Once you leave the safe world of Newtonian physics you need to develop a superhuman ability to try and NOT visualize the universe on the grand scale of the quantum scale. Human intuition and visualizations is was built for Newtons world. Once you leave that world, it breaks down and fails to be much help.
I've always wondered if you raised a kid the right way if he would be able to have a quantum intuition. I mean, despite not being known directly to me, having been taught very early in my life about (the classical model of) atoms makes them seem intuitive, even though I would imagine they would not be to someone 500 years ago.
Of course, it might all be wasted if our final Theory of Everything has a new way of looking at quantum effects. Which I, personally, think it will. My personal candidates include Bohm's interpretation (which goes a lot deeper than Wikipedia will tell you; see Wholeness and the Implicate Order's later chapters for details), Heim theory, loop quantum gravity, and string theory. But I am fairly confident that at least the last of these, and probably all of them, will not survive in their current forms; they will have to merge and evolve first. (IANAP, but IAA Caltech undergrad planning on majoring in/doing research in physics for what that's worth.)
The only God hypothesis that is remotely probable is creation by another finite entity (such as a technologically advanced alien species). Which could quite possibly approve of killing:).
Church leaders back then could then push their own ideas on their followers and ascribe it to Paul, or Peter, or Jesus himself by just using an altered copy of whatever was originally written. Take this one step further: Paul, Peter, whatever could push their own ideas on followers by ascribing it to this divine, quite possibly imaginary, Jesus person. That's what I'm seein'.
Ah, but it wasn't always that way. Long ago (and still for many people) Hera, Zeus, Krishna, etc. all fit that qualification. Before even the Jews, people had gods. So then this Yahweh fellow comes along, and he's just as good as purple flying elephants... until some guy starts convincing other people.
My point is, purple flying elephants would be just as good as Jesus if I were as convincing about them as Paul was about Jesus [I use Jesus instead of Yahweh because I am familiar with the manner in which the Jesus myths arose, but not the Yahweh ones]. We could even assume that both exist (although only (I/Paul) + a limited subset of the people in the world have seen them); the real trick is convincing other people that not only do they exist---after all, we've got a set of people who've seen them---but that they violate conservation of mass-energy/are the son of God, perform miracles, etc. And convincing people of mass-energy violation is really easy in a time when people will believe that you can duplicate food (IIRC, Jesus is said to have done that with fish and chips or something).
If we assume that both don't exist, then I/Paul have just got to get enough people together that think having many people in the world believe in flying purple elephants/Jesus would serve an immensely useful political goal (say, taking over the nation we live in, which just so happens to believe in a YELLOW flying elephant pantheon with names like Jupiter, Saturn, etc.). Then we write a book with lots of really inspiring stories about how cool flying purple elephants are, and people will want to believe us because something that cool just has to exist, and besides, there are all these people who say they've seen them.
Agnosticism is not really logical, although it is logically correct.
For example, it is logically correct to say that I can say nothing for or against the existence of purple elephants with wings, as I sure as heck cannot prove a negative and I just as assuredly cannot find you an example of one. But it's not really logical.
Now, s/purple elephants with wings/gods, and you see the point.
The idea of everyone having an IQ of 300, being able to sleep 4 hours a week, and never getting sick may sound great to some, but where does it stop? After we've reached the point of greatly diminishing returns from drugs, do we turn to machines for enhancment? Do we augment ourselves with embedded computer chips, use genetic engineering to enhance our characteristics, or completely tailor our bodies and minds into something we can't even imagine today?
Oooh, ooh, pick me! Those are easy ones!
Here are the answers: nowhere! Yes! Yes, yes, yes!
This seems to imply to me that one can adapt to no REM sleep, but if one is getting it sporadically or has gotten it for many years but then has it turned off for the duration of a study, then one is screwed. Alternatively maybe sleeping 8 hours without REM is OK, but sleeping until you hit REM, then being woken up by a researcher, then going back to sleep, etc. is not OK.
I don't have time for a flamewar, and I doubt I'm going to convince you of anything, but nobody seemed to be bringing up what to me is the obvious answer:
How does the atheist account for laws of logic? How can abstract universal absolutes exist in a world where only matter exists? Why should men be rational in your worldview?
