Did I miss the memo where we have abandoned capitalism? Demand and supply meet at the price point of agreement. I'm perfectly willing to pay what Apple asks for its products. Sure, I'd be just as happy to pay less, just as they would be happy to charge more. But that's not the point.
The point is: Is it worth it?
Standard PC with Vista - 2000 or iMac with Leopard - 2500
I'd rather pay for the second, because not everything is about price alone.
So I wonder when the Toyota of the operating system world is going to come along and eat MS' lunch?
The metaphers aren't compairable.
Now if GM had managed to have roads built so they only work with their cars, then you'd have an analogy. The core reason that MS manages to sustain their monopoly despite their epic failures (Vista just being the latest one) is the lock-in, namely that switching is more painful then continuing to eat shit.
That's an excellent point. So often, the good questions are simple: How can you be tried as an adult for having "child porn" of yourself?
Maybe the law has finally found quantum physics. You know, Schrödinger's Defendant - she's both adult and a kid at the same time, at least until a judge looks.:-)
Perhaps someone can think of a better method that is still roughly scientific,
Yupp. Don't make thinking illegal.
This is part of the whole "victimless crime" item, except that in the vast majority of cases, you can not even establish probable danger.
If I am speeding on a safe, empty road, I'm not really putting anyone at risk except me, but you could argue that there might be a child hiding at the precise tree I'll be slamming into, or someone somehow gets in front of me without me noticing quick enough - etc. Short version: While in that actual situation nobody might have been harmed, a small modification of the situation creates plausible danger, hence you could argue my speeding needs to be punished.
Now try to extend that to someone looking at cartoon characters fucking. Uh, wait, seemingly underage cartoon characters (whatever that means) fucking. I challenge you. Which small modification of the situation causes harm or puts someone at risk?
There's no risk here. Not even a theoretical one. AFAIK the often provided "looking at drawings that look like a 12 year old doing naughty things causes children to be harmed for more porn production" line has no scientific evidence for it whatsoever. In fact, all evidence we do have suggests that the more you suppress sexual desires, the stronger they will erupt when the barrier falls. Quite honestly, my personal belief is that these kiddie-porn-crusaders are probably causing more actual damage to children than the vast majority of those who enjoy sexy cartoons.
In the end, though, this is a lost cause. Evidence, truth and justice are not on the agenda of 99.99% of the people involved. Just look at the lineup. Politicians, lawyers, policemen. All people who stand to profit from more laws, more complicated laws, broader laws and more difficult to decide legal cases.
countries like Pakistan, being themselves consistently among the worst human rights abusers on the planet
Now, I wouldn't say that. From what I gather from reliable news sources, Pakistan and some others on the list are prettyy good in their human rights abuses. They provide a consistent quantity and pretty good quality of abuses. They might not be as technological advanced in some of their abuses as other abusers, say the US, but what they lack in academic research into pain effects, waterboarding training and electrocution technology, they make up with dedication and human experience. I'd rate them among some of the best human rights abusers, but even if you disagree on that, you can not possibly say they are among the worst!
"The UN Human Rights Council assaulted free expression today, in a 23-11 vote that urges member states to adopt laws outlawing criticism of religions.
It's much worse than free speech. Wake up people! This is an insulation layer for religion not only against unfounded, but also against reasonable criticism, and against critical research and publications. Depending on how the exact wordings of the law turn out, vast amounts of philosophical literature, but also psychological and even cognitive science research could become illegal, simply because it is (and by rights) critical of religions.
You can not maintain faith in a literal interpretation of the Bible and knowledge of evolution at the same time.
That much goes without saying.
Generalizing from that to all faith is the bigotry that I object to. What about, for instance, Deism--faith in the "watchmaker God", who made everything and set up the universal constants, then stood back to watch it unfold? Yes, you're correct that there's no discernible distinction between that kind of God and no God, but I challenge you to credibly claim that there is any conflict between that kind of faith and a belief in evolution.
"The Blind Watchmaker" answers that.
But the "god is to be found before the Big Bang" answer goes beyond evolution. As such in a strict sense, there is no conflict, I agree. But the theory of evolution still tells us that there is no need whatsoever for such a careful "setup" of the process. Life adapts to whatever the circumstances are instead of requiring specific circumstances.
The Anthropic Principle demolishes the "set up the universal constants" concept, as does (in a different way) the Many-Worlds view of quantum physics.
But the primary argument is complexity. Saying "god made the Big Bang" doesn't explain a thing. You still need a lot of handwaving in regards to questions such as "so where did this god come from?" and "how exactly did he do it?". The problem is that everything we know about the universe tells us that complexity builds up over time. Simple things come first, then more complicated things appear as combinations of simple things. A god who could do such a feat as you describe would by necessity be quite complicated (not even to mention all the other powers ascribed to him). Where did that complexity come from? How did it come into existence?
