However, science and, belief in, say, the Christian God is incompatible.
Can you point to the specific points of fundamental incompatibility? As a scientist and a Christian, I sure would be interested to know if Slashdot Anonymous Coward has somehow found some point I've missed in my own ponderings on the topic. Certain shallow "American rightwing fundamentalist" conceptions of God are incompatible with science, but they do not hold a monopoly on defining/understanding "the Christian God."
If I use a hammer to nail a picture up on the wall, does this mean I believe in hammer
Yes, you believed the hammer would be suitable for fulfilling particular claims associated with hammers --- that it would quickly and easily drive the nail into the wall. There are probably reasons you chose to use a hammer to do this, rather than a rotten tomato or your eyeball. Likewise, people believe particular religions are suitable tools for producing claimed results --- from bringing rains to parched crops, to assuring eternal transcendent life. Often, this doesn't work out as reliably as the hammer (or it is exceedingly difficult to judge the outcome). Similarly, people believe in science to reliably produce claimed results (e.g. produce mathematical formulae that accurately model/predict physical events); and science has every bit as solid a track record of doing this as a hammer is reliable for pounding nails.
One clarification: particular scientific theories (e.g. particular cosmological origin models) are falsifiable. However, "science" as the overall framework/method is not falsifiable in the same sense. What type of experimental evidence would convince you that "science doesn't work," rather than "this particular scientific theory doesn't work, and needs to be exchanged for another"? Science has a great track record of producing theories that are easily falsifiable but end up not being easily falsified; but "Science" itself is outside the realm of scientific scrutiny.
I agree. I am a Christian myself --- it's not just "early" scientists who find no conflict between their religious beliefs and a "scientifically predictable" universe. Note, however, that current scientific understanding does place more stringent constraints on what variety of scriptural hermeneutics extract accurate "facts of the Bible" --- for example, ultra-simplistic 19th-century "literal 6-days creation" readings are utterly out of the question.
I'm not justifying this "circular" reasoning, just pointing out that it's a core component of "beliefs" for science. Since there's no way to prove any belief system from first principles, I'm not in the habit of trying to provide "foolproof" self-contained arguments. Rather than logically justifying the scientific system, the best I can do is say "Science: it works, bitches!," pointing to the past success of scientific predictions (which provide no ultimate proof of future performance). I can't know for certain that the universe isn't about to utterly break its habitual uncertainty --- but I know which side of that uncertainty I'd place a beer-money bet on.
But curiously, those same people reject like testimony from the followers of competing religions out of hand.
That's quite variable --- there are plenty of people who will take a "that's cool, dude, whatever works for you" approach. For those with more constrained beliefs of their own --- of course they'll prefer to believe what they already believe, and reject things to the contrary. Many people with "Invisible Guy" beliefs will gladly band together with others on broad shared principles (e.g. extremely vague notions of an "intelligent creator"), even while vehemently damning their "compatriots" over particular specifics. I'm not arguing that the "lots of people believe it" rationale is a good, rational reason for adhering to a belief; only that it is a common part of human (ir)rationality, compared to general rejection of "lone crackpot" propositions.
People would ask how you could tell, but no-one else could, that the planets were there. The "Invisible Guy" hypothesis is supported by testimony from a large number of people, who consider themselves to have personally seen/felt/experienced/trusted Invisible Guy's actions. You may not believe a single word of that testimony --- and consider it a massive collective delusion --- but that does offer an explanation of why one stance (supported by testimony from a single person) is considered "crackpot," while another (supported by testimony from billions) is sometimes considered credible (especially by others who claim similar personal testimony).
Note that I didn't specifically say "causality," only "repeatability." Causality is a particular method for embedding repeatability and logical order in the universe, that so far seems to hold up awfully well. Scientifically contemplating the potential for non-causal structures doesn't mean discarding the notion that, whatever these post-GR theories are, they still produce testable/repeatable behavior in the universe.
