Legitimate companies don't send you crap that you didn't sign up for.
I unsubscribe from stuff when I actually did want it once, or if I registered somewhere and probably forgot to uncheck the "please fill my inbox with crap" box.
But everything that is actually unsolicited commercial email will very, very, likely not come from a legitimate company, because those wouldn't subscribe you to anything without your knowledge in the first place.
What you do when you click on that link is considerably raising the value of the address they can then sell to others, because they have now verified that not only is it a valid address, it also belongs to someone who actually reads the shit and apparently has bad spam filters.
Congratulations, you just made a spammer a couple bucks.
There is an active discussion in Germany right now, because some politician wanted to save some money and decided to leave out the anti-crash sensors on the drones he bought. When they wanted to start putting them into test operation, the german office for airspace safety grounded the entire fleet instead, because these things have absolutely no mechanism that would prevent them from crashing into a passenger plane during flight.
Obviously, the idiot responsible got a bit of heat for that. Just as obviously, this video will pretty much end the discussion. BILD is a horrible newspaper, but they are read by so many people that they control public opinion to a frightening extent.
All of this happening in an election year is bad news for some careers. Not that the next monkeys we get elected would be any better.
There is no basis in logic for this extrapolation being valid.
Of course there is. It's right there in the word: Extrapolation.
The set of things that can be explained by science may or may not be complete.
Yes, but, in the words of Tim Minchin: "Ever mystery ever solved has turned out to be... not magic".
My argument is precisely that even if we assume that there is a limit to what science can explain, religion is not holding that line. Instead, religion is holding whatever line the limit of science is at right now, and once that has fallen it retreats to the next one.
Here's a metaphor for you: I claim that somewhere in my house there is a room that is larger on the inside. I stand in front of the first one and claim that this one is. You open the door, measure it, and find out I'm full of shit. But instead of admitting that I lied, I have moved to the next door and claim that this one is it.
How many doors will you open and how many rooms will you measure before you conclude that I'm simply too stubborn and too much of an asshole to admit that I was wrong all the time, and that even if such a room exists, I don't have the faintest idea where it is, either ?
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised that an analog of Godel's Incompleteness theorem applies to the physical world... that there are true statements that can not be proven.
I'm afraid that you've misunderstood both Goedel and science. First, Goedel's argument is an argument about levels of abstraction, where physical reality by definition is all on the same level. Second, science doesn't bother with proving anything as true (outside of mathematics and logic), but with falsifying as many theories as possible so that we get ever closer to a best fit. It's a lot more like numeric math than logic.
But - and that is my point again - even if we assume just for the sake of the argument that you are correct, then all the evidence we have indicates that all the current religions combined have no more clue about what lies beyond than my pet does.
But recently? What absolute statement about anything does the modern church make that is disprovable with science?
As I said: They have a lot of experience in retreating into the areas where they are not easily falsified, so there is no such simple answer to your question. But the small history you provided pretty much proves the point I'm making all the time.
We went to war in Iraq because
Yes, but that's an entirely different topic. I didn't bring up Iraq to bash Bush, I brought it up to contrast the tabloid-exaggeration of "eco-terrorism" with real violence. You can exchange Iraq for anything else - Afghanistan, Ireland during the IRA times, Spain during the ETA times, Israel, parts of Africa - any place where actual terrorism is taking place.
Don't you guys notice anymore that this has turned into paranoid, nationalistic rambling?
Yeah, right. Anything run by the US is better than being run by anyone else. Suuuure.
You even miss that he does have a point: With the US controlling so much of the Internet, it is remarkably easy for entities like the NSA to abuse that control.
The UN certainly isn't perfect. But neither is the US. So please spare us this egomaniac nationalistic bullshit.
I recall a story about Facebook having to comply with Germany's privacy laws, and only really being forced to do so because they had an office in Hamburg. If they had not had a presence in Germany, they could not have been forced to comply, so yes, a physical presence does seem to matter for legal question.
The Facebook office here in Hamburg (yes, I live there) is a pure marketing office. It contains no part of the Facebook infrastructure.
What you are probably mixing up is that because Facebook has a german subsidary, that company would be served with any legal proceedings.
Legal steps against a foreign corporation are more complicated and tricky, but entirely possible, especially within the EU. So withdrawing from Germany (or any other EU country) alone would buy you a little bit of administrative overhead and nothing else. Withdrawing from Europe would a) ruin your company and b) not protect you from legal steps, because there are many, many international agreements that would come into play, and that is before we consider more drastic steps such as cutting off your business within the EU, because even if you do it from another continent, the EU can freeze all the money going your way from within Europe. Whoops.
