[oops. missed preview and hit submit. And it was really badly formatted too.]
No, the flaws in my education are at best minorly tangential to this discussion. There are numerous causes for that, bad student, bad teacher, bad environment, etc.
But as a more specific example, we have some of the ID nutjobs will totally ignore evidence that supports evolution, and present their evidence in a rather biased manner. But we also have textbooks still showing things as hard fact that have been quite discredited since soon after they were published in the late 1800's.
They seem to still be used because, while bogus in their own right, they show some principle that is to be explained. That doesn't seem like it's much better on a rather basic level. But it also does not mean that I expect an equal half hour from each side on the subject. Shouldn't some small effort be put into finding a better example? It would shut up a whole lot of people.
If you want to show that adding an even number to an odd number results in an odd number, don't use 2+3=7, even if it does show the principle. Perhaps I should wait for a cosmological God-trolling article instead of a biological one since I deal with astronomy and physics better than biology and palentology. But it seems to me (from what I hear at least) that this in some respects is similar to a situation I am a bit more familiar with.
Consider the fact that our place around the sun and galaxy, the various physical constants etc. seem to have a rather tight tolerance on what they could be to support life, out of a rather large range of possible values that could be picked (for all we know) at random. Some have said "See, God did it", others "No, we just wouldn't be around to discuss this if it weren't so. It's just dumb luck." and others invent some new concept like there must be a nearly infinite number of universes all different so we could appear in the right one, but not need it specificly made for us.
I can't say "Don't bother looking farther, we can blame God." But at the same time, I have a difficult time with the alternative which seems rather similar to "I was in front of a firing squad with 20 expert marksman. They all missed, but it doesn't really matter, because if they hadn't all missed, I would't be here to discuss it." I also hold open the many universes option, but there seems to be no evidence for it, and there doesn't seem to be any way to argue against it.
The proper answer for me at least is "I don't know, I will try to keep these possibilities in mind until I find out more." But it seems that many people, perhaps on only philosophical grounds, fall very hard into one camp or another, completely overlooking the evidence against or simple lack of evidence for their position, while berating the other groups for being in the exact same situation.
Since my biology is a bit weaker, part of my interest has been to see what the evidence is, and what trolls I can ignore. It's probably a good thing that I follow more sources than just/. 8^) I'm interested to see if it's all a game of "Your stupid, I'm not listening, go away." or if there is something more going on. Of course this is/. so it's mostly the former, but one can always hope to find a small gem in the pile of...
BTW, rather than going after my mother (even if she might deserve it 8^) Might I suggest a more neutral but similar argument I heard once: Eating pickles causes aircraft crashes. Evidence: 99% of airline fatalities have eaten pickles at some time before boarding the doomed aircraft.
No, the flaws in my education are at best minorly tangential to this discussion. There are numerous causes for that, bad student, bad teacher, bad environment, etc.
But as a specific example, we have some of the ID nutjobs will totally ignore evidence that supports evolution, and present their evidence in a rather biased manner. But we also have textbooks still showing things as hard fact that have been quite discredited since soon after they were published in the late 1800's.
They seem to still be used because while pretty bogus in their own right, they show the principle. That doesn't seem like it's much better on a rather basic level. But it also does not mean that I expect an equal half hour from each side on the subject. Shouldn't some small effort be put into finding a better example? It would shut up a whole lot of people.
Perhaps I should wait for a cosmological God-trolling article instead of a biological one since I deal with astronomy and physics better than biology and palentology. But it seems to me (from what I hear at least) that this in some respects is similar to a situation I am somewhat more familiar with.
Consider the fact that our place around the sun and galaxy, the various physical constants etc. seem to have a rather tight tolerance on what they could be to support life, out of a rather large range of possible values that could be picked (for all we know) at random. Some have said "See, God did it", others "No, we just wouldn't be around to discuss this if it weren't so. It's just dumb luck." and others invent some new concept like there must be a nearly infinite number of universes all different so we could appear in the right one, but not need it specificly made for us.
I can't say "Don't bother looking farther, we can blame God." But at the same time, I have a difficult time with the alternative which seems rather similar to "I was in front of a firing squad with 20 expert marksman. They all missed, but it doesn't matter, because if they hadn't missed, I would't be here to discuss it." I also hold open the many universes option, but there seems to be no evidence for it, and there doesn't seem to be any way to argue against it.
The proper answer for me at least is "I don't know, I will try to keep these possibilities in mind until I find out more." But it seems that many people, perhaps on only philosophical grounds, fall very hard into one camp or another, completely overlooking the evidence against or simple lack of evidence for their position, while berating the other groups for being in the exact same situation.