'Science' as a method and body of accrued knowledge isn't a matter of belief(which is why it has a long history of getting shit done while lesser epistemology waves its hands at uncertainty or contentedly chews its own cud);
The scientific method and accrued body of evidence do rely on some belief that the universe is reasonably repeatable/predictable; that it's worth some effort to, e.g., measure the orbits of planets and come up with mathematical laws describing them, because the planets won't suddenly switch from elliptical to square orbits, then turn into dancing giraffes, just to spite you. This belief continues to be born out by an ever-widening body of evidence, but technically it's still just a belief (with an impressive track record).
Not doubting everything; there are a few assumptions held --- though they may seem so "obvious" that you don't even realize making them. For example, the assumption that the universe is somewhat "repeatable" and amenable to mathematical and logical description: if an experiment about one thing in one circumstance can't tell you anything about other things in other circumstances, then science is entirely useless.
The point is, that the two core doctrines of salvation (the RCC version and the Protestant version) are pretty much opposites.
I'm not trying to minimize the seriousness of the divide --- Protestants and Catholics can't be simultaneously correct on the (highly important) "mechanics" of salvation. But I am loathe to leap from that to saying one or the other is not Christian. Christians in grave error, perhaps; doing a terrible job of rightly proclaiming the Gospel (and perhaps doing more harm than good); but maybe Christians nonetheless. Speaking from the Protestant side, I can still forgive a Catholic for damning me to hell, and see them as a Christian --- considering that categorization as a gift from God, rather than a product of having the right personal theology. And, regardless of the "official" hard-line Council of Trent declarations, there are also plenty of Catholic theologians/priests/laypeople willing to enter into some level of shared dialogue, and consider Protestants to be Christians (albeit with an especially unpleasant time in purgatory awaiting them). Perhaps the most important distinction to make is separating judgment of the teachings/system from judgments of the people: Catholics and Protestants can mutually condemn each others' doctrinal systems as being anti-Christian, without necessarily considering the individual church members to not be Christians (though floundering in error). Consider, as an example, Paul's council in Romans 14 for accepting even those with "weak faith" who erroneously tacked on unnecessary dietary restrictions to their personal Christian piety --- their doctrinal error did not wholly sever them from Christ's work.
How about "the idea of unforgiveable sins directly contradicts all that the apostles and Jesus himself taught"?
Note, in Roman Catholic theology, being a "deadly sin" has nothing to do with being unforgivable --- the "Seven Deadly Sins" can be forgiven. The distinction is rather that they are considered to be especially dangerous as they "engender other sins, other vices" (see the Wikipedia article on the subject for a brief overview). As for whether there is such thing as an "unforgivable sin," one does need to take into account Biblical references to the "unforgivable sin" of "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit," e.g. Mark 3:29. I prefer interpreting this along the lines of "the only way to make a sin unforgivable is to refuse God's forgiveness of sins (through the Holy Spirit)"; nonetheless, it is a matter that requires some nuanced theological care (rather than a blanket dismissal of "not in the Bible," because it *is* in the Bible).
Some churches are raking in the dough --- but a lot aren't, even if they've got big buildings. Many large, impressive church buildings are legacies from many decades ago, when they did have more abundant funds; now under-utilized and barely scraping by to keep the lights on. Many major denominations face an aging and declining membership, with diminishing funds. A few corporatized megachurches can still pull in big, profitable crowds with slick advertising (and often rather hollow "prosperity gospel" theology), but the magnificent old cathedrals from a long-gone heyday of ecclesiastical prosperity are not a good indicator of current finances.
I'm Protestant (Lutheran), so not a fan of many important portions of RCC theology --- but I think you may be pushing a particularly extreme form of sectarian narrow-mindedness that is not a necessary component of either Protestant or RCC (or other offshoots, e.g. Orthodox) theology.
It is for sure that whichever group is christian, the other is not.
This is not "for sure" in a general case. For example, from a Lutheran perspective at the time of the Protestant Reformation, the RCC was the Christian Church, just obscured with a massive cruft of unnecessary and even harmful teachings. There is a long history of ecumenical understandings between divergent Christian groups that accept various bases for a shared Christianity even if "the other side" is "doing it wrong." There is room to be in error and be a Christian --- indeed, that may be a defining aspect of a religion founded on forgiveness and righteousness not of one's own manufacture.
the church founders do, and none ever made reference to deadly sins, nor did the apostles, nor did Jesus, nor did any part of the bible.