There's another argument along the same lines that's got to do with being inside or outside of the world, I'll spare you that.
Or, heck, faith in Buddhism, which does not posit any God, but rather an afterlife and a desirable state of the soul. No, it's not testable, and no, it's not science--but why should it be vilified for the sins of a small (if vocal) group of stupid fundamentalist Christians?
Yes, true. When I speak of "faith" in this context, I mean the usual mainstream religious kind of faith. There's also Buddhism, or Discordianism or several other -isms that are sufficiently different. I just don't make the differentiation every time I use the word.:-)
I know you're an aggressive atheist who believes that all religion is nothing but delusion, but I would like to think that you're not as closed-minded as those you deride. Please don't make the mistake of believing that the extremist nutjobs of Christianity represent our entire faith. That's just as bigoted and prejudiced as believing that all Muslims are suicide bombers just waiting for the right target.
Obviously it is.
Nevertheless, I maintain that you can not maintain both faith and knowledge of evolution at the same time, without some hush-hush here or there. Dawkins puts it much better than I can, and he knows more about evolution, too. The main point is that evolution completely removes not only god but also the need for a god from all life, including our own.
Hung on that are so many fundamental elements of almost all religions (creation, man in gods image, etc.) that as I said if you want to cling to both at the same time, you can only do that if you modify your religion so much that it doesn't match any of the mainstream versions anymore.
Which makes the GP argument a cheap trick of rhetorics, doesn't it?
So, either it isn't evolution simply because of the definition of the word - but similar scientific principles apply, and there's still no god anywhere in sight - or it is evolution if we don't define the word too strictly, with largely the same result.
One way or the other, if you look at the facts, creationism loses. Again. Anyone surprised?:-)
It seems hypocritical that they're not willing to perform combat operations in Afghanistan because of fears this will make people link it to it's Nazi past in being seen as an oppressive force
Nonsense. I've not heard that as a reason once, and I live in Germany.
The actual reason is that anyone who fights a land war in Afghanistan has completely lost his mind. Ok, in the case of Bush Jr. there wasn't much to lose in the first place, but still. Pretty much nobody has ever "won" in Afghanistan in any meaningful sense of the word, and that's if you go back 500+ years in history.
I'd go so far to say that "zero tolerance" is a synonym for fascism. When you leave no room for doubt and exceptions, you definitely are far outside the realm of reason.
That's logical but incomplete. Just because something cannot be detected does not prove it does not exist. Your argument is a form of Black Swan Fallacy.
There's an important difference.
Case A: Something can not currently be detected here and now through the means available. Case B: Something can in principle never, through any means whatsoever, be detected.
In case A I do agree that we do not have a prove of non-existence. In case B, however, I claim that there is no difference between B and non-existence. Therefore, the two cases are identical. Therefore, the subject of case B does not exist.
For the record I'm a raving atheist. But trying to prove the existence or non-existence of somebody's myths is a giant waste of time and effort.
Just like everything else here on/. - it's a kind of mental sports or play. No purpose beyond itself.:-)
Evolution does not explain where life started. It only explains how life become so diverse.
You need to read more books.:-)
There are several extensions of evolution that go beyond what we call "life" today. One very interesting one explains how life could have started from crystals using a process very similar to evolution.
But even that is a strawman. The usual creation myths also claim that the god of the day created the earth, every rock and stone, the sun and moon and everything else. It's become fashionable for believers to answer "no, before that" to every scientific explanation of how these things actually came to be, so no surprise the same trick is played on evolution. But it's rhetorics, nothing else.
Guns are the first tool only of those too weak and too stupid to apply any other means to solving their problem.
As always, context is relevant.
I'm a pretty peaceful guy, almost never got into a brawl even as a kid. I don't think violence is the answer, and my primary problem with war, even before all the horrors and destruction, is that is almost never solves the problem it was started for.
And still, there are some hypothetical situations where I would kill a guy, bare-handed if necessary, and readily admit it afterwards. Raping my girlfriend comes to mind. In fact, if I had time to think about what I'm doing, I would make sure it's a painful death.
So, depending on context, sometimes guns are the first tool.
"This is how it happened, there is no other explanation."
Which is not what anyone is asking for, so put your strawman back into the field where it belongs.
"This is how our best available theory explains it." is what every respectable teacher will say. And that's a pretty good answer given that on a reliability scale of one to ten, the theory of evolution is at 9.x and then there's nothing else for a very, very long time.
I mean, scientists still can't give a definitive answer on how the first cells were formed, only some scifi-esque ideas.
Uh, no?
There is not one "definite answer", that's correct. However, there is a number of competing, plausible theories. Definitely a far cry away from "scifi-esque".
I've never understood why religious folk have such a hard time with evolution. I mean, can't they just say "okay, fine, evolution is the process, and God is the architect". Far as I can see, that kind of solves it.
