Or maybe you just need a bleeding edge graphics card to account for the DirectX >> OpenGL translation.
That might be why yours is slow -- WoW can, in fact, be configured to run in OpenGL mode, even the Windows version, meaning there's no translation to run.
I wish Blizzard would simply port their Mac client to Linux - doesn't the Mac version use OpenGL already? Shouldn't be that hard to churn out Linux version I would think.
If it'd been done right, maybe. It's possible they are running into problems supporting X, which is entirely different than the Mac GUI.
What's more, right now, they cooperate very nicely with the Wine people to make sure everything works, but they aren't required to actually support it. If they were to release a native Linux client, that means they actually have to give it the same level of support that they give Windows, which is more than just "churning out" a client.
I wouldn't mind a Linux port, but I don't think it would actually be much better than what we've got now.
You can still get tons of free mods for a computer game, some of which don't have an equivalent on a console. It's also possible to set up and maintain your own server for games like Counter-Strike, and mod the hell out of it -- again, not possible with a console.
And there are other things which can be done in Windows, which is why some people end up using it, even though for absolutely every purpose other than gaming, they would rather be using Linux.
With your rigid definition, how can it be a fact that I observed something, if you don't have absolute certainty that I did?
Well, it's not a fact, to me. It is to you.
You can count me as a skeptic, but I'm also a utilitarian. Our facts may not be perfectly accurate or completely verifiable, but if we want to survive, they're all we have to act on.
Right.
I live every day as a human, in the world most of us interact with. I don't ever stop to think "Gee, I better be careful, never know when gravity might not work." Or even to consider "Maybe I'm living in the Matrix?"
But, in a philosophical discussion, I absolutely will go back at least as far as Cogito Ergo Sum.
We just need some means for separating useful facts (useful because they are accurate enough to help us) from myth, speculation, or wishful thinking. That means is what we call science.
Again, I agree with you, except I would call them assumptions or beliefs, not facts.
The only value in picking apart every single observation and concluding that, well, it might just be an illusion, is the entertainment value. No scientific value, and no practical value in surviving another day in our lives.
Yet, it may be useful in a religious or philosophical debate, where all parties have already agreed to go beyond the strictly practical.
You also may have missed the point -- The Matrix is about how your current observations may be an illusion. Total Recall is about how your past observations may have been implanted, and thus, your memory may be an illusion.
The conclusion is that you can't even be sure of your own thoughts, except for the ones you're having right now, and understanding fully and simultaneously.
If we have reasonable grounds for accepting something as true, and not just our natural tendency to trust that our belief will be validated someday, then I count it as fact.
Your examples aren't entirely consistent with that definition, then. There are people you could loan money to and have a very high level of confidence that you'd get it back.
What you seem to be implying by "fact" is something that you not only have a good reason for believing is true, but you also have a good reason for believing it will always be true, under any circumstances, and that's mainly grounded in that you've never seen a contradictory observation, and neither has anyone else that you know -- well, anyone credible. (And of course, you define who's credible by who has observations that mostly match up with your own.)
And it is kind of an unstable "fact". What keeps it true are the same things that keep faith true -- your willingness to adapt the "fact", or whatever you believe in, to new observations. For example, not every arrow shot into the air will fall to earth -- some may go into orbit, or escape our gravity well altogether. Your natural reaction is to either attempt to more narrowly define an arrow, or the process of shooting it (You have to use a bow. Held by one person. And the arrow must be small, probably wooden.) or to adjust your "fact" to compensate (An arrow shot into the air at less than escape velocity will fall to the earth, even if we know not where.)
This process is exactly the same as the process by which people of faith adapt to new observations, when they are finally forced to. For example, when it was proved conclusively that the world was round, and done so repeatedly, to the point where the Church could no longer deny it, they replaced the model where God is always directly above us with one where the Earth is at the center of a number of glass spheres (containing the sun, stars, etc), and God is outside the whole contraption. Now, if you were to ask a clergy where God physically is, you might get a response that he's metaphysical -- that he doesn't physically exist any
I don't really care what Stephen Hawking said about anything.
Then why should I care about what Wikipedia says about anything?
It doesn't even make sense to me, either; you obviously have no idea how the scientific process works, but you're still trying to debate it with me.
Because I dispute the basic definitions, you assume I have no idea how it works?
