Alright, you are playing on the wording here, which granted is important, but does not in itself invalidate the argument. If the above definition were re-worded as "B invariably follows A", then the argument is re-instated.
No it is not. The problem is that the way the terms are being defined, the author is trying to make it possible for "B invariably follows B" to be sometimes true for some B's and false for others. This doesn't really make any sense. Depending on what the author is defining "invariably follows" to mean, the identity property "B invariably follows B" must either be true for all B's or false for all B's.
This isn't just a nitpick point, since it's key to how the argument is structured. The points that follow in the text don't make any sense if this issue isn't resolved.
Instead of refuting my point, your post merely detailed it out. Yes there is a 10x markup, and you explained the little steps along the way that cause it. I never made the claim that the 10x markup is coming from a single point in the chain. That's a false claim you put in my mouth. I merely said there was a 10x markup, without specifying where it came from, or how many steps it took.
The subject is about the trends in the music business, and why there is a problem with making money on physical CD's. Therefore What I as an individual do doesn't matter, and what *YOU* as an individual do doesn't matter either. What matters is what are the majority doing. When the majority no longer want the physical CD distribution method, then it's going to suffer as a business model as a result. And that's already starting to happen.
Your decision to buy physical CD's isn't the silly part. The distributors decision to try to survive by continuing to make that the primary way for them to make money is the silly part. It's THEM that's being silly by emphasizing CD purchases, not you.
And this is why they are in trouble - not because of people's desire to be freeloaders, but because of their desire to get things on a better format for their needs, and the music industry's constant beat-down on any new technology that does this.
Not only is downloading a music file from p2p cheaper than buying a CD, if the goal is to end up with a music file instead of a disc, it's also a lot *easier*. And that's what the music industry needs to address if they want to survive - they need to make the money-making means of getting the files just as easy if not easier than the freeloader means of getting the files.
1) Right at the top, in the definitions, you list, among other things: A->B: A causes B, or, never A without B
That definition ends up with a major problem right there before we even begin. A causing B in one instance doesn't always end up meaning A always leads to B in every instance, as the definition implies. For example, If a car hitting a person causes that person to die, that doesn't mean that a car hitting someone will always cause death. It could merely cause injury in many cases.
2) later in the defintions, there's this: D2. B is caused (other-caused) if, for some A != B, A->B and B-/->B
Uhm, Given the definitions so far, it's not possible for B-/->B, ever. B->B is true for all B's, because B->B was defined to mean that there is never a B without a B - which is tautologically true by definition. (This is a consequence of the bad definition I mentioned above, and one of the reasons why it's a bad definition.)
This pretty much kills the rest of the argument, since it talks about things like A->B and B->B being possible but never both.
This argument might work better if it defined its terms differently.
Far too many people reject Christianity because of their pride.
It takes no less pride to claim god is good and worthy of worship than it does to claim god is repugnant and unworthy of worship. Both are cases of a mre puny mortal assuming he knows how to judge god.
If a part of an argument contains the premise that god is beyond our abilty to judge, then that argument cannot conclude with "god is good" without being self-contradictory.
Is it the disc you want or the album cover art, and leaflet? I didn't call the other paraphenalia silly. I called the disc silly. What if music was distributed on a burned chip or USB 'keychain' drive, and had all that other paraphenalia too? It's the fact that the CD format is less useful than a computer file that makes it a silly way to distribute the file. The first thing I do with a new CD is burn a digitized version of the tracks so I can have the music on laptop or portable player (usually as MP3, but occasionally I use a larger less lossy format for stuff where that really matters a lot, like symphonies.
Settlers of Catan is good, but has the problem that it is often possible to tell early on who a guaranteed loser will be, and yet still have over half the game time remaining to play out. I really don't like boardgames that do that because they make it really suck to be that player who is losing, and for the other players it sucks to have to listen to that player whine about how hopeless the game is, especially when you realize he's 100% correct about that hopelessness. The fact that a house or road cannot be removed or change hands once played on the board means it is quite easy for one player to end up getting "boxed in" such that it is 100% impossible for that player to ever make any real progress.
Now, in games where that doesn't happen, Settlers of Catan is a lot of fun, but it seems to be that about 50% of the time I play, the above scenario ends up happening to someone.
Carcassonne is better because you actually *can* do things to screw up the other players a bit more.
Apple's iTunes is doing okay. It's not charging money that's the problem - it's enforcing inferior technology in order to protect a revenue stream with overinflated priofit margins that's the problem. These days it's just silly to get your music by buying it on a physical disk, and it's even sillier to be paying 10x markup for it.
