Right on man. If he had lampooned Clinton for screwing up the war in Iraq, having a low approval rating, or generally being incompetent, no one would have found it funny. It's such a total double standard that it doesn't apply the other way around.
If Clinton was in the same situation as Bush I think the press would be pretty harsh on him. We are talking about a President that was impeached because he lied about getting a blowjob. Also people make jokes about Clinton to this day, until Bush he was the most lampooned President. However if he had made the same mistakes as Bush he would have been impeached and convicted, I am pretty sure of that.
Yeah, but note that the OP said "intellectually curious", not "intelligent". The two are unrelated (and orthogonal) properties.
That's not true. All intelligent people are intellectually curious and I would argue all people who are intellectually curious are also intelligent.
Of course there are varying degrees of intelligence and some will understand more than others. However someone who is stimulated by intellectual pursuits will be more adept than someone who is not.
Compare it to athletics. Someone who is athletic will have some skill in athleticism. They might not be an athlete but they can still be athletic. As someone who is intelligent does not have to be specifically a genius.
You can find a lot of people whose curiosity leads them into astrology or religion or a thousand other things that intelligence would lead them to sniff at, discard, then continue looking for something more worthwhile.
Well there are tons of intelligent people who believe in God but that's a separate matter. People forget that thinking is a skill. Yes, some of us are born with a higher talent for certain kinds of thinking but without rigor and training our thinking becomes soft. It's important that people are given certain critical thinking skills. To be able to analyze ideas in depth. You give someone who finds ideas stimulating a little spark and a simple yet critical set of tools. You'd be surprised with the results.
Actually this system is designed for warfare in the field and not in urban combat. I suspect the effective range from the source of the RPG is 50 meters or so.
Defense Update understands that Trophy is design to form a "beam" of fragments, which will intercept any incoming HEAT threat, including RPG rockets at a range of 10 - 30 meters from the protected platform.
I assume this means the effective range of the interceptor projectile(s).
If you launch a RPG which has a velocity of 210m/s at 15m that gives you 71ms before the RPG hits the target. But that gives the device 24 ms before the RPG has surpassed the minimum range of 10m. I have my doubts that the device can calculate the appropriate trajectory and shoot the interceptor projectile(s) in that time.
15 meters is around 50 feet, which isn't that far away but it's not that close either. That's about 3 Humvee lengths.
Well Computer Science was first a subset of Mathematics until CS became it's own branch. The first computer scientists were really mathematicians, such as Turing and von Neumann. Also Knuth has a PhD in Mathematics. Computer science in recent times, especially programming, has abstracted a lot of the math away. However math is still very fundamental to Computer Sciences.
Predicting an unknown like the mass of a particle or the location of fossil remains is different that predicting a future event like a solar eclipse. Evolution does not have an analogous prediction. (You could say they predicted that they would find fossil remains which is a future event. But that is metatheoretical)
All I was doing was making a logical clarification. I never said evolution was not a theory or was not science. I just wanted to contribute to the conversation and maybe get some insightful and informative counterpoints. Thats what a dialogue is supposed to be. An exchange of views and information.
Sorry but it's becoming harder and harder to have a serious conversation about certain topics on Slashdot, especially Evolution.
Let me preface that I'm not a creationist nor do I believe in ID.
The thing that bothers me about your post is you do not attempt to answer his questions but you attack him for asking such questions. First off good science is done not by trying to always prove a theory but by trying to disprove it. Much like a good programmer will always look for bugs and do unit testing.
Your post reminds me of the arrogant programmer who will quickly dismiss a bug report. And not because the bug report is bad but the programmer has an emotional attachment to his project. Instead of thinking objectively this programmer will attack the bug reporter for being misinformed.
There is nothing wrong with actually answering someone's question without demeaning the question and the person. Also being critical of a scientific theory will only make the theory stronger and more complete.
Well it depends if we are talking about freshwater or saltwater. I only do freshwater fishing and fried bass doesn't appeal to me. Of course freshwater trout is nice but the area which I live has very little trout fishing. Also I like to keep my fishing holes well stocked and not overfished which does suck.
I'm not sure if you are arguing against me or someone else.
1. I never said evolution was not a science because it could not predict future events.
2. I never said evolution was lesser of a theory than physics. Physics is able to explain more within its domain but that does not make physics a better theory.
Also I said the reasons evolution is unable to explain future events is two things; evolution is incomplete as a theory and the computational complexity of evolution as a theory might make such predictions impossible.
Well if that was the case then this kind of evolution would be more frequent. But it only happened a few times in history. Btw I always catch and release.
I was simply stating that evolution as compared to physics are two different kinds of theories. To say evolution has the same explanatory and predictive power as physics would be a false statement. Also the study you cited was not very convincing in showing evolution has a similar predictive power as compared to physics. The blog author was very enthusiastic but the authors of the study were much more reserved. However the conclusions cover things that already have happened or are happening and do not predict any future events.