The church founders never made reference to quite a bit of common "derived" theological formulation developed later. Even in Protestant denominations that give absolute primacy to "as-presented-in-Scripture" doctrine over later "tradition," later theological formulations are accepted to the extent that they are consistent with and clarify/condense "proper scriptural" Christian principles. For example, the Apostle's and Nicene Creed are not found in the Bible; nor the Augsburg Confession, or the Formula of Concord. Core formulations of Trinitarian doctrine post-date the "Church founders" through the Biblical record up to the time of Paul. Just because it's not directly found in the Bible doesn't make a later theological synthesis (from earlier "scattered" concepts) un-Christian. While I'm not a personal fan of the "Seven Deadly Sins" analysis framework, I need a more sophisticated argument than "not a direct quote from the Bible," because that would toss out a huge amount of "good" theology too.
On the other hand, the fact that you think there are deadly sins doesnt speak highly of your knowledge of Christianity.
Given that using the terminology of the "Seven Deadly Sins" is a long-established and ongoing teaching practice in the world's single largest Christian denomination (Roman Catholicism), I'd say your own knowledge of Christianity appears a bit thin. You might not agree with Roman Catholic theology (and a variety of other denominations that adopt the same "deadly sins" categories), but you can't "No True Scotsman"-away the influence of Roman Catholic teaching on defining what "Christianity" means today for a huge number of self-identified believers.
I agree with the theology presented here, but unfortunately you're on the wrong end of a "No True Scotsman" fallacy for presenting this as a commonly "known" principle among Christians. Whether as a de jure or de facto result of widespread approaches to Christianity, a typical Christian is more likely to lean towards considering one "freed for the Law" rather than "freed from the Law."
Fine; but that means that the analogy with a human friend being given a "hint" about how to help out is entirely inappropriate for this case. There's little justification (if you're trying to explain this situation to someone not an Orthodox Jew) for treating robots as "friendly gentiles" who just happen to help you out on the Sabbath when given indirect hints (when the closest "human" analogy would be slaves given direct orders under threat of death to bake your Sabbath meals). You may have a separate logic for relations with inanimate machines; but it doesn't appear to particularly logically follow from the principles applied to human actors.
I can use timers, because there are long-held religious rules surrounding allowing others to perform actions for me, when asked indirectly. For example, I can say "man, it's hot in here" hoping that you'll turn on the A/C, but I can't say "dude - the AC".
So, do you use non-deterministic timers with a reasonable chance of not "getting the hint" and deciding to remain off? An instruction to a machine to turn on at a particular time is about as direct and unambiguous a mandate as you can make, with zero reliance on the "free will" of the device to voluntarily decide to help you out.
Just pointing out (pedantically) that your "unambiguous" version of the sentence is not perfectly unambiguous: there are multiple different grammatically correct ways to interpret the phrase.
For example, "used to" might be taken in the sense of "a spoon is used to eat soup," or as in "he is used to being correct"; in the latter case, "Target" might be an adjective modifying "American," rather than the verb form "to Target". It might be the "Foreign Governments" that are "used to target American," rather than the "Digital Spy Tool," etc. etc.
Language is a tricky thing --- and most human languages are not especially well structured to produce purely unambiguous statements. A large amount of context (that you naturally and easily fill in) is necessary; one of the big problems that makes "natural language" computer control or automated translation extremely difficult.
Every analogy breaks down somewhere (or else it wouldn't be an analogy, but the thing analogized itself). If one wishes absolute mathematical certainty for their piss-free pint, then one must be satisfied with a mathematical pint. As thus: consider a Platonic ideal beer, symbolically represented by the word "beer." Now, imagine quaffing the beer. Theoretically, this should be satisfying and delicious. If you don't consider this exercise superior to drinking an actual beer, you may just not be cut out for pure mathematics --- consider becoming a physicist instead.