Re:That explains those mysterious hirings
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Breaking Google's DRM
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· Score: 2, Insightful
A better analogy would be falling over backward in hopes that a person will be there, when you don't have any reason to believe there is even a person there at all, and the signs seem to point toward you being alone.
People conflate the meaning of "faith" a *LOT*. Faith that a thing exists is very different from faith that a person will act a particular way. I don't need faith to believe the catching person is there, in your example. I just need faith that the catching person will behave a particular way - and that's not even really faith - it's based on observations of past human behavior and realizing that the likelyhood is very high that any randomly chosen person would choose to help keep me from falling. It is no more an act of faith than going out to check the mail at 3:00 pm in the hope that the mailman came by like he usually does is an act of faith. It's based on extrapolating previously observed behavior.
every argument which is valid "assumes the conclusion", implicitly in its premises. if it did not, it would not be possible to derive the conclusion from those premises. that is not a criticism.
I don't have any more need to argue with you. Your post damns itself. You define your conclusion to begin with and don't see anything wrong with that.
If you merely say the universe is caused, that is nowhere near making the claim that this cause is God and has certain properties defined by a religion. In fact, at most this argument ends up defining nothing more than a "somethingorother" with no real discernable properties, and thus coming to this conclusion and labeling it "god" has no real meaningful effect on us because it's really not much of a conclusion at all. The bait-and-switch usually occurs somewhere at this point, going from "somethingoroother" that caused the universe to a thinking being that caused the universe.
And the reason god is defined to be not contingent and therefore an exception to the rule is.... oh yeah - becuase it's more convenient that way. Well, then I can just define the universe itself to not be contingent and poof - no need to posit god. The premise defines the spot at which you wish to stop the chain, and thus the argument is circular.
Ah, so I guess it's like battery cells (if you want something smaller than A, use AA or AAA, etc.) Still, it seems a bit odd to me. What's wrong with just naming the shot by the size of it? (i.e. instead of calling it 000, if it has a diameter of.36 inches, then call it.36 inch shot or something like that - that just sounds more sane to me.)
You seem to be implying that if I was to replace my examples with ones more signifigant that this would make my argument fail. I don't really think so. Try a more signifigant example: What if everything you experience was really just a fake simulation like in the movie The Matrix, and it turns out that if you didn't do the right things, you're not going to be let out of the simulation into the paradise of the "real world". That is just as undisprobable as god's existence, and has just as much repercussions on your life, and yet I doubt anyone reading this is going to suddenly start worrying about this potentiality.
As to your attitude toward God, I'd tentatively agree, for some definitions of god. (If the Christian God existed, I'd be his enemy. If the Bahii god existed, I'd be much less antagonistic toward him.)
Dutch, I heard. It's where "Sabotage" comes from - literally "shoe throwing" - refering to an event where protesting workers decided to ruin a factory's machinery during the early days of the industrial revolution by coming to work with traditional dutch wooden shoes (already starting to go out of style by then, so this looked a bit odd), and throwing their hard shoes into the moving parts.
That doesn't seem like a very sensible naming convention to me - what happens when someone makes something with bigger shot? Is it called a "negative one"?
Put up or shut up. If you characterize something as a strawman, then point out where it is a misrepresentation. All you have done is assert that it is a misrepresentation - you haven't pointed out any specifics of what it allegedly was, other than the vague hand-waving claim that I'm not talking about it in a "contemporary form".
All versions of the first cause argument I have ever heard so far fall into one of two categories - They either have the fault that they deny their own premise, or they set up a special exception to that premise up front that amounts to assuming the conclusion before they begin, making the argument circular.
If you have access to some new and improved version that allegedly fixes this, then let's have it.
Bull. When someone says they know they'll never be able to tell for sure that there is a god, and yet they still believe anyway based on just pure faith - that person is in fact an agnostic too - but certainly not any sort of atheist.
That's why there's two different words. One specifies where you stand, the other specifies how certain you are.
Re:That explains those mysterious hirings
on
Breaking Google's DRM
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· Score: 2, Interesting
What about a combination of the two: "I don't believe god exists and you are a fucking mindless retard if you do"?
I don't have to be convinced of my correctness to consider others who *are* to be idiots for thier false sense of certainty.
And "Foo does not exist" is actually the default hypothesis in the face of no evidence for Foo (since it's falsifiable, and the inverse is not). So the statement "God doesn't exist" is not that far off from the statement "I don't believe god exists". In practical terms they end up pretty much the same, since people go around believing various things don't exist for which they have no proof they don't exist. Do you believe there is a pink unicorn standing on your car right now? Do you have proof it's not there yet? Even before you go outside and look at your car, you are already pretty well convinced that unicorn is not there.
