To paraphrase my wife: "It doesn't matter if global warming is true or not. We all want cleaner air."
But it is important to lay out exactly what our goals are if we want to influence the environment, and you have to be careful about too narrowly defining your goals. If some of the pollutants that affect air quality (particulates) are, as scientists have concluded, causing global dimming, then they could actually be insulating us from the impact of global warming. Decreasing the toxicity of breathable air, without making a serious effort at getting greenhouse gas emissions under control could further accelerate the observed warming trend.
This is why it's necessary to take the science seriously, and why the scientific illiteracy and waning attention spans is getting to be a big problem. You can't boil environmental issues down to simplistic sound bites if you want to really address them. We're dealing with complex issues with a variety of contributing factors, and what sounds sensible or may be the common wisdom could be completely wrong, or may be correct within a limited context, but have ultimate consequences that haven't been properly considered.
Especially when you consider the irrational American hatred of unions, collective bargaining, and collective action in general
Here we go again. If it's a liberal issue Americans support, they're a great, wise, and noble people. If they're against a liberal issue, well, then Americans are just stupid.
This may be so (when you're reading commentary by the readership of a liberal-leaning blog), but the text you quoted doesn't very well illustrate it. The quoted text only offers an opinion of America's disposition towards particular issue. It doesn't evaluate or speculate as to how wise or irrational America perceives other issues.
Shit, that sounds so exciting. Exactly what video games are all about.
The adage, "don't fly what you can't afford to lose" doesn't mean that you're perpetually going to be stuck flying a rookie frigate fitted with civilian modules. It just means that you should always have something to fall back on should the worst happen.
EVE obviously isn't a "twitch" game like a FPS, so the PvP dynamic is going to be much different. The most important difference is that a FPS has no real persistence. You play in the moment, and wins and losses don't have any real consequences for future games. MMOs, of course, are totally different. In most MMOs, the implicit, overarching goal is to make your character as powerful as you can by advancing in level, accumulating better gear, etc. In most MMOs, unless you really suck, you're constantly advancing towards that goal, though good play will usually get you there much faster.
EVE is different even from other MMOs in that forward progress isn't guaranteed, and also in tha there is relatively little hand-holding and not much of a safety net to speak of. You can lose a great deal in the snap of a finger. For anybody to enjoy playing EVE, this is a fundamental aspect of gameplay that must be well understood and embraced. It's also an absolutely critical aspect of the game, as it is conceived.
This is because it is a heavily player-driven game, that is meant to support PvP activities that takes "persistence" to a whole new level, instead of boiling it down to relatively short skirmishes or arena/duel-type battles. It's a game where player-run Alliances can fight wars, including wars of attrition with each over for dominance over territory. It's a game where pirates are meant to be able to make a considerable fortune by attacking/ransoming other players' ships, and where players can turn a tidy profit simply by moving goods from point A to point C (if they can evade the pirates hanging out at point B). It's a game where players can make a living off of producing goods, goods for which there should be steady demand, since ships and equipment are always in need of replacing. If players respawned with their ships fully intact and only a nominal repair bill, then these unique features of EVE just wouldn't be possible, and you'd just have WoW in space... and while that might be a fun game to play, we already have a lot of games in the WoW mold. A game where resource and risk management and overall strategy plays a larger role, and where you can take big risks for bigger scores (or where clever players can score big while taking relatively small risks), is a welcome change for many players, though it's obviously not for everyone.
You're comparing apples to oranges. Pirate isn't really a player class in Eve.
Well, yeah. Since EVE doesn't have any player classes, the role you play is your occputation which is your "class" of sorts. In WoW, sometimes class feels like little more than window dressing, and people think more in terms of "tank, healer or DPS," with class distinctions only becoming really important in certain tactical situations.
As a pirate in EVE you choose to ruin other people's evenings by destroying their hard earned ships and taking their equipment. You can achieve the same thing in a WoW PVP, by going around and ganking noobs of the other faction while they try to finish quests.
Yes, you can grief in either game. The difference is, in WoW, the consequences of having your character killed are relatively minor. It's an annoyance. If the griefers are persistent, it can become a major frustration for that play session. Griefing in this event is something that doesn't really profit the griefers, it's just a person being an asshole.
In EVE, however, there can be real consequences to failure and misfortune. You can lose a large percentage of your character's net worth in a single incident. Likewise, as a pirate, you can make a big score by destroying or ransoming the right ship. I personally think that's pretty cool, but I can see how it doesn't appeal to everyone. "Pointless" griefing still happens, but most people would prefer to turn a profit. This means that in EVE, you always have to calculate the risk of undocking. You balance the advantages of flying an expensive ship (or carrying expensive cargo/modules) against the advantages of doing so, and if you figure you're vulnerable, you can take other precautions (scout your route ahead of time, fly a tougher or more evasive ship, arrange an escort, etc.) The high [potentially] high stakes are all a part of the game, and is a part of the relatively unique allure of EVE.
In WoW, you can also be a market profiteer, a crafter, a guild backstabber, and oooh even a fisherman (beat that EVE)!
All of this is true, but in EVE, the market/industrial aspect of the game is a bigger part of the overall picture, and has a more robust implementation in game mechanics.
You can't really talk up EVE's immersion too much because when you run the exact same mission 18 times you should begin to think: "Didn't I already destroy this NPC pirate stronghold?"
This is an issue for every MMO in existence. If it's not repetitive missions, it's repetitive raids and instances. As NightRain already pointed out, the "sandbox" and more player-driven, player vs. player style of play makes EVE's flaws in this regard somewhat easier to forgive.
this is why I love eve the developers don't try to shelter their users they openly designed it so there could be things like this.
Yes, it certainly makes for a nice change of pace.
EVE appeals to me as a role-player and someone who likes to be immersed in games I play because there the your actions in the world (and the rewards you earn in the world) don't feel overly contrived as they do in most MMOs. In EVE, there are a lot of ways you can make your fortune: join a non-Empire Alliance and enjoy the fruits of 0.0 space (while fighting wars to control that space, or paying "rent" to someone who does so for you), you can be a mercenary, a pirate with varying degrees of honor, a pirate-hunter, a participant in Empire factional warfare, an Empire mission runner, a space trucker, a trader, a market manipulator, an industrialist of various types, a ninja-salvaging vulture, a miner, an explorer, a con artist... and those are just roles that the game mechanics more or less explicitly support.
