Home users aren't going to pay for anything when the free versions are so strong and popular.
In fact I probably have fewer problems with Fedora or Ubuntu than I would for a subscription distro because the free communities are so much larger and I have a better chance of finding a forum or mailing list with someone who had just my problem (note this free competition doesn't hurt the enterprise distros as they're really looking for stability).
Really I think they need OEMs to step in, the OEM pays Canonical a per box license and Canonical makes sure those boxes run smoothly, they could even do end user support as well, it would all be rolled into the purchase price.
Remember the value of software isn't in the bits, it's in the support, and I consumers to explicitly shell out extra for support.
This story belongs in the political section at best.
Perhaps but recall this guy got his nickname during a speech about net neutrality. Stevens has been screwing with my rights online for a while, I don't see any problem with this story being YRO.
The sad thing is that therefore anyone who claims to think "rational" is wrong. If he were truly rational he wouldn't be able to reach any conclusion at all, for he'd run stuck on the axioms he uses, and from the question "why does axiom <x> hold ?" there is no rational way out. And since this persion reaches conclusions in a rational way, he'd run stuck on that problem no matter what problem he was trying to resolve.
Unless of course that person takes a Bayesian perspective and realizes that axiom holds with a probability as a result.
As a rule of thumb, if your concept of rational thought leads you to crippling indecision or some other undesirable consequence than it isn't actually rational.
It looks like the minimum passing grade is still 60%.
Some people mentioned this hurts the students who come in, do the work, and get a mark in the neighborhood of 50%.
But is this necessarily a bad thing? A student who gets 55% probably isn't trying that hard, this is sending a message of either "if you're not going to put in a good effort don't bother coming in" or alternately "it's not enough to do the work, you actually have to apply yourself".
If that message gets across maybe some students who are wasting their time at school will put some more effort in. Of course this relies on teachers not taking the obvious action of deciding the student who came in and wrote a 40% test deserves more than the student who didn't show up and bumping the 40% up to a higher mark as a result.
By Palin using yahoo, it's not closely watched and she can conduct official business off the record.
Or you know, she could in fact SEND PERSONAL EMAIL. Are you saying that no government employee should be able to have a personal email account? Then I guess you're OK with AT&T recording phone conversations without a warrant, because if government employees should not be able to have any private life why should you?
No one cares if she uses yahoo to conduct personal business. What they care about is using a clearly insecure yahoo account to conduct government business, especially if one of the stated intentions in doing so is avoiding subpoenas.
The kid even said there were NO incriminating emails in the account (see: Wired story). So get off your high horse and allow for humans to be humans and have something of a life, even if it's one of your dreaded Repuglithuggnaughtterizies.
The kid was an idiot.
"An index of the e-mails in her inbox, which includes sender, subject line and date sent, indicates that Palin received numerous e-mails from her aides in the governor's office, some of which could be work-related.
An e-mail from her press secretary, Meghan Stapleton, indicates the message is about the "Motor Fuel Tax Suspension".
The subject line of an e-mail from Randall Ruaro, her deputy chief of staff reads, "Draft letter to Governor Schwarzenegger." Another one from Ruaro says, "Please approve" and another one is about "Court of Appeals Nominations.""
Granted, a lot of her staff consists of old high school buddies which explains some of those messages but a lot of those appear work related.
No one is defending the fact that the kid did something wrong but he's kinda irrelevant. For someone claiming to be vice presidential material to be conducting state business over insecure email, with the stated purpose of thwarting the intention of the law, in just wrong.
I always counter by saying, "Yeah and a liberal is a conservative that's been abused by the police."
And historically... I wonder who has a higher body count, government goons or mere muggers.
Hmm, I think it might be more accurate to say "a libertarian is a conservative that's been abused by the police."
I'm not sure how many libertarians have had negative encounters with police/government officials but they certainly seem to have a very low opinion of them.
The results demonstrate that democratic economists lean left and republicans lean right. Economics ought to be unbaised. The fact that it is baised indicatse that economists can't be trusted to understand economic issues objectively.
It could also mean that economists, thinking the economy was very important, went into economics.
And furthermore, thinking the economy was very important, they chose their political party based on economics.
It's quite a testament to the GOP's marketing skill that the average American associates them with smaller government, stronger economic growth, and more jobs.
I've heard that in general left leaning governments end up being better for the economy than right leaning.
Basically everyone thinks left == bad for economy and right == good for economy. As a result right wing governments can do almost anything they want since people trust them to be very frugal. Left wing governments on the other hand have every tax and expenditure scrutinized and end up being a lot more fiscally responsible as a result.
