Anyone can tweak compiler settings, and you only have to do it once to get a speed boost for your whole system. It's something worth doing, and can be well over 5%. Yes using the right algorithm is far more important, but it's hard for an end user to wade into the code and check the algorithm, wheras it's easy for me to benchmark compiling with different settings and choose the best.
I think you've missed out a stage. Gcc builds a "subcompiler" to compile itself with, then once compiled with that it uses itself to recompile itself. Maybe that's stage 0?
I have been wrong based on logical predictions, but pretty rarely as a proportion of the predictions I make, and it has always been because I started from a wrong assumption or made an error. You say we could be mistaken again if we were mistaken once, but once you see an error, it's obvious. You can check it by asking someone else, they will immediately see which one is the right one even without knowing which gives the "wrong" result. Everything we believe about logic can be built up from a handful of basic principles, and if you reduce your reasoning down to them you can always find the error, at least IME. Also, I've known times when my correction was wrong, and I knew it was wrong. It made the answer come out right, but the correction was still wrong, and I wasn't satisfied until I found the real cause of the bad result. I fiddle with my logic all the time, and try to "break" it, so I can see if there's anything wrong with it, but I've yet to find something that makes me lose my faith in it.
I'm 17 and was never taught this. It's implicit if you're paying attention to it, and you won't do well in college science if you didn't pick it up, but you're never actually taught it and I can well imagine over 2/3 of my class not knowing it. (and I think the actual figure is even higher than that)
Yes. Try living without them and you'll quickly find that we are actually much better off thanks to them. For a start, the abolition of slavery would have been impossible without industrialisation.
I don't mind if you believe any manuscript you like, but don't try and claim it's just as scientific as science. It isn't.
At some stage you will be directly forced to do so. And though you may claim the probability is 0, in reality there will always be a small probability of you doing anything.
Nope. In an infinite amount of time, everything happens. Everything. China might get destroyed and recreated or something, but it will exist for an infinite time. And the grandparent will at some stage decide to go there, since him deciding that is not impossible.
There's a simple reason for that paragraph: the cries of "evolution is just a theory" that are heard from advocates of ID so much. There may be people in your movement who aren't that ignorant - but the vocal ones are.
The only argument I can make for being logical is to look at the results. Science following the scientific method allows us to predict a huge array of phenomena with reasonable, sometimes near-perfect, accuracy. We can trace orbits of planets and predict them hundreds of years into the future and so far they haven't deviated from the predictions. By contrast everyone I've ever seen try to predict anything based on the bible has ended up with egg on their faces. That's why I believe firmly in the scientific method.
The reason for this is simple - philosophy of science is not taught in schools. Try taking a random person and getting them to investigate what the period of a pendulum depends on. Most people can't do it, because they never learnt the most important part of science - how to form hypotheses, test them, refine them, make a theory. That's what we need to start teaching.
Nonsense. In the long run, it is testable by exactly that - having a devoted clan of scientists administering a millions of years long experiment. But that is unnecessary, thanks to Occam's razor. We know evolution by natural selection does occur - the ponds, e. coli in the lab, etc. This alone is sufficient to explain the diversity of species, therefore we believe it as an explanation of the diversity of species until we find something that requires an alternative theory. So far no such problem has been observed.
What you say about atheism is true. However, evolution does not imply atheism. It is perfectly possible to be theistic and believe in evolution; I know many people who believe just this. By contrast ID implies the existence of a god and is thus incompatible with atheism. Believing in evolution does not restrict your choice of religion. Believing in ID does, because you then cannot be atheistic. That is why ID violates separation of church and state and evolution doesn't.
error ratio of +/- a million years! A million years.... WOW.
It is insignificant on the timescales we're talking about. If that trilobyte is 399 million years old rather than 400 million years old, what difference does it make?
where are the transitional fossils that show how one creature evolved into another? If we have hundred of thousands of Trilobyte fossils, where are the fossils of the In-Between creatures that should have existed?
We have hundreds of thousands of trilobyte fossils because they lived for a billion or so years and then went extinct without evolving into anything else. We do have transitional fossils for many things - look at humans, with homo errectus and so on, a fair line going back to an ancestor common with other primates. Yes there are "jumps", but we have about 5 (that's an estimate based on the assumption I don't want to go look it up) humanoid fossils if that from any time period equal to the size of the gap.
I don't think it's inability to argue that's making people lash out, it's frustration with IDers who won't accept rational arguments. Which most of them won't.
The entire public is supposed to be openminded to the Theory of Evolution, But they cannot be presented with other Theories to create and open forum and/or open mind?
You show me an actual theory and I'll look at it with an open mind. That is, something which explains the observed facts and makes testable predictions. If you can tell me an experiment I can make that will falsify exactly one of evolution and intelligent design (with which it is depending on the outcome of the experiment) I am willing to consider it.