As internet speed improves, and currencies like bitcoin mature (if they mature) and become more accepted, why exactly would they need a physical presence to make a marketing deal? Why couldn't it be done via video conference?
You obviously haven't worked with high-level executives. I've flown across half of Europe just to meet the people I worked for, because personal contact is very important when you are doing stuff that's considerably more expensive than ordering stuff from Amazon.
Try getting a multi-million deal signed by video conference. Good luck.
Keep in mind, I'm not talking about present day, but maybe 20 years from now.
Video conferencing isn't exactly new technology. It did have an impact on meeting culture and business trips, but the pipe dream that it would replace physical meetings hasn't come anywhere near true in 49 years. Why do you think it would be different in another 20 ?
I'm saying eventually internet speed will be so fast and the internet economy will change to a point where they won't need to have a physical presence in every country. They can limit their physical presence to where the laws suit them best.
You have two assumptions in there that are wrong.
One, that physical presence matters for legal questions. It doesn't. Two, that technical details determine where a corporation has a physical presence. They don't.
I can only repeat my example again. Google does not, to the best of my knowledge, have any servers in Germany. It does, however, have several offices and a german subsidary - for marketing purposes. Because your big customers want you to come to their office to sign that big deal.
Its like "proving" something isn't an uncountable set by enumerating subsets of it.
I don't get how you got there from my argument, which has nothing to do with enumeration. The point I was making is that this strategy of modern religion clearly demonstrates that there are very likely no truths in it anywhere. Because every truth seems to be given up so easily as soon as science produces the real answer, and then the same argument is made about the next deeper layer.
Basically, when you argue against religion, the opponent keeps claiming that A, B and C are absolute truths that religion knows thanks to divine messages and science can never know. Then science produces a definite answer A. The next morning, you have a 1984 moment with religion claiming that B, C and D are absolute truths that religion... uh, ok? Then science answers B and the next morning, religion claims that C, D and E are absolute truths that religion... uh, what? Deja vu moment?
If you've gone through this iteration a couple times, it stops being a stretch to simply extrapolate and say that L, M and N are almost certainly as true and absolute as A, B, C,... K were.
Its not as implausible as we'd like. I'll leave you with this:
You are quoting from a source that has a vital interest in making the label "terrorism" as broad and threatening as possible.
I'm looking at actual, past events. Sure, some extremist eco groups have a couple dead on their list, and quite a bit of damage. But, as I said, the entire history of eco-terrorism sums up to less than what happens on an average day in Iraq.
There are no absolutes in this world. I wouldn't ever claim that there will never be an eco-motivated suicide bomber. But all evidence we have points to that guy being a lone lunatic, not a trend. And that's quite an important difference.
I can relate to him. I have several free projects and basically if you want to control my behaviour, you can pay me for it. As long as I'm giving you the results of my work for free, you get to put up with whatever attitude I need to get it done.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
On the other hand, I can also relate to those who are asking for some moderation, and sometimes I go beyond what was necessary. Having someone to remind you to keep it civil every now and then helps not getting lost entirely.
That someone just needs to understand that he/she is a counterweight and the end result will be somewhere in the middle, not where s/he's pulling it to.
The real politics of the current government are... let's just say they are so deep in certain lobby and interest group pockets, it isn't even funny anymore. If someone had done a satire about this ten years ago, I don't think anyone would have printed it because it would've sounded too outlandish and overdone.
Multinational corporations will always have a presence in Europe. Google maintains several offices throughout Germany. If you want to do business in a country on the scale the giants do, you need a local subsidary.
I see this again and again and again in every stupid fucking article about some European country not bowing down to US corporate interests. It's always the same moronic argument that basically boils down to "we powerful US corporations can do what we want, if Europe doesn't like it, we can pull out of there and then they'll be sorry".
The real world disagrees. Google pulling out of Europe would mean a bit of an inconvenience for Europe, and a dramatically damaged Google. I would go so far and claim that it's a move that could potentially destroy them. Or any other Internet giant.
What would happen to Europe if we lost Google, or Facebook? There'd be a lot of whining, and someone would step up to fill the gap before you can finish writing your blog post about the whining I mentioned, and after a short while, Googles or Facebooks would have powerful competition with a strong base in Europe and pressing on them in their other markets.
Seriously, idiots on/. are the only people seriously suggesting such a suicide move. The real players would rather pump a few millions into lobby work.