True though at the end of the day it's also a good thing to realize that science is about evidence, and if a bunch of scientists believe a theory to be true I think that's pretty damn good evidence that it is true.
No, if a bunch of scientists believe that something is true, that's an indicator that the thing is probably considered by consensus to be a more efficient or more useful proposition than the well-explored alternatives currently available.
Just because a theory is very successful it doesn't mean that it's necessarily true. Many theories in the past have been very successful and then have been overturned by even better theories that have wider ranges of applicability.
"Scientists believe..." is a problematic phrase. Of course scientists, as human beings, tend to believe certain things. But the perfect scientist would have no beliefs at all, only working hypotheses.
Well I'd consider the best theory we have to be true to a degree, it may not be absolutely true but there's a wonderful Asimov quote on that topic.
"â¦when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
Perhaps. But when was the last time you heard someone describe themselves as an aphilatelist? anumismatist? What about "area man" who "doesn't watch television?"
Theism has always been the default state for our human societies. Therefore a special label is useful to differentiate people. That doesn't make it a faith, it just makes it slightly unusual. I don't go around thinking "I'm an atheist!", but if someone questions me about religion it's a useful label.
You may have managed to avoid it, but the fact is that many who think they do not, have a religion, and it is none. They are evangelical, they have dogma, they demonize those who are not of the faith. They even have priests with vestments: A white lab coat.
Militant atheists are certainly more more vocal about arguing with religion, and some do go so far as making somewhat exaggerated generalization about theists (though not nearly as much as some claim). But your claims of "dogma" and "priests" simply aren't applicable to the vast majority of atheists.
I, nor any other atheist I can think of, would claim that someone Charles Darwin or Richard Dawkins is some flawless fountain of truth. We just admire them a lot since they make some very good arguments and have good rational minds.
There really is a fundamental difference between atheists and theists in that regard. Theists believe that some people had/have a direct line to god, and as a result everyone who doesn't have this line is fundamentally further from the truth.
Atheists believe no one has the absolute truth and we simply keep learning. I admire the heck out of Darwin, but the fact is that I probably know a lot more about evolution than he did. I'm not particularly smart or educated in evolution, I just have the benefit of knowing a little bit of the 100+ years of research that followed.
I don't actually care that much about Darwin but he's talked about a lot because theists seem to think in terms of these great saints with a line to god. Since they have all their christian saints they start looking for the corresponding atheist saints and go after Darwin.
"The tendency to falsely link cause to effect a superstition is occasionally beneficial"
What a piece of unfortunate crap, but probably true. Anyhow. Ignorance pleaded - would have worked too and wouldn't have had all side effects.
But, people probably began telling the inquisitive children and adults made up stories. "Don't swim in the deep water or the water monster/god/goblin will eat you. He and his family came from far away. Not all of them are bad, you see. One rules over the forest, etc."
Why not tell them right away: You may drown.
The sad thing is that these chain of innocent little lies got hold over people's mind and life, and became more elaborate, like religions.
Frankly, I have never seen anything good done by that part of reality.
If you don't know. Say so or keep shut! Avoid lies.
Evolution doesn't give us an optimal solution, it just gives us a better one than previous generations.
The explanation I've heard in the past is that we have a strong tendency to assume there's an agent behind every effect, ie. that rustling is a lion. This instinct is so strong that when we don't have an agent readily available we invent one, ie the leaves are rustling and making you nervous, some agent must be doing it, we don't know of lions flying through the leaves but something must be there.
Soon enough someone says a spirit is flying around, it would explain the leaves so why not!
Atheism is a "faith" like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Gaah, I'm really quite sick of this mantra. For one thing.. it's a mantra. That does not make sense.
Actually it does. Faith is believe in something for which there is insufficient evidence, not believing in something for which there is insufficient evidence does not require faith.
For another, if you put as much effort into not collecting stamps as most of the atheists on slashdot put into not believing in god, people would be suggesting support groups for your aphilatelism problem.
I tried to believe in God when I was younger, I really did, but the evidence was so overwhelming that I finally accepted that there was no god.
Not believing in God is very easy for me. Theism, when I tried it, was extremely difficult for all the contradictions I had to ignore.
However, one place I do expend some effort is going out like this and explaining my views to theists. The reason I expend this effort is I've seen the damage that religion does and I'm quite honestly trying to make the world a better place.
The theory could withstand those lines of inquiry if those students were given the theory. Instead they're given a tiny, perhaps broken, subset of the theory. Then they're told a larger, more elaborate crackpot theory and given "evidence" to support that theory.
