Maybe it's just how I was raised, but the first thing I thought upon reading that was, "If you have 'money troubles' then why the fuck are you blowing what money you DO have in a casino, you assholes??? "
Here's how it goes: I still need to work for a living. That means I have money troubles. Doesn't matter if I have a nice apartment, eat well, and generally buy whatever game's on sale over the weekend even though I'll never play it since I'm too busy during the week; I've still got money troubles until I don't need to work for a living any more.
They did. They chose to do it. Information technology gave them a choice -- a freedom -- and they did not use it responsibly and through no one's fault but their own.
Why are you saying "fault"? It is clearly something they think of as a benefit. Yes, the multitaskers perform more poorly on cognitive tasks - however, there are many cognitive tasks that don't require great performance. On the other hand, they experience more than the less-frequent multi-taskers. They're basically willing to give up single-thread performance in order to improve multi-thread performance.
And who are we to say it's a bad thing? In the end, you are only scored on your happiness; if you are happier for having experienced a hundred different Facebook games at the same time, then you've won just as much as the person who spent all their time mastering NetHack (I'll ascend someday goddamnit).
That's just who we are, I think - the sort of people on Slashdot, and I think also in many sciences - we're single-target obsessives. We find an interesting skill and gnaw at it until we're satisfied that it's been mastered enough (which may never happen). For that, we need to be really smart; we need to be able to really focus on this one thing for a long time.
Other people really aren't like that. They don't give a shit about being the most efficient farmer in Farmville, they just want to plant their trees and harvest their crops and spam their friends and do whatever else it is you do in that game; they don't want to be the best, they just want the experience. They're totally willing to give up some of their intelligence in order to experience more things; after all, you only need the extra intelligence for mastery, and they don't derive as much happiness from that.
So really, it's not necessarily a bad thing that they're willing to give up cognitive abilities for extra experiences.
Are you really procrastinating? Would you have done ten minutes of work if you hadn't spent ten minutes on Slashdot?
In a more general sense: do you work as efficiently during your second and third hour at work as you do during your sixth and seventh?
We have this weird obsession with working when you're at work (I know that sounds silly, but still) - you simply can't work full blast all the time, and it's weird that management insists that people pretend they do for eight, nine, ten hours a day.
Honestly, I think that's at least part of the reason why we've seen such an increase in productivity since the advent of computers - they provide a great way to pretend you're working, so you can take a break and work more efficiently when you do actually work. I'm not even trying to be funny with this comment; I seriously do think that the increase in ability to occasionally goof off without repercussions has increased total efficiency.
Is it just me (and I am running a 102 degree fever, so it might be) or is the summary basically gibberish? It starts off talking about Indian kids being good at spelling, and ends with something about the "spellbound kids" (whatever the heck that is) and Ted Brigham who is apparently dead. I am very confused.
If religion described things that are objectively true, then the majority of people who study it would come to the same conclusion. We do not find that in practice. Yes, some things are mostly universal - the golden rule, for instance - but even among people who profess to follow the same religion there are disagreements; is abortion something that ought to be allowed? Is homosexual marriage something that ought to exist?
Religion (which is the topic here, so don't start trying to conflate it with ethics or philosophy) makes no concrete claims. The Bible says almost everything twice - once yes, once no. You can provide good biblical support for almost any position, which means it's basically impossible to prove something objectively true with it. Consider abortion, for instance - some people say that it should be allowed from a religious basis, some say it shouldn't. How do we differentiate between the two? We can't, it's just impossible.
Thus, the is/ought debate really doesn't apply to religion; religion is clearly just a shield people use to pretend that their personal opinion is objectively valid, instead of an opinion.
Yeah, unfortunately that's true. The sad fact is, there are many who choose to attack Islam as a whole, without realizing that the real issue is with the extremists. Unfortunately, that makes the battle against the extremists rather tricky, as inevitably, the fucktard racists/bigots end up jumping onto the bandwagon.
All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
From what I can see, moderate Muslim groups are doing nothing.
When that Christian fundamentalist murdered a doctor performed abortions, the moderate Christians were everywhere decrying his action (even if some of them kind of approved of it); where are the moderate Muslims saying "no, you guys should not be sending death threats to people who offend you"?
