As an atheist, I am completely confident in saying that while it is theoretically possible that some entity or force that could be described as "god" or "godlike" might exist, I am absolutely certain that the patriarchal god of middle-eastern sheep-herders is not and can not be it.
While I agree with you, that is a dangerous argument to use with religious people, as they will parse it as "ah, so you do believe in gods really, I just need to try harder to convince you that mine is the True God of which others are feeble imitations."
Atheism is an absence of belief, not a belief in absence. Few people who self-identify as "atheist" have an affirmative belief/faith in the non-existence of a deities. Atheism is just the default position of an absence of belief through faith. It doesn't require "proof" of anything.
This doesn't describe most of the Atheists I've met, who affirmatively proclaim the non-existence of God(s). Perhaps a differentiation could be made between "atheists" and "Atheists" - the former would be as you describe, and the latter would describe a person who expresses a conviction that there is *not* a God.
As an atheist (or Atheist) my problem with religious people is not that they believe in imaginary nonsense, but that they generally expect me to take those beliefs seriously.
And I most definitely do not believe that the various fairy tales they relate are a serious or accurate representation of reality, so in that sense I probably do proclaim the non-existence of their version of God.
In AI there is no need for a self-concept unless you are trying to design a chat bot to pass the Turing test. Expert systems do not need to be self-aware.
Humans don't need to be self aware either. But it happened.
Until self awareness happened, human beings did not exist - they were just apes who could walk on two legs. And until an "AI" has self awareness it is just a computer.
Defining something as intelligent when it is not self aware is just meaningless playing with words. A world beating chess computer is no more intelligent than my alarm clock. It's just a machine doing a job.
Most people simply don't have the technical skills to maintain a website, even if it is a modern CMS.
Wordpress.com has an anti-porn clause. So do pretty much all hosting providers. Those that do allow porn (usually on dedicated accounts) charge a lot more to do so.
You seem to be under the impression that you have some sort of human right to a free service to host porn on.
Blogger is a site where the public can post their communications.
No, it's not. It's a facility offered by Google to let you post your communications if you agree to their Terms and Conditions of Service. It's not the electronic version of Common Grazing Land.
If Blogger is deciding certain communications are unacceptable and is either hiding them or disallowing them entirely, it's still censorship.
It's censorship in the same way that my local supermarket limits my freedom to walk around naked in their store.
Often times even when you're doing something that's absolutely legal, you're still being an asshole.
If you've got an open platform and you let people post anything that's legal, but then you inject your morals into it and ban them from posting things you personally disagree with, that's being an asshole.
What would you say here if instead of banning content containing nudity, they banned content showing any support for feminism, or for the rights of minorities, or they banned any religious content except that of Christianity?
Then I wouldn't use that platform.
Incidentally, I imagine that if you're a supporter of a group that campaigns for equal rights for paedophiles, or for all People of characteristic X to be gassed like rats, you will find it quite difficult to get someone to host your blog. Whether that's censorship or the application of good taste is a matter of perspective.
However, in the cases of the stores selling stuff, or newspapers publishing stuff, every item is chosen for and cleared by the entity selling/publishing them. That's different from a service that solicits self-publication by the masses.
But Google would already have had to exclude lots of things, such as direct personal threats of violence, terrorist planning or bomb making isntructions, child porn, entire copies of copyrighted Oscar nominated films, or whatever.
They were never even theoretically going to allow self-publication of absolutely anything. Google isn't 4Chan.
If a book publisher refuses to publish your manuscript, is that considered censorship too?
That depends. Were they going to publish it, and then decided not to based on the content?
So, in other words, you consider any value judgement at all about content as censorship?
That makes the word "censorship" an extremely watered down one, as it would have to include a publisher deciding that something just wasn't very good and probably wouldn't sell many copies.
There's a difference between something that by default publishes very little content that is hand-picked for the readers (a magazine), and a platform for public posting (a blog hosting site).
I think you're making up the distinction.
A newspaper can choose not to print every single reader's ranting letter it receives, and it's not just just because of physical constraints.
A blog hoster can also choose not to allow every post it receives. A reputable company like Google is perfectly entitoled to choose not to be associated with psychotic racism, the glorification of child rape, or any number of other things.
Except that "censoring" is the only word that correctly addresses the situation; what other word would you use to describe refusal to publish something based upon a moral decision? "Editorial freedom" is most definitely not it unless you're practicing Newspeak.
Say I write an obscene, violently racist letter to the editor of a newspaper saying that I want to rape his dog and eat his kids, and he (rightly) decides not to publish it?
You can call that censorship if you want, but it's a pretty meaningless choice of words.
Extending the use of the word "censorship" to include (say) me choosing not to swear in front of children just makes it into a useless term, and plays right into the hands of people who want real censorship
No, it's not censorship. Censorship is the government controlling your actions by coercion, the threat of using force against you.
Untrue. "Government censorship" is not redundant. Government censorship is the kind backed with force, sure, but anyone with a communications platform can be a censor. And it's no more appealing when a big player like Google indulges in censorship than when the government does.