The students *were* given the theory. ( What theory are we taking about here, anyway? Big Bang? Evolution? We were taught all of that). We weren't told a larger crackpot theory. We were just given some questions that seemed not to make sense, like who do we know that the source of radioative dating material was all undecayed at the time of formation.
Perhaps they learn a tiny bit of critical thinking in discarding the "conventional" theory,
Perhaps!? We spend the whole friggin' semester on it!
In your original post it sounded like the teacher spent at least some time, if not directly promoting creationism, than pointing out perceived (but actually false) weaknesses in radiometric dating and/or evolution and implying the theory was wrong.
Of course it's all in the delivery so he might have been a great teacher who wasn't trying to push those unscientific views on his students, but that's the impression I got.
I was talking about whatever theories you meant in the original post. Regardless, if your teacher did push a theory not supported by scientists than it's almost by definition a crackpot theory. As for whatever theory you did learn it's simply not possible to have learned all of it and the supporting evidence over the semester.
The example of radioactive dating, the answers to those questions are known, if your teacher didn't know, or if he wanted the class to investigate further, he should have made sure the class understood that scientists did know the answer to the question.
To bring up the unknown ratios at formation, then imply that not even the scientists know the answer, that would imply the scientists didn't know what they were talking about and thus indicate a giant gaping hole in the evidence supporting the theory.
but at the cost of incorrect knowledge.
If you think the scientific method gives incorrect knowledge, well.. what exactly are you trying to argue here? That we don't know anything, not even in science?
If he was giving you those questions as unknowns, when they have known answers, then he's giving you bad data.
Thanks for the answer. I'd always wondered about that one.
The disappointing thing is that your science teacher was spreading doubt on the subject when the answers were out there to be found. When a vast number of scientists say it's true, "I don't think it's right" is not a valid answer unless you've got a PhD. He may not have been spreading religion, but he was spreading doubt about a well-founded science, as if the scientists themselves were ignorant of it. They are not, and it's extremely bad form to imply that they are.
I'm a scientifically-minded skeptic, but I gotta say I disagree with you 100% here. I think that the essence of science is doubt, skepticism, and inquiry. These theories are not so fragile that we have to protect them with a shield of awe. If the science is well-founded, then it should be able to clear these hurdles easily. It should be able to withstand the most withering lines of inquiry -- And it does.
If you teach kids to blindly accept what "the authorities" tell you, whether those authorities are the Bible, or well-respected grey-bearded scientists, then you will get adults who accept whatever the authorities tell them -- in other words, people who can't be scientists, because they don't know how to think for themselves, and therefore can't use the scientific method.
The theory could withstand those lines of inquiry if those students were given the theory. Instead they're given a tiny, perhaps broken, subset of the theory. Then they're told a larger, more elaborate crackpot theory and given "evidence" to support that theory.
Perhaps they learn a tiny bit of critical thinking in discarding the "conventional" theory, but at the cost of incorrect knowledge. Even worse people have a very strong tendency to defend the first opinion we learn on a subject, chances are a lot of them are going to learn a good deal more about rationalizing their incorrect beliefs than skeptically discarding them and arriving at the correct ones.
When we teach science, we shouldn't say "Believe this because a bunch of scientists believe in it!". Instead, we should teach them to ask questions, develop a hypothesis, and think about ways to prove or disprove it. When they're old enough, they should be doing experiements. Think, ask questions, make observations, and do experiments to test your theories. That is science, not the consensus of elites.
True though at the end of the day it's also a good thing to realize that science is about evidence, and if a bunch of scientists believe a theory to be true I think that's pretty damn good evidence that it is true.
As a U.S. citizen, I must say that I am utterly embarrased at the actions of my government. On the one hand, there's no way that they'll let Iran or North Korea even so much as attempt to build a reactor, but as soon as India wants on the scene, oh well, no problem. After all, we wouldn't want them to cut us off from that practically free labor force, right?
It's because the neocons think China is the new USSR, thus the best way to contain China is by encircling them with military allies (if they have nukes that's only better).
This article from a few weeks ago gives some background though misses the prediction on the passage of the deal.
The simple fact is, if she came out and said creationism was bullshit, she'd lose tens of thousands of votes. Actually, likely a lot more if she said it during the presidential election.
You *can't* be all out against it and get anywhere in the extreme conservatism of modern US politics.
It doesn't matter that pushing a version of how life arose which was discredited two centuries ago is insane for the US as a country.
