And, once you account for the fact that the new observation *also* has it own error bar of ~50My, the error bar on the difference (assuming no major correlated errors) is sqrt(59^2+50^2)=77My --- so the two results actually only disagree by ~1.0 standard deviations.
If you currently have more reliable information than the Planck group on this point, I might be interested in buying your bridge. And either your secret scientific space station, or your time machine.
You can argue that theistic belief (either one specific religion or a nebulous definition that tries to tie together a bunch of disparate religions) has special qualities that make it stand well above these other speculative ideas, but I have never seen such an argument that wasn't ridiculously contrived.
I won't argue that, because I'm in agreement: despite numerous attempts by great minds over thousands of years, I have yet to see a "rational argument" for Christianity that isn't "ridiculously contrived" (though, in the better cases, the precise locus of ridiculosity is more cleverly and subtly concealed). Of the many Christians who try to "bridge the gap" between their religious beliefs and a modern rational/scientific synthesis by justifying the former in terms of the latter, I am not one. I have yet to find any writer/philospher who closely represesents the particular veiwpoint of my own theological position; in a less-than-satisfactory sense, I'm vaguely between Stephen J. Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" and Martin Luther's "two kingdoms."
As such, I have no basis on which to prove that my beliefs are correct, or even reasonable or likely. The most I can do is engage in dialogue to clarify what I think (without proving it right), and map out real points of commonality and fundamental disagreement (beyond a superficial "religionist-vs-atheist soundbite spat").
my atheism influences my actions to the same degree your lack of belief in Santa Claus influences yours
On a side note, I've seen this particular line of reasoning in various forms before, and, while a witty sound-bite, I've never thought it holds up well to closer scrutiny (and hence seems unworthy coming from people who theoretically prize rational thought). It would indeed seem silly to make a point of calling ordinary non-Santa-believing adults "asantaists." However, if there was an adult who devoted a considerable amount of time and energy to telling children that Santa isn't real, and berating parents for raising their children with Santa stories, and attending lectures and reading books by prominent Santa-debunkers --- calling that person an asantaist might not be so odd. I'd say your lack of belief in God influences your actions much more than my lack of belief in Santa, because I put zero time/effort into educating myself or others around me about the perils of Santa --- you not only passively disbelieve in God (as I do in Santa), but actively work to promote and defend said disbelief. Based on your post here and below, I respect that you would prefer to emphasize more important *positive* defining aspects of your position; but this doesn't make your atheism conceptually equivalent to my asantaism.
I'd like to be clear that I didn't mean "militant" as a derogatory term --- I absolutely agree with the importance of consciousness raising; I've marched in gay rights rallies, and been arrested in an anti-corporate protest sit-in myself, so I'm no stranger to what I would define as "militant" actions on my own part to take a stand on issues I consider important. I have nothing against your pouring thought and attention into long responses; it's an admirable quality.
As to embracing or not the "atheist" label, it's a very similar struggle to the (also unresolved) nomenclature debates between groups in the LGBTQIA(etc.) community --- e.g., is "queer" a demeaning smear, or a badge of proud and independent identity? I appreciate that particular "picky" stances on self-identifying nomenclature are critical for identifying what components of an otherwise broad and amorphous movement deserve emphasis. I personally think that the components you identify as "important building blocks of freethought" --- a scientific and critical-dissent-welcoming intellectual/social grounding --- do not inevitably require atheism (though they certainly do conflict with many real existing religious institutions).
My apologies if the term "militant atheist" came off as offensive. I assumed the "militant" part from your statement that you'd make a big deal at a dinner party over a scientist merely using a name derived from the Christian tradition (without the intent of proselytizing) --- this seemed to me a bit beyond "never saying 'you are wrong'"; well into "always saying 'you are wrong'" at every small opportunity. As for "atheist," I'm friends with enough people who identify positively with the appellation that I wasn't even thinking that it might be objectionable --- and now I know better. Also, I personally object to the stance that one can't be both a (little-f) free-thinker and a theist:)
I understand your point that promoting familiarity with Christian terminology/mythology might result in "making it more palatable." However, I think there are important differences between your example --- where the Catholic church "sneaks in" Christian perspectives on secular (or at least pre-Christian pagan) celebrations --- and when a scientist (presumably not intending to covertly push a "Christian agenda") draws metaphors from the Christian tradition. If you want to "fight" Christianity (... just after objecting to being called "militant"), perhaps blending it into the same nebulous cultural background to which Zeus and Thor now belong might be a more successful strategy --- you at least don't risk validating the complaints of fundies with a persecution complex, and turning public sentiment against yourself. If the subtle cultural assimilation approach worked so well for the Catholic church, why shouldn't the same work for promoting non-theistic social philosophies?
But go ahead and do whatever you want. It's not as though I want Christianity to lapse into irrelevancy; and I actually would prefer that Christianity be kept clear and distinct from a generic pervasive cultural complex (since, as a Christian, I think there would be something left when you strip away all the tendrils of human religiosity and power politics).
I never said that they make $33M from these people every day --- rather, that they have $33M of these people's money flowing across their poker tables on a regular basis. Of course the casino doesn't take the whole $33M at once. But by skimming a percent here and a percent there, mostly indirectly by schmoozing the big fish to toss a few "tiny" $100k chips on the roulette wheel over a free glass of 40-year-old Scotch, they can rake in a lot of money for themselves (some nice chunk of $181M/year). If the people with tens of millions of dollars to move (and possibly lose) on any given weekend take their cash elsewhere, the casino is left taking a couple percent cut of $0, which is considerably less than a couple percent of $1e9.
