At least I contributed to the discussion instead of just telling someone that they're lame without adding any information on the subject.
You cannot contribute to the discussion if you do not know what a theory is. That may appear unfair to you, but that's how it is.
Your deep confusion about what a theory is, along with your confusion about the nature of scientific knowledge, has been explained away countless times. Go to the talkorigins.org archive, read the Wikipedia for pointers, go to your local library and read something on the epistemology of science, even spend some time searching here in past discussions where from time to time people are generous enough to provide amazingly good expositions of the point; use Google---alertly. Read Popper and those that came after him; read those that contradicted Popper; and those that contradicted them, too. Try Gould, who has some great essays on this particular point. &c. In a word, educate yourself on the matter in any of the miriad different ways accesible to you. Then try to contribute to the discussion, for then you will have something to contribute.
I do not have the energy to go about educating every confused person that comes my way.
I think the point on this discussion about mico vs macro evolution has been affirmed quite strongly. In regards to that context, I have yet to see evidence that proves that one species can be made from another. There is evidence to suggest that. At the same time animal breeders have found that you can only breed one species so far before a limit (to the desired change) is reached. Until we have evidence that does more than suggest, and actually does prove macro-evolution, it will still remain to be a fact.
What could possibly evidence do more than suggest?! Think about it.
This insistence of yours on proofs is another display of your ignorance of how the natural sciences work. You cannot prove anything. You cannot prove that the sun will rise tomorrow---not only you can't but neither can even the brightest and most genial physicists. I am quite sure, even assuming that you know absolutely nothing of celestial mechanics, that you will listen to the suggestion that the evidence screams at you and take for granted that the sun will rise tomorrow, though.
This bears being repeated: Go and educate yourself, and then---only then---try to contribute to the discussion.
Those 1000 pages do not prove anything from first principles. It is not a text book or anything like that: it is just a very, very long paper. You have to be an expert in the subject to be able to get past the first couple of pages of the introduction.
Funny how noone ever advocates that god wanted us to use those oversized, underutilized brains we have.
Indeed.
A quote I love is the following, from Jacques Hadamard's The mathematician's mind. The psychology of invention in the mathematical field (Princeton Science Library. Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ, 1996):
[...] Metschnikoff, who observes, at the end of his book on phagocytosis, that in the human species, the fight against microbes is the work not only of phagocytes, but also of the brain, by creating bacteriology.
You clearly have no understanding of what the word "theory" means in this context. This idea that "theories" eventually graduate and become "laws" that you clearly entertain makes it abundantly clear. As does your use of the word "truth".
Please: inform yourself before participating in a discussion: your ignorance of even the meanings attached to the words you are using and your ensuing performance in the debate does very little to support your point.
I do not pretend to read minds, but I am quite sure that what the poster to whom you are responding here actually meant to say is that the "fact" that the earth revolves around the sun is as much theory as evolution.
Bullshit. There are many physiological structures that biology can't adequately explain, and there's a lot of handwaving to justify creatures that as far as we know are ill adapted to their environments.
Handwaving is never good, surely. But the fact that there are things that a theory cannot explain is not a great argument for rejecting a theory. It is a motivation to better the theory.
On the other hand, Relativity is much more precisely formulated and narrower in scope, making it easily testable and refutable.
The difficulty of testing and refuting a theory is not a variable one should take into account when judging the theory. It is essentially irrelevant.
Evolution on a macro level is untestable, meaning that one can only hypothesize about it.
You seem to use the verb "to test" in a rather naive way. "Testing macro evolution" does not necessarily mean "being able to reproduce it in a lab". A theory is tested by many things, like the way it fits with the evidence, the way in which it provides explanations of phenomena, the successfulness of the predictions it leads to. Evolution is very much testable!
In any case, there is nothing more than an hypothesis that evolution could possibly want to be! One that has resisted many independent tests, of different nature, and so on, but a hypothesis anyways.
It is not as if hypothesis ever graduate and get written in some sacred book where universally and ethernally valid knowledge is recorded.
I'm a person which requires rational and competent explanation for everything, but I still believe there is some supreme being out there... weather divine, or some alien who keeps the universe in his snowglobe is anyone's guess.
Well, in any case you seem not to be very demanding regarding the rationality and competency of the explanations you are willing to accept from yourself.
The problem with functional programming is that it's really only good for problems where you have a fixed set of input data and you aren't going to need any user input.
Huh? Where on earth do you get this impression from?
It's a perfect candidate for this sort of editing: a joyous, uplifting, inoffensive film given a US R rating because of a few seconds of incidental naughty bits.
Do you remember what the `naughty' bits were? I've seen the movie several times, and honestly I cannot attach that adjective to even a millisecond of that movie.
Shakespeare is in schools in editted forms. At my high school, we were shown the DeHaviland version of Romeo and Juliet with some scenes cut out by the teacher. She let us know what they were, but the school board felt we shouldn't see them. We could read it, but not see it. I'm not sure what the differnce was. We could picture it in our hears.
Yup. The fact that the US and China and Japon and many others are watching every single move the north koreans make in in the south direction has only a negligible effect on North Korea.