All of these different "roles" you can play feel more or less natural in the world, and you ARE what you play. In a game like World of Warcraft, if are a blood elf paladin, and that dictates the sorts of abilities you have at your disposal (and thus the sort of mechanical "role" you play in the content you experience) but the different roles you play don't really feel like they have a lot of connection with the flavor of the world you're playing in, so there's no real sense of immersion. You can be a PvP or PvE tank, healer or DPS, but you don't FEEL as much like you're a knight in shining armor, or a warlock in control of wicked dark arts as much as you FEEL and like you're a pirate in a game like EVE.
eve is a real mmo the way it should be done
Well, to some extent. I say different strokes for different folks, but EVE definitely gets some things right that no other MMO has even come close to nailing.
The problem (well, the one BIG problem) for me is that the interface is absolutely atrocious. After playing WoW, with all of its options for customization and modification, when I play EVE, I feel like I'm half-blindfolded and wearing mittens. The font is difficult to read, and against the nebulae in the background I often have a hard time telling which modules are active. Simple actions (like looting a wreck) are a lot of more tedious (and sometimes physically painful) than they need to be. I'm sure most of the EVE oldtimers have gotten used to it all and are hardly bothered by it, but for me it's a game-breaker and a deal-breaker.
"Not all scientists agree" is an essentially meaningless statement anyway. Any group as broad and diverse as "scientists" is going to have disagreements on any matter. The question is, what level of dissent is there among experts in fields pertinent to climate change theory? Is the debate overly one-sided, and if so, why might that be? If a journalist is going to broach a topic, they should be prepared to explore it in some depth.
I'm not saying that short-sighted and heavily biased activists never impede legitimate research, or silence valid sources of information. They most certainly do. But you have to analyze each case on its own merits, and be careful not to assume that because one activist group has managed to bully one reporter into changing a single line of his story, it does not follow that the scientific establishment is being similarly bulled with regard to climate change, or that the scientific establishment is coercing particular scientists to abandon their interest in a particular idea (as the Expelled film claims).
If you take some time to read the Expelled Exposed site, the Expelled site itself, and the reviews of various individuals who've seen the movie (from people who were interviewed for the film, to news sources such as Fox News and the New York Times), it becomes quickly evident that this is propaganda documentary if there ever was one. I mean, this is a movie tat cuts in clips of Hitler ranting as a means of making the scientists they interviewed appear more sinister. I think it's pretty easy to take the word of the NSCE over that of these guys.
Some people (like Dawkins) don't accept that and call themselves agnostic, but it's just intellectual and they're really atheists.. their world would be shattered completely if they learned that they were wrong. Agnosticism isn't just some technicality, it's a completely different way of thinking.
Well, how are you defining these terms?
It is my understanding that agnosticism is a position regarding whether or not a thing can be known. To be agnostic with respect to god is an intellectual position that holds that it is impossible to know whether or not god exists, at least given our present information and intellectual capacity. I don't think it is proper to regard it as a "middle ground" between atheism and theism.
Atheism is a position of doubt with regard to gods. It does not necessarily completely exclude the possibility that a god exists, but the non-existence of god is the basic assumption or default position for atheists.
Theism, on the other hand, accepts the idea that god exists either on the basis of a "leap of faith" or some rational or empirical argument for that god's existence. The theist can still harbor some doubt about whether or not their belief is true.
I am not so sure that Dawkins' world would be "shattered" if he learned that god exists, but then you are using figurative language and it is difficult to understand exactly what you mean. He would have to reconsider many of his past arguments and methods of reasoning, but then, that's something a good scientist should be in the habit of doing anyway. I can't speak for Dawkins, of course, but I imagine the extent of his shock and distress would also probably depend on the type of god he learned of. A basic deistic, hands-off creator probably would not be too hard to cope with. On the other hand, if he learned that a god such as the one described in a literal reading of the Old Testament were in existence (one that created the world 6,000 years ago), he would likely be very surprised and troubled, as would many people (Christians included).
By the way I'm not promoting agnosticism; I think that you have to make a leap of faith [wikipedia.org] somewhere, and on this issue the options seem to me theism and strong atheism.
Why should one "have to" do this? What about agnosticism (or weak atheism) makes it an unreasonable or morally unacceptable position, as compared to theism and strong atheism?
Exactly. Intelligence may not motivate you to act in a virtuous manner (you can be an absolutely ingenious psychopath), but it does allow you to expand your domain of ethical consideration, because you may be more inclined to make connections that a less intelligent person won't.
Also, strong critical thinking skills can allow one to break out of the herd mentality and groupthink that can allow injustice to thrive.
As a parent, there's no way in a hell a 7 year old will have a lock down to keep mom and dad out, no responsible parent will allow such a thing, and the machine gets taken away if such a practice is put into place.
Eh, it's a computer. I realize there are dangers in allowing your child relatively unfettered and private access to digital technology, but come on. They're not going to hide drugs, hookers and weapons on the hard drive, and if you're aware of where they are in meatspace at all times and make an effort to involve yourself in their lives, chances are, your kid won't end up prematurely dead or utterly corrupted in some manner, just because you don't know what their login password is.
I'm not saying that children are, in principle, entitled any privacy where their parents are concerned, but I think blanket statements like your own that don't make any allowance for nuance and circumstance paint an overly simplistic black-and-white picture of good vs. bad parenting. What if the kid hardly uses the computer at all, and when they do, it's usually with a parent in the room (but the parent still doesn't know their pw)? Or what if your child is simply adept at IT, and you know there is no way you can realistically ferret out anything they'd want to hide on their system (or even tell if they're hiding something), short of your constantly supervising them? Do they not get to ever use a computer (up to age 17) without a parent looking over their shoulder literally every second, even if you know from experience that your child is generally pretty up front with you?