In the same sense that Microsoft used to dominate the software world - with big power comes a certain refuses-to-die-quickly element. Due to the large installed base and lock-in effects, it takes a long time to go away, even after its dominance has been solidly broken.
The difference between education and indoctrination is what EXACTLY?
The Wilson quote is pretty good. In my own words I would say that education teaches you how to think (often by example), while indoctrination teaches you what to think, without giving you the tools to get outside the box.
There is no reason to discourage critical examination, because all you'll find is that it comes down to a question of faith.
But that, exactly, is the point. In religion and in other forms of indoctrination (there are many examples in politics), you always reach a point where you have to "just believe". These are the core assumptions of the entire system.
Real education never stops looking for more "why?" questions and trying to answer them. That is why science is so unsatisfying to religiously indoctrinated people - because you always reach a point where you have to answer "we don't yet know".
it makes little sense to attempt to answer those questions with religion, and religion has rightly receded to the areas that remain unaddressable with science for most reasonable religious people.
Correct. But to the intelligent man, this is the most solid proof that all of religion is made-up bullshit. Every time science answers a question previously reserved for religion, the modern form of religion simply retreats further, to the next "unknowable" - rinse, repeat.
Groups that prosecuted people on charges of heresy were primarily interested in maintaining a power structure, and it really didn't have much to do with the religion itself. If we lived in a technocracy with scientists in charge I'd fully expect them to perpetrate violence in the same way to protect their positions of power vs perceived threats to their authority.
That is another assumption, not evidence.
I do, however, grant that many, many religious prosecutions actually had political power reasons hiding inside of them. However, I also maintain two closely related points: One, not all of them do. Especially in the muslim world today, there are many examples where either power has already been obtained and is being held solidly so that explanation falls short. Two, even with political reasons behind them, the religious agenda was the part that convinced people to actually engage in these activities. The crusades may have been motivated by political reasons, but they wouldn't have worked without religion. Can you imagine a "climate change crusade" today where people would sign up to make war on, say, China because they pollute so much and we must stop them? Doesn't pass the giggle test, does it? The worst that "eco-terrorism" has come up with was an RPG attack on an under-construction nuclear plant. Basically, the entire history of eco-terrorism is outdone by a single day in Iraq.
No, without the absolute certainty of having the only valid and correct answer to questions of life, death and beyond that religion provides, people don't blow themselves up in any considerable numbers.
Read "The Golden Bough" and you'll find why this works. It's the same reason magic and religion used to be big things (and guarantee their providers a work-free life):
In a situation where forces you can't control determine your survival, you will grasp at any straw that gives you the illusion of control. It's a normal human reaction. It works even if you know about it. You want to believe, at least unconsciously.
It's probably the oldest scam in the history of mankind.
But it's hard not to catch the faint whiff of Inquisitorial flames
Sorry, but it is. You are trying to create a level playing field where every hostile argument is identical to torture, show trials and barbaric execution. Just because there is some hostility involved in both of them doesn't make them equal.
There are serious questions about AGW as a causal theory
According to my data, the "serious questions" make up about 1% of the scientific debate, with the other 99% agreeing on the theory. That's as close to fact as you can get in science.
From what I gather from studies and meta-studies, there are no remaining serious scientific doubts that a) global warming is happening and b) humans are a cause.
Not I said "a", not "the". There are, of course, always many causes in climate. What b) means is that there would be considerable less warming if it weren't for our contribution.
There is debate about details, about exact values and estimates and especially about models and future extrapolation. But if you know of any actual scientist in this field (not from some totally unrelated field like some of the big names!) who doubts either a) or b) above, please name a name.
anyone doubting as a shill for Big Oil or a Crazy,
The problem is that it is known that Big Oil has conducted propaganda on this topic, and that one strategy was to create the impression that the question is still open and the topic controversial. Since it was part of the same strategy to keep relations between the corporations financing this and those posting their fake studies secret, it isn't really surprising that doubters are suspected of being corrupt.
Actually, they will enlighten you if you listen to what they say without blinder on. There will be nothing I can point you to either if you refuse to do that.
So you're dodging the argument, which had nothing to do with me listening or not.
The post I replied to was the first one in this discussion I made.
My bad, as this deep in the replies/. topics usually have 2 participants. So switch "you" for "the GP" and everything else can stay the same.
You still missed the point, namely that you should've shot that argument against the GP, not my response.
All religious teaching is indoctrination. However, there is usually a lot of non-religious teaching mixed into the religious part. Yes, a lot of the teaching you get from religious people is basically just stuff about life. That is also the part that isn't actually religious, it's just being painted that way.