Its all about the fact that if you say such things as 'Evolution is a proven fact, creationism is a philosophy with no basis in fact', you won't get anywhere in politics, at least not to a high level.
In reality this is all about pandering to the right wing christian voters.
That might be a valid point if there was the slightest bit of evidence that she thought creationism was bullshit. The fact is she's a fundy and that's just that.
Oh, and there are a lot of politicians at a very high level, even republicans, who have come out against teaching creationism in classrooms without alienating their religious bases. I think she could have managed it in Alaska.
You don't seem to have much of an opinion of astronomers.
You're correct that a lot of the explanations are exotic and inscrutable, that's because if it was something ordinary we wouldn't have the problem in the first place. It's like we have a giant equation and it doesn't balance, either we're missing a term or one of our terms is very wrong. Either way it's going to be something new and strange because the old and ordinary clearly isn't the answer.
Who wants to bet that Palin's VP debate performance will outshine McCain's debate performance?
I suspect:
Palin would shine against McCain.
McCain will shine against Obama.
Palin would shine again Obama.
... I don't know how Palin will do against Biden.
Personally, I wouldn't mind the ticket being reversed: Palin/McCain. But given what we've got, Palin's speech this morning was far more inspirational and motivating than Obama's. And she didn't even have a crowd of 80,000 at Invesco field to drum up the energy.
Regardless of who's speech was better the real question is did she write it? I assume Obama wrote his speech as he usually does, but, if like most other politicians, she had a speech writer, than her only credit goes toward delivery.
I'd think this would give Obama an advantage in the debate category.
"He just destroyed the "Obama doesn't have the experience to lead" meme. "
Oh? How? Who's going to say she's inexperienced? Barack Obama?
Just how does he attack her without the attack doing a boomerang right back on him? Her time has been spent as an executive. She's done budgets, personnel, and signed and vetoed legislation.
Obama has done, oh, none of that. This is why his campaign's statement about her being the mayor of a small rube town was so silly. It allows Palin to say "Well, by all means, lets hear of your impressive credentials as a community organizer".
The brilliance of this pick is that the Democrats can't harp on Palin's supposed Vice-Presidential inexperience without highlighting Barack Obama's Presidential inexpierience.
You misunderstand, It doesn't destroy the meme for Obama, it destroys it for McCain.
McCain's attack on Obama, that he doesn't have the necessary qualifications, is compromised since McCain is selecting someone with similar qualifications.
If McCain thinks Obama isn't qualified to be President than how can he think Palin will be qualified to be President if McCain dies?
If you want to stop voting for the lesser of two evils, stop voting for the flawed two-party system. Simply vote third party to show that you want to be involved but hate the choices given to us by the corporate controlled parties.
It doesn't matter if you vote for Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader or Alan Keyes.
People need to start demanding that these 3rd party candidates get air time and in the debates. I'm really hoping that google or someone else has a debate with some of these candidates.
The best thing you can do to make real change and a difference is to take over your local government and work up. Get some friends and like minded people and start running for city council, judges, etc....
At the end of the day the American system is designed for two big parties, even if you manage to somehow get a 3rd party to make a real showing, or even get elected one cycle, it will only last a couple terms until it rescinds or merges with one of the main parties.
Now if there are only two parties total (without small parties) the steady state solution is a migration to the center where you have all your base and as much of the rest as you can get. The problem with this is that the two bases end up ignored since they're sure things.
Thus 3rd parties come along, when the party gets too far to the center (or just too unpalatable) the 3rd party takes some of the base and forces the main party to compensate and move back from the center.
In Canada, despite being better designed for multiple parties, a 3rd party actually did arise (NDP don't count), the Reform party came up and made significant electoral gains until the existing Progressive Conservative party was forced to merge with it.
When it was just the PCs on the right they slowly got closer and closer to the middle, after the merger they were recalibrated to be closer to their base and thus became more right wing (though not as much as reform which was almost all base).
You're never going to get away from the two party system without re-writing your constitution, the best you can do is use your vote to either reward the party you prefer, or send them a message by voting for the 3rd party letting the big party know that's the direction they need to move it.
It's not a very good system but it's what you got.
As for this election, at least from the intellectual and anti-lobbyist standpoint I can't see the logic in voting for someone other than Obama. I can't see the current system producing someone better than Obama and if you still vote for a 3rd party they'd probably just give up on your vote.
Slashdot Mirror
Home users aren't going to pay for anything when the free versions are so strong and popular.
In fact I probably have fewer problems with Fedora or Ubuntu than I would for a subscription distro because the free communities are so much larger and I have a better chance of finding a forum or mailing list with someone who had just my problem (note this free competition doesn't hurt the enterprise distros as they're really looking for stability).