Since my biology is a bit weaker, part of my interest has been to see what the evidence is, and what trolls I can ignore. It's probably a good thing that I follow more sources than just/. 8^)
BTW, rather than going after my mother (even if she might deserve it 8^) Might I suggest a more neutral but similar argument I heard once: Eating pickles causes aircraft crashes. Evidence: 99% of airline fatalities have eaten pickles at some time before boarding the doomed aircraft.
Intelligent Design has been shown to be a religiously motivated political movement. There are no "good ID" people tirelessly toiling away to find evidence of a designer.
This may be (and probably is) true of the vast majority, but it is very hard to prove "all" in the way you suggest. I was indirectly suggesting that "good ID" people, if any exist, would do so. Maybe there is one somewhere.
I do agree with you on much of what I have seen, esp. on the political front. But to be honest, I felt the same way in some of my school classes long ago, but only with different idology.
"There are no stupid questions..." the teacher said, but then would ridicule an honest question, or the person asking it. A lot more progress could be made by either saying up front that "questions along the line of X are not allowed" or presenting even the slightest evidence or reasoning why that line of reasoning is not a useful direction to go.
At least when I was studying astrophysics, we were told about the chain of assumptions that were needed to determine the Hubble Constant, and what the error bounds on it were... "Cosmologists are happy when they can determine the first digit of the number, but they are ok with only knowing the number of digits in it..." my prof. said once.
On the other hand, "Here we have XXX Man, notice the face that looks like a gorilla. They hadn't evolved much by then." Fine and dandy, but don't actively hide the fact that you determined all that from a big toe and a knee cap. I hope the text books have improved since the ones I had to read.
Hence my suggestion to teach flat earth stuff along with proper physics. You probably will run into both, and should know how to deal with both of them, and tell them apart. Just saying the "other" group is stupid/biased/frauds doesn't really help much. They may very well be stupid/biased/frauds but that doesn't prove they are wrong, and it doesn't help you figure out how to tell the difference.
Where ID differs from science, is that not only is no one in ID even looking for mistakes in ID, ID isn't even capable of making mistakes, because their explanations would explain any phenomena
Might I suggest that the only real difference between "good scientists" and "good ID" people is that the former ask "How did X come about?" and the latter ask "Why did Y make X that way?" But they are actually the same question, just phrased differently, and the resolution of the answer is probably very close to the same.
Of course, there are many many fakers and idiots masquerading as members of one group or the other. There always are. One idiot will say "Worms look like human intestines, so humans must be some sort of super worm. See god can't possibly exist!" (I think all you did was point out some similarities between two different things there...)
Another idiot will say "Since you can't explain every single minute transformational step that would turn a worm into a human, you must be a total dork, and that proves that god and only god could do it." (Looks like all you did was point out that the other person lacks a bit of knowledge. They might be right or wrong, you can't know until you find data relevant to the statement you made.)
Yes, I know the arguments aren't quite that simple, but they often times seem to degenerate to that level. I wish high schools would teach both Newtonian physics and what ever stuff the Flat Earth Society cranks out, but with the critical thinking skills to tell arguments apart and make up their own minds. In the same way, perhaps we should teach "evolutionary theory" and "ID theory" along with the skills needed to knock over all the straw men and logically inconsistent statements made by any and all parties in the "debate".
I know that would have helped me more than a lot of what I was taught in school.
Wasn't the whole point of that book to reduce the number of bar fights when drunks start arguing and betting about some wild rumor they heard. Do they list records involving their own product? (It is called the Guinness book for a reason.)
But Garcia insisted the Democrats have the computer security situation well in hand, with the help of security specialists from Cisco Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. ''People can rest assured that we are aware of the need for a strong security system for our technology infrastructure," said Garcia, reading from a prepared statement, ''and we are working with our partners, Cisco and Microsoft, to ensure that our systems remain secure."
Uhmmm. I'd be a bit worried if one of my partners that I trusted with security was Microsoft. Just how many times has Windows Update used the word "critical" to describe a patch recently?
Who are you kidding? Drivers licenses haven't seemed to stop a lot of drunk driving, road rage, or just plain stupidity in the USA. Why should licensed computers (or users) be any different?
Evolution is just the latest attempts of the athiests to pretend they are scientists. It suffers from the same flaw as other such "theories" -- it presumes that which it seeks to prove. In a nutshell, their argument is that life is simple enough to have arisen from a random process, so must not have been created by some intelligence. In other words, we can't explain it, so it must not be god.