Really, it shouldn't be left up to debate (I'm certainly no scientist myself), but to evidence -- evidence which I have provided in the form of a link to Wikipedia, which, for reasons unknown, you have a problem with.
I thought I'd made those reasons pretty clearly known.
I don't think I can even get anywhere like this. I don't even think I could convince you of how wrong you are if I had Stephen Hawking himself tell you so.
You're correct. You criticize me for an argument from authority, and yet, when you use the same argument, I'm unreasonable to reject it?
You are bent on challenging anything that doesn't fit your mindset, which is quite strange to me.
You must be new here.
And now you've tried an ad hominim approach, and still haven't directly challenged (or, apparently, read) my argument. You'd rather just throw your own, unmodified argument at me, as if I hadn't said anything.
I don't know why I bother, since you'd clearly rather call me names (fucktard) than actually debate, but from your own wikipedia link, laws are:
True. By definition, there have never been repeatable contradicting observations.
Does that mean there can't ever be a contradicting observation? No, it just means we haven't seen one.
Stable. Unchanged since first discovered (although they may have been shown to be approximations of more accurate lawssee "Laws as approximations" below),
Allowing them to be observations directly contradicts:
Omnipotent. Everything in the universe apparently must comply with them (according to observations). (Davies, 1992:83)
Gravitation, for example, is not omnipotent. It is, if I remember, actually incompatible with quantum physics. It also must be modified to allow for things like the path of mercury; the Theory of General Relativity certainly contradicts Newton's original Law of Universal Gravitation.
Accepted theories, then, are at least more accurate than laws, and often to clearly express a law, you come up with an equation which may as well be a theory. I can understand why scientists like to try and keep a distinction here, but it does not hold for even basic Hollywood-inspired philosophy.
Well, it might not be problematic at all. I could just be making the whole thing up -- it could be kind of like when a Java programmer criticizes JavaScript for not having interfaces and abstract clasess -- not menaningful for dynamic types.
And I'm going to have to tell you to shut the fuck up and stick your shitty argument from authority up your dumb ass.
Maybe after you read the fucking quote.
Using a quote and not rewording it myself doesn't constitute an argument from authority.
I'm still not seeing what makes a "fact" different than a "theory" except that people dispute theories, but not so much facts. Which is an argument from authority.
In fact, I'll go right ahead and dispute the page you linked to:
Gravity is a "fact" because it has been observed, and observations are "facts" in scientific language.
No, "gravity" has not been observed. There are a really fucking large number of observations of things falling that would tend to support the "fact" of Gravity, but we made up the connection between an apple falling, a branch falling, a person falling, a scale being compressed, and so on.
And I would call that connection a "theory", as it's supported by observation, and not an observation itself. It's every bit as imaginary as our classifications of species.
The people who suggest (like Hitler but unlike Heisenberg, Einstein, and others) that science will outmode religion
I don't think it will. And wasn't Hitler Christian?
I do think that organized religion is far more harmful than organized science. Worse if you combine the two. I also find that science tends to be far less dogmatic than religion.
You're right, in a sense, that we have every bit as much fundamental evidence, looking at, say, the Sun, to say that it's the eye of God, than we do to say it's a giant controlled nuclear reaction. The difference is that a scientist is looking for a reason why, and looks out in the world around him. Where do you turn to if you want to approach this from a religious point of view?
You turn to scripture and maybe intuition. Scripture is pure dogma, and intuition is a guess, one that should give you direction on where to look for your evidence.
When we devote ourselves to logic, we ignore the fact that our brains are not wired to be strictly logical. Instead our brains are generally image-oriented and one cannot conceive of a negative without imagining its opposite, so one must understand that words like "no" or "not" tie us to the images that we seek to distance ourselves from. True mastery over ourselves requires mastery over logic, but also an ability to move beyond it to build a more powerful image of the universe within our minds.
You know what I see when I look beyond logic?
I see beauty.
I see color and sound, anger, love, and all kinds of things for which there is no logical cause or process.
I do not see a mythical sky-god.
All the experiences I've outlined are very real to me. No god is. How many people are religious? Of these people, how many have had a religious experience? And of those, how many can say for certain that it came from the same entity that's mentioned in their scripture?
I do not deny that there are things beyond science, because that is the whole point of science -- to discover and understand what we don't understand already. (The point of technology is to realize and use the science we already have.) I'm also not a "hard atheist".