Really I think they need OEMs to step in, the OEM pays Canonical a per box license and Canonical makes sure those boxes run smoothly, they could even do end user support as well, it would all be rolled into the purchase price.
Remember the value of software isn't in the bits, it's in the support, and I consumers to explicitly shell out extra for support.
This story belongs in the political section at best.
Perhaps but recall this guy got his nickname during a speech about net neutrality. Stevens has been screwing with my rights online for a while, I don't see any problem with this story being YRO.
The sad thing is that therefore anyone who claims to think "rational" is wrong. If he were truly rational he wouldn't be able to reach any conclusion at all, for he'd run stuck on the axioms he uses, and from the question "why does axiom <x> hold ?" there is no rational way out. And since this persion reaches conclusions in a rational way, he'd run stuck on that problem no matter what problem he was trying to resolve.
Unless of course that person takes a Bayesian perspective and realizes that axiom holds with a probability as a result.
As a rule of thumb, if your concept of rational thought leads you to crippling indecision or some other undesirable consequence than it isn't actually rational.
It looks like the minimum passing grade is still 60%.
Some people mentioned this hurts the students who come in, do the work, and get a mark in the neighborhood of 50%.
But is this necessarily a bad thing? A student who gets 55% probably isn't trying that hard, this is sending a message of either "if you're not going to put in a good effort don't bother coming in" or alternately "it's not enough to do the work, you actually have to apply yourself".
If that message gets across maybe some students who are wasting their time at school will put some more effort in. Of course this relies on teachers not taking the obvious action of deciding the student who came in and wrote a 40% test deserves more than the student who didn't show up and bumping the 40% up to a higher mark as a result.
By Palin using yahoo, it's not closely watched and she can conduct official business off the record.
Or you know, she could in fact SEND PERSONAL EMAIL. Are you saying that no government employee should be able to have a personal email account? Then I guess you're OK with AT&T recording phone conversations without a warrant, because if government employees should not be able to have any private life why should you?
No one cares if she uses yahoo to conduct personal business. What they care about is using a clearly insecure yahoo account to conduct government business, especially if one of the stated intentions in doing so is avoiding subpoenas.
The kid even said there were NO incriminating emails in the account (see: Wired story). So get off your high horse and allow for humans to be humans and have something of a life, even if it's one of your dreaded Repuglithuggnaughtterizies.
The kid was an idiot.
"An index of the e-mails in her inbox, which includes sender, subject line and date sent, indicates that Palin received numerous e-mails from her aides in the governor's office, some of which could be work-related.
An e-mail from her press secretary, Meghan Stapleton, indicates the message is about the "Motor Fuel Tax Suspension".
The subject line of an e-mail from Randall Ruaro, her deputy chief of staff reads, "Draft letter to Governor Schwarzenegger." Another one from Ruaro says, "Please approve" and another one is about "Court of Appeals Nominations.""
Granted, a lot of her staff consists of old high school buddies which explains some of those messages but a lot of those appear work related.
No one is defending the fact that the kid did something wrong but he's kinda irrelevant. For someone claiming to be vice presidential material to be conducting state business over insecure email, with the stated purpose of thwarting the intention of the law, in just wrong.
I always counter by saying, "Yeah and a liberal is a conservative that's been abused by the police."
And historically... I wonder who has a higher body count, government goons or mere muggers.
Hmm, I think it might be more accurate to say
"a libertarian is a conservative that's been abused by the police."
I'm not sure how many libertarians have had negative encounters with police/government officials but they certainly seem to have a very low opinion of them.
The results demonstrate that democratic economists lean left and republicans lean right. Economics ought to be unbaised. The fact that it is baised indicatse that economists can't be trusted to understand economic issues objectively.
It could also mean that economists, thinking the economy was very important, went into economics.
And furthermore, thinking the economy was very important, they chose their political party based on economics.
It's quite a testament to the GOP's marketing skill that the average American associates them with smaller government, stronger economic growth, and more jobs.
I've heard that in general left leaning governments end up being better for the economy than right leaning.
Basically everyone thinks left == bad for economy and right == good for economy. As a result right wing governments can do almost anything they want since people trust them to be very frugal. Left wing governments on the other hand have every tax and expenditure scrutinized and end up being a lot more fiscally responsible as a result.
Humans are extremely tribal and are much more responsive to fellow members of their group.
I'd be very interested to know
a) the colour of the users avatar, and
b) the colour of the user (though that's probably impractical to discover).