And that's entirely beside the point. History isn't Science either, nor is Flower Arranging, but they can all be studied, and students benefit from teachers.
There is a lot more science in these than you seem to think. Like art and music, they share the basic approach that you can try doing stuff in a different way if you want (without being stoned to death or burnt, or kicked out), and if it turns out that yours works better, it will be adopted.
And also the inverse: You can't just claim yours is better, you need to prove it. That's not always possible by numbers and hard facts, but people will ask the "why?" question if you make a claim in any of these fields.
Believe it or not, a great deal of religious study is very much like any other historical science combining linguistics, archaeology, history, etc.
I know enough people who studied theology to know that a) yes, it does include a lot of excursions into other fields and b) it's still a huge bag of lies, just one with 2 millenia of experience that tells it that sprinkling your lies with some truth makes them more believable, so it helps knowing a bit about those thruths.
I don't claim every religious person is evil, nor every priest is corrupted. However, I do claim that those who aren't, are good people despite and not because of religion. Even a priest, after all, is still a human, with human values and senses.
Basically, especially in the west, religious indoctrination has evolved (intentional choice of words, not as a pun) to be not too radical and not too esoteric and not too stupid, because otherwise we'd all have laughed it out of the room. But it has also become a lot less religious.
I actually do believe a community benefits from people like(!) a priest - people who can give general advise on questions of daily life, of minor or major importance. Because the materialistic approach common in the west doesn't have a place for something like that. We have doctors to treat us when we're ill, but no one to keep us healthy (except stupid health tips in stupid magazines).
But that is a cultural thing, and it may well be that we don't because the priests occupy that position. In some asian countries, for example, doctors are paid a monthly rate if (and only if) their patients remain healthy. The mindset is not "doctor are there to fixing me when I'm broken", but "doctors are there to make sure I remain healthy".
There are plenty of scientists in history who would have burnt their rivals at the stake if they'd had the authority.
There are plenty of personal rivalries in all walks of human life. But please, show evidence for your claim and name a few whose anger was not on a particular other person, but on supporters of a rival theory in general. To the point of wanting to kill them.
Liability is largely a non-issue in the real world, and a huge issue in the minds of management. Do you know of any actual cases where Oracle was found liable?
Likewise, most customers simply won't be big enough to get a SWAT-team deployed to their location if something goes wrong. You'll be getting standard customer support. That might, in fact, be one of the reasons for going elsewhere. Many years ago, I worked for a company that was, at that time, the largest ADABAS installation in Europe. Our hotline number didn't go to customer support, it went straight to the engineers. You can bet they put their best people on the job when we reported an issue. I'm not sure we'd have had that kind of VIP status with Oracle.
So, it depends. If you need something that will please management, Oracle is a safe bet. If you need something that will be looked at right now when an issue shows up, I'd got with PostgreSQL and pick a support contractor nearby where I'm one of the biggest customers.
There are many, many other cases where it doesn't work.
When a huge corporation enters a new market, it often does it with a small company, and often expects losses throughout the first year or two. And sometimes, they just keep the division running for years or decades despite losses, for political or strategic reasons.
In fact, free market theory pretty much dies within 30 seconds of meeting international corporations on the battlefield. There are just so many ways a corporation can change the rules.
The "changing" effects of the sun are not included in any of the climate models currently mature enough to claim proof or predictive evidence of global warming. The amount of changes are less understood then you seem to think and the changing sun actually creates multiple effects on other systems like cloud formation that feed into the loop.
You make a bold claim there.
Evidence, please.
I'm sure ten or twenty-thousand scientists working in this area would be delighted to be enlightened by you.
Or, if your argument is basically "this whole climate thing is darn complicated" then... uh... yes, it is. That is why we have scientists working on it. Lots of them.
As for calling people idiots and retards, I'm reminded of pigs wallering in the mud.
omg, you really fell for that? Look, dumbo, you were the first one in this discussion using the word retard, so up yours.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Legitimate companies don't send you crap that you didn't sign up for.
I unsubscribe from stuff when I actually did want it once, or if I registered somewhere and probably forgot to uncheck the "please fill my inbox with crap" box.
But everything that is actually unsolicited commercial email will very, very, likely not come from a legitimate company, because those wouldn't subscribe you to anything without your knowledge in the first place.
What you do when you click on that link is considerably raising the value of the address they can then sell to others, because they have now verified that not only is it a valid address, it also belongs to someone who actually reads the shit and apparently has bad spam filters.
