When did US imperialism start? I mean I've heard it said that the spanish american war was a change in foriegn policy. But on the other hand What other word is there for a country going from aquiring more and more territory all the way across a continent than imperialist?
Maybe the question we should be asking is not when did american imperialism begin, but when did it stop and why is it starting up again?
Thanks for the reply. I've got to agree with you about it not going on the shoulders of christianity.
I tried to qualify it with modern because I don't think its anything inherent to the scripture or practice of christianity, just somehow the philosophy or the way its often thought about.
Maybe a better way to describe it is that there are two ways to look at faith at a fundamental level, one that is orthogonal to the observational world and one that tries to explain things.
As for the getting around in modern society, here is all the crazy stuff an ultra-conservative jew will do (I'm allowed to call it crazy since I'm jewish:P):
*not eat at most restaurants, keep two sets of kitchen appliances (fridge, dishwasher etc) (keeping kosher)
*never drive, answer the phone or perform labor on saturday (observing shabat)
*never go outdoors without a head covering
I think if theres a reason that jews are more comfortable with accepting change is that nothing makes sense anymore. Jeudiasm is basically a farmer's religion. What does it mean when you are supposed to leave a certain fraction of your fields unharvested for hungry travellers? How do you sacrifice livestock when you don't keep any? These things probably made sense 2,000 years ago but don't work any more. So probably like you were saying it would be penny-wise and pound foolish to worry about whether the world was literally created in six days with those kinds of gaping holes in the practice.
Heh I REALLY dont mean to start a flame war but thought this might be interesting. Growing up jewish I've had christian friends talk about that view several times -- that faith sort of takes over where fact leaves off. Even had one draw a picture:
|_known__||_god_|
As if it were a kind of slider, that everything we can't explain we attribute to god, and as we understand more of the world empirically the slider moves more and more to the right.
Anyway this is the part that I hope isn't offensive (however feel free to debate of course if you disagree!), but I think that this viewpoint is sort of a byproduct of modern christianity somehow. Even the most conservative, ultra-kosher jew doesn't use faith to explain how the world works. You follow the traditions of your religion because they're the traditions or you believe that's what god wants you to do. There is no conflict between faith and empiricism because faith isn't EXPLAINING anything. Your faith is that this is what god wants you to be doing, not that all heavenly motion is perfect circles or anything like that.
Heh I REALLY dont mean to start a flame war but thought this might be interesting. Growing up jewish I've had christian friends talk about that view several times -- that faith sort of takes over where fact leaves off. Even had one draw a picture:
|_known__||_god_|
As if it were a kind of slider, that everything we can't explain we attribute to god, and as we understand more of the world empirically the slider moves more and more to the right.
Anyway this is the part that I hope isn't offensive (however feel free to debate of course if you disagree!), but I think that this viewpoint is sort of a byproduct of modern christianity somehow. Even the most conservative, ultra-kosher jew doesn't use faith to explain how the world works. You follow the traditions of your religion because they're the traditions or you believe that's what god wants you to do. There is no conflict between faith and empiricism because faith isn't EXPLAINING anything. Your faith is that this is what god wants you to be doing, not that all heavenly motion is perfect circles or anything like that.
Do we really want to say that all sources are biased? What about the census?
More importantly, "everything is biased" just feels like an excuse. It's ok because everybody does it. With that formula, all media is about deception "the more a source claims to be 'balanced' the more likely it is biased." Nobody is trustworthy.
But even this is just the thin end of the wedge. If all media is biased, all facts reported are just matters of opinion. And everybody's opinion is equal. Creationists would love that viewpoint.
So, lets just call a duck a duck with respect to biased sources and not pretend that it is a law of physics that all media are inherently biased.
"It is pseudo-science to argue that a system as complex and chaotic as [a cohesive in-group]can be predicted with any accuracy over long periods of time."
"The fact is that such claims are unverfiable and irreproducable, and rely on [psychological] models that would respond as a model would be expected to but could have no relationship with the real world. Yet we're being asked to base our entire way of life based around flimsy assertions that cannot be proven or disproven scientifically."
There was something on moveon.org (I think) claiming that the weapons inspectors were starting to be used as a convienient way of gathering general intelligence as well as doing their primary job.
Not that I can say for sure one way or the other is this is true of course, but if so that is certainly a reason for Saddam to throw out inspectors other than trying to hide weapons.
I read a Heinlein anthology a long time ago (sorry I cant remember the name-- I think it was a series of short stories describing private industry moving out into space?). Between stories there were little bits of biographical info, and one of the things that struck me was that Heinlein dropped out of an engineering program in the navy. I was always frustrated by that aspect of Heinlein's writing. Door Into Summer-- putting a few bits of flip flops = perfect AI. Huh? Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the computer is so "smart" it determines probabilities of anything perfectly. That represents an almost childish naivete. To his credit though, he seems to recognize this weakness as an author and never gets too daring with his predictions. (Unlike i.e. OSC -- am I the only one who got a bit frustrated with the "Mormon stephen hawking" bit in Xenocide?) Your comment about Door Into Summer really brought that back to me.
Speaking as a child, aisels and aisles of books are a nightmare. Think about having to reboot your machine, sign on to your ISP, etc every time you want to click on a link.
Slashdot Mirror
When did US imperialism start? I mean I've heard it said that the spanish american war was a change in foriegn policy. But on the other hand What other word is there for a country going from aquiring more and more territory all the way across a continent than imperialist?