No, if a bunch of scientists believe that something is true, that's an indicator that the thing is probably considered by consensus to be a more efficient or more useful proposition than the well-explored alternatives currently available.
Just because a theory is very successful it doesn't mean that it's necessarily true. Many theories in the past have been very successful and then have been overturned by even better theories that have wider ranges of applicability.
"Scientists believe ..." is a problematic phrase. Of course scientists, as human beings, tend to believe certain things. But the perfect scientist would have no beliefs at all, only working hypotheses.
Well I'd consider the best theory we have to be true to a degree, it may not be absolutely true but there's a wonderful Asimov quote on that topic.
"â¦when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
Perhaps. But when was the last time you heard someone describe themselves as an aphilatelist? anumismatist? What about "area man" who "doesn't watch television?"
Theism has always been the default state for our human societies. Therefore a special label is useful to differentiate people. That doesn't make it a faith, it just makes it slightly unusual. I don't go around thinking "I'm an atheist!", but if someone questions me about religion it's a useful label.
You may have managed to avoid it, but the fact is that many who think they do not, have a religion, and it is none. They are evangelical, they have dogma, they demonize those who are not of the faith. They even have priests with vestments: A white lab coat.
Militant atheists are certainly more more vocal about arguing with religion, and some do go so far as making somewhat exaggerated generalization about theists (though not nearly as much as some claim). But your claims of "dogma" and "priests" simply aren't applicable to the vast majority of atheists.
I, nor any other atheist I can think of, would claim that someone Charles Darwin or Richard Dawkins is some flawless fountain of truth. We just admire them a lot since they make some very good arguments and have good rational minds.
There really is a fundamental difference between atheists and theists in that regard. Theists believe that some people had/have a direct line to god, and as a result everyone who doesn't have this line is fundamentally further from the truth.
Atheists believe no one has the absolute truth and we simply keep learning. I admire the heck out of Darwin, but the fact is that I probably know a lot more about evolution than he did. I'm not particularly smart or educated in evolution, I just have the benefit of knowing a little bit of the 100+ years of research that followed.
I don't actually care that much about Darwin but he's talked about a lot because theists seem to think in terms of these great saints with a line to god. Since they have all their christian saints they start looking for the corresponding atheist saints and go after Darwin.
"The tendency to falsely link cause to effect a superstition is occasionally beneficial"
What a piece of unfortunate crap, but probably true. Anyhow. Ignorance pleaded - would have worked too and wouldn't have had all side effects.
But, people probably began telling the inquisitive children and adults made up stories.
"Don't swim in the deep water or the water monster/god/goblin will eat you. He and his family came from far away. Not all of them are bad, you see. One rules over the forest, etc."
Why not tell them right away: You may drown.
The sad thing is that these chain of innocent little lies got hold over people's mind and life, and became more elaborate, like religions.
Frankly, I have never seen anything good done by that part of reality.
If you don't know. Say so or keep shut! Avoid lies.
Evolution doesn't give us an optimal solution, it just gives us a better one than previous generations.
The explanation I've heard in the past is that we have a strong tendency to assume there's an agent behind every effect, ie. that rustling is a lion. This instinct is so strong that when we don't have an agent readily available we invent one, ie the leaves are rustling and making you nervous, some agent must be doing it, we don't know of lions flying through the leaves but something must be there.
Soon enough someone says a spirit is flying around, it would explain the leaves so why not!
Gaah, I'm really quite sick of this mantra. For one thing.. it's a mantra. That does not make sense.
Actually it does. Faith is believe in something for which there is insufficient evidence, not believing in something for which there is insufficient evidence does not require faith.
For another, if you put as much effort into not collecting stamps as most of the atheists on slashdot put into not believing in god, people would be suggesting support groups for your aphilatelism problem.
I tried to believe in God when I was younger, I really did, but the evidence was so overwhelming that I finally accepted that there was no god.
Not believing in God is very easy for me. Theism, when I tried it, was extremely difficult for all the contradictions I had to ignore.
However, one place I do expend some effort is going out like this and explaining my views to theists. The reason I expend this effort is I've seen the damage that religion does and I'm quite honestly trying to make the world a better place.
You're building a straw man argument.
The theory could withstand those lines of inquiry if those students were given the theory. Instead they're given a tiny, perhaps broken, subset of the theory. Then they're told a larger, more elaborate crackpot theory and given "evidence" to support that theory.
The students *were* given the theory. ( What theory are we taking about here, anyway? Big Bang? Evolution? We were taught all of that). We weren't told a larger crackpot theory. We were just given some questions that seemed not to make sense, like who do we know that the source of radioative dating material was all undecayed at the time of formation.
