There are some lies within your post I can tolerate. This one I cannot. To be an atheist means to deny the belief in a god. That does not constitute a belief in and of itself. If denying the beliefs of another was itself a belief, then the moment I state something absurd in your prescence, like that the White House is made from cheese, you would suddenly gain a new belief you didn't have a moment before - and that would be true whether you agree with my statement about the White House or deny it.
I don't subscribe to the notion that crazy people can add beliefs (and thus burdens of proof) to my worldview by just stating silly things in my presence.
And speaking of hideously defined words: "Fact" is the opposite of "Opinion", not the opposite of "falsehood". There is such a thing as a false fact. Actually, that is what "fact" means - an objective claim that is CAPABLE of being either true or false, as opposed to a subjective claim for which "true and false" are meaningless concepts.
to say there is no god (atheist), to say that I don't believe in a god until his existense is proved (agnostic)
That's not really what those terms mean. "Atheist" is a wide term that means "I don't believe there is a god" - this umbrella then also ends up including those who go one more step to saying "I believe there is no god." "I believe there is no god" is a statement that is true of only a subset of atheists, and it's not a very large subset, actually (in much the same way that fundamentalists are a subset of Christians, but not a very large subset). It's just as wrong to assume all atheists have a strong belief there is no god, as it would be to assume all Christians are fundamentalists.
"Agnostic" is about knowelge, not belief. There is some overlap between "agnostic" and "atheist". It is possible, for example, to say "I don't think it is possible to really know for sure if god exists or not. However, using Occams' Razor in this situation I think the burden of proof is entirely on the one who says god *does* exist, since they're the one introducing extra entities that don't simplify things any. Therefore if no knowlege is possible, I'm going to take the guess that god is probably nonexistant, and thus refrain from believing in him." Such a person is BOTH an atheist and an agnostic. It's what I am, and I'm not the first person I came across with that exact stance on the issue.
In theory, there could possibly be a god. However all the major religions are nothing more than random guesses as to what properties that god might have. As random guesses taken from a pool of infinite possibilities, the probability of any of them being even remotely close to correct is infinitessimally close to zero. At least that's the way I see it. If there is a god, then there is still a high chance that 100% of theists guessed wrong as to what it is like. In fact, I think that the chance of 100% of them being wrong is almost infinitely greater than the chance of even one individual among them being right.
... religious Darwinism. IOW, beliefs evolve as previous beliefs are shown to be "unfit," i.e. disproven by observation.
That's not exclusively a religion thing - that's true of all mental ideas. The concept is called "Memetics". The idea that you can track the motion of ideas in a population in exactly the same way you can track the motion of genes - it's just a lot faster. Ideas are shared between people who congregate, just like genes are (well, not "JUST" like genes are - it's a bit faster and less messy and happens a zillion times more often in a person's lifetime.) The idea is that ideas live or die based on which ones tend to cause more spreading of the ideas - just like genes live or die based on which ones are more likely to live long enough to spread.
So, for example, a religion that says all sex is wrong tends not to last very long. A religion that says sex is okay, but that contraception is wrong tends to spread better. Therefore religions that say contraception is wrong end up being more common than those that don't. Also, the idea that families are useful and good is common simply because that's how you are more likely to spread that idea on to the next generation. The same thing happens with religion's depictions of God. The religions that survive are the ones that define gods that have zero measurable real-world effect on anything - because those are the ones that can't be disproven no matter what the evidence is.
That Buckingham Palace analogy doesn't work. If there was a pair of black rocks instead of your eyes there, it would have had the same effect of altering the flow of photons. If your eyes were there, but your brain had been removed and your body was dead, it would have had the same effect. So it's not being changed by the act of observation. The application of a conscious being was not the cause of the change.
A lot of quantum physics seems like that to me. Poeple get the false idea that something mystical is going on connected to observing things. It's not the act of observation that interferes. It's the act of *Measuring* that interferes.
Companies, much like humans, don't just adapt to fit the environment - they also adapt the environment to fit themselves. (i.e. Is your business model threatened by the change in the business environment that makes easy digital copying possible? Then instead of evolving your business model to match, you could instead just pass the DMCA and thus evolve the business environment you operate in to match the business model you already have.)
