being morally responsible actually means doing the thinking that's involved to understand whether suffering happens, and taking the actions that you can to minimize it.
Exactly right! And where you don't know, the ethical choice is to err on the side of caution.
And there's more at stake than consequences for animals and the environment. A majority of the people posting here with anti-logic like "if we weren't supposed to eat them then they shouldn't be so tasty" will be having their well-earned heart attacks soon enough, ramping up insurance bills for the rest of us. Diabetes II comes as a price for our diets as well. It costs all of us when people grossly over-consume animal products and other unhealthy processed foods, as the majority of Slashdotters undoubtedly do.
But no one ever said smart people are necessarily wise!
While we're at it, let's teach math but just leave out the part about long division.
Funny! But a better analogy would be, "let's teach math but leave out the part about numeric bases, number theory, Godel's theorem, geometry, Zeno's paradox..." - things which lie at the foundation of math in a similar manner to the way amino acids and cellular life form a foundation for complex organisms.
Your science is invalid because you can't disprove leprechauns. You must even admit that it is possible somewhere where leprechauns may exist. Your science doesn't know everything. Because God is unfathomable He remains forever outside of the borders of your scientific inquiry. How do you like those apples?
You'll notice how we go looking for evidence of a creator in the gaps of your science. Thats because whenever you look into the face of the unknown, that's where you'll find God staring blankly back at you. "You don't know everything," he says. And you know what, He's right.
In the life of the mind - the only life we ever know directly - science is just a way to name and control reality - filling in those blessed gaps with explanations that point away from a creator... and towards a blackboard full of nihilist philosophy. Every new discovery mankind makes steals a little more of the autonomy of God, placing it into the hands of men, whose character and intentions are forever flawed.
If you take evolution literally then we come from an ancient tradition of trusting the unknown. For most of our evolutionary history we existed by pure instinct without any theory about how we arrived in the present and no need to wonder who we were. Thus there's something very special about the level of our minds where everything is gaps. Doesn't that imply a "god in the machine" at the very least? We must at some level be perfectly composed and comfortable in the presence of not-knowing.
At some point we transitioned from an animal-minded being acting on pure instinct (and surviving on pure fortitude) to a rational-minded being that builds and teaches (and survives on social utility).
Well, enough devil's advocacy. I've almost convinced myself of this character.
The Creationist mindset believes intentionality goes all the way down, and can't understand how intentionality could be the result of something completely unintentional.
This is very similar to animism, which assigns spirit and meaningful action to all things.
It seems to be related to tribal and social cohesion, in the sense that insular groups attach to it, and perhaps it could be connected to the psychological wall between me...us and them...that, which breaks down in so-called mystical states, but which itself underlies everyday experience.
My sense is that there is a deep psychological reason why people feel so certain that everything must be intentional. It's projection from a place of self-ignorance. They haven't looked deeply enough into their own situation to see how it can be both, but that each level of the system has its own internal dynamics.
Kids should learn about emergent order in science class, that will help.
Maybe it's more about transcendence of the body rather than rejection of it. While we live we are sensual, and Christians influenced by Tao might realize that our natural desires only need tempering, not abolishment, and that there are skills involved in keeping them within bounds.
I'm not sure all Christians follow the premise that Jesus is THE son of God. Scholarly Christians may have learned that in the original languages Jesus is only referred to - or refers to himself - as "a son of God" in the regional vernacular, and therefore they may understand him not to be a supernatural being, but simply an enlightened teacher explaining how to let go. They might practice his teachings with faith in their general soundness and venerate his example, rather than pedestalize and worship him. Those who follow his advice could be called the best kind of Christians because their intent and their willingness to investigate further allow them to take the psychological guidance of Jesus to heart and go learn yoga and mindfulness meditation from other traditions in order to deepen their practice and get to the heart of the matter.
Maybe they'd stop calling themselves Christians, but that's just part of leaving the vessel behind.
As to whether Jesus cared if his followers were curious, I think it's compatible with his prophetic vision that we must and will use our senses and reason to learn about the universe and survive in it. Jesus might or might not have himself wondered about the age of the earth on a given day, depending on his mood. We'll never know how much he studied the kosmos. Maybe he took literally the Talmud's account of the origin of the world. My guess is he understood reality a little better than that, as he meditated regularly. So he's a super-high inspired guru. His job - or the job of his character in the story - is to inspire a spirit of creativity, curiosity, and life-affirming intentionality to produce better conditions for life overall, especially as inevitable hardship arises. His PR people had at heart the overall resilience and viability of life itself.