I mean, I might just be blinkered by our media who don't report on this sort of thing, or because the blogs I read generally don't link to moderate Muslim websites - but I have honestly never seen moderate Muslims standing up to this ridiculous behavior.
Because there is so much oil, the slicks on the surface are still happening, but this isn't all of the oil. I don't know of any defensible estimates for the % of oil that is getting to the surface versus hanging out in "clouds of oil".
We'll know pretty soon actually - according to my wife (who's getting a doctorate in Earth Systems Science, so she knows this stuff) the processes that produce oil always produce a specific amount of methane (like how when you run current through water, you always get two parts H to one part O). The NSF has just gotten funding to send one of her old professors out into the gulf on a boat to measure methane levels, from which they hope to work backwards and calculate a real flow rate.
Indeed; however, your possibility 3 does not address the question being asked: Does praying for the sick cause them to experience better health outcomes? The observed result of this experiment is that if God heals the sick, then His healing is purely random when you control for prayer. In other words, prayer does not affect health outcomes. If God is healing the sick, His healing does not have anything to do with whether or not we pray.
This is what happens when you start applying actual inquiry to religious questions - apologists start moving the goalposts. The original question was "Does God preferentially heal the sick that are prayed for"; the answer is "No, not as far as we can tell". Now you've changed the question to "Does God preferentially heal the righteous", which this specific study doesn't address.
Note that, despite what you said, this study does address the claim that God heals some people sometimes due to prayer. A drug may only work on one person in ten, and we can detect that; this study had enough statistical power to show signs of something of that magnitude, and it didn't.
Oh come on the current director of the fucking National Institutes of Health is Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian who literally wrote the book on theistic evolution and founded BioLogos, a website dedicated to harmonizing science and religion. If he's been that successful, there's basically no stigma involved in being a religious scientist.
Uhm. Have you read Genesis recently? Here's an online copy; let's go through it line by line.
Gen 1: God creates the heavens and Earth. Before there is light. Meaning that the Earth was created before the Sun, or in fact before there was such a thing as electromagnetic radiation (depending on how you want to interpret it). This is objectively wrong either way.
Gen 3: God creates light. Before the Sun. This means that there's light on Earth, without the Sun. This is objectively wrong.
Gen 7: Apparently, the sky is made out of water? Must be why all our spaceships are built like submarines and have propellers. Except they aren't, because this is objectively wrong.
Gen 11: Seed-bearing, land based plants and trees were the first kind of life on Earth? That's objectively wrong. Keep in mind that we still don't have a sun yet, either - plants and trees were created before the Sun, though oddly enough after there was light on Earth, which is simply ridiculous (and objectively wrong).
Gen 14-18: We finally get the Sun! Man, now those plants have something to eat, besides this weird light that comes from nowhere. Note, however, that the moon was created after the first plant life, which is objectively wrong. Also, the Sun was created before the rest of the stars, which is objectively wrong. (oh yeah and the Earth was created before the rest of the stars as well, which is objectively wrong)
Gen 20: Living creatures in the water? Cool, that's right (finally). But immediately from there we get birds? Not okay.
Gen 24: Livestock were created before wild animals? Livestock existed before there were people to domesticate them? How is that even supposed to make sense? Also, this is the Garden of Eden, which in some interpretations means that there was no such thing as death and Adam and Eve wandered around naked. What would they do with livestock, unless God was already planning the Fall?
The rest of it is stuff about people which you've asked me not to mention; however, I'm sure you get the picture. There's plenty of stuff in in Genesis that's absolutely 100% wrong regardless of your interpretation.
Religion can never be disprove. If there is truly an omnipotent being then that being could change the result of ANY experiment performed. Thus, the results of ANY experiment designed to disprove the existence of god can't be trusted because some omnipotent being could have simply fucked with the results.
Even though in theory a generic omnipotent deity could affect the outcome of any given scientific study and create a false null result, in practice most religions make specific claims about their deities. For instance, a common one is that God listens to prayer and will heal the sick if we pray for them. However, when we actually studied whether or not this happens, we found a null result. This means that either:
God doesn't heal the sick, or
God only heals the sick if they are not currently part of a study to determine if He heals the sick.
