Evolution, like gravity and germ theory, is something for which there is an overwhelming amount of directly observable and measurable evidence. That's the whole point of the example.
Arguably the theory of evolution as regards macro evolution is NOT fact.
See Dawkin's website: www.richarddawkins.net for some good information about the macro/micro evolution debate. Macro is, at its core, a reintroduction of 'group selection' with the added nuance of affecting what Dawkins calls the 'extended phenotype'. In a nutshell, Dakwins and others think it is a non-debate because things always reduce to the selection of the replicators themselves: the genes.
There is so much nonsense here I'm not quite sure where to begin, so I'll take your non-points in order:
When a theory crosses into fact territory is when that theory can be proven to be correct
Wrong. Nothing can be proven with absolute certainty. Any scientist will tell you that. A scientific 'fact' is something for which there is overwhelming evidence from multiple, testable, repeatable sources. Typically, these are things that have stood the test of time and turned out to have very good predictive power. Evolution is about as good an example of scientific fact as you can find, as there is so much evidence for it and - so far - none against it.
the Theory Evolution itself has never been shown to be observeable, measureable, or repeatable
Absolute codswollop. You've apparently never actually read anything about evolution. Bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics, viruses mutating over time, moths changing colors based on pollution, human sickle-cell anemia, etc, etc, etc. Every domesticated animal is an example of evolution at work. Every siamese cat, every pekinese dog, every thoroughbred racehorse is an example of evolution in action. There are dozens of other, better examples - for good, understandable books on the subject for the lay audience you'll want to read anything by Richard Dawkins.
Since, I've got to either believe some hokey theory that says I came from bacteria, or a fish, or whatever it is these days, or I can believe in some super ultra mega dude who built it all, I think the second option sounds cooler and that's what I pick.:D
People who don't want to believe evolution, like you, have psychological reasons - fear of death, fear of insignificance, fear of social stigma or reprisal, etc. Regardless, it is only possible not to accept evolution if 1) you don't understand it (are stupid); or 2) Don't know anything about it (are ignorant).
There's nothing wrong with being ignorant or stupid, but, in general, a person should try to do something to correct those unfortunate qualities and in the meantime keep their mouth shut and their opinions to themselves.
You don't understand what the word "theory" means. Many words have more than one meaning. "Present" has five or six distinct meanings. For example: at present, I present this present to you. Think 'theorem' instead. Maybe that will help you.
What matters to me is whether the belief or lack of belief results in a regressive, narrow minded, receptiveness to scientific research and inquiry.
How, exactly, can you not be have a regressive, narrow minded view of scientific research and inquiry if you don't believe in evolution? This would seem to be just about the perfect litmus test.
Mr. Candidate, sir, given the overwhelming body of evidence from hundreds of different scientific fields ranging from archeology to physics to zoology, can you explain to us how you can seriously believe that the world was created 2,000 years after the Babylonians invented beer?
Evolution and Creation (or "Intelligent Design") are scientific theories and not scientific fact
GUILTY: standard error of assuming that a scientific theory is a speculation, conjecture or guess.
A scientific theory is a logically consistent framework for testable hypotheses. Evolutionary theory is a FACT, just like gravitational theory is a FACT, just like germ theory of disease is a FACT.
Yeah, I think they're getting in over their heads - especially with claims like this:
considering that we have built this platform that makes it easy to build rich applications
I don't know about anyone else, but my experience with Adobe Acrobat (now Adobe Reader) is that while it certainly looks pretty it's slow and stuttery, tends to cause Firefox to hang, has a poor interface, and doesn't "play nice" with other company's software any more than M$ Office - and maybe even less. Just my 2 cents.
Nobody is held accountable for the actions of a corporation.
This is what the limited liability function of corporations and LLCs is expressly designed to do. Bear in mind, however, that limited liability only holds so long as the deleterious consequences of corporate actions are from neglect and not from willful malfeasance. If you can prove the management and/or board of a corporation knew about a problem and did nothing to address it, you can nail them to the wall for it. But it is important to understand that the default position in tort (?) law is that companies never willfully expose their customers to risk because it is not in their best interests (profit) to do so. That's often a bunch of hogwash, of course, but that's the way the system works - it's an assumption parallel to the 'innocent until proven guilty' assumption.
Get some help for your OCD. Seriously. Living germ-free is dangerous - it compromises your immune system, often with nasty long-run consequences. If you've got kids, for goodness' sake don't impose your OCD on them. Ultra-sterile environments in developmental years are what cause asthma and other immunological disorders. We are expressly designed to function in conjunction with microbial ecosystems - both inside our bodies and outside.