Just as a counterpoint to your concerns, I think it's possible that having biblical symbolism re-purposed for secular use as mythological allegory will weaken the grip of bible-thumping fundie-nutjobs on the public conscious. By employing biblical symbolism the same way that enlightenment-era neoclassicism used Greek mythology --- which didn't create a new generation of Zeus-worshippers --- the Christian-centric impact of the terms is undermined by a different message. This example subconsciously subverts the original intent of the Lazarus story from "What can bring stuff back from the dead? Jesus!" to "What can bring stuff back from the dead? Science!".
I say this as a Christian (though not of the bible-thumping-fundie variety), who doesn't particularly want to see Christian symbolism reduced to generic secular allegory. If I don't want this to happen, then perhaps you (as a militant atheist) should.
So, who lost more? The suckers around the table lost $33M. The casino lost the reputation that convinces people to drop $33M on their poker tables *every single day*. In the long run, I bet this is far more than a $33M loss for the casino: they've just lost their fishing seat next to a billion-dollar-a-year cash river from high rollers.
Even though your example was a throw-away, it demonstrates the problem with your thinking about what a PhD should be. A PhD isn't about producing someone who is a technically skilled, hard-working worker who can do work worthy of a 6-figure salary in industry. There are engineering and vocational degrees/educations that provide that --- the ability to clearly articulate and crunch through the necessary steps to solve known engineering problems. While degree inflation and high unemployment has turned the PhD into the new BA/Masters in industry, it really ought to be considered a different (not better or more useful, just different) approach.
PhD research is about working at the edges of knowledge, doing experiments where there is no established "best practices" approach to the problem --- originality and "figuring it out the hard way from first principles" are the key skills, rather than comprehensive real-world technology knowledge. A useful industry engineer, however, is super-skilled and knowledgeable about applying known state-of-the-art methods (they're the kind of people who would spend a year collecting, cataloging, and benchmarking sort algorithms, that a PhD computer scientist invented decades ago but never bothered to turn into marketable products). It's a pity when PhD programs are turned into industry vocational mills, because it both devalues the expertise of highly-skilled workers who don't have a PhD, and ruins the potential of what an academic/bleeding-edge-research PhD program can produce.
Wow, good thing you're not (...just guessing here...) in a position to hand out PhD thesis tasks. That type of grindwork sounds like a fine thing to foist off on a high-school summer intern. Not that doing thesis research doesn't involve a lot of tedious grinding on sub-tasks; however, you seem to be confusing "immediately useful for industry" with "good thesis project."
You also (...just assuming here...) don't seem to have ever gotten deeper in the study/practice of programming than reading Wikipedia pages. For speed/resource-critical programming tasks, yes, there actually is a software engineer looking at every detail of those "additional computational costs" --- counting cycles in assembly code and checking missed cache hits in memory. And this is exactly where your proposed research belongs: the person figuring out the fastest assembly routine for sorting 3 to 11-character unicode strings on an ATmega8535 microprocessor is the engineer tasked with building such a device, not some poor sucker of a grad student grinding through every conceivable hardware/task configuration.
Note my specification of "small-cash". Yes, if you've got a big enough complaint against a company (as in the >=$10k examples you've provided), then people will lawyer up and sue individually (since a cut of several tens of thousands, if not hundreds for the tobacco cases, will actually buy some decent lawyer time). The screen on a $2500 laptop is a marginal case --- how far will people fight that on their own, instead of just sending it back for warranty repairs and dealing with the hassle? For even lower dollar amounts (which can still add up to a lot in bulk), only the hardiest anti-corporate-abuse crusaders will deal with fighting a couple hundred dollar issue (without a lawyer to help maximize the pain to the offending company). And, if you're prepared to fight an individual suit, the "burden" of dealing with class opt-out paperwork is not particularly large, so permitting class actions isn't a major deterrent to (and may even get more people interested in) individual suits.
What really cuts down on legal costs is having millions of potential plaintiffs who each, for the ~$50 of damage done to them, are not willing to go through the bother of even small-claims court (except for a tiny number, who can be paid off a couple hundred bucks on an individual basis). Can you cite any examples of companies being swamped by "thousands" of individual lawsuits over small-cash issues? --- because in the real world, that never actually happens. On the other hand, class actions frequently allow a too-small-for-individuals-to-bother case to get serious, top-notch legal representation, and take a big chunk of cash from the company (as they deserve for mass-screwing-over their customers). This is why all the big pro-corporate-interests media/political loudmouths (aside from the small fraction of them working for law firms) shout so much about "tort reform!" and try to push through legislation *weakening* class action abilities --- megacorporations overwhelmingly prefer to keep their I'm-bigger-than-you legal advantage over private individuals.
If you had been paying attention to my previous posts, you would have already seen my answers as to why I consider n>2 plural marriages in a separate category (for reasons besides blind hate); I will summarize them again for you in one place:
1) Applicability of existing legal statutes: many existing statutes for n=2 marriage are simply inapplicable for n>2 marriage, since they rely on the fact that 2-1=1 to assign rights/responsibilities to a single unique party relative to the other party. Example: In n=2 marriage, when one person is unconscious in the hospital, there is a unique answer to who gets to make decisions for them --- for n>2, you'd need a whole new set of laws to decide how decisions are distributed among several spouses. Thus, n>2 marriage would require a new, different set of legal regulations --- while existing law can be trivially modified to allow n=2 cases not consisting of male+female.
2) Stability of n>2 family units: there is less evidence for long-term stability of n>2 relationships (more likely for destabilizing conflict to erupt between the greater number of participants). An advantage to promoting n=2 pairings is providing reasonably stable family units, who can spend more time going about the business of daily life than tying up courtrooms.
3) Inequality in existing polygamous arrangements: most existing polygamous units exist in and because of cultures with severe gender inequalities, and do not reflect egalitarian unions between consenting adults. Thus, the existence of polygamous marriages in other cultures is not a "selling point" for extending n=2 egalitarian gender-nondiscriminatory unions.