If only people took his basic advice - love others, get your selfishness under control, meditate on this here prayer, don't get hung up on custom and the world, and don't get pious and controlling with me, all you authoritarian bastards... ah, the world would be much more pleasant. And we could all investigate the origins of life and its evolution in peace together.
Hmm, well isn't the whole notion of a cohesive "God" entity INDUCED into the whole equation in the first place? Where, when, and how did this hypothesis ever get beyond fable status?
Why aren't we debating the existence of orange basketball-shaped beings who sing the universe into existence? Could it be because we would prefer the source of the universe to be something like ourselves?
I guarantee the Slashdot crowd, there is no singular entity behind everything that is... no composite being with parts, history, preferences, or anything conditioned or non-transcendent. It seems clear to my inductive reasoning and intuition that the universe is a unified phenomenon - no separation of the physical universe from its source in the eternal present.
The sort of God most modern people seem to believe in is a folly, but people find it useful to pretend he exists so they can justify their preferences, opinions, and bigotries. Sure, there is the rare mystic who uses this concept as an object of contemplation and actually gains insight as a result, but by and large most people have a retarded notion of reality.
The Atheists who deny any sort of spiritual aspect are likewise deluded. Both Theists and Atheists alike for the most part are ideologues trying to one-up each other, both feeling smugly superior.
Fact is, meditative practices and prescriptions like the noble eightfold path and the esoteric teachings of Jesus are meant to help people drop their pointless views on these subjects and get them into direct contact with the non-dualistic reality of which they are an intrinsic part.
Of course, these reasonable practices are not widely promulgated in our media or our capitalist culture. Instead everything revolves around the pointless argument as to whether or not there are fairies and unicorns. Of course, we can't have people getting liberated from their ignorance and growing into fully-realized humans. So-called civil society might collapse!
Hmm, actually there's some reason to think that macroscopic systems - Holons, if you will - are not just abstract notions, but that to some extent there is a kind of top-down "entanglement" that binds holistic units together.
Take for example, the visual cortex. It presents itself to our consciousness as a unified phenomenon, wherein we experience millions of neural firings simultaneously as our field of vision, and yet these neuronal experiences are spatially distributed. Sure, there's a cognitive level where it all "comes together" through information processing, but the thing is we nevertheless seem to experience the raw distributed visual data at some level pre-cognitively.
Of course, it makes sense that as holistic experiencing entities we exhibit this property. The alternative would be to have the data represented in consciousness serially, in the manner of language, which would of course be ridiculous at the earliest stages of cognition.
The overall experience of seeing is tied together simply by the simultaneity of its constituent elements in the present moment - presumably in the phase change from the immediately-past moment, since change is the seed of awareness. But what keeps this experience from being utterly chaotic and meaningless is the "context" of these simultaneous physical events, and their presence in an information-processing system - the brain.
Does this constitute entanglement? Certainly, there must be some essence of entanglement involved. I'm fuzzy on the specifics, but awhile ago I recall reading that the brain has a structure at its center which generates radial magnetic pulses from front-to-back at something like 50Hz. The generated field has the effect of aligning atoms in the brain. Is spatial alignment in some way related to entanglement?
My Google searches aren't turning up the specific information I'm looking for about this - just a lot of stuff about LF magnetic pulses altering consciousness - but I know it's out there somewhere...!
Lots of religions and religious-minded people accept evolution, natural selection, and even biogenesis. The reason being, they regard the universe as a whole as being intrinsic to spirit, in a sense alive, even aware... but the conception of these things is tempered. The point is, the universe as it is is miraculous and amazing, and when you really dive into the mysteries of reality in situ there's no need to imagine that allegories like Genesis are literally true.
And if you want a connection with the divine, the way has been explained over and over again by countless teachers and practitioners for those who care enough to apply it. But although even Jesus prescribed meditation, forgiveness, and somewhere in there - I hope - intellectual curiosity, the sort of people who reject science and evolution in favor of old myths are simply cultist ideologues. They're not what you might call open spiritually-inclined minds, and they're certainly not improved by their adherence to foolish literal beliefs.