Beer analogy, as requested: suppose you want to be 100% certain that no one is pissing a little in your beer before you drink it. You can be 99.999% sure by ordering high-quality beer in an upscale establishment and watching the bartender fill your glass --- but you've still got that nagging fear that someone in the back room, or even the brewery, may have whizzed in the keg when no one was looking. So, instead of relying on empirical likelihoods, you go and brew your own beer, from start to finish under your watchful eye, to get that 100%-guaranteed-piss-free pint. And, ultimately, humankind's fundamental knowledge and craft of beer brewing is advanced through the initial efforts of home-brew enthusiasts.
((Digital Spy) Tool) Sold To (Foreign Governments Used to (Target American))? Foreign governments accustomed to a Target American were sold a digital spy named Tool?
This is worse than begging --- this is *lobbying*. You're not asking for the computer you'd particularly want given the whole world of available choices; you're working on behalf of Microsoft to provide advertising for Microsoft so that people will give money to Microsoft, and in return you get a crappy device that's not what you and your family/friends would have decided to spend the same $X00 on in the first place.
Assuming "cure depression" means "live a normal life, with standard healthy human emotional responses to events," the guillotine doesn't seem especially effective. In a sense, dead people express the symptoms of most extreme depression: an absolute nihilism, utterly unmotivated to do anything at all, don't even care about being dead, zero sense of self-worth, will just lie on the ground and rot.
It doesn't all work this way- I worked at Merck for a shirt while back in the late 1980s and Crixivan [wikipedia.org] was pretty much entirely internal
I could envision a system which could also support genuinely "internal" research by the (divisions of) private companies that actually want to innovate. You could allow private labs, after well-documented preliminary testing stages, to submit their candidate drugs into the final government-run large-scale testing program, in return for some level of exclusive rights to profit from the drug (a lot like now).
What shouldn't be happening is all the cases where the public pays for a bunch of fundamental research, then the pharma companies get to swoop in and grab the most promisingly profitable products for what might look like a "generous" payment for one only-partially-tested drug, but comes nowhere near to covering all the other research that didn't result in near-market-ready drugs (shifting the risk/expense for R&D to the public, while privatizing all the profits whenever the risk pays off).
So, to the extent that drug companies *are* doing their own innovative research, they'd still be able to do so, while also allowing the benefits of publicly-funded research accrue to the public.
Politically it wouldn't fly in the US anyway.
I agree, this won't get done in our current oligarchy. However, I think it's important to discuss options that are "off the table" for our current bought-and-paid-for political system to create pressure for change away from the whole rotten system, rather than becoming resigned to "megacorporations own everything, so stop even thinking about alternatives."
would you rather have political appointees deciding if Gardasil testing should go forwards? Right now there are a number of people in Congress trying to rewrite the way that NSF/NIH award grants [sciencemag.org]- those sort of shenanigans would be long term far more damaging.
Related to the above point --- I agree that current government, in the hands of big pharma lobbyists, would do everything it can to force a nationalized healthcare system to fail (in order to preserve private profits). However, the problems with Congresscritters doing scummy things against the public good mainly stem from the accumulated power of conflicting private interests. Break the back of Big Pharma, and government representatives won't have so many piles'-o'-cash incentives to serve profiteers over the public interest. So, while this isn't a feasible option with our current government split between right-wing and extreme-right-wing stances, it's important to consider visions of what could be achieved after systematic change in order to evaluate and fight for beneficial systematic changes.
Human trials, scaleup of production and the like aren't exactly trivial things to do either- they aren't cookbook.
Yes, they are big, complex projects; but, so far as I know, based on achieving well-defined criteria (meeting predefined statistical thresholds for the harms/benefits of drugs) according to bureaucratically complex, but fundamentally well established, protocols. This is the sort of thing that governments have a good track record of being perfectly efficient and capable of, to the same or better levels as private industry. Correct me if you have examples otherwise, but large-scale drug trials are not typically the place for flexible, free-wheeling, innovative, risk-taking nimbleness in execution.
I'll agree with you on the open access to trial data and advertising bits- we need to simply ban public ads for prescription drugs and dramatically restrict sales tactics to doctors.
Probably the single most important thing to do first in drug reform. A big added benefit of this is that you could allow "riskier" drugs to be available --- ones that only work well for a smaller portion of the population, and may have wo
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However, science and, belief in, say, the Christian God is incompatible.