The guys at M$ are pretty smart. There's a good argument that Windows is too expensive, and that if it was cheaper more people would buy it and that would both discourage piracy and boost the company's profits. But consider the article's point in that context: if Windows was cheaper, it would get rid of the piracy that is staving off Microsoft's REAL competition: freeware.
Maybe this is just tinfoil hat stuff, but could this all be part of Microsoft's strategy? Are they that smart?
Yeah, I don't get the whole 'a computer finally beat a grandmaster' thing. Software beat him that was coded by some other very smart people, and then a machine ran that software fast enough to play an actual, real-time game with Kasparov. So what? So you've got a chess program that can beat a grandmaster - is that the accomplishment? Or have you got a machine that can do 500 Gigaflops or whatever?
In the media this was portrayed as some kind of AI breakthrough. That's nonsense, unless you think a good chess program is an AI breakthrough. If you'd been willing to play over a few thousand years, the same program could have run on a C64. The whole thing is retarded, if you ask me.
Well, there are some relatively common circumstances that might warrant ultra-fast transcontinental travel. Just as one example, if there was a heart available for transplant, for example, then many people would pay the extra $28,000 to have it arrive in 30 minutes instead of 24 hours.
Comedy Central's video isn't just crappy, it doesn't work. Starting about two weeks ago most video clips have not been watchable because the menu for selecting them is messed up.
What are the chances that those are eventually going to combine into a strand of DNA?
You're right back to the 747 in the junkyard. The problem with scientists - and biologists in general - is that we usually don't realize how difficult it is for some people to understand DNA didn't spring into existence in one single instant any more than people, lizards, sponges or bacteria did. Many simpler replicating mechanisms exist - viruses, RNA, protein (prions), and so on. The backwards path of evolution follows smooth curve all the way down to zero complexity - it doesn't end at bacteria, as some foolish poster already suggested, nor does it end at DNA. It goes all the way back to the very first replicating molecule, which was undoubtedly extremely simple, and which only had to occur one single time in history to explain everything we see today. It's utterly explicable. As a result, chances are that life is very, very common throughout the universe.
[From the executive offices of Viacom and Comedy Central]
"OK guys, I've got a great idea! There's this company out there on the interwebs called youtube, and they're owned by Google, and they get tens of millions of visitors every day. Now they're willing to host our videos - get this - for free!
So here's my idea: let's put our videos on our own website instead! That way, we can pay for all our own web design, site maintenance and bandwidth, we can make sure that the interests of the advertisers who finance us go unserved thanks to our site getting just a tiny fraction of the traffic youtube gets, AND we can piss the whole world off in the process! How can we lose!?
For those interested in why the tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747 is a useless analogy for the process of evolution, the simple explanation is that evolution works by a ratcheting effect: improvements are made one tiny step at a time, in sequence, for a cumulative effect of complexity. The selection process by which those steps are made - i.e. mutations that constitute an improvement in fitness survive and others die out - is simple and nonrandom. The tornado analogy implies instant emergence of full complexity, which is nothing at all like what actually happens.
What are you talking about? There has been an industry rating board since 1994. Welcome to 13 years ago.
I'm aware there are video game ratings. Maybe you missed the part I wrote where I said, "holding vendors accountable for sales according to those ratings."
Actually, no. Your knowledge of such issues seem to be about as dated as your lack of knowledge of the fact that the ESRB has been around since 1994.
Really? Here are the first handful of hits in Google when you search for "are video games harmful?":
It might defend on the topic/field in question. The articles you reference seem to be focused on tech stuff. I use wikipedia primarily for socioeconomic reference material, and find it in general to be pretty solid. There are places where the depth is limited, but it's definitely my first-reach resource as long as I have an internet connection - mainly because many of the specific things I'm after might not be in a general encyclopedia like Britannica - intertemporal equilibrium, hedonic regression, Edgeworth's limit theorem, the Bertrand paradox etc, etc.
I'm not one for prohibition, but I don't recall there being much fuss when the film and television rating system was introduced. It therefore seems strange how resistant people are to the idea of rating video games and holding vendors accountable for sales according to those ratings, just like films and TV. Gaming is, after all, a much more active, participatory form of entertainment than film or TV. As far as I know, the jury is still somewhat out on whether or not violent, graphic games contribute to antisocial behavior, but I fully expect the studies to eventually bear out what common sense and intuition tell most people: that violent gaming does affect kids' behavior in a negative way.