The artical is an op-ed piece and was classified as such when it appeared on kuro5hin about 3 years ago (yes I'm exaggerating, but seriously, slashdot shouldn't be this far behind). However, the author goes through straightforward reasoning and explains logically why intelligent design is a pseudoscience, thus justifying his(?) title.
ID is not used as a theory. It is not drawn up modified based on the observed facts. It does not make falsifiable hypotheses. It doesn't belong in science classes any more than determinism does.
Scientific belief is scientific for the very reason it does change. We believe the theory which gives the best explanation of the observed evidence. When that changes, what we believe changes. The reason to prefer this to religious belief is simply its practical success. By believing in F=ma and other results from the scientific method, we have invented the light bulb, gone into space, and made the computer you wrote that on. I have yet to see one good invention come out of simply believing the literal truth of some particular manuscript.
It's impossible to prove a universal negative. You can't prove there isn't a god who doesn't want to be found, just as you can't prove there aren't fairies at the bottom of the garden who disappear when anyone looks at them, or there isn't an invisible pink unicorn controlling everything. That's what occam's razor is for. If there are two explanations which account for the observed phenomena, you favour the simpler. Since we have yet to observe under controlled conditions in a peer-reviewed experiment a phenomenon which cannot be explained without reference to god, and believing in god does not allow us to dispense with any other theories, it makes more sense not to believe in god.
Both beliefs can be called atheism, sometimes they are referred to as "strong" and "weak" atheism. If you parse the word as a-theism, then it's just the absence of a belief in god, wheras athe-ism means belief in the absence of god. It's unclear.
Read again. You'll find 3/4 of the posts above you are pointing out that I.D. is not scientific because it's not falsifiable, so how the hell are we supposed to discuss it? There is no evidence for it, nor is there any way to find evidence against it.
I *think* (not having done enough physics yet) the whole matter could be a fluctuation in the quantum electrodynamic field (all you need is a pea-sized ball that's very dense, then inflation and ordinary classical physics handle the rest), which you already have to assume exists. In which case this is preferable to other explanations because of Occam's Razor.
What, because people are fundamentally evil and only fear of hell holds them in check? I don't think so. People don't need an excuse to do good, but there are plenty of people who will only do evil if they can claim it's for the right. Religion gives them a way to do this. On the whole it makes the world worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, when did you ever see "Segmentation fault" sent over the network? If you're going to use that old joke at least do it r#i*&$£!"^ NO CARRIER
How long did it take for proper f77 support? Code standards take ages to be implemented properly, they're nowhere near support for the latest C yet.
Anyone can tweak compiler settings, and you only have to do it once to get a speed boost for your whole system. It's something worth doing, and can be well over 5%. Yes using the right algorithm is far more important, but it's hard for an end user to wade into the code and check the algorithm, wheras it's easy for me to benchmark compiling with different settings and choose the best.
I think you've missed out a stage. Gcc builds a "subcompiler" to compile itself with, then once compiled with that it uses itself to recompile itself. Maybe that's stage 0?
Yes. That just wouldn't happen until after he had been to China.
I have been wrong based on logical predictions, but pretty rarely as a proportion of the predictions I make, and it has always been because I started from a wrong assumption or made an error. You say we could be mistaken again if we were mistaken once, but once you see an error, it's obvious. You can check it by asking someone else, they will immediately see which one is the right one even without knowing which gives the "wrong" result. Everything we believe about logic can be built up from a handful of basic principles, and if you reduce your reasoning down to them you can always find the error, at least IME. Also, I've known times when my correction was wrong, and I knew it was wrong. It made the answer come out right, but the correction was still wrong, and I wasn't satisfied until I found the real cause of the bad result. I fiddle with my logic all the time, and try to "break" it, so I can see if there's anything wrong with it, but I've yet to find something that makes me lose my faith in it.
I'm 17 and was never taught this. It's implicit if you're paying attention to it, and you won't do well in college science if you didn't pick it up, but you're never actually taught it and I can well imagine over 2/3 of my class not knowing it. (and I think the actual figure is even higher than that)
I don't mind if you believe any manuscript you like, but don't try and claim it's just as scientific as science. It isn't.
OK, I'll rephrase, since we don't know of any natural process which can (ultimately) produce legos.
At some stage you will be directly forced to do so. And though you may claim the probability is 0, in reality there will always be a small probability of you doing anything.
Nope. In an infinite amount of time, everything happens. Everything. China might get destroyed and recreated or something, but it will exist for an infinite time. And the grandparent will at some stage decide to go there, since him deciding that is not impossible.
There's a simple reason for that paragraph: the cries of "evolution is just a theory" that are heard from advocates of ID so much. There may be people in your movement who aren't that ignorant - but the vocal ones are.