Once it becomes faster to fix a deficiency by changing the environment than by waiting for evolution, then evolution will stagnate. That's why I think intelligence is the last major step in evolution for any speicies. Once it happens, then the act of changing the environment to suit the species ends up replacing the process of normal evolution.
I still don't really think that's a very honest description. God is mentioned exactly ONCE, and it is only with the generic moniker "Our Creator", and only in the same sense that someone might say "act of God" to refer to something in the natural world. Yes, those people beileved in a God, which is why they tended to speak that way, but it was not the fact that they were saying "Our Creator" that they were trying to draw attention to in that statement. The argument they were getting at was that they feel those rights exist by default, as opposed to the common view that they are granted by government. The argument was NOT that they exist by creator as opposed to existing without a creator. If religion was a major principle of the Declaration of Independance, it would have had more mention than that one very weak reference.
If our government is based on the principles of the declaration of independence
I don't accept this premise either. (For reasons already stated in my previous post) As far as this being a big "if" that you say I'd have to explain away - I already did just that, in my previous post. Do keep in mind that when the Declaration was written, it was still a distinct possibility that we could have picked a new monarchy with Washington as the first king. Thankfully that faction didn't get what they wanted.
Thoughts don't automatically refer to things that actually exist just because somebody thinks them. I could think of the space aliens that allegedly abucted me this morning, just as easily as I could think of the orange juice I had for breakfast. Therefore the burden of proof is *always* on the one proposing something exists. Thinking it is insufficient. (If you don't agree, then I'd have to ask why you're an agnostic, since most poeple thinking God exists should then put the burden of proof on the minory who don't, right?) Therefore, to show that ethics are a real existant thing is where the burden of proof lays - just like it does for God. Until then, it's just a thought in someone's head.
Ethics "exist" only in the same way that "happiness" "exists" - as thoughts.
There are several good arguments for cognitive relativism. That is, that trees, rocks, gravity, etc. are merely constructs of the human mind. What makes you think that trees exist objectively but "the good" does not?
I consider myself a sane person. That's all the explanation I need for why I believe objective reality exists. "Good", on the other hand, is a value judgment. It is nothing more than a mark of approval. If you erase all thinking beings from existence, rocks still exist. If you remove all thinking beings from existence, good and evil no longer exist.
Actually the problem with meteor deflection strategies has always been that by the time the measurements become precise enough to know with certainty that the rock will hit us, it will be too late to enact them. The equations are such that small variations in measure result in large variations in results if you try to calculate things out years in advance. Right now, with the event expected 20 years away, the probability is still only 1 in 43. That's not enough risk to wake up the world and get us cracking on a solution yet.
I think the most sensible solution is to attach a propulsion craft to the rock by a tether and pull on the rock. (The craft would have to be built such that its exhaust does not bathe the cable tether in heat and melt it, so it would look a bit goofy, with engines far out on arms.) Basically, the ship would have to:
1 - Look at the spin of the rock, and pick a point to shoot for that is near one of the "poles" of its spin. And the tether would need a rotating coupling in it so it can spin with the rock a bit. The reason for wanting to anchor at a pole of the spin is so that the momentum of the spinning rock doesn't "spool up" the tether like a yo-yo and pull the craft in to it.
2 - Then fire the engines of the craft, with the craft programmed to orient itself such that it just pulls in whatever direction the spin of the rock's axis is pointed. With this thing, it really doesn't matter which direction you divert the rock - as long as you alter its tragectory with enough time to spare before impact, it will miss - regardless of whether you made it go faster, slower, or pushed it laterally.
The reason I like this is that you don't have to deal with the spin of the rock, Just go ahead and let it spin. It will eventually spin up the craft to match it's spin, and that's okay too. Just let it happen and keep pulling. The use of a tether, instead of attaching the rocket directly to the rock, ensures that the thrust can be guaranteed not to cause any additional spin, and if anything it can only reduce spin, not increase it.
Hmm... Then again, if the rock is small enough maybe it's not held together by very much gravity. Perhaps we *do* want to spin it a lot, and hope that makes it break apart. Nahh - probably a bad idea.