How much of the privilege of privacy you allow your children, I think is very much a judgment call (different judgments will be better than others, but within the range of choices, many options will be at least adequately reasonable and "responsible"). The parent is within their rights to revoke any privilege (including privacy) they wish at any time, or else impose any punishment (short of abuse) at any time for the child's lack of compliance, but to what extent that power should be exercised is something that can and probably should vary, according to the unique circumstances and characteristics of each child/family/environment. Not knowing your kid's pw just isn't grounds for an automatic fail, in my book.
there is a very strong place for religion and God's work within evolution, seeing as evolution explains the how not why
I often see this said, and I think I understand what is meant by it, but I don't think it's a very clear and accurate way of expressing that it is intended to. The theory of evolution does answer many questions about "why." To give just two examples: Why do human beings have two arms instead of one or four? Why do human parents seem predisposed towards loving their children? Those are questions that science can do a pretty good job of addressing.
What you really seem to be suggesting here is that science/evolution doesn't answer questions concerning the intent of intelligence(s) whose existence is purely speculative. If you ask "Why did humanity evolve?" by which you mean "What purpose and whose intent was served by the evolution of humanity?" then I will grant, that's a question that science/evolution is ill-suited to answer, because at the moment there is insufficient evidence to conclude the question's implied entity exists, let alone hypothesize as to that entity's psychological motives. However, that is a very specific and narrowly defined kind of "why" question.
The role of religion and other non scientific philosophies as they pertain to evolution is that they allow us to appreciate the knowledge the science offers us (that is, when religious and other such biases do not blind us to the knowledge gained by doing science). The "deficiency" of science is not well expressed by saying it can't answer "why," but rather by saying that it can't, by itself, assign moral or emotional value to anything.
Even scientists who promote Evolution don't agree that we came from monkeys.
I would hope so. We didn't evolve from monkeys, we evolves from apes (actually, we are apes), or more specifically, we evolved from something resembling a chimpanzee.
some thing we came from primordial ooze
I'm not going to go into too much more depth, except to say that you're ignorant. This isn't intended as an insult, but it apparent to me that you're discussing something that you have very little knowledge of. You're either getting your information from dubious (non-scientific, probably religious) sources and/or misunderstanding or wrongly remembering things you've read or heard from reputable sources.
Really, go back and check your facts. It will do more to illustrate the flaws in your argument than anything anybody here could say.
Because the idea of a remake isn't to play the exact same game over again on a more modern platform. The idea is to take the opportunity to avail yourself of the capabilities of modern hardware, which usually means improved graphics and sound along with minor tweaks and bug fixes, but might also mean the addition of new content or reworked game mechanics while retaining the "spirit" of the original.
LMRAO (Laughing My Religious Ass Off). Reality Check: You sound just like a Young-Earth Creationist, attempting to spin and explain in great detail why radiocarbon dating is invalid.
To a religious ass, I can see how I might sound like someone who is relentlessly and desperately trying to cast doubt on a well-founded, well subscribed to scientific theories and practices... however, I'm not. Which makes your parallel look pretty silly.
All I did in the quoted text was phrase the question in somewhat more neutral/scientific language, and provided a possible answer from some of the reading I've done on the subject of evolutionary psychology. It is pertinent and fairly well-researched explanation, and in my opinion, the best one I've heard yet. I'm not saying it is an extremely concrete, thoroughly tested and broadly accepted scientific theory... it's a somewhat immature field of study, after all, and I'm not an expert on it.
I do certainly think it's better than saying simplistically saying "god did it" or "this is something we will never understand, so why bother trying to" or "people believe in God because they're afraid of death and this is a product of their delusions" and dismissing these experiences and phenomena out of hand.
If, instead of taking inane potshots at me, you'd like to provide a superior, alternative explanation, or even a thoughtful deconstruction of the one I've provided, I'd be glad to hear it.
Just because you can replicate the sensory experience of something by "poking" at the brain doesn't mean that a real outside stimulus is false. For instance, I think you could probably make the brain experience the sensory perception of color by "poking" at the visual cortex. That doesn't change the fact that there are real world stimuli that evoke this experience as well. In short, showing that the brain is capable of experiencing something because of a different, artificial stimulus does not predict or rule out the primary "natural" source of that experience.
True, it just tells us that there is probably nothing "magical" or "divine" about the experience itself. Indeed, if the experience can be triggered in a laboratory, it is reasonable to assume it happens "naturally" outside of the laboratory as well -- it doesn't necessarily follow that the such natural experiences accurately correspond to actual phenomena any more than is the case when people put on this helmet. Feeling as if you're in the presence of a god, demon, ghost or lurking shadow monster is something most of us can say we've experienced, but empirical evidence for gods, demons, ghosts and shadow monsters is decidedly lacking. The most rational explanation for such experiences is they are all "in our heads" so to speak. That doesn't mean it's the correct explanation, but it's the one I'm going with for the time being.
Although it does present an interesting question for evolutionary theory - why does this perception ability exist?
It is an interesting question, but it should be asked with the proper emphasis, in the proper context. Being capable of sensing the presence of empirically unverifiable entities is an ability in the same way that being fooled by an optical illusion is an ability. So instead of asking "why" we have evolved this "ability," I would ask how we have evolved this attribute.
It could be that this attribute itself conferred some useful survival and reproductive benefit, or it could be a neutral or slightly counterproductive "side effect" of attributes that are too advantageous to have been eliminated by natural selection. Humans, like many animals, have an agency detection system of sorts... we need to be able to detect potential predators, prey, comrades, mates, etc. This agency detection system is a bit overactive... false positives are not unheard of, because the evolutionary cost/risk of being a little too sensitive may be lower than being a little under-sensitive. Also, humans are social animals capable of running elaborate internalized social simulations, vividly imagining the moods, motivations and behaviors of real or imagined entities, both human and non-human... this is something else that we've evolved to do rather liberally. We've even been known to shed tears for beings that we know exist only in our imaginations or in a story book.
Combining these two attributes (overactive agency detection + social simulation, projection and empathy) it's not hard to imagine why people might sometimes have experiences such as those described in the article and that they would take the shape of religious icons that have been conditioned from youth to treat as real, true and important. Given the self-propagating and self-reinforcing (what you might call "memetic") quality of these beliefs and their consequential social importance, it may indeed be in one's best interest (from a survival and reproductive point of view) to at least give the appearance of earnestly believing in them, which the occasionally "feeling" of an invisible "presence" would help produce. So it could be a component of a sort of evolutionary feedback loop.
