Actually, their beliefs don't have anything to do with what science can and cannot prove. They aren't people who believe - at least as far as I know - that God made the Earth in 6 literal days, or created individual animals, etc.
Their view of things seems to be more about how to live life - good ways to behave in order to improve the overall harmony of things (so, I suppose, the one thing they believe unchanging would be harmony).
You're addressing the "God of the Gaps" - which I agree is a pretty feeble deity. I'm talking about things like approaches to take to social interactions, personal behavior and things like that.
An example might be something along the lines of slavery. In olden days, slavery may have made sense and been, compared to the alternatives, an actual good: In many cultures, conquered peoples were slaughtered or tortured and sacrificed - with the advent of slavery, conquered cultures could continue to exist, possibly rebuild, and contribute to the larger tapestry of human experience. In modern times, slavery is less beneficial than the alternatives, and so it would make more sense for a modern religion to abhor the practice while an ancient one would have allowed it.
Similar changes with dietary restrictions. In olden days, it was difficult to keep foods from spoiling, and certain kinds of food would be EXTREMELY lethal if they did. If one believes in God, and believes God would tell us what we should and shouldn't eat, it makes a certain kind of sense that one might think God would say don't eat certain foods that are likely to cause harm. With the advent of modern sanitation and preservation, it would make sense that God might not care about the specific food restrictions because it's less likely to cause harm.
Anyway, things that made *perfect* sense back when no longer do. For a secular (and cellular HA!) example, let me give you the following:
In 1985, having a land-line phone was a no brainer if one wanted phone service. What mobile options were available were hideously expensive. So, telling someone on a budget "Get a land line phone, mobiles are way too expensive!" would be true and correct.
In 2000, having a mobile phone was no longer hugely expensive, so it might make sense to get one instead of a land line. However, if you didn't have sufficient credit to get a cell contract, having to buy an unsubsidized phone and then a pay as you go option would be EXTREMELY expensive for most normal users, much more so than the contract. Thus, the wisdom would have changed to, "If you can get a contract, get a mobile and a decent plan. Otherwise, get a land line."
In 2010, because of taxes, hidden fees, usage charges and other insane additions, contracts with cell providers are, for most people, actually *more* expensive than pay as you go options. Further, basic phones are cheap enough that buying one unsubsidized is a no-brainer. So now the wisdom might be "Unless you use your phone a LOT, get a cheapie and pay as you go, otherwise get a contract that gives you unlimited everything" and land lines wouldn't even be mentioned.
Is that being wishy-washy? No, it's recognizing that as times change, the best course of action will also change. There's absolutely no reason to think that God wouldn't change the details of the message to various prophets over various times in order to get his/her/its/their meaning across in a way that imperfect beings could kind of get it and kind of pass it along to others.
Most people who say they are spiritual despite being atheists are saying that they are open to the idea of larger meaning in the universe without that requiring there be a divine being. Many people who say they are spiritual without being religious mean that they don't subscribe to any particular organized faith.
I'm an atheist and, depending on how the question was asked, would say I'm "spiritual" because I believe that there is meaning in things even if we are just crude matter.
Go to another place - say Slashdot - and say you're a christian and see what happens when some of the nutters there insist that you should be sterilized for "believing in a magical sky wizard" or locked up for child abuse if you take your kids to church. Hell, despite being an atheist, I've been harassed and flamed by people because I'm not willing to go farther than saying people who believe - despite copious evidence to the contrary - in the literal truth of the bible are anything other than mentally ill; because I'm not willing to demonize or dehumanize them, I've gotten flamed.
We need to get rid of assholes of whatever stripe, whether they believe in god or not. I know plenty of religious people who are good people and good scientists. I know plenty of atheists who are raging assholes and REALLY bad scientists. I also know plenty of religious people who are raging dickbags and horribly ignorant, and plenty of atheists who are among the finest human beings I've ever met, and are also good scientists. And any other combination of traits.
Now, what I'll say is this: Of the 275 interviews, the likely reason that only 5 people actively oppose religion is because - wait for it - most people aren't fucking insane. I'm sorry, but anyone who makes a habit of roaming the earth and picking fights because they oppose other people's beliefs is not going to be all that mentally stable. In an environment like a university, people who are mentally unstable will, over time, tend to weed themselves out because they won't be able to perform.
I imagine that in religious organizations the numbers would be different, but that's mainly because, other than persuading people to come to church or give you money or do whatever, the metrics for evaluating performance as a cleric will be different, and being unstable might lead to better performance. But, this is not to say that religious people are more inherently flawed, just that the arenas of academe and church are very different.
Scientists are educated *about their field* but not about everything. Often - but not always - people who are more educated (in their fields) will have, over time been exposed to other ideas, or will be more likely to attempt to approach things with an open mind.
However, working at a university, I know plenty of people with advanced degrees who are pig-ignorant about quite a bit of life. Educating scientists who discriminate against people who are (not insane) religious would take the form, likely, of explaining that not all religious people are hateful assholes like the Falwells and Roberts' of the world, and that just because some people who call themselves Christian believe the devil buried dinosaur bones to fuck with us, not all are like that.
The one thing people - on all sides of this issue - need to do, is learn that there really are more than 2 sides to this, more than "with or against" and to be able to recognize that other people who may believe different things might do so sincerely rather than because they are defective.
The only "defective" people in this scenario are the extremists - people who believe things that are completely not connected to reality. And that can be at both ends of the spectrum. Look at the comments suggesting ANY belief in a "magical sky wizard" should open someone up for derision and persecution - those are not the comments of a well-balanced, mentally healthy individual; they have crazy beliefs, it just happens that the bible being literally true isn't one of them.
There's actually a middle ground which I have had some religious (though not of the insane variety) friends speak of:
Essentially, their idea is that god's ULTIMATE truth is, of course, immutable and unchangeable. However, as imperfect beings, we are not capable of understanding that ultimate truth. What we get, as a result, are slices of the truth, implanted into the minds of prophets by god, and then written down by those prophets (or others close to them) that attempt to express, in our imperfect language and with our imperfect abilities at describing what has been so implanted, winds up not making much sense. Further, as people and societies learn and grow and change, the appropriate slivers of truth that are revealed will also change to reflect the growth and so on.
So you wind up with a situation where some stuff doesn't make sense (blame the people acting as god's transcription service, or just our own imperfect natures for not being able to make sense of paradoxes), or is at odds with what came before, or anything else you want to say - and it's all because *we're* changing and seeing different parts of a whole too vast for us to get.
Of course, this totally throws out the people who believe that the bible and other texts are the literal word of god and the ultimate truth, but those people are deranged anyway. My point with this is that, for certain people, it's abolutely sensical for theological arguments to adapt and change with changing circumstances because theological arguments are just mankinds imperfect and fumbling attempts to describe the bigger plan god has, the bigger truth, and if they didn't change and evolve over time it would mean mankind hasn't been getting "better" or closer to whatever it is that god wants us to grow into.
In that sense, argue these folks, it's kind of like a science of god, wherein as we get more able we should be able to adapt and evolve our understanding and so on. It's just not a science like the scientific method.
The problem is that positive results are, by and large *significant* for expanding our understanding of the universe. Either we confirm something we already suspected or bolster a theory that we've been using as a basis for a lot of other fields.