Those who still conceive of God as a powerful celestial being who observes, reflects, and modifies outcomes are holding on to an outmoded view, and perpetuating within themselves the very dualism they purport to abhor. Science does in fact undermine such outmoded conceptions of God, and challenges all of us to reconsider the nature of the universe, the scope of its "visceral concerns" over ideological ones, and our deep connection to the present.
To use the Biblical language, science is the disciplinarian "Father" (and "son of Man") which tells us things we may not like, but which we must learn to accept in order to mature. And of course, there is much more to life than merely investigating and applying science. But if we want to dance into the night, isn't it nice that science has helped us to be warm, lighted, and dry while we twirl?
I've never seen or heard of this form before, but as a fan of the Jargon File (got it in hardback, baby!) I figured it had to be part of the lore and lexicon of the net. The fact that it's hilarious also gives it away.
Did you just wake up from a nap you began in 1998, and are you also not counting the subscription fees and lost hours and productivity incurred dealing with Windows viruses, malware, and the general inconsistencies and disorganization that plagues Windows?
Even if the cheapest Mac cost $1000 more than the cheapest PC (for example) it would still be a better value for people who value their time and sanity.
Rush is a joke. The media is a joke, insofar as it does sports-like play-by-play commentary from a position of utter ignorance.
I think it's high time we boycott the media, which is increasingly outmoded in a time when we have so much better ability to discover the context of events for ourselves.
Let Rush blather on, doing his best to distort the reality and make people worry. Stupid ass that he is, let him blather on alone in the dark.
Slashdot Mirror
...i mean, how neurotypical...
being morally responsible actually means doing the thinking that's involved to understand whether suffering happens, and taking the actions that you can to minimize it.
Exactly right! And where you don't know, the ethical choice is to err on the side of caution.
And there's more at stake than consequences for animals and the environment. A majority of the people posting here with anti-logic like "if we weren't supposed to eat them then they shouldn't be so tasty" will be having their well-earned heart attacks soon enough, ramping up insurance bills for the rest of us. Diabetes II comes as a price for our diets as well. It costs all of us when people grossly over-consume animal products and other unhealthy processed foods, as the majority of Slashdotters undoubtedly do.
But no one ever said smart people are necessarily wise!
"Does it matter if they feel pain?" - Is that the question?
Well, if it matters to you then it matters.
"Cows sure are cute daddy... It's too bad they taste so good. Can we have steak when we get home?"
How cute! It almost makes me want to take all my ethical cues from infants.
While we're at it, let's teach math but just leave out the part about long division.
Funny! But a better analogy would be, "let's teach math but leave out the part about numeric bases, number theory, Godel's theorem, geometry, Zeno's paradox..." - things which lie at the foundation of math in a similar manner to the way amino acids and cellular life form a foundation for complex organisms.
Nothing funny to see here, move along...
...car says there is no you!
Your science is invalid because you can't disprove leprechauns. You must even admit that it is possible somewhere where leprechauns may exist. Your science doesn't know everything. Because God is unfathomable He remains forever outside of the borders of your scientific inquiry. How do you like those apples?
You'll notice how we go looking for evidence of a creator in the gaps of your science. Thats because whenever you look into the face of the unknown, that's where you'll find God staring blankly back at you. "You don't know everything," he says. And you know what, He's right.
In the life of the mind - the only life we ever know directly - science is just a way to name and control reality - filling in those blessed gaps with explanations that point away from a creator... and towards a blackboard full of nihilist philosophy. Every new discovery mankind makes steals a little more of the autonomy of God, placing it into the hands of men, whose character and intentions are forever flawed.
If you take evolution literally then we come from an ancient tradition of trusting the unknown. For most of our evolutionary history we existed by pure instinct without any theory about how we arrived in the present and no need to wonder who we were. Thus there's something very special about the level of our minds where everything is gaps. Doesn't that imply a "god in the machine" at the very least? We must at some level be perfectly composed and comfortable in the presence of not-knowing.
At some point we transitioned from an animal-minded being acting on pure instinct (and surviving on pure fortitude) to a rational-minded being that builds and teaches (and survives on social utility).
Well, enough devil's advocacy. I've almost convinced myself of this character.
The Creationist mindset believes intentionality goes all the way down, and can't understand how intentionality could be the result of something completely unintentional.
This is very similar to animism, which assigns spirit and meaningful action to all things.