For more on religion from a sociobiological perspective, and its potential implications, I recommend Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett and Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by Pascal Boyer. The preceding is mostly a crude reformulation or extension of the ideas contained within those volumes.
While watching video can be a great way to learn, especially if used in combination with other learning techniques, it's not at interactive. Different teaching styles, tips, and methods to reinforce the learning are required for different students. To be on the safe side, the videos would have to cover every style, every tip, every method on every single point of the lesson because any student may struggle on any particular point. However, including everything in the standard lesson would greatly increase its length and repetition and students who understand most of the material will find themselves getting bored with it, which isn't a good thing.
Some level of interactivity, therefore, is absolutely necessary.
Would would be great is something like a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Start with an engaging and informative audio/visual presentation, and follow up with a "game" or quiz of some sort to evaluate how well the student is following along. If the student does poorly on the game/quiz, or requests additional tips and info, supplemental video could be played. A database could keep track of what teaching techniques the child seems to respond best to, past areas of difficulty or subjects/activities that seem to be of particular interest the student, and some basic AI could be employed to try to tailor lesson plans to the individual student's needs.
What would be even better would be if the program were smart enough to not be completely rigid in how a lesson plays out... if a student gets in the "mood" for a science lesson in the middle of one about English, the program could oblige the student to at least some degree. Perhaps it could provide an passage on a scientific subject but have them perform English exercises on it.
It would take one awesome piece of software with a ton of quality content to really make it work though, and it'd still be inferior to a resourceful, intelligent, knowledgeable and attentive teacher. The reality, of course, is that such people are in fairly short supply and they can only be as resourceful as the resources at their disposal, and their attentiveness to the students is going to be constrained by classroom sizes and the length of time available to work with them.
What really grinds my gears, though, is how common sense goes right out the fucking window... if this guy had anything to hide, why would he have allowed the authorities to see it? If he was up to no good, he'd have dragged his wife's body into the yard and told them she keeled over tending to the garden or something, and never let the EMTs or whoever in the damn house. Failing that, he'd at least have taken the time to hide the dodgy stuff first before making the call-- "I was taking a nap, and when I woke up, she was dead!"
I thought of that too, but people, even terrorists, are not immune to panic or failures in judgment, particularly when a loved one's life is slipping away before their very eyes. He might have thought there was some chance of his wife surviving in the minutes following the call, and after that he probably wouldn't want to take the chance getting caught in the act of dragging his wife outside the house as the ambulance drove up if he were a terrorist.
I'm not sure I really blame the EMTs forwarding their concerns to the authorities. After all, you have the scene of a death and some sort of weird laboratory setup with who knows what kinds of chemical and biological agents. Prudence would seem to dictate at least some sort of investigation. The investigation itself appears to have been massively overblown, of course, and the mail fraud charge is ethically suspect, to say the least.
You're telling me companies should be responsible for the self control and fiscal responsibility of the individual?
No, it did not look that way to me. He said in his first sentence, "it's not wrong" and in his closing remarks that companies "can't help but tale advantage." It's ugly and one might say amoral, but ultimately the most culpable party in a situation like this is the individual buyer.
Proper budgeting, hell even SIMPLE budgeting, should be something we teach our kids in school from early to out.
I agree 100%.
People are stupid, especially about how they spend their money, but they are stupid because they've grown up in a consumer culture where they're bombarded with slick marketing and have their spending impulses egged on at every level, while most receive no education on how to properly manage a budget, or think critically, or about what their psychological blind spots and weaknesses might be, or how others will seek to exploit them.
In my opinion, this is basic, important stuff, and yet I doubt you will find any of it on a NCLB test.
As a Creationist I'm stunned that they would do something this dumb. Honestly, I have no problem with people arguing about religion and trying to prove it wrong, that's to be expected and trying to silence it is akin to saying that your argument is weaker than your opponent's.
You're obviously not well-versed on the tactics of proponents of creationism, because if you were, their actions here would come as absolutely no surprise. Intellectual dishonesty and sleazy tactics are par for the course because their argument is so much incredibly weaker than the argument for evolution. One of their most common tactics is "quote mining," where they take a quote from a prominent scientist or scientific paper completely out of context, sometimes to create an impression that the scientist is saying the exact opposite of the point they're making. Or they will totally misapply other scientific concepts... most popularly, the second law of thermodynamics. Or they'll conduct interviews with biologists under false pretenses, as they did here and here.
At best, being a creationist means you're simply ignorant or uneducated on biology. If you actually seek to spread or reinforce that ignorance among the general public, you're either a jackass or an idiot and one shouldn't be surprised when you use the methods of a jackass or idiot.
Re:Biggest myths of all have been around for ages.
on
Why Myths Persist
·
· Score: 1
tell that to people who thinks that the THEORY of relativity is the ultimate answer to everything even though it's still a THEORY and yet not proven beyond any doubt possible.
I will, if I ever encounter such a person.
If the theory of relativity were the answer to everything, nobody would care about superstrings and branes, or finding a grand unified field theory.
People subscribe to relativity because it makes useful predictions and it works. In some basic way, in some sense, it must be correct. It doesn't explain everything, it may need some fine-tuning, but there doesn't appear to be a reason to exercise extreme skepticism where relativity, least of all because it is a "THEORY," as you put it.
Science generally uses some conservative phrasing. It's more about probabilities than certitudes, more about corroboration than proof. That is what you need to remember when you say that something is "a theory" because in science, a "theory" is the absolute best you're going to get if you want a workable model that describes a broad range of phenomena.
Re:Like the famous "Gore won Florida"?
on
Why Myths Persist
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Why not extend the slant, which wasn't present in the article, to go both ways?
Perhaps to keep the summary length down, and because they wanted a very clear-cut example of a popularly held, erroneous belief, and because there is actually reason to believe that Gore might have won Florida, had the election not been settled in court?... Whereas there is really no sound reasoning or evidence to support the idea that Saddam engineered 9/11.
I'm not disputing your personal experience, but I'm not sure that I've ever heard anyone make the argument that Gore won the presidency because "the media confirmed it" -- that would be a pretty good example of lazy thinking and confirmation bias. The reasoning I usually hear is that there were votes that went uncounted that might have or probably would have went for Gore, and that because Gore won the popular vote (which is technically/legally irrelevant but philosophically persuasive), he was/is the "rightful" president.