Although if we do go with the "blow it up" approach, it would make a lot of sense to get it spinning as much as possible before hitting the detonator - that would help fling the peices father away from the center once it breaks.
I wonder if anyone has ever run into a year 1902 problem on the negative end of 32-bit time_t? (Keeping track of a title deed to an old property, or keeping track of interest on an account that has been around a long time, or trying to store what someone's date of birth is - it may seem odd today to think of someone that old being alive, but 32-bit time_t has been in use for quite some time now. It is feasable to imagine lots of people in 1980 or 1990 being old enough to encounter that problem.)
I don't think it will be nearly as hard as fixing Y2K was. The code doesn't need to change one iota other than to just change the type of "time_t" in the header files. (You *have* been using "time_t" and not just saying "int", right???) Then the only remaining problem becomes what to do with any files that have the 32-bit int time stored in them, and that's not a complicated conversion program to write.
Again, just like y2k, the hard part will be verifying that all problem areas have been found. But unlike y2k, fixing them once they are found will be very simple in every case. The program changes needed will not be of the algorithmic kind (a program having to change how it parses a string date) like they were in y2k, but of the data type kind (change this variable's integer type where it is declared and then leave the rest of the code alone 99% of the time, and if that integer was written to a file, then that file might need a quick ad-hoc converter program written to convert it, but it won't be complex.)
Point #1: I am assuming that by "Our Government" you are referring to the constitutional republic we live under today (as opposed to the short-lived Articles of Confederation). Therefore, while our nation may have begun in 1776, our government began in 1788. The Declaration of Independance is not a foundation of our government. It was a document attempting to justify to the public (and to Parliament) why it was okay to split from the crown, and why the delegates believed an armed revolt was the only means left to make it happen. It had nothing to do with what the government of this new nation would eventually end up being later on once things settled down.
If you look at the actual document that *does* found our government, The Constitution, it never mentions "God" or "Creator", and it only mentions "religion" in two places - The first amendment where it mandates freedom of religion, and in Article 6 where it specifies that the government is not allowed to administer any religous test to see who is eligable for a public office.
Point #2: You keep using "nation" and "government" interchangably. That is a problem because of the reason stated above in point #1. I might be persuaded that there was some small degree of faith in the founding of the Nation, but not of the Government. Since you're talking in the context of basis of law and morality, the government is what matters, not the nation. Consider a nation like France, which has had completely different types of government over the years, but is still the same Nation.
Point #3: Objective things are things that exist outside of the human mind, like trees, rocks, gravity, etc. Subjective things are things that exist ONLY inside the human mind, like value judgements on what is ethically correct. I think that things that are ethically wrong are wrong merely because we desire to live in a world where people don't do that sort of thing. For example, why is being deceptive wrong? It's simply because people don't like being in a world where they are being decieved. And I don't think it needs to be more complex than that. The reason for the arguments between people on what is and is not ethical, then, comes merely from the fact that different people can't agree on what kind of world they'd like to live in.
It appears to me that such a feat could be a philosophical inability for a government that is purely secular. Am I wrong in that conclusion?
Yes you are wrong in that conclusion, because your premise that our government was not based on entirely secular principles is false. It was 100% secular. Secular government does not mean the government is anti-religious. It means the government is an entirely separete entity from religion, and that there are codified rules in place to keep them from mixing together. (And those rules are still there, even though the current administration is trying to violate those rules.) Our government is becoming less than 100% secular today, but it did not start out that way.
Everything seems to become relative, even the basic essence of humanity. Ethics is subjectively based on opinion. It always has been.
Nobody wants a world of Microsoft, but I remember the early 90s when I couldn't trade files with a Mac, WordPerfect wouldn't work with Word, and I spent 19 hours just trying to get my soundblaster 16 to work. I don't want that world either.
You're acting as if they are two different things. The early 90's world you describe is also "a world of Microsoft". What is different today is that Microsoft finally stopping trying to fight the internet at some point in the mid 90's, and crawled out of their insular shell and realized that a greater degree of interoperability is needed, and acted accordingly.
In a day and age when fractions were the most common way to keep track of non-integers (as opposed to today's computer age where decimal places are more common), the imperial system made more sense - measures were designed to have useful multiple integer denominators so it was easy to measure what half of something, or a third or a fourth of something was.