Don't you feel like contributing to world peace? Go make some landmines!
there's more than enough cycles and megabytes to spare for running a nice, friendly text editor with a *sane* set of keybindings
One of the key things about vi(m)'s keybindings and commands is that they are extremely concise. I defy you to come up with a sane UI which allows the user to say "capitalize all a's, z's and t's that start words but are not followed by a digit, in the following thirteen lines".
Please note that I am not saying that it is easy to learn how to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
You cannot contribute to the discussion if you do not know what a theory is. That may appear unfair to you, but that's how it is.
Your deep confusion about what a theory is, along with your confusion about the nature of scientific knowledge, has been explained away countless times. Go to the talkorigins.org archive, read the Wikipedia for pointers, go to your local library and read something on the epistemology of science, even spend some time searching here in past discussions where from time to time people are generous enough to provide amazingly good expositions of the point; use Google---alertly. Read Popper and those that came after him; read those that contradicted Popper; and those that contradicted them, too. Try Gould, who has some great essays on this particular point. &c. In a word, educate yourself on the matter in any of the miriad different ways accesible to you. Then try to contribute to the discussion, for then you will have something to contribute.
I do not have the energy to go about educating every confused person that comes my way.
What could possibly evidence do more than suggest?! Think about it.
This insistence of yours on proofs is another display of your ignorance of how the natural sciences work. You cannot prove anything. You cannot prove that the sun will rise tomorrow---not only you can't but neither can even the brightest and most genial physicists. I am quite sure, even assuming that you know absolutely nothing of celestial mechanics, that you will listen to the suggestion that the evidence screams at you and take for granted that the sun will rise tomorrow, though.
This bears being repeated: Go and educate yourself, and then---only then---try to contribute to the discussion.
Those 1000 pages do not prove anything from first principles. It is not a text book or anything like that: it is just a very, very long paper. You have to be an expert in the subject to be able to get past the first couple of pages of the introduction.
Indeed.
A quote I love is the following, from Jacques Hadamard's The mathematician's mind. The psychology of invention in the mathematical field (Princeton Science Library. Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ, 1996):
You clearly have no understanding of what the word "theory" means in this context. This idea that "theories" eventually graduate and become "laws" that you clearly entertain makes it abundantly clear. As does your use of the word "truth".
Please: inform yourself before participating in a discussion: your ignorance of even the meanings attached to the words you are using and your ensuing performance in the debate does very little to support your point.
I do not pretend to read minds, but I am quite sure that what the poster to whom you are responding here actually meant to say is that the "fact" that the earth revolves around the sun is as much theory as evolution.
Handwaving is never good, surely. But the fact that there are things that a theory cannot explain is not a great argument for rejecting a theory. It is a motivation to better the theory.
The difficulty of testing and refuting a theory is not a variable one should take into account when judging the theory. It is essentially irrelevant.
You seem to use the verb "to test" in a rather naive way. "Testing macro evolution" does not necessarily mean "being able to reproduce it in a lab". A theory is tested by many things, like the way it fits with the evidence, the way in which it provides explanations of phenomena, the successfulness of the predictions it leads to. Evolution is very much testable!
In any case, there is nothing more than an hypothesis that evolution could possibly want to be! One that has resisted many independent tests, of different nature, and so on, but a hypothesis anyways.
It is not as if hypothesis ever graduate and get written in some sacred book where universally and ethernally valid knowledge is recorded.
Wow, that sounds like a great plan. Can you provide an example where it has been applied successfully?
You think the problem is with illegal aliens?!
Well, in any case you seem not to be very demanding regarding the rationality and competency of the explanations you are willing to accept from yourself.
It is quite a show, to watch you USians come up with possible legal problems.
Those statistics are essentially meaningless, because they are based on a verifiably bad sample. This fact is even stated on the page you pointed to.
Can you please show me a little Haskell program in which referential transparency is broken?
I am sorry, I do not have the energy to explain this.
You would probably benefit from reading an explanation of what the monadic style is, for example.
The IO monad does not break referential transparency.
Using the monadic style to program in Haskell does not make it any less "functional". That is the *whole* point of the monadic style.
It's not as if by using IO referential transparency is lost, is it?
Huh? Where on earth do you get this impression from?
I guess by "imperatively" you mean in a monadic style, at least for Haskell. May I ask: so what?
Wow. That is sad.
It is interesting that you refer to "seeing a guy's butt" as graphic... The district seems to have gotten to you ;-)
Do you remember what the `naughty' bits were? I've seen the movie several times, and honestly I cannot attach that adjective to even a millisecond of that movie.
That is very interesting. What scenes where cut?
What do you mean by way worse?
Is naked people bad?
Heh. I knew that. What I wanted was, rather, that the parent poster show me how that would be doable with "sane" key-bindings and "sane" UI.
Yup. The fact that the US and China and Japon and many others are watching every single move the north koreans make in in the south direction has only a negligible effect on North Korea.
Don't you feel like contributing to world peace? Go make some landmines!
One of the key things about vi(m)'s keybindings and commands is that they are extremely concise. I defy you to come up with a sane UI which allows the user to say "capitalize all a's, z's and t's that start words but are not followed by a digit, in the following thirteen lines".
Please note that I am not saying that it is easy to learn how to do that.