Your basic point about people believing what they want to believe is probably valid, though. I've heard that there have been studies conducting establishing that people make up their minds on things a few seconds before they've even consciously considered the question, and then they work backwards to rationalize their position... and of course, they don't even realize that they're doing it. Of course, I haven't gone out of my way to establish the truth of this assertion, and it might be a "myth," so I won't hold fast to it.
Re:Biggest myths of all have been around for ages.
on
Why Myths Persist
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Religion persists against all common sense.
Actually, religion persists because of "common sense," which this article seems to help demonstrate. The problem is that commonly passes as "sense" is not very logically sound. Common sense is not a great tool for discovering the truth.
This is why the scientific method is so invaluable... it can keep us honest and allow us to push beyond what intuitively seems true, or what works according to common sense.
Too bad most people are scientifically illiterate.
I remember having read this in "the selfish gene" by Richard Dawkings that was written 30 years ago... whats so great about this? or is it just a prove that it actually works that way?
The selfish gene hypothesis is a very good one. It basically makes the argument for the gene as the unit of selection (as opposed to the individual organism, some sort of "group," or the species), which before Williams and Dawkins, was a fairly uncommon idea. The idea turned out to be a great one for advancing our understanding of evolutionary biology and is now very well subscribed within the field. However, The Selfish Gene didn't very explicitly cover, or enumerate all of possible ways in which genes might replicate -- only that such replication is their primary goal, and the successes and failures of such replicators (determined by natural selection) are the driving force of evolution.
This study is great because it tells us something new about how changes can occur within the genome of multicellular organisms and it's a specific mechanism for change that few seem to have expected, probably including Dawkins (though there is certainly nothing about these findings that contradicts the selfish gene). These findings may have implications for our models of plant/animal evolution that could be highly significant... or fairly minor. Regardless, it is an interesting finding.
...insertion of bacteria DNA as a mechanism for evolution is a pretty weak theory. You would have to show some likelihood of that gene insertion conferring some advantage or contributing toward some significant change. It will be interesting to see what they find.
I don't know that it's a weak theory.
It may be an as yet uncorroborated hypothesis, but it seems like a strong one to me. I'm not a biologist though.
I'd be a little surprised if these prokaryote to eukaryote gene transfers never ended up conferring a survival advantage or a new function (though I would imagine that they, like most genetic changes, usually end up being detrimental or generally neutral), if such transfers are as common as this research seems to suggest. As you say, it'll be interesting to see what they find out, and it certainly seems to bear further investigation, as now we know that many of those apparent "contaminations" found in our past efforts to sequence animal genomes may in fact be functional components of the subject's DNA. There could be some real gems in that pile of genes that were, apparently, previously being simply discarded and ignored.
I can't wait to hear the take some other geneticists and biologists have on this.
Slashdot Mirror
But it is important to lay out exactly what our goals are if we want to influence the environment, and you have to be careful about too narrowly defining your goals. If some of the pollutants that affect air quality (particulates) are, as scientists have concluded, causing global dimming, then they could actually be insulating us from the impact of global warming. Decreasing the toxicity of breathable air, without making a serious effort at getting greenhouse gas emissions under control could further accelerate the observed warming trend.
This is why it's necessary to take the science seriously, and why the scientific illiteracy and waning attention spans is getting to be a big problem. You can't boil environmental issues down to simplistic sound bites if you want to really address them. We're dealing with complex issues with a variety of contributing factors, and what sounds sensible or may be the common wisdom could be completely wrong, or may be correct within a limited context, but have ultimate consequences that haven't been properly considered.
This may be so (when you're reading commentary by the readership of a liberal-leaning blog), but the text you quoted doesn't very well illustrate it. The quoted text only offers an opinion of America's disposition towards particular issue. It doesn't evaluate or speculate as to how wise or irrational America perceives other issues.
The adage, "don't fly what you can't afford to lose" doesn't mean that you're perpetually going to be stuck flying a rookie frigate fitted with civilian modules. It just means that you should always have something to fall back on should the worst happen.
EVE obviously isn't a "twitch" game like a FPS, so the PvP dynamic is going to be much different. The most important difference is that a FPS has no real persistence. You play in the moment, and wins and losses don't have any real consequences for future games. MMOs, of course, are totally different. In most MMOs, the implicit, overarching goal is to make your character as powerful as you can by advancing in level, accumulating better gear, etc. In most MMOs, unless you really suck, you're constantly advancing towards that goal, though good play will usually get you there much faster.
EVE is different even from other MMOs in that forward progress isn't guaranteed, and also in tha there is relatively little hand-holding and not much of a safety net to speak of. You can lose a great deal in the snap of a finger. For anybody to enjoy playing EVE, this is a fundamental aspect of gameplay that must be well understood and embraced. It's also an absolutely critical aspect of the game, as it is conceived.
This is because it is a heavily player-driven game, that is meant to support PvP activities that takes "persistence" to a whole new level, instead of boiling it down to relatively short skirmishes or arena/duel-type battles. It's a game where player-run Alliances can fight wars, including wars of attrition with each over for dominance over territory. It's a game where pirates are meant to be able to make a considerable fortune by attacking/ransoming other players' ships, and where players can turn a tidy profit simply by moving goods from point A to point C (if they can evade the pirates hanging out at point B). It's a game where players can make a living off of producing goods, goods for which there should be steady demand, since ships and equipment are always in need of replacing. If players respawned with their ships fully intact and only a nominal repair bill, then these unique features of EVE just wouldn't be possible, and you'd just have WoW in space ... and while that might be a fun game to play, we already have a lot of games in the WoW mold. A game where resource and risk management and overall strategy plays a larger role, and where you can take big risks for bigger scores (or where clever players can score big while taking relatively small risks), is a welcome change for many players, though it's obviously not for everyone.
Well, yeah. Since EVE doesn't have any player classes, the role you play is your occputation which is your "class" of sorts. In WoW, sometimes class feels like little more than window dressing, and people think more in terms of "tank, healer or DPS," with class distinctions only becoming really important in certain tactical situations.
Yes, you can grief in either game. The difference is, in WoW, the consequences of having your character killed are relatively minor. It's an annoyance. If the griefers are persistent, it can become a major frustration for that play session. Griefing in this event is something that doesn't really profit the griefers, it's just a person being an asshole.