I won't argue with either statement, but the search&replace seemed interesting to me.
In just a few weeks, will we be able to go to the local Fry's, Best Buy, CompUSA, or whatever, and see hundreds of products under the new brand/tag line:
Slashdot Mirror
No, the flaws in my education are at best minorly tangential to this discussion. There are numerous causes for that, bad student, bad teacher, bad environment, etc.
But as a more specific example, we have some of the ID nutjobs will totally ignore evidence that supports evolution, and present their evidence in a rather biased manner. But we also have textbooks still showing things as hard fact that have been quite discredited since soon after they were published in the late 1800's.
They seem to still be used because, while bogus in their own right, they show some principle that is to be explained. That doesn't seem like it's much better on a rather basic level. But it also does not mean that I expect an equal half hour from each side on the subject. Shouldn't some small effort be put into finding a better example? It would shut up a whole lot of people.
If you want to show that adding an even number to an odd number results in an odd number, don't use 2+3=7, even if it does show the principle. Perhaps I should wait for a cosmological God-trolling article instead of a biological one since I deal with astronomy and physics better than biology and palentology. But it seems to me (from what I hear at least) that this in some respects is similar to a situation I am a bit more familiar with.
Consider the fact that our place around the sun and galaxy, the various physical constants etc. seem to have a rather tight tolerance on what they could be to support life, out of a rather large range of possible values that could be picked (for all we know) at random. Some have said "See, God did it", others "No, we just wouldn't be around to discuss this if it weren't so. It's just dumb luck." and others invent some new concept like there must be a nearly infinite number of universes all different so we could appear in the right one, but not need it specificly made for us.
I can't say "Don't bother looking farther, we can blame God." But at the same time, I have a difficult time with the alternative which seems rather similar to "I was in front of a firing squad with 20 expert marksman. They all missed, but it doesn't really matter, because if they hadn't all missed, I would't be here to discuss it." I also hold open the many universes option, but there seems to be no evidence for it, and there doesn't seem to be any way to argue against it.
The proper answer for me at least is "I don't know, I will try to keep these possibilities in mind until I find out more." But it seems that many people, perhaps on only philosophical grounds, fall very hard into one camp or another, completely overlooking the evidence against or simple lack of evidence for their position, while berating the other groups for being in the exact same situation.
Since my biology is a bit weaker, part of my interest has been to see what the evidence is, and what trolls I can ignore. It's probably a good thing that I follow more sources than just /. 8^) I'm interested to see if it's all a game of "Your stupid, I'm not listening, go away." or if there is something more going on. Of course this is /. so it's mostly the former, but one can always hope to find a small gem in the pile of...
BTW, rather than going after my mother (even if she might deserve it 8^) Might I suggest a more neutral but similar argument I heard once: Eating pickles causes aircraft crashes. Evidence: 99% of airline fatalities have eaten pickles at some time before boarding the doomed aircraft.
No, the flaws in my education are at best minorly tangential to this discussion. There are numerous causes for that, bad student, bad teacher, bad environment, etc. But as a specific example, we have some of the ID nutjobs will totally ignore evidence that supports evolution, and present their evidence in a rather biased manner. But we also have textbooks still showing things as hard fact that have been quite discredited since soon after they were published in the late 1800's. They seem to still be used because while pretty bogus in their own right, they show the principle. That doesn't seem like it's much better on a rather basic level. But it also does not mean that I expect an equal half hour from each side on the subject. Shouldn't some small effort be put into finding a better example? It would shut up a whole lot of people. Perhaps I should wait for a cosmological God-trolling article instead of a biological one since I deal with astronomy and physics better than biology and palentology. But it seems to me (from what I hear at least) that this in some respects is similar to a situation I am somewhat more familiar with. Consider the fact that our place around the sun and galaxy, the various physical constants etc. seem to have a rather tight tolerance on what they could be to support life, out of a rather large range of possible values that could be picked (for all we know) at random. Some have said "See, God did it", others "No, we just wouldn't be around to discuss this if it weren't so. It's just dumb luck." and others invent some new concept like there must be a nearly infinite number of universes all different so we could appear in the right one, but not need it specificly made for us. I can't say "Don't bother looking farther, we can blame God." But at the same time, I have a difficult time with the alternative which seems rather similar to "I was in front of a firing squad with 20 expert marksman. They all missed, but it doesn't matter, because if they hadn't missed, I would't be here to discuss it." I also hold open the many universes option, but there seems to be no evidence for it, and there doesn't seem to be any way to argue against it. The proper answer for me at least is "I don't know, I will try to keep these possibilities in mind until I find out more." But it seems that many people, perhaps on only philosophical grounds, fall very hard into one camp or another, completely overlooking the evidence against or simple lack of evidence for their position, while berating the other groups for being in the exact same situation. Since my biology is a bit weaker, part of my interest has been to see what the evidence is, and what trolls I can ignore. It's probably a good thing that I follow more sources than just /. 8^)
BTW, rather than going after my mother (even if she might deserve it 8^) Might I suggest a more neutral but similar argument I heard once: Eating pickles causes aircraft crashes. Evidence: 99% of airline fatalities have eaten pickles at some time before boarding the doomed aircraft.
