Let's see... Show proof that a god exists. And please don't use any circular logic, like "it says so in the Bible" or "you can see it in His creation". . ..If you claim that something exists, I guess it's on you the burden to prove it.
Why? I claim that no proof can be made for either position. The statement that only proven things should be thought to exist is itself either unproven, or based upon unproven assumptions.
If I am correct, and no proof for either atheism or theism can be made, then whichever alternative is chosen must in fact be an arbitrary decision. Or, as it is frequently referred to in religious circles, faith.
The lack of a proof against the existence of any god is not compelling reason to believe in any god, but neither is the lack of a proof for the existence of any god compelling reason to disbelieve in any god. Unless independent, and arbitrary (as all pure assumptions, or first axioms, are) assumptions are made, the only logically viable position on the question of religion is pure agnosticism.
Of course, that could be taken to its logical extreme. Because assumptions cannot be proven, we must throw them ALL out! Which leaves you with solipsism.
Or, the assumption that unfounded assumptions are bad could be thrown out instead, which leaves you with a much more usable life and philosophy (of course, the idea that a life and/or philosophy should be usable is an assumption in itself). Then, you are free to make assumptions as you like, but you should always be aware that the results of those assumptions are, in a very fundamental way, faith.
Sure, a Pink Elephant God would be improbable,
And there's another assumption. Where do we get the idea that a Pink Elephant God is unlikely? Moreover, you seem to implicitly claim that no god at all is quite likely, by not even investigating the likelihood of that option. Yes, one could say that the likelihood of no god is 1 - (likelihood of the union of all god possibilities)... but is that really a feasible evaluation? Are you really going to evaluate the likelihood of all possible gods? It seems much more reasonable to evaluate all the likelihoods in question individually, including that of no god at all. Not that I think this is a particularly good way of going about things in any case...
I do not presume here to give a mechanism for choosing which possibility is correct, I am merely trying to show that if you really throw out the assumptions, that atheism is on an equal footing with a great many religions. I am glad you do not think that the existence of any god is disprovable, but I question your requirement that any religion must offer proof, when you don't require it of your own beliefs.
Ok, here's a question: Show proof that no god exists. And for all our sakes, please don't implicitly assume the conclusion in your arguments... That is altogether too common a tactic, among both atheistic and theistic arguments. Its been done by Thomas Aquinas, and its been done by Bertrand Russell, just to name two off the top of my head.
I can't remember the last time I actually watched TV. Oh wait, maybe I can... I think I was in a hotel, and there was nothing else more interesting to do (I hadn't brought a book along or something). So I turned on the tv to something or other. During semesters... neither I nor my gf has a tv, so we pretty much never see any.
So, basically, you base your appraisal of Christianity on the fact that there are and have been people who do it badly. That's kind of sad. How about: I've seen bad software, so I'm not going to use computers. Or: I've seen bad countries, so I'm not going to live in one. Or: I've seen moldy food, so I'm going to starve myself. hmm?
Voltaire (not actually, but he's often quoted as saying this, so good enough) said something very close to "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
And yes, there are logical limits to freedom: "Your right to swing your arm stops at the end of my nose", as my father has said. But, this does not justify preemptively taking away freedoms where there is no conflict. I would not say "You have no right to swing your arm because the end of my nose exists", because that would be stupid. Like you. And yes, in case you were wondering, that last bit is an ad hominem fallacy. So disregard it for the purposes of logic.
played under mplayer for me just fine.... first try, too. Really cheesy, and as I don't like techno (I'm sure that's not exactly the right name for the genre but oh well) a whole lot, I didn't care for it, but it was cool. Pretty funny.
Is that kind of like Freshman Orientation? Show the objects around, get them used to the system, play volleyball with them, take them out behind the intramural fields and leave them to find their own way back...
Well, there are energy barriers between different phases of matter. For example: Put a completely enclosed system of water on the stove (ie no steam can escape), and turn on the burner. Oh, and by the way, we're neglecting any heat transfers other than input from the perfectly steadily burning stove... Assume that you know exactly the rate at which heat energy from the burner is going into the closed system. The put a thermometer in it. You will see the termperature rise steadily until it reaches the boiling point of water at that pressure. Then it will plateau, and the temperature of the system as a whole will remain at that boiling point until all the water has boiled off into steam. Then, the temperature will begin climbing steadily again. This is called "heat of vaporization" (or fusion if you're freezing something, or there are most likely other names for the other phase transitions). It is due to the fact that the distance between molecules in the water gas is larger than in the water liquid, and thus correspond to a higher potential energy configuration. The heat energy input to the system goes into potential energy until all of the water has completed the phase transition. Then it switches back into going into heat energy. Similarly, this potential energy is released as heat when the water condenses. The reason (I think) that the heat energy all goes into potential energy is because the higher potential configuration transfers more slowly than the heat energy. So, the heat tends to transfer into potential energy (or distance between molecules), but the potential doesn't tend so much to transfer back to heat. Not sure that that is correct, but everything up to I think should be. Of course, I'm certainly open to correction.