Congratulations, you just made a spammer a couple bucks.
What most here probably don't know:
There is an active discussion in Germany right now, because some politician wanted to save some money and decided to leave out the anti-crash sensors on the drones he bought. When they wanted to start putting them into test operation, the german office for airspace safety grounded the entire fleet instead, because these things have absolutely no mechanism that would prevent them from crashing into a passenger plane during flight.
Obviously, the idiot responsible got a bit of heat for that. Just as obviously, this video will pretty much end the discussion. BILD is a horrible newspaper, but they are read by so many people that they control public opinion to a frightening extent.
All of this happening in an election year is bad news for some careers. Not that the next monkeys we get elected would be any better.
There is no basis in logic for this extrapolation being valid.
Of course there is. It's right there in the word: Extrapolation.
The set of things that can be explained by science may or may not be complete.
Yes, but, in the words of Tim Minchin: "Ever mystery ever solved has turned out to be... not magic".
My argument is precisely that even if we assume that there is a limit to what science can explain, religion is not holding that line. Instead, religion is holding whatever line the limit of science is at right now, and once that has fallen it retreats to the next one.
Here's a metaphor for you: I claim that somewhere in my house there is a room that is larger on the inside. I stand in front of the first one and claim that this one is. You open the door, measure it, and find out I'm full of shit. But instead of admitting that I lied, I have moved to the next door and claim that this one is it.
How many doors will you open and how many rooms will you measure before you conclude that I'm simply too stubborn and too much of an asshole to admit that I was wrong all the time, and that even if such a room exists, I don't have the faintest idea where it is, either ?
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised that an analog of Godel's Incompleteness theorem applies to the physical world... that there are true statements that can not be proven.
I'm afraid that you've misunderstood both Goedel and science. First, Goedel's argument is an argument about levels of abstraction, where physical reality by definition is all on the same level. Second, science doesn't bother with proving anything as true (outside of mathematics and logic), but with falsifying as many theories as possible so that we get ever closer to a best fit. It's a lot more like numeric math than logic.
But - and that is my point again - even if we assume just for the sake of the argument that you are correct, then all the evidence we have indicates that all the current religions combined have no more clue about what lies beyond than my pet does.
But recently? What absolute statement about anything does the modern church make that is disprovable with science?
As I said: They have a lot of experience in retreating into the areas where they are not easily falsified, so there is no such simple answer to your question. But the small history you provided pretty much proves the point I'm making all the time.
We went to war in Iraq because
Yes, but that's an entirely different topic. I didn't bring up Iraq to bash Bush, I brought it up to contrast the tabloid-exaggeration of "eco-terrorism" with real violence. You can exchange Iraq for anything else - Afghanistan, Ireland during the IRA times, Spain during the ETA times, Israel, parts of Africa - any place where actual terrorism is taking place.
Do you seriously suggest the parent learn German so he/she can read that article?
No, I suggest that knowing several languages is inherently useful.
Why not suggest Google's translate / Babelfish?
Because they often suck with content that's non-trivial.
Or just sum up the article?
I did. What's your problem?
Learn another language, it's useful. :-)
One sentence summary: ABP sold out and is now owned by a shady german company that is deeply in bed with certain ad networks.
You might want to reconsider your choice of ABP:
http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-undercover-einblicke-in-ein-mafioeses-werbenetzwerk/
Warning, long, investigative article in german.
Don't you guys notice anymore that this has turned into paranoid, nationalistic rambling?
Yeah, right. Anything run by the US is better than being run by anyone else. Suuuure.
You even miss that he does have a point: With the US controlling so much of the Internet, it is remarkably easy for entities like the NSA to abuse that control.
The UN certainly isn't perfect. But neither is the US. So please spare us this egomaniac nationalistic bullshit.
I recall a story about Facebook having to comply with Germany's privacy laws, and only really being forced to do so because they had an office in Hamburg. If they had not had a presence in Germany, they could not have been forced to comply, so yes, a physical presence does seem to matter for legal question.
The Facebook office here in Hamburg (yes, I live there) is a pure marketing office. It contains no part of the Facebook infrastructure.
What you are probably mixing up is that because Facebook has a german subsidary, that company would be served with any legal proceedings.
Legal steps against a foreign corporation are more complicated and tricky, but entirely possible, especially within the EU. So withdrawing from Germany (or any other EU country) alone would buy you a little bit of administrative overhead and nothing else. Withdrawing from Europe would a) ruin your company and b) not protect you from legal steps, because there are many, many international agreements that would come into play, and that is before we consider more drastic steps such as cutting off your business within the EU, because even if you do it from another continent, the EU can freeze all the money going your way from within Europe. Whoops.