Can you point to the specific points of fundamental incompatibility? As a scientist and a Christian, I sure would be interested to know if Slashdot Anonymous Coward has somehow found some point I've missed in my own ponderings on the topic. Certain shallow "American rightwing fundamentalist" conceptions of God are incompatible with science, but they do not hold a monopoly on defining/understanding "the Christian God."
If I use a hammer to nail a picture up on the wall, does this mean I believe in hammer
Yes, you believed the hammer would be suitable for fulfilling particular claims associated with hammers --- that it would quickly and easily drive the nail into the wall. There are probably reasons you chose to use a hammer to do this, rather than a rotten tomato or your eyeball. Likewise, people believe particular religions are suitable tools for producing claimed results --- from bringing rains to parched crops, to assuring eternal transcendent life. Often, this doesn't work out as reliably as the hammer (or it is exceedingly difficult to judge the outcome). Similarly, people believe in science to reliably produce claimed results (e.g. produce mathematical formulae that accurately model/predict physical events); and science has every bit as solid a track record of doing this as a hammer is reliable for pounding nails.
Science is falsifiable.
One clarification: particular scientific theories (e.g. particular cosmological origin models) are falsifiable. However, "science" as the overall framework/method is not falsifiable in the same sense. What type of experimental evidence would convince you that "science doesn't work," rather than "this particular scientific theory doesn't work, and needs to be exchanged for another"? Science has a great track record of producing theories that are easily falsifiable but end up not being easily falsified; but "Science" itself is outside the realm of scientific scrutiny.
I agree. I am a Christian myself --- it's not just "early" scientists who find no conflict between their religious beliefs and a "scientifically predictable" universe. Note, however, that current scientific understanding does place more stringent constraints on what variety of scriptural hermeneutics extract accurate "facts of the Bible" --- for example, ultra-simplistic 19th-century "literal 6-days creation" readings are utterly out of the question.
I'm not justifying this "circular" reasoning, just pointing out that it's a core component of "beliefs" for science. Since there's no way to prove any belief system from first principles, I'm not in the habit of trying to provide "foolproof" self-contained arguments. Rather than logically justifying the scientific system, the best I can do is say "Science: it works, bitches!," pointing to the past success of scientific predictions (which provide no ultimate proof of future performance). I can't know for certain that the universe isn't about to utterly break its habitual uncertainty --- but I know which side of that uncertainty I'd place a beer-money bet on.
But curiously, those same people reject like testimony from the followers of competing religions out of hand.
That's quite variable --- there are plenty of people who will take a "that's cool, dude, whatever works for you" approach. For those with more constrained beliefs of their own --- of course they'll prefer to believe what they already believe, and reject things to the contrary. Many people with "Invisible Guy" beliefs will gladly band together with others on broad shared principles (e.g. extremely vague notions of an "intelligent creator"), even while vehemently damning their "compatriots" over particular specifics. I'm not arguing that the "lots of people believe it" rationale is a good, rational reason for adhering to a belief; only that it is a common part of human (ir)rationality, compared to general rejection of "lone crackpot" propositions.
People would ask how you could tell, but no-one else could, that the planets were there. The "Invisible Guy" hypothesis is supported by testimony from a large number of people, who consider themselves to have personally seen/felt/experienced/trusted Invisible Guy's actions. You may not believe a single word of that testimony --- and consider it a massive collective delusion --- but that does offer an explanation of why one stance (supported by testimony from a single person) is considered "crackpot," while another (supported by testimony from billions) is sometimes considered credible (especially by others who claim similar personal testimony).
Note that I didn't specifically say "causality," only "repeatability." Causality is a particular method for embedding repeatability and logical order in the universe, that so far seems to hold up awfully well. Scientifically contemplating the potential for non-causal structures doesn't mean discarding the notion that, whatever these post-GR theories are, they still produce testable/repeatable behavior in the universe.
'Science' as a method and body of accrued knowledge isn't a matter of belief(which is why it has a long history of getting shit done while lesser epistemology waves its hands at uncertainty or contentedly chews its own cud);
The scientific method and accrued body of evidence do rely on some belief that the universe is reasonably repeatable/predictable; that it's worth some effort to, e.g., measure the orbits of planets and come up with mathematical laws describing them, because the planets won't suddenly switch from elliptical to square orbits, then turn into dancing giraffes, just to spite you. This belief continues to be born out by an ever-widening body of evidence, but technically it's still just a belief (with an impressive track record).