Those are the only two options. There's no way omnipotence can get you out of that observed result. Either God doesn't heal the sick in the first place, or He's a douchewidget who will refuse to heal the sick if they're part of a study.
It's these sorts of specific truth-value claims that science can verify, and every single time we've tried it we've come up with a null result, or the result that it's got nothing to do with God.
But but but... it doesn't matter what he did, all that matters is what his label was! If he was the leader of the National Socialist Party, then clearly he was a Socialist, regardless of the actions he actually took! I mean, Obama's a democrat which means he's a commie socialist, even though his actions have more in common with right-wing values than any position that ever came from Marx!
If I purchase an orange from a store, I assume the store has permission to sell that apple. If they do not have permission to sell it, then why are they selling it?
If I purchase a CD from a store, I assume the store has permission to sell that CD. If they do not have permission to sell it, then why are they selling it?
If I receive a CD from one of my friends, I assume my friend has permission to give me that CD. If they do not have permission to give it to me, then why are they giving it to me?
If I receive an MP3 from someone, I assume that person has permission to distribute it. If they do not have permission to distribute it, then why are they distributing it?
I mean seriously, why should it be assumed that I know the full legal history of every bit that comes into my computer?
Please, which ineffable things can religion eff but science cannot? I hear religious people make this statement all the time, but they can never back it up - and when they try, all I get is "well science cannot explain the nature of some specific thing that religions came up and which doesn't appear in real life". Science can't explain the nature of Harry Potter, but that's okay because he doesn't exist.
Also:
Obviously religious people should stop trying to religion away science, but just as much scientists should stop trying to science away religion.
Did you know that the second half of that sentence is the most common way of performing the first half of the sentence? After all, what is religion that science should not perform science on it? Should we not study the effect of prayer on health outcomes? (hint: it has no detectable effect) Should we not study the origin of life? Should we not study whether or not it is possible to create a synthetic organism? Should we not study what neurological effects people who pray experience?
What parts of "religion" should scientists stop trying to "science away"?
All religions are nothing but personal interpretation, and just as useful. They are exactly as factual in nature as Harry Potter. Yes, London exists - that doesn't mean He Who Should Not Be Named exists.
That blog post is entirely useless - all it does is take the New Scientist article, sprinkle in some extra paranoid fear-mongering, mix delicately and bake on high heat for ten minutes.
Why even link to it? Oh right, because "separsons" is probably the same person as the "Sarah Parsons" who wrote the blog post in the first place.
"Mr. Fred, we see you purchased a phone, and then three months later, used that phone to call in a bomb threat." "Oh, I got mugged leaving the store, you can check with the police because I filed a report." "Why didn't you cancel the remaining minutes on the phone?" "Are you kidding me? It was a prepaid and the phone company doesn't give a shit! I tried to get a refund on them, but Verizon tech support ran me around in circles until I gave up and just bought a new phone and account. It was a pain in the ass changing my phone number, let me tell you."
They don't actually create streets where none exist; they say that (for instance) a major street is somewhat smaller than it really is, or that a tiny street nobody really cares about has some extra turns that don't exist in reality - basically, stuff that could be plausibly denied as simply being a mistake, but can be used to fingerprint a copied map.
And now we have a talent shortage. And you can't replace a grade A engineer with a grade C project manager, a grade C product manager, a grade C requirements analyst, a several grade C programmers. Nothing gets done. It's like taking all the C students you had in high school and seeing if they can somehow solve the complex calculus problem. Some jobs just require high caliber individuals.
This is what sickens me the most about our current copyright system.
Once a grade A programmer writes some grade A software, it doesn't go bad. There is absolutely no reason for it to be trapped in some corporation's walled garden - that company's need is fulfilled, there is no reason not to set it free except to screw their competitors. Apparently, the need to screw your competitors takes far more important than the idea that there's absolutely no need to invent the wheel five times over.