Another not previously stated: while there is abundant evidence that people are born with attractions to same or opposite gender individuals (where substituting a partner of the "wrong" gender is not not remotely attractive), there is no evidence that I know of for people who deeply desire a life-long n=3 committed relationship, and yet would be utterly appalled at "settling" for n=2.
With all these reasons, the I leave my heart open to change from the cries of the oppressed --- where there is actual evidence for benefits outweighing difficulties of n>2 groupings, I'd take that into consideration.
Repealing all marriage might be "easy" and "fair," but that's irrelevant if it's not *good* for society (especially when it's also "easy" and "fair" to switch to n=2 non-gender-discriminatory marriage). My underlying argument *for* n=2 marriage (which you seem to keep on trying to replace with a multitude of straw-men that I have never mentioned, whether that's "rights" or "anything goes!" or "hater!", etc.) is that existing male+female marriage is a good thing (which doesn't rely in any critical way on the shape of the participants' genitalia), so we should gain a bit more of a good thing by simply striking the arbitrary male+female limitation. If you want to address my arguments instead of straw-men, you need to either explain why male+female marriage is bad, or specifically why identical n=2 except for the male+female restriction (not n=58, or n=man+goat, or n=woman+daughter, or any other irrelevant category) deserves fundamentally different treatment.
Yep; I didn't mean to imply that Fox is alone in doing this. You can find equally insidious propaganda from corporate think-tank shills brought on as NPR commentators --- just wrapped in more pseudo-intellectual clothing to target a different audience than Fox's proudly anti-intellectual angry white male demographic. In all cases, the big money advertizing interests can more than keep up with any raw intelligence gains in the general population (from better nutrition, health, and childhood education).
People aren't getting any wiser, and propagandists are getting smarter too. While Fox News pushes *extremely dumb* ideas, it does so in a very slickly manipulative way that precisely targets the vulnerabilities of their demographic audience, effectively conditioning them to act less intelligent than they could be.
So, we're going to give more benefits to more people, because you feel that is government's role?
I'm looking for ways to bring more benefits to more people because, ultimately, benefiting people is a *good* thing. The role of *every* institution --- government, family, markets, etc. --- should be to benefit people. If something beneficial can be done through government, then let it be done! Of course, I'm not a total idiot, and realize that beneficial actions may have associated detriments against which they should be weighed. While you think that all government recognition of marriage should be eliminated, I think that male-female government-recognized marriage is a good thing (provides worthwhile societal benefits compared to its cost), so it would be just as good to expand those benefits to the few percent of humanity not already included. If you're worried about cost, there are plenty of other government "benefits" I think we could cut back on --- like dropping bombs on folks in distant lands, or subsidizing unlimited corn syrup production, or handing out free land to mining corporations, or protecting too-big-to-fail banks.
I'm going to register me and my sons and daughters as "domestic partners" (polygamy/incestuous/gay) so that I can bypass inheritance and make sure she can be covered on my insurance for ever. I mean, if we're handing out benefits based on random criteria, why not?
In coming up with revised, more inclusive marital institutions, we will need to be careful that self-serving asshole sociopaths like you aren't simply given a free pass to abuse the system at everyone else' expense. You personally seem to be "the reason we can't have nice things" as a society. There certainly are several details to hash out. I'm not personally in favor of more-than-2-person units (which would require a whole different legal can of worms from mediating inheritance/divorce/etc between 2 people) or incest (especially trans-generational). An immediate extension of existing marriage with no change but the male+female restriction (which is itself the "random criteria" here) would not introduce any new problems not already present under the existing system.
1, 2) yes, every big object will probably have at least some tiny net spin from its Fermion components --- however, most of these spins will (randomly) cancel out in bulk; there will be much larger net angular momentum from overall orbital motions of the mass which will entirely swamp the spin of the system. 3) Yes, there's some small frame-dragging effect from the orbital angular momentum of the ship, too. These are very tiny corrections, and --- most importantly for this line of reasoning --- not effected differently by the Higgs, because generating extra Higgs *does not* increase the mass of your spaceship.
4) A relevant quote from the Wikipedia Higgs Boson page, which sums it up better than I was:
The Standard Model shows how the energy of the Higgs field and vacuum can manifest, in the right conditions, as the property we call 'mass'. But the Higgs field is not actually "creating" mass miraculously out of nothing (which would violate the law of conservation of energy). In Higgs-based theories, mass is a manifestation of potential energy transferred to the particle during interactions ("coupling") with the Higgs field, which had contained that mass in the form of energy.[33]
Extra free Higgs don't behave "differently" from the coupling with vacuum Higgs. However, it is the fact that the vacuum Higgs field coupling is omnipresent that "creates" the mass term. Adding more Higgs is just like adding more of any particles: whatever extra interaction energy you *add* from the excess Higgs comes out of extra energy required to *create* the excess Higgs, so the total mass/energy of your system remains unchanged.
I don't understand how/why you are involving frame-dragging in this; frame dragging is specifically an effect around spinning objects (if the star is rotating), which wasn't necessarily a part of your earlier considerations. Without understanding your question, I'll venture an answer that may not be useful: while spacetime doesn't have a preferred translational frame, you can tell whether or not you are spinning: if you ever find yourself floating out in empty space, there's no way to feel how fast or in what direction you are going. However, you can tell if you're spinning (just like spinning around in a desk chair). So, a spinning star does create a differently-shaped spacetime around it than a still one, which will move the ship on a different trajectory. But this trajectory is still unchanged whether the ship has molasses or Higgs around it or not. Perhaps another un-helpful answer to the wrong question: to the extent that the ship is heavy enough relative to the star, you do need to include the full bi-directional interactions between both for the motion (not just viewing the ship as moving in an orbit due to the star mass alone). Again, however, the universe doesn't distinguish in this case between carrying along a ball of Higgs or sucrose syrup.