Again, I'm not for prohibition. It is the responsibility of all parents to monitor what their kids get up to, especially TV and video game entertainment since to reports seem to tell us that the average child spends about as much time in front of a screen as in school or asleep. But that doesn't mean a rating system and some guidelines for vendors aren't in order.
Modded redundant? How is that, exactly? Not enough people pay attention to the modding guidelines: modup not down, unless it is something extreme. Downmodding is for dealing with people who are being deliberate troublemakers, not for pulling a Napoleon on viewpoints you disagree with.
Slashdot Mirror
Evolution, like gravity and germ theory, is something for which there is an overwhelming amount of directly observable and measurable evidence. That's the whole point of the example.
See Dawkin's website: www.richarddawkins.net for some good information about the macro/micro evolution debate. Macro is, at its core, a reintroduction of 'group selection' with the added nuance of affecting what Dawkins calls the 'extended phenotype'. In a nutshell, Dakwins and others think it is a non-debate because things always reduce to the selection of the replicators themselves: the genes.
When a theory crosses into fact territory is when that theory can be proven to be correct
Wrong. Nothing can be proven with absolute certainty. Any scientist will tell you that. A scientific 'fact' is something for which there is overwhelming evidence from multiple, testable, repeatable sources. Typically, these are things that have stood the test of time and turned out to have very good predictive power. Evolution is about as good an example of scientific fact as you can find, as there is so much evidence for it and - so far - none against it.
the Theory Evolution itself has never been shown to be observeable, measureable, or repeatable
Absolute codswollop. You've apparently never actually read anything about evolution. Bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics, viruses mutating over time, moths changing colors based on pollution, human sickle-cell anemia, etc, etc, etc. Every domesticated animal is an example of evolution at work. Every siamese cat, every pekinese dog, every thoroughbred racehorse is an example of evolution in action. There are dozens of other, better examples - for good, understandable books on the subject for the lay audience you'll want to read anything by Richard Dawkins.
Since, I've got to either believe some hokey theory that says I came from bacteria, or a fish, or whatever it is these days, or I can believe in some super ultra mega dude who built it all, I think the second option sounds cooler and that's what I pick. :D
People who don't want to believe evolution, like you, have psychological reasons - fear of death, fear of insignificance, fear of social stigma or reprisal, etc. Regardless, it is only possible not to accept evolution if 1) you don't understand it (are stupid); or 2) Don't know anything about it (are ignorant).
There's nothing wrong with being ignorant or stupid, but, in general, a person should try to do something to correct those unfortunate qualities and in the meantime keep their mouth shut and their opinions to themselves.
You don't understand what the word "theory" means. Many words have more than one meaning. "Present" has five or six distinct meanings. For example: at present, I present this present to you. Think 'theorem' instead. Maybe that will help you.
How, exactly, can you not be have a regressive, narrow minded view of scientific research and inquiry if you don't believe in evolution? This would seem to be just about the perfect litmus test.
Anti-evolution = anti-science. QED.
Mr. Candidate, sir, given the overwhelming body of evidence from hundreds of different scientific fields ranging from archeology to physics to zoology, can you explain to us how you can seriously believe that the world was created 2,000 years after the Babylonians invented beer?
GUILTY: standard error of assuming that a scientific theory is a speculation, conjecture or guess.
A scientific theory is a logically consistent framework for testable hypotheses. Evolutionary theory is a FACT, just like gravitational theory is a FACT, just like germ theory of disease is a FACT.
The interwebs made me do it! They made me do it!
considering that we have built this platform that makes it easy to build rich applications
I don't know about anyone else, but my experience with Adobe Acrobat (now Adobe Reader) is that while it certainly looks pretty it's slow and stuttery, tends to cause Firefox to hang, has a poor interface, and doesn't "play nice" with other company's software any more than M$ Office - and maybe even less. Just my 2 cents.
Nobody is held accountable for the actions of a corporation.
This is what the limited liability function of corporations and LLCs is expressly designed to do. Bear in mind, however, that limited liability only holds so long as the deleterious consequences of corporate actions are from neglect and not from willful malfeasance. If you can prove the management and/or board of a corporation knew about a problem and did nothing to address it, you can nail them to the wall for it. But it is important to understand that the default position in tort (?) law is that companies never willfully expose their customers to risk because it is not in their best interests (profit) to do so. That's often a bunch of hogwash, of course, but that's the way the system works - it's an assumption parallel to the 'innocent until proven guilty' assumption.