As internet speed improves, and currencies like bitcoin mature (if they mature) and become more accepted, why exactly would they need a physical presence to make a marketing deal? Why couldn't it be done via video conference?
You obviously haven't worked with high-level executives. I've flown across half of Europe just to meet the people I worked for, because personal contact is very important when you are doing stuff that's considerably more expensive than ordering stuff from Amazon.
Try getting a multi-million deal signed by video conference. Good luck.
Keep in mind, I'm not talking about present day, but maybe 20 years from now.
Video conferencing isn't exactly new technology. It did have an impact on meeting culture and business trips, but the pipe dream that it would replace physical meetings hasn't come anywhere near true in 49 years. Why do you think it would be different in another 20 ?
I'm saying eventually internet speed will be so fast and the internet economy will change to a point where they won't need to have a physical presence in every country. They can limit their physical presence to where the laws suit them best.
You have two assumptions in there that are wrong.
One, that physical presence matters for legal questions. It doesn't.
Two, that technical details determine where a corporation has a physical presence. They don't.
I can only repeat my example again. Google does not, to the best of my knowledge, have any servers in Germany. It does, however, have several offices and a german subsidary - for marketing purposes. Because your big customers want you to come to their office to sign that big deal.
Its like "proving" something isn't an uncountable set by enumerating subsets of it.
I don't get how you got there from my argument, which has nothing to do with enumeration. The point I was making is that this strategy of modern religion clearly demonstrates that there are very likely no truths in it anywhere. Because every truth seems to be given up so easily as soon as science produces the real answer, and then the same argument is made about the next deeper layer.
Basically, when you argue against religion, the opponent keeps claiming that A, B and C are absolute truths that religion knows thanks to divine messages and science can never know. Then science produces a definite answer A. The next morning, you have a 1984 moment with religion claiming that B, C and D are absolute truths that religion... uh, ok? Then science answers B and the next morning, religion claims that C, D and E are absolute truths that religion... uh, what? Deja vu moment?
If you've gone through this iteration a couple times, it stops being a stretch to simply extrapolate and say that L, M and N are almost certainly as true and absolute as A, B, C, ... K were.
Its not as implausible as we'd like. I'll leave you with this:
You are quoting from a source that has a vital interest in making the label "terrorism" as broad and threatening as possible.
I'm looking at actual, past events. Sure, some extremist eco groups have a couple dead on their list, and quite a bit of damage. But, as I said, the entire history of eco-terrorism sums up to less than what happens on an average day in Iraq.
There are no absolutes in this world. I wouldn't ever claim that there will never be an eco-motivated suicide bomber. But all evidence we have points to that guy being a lone lunatic, not a trend. And that's quite an important difference.
I can relate to him. I have several free projects and basically if you want to control my behaviour, you can pay me for it. As long as I'm giving you the results of my work for free, you get to put up with whatever attitude I need to get it done.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
On the other hand, I can also relate to those who are asking for some moderation, and sometimes I go beyond what was necessary. Having someone to remind you to keep it civil every now and then helps not getting lost entirely.
That someone just needs to understand that he/she is a counterweight and the end result will be somewhere in the middle, not where s/he's pulling it to.
Except that this is only the show.
The real politics of the current government are... let's just say they are so deep in certain lobby and interest group pockets, it isn't even funny anymore. If someone had done a satire about this ten years ago, I don't think anyone would have printed it because it would've sounded too outlandish and overdone.
Bullshit.
Multinational corporations will always have a presence in Europe. Google maintains several offices throughout Germany. If you want to do business in a country on the scale the giants do, you need a local subsidary.
I see this again and again and again in every stupid fucking article about some European country not bowing down to US corporate interests. It's always the same moronic argument that basically boils down to "we powerful US corporations can do what we want, if Europe doesn't like it, we can pull out of there and then they'll be sorry".
The real world disagrees. Google pulling out of Europe would mean a bit of an inconvenience for Europe, and a dramatically damaged Google. I would go so far and claim that it's a move that could potentially destroy them. Or any other Internet giant.
What would happen to Europe if we lost Google, or Facebook? There'd be a lot of whining, and someone would step up to fill the gap before you can finish writing your blog post about the whining I mentioned, and after a short while, Googles or Facebooks would have powerful competition with a strong base in Europe and pressing on them in their other markets.
