I understand now: you think it is failing because you think it is not successful in achieving a goal you seem to think the movement set out to achieve.
Well: I have to say I could not care less about displacing Microsoft software. I honestly, seriously do not care about that. I do not measure success by counting formatted Windows partitions. Yet I am part of that movement.
Kernel developers are free to be the arbiters of the code they write.
As for your boldened phrases: note you can do absolutely anything with your computer without violating the kernel licence: the licence is just about redistribution. And: the authors can of course allow you or disallow you to do whatever it pleases them.
As for the arrogance charge... If people were bragging that there is no design in the kernel, and that things just are put together randomly, you'd find it idiotic. Why is it that you seem to think that careful design of the social and economic processes which are involved in the development of the kernel (which have so far been essentially the only support for that development) is arrogance?
Do you seriously think they might have forgotten about callibration? Do you think whoever is in charge of this thing is that dumb? By all means, if you do, pick up a telephone, call them and shout "Remember to do some form of callibration!!!". Be sure to be very emphatic. Science will thank you.
In dealing with lots of these "major breakthroughs" in science, it is impossible or very, very to point at specific errors: it is not the case, usually, that one is dealing with a reasoning which goes all well until a point where a mistake occurs, and from there everything is logically fine. Most of this "breakthroughs" are completely misguided.
I am a mathematician, so I will not give examples in physics, but in math. You may remember that last year (or was it two years ago?) that a swedish student claimed to have proved Hilbert's
sixteenth problem; this call quite widely covered by the media. The paper had been accepted by a respected journal, and it was supposed to have withstood peer review. While the subject of that particular problem is not my area of expertise, as soon as the journal published an electronic version of the paper (mostly due to "public" pressure) I downloaded it, printed it out, and sat down and read. Only by looking at it it was clear that there was absolutely no way that paper could have solved the 16th problem. It's not that there was a particular mistake (say, something you can point at: "the equation on page 4, line 5, has the wrong signum"). But it was plain to anyone who'd reached what's known as "mathematical maturity" that that did not any way imaginable solve (not even partially) the problem.
The same thing happens quite frequently when grading work done by students...
Well, RelaxNG was developed by OASIS, who developed ODF... Those confused costumers will probably have dealt with the anguish of non-W3C-ness when they decided they wanted to do ODF, which, remember, comes from OASIS too.
Also, there is Trang to do the conversion (and others, actually)
Yup: exactly as I thought so: all the physicists I've shown your link to laughed hard.
I did love this from the commentary by the article author:
Further, it raises the distinct possibility that scientific validation exists for a (gasp) literal interpretation of the seminal passages of Genesis. Goodbye Scopes trial.
The author's simplicity certainly does not detract from the mentioned physicist's work, but it most certainly does not add anything, either. And, well, thatmade me laugh.
You do not prove its constancy, as you do not prove anything while you are doing science.
What you do is measure decay rate once and again and again, in different ways, at different locations, by different people; you consider what consequences the constancy of the decay might have and what consequences its non-constancy might have, and you think hard so as to come up with consequences of both which might be effectively measure, and you measure them; you sit down and think very, very hard about why would it be constant (or not) and what other theories you have evidence for hint at; thenyou go back to the lab and measure, measure, measure, and measure some more. You get your friends to measure for you. You get anonymous peers to check your measurements. You explain your procedures to the people that know of such things, and they in turn repeat the whole procedure. Then of course, you go back, and measure some more, and then think some more about consequences, and other theories, and from time to time you say "ok, let's think not", and try to come up with alternatives, and then you try to verify these in the lab, even though by now you do not expect them to be verified, but, yes, you insist. And so on and so forth.
As soon as you find something in nature which contradicts the consequences drawn from either hypothesis, you reject that hypothesis.
Well. People have been done that for a century or so. And guess what? Everything done so far is consistent with the hypothesis that decay rate is constant.