You are talking about two different things here: 1) Platonic forms ("laws of logic", "abstract universal absolutes"); 2) rational thought (i.e. the behavior of men).
Your confusion as to 1) derives from your use of the word "exist" in two different ways. Matter exists as an actual material thing. Platonic forms, however, do not exist in this sense; they only exist as something that men think up. They consistently think them up, as all brains are pattern-recognition/building machines, so very consistently, seeing a triangle-like shape induces us to abstract that into a triangle. Similarly, our experience with logic working rather well in the real world is abstracted to logic working perfectly in our imaginations. There is no need for these to exist in the same sense that matter does; all they are is a series of patterns of neuron arrangements that most humans end up sharing.
Your confusion as to 2) seems to be grounded in a lack of understanding of, or perhaps a lack of consideration for, evolutionary principles. It's quite obvious that being rational is an evolutionary advantage. Let's develop some background. You seem to be familiar with the premise that we can't prove induction without induction (i.e. "it's worked in the past, therefore I'll continue to use it!"). I conjecture that there's nothing inherently true about induction, but simply that it fits well with our experience and thus it seems obviously true because of millions of years of evolutionary programming. For example, imagine a set of beings using the (logically consistent) principle of "negative induction." This states that if something has happened a lot in the past, it's definitely not a general rule. Well, as you can see, it proves itself: it's never worked in the past, so clearly it working is a general rule. However, such a (logically consistent, mind you!) principle is completely stupid from an evolutionary point of view. It would just get the creature killed. So induction, and other principles of rational thought, are simply evolutionarily advantageous modes of being.
You may have been using "should" in a different sense for "Why should men be rational in your worldview," to which I reply "they shouldn't have to be." I, personally, am not in favor of a universal imperative to act a certain way---even if it's a way I prefer acting. Just like I think there should be no governmental imperative to wear a seat belt, even if I would anyway.
In RotJ, Leia says she remembers her real mother a little, and yet in Episode 3 she dies in childbirth. It isn't even coherent.
I've always thought that since she refers to "pictures and images," she literally was shown pictures and images (holograms) by the Organas. Why does nobody else see this?
Apparently it's obvious to everyone else, since I never see this question asked, but why the wait between businesses and consumers? What's the logic there? I mean, I understand why you would give it to businesses ASAP, but why make the consumers wait---especially until after Christmas? I mean, if it's good enough for businesses, it's good enough for consumers, right?
Oh, no, they still have it for sure. I think it a case of mispeaking combined with the vague notion that less parser bugs in IE7 means less need for it.
Which leads to one of the only things I ever liked about IE's CSS: JavaScript expressions. You could insert JavaScript to calculate what you wanted the CSS to say, inline in the CSS file, and be referencing DOM nodes and such. Too bad it was nonstandard:(. Was useful for working around IE6 bugs though.
While your last point may be valid, there's still some problems with your oversimplication.
First, let's assume that magically everyone in the world has IE7:
* Inline styles. So you need some kind of semi-complicated regex that looks for (this is an off-the-top-of-my-head regex) style="(|.*; )filter*". And I don't know about you, but I am not 100% confident that EVERY DEVELOPER WHO WANTS TO UPDATE HIS/HER SITE will be able to make a 100% perfect regex that substitutes correctly. Or that EVERY DEVELOPER will be willing to look through all the find-replace results and make sure it all happened perfectly. Or even that every developer will notice that he/she needs to do this!
* You've got the refractory period, between when IE7 is released the next scheduled website update can get approved and tested. That could be a while, especially for sites that are rarely updated or have been forgotten about.
* All those sites that offer user-submitted tricks, like filter code? Gotta fix it all. So now we're running a regex replacement on the database too.
Now let's not make dumb assumptions, since while Windows Update will be offering it, it won't go out to (e.g.) illegal copies or those people who say "no thanks" or Windows .
* What was the point again? I mean, yeah, it cleans up the codebase for the developer who cares (me and you). But was there any practical benefit? Anything the users can see? Does this add a new feature developers can wow users with? Not seeing it.