But I don't have blind faith in something merely because it's mentioned in a scroll from centuries ago. Too many people do have that faith, to the point where they will interpret the parts they like as being literally true.
I think I should end by pointing out that Einstein did not believe in Judaism, not the way I was taught. Check out his wikiquote page -- other than the "Einstein's God" part, look at the images on the right. Also check out Spinoza's page, particularly the beginning of "Overview of his philosophy".
There are some definitions of God that are inspiring, and also hold up very well to observation -- God existing as the natural world, as the Universe and its laws, does match our observations that the world tends to make sense, in almost an intelligent sort of way -- that there is, then, some intelligence behind things -- although I could argue that we could very well be seeing our own intelligence reflected; humans can and do see patterns and intelligence in complete randomness, to where the iPod and iTunes have been made less random in an effort to seem more random.
But it's a longer discussion, and it makes a lot more sense than talk of silly things like "Believe in Christ or you go to Hell."
And then there are the ludicrous definitions of mainstream religion, that don't work at all. Spinoza's God is not omnibenevolent, merely omniscient and omnipresent.
According to Wikipedia, Newton's Law is listed under Laws, and is an equation, which would tend to make it a theory. I really don't see the distinction you're drawing here.
I'm going to have to go with Stephen Hawking, and not you:
"any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis; you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single repeatable observation which disagrees with the predictions of the theory".
Why does this not apply to a "law"? Why would it bother you if it does?
You know, all those things that atheists claim are arbitrary, human constructs that don't really exist.
But we admit it. We then have to justify our arbitrary, human concepts to each other with more than just "God says so" or "The Bible says so."
So, yes, an atheistic universe is necessarily devoid of purpose, meaning and similar fantastical human constructs.
Which does not mean a human being has to be devoid of these properties.
Consider love. An atheist might describe love as just a bunch of chemicals interacting, but we can still enjoy it. Nothing is inherently beautiful, it's in the "eye" of the beholder, but there is still wonder to be experienced, even if they are human constructs. That we exist is fascinating in itself.
I was under the impression that there were other ideas around, like that a universe may have existed before, experienced a "big crunch" and then another big bang?
Or that, in any case, one could certainly argue that something caused the Big Bang, and that thing may have its own cause, and so on.
Erlang has had modules (namespaces) forever. What are you talking about?
Atoms. They're used for some things I might use constants for in another language, I think. I'll have to get back to you with some code examples.
Check out the HIPE project for a JIT.
HIPE is sort of what I was looking for -- I remember BEAM being bad. But I still don't see whether I can dynamically reload HIPE the way I can dynamically reload straight-interpreted stuff.
As for performance, well, it'll at least thread, without you having to think about it, and as I understand it, they are real threads, which is a big win over Python, for example. But that's what I'm holding out for, is a high-level language with good performance that at least approaches C.
At least this starts open. Also, if Moonlight ends up being better than Silverlight for some things, it could get to be like Firefox/IE was -- that is, Firefox became just popular enough that websites started targeting both, even if they realized their audience was mostly IE-only. Microsoft finally had to give up deliberately making IE break standards, and is actually trying to improve the situation now, because they're tired of being hated by web developers.
In any case, I'd much rather have just the update not work for some short amount of time than have everything broken everywhere.
No amount of science makes your beliefs better than another person's in regards to God, its just FAITH in a different set of people.
Actually, science doesn't require faith in people, just in evidence. And yes, I realize that's faith, too. Even your eyes can be deceiving you.
why are my personal experiences not relevant simply because you haven't experienced them?
Precisely because I haven't. They are relevant to you, not to me. That's not better or worse, it just is.
I think you think that your intelligence is YOUR opiate and makes you feel better: that way you don't have to confront the fact that religious people may be right...
Well, you're certainly wrong right here, right now, for a number of reasons. I was just fucking quoting Karl Marx. Oh, and I also said:
"making you feel good inside" isn't enough to make faith a good thing, unless you also wish to declare heroin a good thing.
That analogy also isn't enough to make faith a bad thing. It might be good, it might be bad. But if you wish to justify it as a good thing, you're going to have to do better than the strawman post you just made.
What's missing from Erlang...
on
Programming Erlang
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Last I checked, there was an implementation issue and a design issue.