I mean, just imagine where we would be if all software were absolutely in the public domain (overriding any contracts) five years after the first public sale. As long as at least one person managed to save or sneak out the Windows 2K source code, we would have had the Windows 2000 and Office 2000 source code for five years now. This would have have pre-empted the whole Microsoft OOXML debacle; by now, Wine would be effectively Windows compatible, and companies like Stardock would probably be selling their own enhanced versions of Windows.
I can see basically no downside to it - all those copies of Windows 2K and XP and Vista and 7 would have still been sold, after all. The only difference is that the public domain would have been enriched in our lifetimes, with the work of our peers.
Voting reform is my goal here, but I honestly don't think that can happen with the current D&R oligarchy. What I'm saying is people should vote for a third party as a vote for reform, not as a vote for that party or candidate- it doesn't matter who likes what party. I understand the mathematics, but if we can force the numbers so there are three viable candidates the two party system will break when no one is even reaching 40% of the popular vote. Even if the popular vote leader still gets in, enough people will be upset that people will be receptive to the idea of voting reform. A third party candidate never even has to win for this to happen, so losing is irrelevant.
But, as long as people like you* still think that a third party vote is a waste, voting reform will not happen.
Oh no I agree entirely that voting reform cannot happen with the current parties. However, you're failing to consider the fact that basically no president in living memory received more than 40% of the total votes - Obama, for instance, won the election with a mere 70 million votes, out of a total eligible voting population of 200 million. He only represents a third of the population!
Why do you think that people will care that their candidate only won with 40% of the vote? Why do you think that will matter to them? Their candidates already have the votes of a third (or less) of the population.
And even then - even then - why do you think these independents we just voted in will change the rules? Like I said, you're telling a room full of men who have played tic-tac-toe their whole lives that it's time to start playing chess. Even those independents have spent their political lives playing the same game. You'd need not only one person who was willing to change the system, but a majority of politicians that are willing to start playing a much harder game that they aren't guaranteed to win any more.
Slashdot Mirror
So what you're saying is... one click for both hookers and blow? That's insanity!
Here's how it goes: I still need to work for a living. That means I have money troubles. Doesn't matter if I have a nice apartment, eat well, and generally buy whatever game's on sale over the weekend even though I'll never play it since I'm too busy during the week; I've still got money troubles until I don't need to work for a living any more.
Because you plan on selling the device to people who haven't got a clue? That seems to be Del^H^H^H everyone's target market these days.
Why are you saying "fault"? It is clearly something they think of as a benefit. Yes, the multitaskers perform more poorly on cognitive tasks - however, there are many cognitive tasks that don't require great performance. On the other hand, they experience more than the less-frequent multi-taskers. They're basically willing to give up single-thread performance in order to improve multi-thread performance.
And who are we to say it's a bad thing? In the end, you are only scored on your happiness; if you are happier for having experienced a hundred different Facebook games at the same time, then you've won just as much as the person who spent all their time mastering NetHack (I'll ascend someday goddamnit).
That's just who we are, I think - the sort of people on Slashdot, and I think also in many sciences - we're single-target obsessives. We find an interesting skill and gnaw at it until we're satisfied that it's been mastered enough (which may never happen). For that, we need to be really smart; we need to be able to really focus on this one thing for a long time.
Other people really aren't like that. They don't give a shit about being the most efficient farmer in Farmville, they just want to plant their trees and harvest their crops and spam their friends and do whatever else it is you do in that game; they don't want to be the best, they just want the experience. They're totally willing to give up some of their intelligence in order to experience more things; after all, you only need the extra intelligence for mastery, and they don't derive as much happiness from that.
So really, it's not necessarily a bad thing that they're willing to give up cognitive abilities for extra experiences.
Are you really procrastinating? Would you have done ten minutes of work if you hadn't spent ten minutes on Slashdot?
In a more general sense: do you work as efficiently during your second and third hour at work as you do during your sixth and seventh?
We have this weird obsession with working when you're at work (I know that sounds silly, but still) - you simply can't work full blast all the time, and it's weird that management insists that people pretend they do for eight, nine, ten hours a day.
Honestly, I think that's at least part of the reason why we've seen such an increase in productivity since the advent of computers - they provide a great way to pretend you're working, so you can take a break and work more efficiently when you do actually work. I'm not even trying to be funny with this comment; I seriously do think that the increase in ability to occasionally goof off without repercussions has increased total efficiency.