So, a new phase of matter could be said to exist if there is a similar plateau in the temperature vs. heat input curve. Of course, then, there are other ways I suppose of distinguishing between states of matter, involving various properties of the matter in those states, in which case you are forced to deal with the funny things like glass and colloids (I think that's the ketchup thing). I'm not so familiar with how those are differentiated.
You can increase mass, and thus gravity, without adding more "stuff" by approach the speed of light.
erm... not strictly true... depending on how you write the equations, you could say that inertial mass increases with speed, or you could simply say that our equation for kinetic energy is not quite correct, and has a speed dependent multiplicative correction, called the gamma factor. This is actually the route preferred by most theorists these days, but not the way Einstein wrote it. This is preferred because the gamma factor shows up usefully in a lot of other places as well.
Anyway, the point was that 1) special relativity doesn't really deal with gravity, but anyway, 2) the increased mass from relativistic speeds is only inertial mass, and does not affect the gravitational force.
No no... Mr. Fusion doesn't need dueterium. It runs on banana peels, and beer (it works best if you pour the beer out of the can, THEN drop the can in.), etc.
Does Linspire offer any sort of student licensing? For example, I can imagine a lot of my friends at college being interested in this, however, my school sells student license copies of winXP for $16. At $95, Linspire+cedega is not even going to be considered, and even if it were considered, it would not really be a viable option. In fact, I suspect that for a number of students, without the 16$ Xp, they would not have a computer. There's always the library after all.
That is a good point, sad to say. I can envision a lot of people considering the switch to Linux, and then rejecting it because the utilities that they are familiar with needing are not available. Perhaps we need to make it more clear to the general public that Linux doesn't need defrag software or anti-spyware software, etc. Not that I have any idea how we'd go about doing this, of course....
erm... hate to burst your bubble, but last time I checked, a nine degree Fahrenheit difference was a difference of five degrees Celsius, or five Kelvins. If the ratio were 10:6, then, assuming that 273 K = 32 degF, then 373 K would be 198 degF. Which is not correct. (The temperatures chosen were freezing and boiling of water at 1 atm pressure, in case anyone didn't know. The correct Fahrenheit boiling point of water (at 1 atm) is 212 degF.)
It is entirely possible that it is an extremely large amount of data, but not nearly as many files as you might expect. I work at Fermilab, and I know that the event records we generate are somewhere on the order of a fifth of a gigabyte per event (after significant statistical data reduction). Then, we are having collisions at a rate of one every 396ns. Of course, most of those are uninteresting, and our trigger system throws them out. So, we finally have an event acceptance rate of ~0.08 kHz. Which leaves us producing data at a rate of 16 GB/s. In other words, we could have 347 PB produced in about 6000 hours (250 days). However, it would only contain ~1.75 billion different records. In which case archiving it would not in fact be a phenomenally difficult task.
Anyway, my point was that the records could be really large, and therefore there would not be that many of them. Turns out our event records are smaller on average than I thought they were, so my example didn't work as well as I had hoped... but the point stands.
Afterthought: Sorry to be unable to provide references... you can go to www-cdf.fnal.gov if you like, but you will not be able to get to the internal sites that this information came off of.
Re:Artist missed the "art" portion of the project.
on
The Neuron Drive
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· Score: 1
You are officially on crack buddy. The drive is definitely part of the final piece...
Nice sig. I haven't thought about that flag in ages... I used to have a miniature version of it when I was a kid. I bet I've still got it somewhere.... hmmmm.... next time I'm at my parents' house I'll have to look.
Hey, there's an idea! Perhaps patents should simply be denied to monopolies/near monopolies. Of course, to really make it fair, you'd still have to have some sort of protection for the monopolies from people patenting the stuff that the monopoly does actually create and then suing them for it. Perhaps, monopolies should not be allowed to enforce their patents. Yeah, that's it.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's see... Show proof that a god exists. And please don't use any circular logic, like "it says so in the Bible" or "you can see it in His creation". . . .If you claim that something exists, I guess it's on you the burden to prove it.
Why? I claim that no proof can be made for either position. The statement that only proven things should be thought to exist is itself either unproven, or based upon unproven assumptions.