The design issue, for me, was a lack of namespaces. I think it might have been that I can't have an atom with a namespace, beyond prefixing, which is a hack for languages that don't support namespaces.
The implementation issue was that you had to choose between performance and being able to reload functions later. I would very much like it to be able to JIT or even compile down to binary (x86_64 too, pretty please?), then be able to just leave it running, and have it reload functions as needed.
I'll have to think of what else I didn't like, but I don't think there was much, aside from some odd syntax. I don't actually have a problem with the somewhat functional nature of it, just certain syntax that looks ugly, but that's a matter of opinion, and something I can live with.
God most certainly can exist, right along with science. There is no reason it cannot.
Alright, lemme give you the omniscient/omnipotent/omnibenevolent argument.
If God is omnibenevolent, that means He's infinitely good. I'm assuming that means he would create as much good as he possibly can, and not allow evil.
If he's omnipotent, that means he can do anything, including create an entirely good world.
If he's omniscient, that means there's no chance he doesn't know about the evil in the world.
Premise: Evil exists.
Thus, God cannot exist, or cannot be all of those properties. One has to give. Either he doesn't really know what's going on (not omniscient), or doesn't care (not omnibenevolent), or can't do anything about it (not omnipotent).
The only way out of this is to say that it's not really evil, or that some balance of good and evil is needed. I reject both of these -- the Holocaust caused a lot of atheists, because it really is pure, unadulterated evil. The idea of "balance" is well and good, and a Taoist might accept it, but then you don't get to call God "omnibenevolent" -- the best you could do is "omnibalanced" or "fair".
I think it's just important to be true to yourself. If you have to believe in a God who is benevolent and all-seeing and all-knowing, then why should I stop that? Why should anyone?
Replace "God who is..." with some completely weird notion like "UFOs", or something actually dangerous like "The West is the Great White Satan and must be killed."
I don't try to stop people from believing whatever they want to. However, when they preach to me, or when they try to involve themselves in a philosophical debate, I absolutely will attack their beliefs.
God, in concept, is just 'that which was and will always be' at it's core. It's easier to believe in one solid thing that is eternal (be there omnipresc---any of those silly omni words that are applied), rather than a whole universe of fluctuating energies that had a massive growth period and will eventually burn out...
No, it's not. Not really -- as you said, we have no concept of "eternity".
Time to bring out the big guns: You don't believe in God because it's "easier", or more likely, or more logical. You believe in God because you need there to be a father figure for the race. It's a psychological thing -- maybe your own father is actually dead, or maybe you've discovered that there are things he can't do -- your father is no longer the omni-everything force (the God force) in your life. (Very young children do tend to think of their parents as gods.)
It's childish. Grow up and take your own advice -- be true to yourself, not to some childish instinct you have for a God. Be willing to stand up and take responsibility for your own actions, not just "it's good because Jesus says so." Be willing to be the "God" force in your life.
Not all facts are mathematical in nature. "Facts" can refer to observations, as well.
In this case, the only true fact here is that you observed something.
Even observations that are not 100% repeatable or 100% accurate come within the realm of fact.
Even the ones that are, the only fact is that you observe something now, and/or you remember observing the same phenomenon before. Watch "Total Recall" if you haven't -- you can't even be sure your memory is your own. More extreme than the movie, you can't be sure moment to moment. The only fact that you can truly believe in with absolute certainty is that you are experiencing whatever you are experiencing right now.
Which comes down to little more than "I am aware, I think, and I am."
You are equating faith with inductive reasoning, but I don't think that equation stands.
Thanks for putting it so concisely.
Yes, I am basically saying that we do not have a logically sound reason for believing that inductive reasoning works. But, we do have faith that it does -- like I said before, we have faith that the universe is generally orderly and logical.
The reason there are what I'd call mathematical facts is that they require far fewer premises, always explicitly stated. Proper philosophical arguments are the same way. Only invalid arguments fail to acknowledge the premises, including the one that says that objects will fall when dropped. Basically, to say that objects will fall when dropped, you either have to call it a premise (and admit that you're assuming/believing it), or you use a "law" such as Newtonian or Relativistic Gravity as a premise, or you use inductive reasoning, your faith in your memory, and repeated observations as premises. Or you can go farther than that...