Well, we have absolutely no way to know that half-life for carbon has always been constant: only that since we have been measuring it it has not changed within the precision of our measurements, and we extrapolate. The exact same thing can be said of all "constants": physicists come up all the time with new ways to measure everything from the value of the universal constant of gravitation in early times in the formation of the universe to the fine structure constant in the first millionth of a second of the universe. And they do measure such things all the time. Sure, these measurements do tend to give the same values all the time. That's why those numbers are called constants in the first place.
I'll take your statement to mean that math is not part of science (you cannot be saying that mathematics is not all of science because that is too boringly tautological) Then I find that your statement is wrong.
Mathematics is a scientific endeavor in so far as it uses the scientific method to come up with information about something. You talk about "logically connected propositions", but that is not mathematics, but the object studied by mathematics. Mathematics is, one might say, the endeavor by which one arrives at constructing such logically connected propositions, and such construction is done in a way closely matching the scientific method.
Of course, experiments are of a rather different nature from those done by a physicist, but they are experiments nontheless: mathematicians compute examples, lots of them sometimes, and try to gain insights as to what propositions are valid and which are not; they make hypotheses as to in what ways the objects involved behave, called in the jargon conjectures. Etc.
The difference in the objects studied by math and other natural sciences shows up in various ways in the products of these sciences: for example, the nature of the induction procedures available to each of them is different.
Let me pick one such treatment as an example: the string of characters "2" denotes, by convention, the natural number which is the successor of the successor of zero in the Peano formalization of arithmetic. Up to a rewriting of addition in Peano terms, and using the definition of "1", there is absolutely no depth in the statement "1+1=2", since "2" is defined by this equation. There is nothing to be "known" about the statment.
(There are other formalizations of arithmetic in which "2" is not taken with this definition, but something else, and then "1+1=2" might require a proof. One such formalization is the one laid out in Principia Mathematica.)
I have never ever used the word evolution except in the meaning of a scientific theory. It is nothing more than a scientific theory. Evolution is "about species adapting", as you say. Nothing more. Nothing else. You seem to think there is some theology there. Nope: there isn't.
If you will take the statements about us being made from dust literally, do you take literally Joshua's "...and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and, thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still and the moon stayed." Will you agree that if God had to tell the sun and the moon to be still, that they must have been moving in the first place? After all, "is not this written in the book of Jasher?" Are you willing to burn Galileo for heresy?
Never mind.
To be honest, I cannot discuss intelligently with someone who regards the literal interpretation of the Bible as reasonable. I am sorry. I think I would not be able to even if I were a person of faith: to be a bit graphic, I do no think I could reconcile the fact that the spilling of the seed by Onan was sinful, but the puting to waste of people's intelligence is not.
Btw, a darwinist is not defined as an atheist: those are completely orthogonal categories. There is absolutely nothing in darwinism that precludes believing in gods of all sorts and kinds. You have to understand that darwinism, as well as newtonianism or maxwellism (forgive me the neologisms) have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with theology.
Evolution does not rule out a creator: any creator. Evolution implies abnsolutely nothing about the existence of a god, any god, or, in case of its existance, of its methods, plans, intentions, or desires. Statements like "Some creators did not create by evolution" are meaningless, because they are devoid of absolutely any content.
As for your second paralogism, well, I have no idea how you concluded that from those hypotheses, and you probably realize that your A statement is a petition of principle, and that B is basically nonsensical.
The darwinist does not worship any creator. Saying so just paints you in a very childish light.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand now: you think it is failing because you think it is not successful in achieving a goal you seem to think the movement set out to achieve.
Well: I have to say I could not care less about displacing Microsoft software. I honestly, seriously do not care about that. I do not measure success by counting formatted Windows partitions. Yet I am part of that movement.
Do you understand that that ideology is precisely what supports that user experience?
Kernel developers are free to be the arbiters of the code they write.
As for your boldened phrases: note you can do absolutely anything with your computer without violating the kernel licence: the licence is just about redistribution. And: the authors can of course allow you or disallow you to do whatever it pleases them.