The difference is that you can publish your blog in approximately one million other places on the internet if you want to. If it was government censorship you wouldn't be able to publish it anywhere.
The competition challenges teams from around the world to develop open source software solutions that will allow children in developing countries to teach themselves basic reading, writing and arithmetic.
It has been the geek's wet dream for at least the past ten years to take the teacher out of the grade school classroom --- which damn little evidence to show that he has was ever on the right track.
It's a standard trope on slashdot (and other geek sites) that teachers just discourage all the brilliant students from achieving their full awesomeness.
These are all great opinions, but before I can take frequent contributor *apk* seriously, I need to know what opinion on 'hosts' is held by Frequent Contributor (TM) BENNET HASELTON!?!
There are good contributors, there are bad contributors, there are plenty of truly horrendous contributors: but there can be only one Frequent Contributor.
Yes. but I think that the people using exercise bikes to generate power is just a placeholder for 'something else' that the author hasn't quite figured out yet
Killing the humans and burning their bodies is more energy efficient.
But at some point people will notice that their friends and neighbours are being burnt. The point is that you have to pacify the majority or else they turn on those in power.
In Brave New World, the proles had drugs and sex to keep them happy: it's a much better prediction of the future than 1984 in many ways.
With no government intervention, corporations would wipe out trade unions and any form of worker protection, and pay even less than they do now, as a near-starvation wage is better than actually starving.
The unemployed aren't actually starving right now, and they are free to sit in the park on a sunny day. Sounds better than be kept as slaves inside a factory for 24 hours a day.
Yes, but the reason that the unemployed aren't starving is precisely because the government pays them something.
In the libertarian/free market utopia, they would be free to starve to death in the park on a sunny day.
Unemployment is created by government rules, laws, taxes, nothing else.
Unemployment is a function of capitalism in order to create fear and a willing pool of people prepared to do awful jobs for rubbish pay.
With no government intervention, corporations would wipe out trade unions and any form of worker protection, and pay even less than they do now, as a near-starvation wage is better than actually starving.
Slashdot Mirror
As an atheist, I am completely confident in saying that while it is theoretically possible that some entity or force that could be described as "god" or "godlike" might exist, I am absolutely certain that the patriarchal god of middle-eastern sheep-herders is not and can not be it.
While I agree with you, that is a dangerous argument to use with religious people, as they will parse it as "ah, so you do believe in gods really, I just need to try harder to convince you that mine is the True God of which others are feeble imitations."
This doesn't describe most of the Atheists I've met, who affirmatively proclaim the non-existence of God(s). Perhaps a differentiation could be made between "atheists" and "Atheists" - the former would be as you describe, and the latter would describe a person who expresses a conviction that there is *not* a God.
As an atheist (or Atheist) my problem with religious people is not that they believe in imaginary nonsense, but that they generally expect me to take those beliefs seriously.
And I most definitely do not believe that the various fairy tales they relate are a serious or accurate representation of reality, so in that sense I probably do proclaim the non-existence of their version of God.
In AI there is no need for a self-concept unless you are trying to design a chat bot to pass the Turing test. Expert systems do not need to be self-aware.
Humans don't need to be self aware either. But it happened.
Until self awareness happened, human beings did not exist - they were just apes who could walk on two legs. And until an "AI" has self awareness it is just a computer.
Defining something as intelligent when it is not self aware is just meaningless playing with words. A world beating chess computer is no more intelligent than my alarm clock. It's just a machine doing a job.
Most people simply don't have the technical skills to maintain a website, even if it is a modern CMS. Wordpress.com has an anti-porn clause. So do pretty much all hosting providers. Those that do allow porn (usually on dedicated accounts) charge a lot more to do so.
You seem to be under the impression that you have some sort of human right to a free service to host porn on.
Blogger is a site where the public can post their communications.
No, it's not. It's a facility offered by Google to let you post your communications if you agree to their Terms and Conditions of Service. It's not the electronic version of Common Grazing Land.
If Blogger is deciding certain communications are unacceptable and is either hiding them or disallowing them entirely, it's still censorship.
It's censorship in the same way that my local supermarket limits my freedom to walk around naked in their store.
Often times even when you're doing something that's absolutely legal, you're still being an asshole. If you've got an open platform and you let people post anything that's legal, but then you inject your morals into it and ban them from posting things you personally disagree with, that's being an asshole. What would you say here if instead of banning content containing nudity, they banned content showing any support for feminism, or for the rights of minorities, or they banned any religious content except that of Christianity?
Then I wouldn't use that platform.
Incidentally, I imagine that if you're a supporter of a group that campaigns for equal rights for paedophiles, or for all People of characteristic X to be gassed like rats, you will find it quite difficult to get someone to host your blog. Whether that's censorship or the application of good taste is a matter of perspective.
I also question your use of the word "popular" as I have never come across blogger before (pun intended).
However, in the cases of the stores selling stuff, or newspapers publishing stuff, every item is chosen for and cleared by the entity selling/publishing them. That's different from a service that solicits self-publication by the masses.