With negative results, they can easily be not significant. If I hypothesize that my cat has telekinesis and design an experiment to test it and it turns up negative, that is not a significant negative result because there's absolutely no evidence to suggest that my cat had telekinesis in the first place. So we can discard one HUGE set of negative results.
Then there are negative results that are of intermediate significance (which I think you and I would agree should be covered more) - these would be experiments that test common sense assumptions about the world that turn out to be wrong or different than we expected.
The remaining set - the obviously significant negatives - DEFINITELY should get plenty of air time, and by and large they do. If a hypothesis that is based on accepted theory turns out to be false, that's HUGE news.
So, what we wind up with is a situation where virtually 100% of positive results are worth publishing but a substantially lower proportion of negative results are worth publishing. And, in many cases, when there are negative results it comes about because of methodological problems - failure to control or account for certain factors that the researchers in question are aware of, and choose not to submit the negative results paper over because they will very rightly have it dismissed as being essentially pointless work. "Look at this! My poorly designed and poorly conducted experiment produced a negative result, meaning that essentially we learned exactly nothing except for maybe how to design a better experiment in the future!" isn't exactly a compelling argument for publication.
Because the people that you're really talking about - the ones who have essentially psychotic religious beliefs (in the sense that they are completely disconnected from reality) are insane. They're the ones defending it. Then you have people who are taking advantage of the mentally ill by using religion to manipulate them to their own ends.
So, the people who are defending the religious things that are counter to reality are either insane or manipulative, and it becomes obvious why they would resist anything that shoots their stated beliefs down: if they're insane, they can't help it, and if they're manipulative they don't want to help it.
Arguing with them is pointless. Offering them treatment for their mental illness (and just treating them compassionately if they refuse that) for the insane ones will be a better bet. With the manipulative ones, deal with them the way that anyone who runs a confidence scheme is dealt with.
Let me refute those points in the way someone who believes the bible is literally true would:
Gen 1: This just proves the magnificence of God! He is able to do things that our poor, human brains, cannot possibly comprehend, and in fact seem completely paradoxical to us. God is immune to paradox!
Gen 3: God is light. God made the sun to keep things from being confusing to us.
Gen 7: It was made out of water back then, but God chose to change it later on so that we could fly and do other things. Isn't God really cool and nice?
Gen 11: Satan is testing our faith by burying "evidence" that there were other kinds of life on Earth before Seed-bearing, land based plants and trees. Satan is a jerk!
Gen 14-18: God fed the plants directly because he loves all living things. Well, he "loves" them in a way that only makes sense to God, so even if he lets really bad things happen to some people, it's still love. Also, Satan planted the light coming from stars "older" than the sun to test our faith. Satan is a jerk!
Gen 20: Any evidence suggesting that birds *didn't* come from aquatic life is because Satan - the master of lies! - chose to hide it from us and replace it with lies to make us doubt our faith! Satan is a jerk! Oh, also, God trusts us to see through Satan's lies.
Gen 24: Because the animals fell because that harlot Eve ate an apple that she wasn't supposed to because - say it with me now - Satan is a jerk!
Let me put this another way:
If I am making a scientific argument, I have to make my argument valid in a way that follows scientific principles and rigor. If I am making a religious argument, I have to make my argument valid in a way that follows religious principles and rigor.
The arguments that you make are perfectly reasonable *scientific* arguments, but they are *completely* wrong when put within the religious context. No matter *how much* scientific evidence you provide, *none of it* is valid when addressing the religious argument because - literally! - "God did it" "Satan is testing our faith" and "God moves in mysterious ways" are *perfectly* acceptable religious arguments for or against anything. In science, paradox is anathema, in religion god is immune to it, and thus able to create entirely self-contradicting things because nothing is self-contradictory when it comes to god, only we're just not capable of understanding it.
Arguing with those people is impossible because they are immune to reason, logic and evidence because they have those 3 trump cards that make *anything* that opposes their view invalid.
People who do not fall into that category are not the ones who are causing a problem - it's just the people who are denying reality who are the issue, and I make it a point not to get into arguments with people who are mentally ill.
Not true. Give me *one* conclusion that can disprove an exact and specific claim that any religion has made that can be proven false.
Difficulty: "Satan is testing our faith" is a *perfectly* reasonable refutation of any evidence you present. So is "God moves in mysterious ways."
See what we're saying now?
"God did it" "Satan is testing our faith" and "God moves in mysterious ways" cover all possible situations. It is by definition a system that is outside of any kind of logic, reason, rationality or evidence.
Religion and science are not at odds, they are completely separate systems. Trying to handle one with the other is just completely pointless because even if they sometimes use similar terms, those terms mean *vastly* different things and are based on *completely* different axioms.
Not to say that you can't have religious people who are also scientific - this is just saying that when push comes to shove, it's very easy to dismiss *any* evidence that suggests one's religious beliefs are wrong because they are literally able to just say "Nuh uh!" and it is, within their viewpoint, *perfectly valid* to do so!
Creationist: "The earth was made exactly 6021 years ago, at 3PM on a Sunday" Disproof: Light exists that has been in transit for billions of years Creationist: "That's Satan trying to trick us."
Literalist: "The Bible is literally true in every single particular" Response: "You ate shrimp once, which is an abomination" Literalist: "Some abominations are OK."
No matter what evidence that is contrary to their beliefs, this sort of person will not be swayed. So I say stop bothering trying to convince them because the form of their particular belief system is that they are impervious to counter arguments or dissuasion, no matter how compelling. I'm sure that if Jesus were to come back and appear in front of these people and say "Yo! Asshole! What you're practicing in my name is abhorrent to me! Stop it!" they'd just insist it was Satan testing their faith.
Mind you, I don't dislike these people - I feel a great sense of compassion towards people who are obviously mentally ill and not receiving treatment for it. I just think arguing with them is not helpful to anyone.
This is not to say that all people who are religious are mentally ill, just that the kind of religious people we're talking about - the ones immune to reason, evidence and logic - are.
Please provide precise, quantifiable definitions of the following terms:
1) Prayer - what constitutes a prayer? What's the proper protocol for prayer? How can we know if someone is praying sincerely, praying correctly, or otherwise following that process correctly?
2) Sick - what ailments are covered? Are these spiritual ailments? Are they physical ailments? Psychiatric? Are all ailments covered or only some?
3) Heal - what constitutes "healing"? Is it *any* improvement (and what constitutes improvement?) Is it complete and total remission? What if the "healing" refers to the soul or some other non-bodily ailment? Given that religion seems to be preoccupied with the soul and not the body, it does make a certain amount of sense.
The problem is that these definitions are so flexible, so full of wiggle room that you can *always* say that some variable or factor was out of place, so any negative (from a religious standpoint) outcome to a test just proves, to a religious person, that your test was flawed. Any positive outcome just proves they're right.
With actual science, I can make a prediction - "if I drop object x with properties a, b and c in environment y, it will behave as follows..." The motivations or sincerity of object x can't be called into question, the properties a, b and c can be measured with exactitude, and environment y can be very clearly defined.
I agree that religion is (for the most part - aside from some forms of social value and psychological value for some adherents, in some situations) bunk, but you're still missing the larger point that until you can operationalize terms and control confounding factors, any experiment involving tests of religious doctrine will not disprove anything to the people who most need convincing.