As for the arrogance charge... If people were bragging that there is no design in the kernel, and that things just are put together randomly, you'd find it idiotic. Why is it that you seem to think that careful design of the social and economic processes which are involved in the development of the kernel (which have so far been essentially the only support for that development) is arrogance?
You really think the open source movement is failing?
Yet people may be willing to exclude his unwillingness. Just as we mostly ignore Newton's astrological writings.
I doubt anyone seriously wants to start reading Darwin's writings as the ultimate truth...
Wouldn't it be a start of people started following this recomendation when reading other parts of the book?
Do you seriously think they might have forgotten about callibration? Do you think whoever is in charge of this thing is that dumb? By all means, if you do, pick up a telephone, call them and shout "Remember to do some form of callibration!!!". Be sure to be very emphatic. Science will thank you.
In dealing with lots of these "major breakthroughs" in science, it is impossible or very, very to point at specific errors: it is not the case, usually, that one is dealing with a reasoning which goes all well until a point where a mistake occurs, and from there everything is logically fine. Most of this "breakthroughs" are completely misguided.
I am a mathematician, so I will not give examples in physics, but in math. You may remember that last year (or was it two years ago?) that a swedish student claimed to have proved Hilbert's sixteenth problem; this call quite widely covered by the media. The paper had been accepted by a respected journal, and it was supposed to have withstood peer review. While the subject of that particular problem is not my area of expertise, as soon as the journal published an electronic version of the paper (mostly due to "public" pressure) I downloaded it, printed it out, and sat down and read. Only by looking at it it was clear that there was absolutely no way that paper could have solved the 16th problem. It's not that there was a particular mistake (say, something you can point at: "the equation on page 4, line 5, has the wrong signum"). But it was plain to anyone who'd reached what's known as "mathematical maturity" that that did not any way imaginable solve (not even partially) the problem.
The same thing happens quite frequently when grading work done by students...
This ruins a lot of movies for you now?
Well, RelaxNG was developed by OASIS, who developed ODF... Those confused costumers will probably have dealt with the anguish of non-W3C-ness when they decided they wanted to do ODF, which, remember, comes from OASIS too.
Also, there is Trang to do the conversion (and others, actually)
At the same time, getting laughed at does not make your idea revolutionary...
I'll be blunt: your comments make me sad.
Yup: exactly as I thought so: all the physicists I've shown your link to laughed hard.
I did love this from the commentary by the article author:
The author's simplicity certainly does not detract from the mentioned physicist's work, but it most certainly does not add anything, either. And, well, thatmade me laugh.
So, in all, thanks for the link!
You do not prove its constancy, as you do not prove anything while you are doing science.
What you do is measure decay rate once and again and again, in different ways, at different locations, by different people; you consider what consequences the constancy of the decay might have and what consequences its non-constancy might have, and you think hard so as to come up with consequences of both which might be effectively measure, and you measure them; you sit down and think very, very hard about why would it be constant (or not) and what other theories you have evidence for hint at; thenyou go back to the lab and measure, measure, measure, and measure some more. You get your friends to measure for you. You get anonymous peers to check your measurements. You explain your procedures to the people that know of such things, and they in turn repeat the whole procedure. Then of course, you go back, and measure some more, and then think some more about consequences, and other theories, and from time to time you say "ok, let's think not", and try to come up with alternatives, and then you try to verify these in the lab, even though by now you do not expect them to be verified, but, yes, you insist. And so on and so forth.
As soon as you find something in nature which contradicts the consequences drawn from either hypothesis, you reject that hypothesis.
Well. People have been done that for a century or so. And guess what? Everything done so far is consistent with the hypothesis that decay rate is constant.
Do we know if it is constant? No.
Have we any reason to suspect it is not? Nope.