I go to Caltech (freshman). People here are quite brilliant, I assure you. Yet, despite the fat nerd stereotype, I have met _nobody_ I would consider fat (except one custodian). Everyone seems in the skinny to normal range. Sure, I haven't seen everyone on campus, but I was definitely expecting much less skinniness.
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I've always wondered if you raised a kid the right way if he would be able to have a quantum intuition. I mean, despite not being known directly to me, having been taught very early in my life about (the classical model of) atoms makes them seem intuitive, even though I would imagine they would not be to someone 500 years ago.
Of course, it might all be wasted if our final Theory of Everything has a new way of looking at quantum effects. Which I, personally, think it will. My personal candidates include Bohm's interpretation (which goes a lot deeper than Wikipedia will tell you; see Wholeness and the Implicate Order's later chapters for details), Heim theory, loop quantum gravity, and string theory. But I am fairly confident that at least the last of these, and probably all of them, will not survive in their current forms; they will have to merge and evolve first. (IANAP, but IAA Caltech undergrad planning on majoring in/doing research in physics for what that's worth.)
The only God hypothesis that is remotely probable is creation by another finite entity (such as a technologically advanced alien species). Which could quite possibly approve of killing :).
I don't really have a point, just sayin'.
Wow, "sheep" is SUCH a perfect word! I'll have to add that one to my collection of quotes.
My favorite way of putting it to religious people (I'm atheist) is "I don't respect your believes, but I won't disrespect them."
Ah, but it wasn't always that way. Long ago (and still for many people) Hera, Zeus, Krishna, etc. all fit that qualification. Before even the Jews, people had gods. So then this Yahweh fellow comes along, and he's just as good as purple flying elephants... until some guy starts convincing other people.
My point is, purple flying elephants would be just as good as Jesus if I were as convincing about them as Paul was about Jesus [I use Jesus instead of Yahweh because I am familiar with the manner in which the Jesus myths arose, but not the Yahweh ones]. We could even assume that both exist (although only (I/Paul) + a limited subset of the people in the world have seen them); the real trick is convincing other people that not only do they exist---after all, we've got a set of people who've seen them---but that they violate conservation of mass-energy/are the son of God, perform miracles, etc. And convincing people of mass-energy violation is really easy in a time when people will believe that you can duplicate food (IIRC, Jesus is said to have done that with fish and chips or something).
If we assume that both don't exist, then I/Paul have just got to get enough people together that think having many people in the world believe in flying purple elephants/Jesus would serve an immensely useful political goal (say, taking over the nation we live in, which just so happens to believe in a YELLOW flying elephant pantheon with names like Jupiter, Saturn, etc.). Then we write a book with lots of really inspiring stories about how cool flying purple elephants are, and people will want to believe us because something that cool just has to exist, and besides, there are all these people who say they've seen them.
OK, make it flying purple elephants with the power to break the conservation of mass-energy. Now it's a supernatural concept.
Agnosticism is not really logical, although it is logically correct.
For example, it is logically correct to say that I can say nothing for or against the existence of purple elephants with wings, as I sure as heck cannot prove a negative and I just as assuredly cannot find you an example of one. But it's not really logical.
Now, s/purple elephants with wings/gods, and you see the point.
Oooh, ooh, pick me! Those are easy ones!
Here are the answers: nowhere! Yes! Yes, yes, yes!
This seems to imply to me that one can adapt to no REM sleep, but if one is getting it sporadically or has gotten it for many years but then has it turned off for the duration of a study, then one is screwed. Alternatively maybe sleeping 8 hours without REM is OK, but sleeping until you hit REM, then being woken up by a researcher, then going back to sleep, etc. is not OK.
I don't have time for a flamewar, and I doubt I'm going to convince you of anything, but nobody seemed to be bringing up what to me is the obvious answer:
You are talking about two different things here: 1) Platonic forms ("laws of logic", "abstract universal absolutes"); 2) rational thought (i.e. the behavior of men).
Your confusion as to 1) derives from your use of the word "exist" in two different ways. Matter exists as an actual material thing. Platonic forms, however, do not exist in this sense; they only exist as something that men think up. They consistently think them up, as all brains are pattern-recognition/building machines, so very consistently, seeing a triangle-like shape induces us to abstract that into a triangle. Similarly, our experience with logic working rather well in the real world is abstracted to logic working perfectly in our imaginations. There is no need for these to exist in the same sense that matter does; all they are is a series of patterns of neuron arrangements that most humans end up sharing.