There is a huge difference between the kinds of predictions evolution makes and kinds of predictions physics and chemistry make.
Physics is able to predict the future outcome of an experiment. Evolution is only able to predict the past. Evolution in essence is only able to describe a history. In that sense evolution does not predict anything but explains an event. This may be because evolution is incomplete or evolution as a theory has a large computational complexity. Most likely both.
Assume this animal uses oxygen as an energy source for chemical reactions. Traditionally it retrieved oxygen through the water. Yet after some time its lungs grew the capacity to retrieve oxygen through the air. It would seem that there would have to be some sort of informational exchange in order to determine air was a candidate source for oxygen. How did this happen?
The ancestors of this animal most likely lived in shallow water and perhaps came into contact with air all the time. It might have been able to jump out of the water for a very short period of time. Yet in order to evolve lungs that could take advantage of oxygen in the atmosphere there must have been some informational exchange.
I think some will argue that there doesn't have to be any information involved because random genetic change and natural selection will over time evolve a lung that can retrieve oxygen through the air. The major presupposition is that the genetic code that allows for breathing on land is implicit in genetic change. The group of possible genetic alterations included at least one genetic sequence which would result in land breathing capabilities.
If genetic change is truly random then it could have possibly happened somewhere that was not close to land. Therefore such a change would have not been selected. Then either the space of possible genetic changes is rather small (unlikely) or there is an informational element to evolution.
You don't get it. The OSS philosophy is the product. The various OSS projects like Linux, gcc, etc are direct results of this philosophy. The philosophy itself leads to success.
If you try to sell the projects first without the philosophy, business will think they are two different things. They will try to seperate the philosophy(what they don't like) from the project(what they like). Then you will have removed the very thing that made the project a success in the first place. No we should sell the philosophy first, because without it in essence what is the difference between open-source and proprietary software?
a quantitative reduction in the level of risk and a simultaneous change in the quantitative level of justification
That's the flaw in your reasoning right there. You assume there is a "quantitative level of justification" when there is not. What you consider to be just in one case could be considered unjust by someone else. How do you determine who is right? You can't. Justice is a qualitative term.
The problem isn't with the original statement, it's with the kind of logic you're applying to transform it into other statements.
His logic is perfectly fine. All those statements are perfectly sound and logical. The problem is you think "justice" can be quantified so you find fault in those statements because your spectrum of "justice" does not match his. Sure if you assume your spectrum of "justice" to be true his statements appear silly, but that does not change their logical satisfiability.
The Sopranos were just citing the old study... the new study came out like a week ago.
Did you notice though that the evangelical was willing to cite a scientific study that backed his beliefs but quickly dismissed science that went against it (Evolution).
Sorry sir but there is no place for meta-commentary on Slashdot. I suggest you take your pseudo-intellectualism and go here
Re:I'm a geek, so I watched this twice last night.
on
Inside DARPA's Robot Race
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The Red team (CMU) basically preprogrammed their robots before the race by looking at satellite maps of the race course. I thought in essence this was cheating but I suppose it was not against the rules. The Blue Team (Stanford) had a better software solution where their robot would essentialy drive and learn on the fly. I'm glad to see Stanley won because this is the technology needed for automated driving, imagine using the Red team's solution and have to preprogram you car? What's the point?
People should be free to do whatever they want, provided that what they do doesn't (a) impinge on the freedoms of others and/or (b) harm others.
While I certainly agree with this statement, my argument was that moral propositions are different than say scientific or mathematical statements. Moral propositions do not have the same truth-values in all possible semantics. Because of this moral absolutism is false.
The only way to counter this is to say the truth-value of these propositions is inaccessible but knowable. Which is essentially invoking a God or God-like being. Even though it might not be explicity stated these arguments reduce down to that.
How do you determine the moral weight of a culture? If you examine moral propositions and statements in depth, you quickly come to the conclusion that they are solely relative in nature. There is no particle called the "moralton" that you can detect and determine the frequency of morality. There is no science of morality. To attribute moral qualities to any object is based on belief that is not founded in "physical" reality.
The only way to claim moral absolutism is to invoke God. That there is a metaphysical essence to moral propositions which are true by nature. They are true because God says so. But then of course cultures have their own Gods, so which God is right?
This isn't an argument for moral relativism but an argument against moral absolutism. As a human being I want my fellow human beings to be judged and treated fairly. I will not claim to be superior or for others to be inferior in some supernatural attribute. This in essence separates me from my fellow human beings when in reality there is little difference amongst us.
Slashdot Mirror
Right on man. If he had lampooned Clinton for screwing up the war in Iraq, having a low approval rating, or generally being incompetent, no one would have found it funny. It's such a total double standard that it doesn't apply the other way around.