Is it just me (and I am running a 102 degree fever, so it might be) or is the summary basically gibberish? It starts off talking about Indian kids being good at spelling, and ends with something about the "spellbound kids" (whatever the heck that is) and Ted Brigham who is apparently dead. I am very confused.
If religion described things that are objectively true, then the majority of people who study it would come to the same conclusion. We do not find that in practice. Yes, some things are mostly universal - the golden rule, for instance - but even among people who profess to follow the same religion there are disagreements; is abortion something that ought to be allowed? Is homosexual marriage something that ought to exist?
Religion (which is the topic here, so don't start trying to conflate it with ethics or philosophy) makes no concrete claims. The Bible says almost everything twice - once yes, once no. You can provide good biblical support for almost any position, which means it's basically impossible to prove something objectively true with it. Consider abortion, for instance - some people say that it should be allowed from a religious basis, some say it shouldn't. How do we differentiate between the two? We can't, it's just impossible.
Thus, the is/ought debate really doesn't apply to religion; religion is clearly just a shield people use to pretend that their personal opinion is objectively valid, instead of an opinion.
You're totally right! And the moon is actually a liberal myth!
All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
From what I can see, moderate Muslim groups are doing nothing.
When that Christian fundamentalist murdered a doctor performed abortions, the moderate Christians were everywhere decrying his action (even if some of them kind of approved of it); where are the moderate Muslims saying "no, you guys should not be sending death threats to people who offend you"?
I mean, I might just be blinkered by our media who don't report on this sort of thing, or because the blogs I read generally don't link to moderate Muslim websites - but I have honestly never seen moderate Muslims standing up to this ridiculous behavior.
We'll know pretty soon actually - according to my wife (who's getting a doctorate in Earth Systems Science, so she knows this stuff) the processes that produce oil always produce a specific amount of methane (like how when you run current through water, you always get two parts H to one part O). The NSF has just gotten funding to send one of her old professors out into the gulf on a boat to measure methane levels, from which they hope to work backwards and calculate a real flow rate.
Indeed; however, your possibility 3 does not address the question being asked: Does praying for the sick cause them to experience better health outcomes? The observed result of this experiment is that if God heals the sick, then His healing is purely random when you control for prayer. In other words, prayer does not affect health outcomes. If God is healing the sick, His healing does not have anything to do with whether or not we pray.
This is what happens when you start applying actual inquiry to religious questions - apologists start moving the goalposts. The original question was "Does God preferentially heal the sick that are prayed for"; the answer is "No, not as far as we can tell". Now you've changed the question to "Does God preferentially heal the righteous", which this specific study doesn't address.
Note that, despite what you said, this study does address the claim that God heals some people sometimes due to prayer. A drug may only work on one person in ten, and we can detect that; this study had enough statistical power to show signs of something of that magnitude, and it didn't.
You're right, I knew I was forgetting something. This adds option 3: God is petty.
Oh come on the current director of the fucking National Institutes of Health is Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian who literally wrote the book on theistic evolution and founded BioLogos, a website dedicated to harmonizing science and religion. If he's been that successful, there's basically no stigma involved in being a religious scientist.
Uhm. Have you read Genesis recently? Here's an online copy; let's go through it line by line.
The rest of it is stuff about people which you've asked me not to mention; however, I'm sure you get the picture. There's plenty of stuff in in Genesis that's absolutely 100% wrong regardless of your interpretation.
Even though in theory a generic omnipotent deity could affect the outcome of any given scientific study and create a false null result, in practice most religions make specific claims about their deities. For instance, a common one is that God listens to prayer and will heal the sick if we pray for them. However, when we actually studied whether or not this happens, we found a null result. This means that either:
Those are the only two options. There's no way omnipotence can get you out of that observed result. Either God doesn't heal the sick in the first place, or He's a douchewidget who will refuse to heal the sick if they're part of a study.
It's these sorts of specific truth-value claims that science can verify, and every single time we've tried it we've come up with a null result, or the result that it's got nothing to do with God.