The only argument I can make for being logical is to look at the results. Science following the scientific method allows us to predict a huge array of phenomena with reasonable, sometimes near-perfect, accuracy. We can trace orbits of planets and predict them hundreds of years into the future and so far they haven't deviated from the predictions. By contrast everyone I've ever seen try to predict anything based on the bible has ended up with egg on their faces. That's why I believe firmly in the scientific method.
The reason for this is simple - philosophy of science is not taught in schools. Try taking a random person and getting them to investigate what the period of a pendulum depends on. Most people can't do it, because they never learnt the most important part of science - how to form hypotheses, test them, refine them, make a theory. That's what we need to start teaching.
Nonsense. In the long run, it is testable by exactly that - having a devoted clan of scientists administering a millions of years long experiment. But that is unnecessary, thanks to Occam's razor. We know evolution by natural selection does occur - the ponds, e. coli in the lab, etc. This alone is sufficient to explain the diversity of species, therefore we believe it as an explanation of the diversity of species until we find something that requires an alternative theory. So far no such problem has been observed.
What you say about atheism is true. However, evolution does not imply atheism. It is perfectly possible to be theistic and believe in evolution; I know many people who believe just this. By contrast ID implies the existence of a god and is thus incompatible with atheism. Believing in evolution does not restrict your choice of religion. Believing in ID does, because you then cannot be atheistic. That is why ID violates separation of church and state and evolution doesn't.
It is insignificant on the timescales we're talking about. If that trilobyte is 399 million years old rather than 400 million years old, what difference does it make?
where are the transitional fossils that show how one creature evolved into another? If we have hundred of thousands of Trilobyte fossils, where are the fossils of the In-Between creatures that should have existed?
We have hundreds of thousands of trilobyte fossils because they lived for a billion or so years and then went extinct without evolving into anything else. We do have transitional fossils for many things - look at humans, with homo errectus and so on, a fair line going back to an ancestor common with other primates. Yes there are "jumps", but we have about 5 (that's an estimate based on the assumption I don't want to go look it up) humanoid fossils if that from any time period equal to the size of the gap.
I don't think it's inability to argue that's making people lash out, it's frustration with IDers who won't accept rational arguments. Which most of them won't.
The entire public is supposed to be openminded to the Theory of Evolution, But they cannot be presented with other Theories to create and open forum and/or open mind?
You show me an actual theory and I'll look at it with an open mind. That is, something which explains the observed facts and makes testable predictions. If you can tell me an experiment I can make that will falsify exactly one of evolution and intelligent design (with which it is depending on the outcome of the experiment) I am willing to consider it.
The artical is an op-ed piece and was classified as such when it appeared on kuro5hin about 3 years ago (yes I'm exaggerating, but seriously, slashdot shouldn't be this far behind). However, the author goes through straightforward reasoning and explains logically why intelligent design is a pseudoscience, thus justifying his(?) title.
ID is not used as a theory. It is not drawn up modified based on the observed facts. It does not make falsifiable hypotheses. It doesn't belong in science classes any more than determinism does.
Scientific belief is scientific for the very reason it does change. We believe the theory which gives the best explanation of the observed evidence. When that changes, what we believe changes. The reason to prefer this to religious belief is simply its practical success. By believing in F=ma and other results from the scientific method, we have invented the light bulb, gone into space, and made the computer you wrote that on. I have yet to see one good invention come out of simply believing the literal truth of some particular manuscript.
It's impossible to prove a universal negative. You can't prove there isn't a god who doesn't want to be found, just as you can't prove there aren't fairies at the bottom of the garden who disappear when anyone looks at them, or there isn't an invisible pink unicorn controlling everything. That's what occam's razor is for. If there are two explanations which account for the observed phenomena, you favour the simpler. Since we have yet to observe under controlled conditions in a peer-reviewed experiment a phenomenon which cannot be explained without reference to god, and believing in god does not allow us to dispense with any other theories, it makes more sense not to believe in god.
Both beliefs can be called atheism, sometimes they are referred to as "strong" and "weak" atheism. If you parse the word as a-theism, then it's just the absence of a belief in god, wheras athe-ism means belief in the absence of god. It's unclear.
I *think* (not having done enough physics yet) the whole matter could be a fluctuation in the quantum electrodynamic field (all you need is a pea-sized ball that's very dense, then inflation and ordinary classical physics handle the rest), which you already have to assume exists. In which case this is preferable to other explanations because of Occam's Razor.
Has evolution ever passed a Turing test?
What, because people are fundamentally evil and only fear of hell holds them in check? I don't think so. People don't need an excuse to do good, but there are plenty of people who will only do evil if they can claim it's for the right. Religion gives them a way to do this. On the whole it makes the world worse.