Maybe the question we should be asking is not when did american imperialism begin, but when did it stop and why is it starting up again?
Thanks for the reply. I've got to agree with you about it not going on the shoulders of christianity. I tried to qualify it with modern because I don't think its anything inherent to the scripture or practice of christianity, just somehow the philosophy or the way its often thought about. Maybe a better way to describe it is that there are two ways to look at faith at a fundamental level, one that is orthogonal to the observational world and one that tries to explain things. As for the getting around in modern society, here is all the crazy stuff an ultra-conservative jew will do (I'm allowed to call it crazy since I'm jewish :P):
*not eat at most restaurants, keep two sets of kitchen appliances (fridge, dishwasher etc) (keeping kosher)
*never drive, answer the phone or perform labor on saturday (observing shabat)
*never go outdoors without a head covering
I think if theres a reason that jews are more comfortable with accepting change is that nothing makes sense anymore. Jeudiasm is basically a farmer's religion. What does it mean when you are supposed to leave a certain fraction of your fields unharvested for hungry travellers? How do you sacrifice livestock when you don't keep any? These things probably made sense 2,000 years ago but don't work any more. So probably like you were saying it would be penny-wise and pound foolish to worry about whether the world was literally created in six days with those kinds of gaping holes in the practice.
Heh I REALLY dont mean to start a flame war but thought this might be interesting. Growing up jewish I've had christian friends talk about that view several times -- that faith sort of takes over where fact leaves off. Even had one draw a picture:
|_known__||_god_|
As if it were a kind of slider, that everything we can't explain we attribute to god, and as we understand more of the world empirically the slider moves more and more to the right.
Anyway this is the part that I hope isn't offensive (however feel free to debate of course if you disagree!), but I think that this viewpoint is sort of a byproduct of modern christianity somehow. Even the most conservative, ultra-kosher jew doesn't use faith to explain how the world works. You follow the traditions of your religion because they're the traditions or you believe that's what god wants you to do. There is no conflict between faith and empiricism because faith isn't EXPLAINING anything. Your faith is that this is what god wants you to be doing, not that all heavenly motion is perfect circles or anything like that.
Heh I REALLY dont mean to start a flame war but thought this might be interesting. Growing up jewish I've had christian friends talk about that view several times -- that faith sort of takes over where fact leaves off. Even had one draw a picture: |_known__||_god_| As if it were a kind of slider, that everything we can't explain we attribute to god, and as we understand more of the world empirically the slider moves more and more to the right. Anyway this is the part that I hope isn't offensive (however feel free to debate of course if you disagree!), but I think that this viewpoint is sort of a byproduct of modern christianity somehow. Even the most conservative, ultra-kosher jew doesn't use faith to explain how the world works. You follow the traditions of your religion because they're the traditions or you believe that's what god wants you to do. There is no conflict between faith and empiricism because faith isn't EXPLAINING anything. Your faith is that this is what god wants you to be doing, not that all heavenly motion is perfect circles or anything like that.
Do we really want to say that all sources are biased? What about the census?
More importantly, "everything is biased" just feels like an excuse. It's ok because everybody does it. With that formula, all media is about deception "the more a source claims to be 'balanced' the more likely it is biased." Nobody is trustworthy.
But even this is just the thin end of the wedge. If all media is biased, all facts reported are just matters of opinion. And everybody's opinion is equal. Creationists would love that viewpoint.
So, lets just call a duck a duck with respect to biased sources and not pretend that it is a law of physics that all media are inherently biased.
"It is pseudo-science to argue that a system as complex and chaotic as [a cohesive in-group]can be predicted with any accuracy over long periods of time."
"The fact is that such claims are unverfiable and irreproducable, and rely on [psychological] models that would respond as a model would be expected to but could have no relationship with the real world. Yet we're being asked to base our entire way of life based around flimsy assertions that cannot be proven or disproven scientifically."
There was something on moveon.org (I think) claiming that the weapons inspectors were starting to be used as a convienient way of gathering general intelligence as well as doing their primary job.
Not that I can say for sure one way or the other is this is true of course, but if so that is certainly a reason for Saddam to throw out inspectors other than trying to hide weapons.
"unlike M$, Apple has very strong support for those old programs"
Err... ya um I guess that would be the poor support for old programs that lets me run all my legacy software back to MS-DOS.
I mean is there an incident where you had something not work? Or were you just bashing windows on principle?
I read a Heinlein anthology a long time ago (sorry I cant remember the name-- I think it was a series of short stories describing private industry moving out into space?). Between stories there were little bits of biographical info, and one of the things that struck me was that Heinlein dropped out of an engineering program in the navy.
I was always frustrated by that aspect of Heinlein's writing. Door Into Summer-- putting a few bits of flip flops = perfect AI. Huh? Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the computer is so "smart" it determines probabilities of anything perfectly. That represents an almost childish naivete. To his credit though, he seems to recognize this weakness as an author and never gets too daring with his predictions. (Unlike i.e. OSC -- am I the only one who got a bit frustrated with the "Mormon stephen hawking" bit in Xenocide?)
Your comment about Door Into Summer really brought that back to me.
military research? NSA? CIA? alot of their research is done by private industry...
Speaking as a child, aisels and aisles of books are a nightmare. Think about having to reboot your machine, sign on to your ISP, etc every time you want to click on a link.