Well, we have absolutely no way to know that half-life for carbon has always been constant: only that since we have been measuring it it has not changed within the precision of our measurements, and we extrapolate. The exact same thing can be said of all "constants": physicists come up all the time with new ways to measure everything from the value of the universal constant of gravitation in early times in the formation of the universe to the fine structure constant in the first millionth of a second of the universe. And they do measure such things all the time. Sure, these measurements do tend to give the same values all the time. That's why those numbers are called constants in the first place.
For the love of $DEITY, please stop saying "evolution is just a theory"!
You are confusing art history with the evaluation of art through out history, or something in that line.
The universe is not suffering for the loss, though, so I really don't care either.
I'll take your statement to mean that math is not part of science (you cannot be saying that mathematics is not all of science because that is too boringly tautological) Then I find that your statement is wrong.
Mathematics is a scientific endeavor in so far as it uses the scientific method to come up with information about something. You talk about "logically connected propositions", but that is not mathematics, but the object studied by mathematics. Mathematics is, one might say, the endeavor by which one arrives at constructing such logically connected propositions, and such construction is done in a way closely matching the scientific method.
Of course, experiments are of a rather different nature from those done by a physicist, but they are experiments nontheless: mathematicians compute examples, lots of them sometimes, and try to gain insights as to what propositions are valid and which are not; they make hypotheses as to in what ways the objects involved behave, called in the jargon conjectures. Etc.
The difference in the objects studied by math and other natural sciences shows up in various ways in the products of these sciences: for example, the nature of the induction procedures available to each of them is different.
But math is very much a science.
You'll agree that this has not much to do with art history being scientific of not, won't you?
The whole argument against ID is that is cannot be proven incorrect.
Art history can be done scientifically.
One can tell a Rembrandt forgery from an authentic Rembrandt because scientific Art historians have learned enough to make the difference.
Let me pick one such treatment as an example: the string of characters "2" denotes, by convention, the natural number which is the successor of the successor of zero in the Peano formalization of arithmetic. Up to a rewriting of addition in Peano terms, and using the definition of "1", there is absolutely no depth in the statement "1+1=2", since "2" is defined by this equation. There is nothing to be "known" about the statment.
(There are other formalizations of arithmetic in which "2" is not taken with this definition, but something else, and then "1+1=2" might require a proof. One such formalization is the one laid out in Principia Mathematica.)
In most standard treatments of arithmetic, 1+1=2 by definition of the symbol 2.
I have never ever used the word evolution except in the meaning of a scientific theory. It is nothing more than a scientific theory. Evolution is "about species adapting", as you say. Nothing more. Nothing else. You seem to think there is some theology there. Nope: there isn't.
If you will take the statements about us being made from dust literally, do you take literally Joshua's "...and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and, thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still and the moon stayed." Will you agree that if God had to tell the sun and the moon to be still, that they must have been moving in the first place? After all, "is not this written in the book of Jasher?" Are you willing to burn Galileo for heresy?
Never mind.
To be honest, I cannot discuss intelligently with someone who regards the literal interpretation of the Bible as reasonable. I am sorry. I think I would not be able to even if I were a person of faith: to be a bit graphic, I do no think I could reconcile the fact that the spilling of the seed by Onan was sinful, but the puting to waste of people's intelligence is not.
Btw, a darwinist is not defined as an atheist: those are completely orthogonal categories. There is absolutely nothing in darwinism that precludes believing in gods of all sorts and kinds. You have to understand that darwinism, as well as newtonianism or maxwellism (forgive me the neologisms) have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with theology.
Evolution does not rule out a creator: any creator. Evolution implies abnsolutely nothing about the existence of a god, any god, or, in case of its existance, of its methods, plans, intentions, or desires. Statements like "Some creators did not create by evolution" are meaningless, because they are devoid of absolutely any content.
As for your second paralogism, well, I have no idea how you concluded that from those hypotheses, and you probably realize that your A statement is a petition of principle, and that B is basically nonsensical.
The darwinist does not worship any creator. Saying so just paints you in a very childish light.
The logic behind this statement of yours (or, rather, the lack thereof) might be pointing at an explanation of some of your beliefs.