If I am correct, and no proof for either atheism or theism can be made, then whichever alternative is chosen must in fact be an arbitrary decision. Or, as it is frequently referred to in religious circles, faith.
The lack of a proof against the existence of any god is not compelling reason to believe in any god, but neither is the lack of a proof for the existence of any god compelling reason to disbelieve in any god. Unless independent, and arbitrary (as all pure assumptions, or first axioms, are) assumptions are made, the only logically viable position on the question of religion is pure agnosticism.
Of course, that could be taken to its logical extreme. Because assumptions cannot be proven, we must throw them ALL out! Which leaves you with solipsism.
Or, the assumption that unfounded assumptions are bad could be thrown out instead, which leaves you with a much more usable life and philosophy (of course, the idea that a life and/or philosophy should be usable is an assumption in itself). Then, you are free to make assumptions as you like, but you should always be aware that the results of those assumptions are, in a very fundamental way, faith.
Sure, a Pink Elephant God would be improbable,
And there's another assumption. Where do we get the idea that a Pink Elephant God is unlikely? Moreover, you seem to implicitly claim that no god at all is quite likely, by not even investigating the likelihood of that option. Yes, one could say that the likelihood of no god is 1 - (likelihood of the union of all god possibilities)... but is that really a feasible evaluation? Are you really going to evaluate the likelihood of all possible gods? It seems much more reasonable to evaluate all the likelihoods in question individually, including that of no god at all. Not that I think this is a particularly good way of going about things in any case...
I do not presume here to give a mechanism for choosing which possibility is correct, I am merely trying to show that if you really throw out the assumptions, that atheism is on an equal footing with a great many religions. I am glad you do not think that the existence of any god is disprovable, but I question your requirement that any religion must offer proof, when you don't require it of your own beliefs.
Ok, here's a question: Show proof that no god exists. And for all our sakes, please don't implicitly assume the conclusion in your arguments... That is altogether too common a tactic, among both atheistic and theistic arguments. Its been done by Thomas Aquinas, and its been done by Bertrand Russell, just to name two off the top of my head.
I can't remember the last time I actually watched TV. Oh wait, maybe I can... I think I was in a hotel, and there was nothing else more interesting to do (I hadn't brought a book along or something). So I turned on the tv to something or other. During semesters... neither I nor my gf has a tv, so we pretty much never see any.
I hate TLAs*...
So, basically, you base your appraisal of Christianity on the fact that there are and have been people who do it badly. That's kind of sad. How about: I've seen bad software, so I'm not going to use computers. Or: I've seen bad countries, so I'm not going to live in one. Or: I've seen moldy food, so I'm going to starve myself. hmm?
Voltaire (not actually, but he's often quoted as saying this, so good enough) said something very close to "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
And yes, there are logical limits to freedom: "Your right to swing your arm stops at the end of my nose", as my father has said. But, this does not justify preemptively taking away freedoms where there is no conflict. I would not say "You have no right to swing your arm because the end of my nose exists", because that would be stupid. Like you. And yes, in case you were wondering, that last bit is an ad hominem fallacy. So disregard it for the purposes of logic.
Now the question is, when will MAKE magazine run a feature on how to modify your cellphone to do this?
I like it.
mkay. Thanks. That sounds like a good name for it :-p
played under mplayer for me just fine.... first try, too. Really cheesy, and as I don't like techno (I'm sure that's not exactly the right name for the genre but oh well) a whole lot, I didn't care for it, but it was cool. Pretty funny.
. . . Object Orientation.
Is that kind of like Freshman Orientation? Show the objects around, get them used to the system, play volleyball with them, take them out behind the intramural fields and leave them to find their own way back...
A slashdotting, to bittorrent, is lifeblood. A true swarm.
Well, for one thing, there's the issue of freedom.
Then there's the fact that it is slow when compared to most other languages which are used for designing large scale systems (C, C++, etc.).
Then also, it is viewed as a favorite of suits, and therefore by (admittedly somewhat childish) knee-jerk reaction, it is derided by geeks.