It's only today where we use computers for everything that decimal places became an easier way to deal with fractional units of measure.
Now, if we didn't use a number system based on the number of fingers on our hands, and instead taught kids base16 or base12 from birth, then a system for measuring could have been invented that did both fractions and decimals well - but that's not what happened, and so now we have to pick to optimize one over the other.
That would only be a funny joke if "FF" meant "enjoy" or "like" or something - but it doesn't.
Re:Sounds like a nut - more like a hoax
on
New Calendar Proposal
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The other silly thing about the statement that "Calendar reform has always failed before" is obvious in the name of the current month. This is December, as in deca, as in "the tenth month". Except, of course, it's not the tenth month - it's the twelvth. just like sept-ember is the 9th and not the 7th, and oct-ober is the 10th and not the 8th. That's pretty clear evidence that the months have been shoved around a bit and calander reform has in fact worked. (August is named after who, again?)
But that doesn't mean that the processes must be the same. They could in fact be very different.
Only if they are very different in a fashion that is impossbile to tell what the difference is. After all, we still don't know why gravity works. We just know that it *does* and that it does so in a predictable fashion we can reliably describe.
It would be hard to form friendships if that wasn't true, or to write a reliable history book.
Uhhm - but it *IS* hard to write a reliable history book, though, for exactly this reason. And forming friendships is a fully subjective issue, which right there already means it is not a form a knowlege.
And, oddly, I never liked the Mac OS interface despite everyone saying it was awesome. It just felt clunky. Which is why, for me, I get annoyed at every program on Mac having the same interface - in my case that mentality results in a system that feels wrong to me 100% of the time as opposed to one that feels wrong only some of the time.
I suppose. It's just that the notion of target practice being fun in and of itself is alien to me (yes, I have done it), so it never occurred to me that that could be an end-goal in itself. It just seems like a tedious chore rather than entertainment to me.
Slashdot Mirror
The atheists believe, "There is no God,"
There are some lies within your post I can tolerate. This one I cannot. To be an atheist means to deny the belief in a god. That does not constitute a belief in and of itself. If denying the beliefs of another was itself a belief, then the moment I state something absurd in your prescence, like that the White House is made from cheese, you would suddenly gain a new belief you didn't have a moment before - and that would be true whether you agree with my statement about the White House or deny it.
I don't subscribe to the notion that crazy people can add beliefs (and thus burdens of proof) to my worldview by just stating silly things in my presence.
And speaking of hideously defined words:
"Fact" is the opposite of "Opinion", not the opposite of "falsehood". There is such a thing as a false fact. Actually, that is what "fact" means - an objective claim that is CAPABLE of being either true or false, as opposed to a subjective claim for which "true and false" are meaningless concepts.
to say there is no god (atheist), to say that I don't believe in a god until his existense is proved (agnostic)
That's not really what those terms mean. "Atheist" is a wide term that means "I don't believe there is a god" - this umbrella then also ends up including those who go one more step to saying "I believe there is no god." "I believe there is no god" is a statement that is true of only a subset of atheists, and it's not a very large subset, actually (in much the same way that fundamentalists are a subset of Christians, but not a very large subset). It's just as wrong to assume all atheists have a strong belief there is no god, as it would be to assume all Christians are fundamentalists.
"Agnostic" is about knowelge, not belief. There is some overlap between "agnostic" and "atheist". It is possible, for example, to say "I don't think it is possible to really know for sure if god exists or not. However, using Occams' Razor in this situation I think the burden of proof is entirely on the one who says god *does* exist, since they're the one introducing extra entities that don't simplify things any. Therefore if no knowlege is possible, I'm going to take the guess that god is probably nonexistant, and thus refrain from believing in him." Such a person is BOTH an atheist and an agnostic. It's what I am, and I'm not the first person I came across with that exact stance on the issue.
In theory, there could possibly be a god. However all the major religions are nothing more than random guesses as to what properties that god might have. As random guesses taken from a pool of infinite possibilities, the probability of any of them being even remotely close to correct is infinitessimally close to zero. At least that's the way I see it. If there is a god, then there is still a high chance that 100% of theists guessed wrong as to what it is like. In fact, I think that the chance of 100% of them being wrong is almost infinitely greater than the chance of even one individual among them being right.