In EVE, however, there can be real consequences to failure and misfortune. You can lose a large percentage of your character's net worth in a single incident. Likewise, as a pirate, you can make a big score by destroying or ransoming the right ship. I personally think that's pretty cool, but I can see how it doesn't appeal to everyone. "Pointless" griefing still happens, but most people would prefer to turn a profit. This means that in EVE, you always have to calculate the risk of undocking. You balance the advantages of flying an expensive ship (or carrying expensive cargo/modules) against the advantages of doing so, and if you figure you're vulnerable, you can take other precautions (scout your route ahead of time, fly a tougher or more evasive ship, arrange an escort, etc.) The high [potentially] high stakes are all a part of the game, and is a part of the relatively unique allure of EVE.
All of this is true, but in EVE, the market/industrial aspect of the game is a bigger part of the overall picture, and has a more robust implementation in game mechanics.
This is an issue for every MMO in existence. If it's not repetitive missions, it's repetitive raids and instances. As NightRain already pointed out, the "sandbox" and more player-driven, player vs. player style of play makes EVE's flaws in this regard somewhat easier to forgive.
Yes, it certainly makes for a nice change of pace.
EVE appeals to me as a role-player and someone who likes to be immersed in games I play because there the your actions in the world (and the rewards you earn in the world) don't feel overly contrived as they do in most MMOs. In EVE, there are a lot of ways you can make your fortune: join a non-Empire Alliance and enjoy the fruits of 0.0 space (while fighting wars to control that space, or paying "rent" to someone who does so for you), you can be a mercenary, a pirate with varying degrees of honor, a pirate-hunter, a participant in Empire factional warfare, an Empire mission runner, a space trucker, a trader, a market manipulator, an industrialist of various types, a ninja-salvaging vulture, a miner, an explorer, a con artist ... and those are just roles that the game mechanics more or less explicitly support.
All of these different "roles" you can play feel more or less natural in the world, and you ARE what you play. In a game like World of Warcraft, if are a blood elf paladin, and that dictates the sorts of abilities you have at your disposal (and thus the sort of mechanical "role" you play in the content you experience) but the different roles you play don't really feel like they have a lot of connection with the flavor of the world you're playing in, so there's no real sense of immersion. You can be a PvP or PvE tank, healer or DPS, but you don't FEEL as much like you're a knight in shining armor, or a warlock in control of wicked dark arts as much as you FEEL and like you're a pirate in a game like EVE.
Well, to some extent. I say different strokes for different folks, but EVE definitely gets some things right that no other MMO has even come close to nailing.
The problem (well, the one BIG problem) for me is that the interface is absolutely atrocious. After playing WoW, with all of its options for customization and modification, when I play EVE, I feel like I'm half-blindfolded and wearing mittens. The font is difficult to read, and against the nebulae in the background I often have a hard time telling which modules are active. Simple actions (like looting a wreck) are a lot of more tedious (and sometimes physically painful) than they need to be. I'm sure most of the EVE oldtimers have gotten used to it all and are hardly bothered by it, but for me it's a game-breaker and a deal-breaker.
"Not all scientists agree" is an essentially meaningless statement anyway. Any group as broad and diverse as "scientists" is going to have disagreements on any matter. The question is, what level of dissent is there among experts in fields pertinent to climate change theory? Is the debate overly one-sided, and if so, why might that be? If a journalist is going to broach a topic, they should be prepared to explore it in some depth.
I'm not saying that short-sighted and heavily biased activists never impede legitimate research, or silence valid sources of information. They most certainly do. But you have to analyze each case on its own merits, and be careful not to assume that because one activist group has managed to bully one reporter into changing a single line of his story, it does not follow that the scientific establishment is being similarly bulled with regard to climate change, or that the scientific establishment is coercing particular scientists to abandon their interest in a particular idea (as the Expelled film claims).
If you take some time to read the Expelled Exposed site, the Expelled site itself, and the reviews of various individuals who've seen the movie (from people who were interviewed for the film, to news sources such as Fox News and the New York Times), it becomes quickly evident that this is propaganda documentary if there ever was one. I mean, this is a movie tat cuts in clips of Hitler ranting as a means of making the scientists they interviewed appear more sinister. I think it's pretty easy to take the word of the NSCE over that of these guys.
Well, how are you defining these terms?
It is my understanding that agnosticism is a position regarding whether or not a thing can be known. To be agnostic with respect to god is an intellectual position that holds that it is impossible to know whether or not god exists, at least given our present information and intellectual capacity. I don't think it is proper to regard it as a "middle ground" between atheism and theism.
Atheism is a position of doubt with regard to gods. It does not necessarily completely exclude the possibility that a god exists, but the non-existence of god is the basic assumption or default position for atheists.
Theism, on the other hand, accepts the idea that god exists either on the basis of a "leap of faith" or some rational or empirical argument for that god's existence. The theist can still harbor some doubt about whether or not their belief is true.
I am not so sure that Dawkins' world would be "shattered" if he learned that god exists, but then you are using figurative language and it is difficult to understand exactly what you mean. He would have to reconsider many of his past arguments and methods of reasoning, but then, that's something a good scientist should be in the habit of doing anyway. I can't speak for Dawkins, of course, but I imagine the extent of his shock and distress would also probably depend on the type of god he learned of. A basic deistic, hands-off creator probably would not be too hard to cope with. On the other hand, if he learned that a god such as the one described in a literal reading of the Old Testament were in existence (one that created the world 6,000 years ago), he would likely be very surprised and troubled, as would many people (Christians included).
Why should one "have to" do this? What about agnosticism (or weak atheism) makes it an unreasonable or morally unacceptable position, as compared to theism and strong atheism?
Exactly. Intelligence may not motivate you to act in a virtuous manner (you can be an absolutely ingenious psychopath), but it does allow you to expand your domain of ethical consideration, because you may be more inclined to make connections that a less intelligent person won't. Also, strong critical thinking skills can allow one to break out of the herd mentality and groupthink that can allow injustice to thrive.