And if you did say that you thought there was a good chance it could be there just because it's not disproven yet, then I would be right to call you a mindless retard for it.
Why then does the issue change when the thing in question is God?
Re:On the fucking mindless retardness of people...
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Breaking Google's DRM
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· Score: 1
If you think everyone is a mindless retard, save your time and just say it, instead of a large complex Venn diagram of cases that ends up resolving to the same thing.
Re:That explains those mysterious hirings
on
Breaking Google's DRM
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Here's a list of a few other things for which there is also no evidence of absence: Leprechauns. Unicorns. Aircraft carriers painted pink with green polkadots.
Does that mean it's right to hold out a little bit of benefit of the doubt for these things existing? I say no. I just treat the question of god existing the same way - with a healthy degree of skepticism. While it isn't proof there's no god, that isn't that signifigant to say, since proof of things not existing is practically impossible. Does it bother you that there's no proof that there exist no aircraft carriers painted pink with green polkadots? Does it make you think you need to keep the door open on that possiblity and act accordingly? I don't. And the question of God existing doesn't deserve any special treatment differently.
Re:That explains those mysterious hirings
on
Breaking Google's DRM
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The First Cause argument is self-contradictory.
The premise that every entity must be caused does not lead to the conclusion of God existing. It leads to no conclusions whatsoever since it sets up an infinite recursion. In order for it to be true, there must be an infinite length chain of causes, or a loop of causes. If there is any endpoint whatsoever, even if that endpoint is God, then you've just violated the very premise itself that was used to conclude that such a God exists. Or, in other words, if the universe needs a cause because of this premise, then God does too. Why does god get to just appear from nothing, in violation of this premise?
If there is a rational reason to believe in God, this can't be it. The first cause argument is self-contradictory.
And yes, I went to public school. I can also think logically and see when an argument has holes.
It's an interesting alternate universe you live in where I was pummeling down on the people making the car. In the real world where the rest of us live, I was pummeling down on a slashdot poster's suggestion of how to power a refueling station FOR this type of car, not the car itself.
Slashdot Mirror
with a cost of sale of about six bucks
This is already a markup in the first place right there. 50 cents to the author, 50 cents to press the CD. The rest is advertising and marketing.
Alright, you are playing on the wording here, which granted is important, but does not in itself invalidate the argument. If the above definition were re-worded as "B invariably follows A", then the argument is re-instated.
No it is not. The problem is that the way the terms are being defined, the author is trying to make it possible for "B invariably follows B" to be sometimes true for some B's and false for others. This doesn't really make any sense. Depending on what the author is defining "invariably follows" to mean, the identity property "B invariably follows B" must either be true for all B's or false for all B's.
This isn't just a nitpick point, since it's key to how the argument is structured. The points that follow in the text don't make any sense if this issue isn't resolved.
Instead of refuting my point, your post merely detailed it out. Yes there is a 10x markup, and you explained the little steps along the way that cause it. I never made the claim that the 10x markup is coming from a single point in the chain. That's a false claim you put in my mouth. I merely said there was a 10x markup, without specifying where it came from, or how many steps it took.
The subject is about the trends in the music business, and why there is a problem with making money on physical CD's. Therefore What I as an individual do doesn't matter, and what *YOU* as an individual do doesn't matter either. What matters is what are the majority doing. When the majority no longer want the physical CD distribution method, then it's going to suffer as a business model as a result. And that's already starting to happen.
Your decision to buy physical CD's isn't the silly part. The distributors decision to try to survive by continuing to make that the primary way for them to make money is the silly part. It's THEM that's being silly by emphasizing CD purchases, not you.
And this is why they are in trouble - not because of people's desire to be freeloaders, but because of their desire to get things on a better format for their needs, and the music industry's constant beat-down on any new technology that does this.
Not only is downloading a music file from p2p cheaper than buying a CD, if the goal is to end up with a music file instead of a disc, it's also a lot *easier*. And that's what the music industry needs to address if they want to survive - they need to make the money-making means of getting the files just as easy if not easier than the freeloader means of getting the files.
Reading through your link, I see some problems:
1) Right at the top, in the definitions, you list, among other things:
A->B: A causes B, or, never A without B
That definition ends up with a major problem right there before we even begin. A causing B in one instance doesn't always end up meaning A always leads to B in every instance, as the definition implies. For example, If a car hitting a person causes that person to die, that doesn't mean that a car hitting someone will always cause death. It could merely cause injury in many cases.