Perhaps they learn a tiny bit of critical thinking in discarding the "conventional" theory,
Perhaps!? We spend the whole friggin' semester on it!
In your original post it sounded like the teacher spent at least some time, if not directly promoting creationism, than pointing out perceived (but actually false) weaknesses in radiometric dating and/or evolution and implying the theory was wrong.
Of course it's all in the delivery so he might have been a great teacher who wasn't trying to push those unscientific views on his students, but that's the impression I got.
I was talking about whatever theories you meant in the original post. Regardless, if your teacher did push a theory not supported by scientists than it's almost by definition a crackpot theory. As for whatever theory you did learn it's simply not possible to have learned all of it and the supporting evidence over the semester.
The example of radioactive dating, the answers to those questions are known, if your teacher didn't know, or if he wanted the class to investigate further, he should have made sure the class understood that scientists did know the answer to the question.
To bring up the unknown ratios at formation, then imply that not even the scientists know the answer, that would imply the scientists didn't know what they were talking about and thus indicate a giant gaping hole in the evidence supporting the theory.
but at the cost of incorrect knowledge.
If you think the scientific method gives incorrect knowledge, well.. what exactly are you trying to argue here? That we don't know anything, not even in science?
If he was giving you those questions as unknowns, when they have known answers, then he's giving you bad data.
Bad data + scientific method = wrong conclusion
Thanks for the answer. I'd always wondered about that one.
The disappointing thing is that your science teacher was spreading doubt on the subject when the answers were out there to be found. When a vast number of scientists say it's true, "I don't think it's right" is not a valid answer unless you've got a PhD. He may not have been spreading religion, but he was spreading doubt about a well-founded science, as if the scientists themselves were ignorant of it. They are not, and it's extremely bad form to imply that they are.
I'm a scientifically-minded skeptic, but I gotta say I disagree with you 100% here. I think that the essence of science is doubt, skepticism, and inquiry. These theories are not so fragile that we have to protect them with a shield of awe. If the science is well-founded, then it should be able to clear these hurdles easily. It should be able to withstand the most withering lines of inquiry -- And it does.
If you teach kids to blindly accept what "the authorities" tell you, whether those authorities are the Bible, or well-respected grey-bearded scientists, then you will get adults who accept whatever the authorities tell them -- in other words, people who can't be scientists, because they don't know how to think for themselves, and therefore can't use the scientific method.
The theory could withstand those lines of inquiry if those students were given the theory. Instead they're given a tiny, perhaps broken, subset of the theory. Then they're told a larger, more elaborate crackpot theory and given "evidence" to support that theory.
Perhaps they learn a tiny bit of critical thinking in discarding the "conventional" theory, but at the cost of incorrect knowledge. Even worse people have a very strong tendency to defend the first opinion we learn on a subject, chances are a lot of them are going to learn a good deal more about rationalizing their incorrect beliefs than skeptically discarding them and arriving at the correct ones.
When we teach science, we shouldn't say "Believe this because a bunch of scientists believe in it!". Instead, we should teach them to ask questions, develop a hypothesis, and think about ways to prove or disprove it. When they're old enough, they should be doing experiements. Think, ask questions, make observations, and do experiments to test your theories. That is science, not the consensus of elites.
True though at the end of the day it's also a good thing to realize that science is about evidence, and if a bunch of scientists believe a theory to be true I think that's pretty damn good evidence that it is true.
I'm sorry but your entire comment strikes me as a list of rationalizations as to why we don't have to do anything about global warming.
Personally I don't want to base the welfare of the planet on optimism.
As a U.S. citizen, I must say that I am utterly embarrased at the actions of my government. On the one hand, there's no way that they'll let Iran or North Korea even so much as attempt to build a reactor, but as soon as India wants on the scene, oh well, no problem. After all, we wouldn't want them to cut us off from that practically free labor force, right?
It's because the neocons think China is the new USSR, thus the best way to contain China is by encircling them with military allies (if they have nukes that's only better).
This article from a few weeks ago gives some background though misses the prediction on the passage of the deal.
The simple fact is, if she came out and said creationism was bullshit, she'd lose tens of thousands of votes. Actually, likely a lot more if she said it during the presidential election.
You *can't* be all out against it and get anywhere in the extreme conservatism of modern US politics.
It doesn't matter that pushing a version of how life arose which was discredited two centuries ago is insane for the US as a country.
