amount of possible theories (and data sets) out of a near infinite range of potentially valid ones. Right now the current paradigm requires reductionism (which is the key to determinism as it relates to human agency), so potential observations outside of this view are outside the realm of possibility (yes, eventually they might be).
In the "how can one live as determined" topic, I think we're arguing at cross purposes. I'm talking about subjective experience, when I choose, say, the blue sweater over the red one, it seems a free choice. I have the experience of choice.
With your robot example we enter a problematic realm, Searle's "Chinese Box", or at least we risk this. The problem, as it stands now, is that we are dealing with OBSERVING behavior, versus EXPERIENCING behavior. I experience agency, as opposed to merely observing it and deducing the experience.
I might be overstating my case, I don't mean to though. I've been working on this issue for some time, and it is a damn tricky issue, as is most philosophy of science issues. In the end I don't think it really matters since life does go on regardless, even with the tricky ethical issues involved, and the tricky science issues involved. I guess thats the best way of phrasing my existential argument, but it lacks rational completely.
I've always found it strange that no one criticized the people who PUBLISHED that information, for some reason all the people who actually acted on the information (the NYT journalists, for example) got sympathy for protecting their sources (ala journalistic "integrity"), while the "leak" is bad. The leak wouldn't have been bad if irresponsible journalists had actual integrity.
Just an observation. All rights are conditional to responsibility, sure you have the RIGHT to free speech, but that does not mean it is always the responsible action. The people who published the Plame information are as guilty as the people who leaked it.
I see no problem with the term "scientism" nor do I see it as derogatory, it is a philosophy of the world that one can take, like idealism, materialism, etc. As Wikipedia says, it is merely the view "that science has primacy over other interpretations of life (e.g., religious, mythical, spiritual, or humanistic explanations). The term has also been applied to the view that natural sciences have primacy over other fields of inquiry such as social sciences." Doesn't seem derogatory to me. Perhaps it does verge on being a strawman, I admit, but in most other views determinism doesn't arise (except in some rather archaic Christian doctrines), and thus this wouldn't be a topic for debate.
Yes determinism has shown itself useful in science, I would not argue otherwise. But this does not make it true in all cases, we cannot generalize that because it works in A-Y that it must be true in Z since our sciences are based (mostly) on inductive principles. It might hold true for everything, but we run into the problem that most determinism is of the reductionalist kind. but we do encounter unreductable natural phenomena too in the form of emergent behavior.
Science has its own stack of problems, but that is largely another debate. The fact that we're talking about CURRENT science makes my point nontrivial, your talking about science as process, and I'm talking about science as the current standing of human knowledge. Perhaps in 10/20/100 years there will be a better answer, but right now I think we're on shaky ground.
The fact that science (which has somehow become a proper noun) holds itself above analysis is troubling, and I think that this fact leads to potential problems. As Kuhn demonstrated, there is more at work in science (as activity) than pure science, there is more too it than just men in white lab coats plugging away at "truth". Your second position is begging the question, and holds as much truth as me saying "the Bible says the Bible is true, therefore the bible is true". Science is self-proving within the system of science, it is coherent, but this does not ensure a full mapping to the world. Yes, it has done a fair job, but this does not make it flawless, nor does it make it even perfectable.
How so? How can one live as if one was determined?
I am rather enjoying this debate. Thanks for the discussion!
Which third paragraph? I don't think I implied that what scientists say = proof, I was going for the contrary. Could you please elaborate?
I though long and hard about this. I Sure, I can (and to be honest, did) have all of the NES and SNES games I want for free and with somewhat upped graphics instead of buying them. But I still ended up in the end buying the original Zelda, Sonic, and Mario 64.
Why "waste" the money? For several reasons. I'd like to support Nintendo, since they really haven't disappointed me yet, and I thus support their products. I'd like also to convince them to release some older games, so I can actually OWN them, and not just steal them. Here's hoping they release the original 8-bit Final Fantasies (sure, I could get the revamped copies, but they lose something in the pimped graphics, and I do own FF1 on the NES, but am getting sick of blowing on the cart/having it plugged in), Mario RPG, Chronotrigger (have it on PS1, but it isn't the same...), Earthbound (Mother PLEASE!!!), the Shining Force games (beats Fire Emblem / FF Tactics any day), Phantasy Star, Alisa Dragoon, and such. On this vein, it is nice to play old games on the TV, with a real controller, without the fuss of adapters, wires, and ghetto PC controllers, or having to view things in a TEENY window to play on your PC in the original 8-16bit glory.
Also I support the VC for the same reason I support iTunes, they try for something legal instead of just suing. There really is no excuse for piracy when it is offered cheap, easy, and legally.
To play Devil's Advocate...
Where is the line between "can't know", and "don't know". How can we know if "yet" s possible until we already know. You operate under the assumption that we can know everything, but how can one offer proof of this position?
You then have problems that enter in such as Godel's theorum, and Turing's halting problem, systems where it is impossible to know certain aspects of the system fully.
No offense, but i think your framing the argument wrong. Your loading it towards a view you accept. You verge on begging the question.
Freewill would not necessarily lead to antiscience or supernaturalism. You take determinism for granted when presenting that as a consequence. It would not necissarily represent something "outside" of the universe, it could be a structural facet of the universe. It would, though, represent something outside of our current model of the universe, meaning it is more a reflection of our knowledge, and not of physicality. I see no problem in excepting the fact that the universe is far more complex than we could comprehend, our knowledge is by no means complete. I see determinism (in all shades) as problematic since it relies on reductionism (and some other remnants of positivism), which seems to fail to account of some complex phenomena, and other emergent traits. Is water purely the sum of atomic structure, or is there something more? Are the poetic phrases "water is dangerous", "water is beautiful", etc... more or less true than "water is H2O"?