Perhaps a useful thing to keep in mind is that the Higgs is "special" not so much on account of the free particle itself (which you can generate), but on account of the underlying field (which you can't manipulate): the Higgs field has a non-zero "vacuum expectation value," unlike all the other fields. This means that all of "empty space" is effectively already filled with a sea of Higgs (beyond the fluctuation-about-zero-point spontaneous generation of other field quanta virtual pairs) which cause the omnipresent molasses drag we see as particle mass. Again, it's the vacuum-expectation-value-having field which causes this, while extra free Higgs above the vacuum level don't cause any more "special" mass/energy effects than any other interacting particle.
What you seem to be missing is why your plan *doesn't* work if you actually used molasses instead of Higgs --- and that the Higgs aren't particularly different in this respect. So, your ship is embedded in a blob of Higgs molasses. If the free Higgs were somehow pinned stationary to the fabric of spacetime, then it would indeed slow down the ship being pulled by the star's gravity. However, just as with embedding the ship in a molasses ball, the ship and free Higgs cloud are falling *together* under the same gravitational pull of the star --- just as fast as before. In fact, it is a fundamental tenet of Einstein's relativity that there is no such thing as "pinned stationary to the fabric of spacetime" (since spacetime has no fixed reference frame onto which to grab) --- no matter what exotic particle or pancake topping you spread around the ship, the whole ensemble will always tumble in exactly the same way around the star. In the relativity picture, the ship is not even being "pulled" by the star, but moving along a geodesic path in mass-warped spacetime that doesn't depend on the rest mass of the ship at all (hence the apparent gravitational/inertial mass equivalence).
(oops... duplicate of response to wrong post, re-posted below in correct location)
When did I say it was a right, and not a modern invention? I just think it's a great modern invention; an excellent way to bring the benefits of a very old invention (two-person lifetime committed heterosexual unions) to even more people in the world.
How do you feel about polygamy, polyandry and heterosexual incestuous marriages, for the purposes of gaining government benefits?
I've seen little demonstrated evidence of the general benefits of these; however, I'd be willing to change my mind in the presence of actual evidence from the lives of those impacted. More-than-two-person close relationships don't seem to work out stably --- totally loving one person is hard enough (already a high failure rate, but managed very well by some), and adding more generally leads to messy disastrous conflict. Many polygamous practices also occur under conditions of extreme power inequality between male and female participants, which negate marriage as a freely undertaken endeavor of love. Incestuous heterosexual relations have the downside of potential cruelty and suffering from children born with the genetic disadvantages of inbreeding; discouragement of at least this aspect is probably best. Again, however, I will be loving and charitable to my fellow humans, and willing to change my views in response to the cries and struggles of others who lie outside my preconceived sphere of propriety --- if a brother/sister pair truly want to "marry" and start a childless or adoptive family, perhaps I need a change of heart.
When did I say it was a right, and not a modern invention? I just think it's a great modern invention; an excellent way to bring the benefits of a very old invention (two-person lifetime committed heterosexual unions) to even more people in the world.
How do you feel about polygamy, polyandry and heterosexual incestuous marriages, for the purposes of gaining government benefits?
I've seen little demonstrated evidence of the general benefits of these; however, I'd be willing to change my mind in the presence of actual evidence from the lives of those impacted. More-than-two-person close relationships don't seem to work out stably --- totally loving one person is hard enough (already a high failure rate, but managed very well by some), and adding more generally leads to messy disastrous conflict. Many polygamous practices also occur under conditions of extreme power inequality between male and female participants, which negate marriage as a freely undertaken endeavor of love. Incestuous heterosexual relations have the downside of potential cruelty and suffering from children born with the genetic disadvantages of inbreeding; discouragement of at least this aspect is probably best. Again, however, I will be loving and charitable to my fellow humans, and willing to change my views in response to the cries and struggles of others who lie outside my preconceived sphere of propriety --- if a brother/sister pair truly want to "marry" and start a childless or adoptive family, perhaps I need a change of heart.
And that's why concrete is such an awesome building material. In the short term, it might be a lot easier/faster to whip up a structure out of mud, sticks, and goat hide --- mixing, forming, pouring, curing concrete is a real pain. However, the mud-stick-goat solution doesn't work out so great if you need a structure that endures for the ages.
Sorry, I was reading a bit too quickly, and assuming you were continuing the discussion of the grandparent poster asking "couldn't you lower the mass of a spaceship and accelerate it past light speed?".
Anyway, you're still trying to pull some not-in-known-physics sleight of hand with your higgs-o-matic mass fiddling device. If I'm reading you right, you're saying that particles still have the same rest mass contribution from the existing (unchanged) Higgs field, plus extra interactions with the extra Higgs particles being sprayed about. However, there's nothing "special" about free Higgs that makes their interactions with other particles violate the conservation of energy/mass built into the field equations structure. You don't "increase the rest mass of the system" (without pumping in energy from an external source), or "decouple the parity between inertial mass and rest mass" by this mechanism. You just have particles that are both bouncing off virtual Higgs in the vacuum Higgs field (giving them intrinsic mass), plus extra physical Higgs (nothing more special here than bouncing off photons or protons or anything else).
Adding the extra Higgs is approximately equivalent to filling the spaceship with molasses: you'll notice "gee, I have to push my chair a lot harder to move it across the room than without the molasses." The chair has extra "effective mass" due to the molasses (which you notice when you try to accelerate it through the molasses), but it doesn't actually get any heavier so far as the gravitational pull from the distant star is concerned. The star keeps pulling the whole molasses-filled spaceship together without caring about the added "effective mass" from the surplus Higgs. In solid state physics, you learn that electrons can also pick up extra "effective mass" when moving in certain materials due to additional interactions --- but actual conservation of mass or overall rest/inertial mass equivalence is never violated.