If Clinton was in the same situation as Bush I think the press would be pretty harsh on him. We are talking about a President that was impeached because he lied about getting a blowjob. Also people make jokes about Clinton to this day, until Bush he was the most lampooned President. However if he had made the same mistakes as Bush he would have been impeached and convicted, I am pretty sure of that.
Stephen was on 60 Minutes this Sunday. Link to video. And the CBS text.
We aren't there yet. Hold your representatives accountable. If they are not doing their job find someone else. 1984 will only come when we allow it.
Yeah, but note that the OP said "intellectually curious", not "intelligent". The two are unrelated (and orthogonal) properties.
That's not true. All intelligent people are intellectually curious and I would argue all people who are intellectually curious are also intelligent.
Of course there are varying degrees of intelligence and some will understand more than others. However someone who is stimulated by intellectual pursuits will be more adept than someone who is not.
Compare it to athletics. Someone who is athletic will have some skill in athleticism. They might not be an athlete but they can still be athletic. As someone who is intelligent does not have to be specifically a genius.
You can find a lot of people whose curiosity leads them into astrology or religion or a thousand other things that intelligence would lead them to sniff at, discard, then continue looking for something more worthwhile.
Well there are tons of intelligent people who believe in God but that's a separate matter. People forget that thinking is a skill. Yes, some of us are born with a higher talent for certain kinds of thinking but without rigor and training our thinking becomes soft. It's important that people are given certain critical thinking skills. To be able to analyze ideas in depth. You give someone who finds ideas stimulating a little spark and a simple yet critical set of tools. You'd be surprised with the results.
Check out Lost Magic. Comes out next week.
Actually this system is designed for warfare in the field and not in urban combat. I suspect the effective range from the source of the RPG is 50 meters or so.
Defense Update understands that Trophy is design to form a "beam" of fragments, which will intercept any incoming HEAT threat, including RPG rockets at a range of 10 - 30 meters from the protected platform.
I assume this means the effective range of the interceptor projectile(s).
If you launch a RPG which has a velocity of 210m/s at 15m that gives you 71ms before the RPG hits the target. But that gives the device 24 ms before the RPG has surpassed the minimum range of 10m. I have my doubts that the device can calculate the appropriate trajectory and shoot the interceptor projectile(s) in that time.
15 meters is around 50 feet, which isn't that far away but it's not that close either. That's about 3 Humvee lengths.
Well Computer Science was first a subset of Mathematics until CS became it's own branch. The first computer scientists were really mathematicians, such as Turing and von Neumann. Also Knuth has a PhD in Mathematics. Computer science in recent times, especially programming, has abstracted a lot of the math away. However math is still very fundamental to Computer Sciences.
Predicting an unknown like the mass of a particle or the location of fossil remains is different that predicting a future event like a solar eclipse. Evolution does not have an analogous prediction. (You could say they predicted that they would find fossil remains which is a future event. But that is metatheoretical)
All I was doing was making a logical clarification. I never said evolution was not a theory or was not science. I just wanted to contribute to the conversation and maybe get some insightful and informative counterpoints. Thats what a dialogue is supposed to be. An exchange of views and information.
Sorry but it's becoming harder and harder to have a serious conversation about certain topics on Slashdot, especially Evolution.
Let me preface that I'm not a creationist nor do I believe in ID.
The thing that bothers me about your post is you do not attempt to answer his questions but you attack him for asking such questions. First off good science is done not by trying to always prove a theory but by trying to disprove it. Much like a good programmer will always look for bugs and do unit testing.
Your post reminds me of the arrogant programmer who will quickly dismiss a bug report. And not because the bug report is bad but the programmer has an emotional attachment to his project. Instead of thinking objectively this programmer will attack the bug reporter for being misinformed.
There is nothing wrong with actually answering someone's question without demeaning the question and the person. Also being critical of a scientific theory will only make the theory stronger and more complete.
Well it depends if we are talking about freshwater or saltwater. I only do freshwater fishing and fried bass doesn't appeal to me. Of course freshwater trout is nice but the area which I live has very little trout fishing. Also I like to keep my fishing holes well stocked and not overfished which does suck.
I'm not sure if you are arguing against me or someone else.
1. I never said evolution was not a science because it could not predict future events.
2. I never said evolution was lesser of a theory than physics. Physics is able to explain more within its domain but that does not make physics a better theory.
Also I said the reasons evolution is unable to explain future events is two things; evolution is incomplete as a theory and the computational complexity of evolution as a theory might make such predictions impossible.
see group
Well if that was the case then this kind of evolution would be more frequent. But it only happened a few times in history. Btw I always catch and release.