A family friend recently fought cancer (one which, when caught early, has extremely good 5 and 10 year survival rates, and in his case it was caught as early as it's possible to do). His wife, when finding out that he had cancer, literally dropped to her knees and begged God to let her husband survive this and saying she'd rededicate herself to religion as payment. He got the appropriate treatments and - miracle of miracles! he was pronounced cancer free 6 months later when that's the exact same outcome that 95% of patients with that same cancer, undergoing that same treatment and caught at that stage receive. His wife *insists* that it was god's hand at work and no amount of telling her othewise will persuade her. Even her husband insists that it's science, not god, that's responsible. Sadly, she's gone so far off the deep end with the religious activities that it has actually caused them to get a separation. Yet, despite huge amounts of evidence supporting it being reasonable to expect a "cure" from the treatments, the fact that it is tearing apart their marriage, and that it is causing her friends and family to become distant, she *still* insists that God did it, and he's got some kind of plan for her.
No amount of factual evidence will convince someone like this otherwise.
And, please forgive the self reply, but I also didn't mention:
People should violate the laws they disagree with, but they should also be prepared for the punishments that will come about as well.
If I get in trouble for piracy, I'll definitely fight it, and try like hell to get my arguments heard, but I am emphatically NOT under the impression that I'm not breaking the law. I'm just not doing anything wrong - which, unfortunately, is not the same as not breaking the law.
I don't think they're mutually exclusive - but we are exploring different aspects and talking past each other to some extent, I think.
Certainly Google does the things they do to profit. But the question is how much stuff do they do just to do it that isn't started with the idea of profit, but just because it's cool? I think Google does a LOT of stuff with the idea of making neat things that people will want to use, and THEN figuring out how to monetize it. If something can't be turned into a money maker, it sure seems like they let it out in the wild rather than crushing it and not sharing.
As to the gap in quality - I'll invoke Sturgeon's Law: 99% of *anything* is crap. I've seen some really, REALLY well done stuff on YouTube and I've seen some vomitously bad stuff released straight to DVD by Hollywood. Sure, the production value of Hollywood stuff is usually better, but that's just form, not substance. Ditto with lots of OSS projects - ugly as hell, but they work. Ditto for lots of amateur stuff in any field - it can be really, really interesting but probably will have rough touches. When I think of stuff that is *innovative* (and that gets us back to your original point - that innovation would cease or massively slow down), I look for stuff that's in a prototype and developmental stage, NOT highly refined things that have high production value. I mean, almost by definition, the stuff that's innovative *can't* be refined because refinement requires building on what came before.
Getting to IP laws themselves... My take on IP laws - which is really outside of the scope of what I was initially getting at, but I will go into a bit here - is actually that the holders of copyright have perverted the original intent and basis for the law. Initially the intent was to protect creators so that they could make money from those creations BUT eventually, in exchange for those creations, the rights would eventually expire and the works would join the public domain. Well and good - I am willing to give up some rights (like, to just do whatever the hell I want with something someone else made) in order to gain some benefits (like getting neat stuff that people make and supporting the people who make really good stuff IMO). Pretty much like the situation you are talking about.
HOWEVER! Nowadays that bargain has been completely subverted: Corporations and other groups have used their vast (vaster than any individual) resources to have the period of protection for their works extended to the point where, unless the copyright holder explicitly permits it, those works will *never* enter the public domain. It's a fundamental violation of the idea of equity between creators and consumers - consumers have rights too.
These abuses have taken other forms as well: COMPLETELY broken products crippled by DRM that is intended to thwart pirates but *only* hurts people who paid for the software (completely absurd!) Content producers installing rootkits and other such onto people's machines in order to thwart pirates. Content producers lobbying to ban resale of things like CDs and digital purchases. Theaters demanding to search the bags of paying customers in order to keep people from recording movies (despite the fact that it's usually someone working at the theater who is doing the piracy, or someone releasing a screener DVD onto the scene, etc).
While there are a bunch of people who pirate things just because they can, I actually do think of it as a form of civil disobedience and one of the only (of the very few remaining) ways a consumer may exercise their rights. You say it's wrong for someone to violate IP laws, I say that the laws no longer represent anything near the original intent and as such are unjust.
This is not to say that I won't support someone who's work is good or interesting to me, or support people who are releasing things in ways that address the issues I have with the basis for IP law. I bought the Humble Bundle (I will almost certainly not play it before it's in a second or third wa
I never said they don't create revenue. I said that they were created without the assumption that the creators would get paid. They were created for any number of reasons - to scratch an itch, to satisfy curiosity, to correct something that was seen to be flawed; whatever the reason, they were created. History has shown that people will *continue* creating things because that's what they *do*.
I know writers who have produced god only knows how many stories (none published) because they like telling stories. I know people who make films (none released) because they really enjoy it. I know people who write software because they love the challenge. One hobby I have is building kites - complex, crazy things that crash and get completely wrecked more often than not, but I make them. And they can get *really* impractically expensive to make, for some of the more intricate and innovative designs - too expensive, in fact, to have even the remotest chance of being commercially viable, so I'm actually being *more* innovative in some ways than people who want a profit. People do these things because they are inspired to do them. Getting paid is not even an issue.
Professionally I do research at a university for about 1/10th the salary I could get had I stayed in tech. Virtually everyone I work with could make MUCH much more if they worked in the private sector. Half of my friends are school teachers, despite the fact that they work awful hours, have to deal with insane parents, and get paid very little compared to what they could be making elsewhere. People do these things because they are inspired to do them. Getting paid is an afterthought, and in at least three cases the people who are teaching donate their entire salary to charity.
Oh, sure - some people create things with the sole idea behind it of getting paid to do so. And some things *need* to be created/developed (though, arguably, anything that is a necessity, I think, should be handled in a way different than the free market, but that's an entirely different line of discussion. The fact is, even without money as a motivator, there are PLENTY of other reasons people do things. I'd say that money is very likely the *worst* kind of motivation, because it encourages people to make not things that appeal, but things that appeal *enough* but are also cheap enough to be worth producing and selling. The most interesting and innovative stuff is almost never - at first - commercially viable or likely to be able to be made so.
Yet people continue to create and innovate. Funny how that works, despite your insistence that it wouldn't.
Those things were created in a world and environment where it is *entirely* possible - and likely something the creators of those things knew was possible - that the nature of the protections they might have could, and almost certainly would, change dramatically over time. Additionally, the creators of those things almost certainly knew that *any* efforts they took to restrict use of those things could and would be circumvented.
Yet, in complete opposition to your original point, those things did get created.
Except you missed the point entirely. My response was to the idea that people wouldn't create unless they were assured of getting paid for their creation.
Every single one of those things I mentioned was created without the assumption of payment, and in fact every single one of them is free for me to use.
Sure, they're protected by IP laws, but that's not the argument I was making at all - I was making the argument that even without guarantee of payment things will still get created. I know it's fun kicking over strawmen, but really - what's the point?
You're absolutely right. Nobody would ever design anything or build anything or make anything or write anything without knowing they can get paid, and certainly wouldn't ever offer those things for free.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go use Firefox to search Google and see if I can get a solution for an error I'm finding when trying to compile the source for PSPP on my Ubuntu box.
I work for a university research group doing social psychology & public health research. As the most technologically adept person in my program, I've been slowly but steadily weaning the rest of my team off of closed source stuff and getting them to use, or if not actually use, at least consider OSS for various uses.