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And, once you account for the fact that the new observation *also* has it own error bar of ~50My, the error bar on the difference (assuming no major correlated errors) is sqrt(59^2+50^2)=77My --- so the two results actually only disagree by ~1.0 standard deviations.
If you currently have more reliable information than the Planck group on this point, I might be interested in buying your bridge. And either your secret scientific space station, or your time machine.
It's still an important step up from:
Husband: "no, it's not the outfit."
You can argue that theistic belief (either one specific religion or a nebulous definition that tries to tie together a bunch of disparate religions) has special qualities that make it stand well above these other speculative ideas, but I have never seen such an argument that wasn't ridiculously contrived.
I won't argue that, because I'm in agreement: despite numerous attempts by great minds over thousands of years, I have yet to see a "rational argument" for Christianity that isn't "ridiculously contrived" (though, in the better cases, the precise locus of ridiculosity is more cleverly and subtly concealed). Of the many Christians who try to "bridge the gap" between their religious beliefs and a modern rational/scientific synthesis by justifying the former in terms of the latter, I am not one. I have yet to find any writer/philospher who closely represesents the particular veiwpoint of my own theological position; in a less-than-satisfactory sense, I'm vaguely between Stephen J. Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" and Martin Luther's "two kingdoms."
As such, I have no basis on which to prove that my beliefs are correct, or even reasonable or likely. The most I can do is engage in dialogue to clarify what I think (without proving it right), and map out real points of commonality and fundamental disagreement (beyond a superficial "religionist-vs-atheist soundbite spat").
my atheism influences my actions to the same degree your lack of belief in Santa Claus influences yours
On a side note, I've seen this particular line of reasoning in various forms before, and, while a witty sound-bite, I've never thought it holds up well to closer scrutiny (and hence seems unworthy coming from people who theoretically prize rational thought). It would indeed seem silly to make a point of calling ordinary non-Santa-believing adults "asantaists." However, if there was an adult who devoted a considerable amount of time and energy to telling children that Santa isn't real, and berating parents for raising their children with Santa stories, and attending lectures and reading books by prominent Santa-debunkers --- calling that person an asantaist might not be so odd. I'd say your lack of belief in God influences your actions much more than my lack of belief in Santa, because I put zero time/effort into educating myself or others around me about the perils of Santa --- you not only passively disbelieve in God (as I do in Santa), but actively work to promote and defend said disbelief. Based on your post here and below, I respect that you would prefer to emphasize more important *positive* defining aspects of your position; but this doesn't make your atheism conceptually equivalent to my asantaism.
I'd like to be clear that I didn't mean "militant" as a derogatory term --- I absolutely agree with the importance of consciousness raising; I've marched in gay rights rallies, and been arrested in an anti-corporate protest sit-in myself, so I'm no stranger to what I would define as "militant" actions on my own part to take a stand on issues I consider important. I have nothing against your pouring thought and attention into long responses; it's an admirable quality.
As to embracing or not the "atheist" label, it's a very similar struggle to the (also unresolved) nomenclature debates between groups in the LGBTQIA(etc.) community --- e.g., is "queer" a demeaning smear, or a badge of proud and independent identity? I appreciate that particular "picky" stances on self-identifying nomenclature are critical for identifying what components of an otherwise broad and amorphous movement deserve emphasis. I personally think that the components you identify as "important building blocks of freethought" --- a scientific and critical-dissent-welcoming intellectual/social grounding --- do not inevitably require atheism (though they certainly do conflict with many real existing religious institutions).
My apologies if the term "militant atheist" came off as offensive. I assumed the "militant" part from your statement that you'd make a big deal at a dinner party over a scientist merely using a name derived from the Christian tradition (without the intent of proselytizing) --- this seemed to me a bit beyond "never saying 'you are wrong'"; well into "always saying 'you are wrong'" at every small opportunity. As for "atheist," I'm friends with enough people who identify positively with the appellation that I wasn't even thinking that it might be objectionable --- and now I know better. Also, I personally object to the stance that one can't be both a (little-f) free-thinker and a theist :)
I understand your point that promoting familiarity with Christian terminology/mythology might result in "making it more palatable." However, I think there are important differences between your example --- where the Catholic church "sneaks in" Christian perspectives on secular (or at least pre-Christian pagan) celebrations --- and when a scientist (presumably not intending to covertly push a "Christian agenda") draws metaphors from the Christian tradition. If you want to "fight" Christianity (... just after objecting to being called "militant"), perhaps blending it into the same nebulous cultural background to which Zeus and Thor now belong might be a more successful strategy --- you at least don't risk validating the complaints of fundies with a persecution complex, and turning public sentiment against yourself. If the subtle cultural assimilation approach worked so well for the Catholic church, why shouldn't the same work for promoting non-theistic social philosophies?
But go ahead and do whatever you want. It's not as though I want Christianity to lapse into irrelevancy; and I actually would prefer that Christianity be kept clear and distinct from a generic pervasive cultural complex (since, as a Christian, I think there would be something left when you strip away all the tendrils of human religiosity and power politics).
I never said that they make $33M from these people every day --- rather, that they have $33M of these people's money flowing across their poker tables on a regular basis. Of course the casino doesn't take the whole $33M at once. But by skimming a percent here and a percent there, mostly indirectly by schmoozing the big fish to toss a few "tiny" $100k chips on the roulette wheel over a free glass of 40-year-old Scotch, they can rake in a lot of money for themselves (some nice chunk of $181M/year). If the people with tens of millions of dollars to move (and possibly lose) on any given weekend take their cash elsewhere, the casino is left taking a couple percent cut of $0, which is considerably less than a couple percent of $1e9.