WTF? The base of science is doubting everything
Not doubting everything; there are a few assumptions held --- though they may seem so "obvious" that you don't even realize making them. For example, the assumption that the universe is somewhat "repeatable" and amenable to mathematical and logical description: if an experiment about one thing in one circumstance can't tell you anything about other things in other circumstances, then science is entirely useless.
The point is, that the two core doctrines of salvation (the RCC version and the Protestant version) are pretty much opposites.
I'm not trying to minimize the seriousness of the divide --- Protestants and Catholics can't be simultaneously correct on the (highly important) "mechanics" of salvation. But I am loathe to leap from that to saying one or the other is not Christian. Christians in grave error, perhaps; doing a terrible job of rightly proclaiming the Gospel (and perhaps doing more harm than good); but maybe Christians nonetheless. Speaking from the Protestant side, I can still forgive a Catholic for damning me to hell, and see them as a Christian --- considering that categorization as a gift from God, rather than a product of having the right personal theology. And, regardless of the "official" hard-line Council of Trent declarations, there are also plenty of Catholic theologians/priests/laypeople willing to enter into some level of shared dialogue, and consider Protestants to be Christians (albeit with an especially unpleasant time in purgatory awaiting them). Perhaps the most important distinction to make is separating judgment of the teachings/system from judgments of the people: Catholics and Protestants can mutually condemn each others' doctrinal systems as being anti-Christian, without necessarily considering the individual church members to not be Christians (though floundering in error). Consider, as an example, Paul's council in Romans 14 for accepting even those with "weak faith" who erroneously tacked on unnecessary dietary restrictions to their personal Christian piety --- their doctrinal error did not wholly sever them from Christ's work.
How about "the idea of unforgiveable sins directly contradicts all that the apostles and Jesus himself taught"?
Note, in Roman Catholic theology, being a "deadly sin" has nothing to do with being unforgivable --- the "Seven Deadly Sins" can be forgiven. The distinction is rather that they are considered to be especially dangerous as they "engender other sins, other vices" (see the Wikipedia article on the subject for a brief overview). As for whether there is such thing as an "unforgivable sin," one does need to take into account Biblical references to the "unforgivable sin" of "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit," e.g. Mark 3:29. I prefer interpreting this along the lines of "the only way to make a sin unforgivable is to refuse God's forgiveness of sins (through the Holy Spirit)"; nonetheless, it is a matter that requires some nuanced theological care (rather than a blanket dismissal of "not in the Bible," because it *is* in the Bible).
Some churches are raking in the dough --- but a lot aren't, even if they've got big buildings. Many large, impressive church buildings are legacies from many decades ago, when they did have more abundant funds; now under-utilized and barely scraping by to keep the lights on. Many major denominations face an aging and declining membership, with diminishing funds. A few corporatized megachurches can still pull in big, profitable crowds with slick advertising (and often rather hollow "prosperity gospel" theology), but the magnificent old cathedrals from a long-gone heyday of ecclesiastical prosperity are not a good indicator of current finances.
I'm Protestant (Lutheran), so not a fan of many important portions of RCC theology --- but I think you may be pushing a particularly extreme form of sectarian narrow-mindedness that is not a necessary component of either Protestant or RCC (or other offshoots, e.g. Orthodox) theology.
It is for sure that whichever group is christian, the other is not.
This is not "for sure" in a general case. For example, from a Lutheran perspective at the time of the Protestant Reformation, the RCC was the Christian Church, just obscured with a massive cruft of unnecessary and even harmful teachings. There is a long history of ecumenical understandings between divergent Christian groups that accept various bases for a shared Christianity even if "the other side" is "doing it wrong." There is room to be in error and be a Christian --- indeed, that may be a defining aspect of a religion founded on forgiveness and righteousness not of one's own manufacture.
the church founders do, and none ever made reference to deadly sins, nor did the apostles, nor did Jesus, nor did any part of the bible.