One of the things I'm starting to do is get in contact with people who manage OSS projects that *almost* but not quite meet our needs and discuss funding them to implement the features and functionality we want. We win because we get a tool that does what we want without needing the skills in house and at a lower cost than buying a proprietary solution, the software project team wins because they get funding for their efforts, and the community wins because they get more features.
The only real hurdle I have right now to getting people to get fully onboard with OSS is that we haven't yet been able to find anything that's comprable to SPSS and SAS for our analysis (and that's compatible/capable of reading from both) - any suggestions?
The iPad isn't a computer. The iPhone isn't a computer. The iPod isn't a computer.
Oh, sure, in the broadest possible sense they're "computers" in that they're devices that compute, but they've gone into appliance territory. They're gadgets that let you do certain things in a certain way, and they're actually pretty good at that stuff.
A better analogy might be an Erector set (Mechano, maybe, for our European friends?) vs. a set of dolls or action figures.
With one - the Erector/Mechano set - you can make a whole bunch of stuff and do a bunch of different things. Sure, they might not be completely elegant, but if you want a truck, you can make a truck. If you want a house, you can make a house. If you want a robot, you can kind of make a robot. Some people - people who use Slashdot quite obviously - really like this freedom and don't mind the rough edges because they're a trivial price to pay for the flexibility.
With the other - the set of dolls - you can't really do nearly as much, but what you can do is going to be a more refined experience, and a more specific one. With this, instead of a generic truck, you're getting a Tonka brand Dump Truck. Or you're getting a Barbie Dream House instead of a generic house. Or you're getting Wall-E instead of random robot looking thing. You can't do nearly as much - I mean, if you get Wall-E you aren't going to turn it into a Tonka. Lots of people actually prefer this kind of experience, strange as that might sound. They want to play with Wall-E, not a random robot they made. They want a Tonka, not some truck-like thing. They don't *want* to have to put it together.
And some people like both for different purposes. Sometimes people just want to make whatever the feel like making, and sometimes they want to play with a specific toy.
Anyway, while people may have a preference for one or the other and think the one they didn't pick is shit, the fact is, quite a few people see some value - for whatever reason - in their choice.
When I grew up I had Barbies and also an Erector set. I wound up making machines that would pull apart the Barbies so that I could rebuild them as Cyborgs. I don't know what that means, but I thought if I'm gonna keep going with this toy analogy I might as well share.
The problem is that all those things sound FABULOUS - space colonies! Woo woo! - but there's no chance of them happening unless we massively change the way we handle space development on a political level.
Look at the shuttle: it was initially hoped that it'd be a space workhorse that would open up the high ground for massive expansion but turned into an inefficient waste of resources that was, frankly, insanely dangerous, not particularly useful overall, and incredibly wasteful compared to a whole bunch of other ways we could have gotten the same stuff done.
I really, REALLY want to go to space. I REALLY want to live in space. I want humankind to spread out amongst the stars. But that isn't happening until we get our shit together on the ground and stop turning everything into some ridiculous dog and pony show. Since that doesn't seem like it's gonna happen any time soon, I'm having a hard time being bothered by NASA cutting back on the absurd waste of money that is the manned space program in order to focus on the stuff they do well.
And, for what it's worth, I think countries like China are much, much more likely to make significant breakthroughs in manned spaceflight because they simply aren't pants-pissingly afraid of their taikonauts dying. Shit's dangerous, exploring it will be dangerous, there will be deaths - we seem to have lost that pioneer spirit that once let us accept the fact that people might die for a greater good and made us try even harder to make sure their deaths were not in vain.
Did he say that or are you just making that shit up? And even if he did say that - which he didn't - can you show me where it's become a policy, or even a hint of policy, to make it impossible for people to get their news from wherever?
I have great compassion for the mentally ill, but people like you are really straining that.
You are an idiot. I just wanted to say that up front before I completely demolish your point.
Many jobs offer healthcare benefits for the family of employees, either subsidized by the employer or paid for by the employee. In the case of the military, the absolutely shit pay that military personnel receive can be considered to be part payment for healthcare for their family members. As I remember from when a family member was in the service, a married E-4 with 1 kid makes so little that they are considered to be below the poverty line.
The military person themselves is not the only person who can need medical care as a result of their job. A soldier who comes back from a combat zone with injuries has a massive impact on their family, and the family will need counseling and care as well.
Finally, these are people who volunteer to put their lives on the line for their country. Unless and until we can guarantee that ALL US citizens will receive health care regardless of the ability to pay, we absolutely must provide specific coverage for military/their families.
He's talking about people mistaking using gadgets for productivity and using only single sources of news rather than actually being productive, thinking for themselves and trying to actually be informed.
He's not talking about removing the ability of anyone who dares disagree with him to speak their point, he's not talking about banning things, he's not talking about *anything* like the paranoid bullshit you seem to imagine.
Look, it's okay - I get it, you don't like the guy. That's fine. But at least, if you're not going to like him, do it for things he's *actually* said and done rather than shit you're imagining he might say or might do. It's people like you - who just decide they're going to ascribe all kinds of things to the other side(s) that are fucking up political discourse in this country.
I'll admit that I tend to lean left (and, to be honest, no mainstream US politician is nearly left enough for my tastes), but I like to think I'm at least somewhat intellectually honest. When Bush and company were in power I was just as bothered by the moonbats who were insisting that Cheney was going to stage a coup before the 2008 elections and other crazy shit like that as I am now bothered by the wingnuts who insist that Obama is actually an Atheist Muslim Socialist Fascist Do-Nothing Empty Suit Who Is Single-Handedly Ruining America By Doing Too Much.
You're certainly welcome to your paranoid delusions that he's going to go from "Hey, kids, think for yourselves" to "Chairman Obama has declared that any source of news other than MSNBC is bad for the environment" but all it's going to do is get you ignored by people who aren't insane.
Exactly, and it hasn't been happening in the US. If people *wanted* to do it, they would be doing it.
What makes more sense?
That we have tons of enemies who want nothing more than to give up their lives to kill some americans, but they are completely unable to get into the US, are unable to do things like rent cars or buy weapons when they get here, or are otherwise completely and 100% thwarted by our counter-terrorism efforts
- or -
That we just don't have that many people willing to try to kill Americans in the US, and the ones who do try things are usually just not mentally coherent enough to pull it off
I'm going with the second option - the first requires too many completely absurd things to be true.
If terrorism was such a threat to the US, there would have been hundreds of minor, soft-target attacks on US soil. There are dozens of ways I can think of, off the top of my head, for a single individual to kill dozens/hundreds of americans without actually putting their life at risk. Why aren't terrorists leaving cars packed with explosives outside of Starbucks, daycare centers, shopping malls, sporting events and any other place where people routinely go? Why haven't suicide bombers run screaming into the HUGE crowds that are waiting to get through the security checkpoints at airports?
I'll tell you why: There simply just isn't an interest in doing that kind of thing. Or, I should say, not much of an interest. Right now, if I wanted to - if I really had a bug up my ass and was willing to do something about it - I could go out and kill dozens to hundreds of people - for less than $200 bucks by renting a car and plowing into a crowd of people on a busy sidewalk in my city. The fact that we don't have people doing this kind of thing *at all (except for maybe Fort Hood)* let alone all the time shows me exactly how much of a threat terrorism isn't.