Of course, I do accept gravity, but only in the way that I accept the rest of reality -- I like dealing with our rational, "real" world.
You seem to be using "Man is created in his image" as the basis for your definition of God. In which case, really, Adam, or any monkey, is a definition.
However, for quite awhile, there were the Chosen People of God, and to this day, many people believe they are the chosen ones. I can certainly see there being another sentient species, even a crablike one, and having that not affect that hypothesis at all -- Man was created in God's image, and Zoidberg was not.
For that matter, notice how so many Trek species are Humanoid? That would tend to support the idea, rather than detract from it. In fact, there is an episode of TNG which finally addresses this -- turns out there was one original species which planted their genes on all kinds of diverse planets in such a way that intelligent life would evolve, and would eventually look humanoid, but it would also look different for each one.
In any case, the "probability" of God existing varies drastically depending on which definition you use, generally between 0, 1, and 0.5 with an 0.5 margin of error. I may have gotten the terms wrong there, but what I mean to say is, unless you can easily prove that a particular definition is always true -- for example, if you define God as what created Jesus, that pretty much approaches 1, but you might have to then define God as Joseph, if it's ever possible to prove whether Mary was a virgin or not. If you define God as omniscient/omnibenevolent/omnipotent, and you accept that evil exists in the world, then you have to have a very strange definition of "good" for that to work -- that's assuming that omnipotence is possible, which in a sense, it's not, since no deity can make 2+2=5.
And in this case, how can both be right? It seems to me that existence and nonexistence are incompatible states. One of them has to be true, unless you use Obi-Wan's "in a way" kind of truth. "Well, God doesn't really exist, but I am your father, so I am God to you. Go to your room, young man."
Slashdot Mirror
You mean the ones we already have?
That might be why yours is slow -- WoW can, in fact, be configured to run in OpenGL mode, even the Windows version, meaning there's no translation to run.
If it'd been done right, maybe. It's possible they are running into problems supporting X, which is entirely different than the Mac GUI.
What's more, right now, they cooperate very nicely with the Wine people to make sure everything works, but they aren't required to actually support it. If they were to release a native Linux client, that means they actually have to give it the same level of support that they give Windows, which is more than just "churning out" a client.
I wouldn't mind a Linux port, but I don't think it would actually be much better than what we've got now.
You can still get tons of free mods for a computer game, some of which don't have an equivalent on a console. It's also possible to set up and maintain your own server for games like Counter-Strike, and mod the hell out of it -- again, not possible with a console.
And there are other things which can be done in Windows, which is why some people end up using it, even though for absolutely every purpose other than gaming, they would rather be using Linux.
Well, it's not a fact, to me. It is to you.
Right.
I live every day as a human, in the world most of us interact with. I don't ever stop to think "Gee, I better be careful, never know when gravity might not work." Or even to consider "Maybe I'm living in the Matrix?"
But, in a philosophical discussion, I absolutely will go back at least as far as Cogito Ergo Sum.
Again, I agree with you, except I would call them assumptions or beliefs, not facts.
Yet, it may be useful in a religious or philosophical debate, where all parties have already agreed to go beyond the strictly practical.
You also may have missed the point -- The Matrix is about how your current observations may be an illusion. Total Recall is about how your past observations may have been implanted, and thus, your memory may be an illusion.
The conclusion is that you can't even be sure of your own thoughts, except for the ones you're having right now, and understanding fully and simultaneously.
Your examples aren't entirely consistent with that definition, then. There are people you could loan money to and have a very high level of confidence that you'd get it back.
What you seem to be implying by "fact" is something that you not only have a good reason for believing is true, but you also have a good reason for believing it will always be true, under any circumstances, and that's mainly grounded in that you've never seen a contradictory observation, and neither has anyone else that you know -- well, anyone credible. (And of course, you define who's credible by who has observations that mostly match up with your own.)
And it is kind of an unstable "fact". What keeps it true are the same things that keep faith true -- your willingness to adapt the "fact", or whatever you believe in, to new observations. For example, not every arrow shot into the air will fall to earth -- some may go into orbit, or escape our gravity well altogether. Your natural reaction is to either attempt to more narrowly define an arrow, or the process of shooting it (You have to use a bow. Held by one person. And the arrow must be small, probably wooden.) or to adjust your "fact" to compensate (An arrow shot into the air at less than escape velocity will fall to the earth, even if we know not where.)