That's not exclusively a religion thing - that's true of all mental ideas. The concept is called "Memetics". The idea that you can track the motion of ideas in a population in exactly the same way you can track the motion of genes - it's just a lot faster. Ideas are shared between people who congregate, just like genes are (well, not "JUST" like genes are - it's a bit faster and less messy and happens a zillion times more often in a person's lifetime.) The idea is that ideas live or die based on which ones tend to cause more spreading of the ideas - just like genes live or die based on which ones are more likely to live long enough to spread.
So, for example, a religion that says all sex is wrong tends not to last very long. A religion that says sex is okay, but that contraception is wrong tends to spread better. Therefore religions that say contraception is wrong end up being more common than those that don't. Also, the idea that families are useful and good is common simply because that's how you are more likely to spread that idea on to the next generation. The same thing happens with religion's depictions of God. The religions that survive are the ones that define gods that have zero measurable real-world effect on anything - because those are the ones that can't be disproven no matter what the evidence is.
That Buckingham Palace analogy doesn't work. If there was a pair of black rocks instead of your eyes there, it would have had the same effect of altering the flow of photons. If your eyes were there, but your brain had been removed and your body was dead, it would have had the same effect. So it's not being changed by the act of observation. The application of a conscious being was not the cause of the change.
A lot of quantum physics seems like that to me. Poeple get the false idea that something mystical is going on connected to observing things. It's not the act of observation that interferes. It's the act of *Measuring* that interferes.
Companies, much like humans, don't just adapt to fit the environment - they also adapt the environment to fit themselves. (i.e. Is your business model threatened by the change in the business environment that makes easy digital copying possible? Then instead of evolving your business model to match, you could instead just pass the DMCA and thus evolve the business environment you operate in to match the business model you already have.)
Once it becomes faster to fix a deficiency by changing the environment than by waiting for evolution, then evolution will stagnate. That's why I think intelligence is the last major step in evolution for any speicies. Once it happens, then the act of changing the environment to suit the species ends up replacing the process of normal evolution.
a nation with religious roots
I still don't really think that's a very honest description. God is mentioned exactly ONCE, and it is only with the generic moniker "Our Creator", and only in the same sense that someone might say "act of God" to refer to something in the natural world. Yes, those people beileved in a God, which is why they tended to speak that way, but it was not the fact that they were saying "Our Creator" that they were trying to draw attention to in that statement. The argument they were getting at was that they feel those rights exist by default, as opposed to the common view that they are granted by government. The argument was NOT that they exist by creator as opposed to existing without a creator. If religion was a major principle of the Declaration of Independance, it would have had more mention than that one very weak reference.
If our government is based on the principles of the declaration of independence
I don't accept this premise either. (For reasons already stated in my previous post) As far as this being a big "if" that you say I'd have to explain away - I already did just that, in my previous post. Do keep in mind that when the Declaration was written, it was still a distinct possibility that we could have picked a new monarchy with Washington as the first king. Thankfully that faction didn't get what they wanted.
Thoughts don't automatically refer to things that actually exist just because somebody thinks them. I could think of the space aliens that allegedly abucted me this morning, just as easily as I could think of the orange juice I had for breakfast. Therefore the burden of proof is *always* on the one proposing something exists. Thinking it is insufficient. (If you don't agree, then I'd have to ask why you're an agnostic, since most poeple thinking God exists should then put the burden of proof on the minory who don't, right?) Therefore, to show that ethics are a real existant thing is where the burden of proof lays - just like it does for God. Until then, it's just a thought in someone's head.
Ethics "exist" only in the same way that "happiness" "exists" - as thoughts.
There are several good arguments for cognitive relativism. That is, that trees, rocks, gravity, etc. are merely constructs of the human mind. What makes you think that trees exist objectively but "the good" does not?
I consider myself a sane person. That's all the explanation I need for why I believe objective reality exists. "Good", on the other hand, is a value judgment. It is nothing more than a mark of approval. If you erase all thinking beings from existence, rocks still exist. If you remove all thinking beings from existence, good and evil no longer exist.