Eh, it's a computer. I realize there are dangers in allowing your child relatively unfettered and private access to digital technology, but come on. They're not going to hide drugs, hookers and weapons on the hard drive, and if you're aware of where they are in meatspace at all times and make an effort to involve yourself in their lives, chances are, your kid won't end up prematurely dead or utterly corrupted in some manner, just because you don't know what their login password is.
I'm not saying that children are, in principle, entitled any privacy where their parents are concerned, but I think blanket statements like your own that don't make any allowance for nuance and circumstance paint an overly simplistic black-and-white picture of good vs. bad parenting. What if the kid hardly uses the computer at all, and when they do, it's usually with a parent in the room (but the parent still doesn't know their pw)? Or what if your child is simply adept at IT, and you know there is no way you can realistically ferret out anything they'd want to hide on their system (or even tell if they're hiding something), short of your constantly supervising them? Do they not get to ever use a computer (up to age 17) without a parent looking over their shoulder literally every second, even if you know from experience that your child is generally pretty up front with you?
How much of the privilege of privacy you allow your children, I think is very much a judgment call (different judgments will be better than others, but within the range of choices, many options will be at least adequately reasonable and "responsible"). The parent is within their rights to revoke any privilege (including privacy) they wish at any time, or else impose any punishment (short of abuse) at any time for the child's lack of compliance, but to what extent that power should be exercised is something that can and probably should vary, according to the unique circumstances and characteristics of each child/family/environment. Not knowing your kid's pw just isn't grounds for an automatic fail, in my book.
I often see this said, and I think I understand what is meant by it, but I don't think it's a very clear and accurate way of expressing that it is intended to. The theory of evolution does answer many questions about "why." To give just two examples: Why do human beings have two arms instead of one or four? Why do human parents seem predisposed towards loving their children? Those are questions that science can do a pretty good job of addressing.
What you really seem to be suggesting here is that science/evolution doesn't answer questions concerning the intent of intelligence(s) whose existence is purely speculative. If you ask "Why did humanity evolve?" by which you mean "What purpose and whose intent was served by the evolution of humanity?" then I will grant, that's a question that science/evolution is ill-suited to answer, because at the moment there is insufficient evidence to conclude the question's implied entity exists, let alone hypothesize as to that entity's psychological motives. However, that is a very specific and narrowly defined kind of "why" question.
The role of religion and other non scientific philosophies as they pertain to evolution is that they allow us to appreciate the knowledge the science offers us (that is, when religious and other such biases do not blind us to the knowledge gained by doing science). The "deficiency" of science is not well expressed by saying it can't answer "why," but rather by saying that it can't, by itself, assign moral or emotional value to anything.
No, these controllers are just poorly built, especially the Rock Band guitar.
Really, go back and check your facts. It will do more to illustrate the flaws in your argument than anything anybody here could say.
Because the idea of a remake isn't to play the exact same game over again on a more modern platform. The idea is to take the opportunity to avail yourself of the capabilities of modern hardware, which usually means improved graphics and sound along with minor tweaks and bug fixes, but might also mean the addition of new content or reworked game mechanics while retaining the "spirit" of the original.
To a religious ass, I can see how I might sound like someone who is relentlessly and desperately trying to cast doubt on a well-founded, well subscribed to scientific theories and practices
All I did in the quoted text was phrase the question in somewhat more neutral/scientific language, and provided a possible answer from some of the reading I've done on the subject of evolutionary psychology. It is pertinent and fairly well-researched explanation, and in my opinion, the best one I've heard yet. I'm not saying it is an extremely concrete, thoroughly tested and broadly accepted scientific theory
I do certainly think it's better than saying simplistically saying "god did it" or "this is something we will never understand, so why bother trying to" or "people believe in God because they're afraid of death and this is a product of their delusions" and dismissing these experiences and phenomena out of hand.
If, instead of taking inane potshots at me, you'd like to provide a superior, alternative explanation, or even a thoughtful deconstruction of the one I've provided, I'd be glad to hear it.
True, it just tells us that there is probably nothing "magical" or "divine" about the experience itself. Indeed, if the experience can be triggered in a laboratory, it is reasonable to assume it happens "naturally" outside of the laboratory as well -- it doesn't necessarily follow that the such natural experiences accurately correspond to actual phenomena any more than is the case when people put on this helmet. Feeling as if you're in the presence of a god, demon, ghost or lurking shadow monster is something most of us can say we've experienced, but empirical evidence for gods, demons, ghosts and shadow monsters is decidedly lacking. The most rational explanation for such experiences is they are all "in our heads" so to speak. That doesn't mean it's the correct explanation, but it's the one I'm going with for the time being.
It is an interesting question, but it should be asked with the proper emphasis, in the proper context. Being capable of sensing the presence of empirically unverifiable entities is an ability in the same way that being fooled by an optical illusion is an ability. So instead of asking "why" we have evolved this "ability," I would ask how we have evolved this attribute.
It could be that this attribute itself conferred some useful survival and reproductive benefit, or it could be a neutral or slightly counterproductive "side effect" of attributes that are too advantageous to have been eliminated by natural selection. Humans, like many animals, have an agency detection system of sorts
Combining these two attributes (overactive agency detection + social simulation, projection and empathy) it's not hard to imagine why people might sometimes have experiences such as those described in the article and that they would take the shape of religious icons that have been conditioned from youth to treat as real, true and important. Given the self-propagating and self-reinforcing (what you might call "memetic") quality of these beliefs and their consequential social importance, it may indeed be in one's best interest (from a survival and reproductive point of view) to at least give the appearance of earnestly believing in them, which the occasionally "feeling" of an invisible "presence" would help produce. So it could be a component of a sort of evolutionary feedback loop.
For more on religion from a sociobiological perspective, and its potential implications, I recommend Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett and Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by Pascal Boyer. The preceding is mostly a crude reformulation or extension of the ideas contained within those volumes.
While watching video can be a great way to learn, especially if used in combination with other learning techniques, it's not at interactive. Different teaching styles, tips, and methods to reinforce the learning are required for different students. To be on the safe side, the videos would have to cover every style, every tip, every method on every single point of the lesson because any student may struggle on any particular point. However, including everything in the standard lesson would greatly increase its length and repetition and students who understand most of the material will find themselves getting bored with it, which isn't a good thing.