But but but... it doesn't matter what he did, all that matters is what his label was! If he was the leader of the National Socialist Party, then clearly he was a Socialist, regardless of the actions he actually took! I mean, Obama's a democrat which means he's a commie socialist, even though his actions have more in common with right-wing values than any position that ever came from Marx!
If I purchase an orange from a store, I assume the store has permission to sell that apple. If they do not have permission to sell it, then why are they selling it?
If I purchase a CD from a store, I assume the store has permission to sell that CD. If they do not have permission to sell it, then why are they selling it?
If I receive a CD from one of my friends, I assume my friend has permission to give me that CD. If they do not have permission to give it to me, then why are they giving it to me?
If I receive an MP3 from someone, I assume that person has permission to distribute it. If they do not have permission to distribute it, then why are they distributing it?
I mean seriously, why should it be assumed that I know the full legal history of every bit that comes into my computer?
More like, yes, Nazareth exists - but that doesn't mean Jesus did.
Please, which ineffable things can religion eff but science cannot? I hear religious people make this statement all the time, but they can never back it up - and when they try, all I get is "well science cannot explain the nature of some specific thing that religions came up and which doesn't appear in real life". Science can't explain the nature of Harry Potter, but that's okay because he doesn't exist.
Also:
Did you know that the second half of that sentence is the most common way of performing the first half of the sentence? After all, what is religion that science should not perform science on it? Should we not study the effect of prayer on health outcomes? (hint: it has no detectable effect) Should we not study the origin of life? Should we not study whether or not it is possible to create a synthetic organism? Should we not study what neurological effects people who pray experience?
What parts of "religion" should scientists stop trying to "science away"?
All religions are nothing but personal interpretation, and just as useful. They are exactly as factual in nature as Harry Potter. Yes, London exists - that doesn't mean He Who Should Not Be Named exists.
That blog post is entirely useless - all it does is take the New Scientist article, sprinkle in some extra paranoid fear-mongering, mix delicately and bake on high heat for ten minutes.
Why even link to it? Oh right, because "separsons" is probably the same person as the "Sarah Parsons" who wrote the blog post in the first place.
Fixed that for you.
They don't actually create streets where none exist; they say that (for instance) a major street is somewhat smaller than it really is, or that a tiny street nobody really cares about has some extra turns that don't exist in reality - basically, stuff that could be plausibly denied as simply being a mistake, but can be used to fingerprint a copied map.
This is what sickens me the most about our current copyright system.
Once a grade A programmer writes some grade A software, it doesn't go bad. There is absolutely no reason for it to be trapped in some corporation's walled garden - that company's need is fulfilled, there is no reason not to set it free except to screw their competitors. Apparently, the need to screw your competitors takes far more important than the idea that there's absolutely no need to invent the wheel five times over.
I mean, just imagine where we would be if all software were absolutely in the public domain (overriding any contracts) five years after the first public sale. As long as at least one person managed to save or sneak out the Windows 2K source code, we would have had the Windows 2000 and Office 2000 source code for five years now. This would have have pre-empted the whole Microsoft OOXML debacle; by now, Wine would be effectively Windows compatible, and companies like Stardock would probably be selling their own enhanced versions of Windows.
I can see basically no downside to it - all those copies of Windows 2K and XP and Vista and 7 would have still been sold, after all. The only difference is that the public domain would have been enriched in our lifetimes, with the work of our peers.
Oh no I agree entirely that voting reform cannot happen with the current parties. However, you're failing to consider the fact that basically no president in living memory received more than 40% of the total votes - Obama, for instance, won the election with a mere 70 million votes, out of a total eligible voting population of 200 million. He only represents a third of the population!
Why do you think that people will care that their candidate only won with 40% of the vote? Why do you think that will matter to them? Their candidates already have the votes of a third (or less) of the population.
And even then - even then - why do you think these independents we just voted in will change the rules? Like I said, you're telling a room full of men who have played tic-tac-toe their whole lives that it's time to start playing chess. Even those independents have spent their political lives playing the same game. You'd need not only one person who was willing to change the system, but a majority of politicians that are willing to start playing a much harder game that they aren't guaranteed to win any more.