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Actually, their beliefs don't have anything to do with what science can and cannot prove. They aren't people who believe - at least as far as I know - that God made the Earth in 6 literal days, or created individual animals, etc.
Their view of things seems to be more about how to live life - good ways to behave in order to improve the overall harmony of things (so, I suppose, the one thing they believe unchanging would be harmony).
You're addressing the "God of the Gaps" - which I agree is a pretty feeble deity. I'm talking about things like approaches to take to social interactions, personal behavior and things like that.
An example might be something along the lines of slavery. In olden days, slavery may have made sense and been, compared to the alternatives, an actual good: In many cultures, conquered peoples were slaughtered or tortured and sacrificed - with the advent of slavery, conquered cultures could continue to exist, possibly rebuild, and contribute to the larger tapestry of human experience. In modern times, slavery is less beneficial than the alternatives, and so it would make more sense for a modern religion to abhor the practice while an ancient one would have allowed it.
Similar changes with dietary restrictions. In olden days, it was difficult to keep foods from spoiling, and certain kinds of food would be EXTREMELY lethal if they did. If one believes in God, and believes God would tell us what we should and shouldn't eat, it makes a certain kind of sense that one might think God would say don't eat certain foods that are likely to cause harm. With the advent of modern sanitation and preservation, it would make sense that God might not care about the specific food restrictions because it's less likely to cause harm.
Anyway, things that made *perfect* sense back when no longer do. For a secular (and cellular HA!) example, let me give you the following:
In 1985, having a land-line phone was a no brainer if one wanted phone service. What mobile options were available were hideously expensive. So, telling someone on a budget "Get a land line phone, mobiles are way too expensive!" would be true and correct.
In 2000, having a mobile phone was no longer hugely expensive, so it might make sense to get one instead of a land line. However, if you didn't have sufficient credit to get a cell contract, having to buy an unsubsidized phone and then a pay as you go option would be EXTREMELY expensive for most normal users, much more so than the contract. Thus, the wisdom would have changed to, "If you can get a contract, get a mobile and a decent plan. Otherwise, get a land line."
In 2010, because of taxes, hidden fees, usage charges and other insane additions, contracts with cell providers are, for most people, actually *more* expensive than pay as you go options. Further, basic phones are cheap enough that buying one unsubsidized is a no-brainer. So now the wisdom might be "Unless you use your phone a LOT, get a cheapie and pay as you go, otherwise get a contract that gives you unlimited everything" and land lines wouldn't even be mentioned.
Is that being wishy-washy? No, it's recognizing that as times change, the best course of action will also change. There's absolutely no reason to think that God wouldn't change the details of the message to various prophets over various times in order to get his/her/its/their meaning across in a way that imperfect beings could kind of get it and kind of pass it along to others.
Most people who say they are spiritual despite being atheists are saying that they are open to the idea of larger meaning in the universe without that requiring there be a divine being. Many people who say they are spiritual without being religious mean that they don't subscribe to any particular organized faith.
I'm an atheist and, depending on how the question was asked, would say I'm "spiritual" because I believe that there is meaning in things even if we are just crude matter.
Go to another place - say Slashdot - and say you're a christian and see what happens when some of the nutters there insist that you should be sterilized for "believing in a magical sky wizard" or locked up for child abuse if you take your kids to church. Hell, despite being an atheist, I've been harassed and flamed by people because I'm not willing to go farther than saying people who believe - despite copious evidence to the contrary - in the literal truth of the bible are anything other than mentally ill; because I'm not willing to demonize or dehumanize them, I've gotten flamed.
We need to get rid of assholes of whatever stripe, whether they believe in god or not. I know plenty of religious people who are good people and good scientists. I know plenty of atheists who are raging assholes and REALLY bad scientists. I also know plenty of religious people who are raging dickbags and horribly ignorant, and plenty of atheists who are among the finest human beings I've ever met, and are also good scientists. And any other combination of traits.
Now, what I'll say is this: Of the 275 interviews, the likely reason that only 5 people actively oppose religion is because - wait for it - most people aren't fucking insane. I'm sorry, but anyone who makes a habit of roaming the earth and picking fights because they oppose other people's beliefs is not going to be all that mentally stable. In an environment like a university, people who are mentally unstable will, over time, tend to weed themselves out because they won't be able to perform.
I imagine that in religious organizations the numbers would be different, but that's mainly because, other than persuading people to come to church or give you money or do whatever, the metrics for evaluating performance as a cleric will be different, and being unstable might lead to better performance. But, this is not to say that religious people are more inherently flawed, just that the arenas of academe and church are very different.
Scientists are educated *about their field* but not about everything. Often - but not always - people who are more educated (in their fields) will have, over time been exposed to other ideas, or will be more likely to attempt to approach things with an open mind.
However, working at a university, I know plenty of people with advanced degrees who are pig-ignorant about quite a bit of life. Educating scientists who discriminate against people who are (not insane) religious would take the form, likely, of explaining that not all religious people are hateful assholes like the Falwells and Roberts' of the world, and that just because some people who call themselves Christian believe the devil buried dinosaur bones to fuck with us, not all are like that.
The one thing people - on all sides of this issue - need to do, is learn that there really are more than 2 sides to this, more than "with or against" and to be able to recognize that other people who may believe different things might do so sincerely rather than because they are defective.
The only "defective" people in this scenario are the extremists - people who believe things that are completely not connected to reality. And that can be at both ends of the spectrum. Look at the comments suggesting ANY belief in a "magical sky wizard" should open someone up for derision and persecution - those are not the comments of a well-balanced, mentally healthy individual; they have crazy beliefs, it just happens that the bible being literally true isn't one of them.
There's actually a middle ground which I have had some religious (though not of the insane variety) friends speak of:
Essentially, their idea is that god's ULTIMATE truth is, of course, immutable and unchangeable. However, as imperfect beings, we are not capable of understanding that ultimate truth. What we get, as a result, are slices of the truth, implanted into the minds of prophets by god, and then written down by those prophets (or others close to them) that attempt to express, in our imperfect language and with our imperfect abilities at describing what has been so implanted, winds up not making much sense. Further, as people and societies learn and grow and change, the appropriate slivers of truth that are revealed will also change to reflect the growth and so on.
So you wind up with a situation where some stuff doesn't make sense (blame the people acting as god's transcription service, or just our own imperfect natures for not being able to make sense of paradoxes), or is at odds with what came before, or anything else you want to say - and it's all because *we're* changing and seeing different parts of a whole too vast for us to get.
Of course, this totally throws out the people who believe that the bible and other texts are the literal word of god and the ultimate truth, but those people are deranged anyway. My point with this is that, for certain people, it's abolutely sensical for theological arguments to adapt and change with changing circumstances because theological arguments are just mankinds imperfect and fumbling attempts to describe the bigger plan god has, the bigger truth, and if they didn't change and evolve over time it would mean mankind hasn't been getting "better" or closer to whatever it is that god wants us to grow into.
In that sense, argue these folks, it's kind of like a science of god, wherein as we get more able we should be able to adapt and evolve our understanding and so on. It's just not a science like the scientific method.
The problem is that positive results are, by and large *significant* for expanding our understanding of the universe. Either we confirm something we already suspected or bolster a theory that we've been using as a basis for a lot of other fields.
With negative results, they can easily be not significant. If I hypothesize that my cat has telekinesis and design an experiment to test it and it turns up negative, that is not a significant negative result because there's absolutely no evidence to suggest that my cat had telekinesis in the first place. So we can discard one HUGE set of negative results.