2) later in the defintions, there's this:
D2. B is caused (other-caused) if, for some A != B, A->B and B-/->B
Uhm, Given the definitions so far, it's not possible for B-/->B, ever. B->B is true for all B's, because B->B was defined to mean that there is never a B without a B - which is tautologically true by definition. (This is a consequence of the bad definition I mentioned above, and one of the reasons why it's a bad definition.)
This pretty much kills the rest of the argument, since it talks about things like A->B and B->B being possible but never both.
This argument might work better if it defined its terms differently.
Far too many people reject Christianity because of their pride.
It takes no less pride to claim god is good and worthy of worship than it does to claim god is repugnant and unworthy of worship. Both are cases of a mre puny mortal assuming he knows how to judge god.
If a part of an argument contains the premise that god is beyond our abilty to judge, then that argument cannot conclude with "god is good" without being self-contradictory.
Is it the disc you want or the album cover art, and leaflet? I didn't call the other paraphenalia silly. I called the disc silly. What if music was distributed on a burned chip or USB 'keychain' drive, and had all that other paraphenalia too? It's the fact that the CD format is less useful than a computer file that makes it a silly way to distribute the file. The first thing I do with a new CD is burn a digitized version of the tracks so I can have the music on laptop or portable player (usually as MP3, but occasionally I use a larger less lossy format for stuff where that really matters a lot, like symphonies.
Settlers of Catan is good, but has the problem that it is often possible to tell early on who a guaranteed loser will be, and yet still have over half the game time remaining to play out. I really don't like boardgames that do that because they make it really suck to be that player who is losing, and for the other players it sucks to have to listen to that player whine about how hopeless the game is, especially when you realize he's 100% correct about that hopelessness. The fact that a house or road cannot be removed or change hands once played on the board means it is quite easy for one player to end up getting "boxed in" such that it is 100% impossible for that player to ever make any real progress.
Now, in games where that doesn't happen, Settlers of Catan is a lot of fun, but it seems to be that about 50% of the time I play, the above scenario ends up happening to someone.
Carcassonne is better because you actually *can* do things to screw up the other players a bit more.
Apple's iTunes is doing okay. It's not charging money that's the problem - it's enforcing inferior technology in order to protect a revenue stream with overinflated priofit margins that's the problem. These days it's just silly to get your music by buying it on a physical disk, and it's even sillier to be paying 10x markup for it.
A better analogy would be falling over backward in hopes that a person will be there, when you don't have any reason to believe there is even a person there at all, and the signs seem to point toward you being alone.
People conflate the meaning of "faith" a *LOT*. Faith that a thing exists is very different from faith that a person will act a particular way. I don't need faith to believe the catching person is there, in your example. I just need faith that the catching person will behave a particular way - and that's not even really faith - it's based on observations of past human behavior and realizing that the likelyhood is very high that any randomly chosen person would choose to help keep me from falling. It is no more an act of faith than going out to check the mail at 3:00 pm in the hope that the mailman came by like he usually does is an act of faith. It's based on extrapolating previously observed behavior.
every argument which is valid "assumes the conclusion", implicitly in its premises. if it did not,
it would not be possible to derive the conclusion
from those premises. that is not a criticism.
I don't have any more need to argue with you. Your post damns itself. You define your conclusion to begin with and don't see anything wrong with that.
If you merely say the universe is caused, that is nowhere near making the claim that this cause is God and has certain properties defined by a religion. In fact, at most this argument ends up defining nothing more than a "somethingorother" with no real discernable properties, and thus coming to this conclusion and labeling it "god" has no real meaningful effect on us because it's really not much of a conclusion at all. The bait-and-switch usually occurs somewhere at this point, going from "somethingoroother" that caused the universe to a thinking being that caused the universe.
And the reason god is defined to be not contingent and therefore an exception to the rule is.... oh yeah - becuase it's more convenient that way. Well, then I can just define the universe itself to not be contingent and poof - no need to posit god. The premise defines the spot at which you wish to stop the chain, and thus the argument is circular.
Ah, so I guess it's like battery cells (if you want something smaller than A, use AA or AAA, etc.) Still, it seems a bit odd to me. What's wrong with just naming the shot by the size of it? (i.e. instead of calling it 000, if it has a diameter of .36 inches, then call it .36 inch shot or something like that - that just sounds more sane to me.)