Actually the problem with meteor deflection strategies has always been that by the time the measurements become precise enough to know with certainty that the rock will hit us, it will be too late to enact them. The equations are such that small variations in measure result in large variations in results if you try to calculate things out years in advance. Right now, with the event expected 20 years away, the probability is still only 1 in 43. That's not enough risk to wake up the world and get us cracking on a solution yet.
I think the most sensible solution is to attach a propulsion craft to the rock by a tether and pull on the rock. (The craft would have to be built such that its exhaust does not bathe the cable tether in heat and melt it, so it would look a bit goofy, with engines far out on arms.) Basically, the ship would have to:
1 - Look at the spin of the rock, and pick a point to shoot for that is near one of the "poles" of its spin. And the tether would need a rotating coupling in it so it can spin with the rock a bit. The reason for wanting to anchor at a pole of the spin is so that the momentum of the spinning rock doesn't "spool up" the tether like a yo-yo and pull the craft in to it.
2 - Then fire the engines of the craft, with the craft programmed to orient itself such that it just pulls in whatever direction the spin of the rock's axis is pointed. With this thing, it really doesn't matter which direction you divert the rock - as long as you alter its tragectory with enough time to spare before impact, it will miss - regardless of whether you made it go faster, slower, or pushed it laterally.
The reason I like this is that you don't have to deal with the spin of the rock, Just go ahead and let it spin. It will eventually spin up the craft to match it's spin, and that's okay too. Just let it happen and keep pulling. The use of a tether, instead of attaching the rocket directly to the rock, ensures that the thrust can be guaranteed not to cause any additional spin, and if anything it can only reduce spin, not increase it.
Hmm... Then again, if the rock is small enough maybe it's not held together by very much gravity. Perhaps we *do* want to spin it a lot, and hope that makes it break apart. Nahh - probably a bad idea.
Although if we do go with the "blow it up" approach, it would make a lot of sense to get it spinning as much as possible before hitting the detonator - that would help fling the peices father away from the center once it breaks.
I wonder if anyone has ever run into a year 1902 problem on the negative end of 32-bit time_t? (Keeping track of a title deed to an old property, or keeping track of interest on an account that has been around a long time, or trying to store what someone's date of birth is - it may seem odd today to think of someone that old being alive, but 32-bit time_t has been in use for quite some time now. It is feasable to imagine lots of people in 1980 or 1990 being old enough to encounter that problem.)
I don't think it will be nearly as hard as fixing Y2K was. The code doesn't need to change one iota other than to just change the type of "time_t" in the header files. (You *have* been using "time_t" and not just saying "int", right???) Then the only remaining problem becomes what to do with any files that have the 32-bit int time stored in them, and that's not a complicated conversion program to write.
Again, just like y2k, the hard part will be verifying that all problem areas have been found. But unlike y2k, fixing them once they are found will be very simple in every case. The program changes needed will not be of the algorithmic kind (a program having to change how it parses a string date) like they were in y2k, but of the data type kind (change this variable's integer type where it is declared and then leave the rest of the code alone 99% of the time, and if that integer was written to a file, then that file might need a quick ad-hoc converter program written to convert it, but it won't be complex.)
Point #1: I am assuming that by "Our Government" you are referring to the constitutional republic we live under today (as opposed to the short-lived Articles of Confederation). Therefore, while our nation may have begun in 1776, our government began in 1788. The Declaration of Independance is not a foundation of our government. It was a document attempting to justify to the public (and to Parliament) why it was okay to split from the crown, and why the delegates believed an armed revolt was the only means left to make it happen. It had nothing to do with what the government of this new nation would eventually end up being later on once things settled down.
If you look at the actual document that *does* found our government, The Constitution, it never mentions "God" or "Creator", and it only mentions "religion" in two places - The first amendment where it mandates freedom of religion, and in Article 6 where it specifies that the government is not allowed to administer any religous test to see who is eligable for a public office.
Point #2: You keep using "nation" and "government" interchangably. That is a problem because of the reason stated above in point #1. I might be persuaded that there was some small degree of faith in the founding of the Nation, but not of the Government. Since you're talking in the context of basis of law and morality, the government is what matters, not the nation. Consider a nation like France, which has had completely different types of government over the years, but is still the same Nation.