This process is exactly the same as the process by which people of faith adapt to new observations, when they are finally forced to. For example, when it was proved conclusively that the world was round, and done so repeatedly, to the point where the Church could no longer deny it, they replaced the model where God is always directly above us with one where the Earth is at the center of a number of glass spheres (containing the sun, stars, etc), and God is outside the whole contraption. Now, if you were to ask a clergy where God physically is, you might get a response that he's metaphysical -- that he doesn't physically exist any
And yes, I use wine every day. It works incredibly well for the applications I need it for.
Whoops. Should have hit preview.
Then why should I care about what Wikipedia says about anything?
Because I dispute the basic definitions, you assume I have no idea how it works?
I thought I'd made those reasons pretty clearly known.
You're correct. You criticize me for an argument from authority, and yet, when you use the same argument, I'm unreasonable to reject it?
You must be new here.
And now you've tried an ad hominim approach, and still haven't directly challenged (or, apparently, read) my argument. You'd rather just throw your own, unmodified argument at me, as if I hadn't said anything.
I don't know why I bother, since you'd clearly rather call me names (fucktard) than actually debate, but from your own wikipedia link, laws are:
Does that mean there can't ever be a contradicting observation? No, it just means we haven't seen one.
Allowing them to be observations directly contradicts:
Gravitation, for example, is not omnipotent. It is, if I remember, actually incompatible with quantum physics. It also must be modified to allow for things like the path of mercury; the Theory of General Relativity certainly contradicts Newton's original Law of Universal Gravitation.
Accepted theories, then, are at least more accurate than laws, and often to clearly express a law, you come up with an equation which may as well be a theory. I can understand why scientists like to try and keep a distinction here, but it does not hold for even basic Hollywood-inspired philosophy.
Well, it might not be problematic at all. I could just be making the whole thing up -- it could be kind of like when a Java programmer criticizes JavaScript for not having interfaces and abstract clasess -- not menaningful for dynamic types.
Ahem.
For some things I might use constants for. For example, for passing in flags to functions.
By all means, but in.
But, could you please explain what's different and special about Scheme? At first glance, it looks like yet another Lisp dialect.
Maybe after you read the fucking quote.
Using a quote and not rewording it myself doesn't constitute an argument from authority.
I'm still not seeing what makes a "fact" different than a "theory" except that people dispute theories, but not so much facts. Which is an argument from authority.
In fact, I'll go right ahead and dispute the page you linked to:
No, "gravity" has not been observed. There are a really fucking large number of observations of things falling that would tend to support the "fact" of Gravity, but we made up the connection between an apple falling, a branch falling, a person falling, a scale being compressed, and so on.
And I would call that connection a "theory", as it's supported by observation, and not an observation itself. It's every bit as imaginary as our classifications of species.
I don't think it will. And wasn't Hitler Christian?
I do think that organized religion is far more harmful than organized science. Worse if you combine the two. I also find that science tends to be far less dogmatic than religion.
You're right, in a sense, that we have every bit as much fundamental evidence, looking at, say, the Sun, to say that it's the eye of God, than we do to say it's a giant controlled nuclear reaction. The difference is that a scientist is looking for a reason why, and looks out in the world around him. Where do you turn to if you want to approach this from a religious point of view?
You turn to scripture and maybe intuition. Scripture is pure dogma, and intuition is a guess, one that should give you direction on where to look for your evidence.
You know what I see when I look beyond logic?
I see beauty.
I see color and sound, anger, love, and all kinds of things for which there is no logical cause or process.
I do not see a mythical sky-god.
All the experiences I've outlined are very real to me. No god is. How many people are religious? Of these people, how many have had a religious experience? And of those, how many can say for certain that it came from the same entity that's mentioned in their scripture?
I do not deny that there are things beyond science, because that is the whole point of science -- to discover and understand what we don't understand already. (The point of technology is to realize and use the science we already have.) I'm also not a "hard atheist".
But I don't have blind faith in something merely because it's mentioned in a scroll from centuries ago. Too many people do have that faith, to the point where they will interpret the parts they like as being literally true.
I think I should end by pointing out that Einstein did not believe in Judaism, not the way I was taught. Check out his wikiquote page -- other than the "Einstein's God" part, look at the images on the right. Also check out Spinoza's page, particularly the beginning of "Overview of his philosophy".