It seems to be related to tribal and social cohesion, in the sense that insular groups attach to it, and perhaps it could be connected to the psychological wall between me...us and them...that, which breaks down in so-called mystical states, but which itself underlies everyday experience.
My sense is that there is a deep psychological reason why people feel so certain that everything must be intentional. It's projection from a place of self-ignorance. They haven't looked deeply enough into their own situation to see how it can be both, but that each level of the system has its own internal dynamics.
Kids should learn about emergent order in science class, that will help.
I agree totally.
Maybe it's more about transcendence of the body rather than rejection of it. While we live we are sensual, and Christians influenced by Tao might realize that our natural desires only need tempering, not abolishment, and that there are skills involved in keeping them within bounds.
I'm not sure all Christians follow the premise that Jesus is THE son of God. Scholarly Christians may have learned that in the original languages Jesus is only referred to - or refers to himself - as "a son of God" in the regional vernacular, and therefore they may understand him not to be a supernatural being, but simply an enlightened teacher explaining how to let go. They might practice his teachings with faith in their general soundness and venerate his example, rather than pedestalize and worship him. Those who follow his advice could be called the best kind of Christians because their intent and their willingness to investigate further allow them to take the psychological guidance of Jesus to heart and go learn yoga and mindfulness meditation from other traditions in order to deepen their practice and get to the heart of the matter.
Maybe they'd stop calling themselves Christians, but that's just part of leaving the vessel behind.
As to whether Jesus cared if his followers were curious, I think it's compatible with his prophetic vision that we must and will use our senses and reason to learn about the universe and survive in it. Jesus might or might not have himself wondered about the age of the earth on a given day, depending on his mood. We'll never know how much he studied the kosmos. Maybe he took literally the Talmud's account of the origin of the world. My guess is he understood reality a little better than that, as he meditated regularly. So he's a super-high inspired guru. His job - or the job of his character in the story - is to inspire a spirit of creativity, curiosity, and life-affirming intentionality to produce better conditions for life overall, especially as inevitable hardship arises. His PR people had at heart the overall resilience and viability of life itself.
If only people took his basic advice - love others, get your selfishness under control, meditate on this here prayer, don't get hung up on custom and the world, and don't get pious and controlling with me, all you authoritarian bastards... ah, the world would be much more pleasant. And we could all investigate the origins of life and its evolution in peace together.
Hmm, well isn't the whole notion of a cohesive "God" entity INDUCED into the whole equation in the first place? Where, when, and how did this hypothesis ever get beyond fable status?
Why aren't we debating the existence of orange basketball-shaped beings who sing the universe into existence? Could it be because we would prefer the source of the universe to be something like ourselves?
I guarantee the Slashdot crowd, there is no singular entity behind everything that is... no composite being with parts, history, preferences, or anything conditioned or non-transcendent. It seems clear to my inductive reasoning and intuition that the universe is a unified phenomenon - no separation of the physical universe from its source in the eternal present.
The sort of God most modern people seem to believe in is a folly, but people find it useful to pretend he exists so they can justify their preferences, opinions, and bigotries. Sure, there is the rare mystic who uses this concept as an object of contemplation and actually gains insight as a result, but by and large most people have a retarded notion of reality.
The Atheists who deny any sort of spiritual aspect are likewise deluded. Both Theists and Atheists alike for the most part are ideologues trying to one-up each other, both feeling smugly superior.
Fact is, meditative practices and prescriptions like the noble eightfold path and the esoteric teachings of Jesus are meant to help people drop their pointless views on these subjects and get them into direct contact with the non-dualistic reality of which they are an intrinsic part.
Of course, these reasonable practices are not widely promulgated in our media or our capitalist culture. Instead everything revolves around the pointless argument as to whether or not there are fairies and unicorns. Of course, we can't have people getting liberated from their ignorance and growing into fully-realized humans. So-called civil society might collapse!
Oh, God. That's weird. What the hell is Goofy?
Hmm, actually there's some reason to think that macroscopic systems - Holons, if you will - are not just abstract notions, but that to some extent there is a kind of top-down "entanglement" that binds holistic units together.
Take for example, the visual cortex. It presents itself to our consciousness as a unified phenomenon, wherein we experience millions of neural firings simultaneously as our field of vision, and yet these neuronal experiences are spatially distributed. Sure, there's a cognitive level where it all "comes together" through information processing, but the thing is we nevertheless seem to experience the raw distributed visual data at some level pre-cognitively.