But Google would already have had to exclude lots of things, such as direct personal threats of violence, terrorist planning or bomb making isntructions, child porn, entire copies of copyrighted Oscar nominated films, or whatever.
They were never even theoretically going to allow self-publication of absolutely anything. Google isn't 4Chan.
The meaning of a word is not something that should be politicized...
Neither should it be encouraged to extend its meaning so far as to became a vague, meaningless term of abuse when you don't like someone's opinion.
If a book publisher refuses to publish your manuscript, is that considered censorship too?
That depends. Were they going to publish it, and then decided not to based on the content?
So, in other words, you consider any value judgement at all about content as censorship?
That makes the word "censorship" an extremely watered down one, as it would have to include a publisher deciding that something just wasn't very good and probably wouldn't sell many copies.
There's a difference between something that by default publishes very little content that is hand-picked for the readers (a magazine), and a platform for public posting (a blog hosting site).
I think you're making up the distinction.
A newspaper can choose not to print every single reader's ranting letter it receives, and it's not just just because of physical constraints.
A blog hoster can also choose not to allow every post it receives. A reputable company like Google is perfectly entitoled to choose not to be associated with psychotic racism, the glorification of child rape, or any number of other things.
Is it a physical magazine with a finite space that you have to pick and choose what goes into (i.e. default state is unpublished)? Then no.
Is it an online paper, whose default state is that everything is published? Then yes.
No, choosing what to pick and choose is definitely making a decision for or against publishing something.
And online newspapers or sites (with any serious reputation) most certainly do not default to publishing everything
Except that "censoring" is the only word that correctly addresses the situation; what other word would you use to describe refusal to publish something based upon a moral decision? "Editorial freedom" is most definitely not it unless you're practicing Newspeak.
Say I write an obscene, violently racist letter to the editor of a newspaper saying that I want to rape his dog and eat his kids, and he (rightly) decides not to publish it?
You can call that censorship if you want, but it's a pretty meaningless choice of words.
Extending the use of the word "censorship" to include (say) me choosing not to swear in front of children just makes it into a useless term, and plays right into the hands of people who want real censorship
You're not a child until your 13th birthday, then suddenly turn into a teenager.
No, it's not censorship. Censorship is the government controlling your actions by coercion, the threat of using force against you.
Untrue. "Government censorship" is not redundant. Government censorship is the kind backed with force, sure, but anyone with a communications platform can be a censor. And it's no more appealing when a big player like Google indulges in censorship than when the government does.
The difference is that you can publish your blog in approximately one million other places on the internet if you want to. If it was government censorship you wouldn't be able to publish it anywhere.
it may be their servers, but it's still censorship.
No, that's cheapening the use of the term "censorship" until it's meaningless.
True censorship occurs when those in power prohibit publication of something on pain of criminal sanction.
...maybe you just suck.
The competition challenges teams from around the world to develop open source software solutions that will allow children in developing countries to teach themselves basic reading, writing and arithmetic.
It has been the geek's wet dream for at least the past ten years to take the teacher out of the grade school classroom --- which damn little evidence to show that he has was ever on the right track.
It's a standard trope on slashdot (and other geek sites) that teachers just discourage all the brilliant students from achieving their full awesomeness.
Why not just come right out with it and tell her to read the Collected Works of Ayn Rand like they're the Bible?
These are all great opinions, but before I can take frequent contributor *apk* seriously, I need to know what opinion on 'hosts' is held by Frequent Contributor (TM) BENNET HASELTON!?!
There are good contributors, there are bad contributors, there are plenty of truly horrendous contributors: but there can be only one Frequent Contributor.
Robots have owners of course
And the owners take everything the robots produce. People who don't own robots can just go fuck themselves. How's that ?
Yep, sounds like a perfect recipe for a revolution.
Do you even realise that it is not supply of money that is limiting people's wealth, it is supply of production, or do you not realise that?
But if the production is all done by robots, that only leaves things like writing music or poetry for humans to do.
Yes. but I think that the people using exercise bikes to generate power is just a placeholder for 'something else' that the author hasn't quite figured out yet
Killing the humans and burning their bodies is more energy efficient.
But at some point people will notice that their friends and neighbours are being burnt. The point is that you have to pacify the majority or else they turn on those in power.
In Brave New World, the proles had drugs and sex to keep them happy: it's a much better prediction of the future than 1984 in many ways.
With no government intervention, corporations would wipe out trade unions and any form of worker protection, and pay even less than they do now, as a near-starvation wage is better than actually starving.
The unemployed aren't actually starving right now, and they are free to sit in the park on a sunny day. Sounds better than be kept as slaves inside a factory for 24 hours a day.
Yes, but the reason that the unemployed aren't starving is precisely because the government pays them something.
In the libertarian/free market utopia, they would be free to starve to death in the park on a sunny day.
Unemployment is created by government rules, laws, taxes, nothing else.
Unemployment is a function of capitalism in order to create fear and a willing pool of people prepared to do awful jobs for rubbish pay.
With no government intervention, corporations would wipe out trade unions and any form of worker protection, and pay even less than they do now, as a near-starvation wage is better than actually starving.