I was simply stating that evolution as compared to physics are two different kinds of theories. To say evolution has the same explanatory and predictive power as physics would be a false statement. Also the study you cited was not very convincing in showing evolution has a similar predictive power as compared to physics. The blog author was very enthusiastic but the authors of the study were much more reserved. However the conclusions cover things that already have happened or are happening and do not predict any future events.
Also I am not a creationist.
There is a huge difference between the kinds of predictions evolution makes and kinds of predictions physics and chemistry make.
Physics is able to predict the future outcome of an experiment. Evolution is only able to predict the past. Evolution in essence is only able to describe a history. In that sense evolution does not predict anything but explains an event. This may be because evolution is incomplete or evolution as a theory has a large computational complexity. Most likely both.
Assume this animal uses oxygen as an energy source for chemical reactions. Traditionally it retrieved oxygen through the water. Yet after some time its lungs grew the capacity to retrieve oxygen through the air. It would seem that there would have to be some sort of informational exchange in order to determine air was a candidate source for oxygen. How did this happen?
The ancestors of this animal most likely lived in shallow water and perhaps came into contact with air all the time. It might have been able to jump out of the water for a very short period of time. Yet in order to evolve lungs that could take advantage of oxygen in the atmosphere there must have been some informational exchange.
I think some will argue that there doesn't have to be any information involved because random genetic change and natural selection will over time evolve a lung that can retrieve oxygen through the air. The major presupposition is that the genetic code that allows for breathing on land is implicit in genetic change. The group of possible genetic alterations included at least one genetic sequence which would result in land breathing capabilities.
If genetic change is truly random then it could have possibly happened somewhere that was not close to land. Therefore such a change would have not been selected. Then either the space of possible genetic changes is rather small (unlikely) or there is an informational element to evolution.
I'd have to agree that DRM laden hardware is very this century.
You don't get it. The OSS philosophy is the product. The various OSS projects like Linux, gcc, etc are direct results of this philosophy. The philosophy itself leads to success.
If you try to sell the projects first without the philosophy, business will think they are two different things. They will try to seperate the philosophy(what they don't like) from the project(what they like). Then you will have removed the very thing that made the project a success in the first place. No we should sell the philosophy first, because without it in essence what is the difference between open-source and proprietary software?
a quantitative reduction in the level of risk and a simultaneous change in the quantitative level of justification
That's the flaw in your reasoning right there. You assume there is a "quantitative level of justification" when there is not. What you consider to be just in one case could be considered unjust by someone else. How do you determine who is right? You can't. Justice is a qualitative term.
The problem isn't with the original statement, it's with the kind of logic you're applying to transform it into other statements.
His logic is perfectly fine. All those statements are perfectly sound and logical. The problem is you think "justice" can be quantified so you find fault in those statements because your spectrum of "justice" does not match his. Sure if you assume your spectrum of "justice" to be true his statements appear silly, but that does not change their logical satisfiability.
The Sopranos were just citing the old study... the new study came out like a week ago.
Did you notice though that the evangelical was willing to cite a scientific study that backed his beliefs but quickly dismissed science that went against it (Evolution).
Sorry sir but there is no place for meta-commentary on Slashdot. I suggest you take your pseudo-intellectualism and go here
The Red team (CMU) basically preprogrammed their robots before the race by looking at satellite maps of the race course. I thought in essence this was cheating but I suppose it was not against the rules. The Blue Team (Stanford) had a better software solution where their robot would essentialy drive and learn on the fly. I'm glad to see Stanley won because this is the technology needed for automated driving, imagine using the Red team's solution and have to preprogram you car? What's the point?
People should be free to do whatever they want, provided that what they do doesn't (a) impinge on the freedoms of others and/or (b) harm others.
While I certainly agree with this statement, my argument was that moral propositions are different than say scientific or mathematical statements. Moral propositions do not have the same truth-values in all possible semantics. Because of this moral absolutism is false.
The only way to counter this is to say the truth-value of these propositions is inaccessible but knowable. Which is essentially invoking a God or God-like being. Even though it might not be explicity stated these arguments reduce down to that.
Do you mean Kant's categorical imperative? Maybe you should take Moral Philosophy 201, where they start with Nietzsche.
Not all cultures are morally equivalent.
How do you determine the moral weight of a culture? If you examine moral propositions and statements in depth, you quickly come to the conclusion that they are solely relative in nature. There is no particle called the "moralton" that you can detect and determine the frequency of morality. There is no science of morality. To attribute moral qualities to any object is based on belief that is not founded in "physical" reality.
The only way to claim moral absolutism is to invoke God. That there is a metaphysical essence to moral propositions which are true by nature. They are true because God says so. But then of course cultures have their own Gods, so which God is right?
This isn't an argument for moral relativism but an argument against moral absolutism. As a human being I want my fellow human beings to be judged and treated fairly. I will not claim to be superior or for others to be inferior in some supernatural attribute. This in essence separates me from my fellow human beings when in reality there is little difference amongst us.