Of course, it makes sense that as holistic experiencing entities we exhibit this property. The alternative would be to have the data represented in consciousness serially, in the manner of language, which would of course be ridiculous at the earliest stages of cognition.
The overall experience of seeing is tied together simply by the simultaneity of its constituent elements in the present moment - presumably in the phase change from the immediately-past moment, since change is the seed of awareness. But what keeps this experience from being utterly chaotic and meaningless is the "context" of these simultaneous physical events, and their presence in an information-processing system - the brain.
Does this constitute entanglement? Certainly, there must be some essence of entanglement involved. I'm fuzzy on the specifics, but awhile ago I recall reading that the brain has a structure at its center which generates radial magnetic pulses from front-to-back at something like 50Hz. The generated field has the effect of aligning atoms in the brain. Is spatial alignment in some way related to entanglement?
My Google searches aren't turning up the specific information I'm looking for about this - just a lot of stuff about LF magnetic pulses altering consciousness - but I know it's out there somewhere...!
...they cut off a mouse's leg and the offspring are shown to walk funny.
Lots of religions and religious-minded people accept evolution, natural selection, and even biogenesis. The reason being, they regard the universe as a whole as being intrinsic to spirit, in a sense alive, even aware... but the conception of these things is tempered. The point is, the universe as it is is miraculous and amazing, and when you really dive into the mysteries of reality in situ there's no need to imagine that allegories like Genesis are literally true.
And if you want a connection with the divine, the way has been explained over and over again by countless teachers and practitioners for those who care enough to apply it. But although even Jesus prescribed meditation, forgiveness, and somewhere in there - I hope - intellectual curiosity, the sort of people who reject science and evolution in favor of old myths are simply cultist ideologues. They're not what you might call open spiritually-inclined minds, and they're certainly not improved by their adherence to foolish literal beliefs.
Those who still conceive of God as a powerful celestial being who observes, reflects, and modifies outcomes are holding on to an outmoded view, and perpetuating within themselves the very dualism they purport to abhor. Science does in fact undermine such outmoded conceptions of God, and challenges all of us to reconsider the nature of the universe, the scope of its "visceral concerns" over ideological ones, and our deep connection to the present.
To use the Biblical language, science is the disciplinarian "Father" (and "son of Man") which tells us things we may not like, but which we must learn to accept in order to mature. And of course, there is much more to life than merely investigating and applying science. But if we want to dance into the night, isn't it nice that science has helped us to be warm, lighted, and dry while we twirl?
Publish naked pics of his sister on the net?
Oops, nevermind, that's her side job.
I've never seen or heard of this form before, but as a fan of the Jargon File (got it in hardback, baby!) I figured it had to be part of the lore and lexicon of the net. The fact that it's hilarious also gives it away.
It will probably be the element that enables FTL.
Imagination?
Don't be messin' with Microsoft's Freedom to Innovate, dude!
unreasonably expensive switch to Mac
Did you just wake up from a nap you began in 1998, and are you also not counting the subscription fees and lost hours and productivity incurred dealing with Windows viruses, malware, and the general inconsistencies and disorganization that plagues Windows?
Even if the cheapest Mac cost $1000 more than the cheapest PC (for example) it would still be a better value for people who value their time and sanity.
Indeed. When Microsoft gets around to rewriting their OS from the bottom up as a UNIX I'll totally buy it. Until then, yaaawwwn!
Oh come on, at least mod parent 'Funny' for the sincere attempt! The followups that don't get it, mod 'Downs Syndrome.'
New Starbar - I like it. Good Job Microsoft. But is it worth the upgrade?
Starbar? I've never heard of it but it sounds cool. Can I get one for Mac OS X?
...each party...
You do realize there are other parties, don't you? ;)
But please, more wisdom from your position of mindless acquiescence would be most welcome!
Rush is a joke. The media is a joke, insofar as it does sports-like play-by-play commentary from a position of utter ignorance.
I think it's high time we boycott the media, which is increasingly outmoded in a time when we have so much better ability to discover the context of events for ourselves.
Let Rush blather on, doing his best to distort the reality and make people worry. Stupid ass that he is, let him blather on alone in the dark.
Regardless of your political leanings, when it comes to debunking media distortions Media Matters rules!