Just as a counterpoint to your concerns, I think it's possible that having biblical symbolism re-purposed for secular use as mythological allegory will weaken the grip of bible-thumping fundie-nutjobs on the public conscious. By employing biblical symbolism the same way that enlightenment-era neoclassicism used Greek mythology --- which didn't create a new generation of Zeus-worshippers --- the Christian-centric impact of the terms is undermined by a different message. This example subconsciously subverts the original intent of the Lazarus story from "What can bring stuff back from the dead? Jesus!" to "What can bring stuff back from the dead? Science!".
I say this as a Christian (though not of the bible-thumping-fundie variety), who doesn't particularly want to see Christian symbolism reduced to generic secular allegory. If I don't want this to happen, then perhaps you (as a militant atheist) should.
So, who lost more? The suckers around the table lost $33M. The casino lost the reputation that convinces people to drop $33M on their poker tables *every single day*. In the long run, I bet this is far more than a $33M loss for the casino: they've just lost their fishing seat next to a billion-dollar-a-year cash river from high rollers.
Even though your example was a throw-away, it demonstrates the problem with your thinking about what a PhD should be. A PhD isn't about producing someone who is a technically skilled, hard-working worker who can do work worthy of a 6-figure salary in industry. There are engineering and vocational degrees/educations that provide that --- the ability to clearly articulate and crunch through the necessary steps to solve known engineering problems. While degree inflation and high unemployment has turned the PhD into the new BA/Masters in industry, it really ought to be considered a different (not better or more useful, just different) approach.
PhD research is about working at the edges of knowledge, doing experiments where there is no established "best practices" approach to the problem --- originality and "figuring it out the hard way from first principles" are the key skills, rather than comprehensive real-world technology knowledge. A useful industry engineer, however, is super-skilled and knowledgeable about applying known state-of-the-art methods (they're the kind of people who would spend a year collecting, cataloging, and benchmarking sort algorithms, that a PhD computer scientist invented decades ago but never bothered to turn into marketable products). It's a pity when PhD programs are turned into industry vocational mills, because it both devalues the expertise of highly-skilled workers who don't have a PhD, and ruins the potential of what an academic/bleeding-edge-research PhD program can produce.
Wow, good thing you're not (...just guessing here...) in a position to hand out PhD thesis tasks. That type of grindwork sounds like a fine thing to foist off on a high-school summer intern. Not that doing thesis research doesn't involve a lot of tedious grinding on sub-tasks; however, you seem to be confusing "immediately useful for industry" with "good thesis project."
You also (...just assuming here...) don't seem to have ever gotten deeper in the study/practice of programming than reading Wikipedia pages. For speed/resource-critical programming tasks, yes, there actually is a software engineer looking at every detail of those "additional computational costs" --- counting cycles in assembly code and checking missed cache hits in memory. And this is exactly where your proposed research belongs: the person figuring out the fastest assembly routine for sorting 3 to 11-character unicode strings on an ATmega8535 microprocessor is the engineer tasked with building such a device, not some poor sucker of a grad student grinding through every conceivable hardware/task configuration.
Note my specification of "small-cash". Yes, if you've got a big enough complaint against a company (as in the >=$10k examples you've provided), then people will lawyer up and sue individually (since a cut of several tens of thousands, if not hundreds for the tobacco cases, will actually buy some decent lawyer time). The screen on a $2500 laptop is a marginal case --- how far will people fight that on their own, instead of just sending it back for warranty repairs and dealing with the hassle? For even lower dollar amounts (which can still add up to a lot in bulk), only the hardiest anti-corporate-abuse crusaders will deal with fighting a couple hundred dollar issue (without a lawyer to help maximize the pain to the offending company). And, if you're prepared to fight an individual suit, the "burden" of dealing with class opt-out paperwork is not particularly large, so permitting class actions isn't a major deterrent to (and may even get more people interested in) individual suits.
What really cuts down on legal costs is having millions of potential plaintiffs who each, for the ~$50 of damage done to them, are not willing to go through the bother of even small-claims court (except for a tiny number, who can be paid off a couple hundred bucks on an individual basis). Can you cite any examples of companies being swamped by "thousands" of individual lawsuits over small-cash issues? --- because in the real world, that never actually happens. On the other hand, class actions frequently allow a too-small-for-individuals-to-bother case to get serious, top-notch legal representation, and take a big chunk of cash from the company (as they deserve for mass-screwing-over their customers). This is why all the big pro-corporate-interests media/political loudmouths (aside from the small fraction of them working for law firms) shout so much about "tort reform!" and try to push through legislation *weakening* class action abilities --- megacorporations overwhelmingly prefer to keep their I'm-bigger-than-you legal advantage over private individuals.
If you had been paying attention to my previous posts, you would have already seen my answers as to why I consider n>2 plural marriages in a separate category (for reasons besides blind hate); I will summarize them again for you in one place:
1) Applicability of existing legal statutes: many existing statutes for n=2 marriage are simply inapplicable for n>2 marriage, since they rely on the fact that 2-1=1 to assign rights/responsibilities to a single unique party relative to the other party. Example: In n=2 marriage, when one person is unconscious in the hospital, there is a unique answer to who gets to make decisions for them --- for n>2, you'd need a whole new set of laws to decide how decisions are distributed among several spouses. Thus, n>2 marriage would require a new, different set of legal regulations --- while existing law can be trivially modified to allow n=2 cases not consisting of male+female.
2) Stability of n>2 family units: there is less evidence for long-term stability of n>2 relationships (more likely for destabilizing conflict to erupt between the greater number of participants). An advantage to promoting n=2 pairings is providing reasonably stable family units, who can spend more time going about the business of daily life than tying up courtrooms.
3) Inequality in existing polygamous arrangements: most existing polygamous units exist in and because of cultures with severe gender inequalities, and do not reflect egalitarian unions between consenting adults. Thus, the existence of polygamous marriages in other cultures is not a "selling point" for extending n=2 egalitarian gender-nondiscriminatory unions.