This may be (and probably is) true of the vast majority, but it is very hard to prove "all" in the way you suggest. I was indirectly suggesting that "good ID" people, if any exist, would do so. Maybe there is one somewhere.
I do agree with you on much of what I have seen, esp. on the political front. But to be honest, I felt the same way in some of my school classes long ago, but only with different idology.
"There are no stupid questions..." the teacher said, but then would ridicule an honest question, or the person asking it. A lot more progress could be made by either saying up front that "questions along the line of X are not allowed" or presenting even the slightest evidence or reasoning why that line of reasoning is not a useful direction to go.
At least when I was studying astrophysics, we were told about the chain of assumptions that were needed to determine the Hubble Constant, and what the error bounds on it were... "Cosmologists are happy when they can determine the first digit of the number, but they are ok with only knowing the number of digits in it..." my prof. said once.
On the other hand, "Here we have XXX Man, notice the face that looks like a gorilla. They hadn't evolved much by then." Fine and dandy, but don't actively hide the fact that you determined all that from a big toe and a knee cap. I hope the text books have improved since the ones I had to read.
Hence my suggestion to teach flat earth stuff along with proper physics. You probably will run into both, and should know how to deal with both of them, and tell them apart. Just saying the "other" group is stupid/biased/frauds doesn't really help much. They may very well be stupid/biased/frauds but that doesn't prove they are wrong, and it doesn't help you figure out how to tell the difference.
Might I suggest that the only real difference between "good scientists" and "good ID" people is that the former ask "How did X come about?" and the latter ask "Why did Y make X that way?" But they are actually the same question, just phrased differently, and the resolution of the answer is probably very close to the same.
Of course, there are many many fakers and idiots masquerading as members of one group or the other. There always are. One idiot will say "Worms look like human intestines, so humans must be some sort of super worm. See god can't possibly exist!" (I think all you did was point out some similarities between two different things there...)
Another idiot will say "Since you can't explain every single minute transformational step that would turn a worm into a human, you must be a total dork, and that proves that god and only god could do it." (Looks like all you did was point out that the other person lacks a bit of knowledge. They might be right or wrong, you can't know until you find data relevant to the statement you made.)
Yes, I know the arguments aren't quite that simple, but they often times seem to degenerate to that level. I wish high schools would teach both Newtonian physics and what ever stuff the Flat Earth Society cranks out, but with the critical thinking skills to tell arguments apart and make up their own minds. In the same way, perhaps we should teach "evolutionary theory" and "ID theory" along with the skills needed to knock over all the straw men and logically inconsistent statements made by any and all parties in the "debate".
I know that would have helped me more than a lot of what I was taught in school.
Wasn't the whole point of that book to reduce the number of bar fights when drunks start arguing and betting about some wild rumor they heard. Do they list records involving their own product? (It is called the Guinness book for a reason.)
But Garcia insisted the Democrats have the computer security situation well in hand, with the help of security specialists from Cisco Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. ''People can rest assured that we are aware of the need for a strong security system for our technology infrastructure," said Garcia, reading from a prepared statement, ''and we are working with our partners, Cisco and Microsoft, to ensure that our systems remain secure."
Uhmmm. I'd be a bit worried if one of my partners that I trusted with security was Microsoft. Just how many times has Windows Update used the word "critical" to describe a patch recently?
Maybe it's just me...
Make sure you run bochs or VirtualPC inside Pear too. Hmmm, a PC inside a Mac inside a PC...
Whose GUI-ine reigns supreme!?
Who are you kidding? Drivers licenses haven't seemed to stop a lot of drunk driving, road rage, or just plain stupidity in the USA. Why should licensed computers (or users) be any different?
I won't argue with either statement, but the search&replace seemed interesting to me.
In just a few weeks, will we be able to go to the local Fry's, Best Buy, CompUSA, or whatever, and see hundreds of products under the new brand/tag line:
If it's Belkin, it's broken!
Hmmm, it just might work...