... if a student gets in the "mood" for a science lesson in the middle of one about English, the program could oblige the student to at least some degree. Perhaps it could provide an passage on a scientific subject but have them perform English exercises on it.
Some level of interactivity, therefore, is absolutely necessary.
Would would be great is something like a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Start with an engaging and informative audio/visual presentation, and follow up with a "game" or quiz of some sort to evaluate how well the student is following along. If the student does poorly on the game/quiz, or requests additional tips and info, supplemental video could be played. A database could keep track of what teaching techniques the child seems to respond best to, past areas of difficulty or subjects/activities that seem to be of particular interest the student, and some basic AI could be employed to try to tailor lesson plans to the individual student's needs.
What would be even better would be if the program were smart enough to not be completely rigid in how a lesson plays out
It would take one awesome piece of software with a ton of quality content to really make it work though, and it'd still be inferior to a resourceful, intelligent, knowledgeable and attentive teacher. The reality, of course, is that such people are in fairly short supply and they can only be as resourceful as the resources at their disposal, and their attentiveness to the students is going to be constrained by classroom sizes and the length of time available to work with them.
I thought of that too, but people, even terrorists, are not immune to panic or failures in judgment, particularly when a loved one's life is slipping away before their very eyes. He might have thought there was some chance of his wife surviving in the minutes following the call, and after that he probably wouldn't want to take the chance getting caught in the act of dragging his wife outside the house as the ambulance drove up if he were a terrorist.
I'm not sure I really blame the EMTs forwarding their concerns to the authorities. After all, you have the scene of a death and some sort of weird laboratory setup with who knows what kinds of chemical and biological agents. Prudence would seem to dictate at least some sort of investigation. The investigation itself appears to have been massively overblown, of course, and the mail fraud charge is ethically suspect, to say the least.
No, it did not look that way to me. He said in his first sentence, "it's not wrong" and in his closing remarks that companies "can't help but tale advantage." It's ugly and one might say amoral, but ultimately the most culpable party in a situation like this is the individual buyer.
I agree 100%.
People are stupid, especially about how they spend their money, but they are stupid because they've grown up in a consumer culture where they're bombarded with slick marketing and have their spending impulses egged on at every level, while most receive no education on how to properly manage a budget, or think critically, or about what their psychological blind spots and weaknesses might be, or how others will seek to exploit them.
In my opinion, this is basic, important stuff, and yet I doubt you will find any of it on a NCLB test.
You're obviously not well-versed on the tactics of proponents of creationism, because if you were, their actions here would come as absolutely no surprise. Intellectual dishonesty and sleazy tactics are par for the course because their argument is so much incredibly weaker than the argument for evolution. One of their most common tactics is "quote mining," where they take a quote from a prominent scientist or scientific paper completely out of context, sometimes to create an impression that the scientist is saying the exact opposite of the point they're making. Or they will totally misapply other scientific concepts
At best, being a creationist means you're simply ignorant or uneducated on biology. If you actually seek to spread or reinforce that ignorance among the general public, you're either a jackass or an idiot and one shouldn't be surprised when you use the methods of a jackass or idiot.
I will, if I ever encounter such a person.
If the theory of relativity were the answer to everything, nobody would care about superstrings and branes, or finding a grand unified field theory.
People subscribe to relativity because it makes useful predictions and it works. In some basic way, in some sense, it must be correct. It doesn't explain everything, it may need some fine-tuning, but there doesn't appear to be a reason to exercise extreme skepticism where relativity, least of all because it is a "THEORY," as you put it.
Science generally uses some conservative phrasing. It's more about probabilities than certitudes, more about corroboration than proof. That is what you need to remember when you say that something is "a theory" because in science, a "theory" is the absolute best you're going to get if you want a workable model that describes a broad range of phenomena.
Perhaps to keep the summary length down, and because they wanted a very clear-cut example of a popularly held, erroneous belief, and because there is actually reason to believe that Gore might have won Florida, had the election not been settled in court?
I'm not disputing your personal experience, but I'm not sure that I've ever heard anyone make the argument that Gore won the presidency because "the media confirmed it" -- that would be a pretty good example of lazy thinking and confirmation bias. The reasoning I usually hear is that there were votes that went uncounted that might have or probably would have went for Gore, and that because Gore won the popular vote (which is technically/legally irrelevant but philosophically persuasive), he was/is the "rightful" president.
Your basic point about people believing what they want to believe is probably valid, though. I've heard that there have been studies conducting establishing that people make up their minds on things a few seconds before they've even consciously considered the question, and then they work backwards to rationalize their position
Actually, religion persists because of "common sense," which this article seems to help demonstrate. The problem is that commonly passes as "sense" is not very logically sound. Common sense is not a great tool for discovering the truth.
This is why the scientific method is so invaluable
Too bad most people are scientifically illiterate.
The selfish gene hypothesis is a very good one. It basically makes the argument for the gene as the unit of selection (as opposed to the individual organism, some sort of "group," or the species), which before Williams and Dawkins, was a fairly uncommon idea. The idea turned out to be a great one for advancing our understanding of evolutionary biology and is now very well subscribed within the field. However, The Selfish Gene didn't very explicitly cover, or enumerate all of possible ways in which genes might replicate -- only that such replication is their primary goal, and the successes and failures of such replicators (determined by natural selection) are the driving force of evolution.
This study is great because it tells us something new about how changes can occur within the genome of multicellular organisms and it's a specific mechanism for change that few seem to have expected, probably including Dawkins (though there is certainly nothing about these findings that contradicts the selfish gene). These findings may have implications for our models of plant/animal evolution that could be highly significant
I don't know that it's a weak theory.
It may be an as yet uncorroborated hypothesis, but it seems like a strong one to me. I'm not a biologist though.
I'd be a little surprised if these prokaryote to eukaryote gene transfers never ended up conferring a survival advantage or a new function (though I would imagine that they, like most genetic changes, usually end up being detrimental or generally neutral), if such transfers are as common as this research seems to suggest. As you say, it'll be interesting to see what they find out, and it certainly seems to bear further investigation, as now we know that many of those apparent "contaminations" found in our past efforts to sequence animal genomes may in fact be functional components of the subject's DNA. There could be some real gems in that pile of genes that were, apparently, previously being simply discarded and ignored.
I can't wait to hear the take some other geneticists and biologists have on this.