Seriously, idiots on /. are the only people seriously suggesting such a suicide move. The real players would rather pump a few millions into lobby work.
In the same sense that Microsoft used to dominate the software world - with big power comes a certain refuses-to-die-quickly element. Due to the large installed base and lock-in effects, it takes a long time to go away, even after its dominance has been solidly broken.
The difference between education and indoctrination is what EXACTLY?
The Wilson quote is pretty good. In my own words I would say that education teaches you how to think (often by example), while indoctrination teaches you what to think, without giving you the tools to get outside the box.
There is no reason to discourage critical examination, because all you'll find is that it comes down to a question of faith.
But that, exactly, is the point. In religion and in other forms of indoctrination (there are many examples in politics), you always reach a point where you have to "just believe". These are the core assumptions of the entire system.
Real education never stops looking for more "why?" questions and trying to answer them. That is why science is so unsatisfying to religiously indoctrinated people - because you always reach a point where you have to answer "we don't yet know".
it makes little sense to attempt to answer those questions with religion, and religion has rightly receded to the areas that remain unaddressable with science for most reasonable religious people.
Correct. But to the intelligent man, this is the most solid proof that all of religion is made-up bullshit. Every time science answers a question previously reserved for religion, the modern form of religion simply retreats further, to the next "unknowable" - rinse, repeat.
Groups that prosecuted people on charges of heresy were primarily interested in maintaining a power structure, and it really didn't have much to do with the religion itself. If we lived in a technocracy with scientists in charge I'd fully expect them to perpetrate violence in the same way to protect their positions of power vs perceived threats to their authority.
That is another assumption, not evidence.
I do, however, grant that many, many religious prosecutions actually had political power reasons hiding inside of them. However, I also maintain two closely related points: One, not all of them do. Especially in the muslim world today, there are many examples where either power has already been obtained and is being held solidly so that explanation falls short. Two, even with political reasons behind them, the religious agenda was the part that convinced people to actually engage in these activities. The crusades may have been motivated by political reasons, but they wouldn't have worked without religion. Can you imagine a "climate change crusade" today where people would sign up to make war on, say, China because they pollute so much and we must stop them? Doesn't pass the giggle test, does it? The worst that "eco-terrorism" has come up with was an RPG attack on an under-construction nuclear plant. Basically, the entire history of eco-terrorism is outdone by a single day in Iraq.
No, without the absolute certainty of having the only valid and correct answer to questions of life, death and beyond that religion provides, people don't blow themselves up in any considerable numbers.
Read "The Golden Bough" and you'll find why this works. It's the same reason magic and religion used to be big things (and guarantee their providers a work-free life):
In a situation where forces you can't control determine your survival, you will grasp at any straw that gives you the illusion of control. It's a normal human reaction. It works even if you know about it. You want to believe, at least unconsciously.
It's probably the oldest scam in the history of mankind.
This one actually had an informative bit in it. I didn't know the guy responsible is in jail. I'm very happy that he is.
But it's hard not to catch the faint whiff of Inquisitorial flames
Sorry, but it is. You are trying to create a level playing field where every hostile argument is identical to torture, show trials and barbaric execution. Just because there is some hostility involved in both of them doesn't make them equal.
There are serious questions about AGW as a causal theory
According to my data, the "serious questions" make up about 1% of the scientific debate, with the other 99% agreeing on the theory. That's as close to fact as you can get in science.
From what I gather from studies and meta-studies, there are no remaining serious scientific doubts that a) global warming is happening and b) humans are a cause.
Not I said "a", not "the". There are, of course, always many causes in climate. What b) means is that there would be considerable less warming if it weren't for our contribution.
There is debate about details, about exact values and estimates and especially about models and future extrapolation. But if you know of any actual scientist in this field (not from some totally unrelated field like some of the big names!) who doubts either a) or b) above, please name a name.
anyone doubting as a shill for Big Oil or a Crazy,
The problem is that it is known that Big Oil has conducted propaganda on this topic, and that one strategy was to create the impression that the question is still open and the topic controversial. Since it was part of the same strategy to keep relations between the corporations financing this and those posting their fake studies secret, it isn't really surprising that doubters are suspected of being corrupt.
Actually, they will enlighten you if you listen to what they say without blinder on. There will be nothing I can point you to either if you refuse to do that.
So you're dodging the argument, which had nothing to do with me listening or not.
The post I replied to was the first one in this discussion I made.
My bad, as this deep in the replies /. topics usually have 2 participants. So switch "you" for "the GP" and everything else can stay the same.