Get some help for your OCD. Seriously. Living germ-free is dangerous - it compromises your immune system, often with nasty long-run consequences. If you've got kids, for goodness' sake don't impose your OCD on them. Ultra-sterile environments in developmental years are what cause asthma and other immunological disorders. We are expressly designed to function in conjunction with microbial ecosystems - both inside our bodies and outside.
Maybe this is just tinfoil hat stuff, but could this all be part of Microsoft's strategy? Are they that smart?
In the media this was portrayed as some kind of AI breakthrough. That's nonsense, unless you think a good chess program is an AI breakthrough. If you'd been willing to play over a few thousand years, the same program could have run on a C64. The whole thing is retarded, if you ask me.
Well, there are some relatively common circumstances that might warrant ultra-fast transcontinental travel. Just as one example, if there was a heart available for transplant, for example, then many people would pay the extra $28,000 to have it arrive in 30 minutes instead of 24 hours.
I come down on Dawkins' side of the debate, not Goulds'.
Comedy Central's video isn't just crappy, it doesn't work. Starting about two weeks ago most video clips have not been watchable because the menu for selecting them is messed up.
You're right back to the 747 in the junkyard. The problem with scientists - and biologists in general - is that we usually don't realize how difficult it is for some people to understand DNA didn't spring into existence in one single instant any more than people, lizards, sponges or bacteria did. Many simpler replicating mechanisms exist - viruses, RNA, protein (prions), and so on. The backwards path of evolution follows smooth curve all the way down to zero complexity - it doesn't end at bacteria, as some foolish poster already suggested, nor does it end at DNA. It goes all the way back to the very first replicating molecule, which was undoubtedly extremely simple, and which only had to occur one single time in history to explain everything we see today. It's utterly explicable. As a result, chances are that life is very, very common throughout the universe.
Viruses, RNA chains, proteins (prions), etc, etc, etc.
"OK guys, I've got a great idea! There's this company out there on the interwebs called youtube, and they're owned by Google, and they get tens of millions of visitors every day. Now they're willing to host our videos - get this - for free!
So here's my idea: let's put our videos on our own website instead! That way, we can pay for all our own web design, site maintenance and bandwidth, we can make sure that the interests of the advertisers who finance us go unserved thanks to our site getting just a tiny fraction of the traffic youtube gets, AND we can piss the whole world off in the process! How can we lose!?
For those interested in why the tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747 is a useless analogy for the process of evolution, the simple explanation is that evolution works by a ratcheting effect: improvements are made one tiny step at a time, in sequence, for a cumulative effect of complexity. The selection process by which those steps are made - i.e. mutations that constitute an improvement in fitness survive and others die out - is simple and nonrandom. The tornado analogy implies instant emergence of full complexity, which is nothing at all like what actually happens.
I'm aware there are video game ratings. Maybe you missed the part I wrote where I said, "holding vendors accountable for sales according to those ratings."
Actually, no. Your knowledge of such issues seem to be about as dated as your lack of knowledge of the fact that the ESRB has been around since 1994.
Really? Here are the first handful of hits in Google when you search for "are video games harmful?":
http://www.apa.org/releases/videogames.html
http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers /freedman.html
http://www.psychologymatters.org/videogames.html
http://www.psychologymatters.org/mediaviolence.htm l
http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/familyresources/a /vidgameviolence.htm
http://www.psu.edu/dept/medialab/research/vgviolen ce.html
You'd better get back to class there, professor.
Yikes, defend = depend
It might defend on the topic/field in question. The articles you reference seem to be focused on tech stuff. I use wikipedia primarily for socioeconomic reference material, and find it in general to be pretty solid. There are places where the depth is limited, but it's definitely my first-reach resource as long as I have an internet connection - mainly because many of the specific things I'm after might not be in a general encyclopedia like Britannica - intertemporal equilibrium, hedonic regression, Edgeworth's limit theorem, the Bertrand paradox etc, etc.
Again, I'm not for prohibition. It is the responsibility of all parents to monitor what their kids get up to, especially TV and video game entertainment since to reports seem to tell us that the average child spends about as much time in front of a screen as in school or asleep. But that doesn't mean a rating system and some guidelines for vendors aren't in order.
Modded redundant? How is that, exactly? Not enough people pay attention to the modding guidelines: modup not down, unless it is something extreme. Downmodding is for dealing with people who are being deliberate troublemakers, not for pulling a Napoleon on viewpoints you disagree with.