The church founders never made reference to quite a bit of common "derived" theological formulation developed later. Even in Protestant denominations that give absolute primacy to "as-presented-in-Scripture" doctrine over later "tradition," later theological formulations are accepted to the extent that they are consistent with and clarify/condense "proper scriptural" Christian principles. For example, the Apostle's and Nicene Creed are not found in the Bible; nor the Augsburg Confession, or the Formula of Concord. Core formulations of Trinitarian doctrine post-date the "Church founders" through the Biblical record up to the time of Paul. Just because it's not directly found in the Bible doesn't make a later theological synthesis (from earlier "scattered" concepts) un-Christian. While I'm not a personal fan of the "Seven Deadly Sins" analysis framework, I need a more sophisticated argument than "not a direct quote from the Bible," because that would toss out a huge amount of "good" theology too.
On the other hand, the fact that you think there are deadly sins doesnt speak highly of your knowledge of Christianity.
Given that using the terminology of the "Seven Deadly Sins" is a long-established and ongoing teaching practice in the world's single largest Christian denomination (Roman Catholicism), I'd say your own knowledge of Christianity appears a bit thin. You might not agree with Roman Catholic theology (and a variety of other denominations that adopt the same "deadly sins" categories), but you can't "No True Scotsman"-away the influence of Roman Catholic teaching on defining what "Christianity" means today for a huge number of self-identified believers.
I agree with the theology presented here, but unfortunately you're on the wrong end of a "No True Scotsman" fallacy for presenting this as a commonly "known" principle among Christians. Whether as a de jure or de facto result of widespread approaches to Christianity, a typical Christian is more likely to lean towards considering one "freed for the Law" rather than "freed from the Law."
Fine; but that means that the analogy with a human friend being given a "hint" about how to help out is entirely inappropriate for this case. There's little justification (if you're trying to explain this situation to someone not an Orthodox Jew) for treating robots as "friendly gentiles" who just happen to help you out on the Sabbath when given indirect hints (when the closest "human" analogy would be slaves given direct orders under threat of death to bake your Sabbath meals). You may have a separate logic for relations with inanimate machines; but it doesn't appear to particularly logically follow from the principles applied to human actors.
I can use timers, because there are long-held religious rules surrounding allowing others to perform actions for me, when asked indirectly. For example, I can say "man, it's hot in here" hoping that you'll turn on the A/C, but I can't say "dude - the AC".
So, do you use non-deterministic timers with a reasonable chance of not "getting the hint" and deciding to remain off? An instruction to a machine to turn on at a particular time is about as direct and unambiguous a mandate as you can make, with zero reliance on the "free will" of the device to voluntarily decide to help you out.
lessor of two evils
An apt Freudian slip for describing our system set up to rent out political influence (through both major parties) to those with the money to pay.
Just pointing out (pedantically) that your "unambiguous" version of the sentence is not perfectly unambiguous: there are multiple different grammatically correct ways to interpret the phrase.
For example, "used to" might be taken in the sense of "a spoon is used to eat soup," or as in "he is used to being correct"; in the latter case, "Target" might be an adjective modifying "American," rather than the verb form "to Target". It might be the "Foreign Governments" that are "used to target American," rather than the "Digital Spy Tool," etc. etc.
Language is a tricky thing --- and most human languages are not especially well structured to produce purely unambiguous statements. A large amount of context (that you naturally and easily fill in) is necessary; one of the big problems that makes "natural language" computer control or automated translation extremely difficult.
Every analogy breaks down somewhere (or else it wouldn't be an analogy, but the thing analogized itself). If one wishes absolute mathematical certainty for their piss-free pint, then one must be satisfied with a mathematical pint. As thus: consider a Platonic ideal beer, symbolically represented by the word "beer." Now, imagine quaffing the beer. Theoretically, this should be satisfying and delicious. If you don't consider this exercise superior to drinking an actual beer, you may just not be cut out for pure mathematics --- consider becoming a physicist instead.