There are some definitions of God that are inspiring, and also hold up very well to observation -- God existing as the natural world, as the Universe and its laws, does match our observations that the world tends to make sense, in almost an intelligent sort of way -- that there is, then, some intelligence behind things -- although I could argue that we could very well be seeing our own intelligence reflected; humans can and do see patterns and intelligence in complete randomness, to where the iPod and iTunes have been made less random in an effort to seem more random.
But it's a longer discussion, and it makes a lot more sense than talk of silly things like "Believe in Christ or you go to Hell."
And then there are the ludicrous definitions of mainstream religion, that don't work at all. Spinoza's God is not omnibenevolent, merely omniscient and omnipresent.
I'll have to check it out again.
What are the options for compilation? Anything beyond simply distributing source code?
According to Wikipedia, Newton's Law is listed under Laws, and is an equation, which would tend to make it a theory. I really don't see the distinction you're drawing here.
I'm going to have to go with Stephen Hawking, and not you:
Why does this not apply to a "law"? Why would it bother you if it does?
But we admit it. We then have to justify our arbitrary, human concepts to each other with more than just "God says so" or "The Bible says so."
Which does not mean a human being has to be devoid of these properties.
Consider love. An atheist might describe love as just a bunch of chemicals interacting, but we can still enjoy it. Nothing is inherently beautiful, it's in the "eye" of the beholder, but there is still wonder to be experienced, even if they are human constructs. That we exist is fascinating in itself.
None of these require any particular "faith".
I was under the impression that there were other ideas around, like that a universe may have existed before, experienced a "big crunch" and then another big bang?
Or that, in any case, one could certainly argue that something caused the Big Bang, and that thing may have its own cause, and so on.
STFW is generally acceptable when it's the first result to a very obvious Google search.
Atoms. They're used for some things I might use constants for in another language, I think. I'll have to get back to you with some code examples.
HIPE is sort of what I was looking for -- I remember BEAM being bad. But I still don't see whether I can dynamically reload HIPE the way I can dynamically reload straight-interpreted stuff.
As for performance, well, it'll at least thread, without you having to think about it, and as I understand it, they are real threads, which is a big win over Python, for example. But that's what I'm holding out for, is a high-level language with good performance that at least approaches C.
Just look at Gnash...
At least this starts open. Also, if Moonlight ends up being better than Silverlight for some things, it could get to be like Firefox/IE was -- that is, Firefox became just popular enough that websites started targeting both, even if they realized their audience was mostly IE-only. Microsoft finally had to give up deliberately making IE break standards, and is actually trying to improve the situation now, because they're tired of being hated by web developers.
In any case, I'd much rather have just the update not work for some short amount of time than have everything broken everywhere.
Actually, science doesn't require faith in people, just in evidence. And yes, I realize that's faith, too. Even your eyes can be deceiving you.
Precisely because I haven't. They are relevant to you, not to me. That's not better or worse, it just is.
Well, you're certainly wrong right here, right now, for a number of reasons. I was just fucking quoting Karl Marx. Oh, and I also said:
That analogy also isn't enough to make faith a bad thing. It might be good, it might be bad. But if you wish to justify it as a good thing, you're going to have to do better than the strawman post you just made.
Last I checked, there was an implementation issue and a design issue.
The design issue, for me, was a lack of namespaces. I think it might have been that I can't have an atom with a namespace, beyond prefixing, which is a hack for languages that don't support namespaces.
The implementation issue was that you had to choose between performance and being able to reload functions later. I would very much like it to be able to JIT or even compile down to binary (x86_64 too, pretty please?), then be able to just leave it running, and have it reload functions as needed.
I'll have to think of what else I didn't like, but I don't think there was much, aside from some odd syntax. I don't actually have a problem with the somewhat functional nature of it, just certain syntax that looks ugly, but that's a matter of opinion, and something I can live with.
Alright, lemme give you the omniscient/omnipotent/omnibenevolent argument.
If God is omnibenevolent, that means He's infinitely good. I'm assuming that means he would create as much good as he possibly can, and not allow evil.
If he's omnipotent, that means he can do anything, including create an entirely good world.
If he's omniscient, that means there's no chance he doesn't know about the evil in the world.
Premise: Evil exists.