Another not previously stated: while there is abundant evidence that people are born with attractions to same or opposite gender individuals (where substituting a partner of the "wrong" gender is not not remotely attractive), there is no evidence that I know of for people who deeply desire a life-long n=3 committed relationship, and yet would be utterly appalled at "settling" for n=2.
With all these reasons, the I leave my heart open to change from the cries of the oppressed --- where there is actual evidence for benefits outweighing difficulties of n>2 groupings, I'd take that into consideration.
Repealing all marriage might be "easy" and "fair," but that's irrelevant if it's not *good* for society (especially when it's also "easy" and "fair" to switch to n=2 non-gender-discriminatory marriage). My underlying argument *for* n=2 marriage (which you seem to keep on trying to replace with a multitude of straw-men that I have never mentioned, whether that's "rights" or "anything goes!" or "hater!", etc.) is that existing male+female marriage is a good thing (which doesn't rely in any critical way on the shape of the participants' genitalia), so we should gain a bit more of a good thing by simply striking the arbitrary male+female limitation. If you want to address my arguments instead of straw-men, you need to either explain why male+female marriage is bad, or specifically why identical n=2 except for the male+female restriction (not n=58, or n=man+goat, or n=woman+daughter, or any other irrelevant category) deserves fundamentally different treatment.
Yep; I didn't mean to imply that Fox is alone in doing this. You can find equally insidious propaganda from corporate think-tank shills brought on as NPR commentators --- just wrapped in more pseudo-intellectual clothing to target a different audience than Fox's proudly anti-intellectual angry white male demographic. In all cases, the big money advertizing interests can more than keep up with any raw intelligence gains in the general population (from better nutrition, health, and childhood education).
People aren't getting any wiser, and propagandists are getting smarter too. While Fox News pushes *extremely dumb* ideas, it does so in a very slickly manipulative way that precisely targets the vulnerabilities of their demographic audience, effectively conditioning them to act less intelligent than they could be.
So, we're going to give more benefits to more people, because you feel that is government's role?
I'm looking for ways to bring more benefits to more people because, ultimately, benefiting people is a *good* thing. The role of *every* institution --- government, family, markets, etc. --- should be to benefit people. If something beneficial can be done through government, then let it be done! Of course, I'm not a total idiot, and realize that beneficial actions may have associated detriments against which they should be weighed. While you think that all government recognition of marriage should be eliminated, I think that male-female government-recognized marriage is a good thing (provides worthwhile societal benefits compared to its cost), so it would be just as good to expand those benefits to the few percent of humanity not already included. If you're worried about cost, there are plenty of other government "benefits" I think we could cut back on --- like dropping bombs on folks in distant lands, or subsidizing unlimited corn syrup production, or handing out free land to mining corporations, or protecting too-big-to-fail banks.
I'm going to register me and my sons and daughters as "domestic partners" (polygamy/incestuous/gay) so that I can bypass inheritance and make sure she can be covered on my insurance for ever. I mean, if we're handing out benefits based on random criteria, why not?
In coming up with revised, more inclusive marital institutions, we will need to be careful that self-serving asshole sociopaths like you aren't simply given a free pass to abuse the system at everyone else' expense. You personally seem to be "the reason we can't have nice things" as a society. There certainly are several details to hash out. I'm not personally in favor of more-than-2-person units (which would require a whole different legal can of worms from mediating inheritance/divorce/etc between 2 people) or incest (especially trans-generational). An immediate extension of existing marriage with no change but the male+female restriction (which is itself the "random criteria" here) would not introduce any new problems not already present under the existing system.
1, 2) yes, every big object will probably have at least some tiny net spin from its Fermion components --- however, most of these spins will (randomly) cancel out in bulk; there will be much larger net angular momentum from overall orbital motions of the mass which will entirely swamp the spin of the system.
3) Yes, there's some small frame-dragging effect from the orbital angular momentum of the ship, too. These are very tiny corrections, and --- most importantly for this line of reasoning --- not effected differently by the Higgs, because generating extra Higgs *does not* increase the mass of your spaceship.
4) A relevant quote from the Wikipedia Higgs Boson page, which sums it up better than I was:
The Standard Model shows how the energy of the Higgs field and vacuum can manifest, in the right conditions, as the property we call 'mass'. But the Higgs field is not actually "creating" mass miraculously out of nothing (which would violate the law of conservation of energy). In Higgs-based theories, mass is a manifestation of potential energy transferred to the particle during interactions ("coupling") with the Higgs field, which had contained that mass in the form of energy.[33]
Extra free Higgs don't behave "differently" from the coupling with vacuum Higgs. However, it is the fact that the vacuum Higgs field coupling is omnipresent that "creates" the mass term. Adding more Higgs is just like adding more of any particles: whatever extra interaction energy you *add* from the excess Higgs comes out of extra energy required to *create* the excess Higgs, so the total mass/energy of your system remains unchanged.
I don't understand how/why you are involving frame-dragging in this; frame dragging is specifically an effect around spinning objects (if the star is rotating), which wasn't necessarily a part of your earlier considerations. Without understanding your question, I'll venture an answer that may not be useful: while spacetime doesn't have a preferred translational frame, you can tell whether or not you are spinning: if you ever find yourself floating out in empty space, there's no way to feel how fast or in what direction you are going. However, you can tell if you're spinning (just like spinning around in a desk chair). So, a spinning star does create a differently-shaped spacetime around it than a still one, which will move the ship on a different trajectory. But this trajectory is still unchanged whether the ship has molasses or Higgs around it or not. Perhaps another un-helpful answer to the wrong question: to the extent that the ship is heavy enough relative to the star, you do need to include the full bi-directional interactions between both for the motion (not just viewing the ship as moving in an orbit due to the star mass alone). Again, however, the universe doesn't distinguish in this case between carrying along a ball of Higgs or sucrose syrup.