Beer analogy, as requested: suppose you want to be 100% certain that no one is pissing a little in your beer before you drink it. You can be 99.999% sure by ordering high-quality beer in an upscale establishment and watching the bartender fill your glass --- but you've still got that nagging fear that someone in the back room, or even the brewery, may have whizzed in the keg when no one was looking. So, instead of relying on empirical likelihoods, you go and brew your own beer, from start to finish under your watchful eye, to get that 100%-guaranteed-piss-free pint. And, ultimately, humankind's fundamental knowledge and craft of beer brewing is advanced through the initial efforts of home-brew enthusiasts.
((Digital Spy) Tool) Sold To (Foreign Governments Used to (Target American))? Foreign governments accustomed to a Target American were sold a digital spy named Tool?
This is worse than begging --- this is *lobbying*. You're not asking for the computer you'd particularly want given the whole world of available choices; you're working on behalf of Microsoft to provide advertising for Microsoft so that people will give money to Microsoft, and in return you get a crappy device that's not what you and your family/friends would have decided to spend the same $X00 on in the first place.
Assuming "cure depression" means "live a normal life, with standard healthy human emotional responses to events," the guillotine doesn't seem especially effective. In a sense, dead people express the symptoms of most extreme depression: an absolute nihilism, utterly unmotivated to do anything at all, don't even care about being dead, zero sense of self-worth, will just lie on the ground and rot.
It doesn't all work this way- I worked at Merck for a shirt while back in the late 1980s and Crixivan [wikipedia.org] was pretty much entirely internal
I could envision a system which could also support genuinely "internal" research by the (divisions of) private companies that actually want to innovate. You could allow private labs, after well-documented preliminary testing stages, to submit their candidate drugs into the final government-run large-scale testing program, in return for some level of exclusive rights to profit from the drug (a lot like now).
What shouldn't be happening is all the cases where the public pays for a bunch of fundamental research, then the pharma companies get to swoop in and grab the most promisingly profitable products for what might look like a "generous" payment for one only-partially-tested drug, but comes nowhere near to covering all the other research that didn't result in near-market-ready drugs (shifting the risk/expense for R&D to the public, while privatizing all the profits whenever the risk pays off).
So, to the extent that drug companies *are* doing their own innovative research, they'd still be able to do so, while also allowing the benefits of publicly-funded research accrue to the public.
Politically it wouldn't fly in the US anyway.
I agree, this won't get done in our current oligarchy. However, I think it's important to discuss options that are "off the table" for our current bought-and-paid-for political system to create pressure for change away from the whole rotten system, rather than becoming resigned to "megacorporations own everything, so stop even thinking about alternatives."
would you rather have political appointees deciding if Gardasil testing should go forwards? Right now there are a number of people in Congress trying to rewrite the way that NSF/NIH award grants [sciencemag.org]- those sort of shenanigans would be long term far more damaging.
Related to the above point --- I agree that current government, in the hands of big pharma lobbyists, would do everything it can to force a nationalized healthcare system to fail (in order to preserve private profits). However, the problems with Congresscritters doing scummy things against the public good mainly stem from the accumulated power of conflicting private interests. Break the back of Big Pharma, and government representatives won't have so many piles'-o'-cash incentives to serve profiteers over the public interest. So, while this isn't a feasible option with our current government split between right-wing and extreme-right-wing stances, it's important to consider visions of what could be achieved after systematic change in order to evaluate and fight for beneficial systematic changes.
Human trials, scaleup of production and the like aren't exactly trivial things to do either- they aren't cookbook.
Yes, they are big, complex projects; but, so far as I know, based on achieving well-defined criteria (meeting predefined statistical thresholds for the harms/benefits of drugs) according to bureaucratically complex, but fundamentally well established, protocols. This is the sort of thing that governments have a good track record of being perfectly efficient and capable of, to the same or better levels as private industry. Correct me if you have examples otherwise, but large-scale drug trials are not typically the place for flexible, free-wheeling, innovative, risk-taking nimbleness in execution.
I'll agree with you on the open access to trial data and advertising bits- we need to simply ban public ads for prescription drugs and dramatically restrict sales tactics to doctors.
Probably the single most important thing to do first in drug reform. A big added benefit of this is that you could allow "riskier" drugs to be available --- ones that only work well for a smaller portion of the population, and may have wo