Point #3: Objective things are things that exist outside of the human mind, like trees, rocks, gravity, etc. Subjective things are things that exist ONLY inside the human mind, like value judgements on what is ethically correct. I think that things that are ethically wrong are wrong merely because we desire to live in a world where people don't do that sort of thing. For example, why is being deceptive wrong? It's simply because people don't like being in a world where they are being decieved. And I don't think it needs to be more complex than that. The reason for the arguments between people on what is and is not ethical, then, comes merely from the fact that different people can't agree on what kind of world they'd like to live in.
It appears to me that such a feat could be a philosophical inability for a government that is purely secular. Am I wrong in that conclusion?
Yes you are wrong in that conclusion, because your premise that our government was not based on entirely secular principles is false. It was 100% secular. Secular government does not mean the government is anti-religious. It means the government is an entirely separete entity from religion, and that there are codified rules in place to keep them from mixing together. (And those rules are still there, even though the current administration is trying to violate those rules.) Our government is becoming less than 100% secular today, but it did not start out that way.
Everything seems to become relative, even the basic essence of humanity.
Ethics is subjectively based on opinion. It always has been.
Nobody wants a world of Microsoft, but I remember the early 90s when I couldn't trade files with a Mac, WordPerfect wouldn't work with Word, and I spent 19 hours just trying to get my soundblaster 16 to work. I don't want that world either.
You're acting as if they are two different things. The early 90's world you describe is also "a world of Microsoft". What is different today is that Microsoft finally stopping trying to fight the internet at some point in the mid 90's, and crawled out of their insular shell and realized that a greater degree of interoperability is needed, and acted accordingly.
There's an interesting work in English. It's the word "IF". Apparently you don't understand what it means.
In a day and age when fractions were the most common way to keep track of non-integers (as opposed to today's computer age where decimal places are more common), the imperial system made more sense - measures were designed to have useful multiple integer denominators so it was easy to measure what half of something, or a third or a fourth of something was.
It's only today where we use computers for everything that decimal places became an easier way to deal with fractional units of measure.
Now, if we didn't use a number system based on the number of fingers on our hands, and instead taught kids base16 or base12 from birth, then a system for measuring could have been invented that did both fractions and decimals well - but that's not what happened, and so now we have to pick to optimize one over the other.
That would only be a funny joke if "FF" meant "enjoy" or "like" or something - but it doesn't.
The other silly thing about the statement that "Calendar reform has always failed before" is obvious in the name of the current month. This is December, as in deca, as in "the tenth month". Except, of course, it's not the tenth month - it's the twelvth. just like sept-ember is the 9th and not the 7th, and oct-ober is the 10th and not the 8th. That's pretty clear evidence that the months have been shoved around a bit and calander reform has in fact worked. (August is named after who, again?)
I agree with this philosophy.
Unfortunately, most of the world does not, and they are who I have to communicate with.
But that doesn't mean that the processes must be the same. They could in fact be very different.
Only if they are very different in a fashion that is impossbile to tell what the difference is. After all, we still don't know why gravity works. We just know that it *does* and that it does so in a predictable fashion we can reliably describe.
It would be hard to form friendships if that wasn't true, or to write a reliable history book.
Uhhm - but it *IS* hard to write a reliable history book, though, for exactly this reason. And forming friendships is a fully subjective issue, which right there already means it is not a form a knowlege.
I agree with you that such a legal system you describe would be a great loophole
You have every right to believe as you wish. You have zero right whatsoever to put words in my mouth by lying about what I said.
That is the worst kind of lie possible. I do not tolerate it.
And, oddly, I never liked the Mac OS interface despite everyone saying it was awesome. It just felt clunky. Which is why, for me, I get annoyed at every program on Mac having the same interface - in my case that mentality results in a system that feels wrong to me 100% of the time as opposed to one that feels wrong only some of the time.
I suppose. It's just that the notion of target practice being fun in and of itself is alien to me (yes, I have done it), so it never occurred to me that that could be an end-goal in itself. It just seems like a tedious chore rather than entertainment to me.
Ah - that sounds useful. Very useful. (So SpamAssasin just sticks a header into the e-mail that you can do whatever you like with?)