Your confusion as to 2) seems to be grounded in a lack of understanding of, or perhaps a lack of consideration for, evolutionary principles. It's quite obvious that being rational is an evolutionary advantage. Let's develop some background. You seem to be familiar with the premise that we can't prove induction without induction (i.e. "it's worked in the past, therefore I'll continue to use it!"). I conjecture that there's nothing inherently true about induction, but simply that it fits well with our experience and thus it seems obviously true because of millions of years of evolutionary programming. For example, imagine a set of beings using the (logically consistent) principle of "negative induction." This states that if something has happened a lot in the past, it's definitely not a general rule. Well, as you can see, it proves itself: it's never worked in the past, so clearly it working is a general rule. However, such a (logically consistent, mind you!) principle is completely stupid from an evolutionary point of view. It would just get the creature killed. So induction, and other principles of rational thought, are simply evolutionarily advantageous modes of being.
You may have been using "should" in a different sense for "Why should men be rational in your worldview," to which I reply "they shouldn't have to be." I, personally, am not in favor of a universal imperative to act a certain way---even if it's a way I prefer acting. Just like I think there should be no governmental imperative to wear a seat belt, even if I would anyway.
For someone in the computer industry, that's really slow.
I've always thought that since she refers to "pictures and images," she literally was shown pictures and images (holograms) by the Organas. Why does nobody else see this?
Thanks, this was definitely the most informative reply.
OK, so why not ship to consumers at the same time?
Apparently it's obvious to everyone else, since I never see this question asked, but why the wait between businesses and consumers? What's the logic there? I mean, I understand why you would give it to businesses ASAP, but why make the consumers wait---especially until after Christmas? I mean, if it's good enough for businesses, it's good enough for consumers, right?
Oh, no, they still have it for sure. I think it a case of mispeaking combined with the vague notion that less parser bugs in IE7 means less need for it.
Which leads to one of the only things I ever liked about IE's CSS: JavaScript expressions. You could insert JavaScript to calculate what you wanted the CSS to say, inline in the CSS file, and be referencing DOM nodes and such. Too bad it was nonstandard :(. Was useful for working around IE6 bugs though.
Thank you! I couldn't find the link; where was it? (Likely I was just too lazy when View > Source > Find rss got nothing.)
...BitTorrent is where the wonderfulness is at.
:(.
http://www.mininova.org/sub/272/added
http://www.mininova.org/sub/114/added
Just wish they were RSS feeds
While your last point may be valid, there's still some problems with your oversimplication.
First, let's assume that magically everyone in the world has IE7:
* Inline styles. So you need some kind of semi-complicated regex that looks for (this is an off-the-top-of-my-head regex) style="(|.*; )filter*". And I don't know about you, but I am not 100% confident that EVERY DEVELOPER WHO WANTS TO UPDATE HIS/HER SITE will be able to make a 100% perfect regex that substitutes correctly. Or that EVERY DEVELOPER will be willing to look through all the find-replace results and make sure it all happened perfectly. Or even that every developer will notice that he/she needs to do this!
* You've got the refractory period, between when IE7 is released the next scheduled website update can get approved and tested. That could be a while, especially for sites that are rarely updated or have been forgotten about.
* All those sites that offer user-submitted tricks, like filter code? Gotta fix it all. So now we're running a regex replacement on the database too.
Now let's not make dumb assumptions, since while Windows Update will be offering it, it won't go out to (e.g.) illegal copies or those people who say "no thanks" or Windows .
* What was the point again? I mean, yeah, it cleans up the codebase for the developer who cares (me and you). But was there any practical benefit? Anything the users can see? Does this add a new feature developers can wow users with? Not seeing it.
IETab works.
Uh, backwards compatibility? Duh?
I go to Caltech (freshman). People here are quite brilliant, I assure you. Yet, despite the fat nerd stereotype, I have met _nobody_ I would consider fat (except one custodian). Everyone seems in the skinny to normal range. Sure, I haven't seen everyone on campus, but I was definitely expecting much less skinniness.
*Shrug*.