You still missed the point, namely that you should've shot that argument against the GP, not my response.
Not all religious teaching is "indoctrination".
All religious teaching is indoctrination. However, there is usually a lot of non-religious teaching mixed into the religious part. Yes, a lot of the teaching you get from religious people is basically just stuff about life. That is also the part that isn't actually religious, it's just being painted that way.
And that's entirely beside the point. History isn't Science either, nor is Flower Arranging, but they can all be studied, and students benefit from teachers.
There is a lot more science in these than you seem to think. Like art and music, they share the basic approach that you can try doing stuff in a different way if you want (without being stoned to death or burnt, or kicked out), and if it turns out that yours works better, it will be adopted.
And also the inverse: You can't just claim yours is better, you need to prove it. That's not always possible by numbers and hard facts, but people will ask the "why?" question if you make a claim in any of these fields.
Believe it or not, a great deal of religious study is very much like any other historical science combining linguistics, archaeology, history, etc.
I know enough people who studied theology to know that a) yes, it does include a lot of excursions into other fields and b) it's still a huge bag of lies, just one with 2 millenia of experience that tells it that sprinkling your lies with some truth makes them more believable, so it helps knowing a bit about those thruths.
I don't claim every religious person is evil, nor every priest is corrupted. However, I do claim that those who aren't, are good people despite and not because of religion. Even a priest, after all, is still a human, with human values and senses.
Basically, especially in the west, religious indoctrination has evolved (intentional choice of words, not as a pun) to be not too radical and not too esoteric and not too stupid, because otherwise we'd all have laughed it out of the room.
But it has also become a lot less religious.
I actually do believe a community benefits from people like(!) a priest - people who can give general advise on questions of daily life, of minor or major importance. Because the materialistic approach common in the west doesn't have a place for something like that. We have doctors to treat us when we're ill, but no one to keep us healthy (except stupid health tips in stupid magazines).
But that is a cultural thing, and it may well be that we don't because the priests occupy that position. In some asian countries, for example, doctors are paid a monthly rate if (and only if) their patients remain healthy. The mindset is not "doctor are there to fixing me when I'm broken", but "doctors are there to make sure I remain healthy".
There are plenty of scientists in history who would have burnt their rivals at the stake if they'd had the authority.
There are plenty of personal rivalries in all walks of human life. But please, show evidence for your claim and name a few whose anger was not on a particular other person, but on supporters of a rival theory in general. To the point of wanting to kill them.
Even if it would do just that, it would still be a step in the right direction.
As with so many things, it depends.
Liability is largely a non-issue in the real world, and a huge issue in the minds of management. Do you know of any actual cases where Oracle was found liable?
Likewise, most customers simply won't be big enough to get a SWAT-team deployed to their location if something goes wrong. You'll be getting standard customer support. That might, in fact, be one of the reasons for going elsewhere. Many years ago, I worked for a company that was, at that time, the largest ADABAS installation in Europe. Our hotline number didn't go to customer support, it went straight to the engineers. You can bet they put their best people on the job when we reported an issue. I'm not sure we'd have had that kind of VIP status with Oracle.
So, it depends. If you need something that will please management, Oracle is a safe bet. If you need something that will be looked at right now when an issue shows up, I'd got with PostgreSQL and pick a support contractor nearby where I'm one of the biggest customers.
There are many, many other cases where it doesn't work.
When a huge corporation enters a new market, it often does it with a small company, and often expects losses throughout the first year or two. And sometimes, they just keep the division running for years or decades despite losses, for political or strategic reasons.
In fact, free market theory pretty much dies within 30 seconds of meeting international corporations on the battlefield. There are just so many ways a corporation can change the rules.
Not sure if you are making a statement or asking a question, so in case of the later:
Yes, that is exactly what they do. A friend of mine works in the industry, managing ships. Ever single ship is legally its own company.
The "changing" effects of the sun are not included in any of the climate models currently mature enough to claim proof or predictive evidence of global warming. The amount of changes are less understood then you seem to think and the changing sun actually creates multiple effects on other systems like cloud formation that feed into the loop.
You make a bold claim there.
Evidence, please.
I'm sure ten or twenty-thousand scientists working in this area would be delighted to be enlightened by you.
Or, if your argument is basically "this whole climate thing is darn complicated" then... uh... yes, it is. That is why we have scientists working on it. Lots of them.
As for calling people idiots and retards, I'm reminded of pigs wallering in the mud.
omg, you really fell for that? Look, dumbo, you were the first one in this discussion using the word retard, so up yours. :-)