Well, there are energy barriers between different phases of matter. For example: Put a completely enclosed system of water on the stove (ie no steam can escape), and turn on the burner. Oh, and by the way, we're neglecting any heat transfers other than input from the perfectly steadily burning stove... Assume that you know exactly the rate at which heat energy from the burner is going into the closed system. The put a thermometer in it. You will see the termperature rise steadily until it reaches the boiling point of water at that pressure. Then it will plateau, and the temperature of the system as a whole will remain at that boiling point until all the water has boiled off into steam. Then, the temperature will begin climbing steadily again. This is called "heat of vaporization" (or fusion if you're freezing something, or there are most likely other names for the other phase transitions). It is due to the fact that the distance between molecules in the water gas is larger than in the water liquid, and thus correspond to a higher potential energy configuration. The heat energy input to the system goes into potential energy until all of the water has completed the phase transition. Then it switches back into going into heat energy. Similarly, this potential energy is released as heat when the water condenses. The reason (I think) that the heat energy all goes into potential energy is because the higher potential configuration transfers more slowly than the heat energy. So, the heat tends to transfer into potential energy (or distance between molecules), but the potential doesn't tend so much to transfer back to heat. Not sure that that is correct, but everything up to I think should be. Of course, I'm certainly open to correction.
So, a new phase of matter could be said to exist if there is a similar plateau in the temperature vs. heat input curve. Of course, then, there are other ways I suppose of distinguishing between states of matter, involving various properties of the matter in those states, in which case you are forced to deal with the funny things like glass and colloids (I think that's the ketchup thing). I'm not so familiar with how those are differentiated.
You can increase mass, and thus gravity, without adding more "stuff" by approach the speed of light.
erm... not strictly true... depending on how you write the equations, you could say that inertial mass increases with speed, or you could simply say that our equation for kinetic energy is not quite correct, and has a speed dependent multiplicative correction, called the gamma factor. This is actually the route preferred by most theorists these days, but not the way Einstein wrote it. This is preferred because the gamma factor shows up usefully in a lot of other places as well.
Anyway, the point was that 1) special relativity doesn't really deal with gravity, but anyway, 2) the increased mass from relativistic speeds is only inertial mass, and does not affect the gravitational force.
No no... Mr. Fusion doesn't need dueterium. It runs on banana peels, and beer (it works best if you pour the beer out of the can, THEN drop the can in.), etc.
Does Linspire offer any sort of student licensing? For example, I can imagine a lot of my friends at college being interested in this, however, my school sells student license copies of winXP for $16. At $95, Linspire+cedega is not even going to be considered, and even if it were considered, it would not really be a viable option. In fact, I suspect that for a number of students, without the 16$ Xp, they would not have a computer. There's always the library after all.
That is a good point, sad to say. I can envision a lot of people considering the switch to Linux, and then rejecting it because the utilities that they are familiar with needing are not available. Perhaps we need to make it more clear to the general public that Linux doesn't need defrag software or anti-spyware software, etc. Not that I have any idea how we'd go about doing this, of course....
erm... hate to burst your bubble, but last time I checked, a nine degree Fahrenheit difference was a difference of five degrees Celsius, or five Kelvins. If the ratio were 10:6, then, assuming that 273 K = 32 degF, then 373 K would be 198 degF. Which is not correct. (The temperatures chosen were freezing and boiling of water at 1 atm pressure, in case anyone didn't know. The correct Fahrenheit boiling point of water (at 1 atm) is 212 degF.)
It is entirely possible that it is an extremely large amount of data, but not nearly as many files as you might expect. I work at Fermilab, and I know that the event records we generate are somewhere on the order of a fifth of a gigabyte per event (after significant statistical data reduction). Then, we are having collisions at a rate of one every 396ns. Of course, most of those are uninteresting, and our trigger system throws them out. So, we finally have an event acceptance rate of ~0.08 kHz. Which leaves us producing data at a rate of 16 GB/s. In other words, we could have 347 PB produced in about 6000 hours (250 days). However, it would only contain ~1.75 billion different records. In which case archiving it would not in fact be a phenomenally difficult task.
Anyway, my point was that the records could be really large, and therefore there would not be that many of them. Turns out our event records are smaller on average than I thought they were, so my example didn't work as well as I had hoped... but the point stands.
Afterthought: Sorry to be unable to provide references... you can go to www-cdf.fnal.gov if you like, but you will not be able to get to the internal sites that this information came off of.
You are officially on crack buddy. The drive is definitely part of the final piece...
Nice sig. I haven't thought about that flag in ages... I used to have a miniature version of it when I was a kid. I bet I've still got it somewhere.... hmmmm.... next time I'm at my parents' house I'll have to look.
Hey, there's an idea! Perhaps patents should simply be denied to monopolies/near monopolies. Of course, to really make it fair, you'd still have to have some sort of protection for the monopolies from people patenting the stuff that the monopoly does actually create and then suing them for it. Perhaps, monopolies should not be allowed to enforce their patents. Yeah, that's it.
In Soviet Russia, Nintendo DS kills YOU!
In Soviet Russia, Joke funnier than YOU!
You mean like Christa McAuliffe? She was the grade school teacher who was on board the Challenger in 1986.