Then there are negative results that are of intermediate significance (which I think you and I would agree should be covered more) - these would be experiments that test common sense assumptions about the world that turn out to be wrong or different than we expected.
The remaining set - the obviously significant negatives - DEFINITELY should get plenty of air time, and by and large they do. If a hypothesis that is based on accepted theory turns out to be false, that's HUGE news.
So, what we wind up with is a situation where virtually 100% of positive results are worth publishing but a substantially lower proportion of negative results are worth publishing. And, in many cases, when there are negative results it comes about because of methodological problems - failure to control or account for certain factors that the researchers in question are aware of, and choose not to submit the negative results paper over because they will very rightly have it dismissed as being essentially pointless work. "Look at this! My poorly designed and poorly conducted experiment produced a negative result, meaning that essentially we learned exactly nothing except for maybe how to design a better experiment in the future!" isn't exactly a compelling argument for publication.
Why focus on defending it?
Because the people that you're really talking about - the ones who have essentially psychotic religious beliefs (in the sense that they are completely disconnected from reality) are insane. They're the ones defending it. Then you have people who are taking advantage of the mentally ill by using religion to manipulate them to their own ends.
So, the people who are defending the religious things that are counter to reality are either insane or manipulative, and it becomes obvious why they would resist anything that shoots their stated beliefs down: if they're insane, they can't help it, and if they're manipulative they don't want to help it.
Arguing with them is pointless. Offering them treatment for their mental illness (and just treating them compassionately if they refuse that) for the insane ones will be a better bet. With the manipulative ones, deal with them the way that anyone who runs a confidence scheme is dealt with.
Let me refute those points in the way someone who believes the bible is literally true would:
Gen 1: This just proves the magnificence of God! He is able to do things that our poor, human brains, cannot possibly comprehend, and in fact seem completely paradoxical to us. God is immune to paradox!
Gen 3: God is light. God made the sun to keep things from being confusing to us.
Gen 7: It was made out of water back then, but God chose to change it later on so that we could fly and do other things. Isn't God really cool and nice?
Gen 11: Satan is testing our faith by burying "evidence" that there were other kinds of life on Earth before Seed-bearing, land based plants and trees. Satan is a jerk!
Gen 14-18: God fed the plants directly because he loves all living things. Well, he "loves" them in a way that only makes sense to God, so even if he lets really bad things happen to some people, it's still love. Also, Satan planted the light coming from stars "older" than the sun to test our faith. Satan is a jerk!
Gen 20: Any evidence suggesting that birds *didn't* come from aquatic life is because Satan - the master of lies! - chose to hide it from us and replace it with lies to make us doubt our faith! Satan is a jerk! Oh, also, God trusts us to see through Satan's lies.
Gen 24: Because the animals fell because that harlot Eve ate an apple that she wasn't supposed to because - say it with me now - Satan is a jerk!
Let me put this another way:
If I am making a scientific argument, I have to make my argument valid in a way that follows scientific principles and rigor. If I am making a religious argument, I have to make my argument valid in a way that follows religious principles and rigor.
The arguments that you make are perfectly reasonable *scientific* arguments, but they are *completely* wrong when put within the religious context. No matter *how much* scientific evidence you provide, *none of it* is valid when addressing the religious argument because - literally! - "God did it" "Satan is testing our faith" and "God moves in mysterious ways" are *perfectly* acceptable religious arguments for or against anything. In science, paradox is anathema, in religion god is immune to it, and thus able to create entirely self-contradicting things because nothing is self-contradictory when it comes to god, only we're just not capable of understanding it.
Arguing with those people is impossible because they are immune to reason, logic and evidence because they have those 3 trump cards that make *anything* that opposes their view invalid.
People who do not fall into that category are not the ones who are causing a problem - it's just the people who are denying reality who are the issue, and I make it a point not to get into arguments with people who are mentally ill.
Not true. Give me *one* conclusion that can disprove an exact and specific claim that any religion has made that can be proven false.
Difficulty: "Satan is testing our faith" is a *perfectly* reasonable refutation of any evidence you present. So is "God moves in mysterious ways."
See what we're saying now?
"God did it" "Satan is testing our faith" and "God moves in mysterious ways" cover all possible situations. It is by definition a system that is outside of any kind of logic, reason, rationality or evidence.
Religion and science are not at odds, they are completely separate systems. Trying to handle one with the other is just completely pointless because even if they sometimes use similar terms, those terms mean *vastly* different things and are based on *completely* different axioms.
Not to say that you can't have religious people who are also scientific - this is just saying that when push comes to shove, it's very easy to dismiss *any* evidence that suggests one's religious beliefs are wrong because they are literally able to just say "Nuh uh!" and it is, within their viewpoint, *perfectly valid* to do so!
Exactly.
Creationist: "The earth was made exactly 6021 years ago, at 3PM on a Sunday"
Disproof: Light exists that has been in transit for billions of years
Creationist: "That's Satan trying to trick us."
Literalist: "The Bible is literally true in every single particular"
Response: "You ate shrimp once, which is an abomination"
Literalist: "Some abominations are OK."
No matter what evidence that is contrary to their beliefs, this sort of person will not be swayed. So I say stop bothering trying to convince them because the form of their particular belief system is that they are impervious to counter arguments or dissuasion, no matter how compelling. I'm sure that if Jesus were to come back and appear in front of these people and say "Yo! Asshole! What you're practicing in my name is abhorrent to me! Stop it!" they'd just insist it was Satan testing their faith.
Mind you, I don't dislike these people - I feel a great sense of compassion towards people who are obviously mentally ill and not receiving treatment for it. I just think arguing with them is not helpful to anyone.
This is not to say that all people who are religious are mentally ill, just that the kind of religious people we're talking about - the ones immune to reason, evidence and logic - are.
Please provide precise, quantifiable definitions of the following terms:
1) Prayer - what constitutes a prayer? What's the proper protocol for prayer? How can we know if someone is praying sincerely, praying correctly, or otherwise following that process correctly?
2) Sick - what ailments are covered? Are these spiritual ailments? Are they physical ailments? Psychiatric? Are all ailments covered or only some?
3) Heal - what constitutes "healing"? Is it *any* improvement (and what constitutes improvement?) Is it complete and total remission? What if the "healing" refers to the soul or some other non-bodily ailment? Given that religion seems to be preoccupied with the soul and not the body, it does make a certain amount of sense.
The problem is that these definitions are so flexible, so full of wiggle room that you can *always* say that some variable or factor was out of place, so any negative (from a religious standpoint) outcome to a test just proves, to a religious person, that your test was flawed. Any positive outcome just proves they're right.
With actual science, I can make a prediction - "if I drop object x with properties a, b and c in environment y, it will behave as follows..." The motivations or sincerity of object x can't be called into question, the properties a, b and c can be measured with exactitude, and environment y can be very clearly defined.
I agree that religion is (for the most part - aside from some forms of social value and psychological value for some adherents, in some situations) bunk, but you're still missing the larger point that until you can operationalize terms and control confounding factors, any experiment involving tests of religious doctrine will not disprove anything to the people who most need convincing.