Perhaps a useful thing to keep in mind is that the Higgs is "special" not so much on account of the free particle itself (which you can generate), but on account of the underlying field (which you can't manipulate): the Higgs field has a non-zero "vacuum expectation value," unlike all the other fields. This means that all of "empty space" is effectively already filled with a sea of Higgs (beyond the fluctuation-about-zero-point spontaneous generation of other field quanta virtual pairs) which cause the omnipresent molasses drag we see as particle mass. Again, it's the vacuum-expectation-value-having field which causes this, while extra free Higgs above the vacuum level don't cause any more "special" mass/energy effects than any other interacting particle.
What you seem to be missing is why your plan *doesn't* work if you actually used molasses instead of Higgs --- and that the Higgs aren't particularly different in this respect. So, your ship is embedded in a blob of Higgs molasses. If the free Higgs were somehow pinned stationary to the fabric of spacetime, then it would indeed slow down the ship being pulled by the star's gravity. However, just as with embedding the ship in a molasses ball, the ship and free Higgs cloud are falling *together* under the same gravitational pull of the star --- just as fast as before. In fact, it is a fundamental tenet of Einstein's relativity that there is no such thing as "pinned stationary to the fabric of spacetime" (since spacetime has no fixed reference frame onto which to grab) --- no matter what exotic particle or pancake topping you spread around the ship, the whole ensemble will always tumble in exactly the same way around the star. In the relativity picture, the ship is not even being "pulled" by the star, but moving along a geodesic path in mass-warped spacetime that doesn't depend on the rest mass of the ship at all (hence the apparent gravitational/inertial mass equivalence).
(oops... duplicate of response to wrong post, re-posted below in correct location)
When did I say it was a right, and not a modern invention? I just think it's a great modern invention; an excellent way to bring the benefits of a very old invention (two-person lifetime committed heterosexual unions) to even more people in the world.
How do you feel about polygamy, polyandry and heterosexual incestuous marriages, for the purposes of gaining government benefits?
I've seen little demonstrated evidence of the general benefits of these; however, I'd be willing to change my mind in the presence of actual evidence from the lives of those impacted. More-than-two-person close relationships don't seem to work out stably --- totally loving one person is hard enough (already a high failure rate, but managed very well by some), and adding more generally leads to messy disastrous conflict. Many polygamous practices also occur under conditions of extreme power inequality between male and female participants, which negate marriage as a freely undertaken endeavor of love. Incestuous heterosexual relations have the downside of potential cruelty and suffering from children born with the genetic disadvantages of inbreeding; discouragement of at least this aspect is probably best. Again, however, I will be loving and charitable to my fellow humans, and willing to change my views in response to the cries and struggles of others who lie outside my preconceived sphere of propriety --- if a brother/sister pair truly want to "marry" and start a childless or adoptive family, perhaps I need a change of heart.
When did I say it was a right, and not a modern invention? I just think it's a great modern invention; an excellent way to bring the benefits of a very old invention (two-person lifetime committed heterosexual unions) to even more people in the world.
How do you feel about polygamy, polyandry and heterosexual incestuous marriages, for the purposes of gaining government benefits?
I've seen little demonstrated evidence of the general benefits of these; however, I'd be willing to change my mind in the presence of actual evidence from the lives of those impacted. More-than-two-person close relationships don't seem to work out stably --- totally loving one person is hard enough (already a high failure rate, but managed very well by some), and adding more generally leads to messy disastrous conflict. Many polygamous practices also occur under conditions of extreme power inequality between male and female participants, which negate marriage as a freely undertaken endeavor of love. Incestuous heterosexual relations have the downside of potential cruelty and suffering from children born with the genetic disadvantages of inbreeding; discouragement of at least this aspect is probably best. Again, however, I will be loving and charitable to my fellow humans, and willing to change my views in response to the cries and struggles of others who lie outside my preconceived sphere of propriety --- if a brother/sister pair truly want to "marry" and start a childless or adoptive family, perhaps I need a change of heart.
And that's why concrete is such an awesome building material. In the short term, it might be a lot easier/faster to whip up a structure out of mud, sticks, and goat hide --- mixing, forming, pouring, curing concrete is a real pain. However, the mud-stick-goat solution doesn't work out so great if you need a structure that endures for the ages.
Sorry, I was reading a bit too quickly, and assuming you were continuing the discussion of the grandparent poster asking "couldn't you lower the mass of a spaceship and accelerate it past light speed?".
Anyway, you're still trying to pull some not-in-known-physics sleight of hand with your higgs-o-matic mass fiddling device. If I'm reading you right, you're saying that particles still have the same rest mass contribution from the existing (unchanged) Higgs field, plus extra interactions with the extra Higgs particles being sprayed about. However, there's nothing "special" about free Higgs that makes their interactions with other particles violate the conservation of energy/mass built into the field equations structure. You don't "increase the rest mass of the system" (without pumping in energy from an external source), or "decouple the parity between inertial mass and rest mass" by this mechanism. You just have particles that are both bouncing off virtual Higgs in the vacuum Higgs field (giving them intrinsic mass), plus extra physical Higgs (nothing more special here than bouncing off photons or protons or anything else).
Adding the extra Higgs is approximately equivalent to filling the spaceship with molasses: you'll notice "gee, I have to push my chair a lot harder to move it across the room than without the molasses." The chair has extra "effective mass" due to the molasses (which you notice when you try to accelerate it through the molasses), but it doesn't actually get any heavier so far as the gravitational pull from the distant star is concerned. The star keeps pulling the whole molasses-filled spaceship together without caring about the added "effective mass" from the surplus Higgs. In solid state physics, you learn that electrons can also pick up extra "effective mass" when moving in certain materials due to additional interactions --- but actual conservation of mass or overall rest/inertial mass equivalence is never violated.