You seem to be implying that if I was to replace my examples with ones more signifigant that this would make my argument fail. I don't really think so. Try a more signifigant example: What if everything you experience was really just a fake simulation like in the movie The Matrix, and it turns out that if you didn't do the right things, you're not going to be let out of the simulation into the paradise of the "real world". That is just as undisprobable as god's existence, and has just as much repercussions on your life, and yet I doubt anyone reading this is going to suddenly start worrying about this potentiality.
As to your attitude toward God, I'd tentatively agree, for some definitions of god. (If the Christian God existed, I'd be his enemy. If the Bahii god existed, I'd be much less antagonistic toward him.)
sabot. (French for "shoe", apparently.)
Dutch, I heard. It's where "Sabotage" comes from - literally "shoe throwing" - refering to an event where protesting workers decided to ruin a factory's machinery during the early days of the industrial revolution by coming to work with traditional dutch wooden shoes (already starting to go out of style by then, so this looked a bit odd), and throwing their hard shoes into the moving parts.
That doesn't seem like a very sensible naming convention to me - what happens when someone makes something with bigger shot? Is it called a "negative one"?
Put up or shut up. If you characterize something as a strawman, then point out where it is a misrepresentation. All you have done is assert that it is a misrepresentation - you haven't pointed out any specifics of what it allegedly was, other than the vague hand-waving claim that I'm not talking about it in a "contemporary form".
All versions of the first cause argument I have ever heard so far fall into one of two categories - They either have the fault that they deny their own premise, or they set up a special exception to that premise up front that amounts to assuming the conclusion before they begin, making the argument circular.
If you have access to some new and improved version that allegedly fixes this, then let's have it.
Most "atheists" like to think their beliefs are facts.
No. Most of us just know that when our stance gets called a "belief" in the first place, that this is a lie.
A rejection of someone else's belief is not itself a belief.
If atheism is a belief, then bald is a hair color.
Bull. When someone says they know they'll never be able to tell for sure that there is a god, and yet they still believe anyway based on just pure faith - that person is in fact an agnostic too - but certainly not any sort of atheist.
That's why there's two different words. One specifies where you stand, the other specifies how certain you are.
What about a combination of the two: "I don't believe god exists and you are a fucking mindless retard if you do"?
I don't have to be convinced of my correctness to consider others who *are* to be idiots for thier false sense of certainty.
And "Foo does not exist" is actually the default hypothesis in the face of no evidence for Foo (since it's falsifiable, and the inverse is not). So the statement "God doesn't exist" is not that far off from the statement "I don't believe god exists". In practical terms they end up pretty much the same, since people go around believing various things don't exist for which they have no proof they don't exist. Do you believe there is a pink unicorn standing on your car right now? Do you have proof it's not there yet? Even before you go outside and look at your car, you are already pretty well convinced that unicorn is not there.
And if you did say that you thought there was a good chance it could be there just because it's not disproven yet, then I would be right to call you a mindless retard for it.
Why then does the issue change when the thing in question is God?
If you think everyone is a mindless retard, save your time and just say it, instead of a large complex Venn diagram of cases that ends up resolving to the same thing.
Here's a list of a few other things for which there is also no evidence of absence: Leprechauns. Unicorns. Aircraft carriers painted pink with green polkadots.
Does that mean it's right to hold out a little bit of benefit of the doubt for these things existing? I say no. I just treat the question of god existing the same way - with a healthy degree of skepticism. While it isn't proof there's no god, that isn't that signifigant to say, since proof of things not existing is practically impossible. Does it bother you that there's no proof that there exist no aircraft carriers painted pink with green polkadots? Does it make you think you need to keep the door open on that possiblity and act accordingly? I don't. And the question of God existing doesn't deserve any special treatment differently.
The First Cause argument is self-contradictory.
The premise that every entity must be caused does not lead to the conclusion of God existing. It leads to no conclusions whatsoever since it sets up an infinite recursion. In order for it to be true, there must be an infinite length chain of causes, or a loop of causes. If there is any endpoint whatsoever, even if that endpoint is God, then you've just violated the very premise itself that was used to conclude that such a God exists. Or, in other words, if the universe needs a cause because of this premise, then God does too. Why does god get to just appear from nothing, in violation of this premise?
If there is a rational reason to believe in God, this can't be it. The first cause argument is self-contradictory.
And yes, I went to public school. I can also think logically and see when an argument has holes.
It's an interesting alternate universe you live in where I was pummeling down on the people making the car. In the real world where the rest of us live, I was pummeling down on a slashdot poster's suggestion of how to power a refueling station FOR this type of car, not the car itself.