A family friend recently fought cancer (one which, when caught early, has extremely good 5 and 10 year survival rates, and in his case it was caught as early as it's possible to do). His wife, when finding out that he had cancer, literally dropped to her knees and begged God to let her husband survive this and saying she'd rededicate herself to religion as payment. He got the appropriate treatments and - miracle of miracles! he was pronounced cancer free 6 months later when that's the exact same outcome that 95% of patients with that same cancer, undergoing that same treatment and caught at that stage receive. His wife *insists* that it was god's hand at work and no amount of telling her othewise will persuade her. Even her husband insists that it's science, not god, that's responsible. Sadly, she's gone so far off the deep end with the religious activities that it has actually caused them to get a separation. Yet, despite huge amounts of evidence supporting it being reasonable to expect a "cure" from the treatments, the fact that it is tearing apart their marriage, and that it is causing her friends and family to become distant, she *still* insists that God did it, and he's got some kind of plan for her.
No amount of factual evidence will convince someone like this otherwise.
And, please forgive the self reply, but I also didn't mention:
People should violate the laws they disagree with, but they should also be prepared for the punishments that will come about as well.
If I get in trouble for piracy, I'll definitely fight it, and try like hell to get my arguments heard, but I am emphatically NOT under the impression that I'm not breaking the law. I'm just not doing anything wrong - which, unfortunately, is not the same as not breaking the law.
I don't think they're mutually exclusive - but we are exploring different aspects and talking past each other to some extent, I think.
Certainly Google does the things they do to profit. But the question is how much stuff do they do just to do it that isn't started with the idea of profit, but just because it's cool? I think Google does a LOT of stuff with the idea of making neat things that people will want to use, and THEN figuring out how to monetize it. If something can't be turned into a money maker, it sure seems like they let it out in the wild rather than crushing it and not sharing.
As to the gap in quality - I'll invoke Sturgeon's Law: 99% of *anything* is crap. I've seen some really, REALLY well done stuff on YouTube and I've seen some vomitously bad stuff released straight to DVD by Hollywood. Sure, the production value of Hollywood stuff is usually better, but that's just form, not substance. Ditto with lots of OSS projects - ugly as hell, but they work. Ditto for lots of amateur stuff in any field - it can be really, really interesting but probably will have rough touches. When I think of stuff that is *innovative* (and that gets us back to your original point - that innovation would cease or massively slow down), I look for stuff that's in a prototype and developmental stage, NOT highly refined things that have high production value. I mean, almost by definition, the stuff that's innovative *can't* be refined because refinement requires building on what came before.
Getting to IP laws themselves... My take on IP laws - which is really outside of the scope of what I was initially getting at, but I will go into a bit here - is actually that the holders of copyright have perverted the original intent and basis for the law. Initially the intent was to protect creators so that they could make money from those creations BUT eventually, in exchange for those creations, the rights would eventually expire and the works would join the public domain. Well and good - I am willing to give up some rights (like, to just do whatever the hell I want with something someone else made) in order to gain some benefits (like getting neat stuff that people make and supporting the people who make really good stuff IMO). Pretty much like the situation you are talking about.
HOWEVER! Nowadays that bargain has been completely subverted: Corporations and other groups have used their vast (vaster than any individual) resources to have the period of protection for their works extended to the point where, unless the copyright holder explicitly permits it, those works will *never* enter the public domain. It's a fundamental violation of the idea of equity between creators and consumers - consumers have rights too.
These abuses have taken other forms as well: COMPLETELY broken products crippled by DRM that is intended to thwart pirates but *only* hurts people who paid for the software (completely absurd!) Content producers installing rootkits and other such onto people's machines in order to thwart pirates. Content producers lobbying to ban resale of things like CDs and digital purchases. Theaters demanding to search the bags of paying customers in order to keep people from recording movies (despite the fact that it's usually someone working at the theater who is doing the piracy, or someone releasing a screener DVD onto the scene, etc).
While there are a bunch of people who pirate things just because they can, I actually do think of it as a form of civil disobedience and one of the only (of the very few remaining) ways a consumer may exercise their rights. You say it's wrong for someone to violate IP laws, I say that the laws no longer represent anything near the original intent and as such are unjust.
This is not to say that I won't support someone who's work is good or interesting to me, or support people who are releasing things in ways that address the issues I have with the basis for IP law. I bought the Humble Bundle (I will almost certainly not play it before it's in a second or third wa
I never said they don't create revenue. I said that they were created without the assumption that the creators would get paid. They were created for any number of reasons - to scratch an itch, to satisfy curiosity, to correct something that was seen to be flawed; whatever the reason, they were created. History has shown that people will *continue* creating things because that's what they *do*.
I know writers who have produced god only knows how many stories (none published) because they like telling stories. I know people who make films (none released) because they really enjoy it. I know people who write software because they love the challenge. One hobby I have is building kites - complex, crazy things that crash and get completely wrecked more often than not, but I make them. And they can get *really* impractically expensive to make, for some of the more intricate and innovative designs - too expensive, in fact, to have even the remotest chance of being commercially viable, so I'm actually being *more* innovative in some ways than people who want a profit. People do these things because they are inspired to do them. Getting paid is not even an issue.
Professionally I do research at a university for about 1/10th the salary I could get had I stayed in tech. Virtually everyone I work with could make MUCH much more if they worked in the private sector. Half of my friends are school teachers, despite the fact that they work awful hours, have to deal with insane parents, and get paid very little compared to what they could be making elsewhere. People do these things because they are inspired to do them. Getting paid is an afterthought, and in at least three cases the people who are teaching donate their entire salary to charity.
Oh, sure - some people create things with the sole idea behind it of getting paid to do so. And some things *need* to be created/developed (though, arguably, anything that is a necessity, I think, should be handled in a way different than the free market, but that's an entirely different line of discussion. The fact is, even without money as a motivator, there are PLENTY of other reasons people do things. I'd say that money is very likely the *worst* kind of motivation, because it encourages people to make not things that appeal, but things that appeal *enough* but are also cheap enough to be worth producing and selling. The most interesting and innovative stuff is almost never - at first - commercially viable or likely to be able to be made so.
Yet people continue to create and innovate. Funny how that works, despite your insistence that it wouldn't.
Actually, I'll go even further:
Those things were created in a world and environment where it is *entirely* possible - and likely something the creators of those things knew was possible - that the nature of the protections they might have could, and almost certainly would, change dramatically over time. Additionally, the creators of those things almost certainly knew that *any* efforts they took to restrict use of those things could and would be circumvented.
Yet, in complete opposition to your original point, those things did get created.
Except you missed the point entirely. My response was to the idea that people wouldn't create unless they were assured of getting paid for their creation.
Every single one of those things I mentioned was created without the assumption of payment, and in fact every single one of them is free for me to use.
Sure, they're protected by IP laws, but that's not the argument I was making at all - I was making the argument that even without guarantee of payment things will still get created. I know it's fun kicking over strawmen, but really - what's the point?
You're absolutely right. Nobody would ever design anything or build anything or make anything or write anything without knowing they can get paid, and certainly wouldn't ever offer those things for free.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go use Firefox to search Google and see if I can get a solution for an error I'm finding when trying to compile the source for PSPP on my Ubuntu box.
Seriously, are you slow or just trolling?
I work for a university research group doing social psychology & public health research. As the most technologically adept person in my program, I've been slowly but steadily weaning the rest of my team off of closed source stuff and getting them to use, or if not actually use, at least consider OSS for various uses.