Its all about the fact that if you say such things as 'Evolution is a proven fact, creationism is a philosophy with no basis in fact', you won't get anywhere in politics, at least not to a high level.
In reality this is all about pandering to the right wing christian voters.
That might be a valid point if there was the slightest bit of evidence that she thought creationism was bullshit. The fact is she's a fundy and that's just that.
Oh, and there are a lot of politicians at a very high level, even republicans, who have come out against teaching creationism in classrooms without alienating their religious bases. I think she could have managed it in Alaska.
looks like 800x480 is becoming the new 1280×1024.
Dude,
It's $98 and runs Linux.
I'm willing to forgive them for a lower than average screen resolution.
Apparently it's not "permanent" ice. The presumption that we humans know what is "permanent" is mind-boggling.
Well given it's 130 feet thick I'm guessing it's been around a couple years.
You don't seem to have much of an opinion of astronomers.
You're correct that a lot of the explanations are exotic and inscrutable, that's because if it was something ordinary we wouldn't have the problem in the first place. It's like we have a giant equation and it doesn't balance, either we're missing a term or one of our terms is very wrong. Either way it's going to be something new and strange because the old and ordinary clearly isn't the answer.
I suspect:
Personally, I wouldn't mind the ticket being reversed: Palin/McCain. But given what we've got, Palin's speech this morning was far more inspirational and motivating than Obama's. And she didn't even have a crowd of 80,000 at Invesco field to drum up the energy.
Regardless of who's speech was better the real question is did she write it? I assume Obama wrote his speech as he usually does, but, if like most other politicians, she had a speech writer, than her only credit goes toward delivery.
I'd think this would give Obama an advantage in the debate category.
how can anyone take a candidate seriously when they shamelessly pander to the stupid lobby?
Huh?
You mean politicians aren't supposed to pander to the public?
"He just destroyed the "Obama doesn't have the experience to lead" meme. "
Oh? How? Who's going to say she's inexperienced? Barack Obama?
Just how does he attack her without the attack doing a boomerang right back on him? Her time has been spent as an executive. She's done budgets, personnel, and signed and vetoed legislation.
Obama has done, oh, none of that. This is why his campaign's statement about her being the mayor of a small rube town was so silly. It allows Palin to say "Well, by all means, lets hear of your impressive credentials as a community organizer".
The brilliance of this pick is that the Democrats can't harp on Palin's supposed Vice-Presidential inexperience without highlighting Barack Obama's Presidential inexpierience.
You misunderstand, It doesn't destroy the meme for Obama, it destroys it for McCain.
McCain's attack on Obama, that he doesn't have the necessary qualifications, is compromised since McCain is selecting someone with similar qualifications.
If McCain thinks Obama isn't qualified to be President than how can he think Palin will be qualified to be President if McCain dies?
If you want to stop voting for the lesser of two evils, stop voting for the flawed two-party system. Simply vote third party to show that you want to be involved but hate the choices given to us by the corporate controlled parties.
It doesn't matter if you vote for Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader or Alan Keyes.
People need to start demanding that these 3rd party candidates get air time and in the debates. I'm really hoping that google or someone else has a debate with some of these candidates.
The best thing you can do to make real change and a difference is to take over your local government and work up. Get some friends and like minded people and start running for city council, judges, etc....
At the end of the day the American system is designed for two big parties, even if you manage to somehow get a 3rd party to make a real showing, or even get elected one cycle, it will only last a couple terms until it rescinds or merges with one of the main parties.
Now if there are only two parties total (without small parties) the steady state solution is a migration to the center where you have all your base and as much of the rest as you can get. The problem with this is that the two bases end up ignored since they're sure things.
Thus 3rd parties come along, when the party gets too far to the center (or just too unpalatable) the 3rd party takes some of the base and forces the main party to compensate and move back from the center.
In Canada, despite being better designed for multiple parties, a 3rd party actually did arise (NDP don't count), the Reform party came up and made significant electoral gains until the existing Progressive Conservative party was forced to merge with it.
When it was just the PCs on the right they slowly got closer and closer to the middle, after the merger they were recalibrated to be closer to their base and thus became more right wing (though not as much as reform which was almost all base).
You're never going to get away from the two party system without re-writing your constitution, the best you can do is use your vote to either reward the party you prefer, or send them a message by voting for the 3rd party letting the big party know that's the direction they need to move it.
It's not a very good system but it's what you got.
As for this election, at least from the intellectual and anti-lobbyist standpoint I can't see the logic in voting for someone other than Obama. I can't see the current system producing someone better than Obama and if you still vote for a 3rd party they'd probably just give up on your vote.