Thus, God cannot exist, or cannot be all of those properties. One has to give. Either he doesn't really know what's going on (not omniscient), or doesn't care (not omnibenevolent), or can't do anything about it (not omnipotent).
The only way out of this is to say that it's not really evil, or that some balance of good and evil is needed. I reject both of these -- the Holocaust caused a lot of atheists, because it really is pure, unadulterated evil. The idea of "balance" is well and good, and a Taoist might accept it, but then you don't get to call God "omnibenevolent" -- the best you could do is "omnibalanced" or "fair".
Replace "God who is..." with some completely weird notion like "UFOs", or something actually dangerous like "The West is the Great White Satan and must be killed."
I don't try to stop people from believing whatever they want to. However, when they preach to me, or when they try to involve themselves in a philosophical debate, I absolutely will attack their beliefs.
No, it's not. Not really -- as you said, we have no concept of "eternity".
Time to bring out the big guns: You don't believe in God because it's "easier", or more likely, or more logical. You believe in God because you need there to be a father figure for the race. It's a psychological thing -- maybe your own father is actually dead, or maybe you've discovered that there are things he can't do -- your father is no longer the omni-everything force (the God force) in your life. (Very young children do tend to think of their parents as gods.)
It's childish. Grow up and take your own advice -- be true to yourself, not to some childish instinct you have for a God. Be willing to stand up and take responsibility for your own actions, not just "it's good because Jesus says so." Be willing to be the "God" force in your life.
In this case, the only true fact here is that you observed something.
Even the ones that are, the only fact is that you observe something now, and/or you remember observing the same phenomenon before. Watch "Total Recall" if you haven't -- you can't even be sure your memory is your own. More extreme than the movie, you can't be sure moment to moment. The only fact that you can truly believe in with absolute certainty is that you are experiencing whatever you are experiencing right now.
Which comes down to little more than "I am aware, I think, and I am."
Thanks for putting it so concisely.
Yes, I am basically saying that we do not have a logically sound reason for believing that inductive reasoning works. But, we do have faith that it does -- like I said before, we have faith that the universe is generally orderly and logical.
The reason there are what I'd call mathematical facts is that they require far fewer premises, always explicitly stated. Proper philosophical arguments are the same way. Only invalid arguments fail to acknowledge the premises, including the one that says that objects will fall when dropped. Basically, to say that objects will fall when dropped, you either have to call it a premise (and admit that you're assuming/believing it), or you use a "law" such as Newtonian or Relativistic Gravity as a premise, or you use inductive reasoning, your faith in your memory, and repeated observations as premises. Or you can go farther than that...
Of course, I do accept gravity, but only in the way that I accept the rest of reality -- I like dealing with our rational, "real" world.
We're still "just trying to get by." We always will be too busy.
You never have time unless you take time.
You seem to be using "Man is created in his image" as the basis for your definition of God. In which case, really, Adam, or any monkey, is a definition.
However, for quite awhile, there were the Chosen People of God, and to this day, many people believe they are the chosen ones. I can certainly see there being another sentient species, even a crablike one, and having that not affect that hypothesis at all -- Man was created in God's image, and Zoidberg was not.
For that matter, notice how so many Trek species are Humanoid? That would tend to support the idea, rather than detract from it. In fact, there is an episode of TNG which finally addresses this -- turns out there was one original species which planted their genes on all kinds of diverse planets in such a way that intelligent life would evolve, and would eventually look humanoid, but it would also look different for each one.
In any case, the "probability" of God existing varies drastically depending on which definition you use, generally between 0, 1, and 0.5 with an 0.5 margin of error. I may have gotten the terms wrong there, but what I mean to say is, unless you can easily prove that a particular definition is always true -- for example, if you define God as what created Jesus, that pretty much approaches 1, but you might have to then define God as Joseph, if it's ever possible to prove whether Mary was a virgin or not. If you define God as omniscient/omnibenevolent/omnipotent, and you accept that evil exists in the world, then you have to have a very strange definition of "good" for that to work -- that's assuming that omnipotence is possible, which in a sense, it's not, since no deity can make 2+2=5.
And in this case, how can both be right? It seems to me that existence and nonexistence are incompatible states. One of them has to be true, unless you use Obi-Wan's "in a way" kind of truth. "Well, God doesn't really exist, but I am your father, so I am God to you. Go to your room, young man."