One of the things I'm starting to do is get in contact with people who manage OSS projects that *almost* but not quite meet our needs and discuss funding them to implement the features and functionality we want. We win because we get a tool that does what we want without needing the skills in house and at a lower cost than buying a proprietary solution, the software project team wins because they get funding for their efforts, and the community wins because they get more features.
The only real hurdle I have right now to getting people to get fully onboard with OSS is that we haven't yet been able to find anything that's comprable to SPSS and SAS for our analysis (and that's compatible/capable of reading from both) - any suggestions?
The iPad isn't a computer. The iPhone isn't a computer. The iPod isn't a computer.
Oh, sure, in the broadest possible sense they're "computers" in that they're devices that compute, but they've gone into appliance territory. They're gadgets that let you do certain things in a certain way, and they're actually pretty good at that stuff.
A better analogy might be an Erector set (Mechano, maybe, for our European friends?) vs. a set of dolls or action figures.
With one - the Erector/Mechano set - you can make a whole bunch of stuff and do a bunch of different things. Sure, they might not be completely elegant, but if you want a truck, you can make a truck. If you want a house, you can make a house. If you want a robot, you can kind of make a robot. Some people - people who use Slashdot quite obviously - really like this freedom and don't mind the rough edges because they're a trivial price to pay for the flexibility.
With the other - the set of dolls - you can't really do nearly as much, but what you can do is going to be a more refined experience, and a more specific one. With this, instead of a generic truck, you're getting a Tonka brand Dump Truck. Or you're getting a Barbie Dream House instead of a generic house. Or you're getting Wall-E instead of random robot looking thing. You can't do nearly as much - I mean, if you get Wall-E you aren't going to turn it into a Tonka. Lots of people actually prefer this kind of experience, strange as that might sound. They want to play with Wall-E, not a random robot they made. They want a Tonka, not some truck-like thing. They don't *want* to have to put it together.
And some people like both for different purposes. Sometimes people just want to make whatever the feel like making, and sometimes they want to play with a specific toy.
Anyway, while people may have a preference for one or the other and think the one they didn't pick is shit, the fact is, quite a few people see some value - for whatever reason - in their choice.
When I grew up I had Barbies and also an Erector set. I wound up making machines that would pull apart the Barbies so that I could rebuild them as Cyborgs. I don't know what that means, but I thought if I'm gonna keep going with this toy analogy I might as well share.
The problem is that all those things sound FABULOUS - space colonies! Woo woo! - but there's no chance of them happening unless we massively change the way we handle space development on a political level.
Look at the shuttle: it was initially hoped that it'd be a space workhorse that would open up the high ground for massive expansion but turned into an inefficient waste of resources that was, frankly, insanely dangerous, not particularly useful overall, and incredibly wasteful compared to a whole bunch of other ways we could have gotten the same stuff done.
I really, REALLY want to go to space. I REALLY want to live in space. I want humankind to spread out amongst the stars. But that isn't happening until we get our shit together on the ground and stop turning everything into some ridiculous dog and pony show. Since that doesn't seem like it's gonna happen any time soon, I'm having a hard time being bothered by NASA cutting back on the absurd waste of money that is the manned space program in order to focus on the stuff they do well.
And, for what it's worth, I think countries like China are much, much more likely to make significant breakthroughs in manned spaceflight because they simply aren't pants-pissingly afraid of their taikonauts dying. Shit's dangerous, exploring it will be dangerous, there will be deaths - we seem to have lost that pioneer spirit that once let us accept the fact that people might die for a greater good and made us try even harder to make sure their deaths were not in vain.
Did he say that or are you just making that shit up? And even if he did say that - which he didn't - can you show me where it's become a policy, or even a hint of policy, to make it impossible for people to get their news from wherever?
I have great compassion for the mentally ill, but people like you are really straining that.
You are an idiot. I just wanted to say that up front before I completely demolish your point.
Many jobs offer healthcare benefits for the family of employees, either subsidized by the employer or paid for by the employee. In the case of the military, the absolutely shit pay that military personnel receive can be considered to be part payment for healthcare for their family members. As I remember from when a family member was in the service, a married E-4 with 1 kid makes so little that they are considered to be below the poverty line.
The military person themselves is not the only person who can need medical care as a result of their job. A soldier who comes back from a combat zone with injuries has a massive impact on their family, and the family will need counseling and care as well.
Finally, these are people who volunteer to put their lives on the line for their country. Unless and until we can guarantee that ALL US citizens will receive health care regardless of the ability to pay, we absolutely must provide specific coverage for military/their families.
Oh, give me a fucking break.
He's talking about people mistaking using gadgets for productivity and using only single sources of news rather than actually being productive, thinking for themselves and trying to actually be informed.
He's not talking about removing the ability of anyone who dares disagree with him to speak their point, he's not talking about banning things, he's not talking about *anything* like the paranoid bullshit you seem to imagine.
Look, it's okay - I get it, you don't like the guy. That's fine. But at least, if you're not going to like him, do it for things he's *actually* said and done rather than shit you're imagining he might say or might do. It's people like you - who just decide they're going to ascribe all kinds of things to the other side(s) that are fucking up political discourse in this country.
I'll admit that I tend to lean left (and, to be honest, no mainstream US politician is nearly left enough for my tastes), but I like to think I'm at least somewhat intellectually honest. When Bush and company were in power I was just as bothered by the moonbats who were insisting that Cheney was going to stage a coup before the 2008 elections and other crazy shit like that as I am now bothered by the wingnuts who insist that Obama is actually an Atheist Muslim Socialist Fascist Do-Nothing Empty Suit Who Is Single-Handedly Ruining America By Doing Too Much.
You're certainly welcome to your paranoid delusions that he's going to go from "Hey, kids, think for yourselves" to "Chairman Obama has declared that any source of news other than MSNBC is bad for the environment" but all it's going to do is get you ignored by people who aren't insane.
Exactly, and it hasn't been happening in the US. If people *wanted* to do it, they would be doing it.
What makes more sense?
That we have tons of enemies who want nothing more than to give up their lives to kill some americans, but they are completely unable to get into the US, are unable to do things like rent cars or buy weapons when they get here, or are otherwise completely and 100% thwarted by our counter-terrorism efforts
- or -
That we just don't have that many people willing to try to kill Americans in the US, and the ones who do try things are usually just not mentally coherent enough to pull it off
I'm going with the second option - the first requires too many completely absurd things to be true.
Absolutely.
If terrorism was such a threat to the US, there would have been hundreds of minor, soft-target attacks on US soil. There are dozens of ways I can think of, off the top of my head, for a single individual to kill dozens/hundreds of americans without actually putting their life at risk. Why aren't terrorists leaving cars packed with explosives outside of Starbucks, daycare centers, shopping malls, sporting events and any other place where people routinely go? Why haven't suicide bombers run screaming into the HUGE crowds that are waiting to get through the security checkpoints at airports?
I'll tell you why: There simply just isn't an interest in doing that kind of thing. Or, I should say, not much of an interest. Right now, if I wanted to - if I really had a bug up my ass and was willing to do something about it - I could go out and kill dozens to hundreds of people - for less than $200 bucks by renting a car and plowing into a crowd of people on a busy sidewalk in my city. The fact that we don't have people doing this kind of thing *at all (except for maybe Fort Hood)* let alone all the time shows me exactly how much of a threat terrorism isn't.