No, it doesn't. The theory of evolution is fundamentally hostile to faith because it explains one of the great mysteries that form a core part of pretty much every religion, and shows very clearly that for a seemingly incomprehensible process, no creator god of any form or shape is even required.
While democracy and majority decisions are quite a great tool for decision makings, and in fact groups usually make better decisions than individuals(*) - facts are not something that's subject to majority decisions and the processes of democracy. Like it or not, 1+1 equals two, the earth isn't flat, and evolution holds up to the most rigorous tests.
I would be in favour of "more variety" if that would mean something like "teachers must present all widely accepted scientific theories on a particular subject", but not this political, religious bullshit that teaches kids the entirely wrong things, namely to accept nonsense as truth.
(* despite all "design by commitee" cries - yes, design is one of the few areas that are exceptions
Yes, most of the times I don't care for the source, either.
However, several times already I came across a piece of Free Software that did almost exactly what I needed, or that did what I needed but hadn't been updated for quite a while. I could take it and add the feature I wanted, or take it over and continue developing it, or simply fix a few bugs that prevented it from running/compiling in the current compiler/webserver/whatever environment.
Just because you don't use a freedom 99% of your time doesn't mean it isn't valuable. I very rarely make use of my freedom to assemble, and elections are only every few years - but still these are important freedoms to have.
Then try landing head first. If your skull (i.e. pain-processing unit) is destroyed first, the nerve signals from the rest of your body as it gets flattened have nowhere to go anymore.:-)
In a specific sense, the term does in fact make sense.
The so-called "natural religions" are based on a worship of nature, with at most one level of abstraction inbetween (spirits of nature or natural forces).
The "other" religions do not worship nature, but see it as a by-product, or subservient to a higher being that is not itself part of the nature that surrounds us (i.e. you can't touch it).
There's also the interesting fact that "natural religions" tend to have a dramatically different viewpoint on human natural instincts, especially sexuality, than the later religions do. Mostly pretty opposite viewpoints.
So there's a fairly solid distinction, that has to do with the view on nature. The term is a little misleading, but not wrong.
the simplest explanation is the anthropic principle, but really it doesn't explain anything
Actually, it does, just not in the sense that we've all been brought up with. But the very point of it is that there is no meaning. We are searching for meaning and reason, and the anthropic principle tells us that we can stop doing that. It tells us that there's no point in trying to find out why the world is all pinkish when in fact due to those pink glasses we're wearing, we could not possibly see it in any other colour.
It doesn't give us the answer - it tells us that we were asking the false question.
Slashdot Mirror
We operate according to the same laws of physics that govern that boiler over in the corner. Get over yourselves already.
Uh, quantum physics happens to be physics, you know? Laws and all.
Maybe Apple is more expensive, maybe it isn't.
Did I miss the memo where we have abandoned capitalism? Demand and supply meet at the price point of agreement. I'm perfectly willing to pay what Apple asks for its products. Sure, I'd be just as happy to pay less, just as they would be happy to charge more. But that's not the point.
The point is: Is it worth it?
Standard PC with Vista - 2000
or iMac with Leopard - 2500
I'd rather pay for the second, because not everything is about price alone.
So I wonder when the Toyota of the operating system world is going to come along and eat MS' lunch?
The metaphers aren't compairable.
Now if GM had managed to have roads built so they only work with their cars, then you'd have an analogy. The core reason that MS manages to sustain their monopoly despite their epic failures (Vista just being the latest one) is the lock-in, namely that switching is more painful then continuing to eat shit.
That's an excellent point. So often, the good questions are simple: How can you be tried as an adult for having "child porn" of yourself?
Maybe the law has finally found quantum physics. You know, Schrödinger's Defendant - she's both adult and a kid at the same time, at least until a judge looks. :-)
Perhaps someone can think of a better method that is still roughly scientific,
Yupp. Don't make thinking illegal.
This is part of the whole "victimless crime" item, except that in the vast majority of cases, you can not even establish probable danger.
If I am speeding on a safe, empty road, I'm not really putting anyone at risk except me, but you could argue that there might be a child hiding at the precise tree I'll be slamming into, or someone somehow gets in front of me without me noticing quick enough - etc. Short version: While in that actual situation nobody might have been harmed, a small modification of the situation creates plausible danger, hence you could argue my speeding needs to be punished.
Now try to extend that to someone looking at cartoon characters fucking. Uh, wait, seemingly underage cartoon characters (whatever that means) fucking. I challenge you. Which small modification of the situation causes harm or puts someone at risk?
There's no risk here. Not even a theoretical one. AFAIK the often provided "looking at drawings that look like a 12 year old doing naughty things causes children to be harmed for more porn production" line has no scientific evidence for it whatsoever. In fact, all evidence we do have suggests that the more you suppress sexual desires, the stronger they will erupt when the barrier falls.
Quite honestly, my personal belief is that these kiddie-porn-crusaders are probably causing more actual damage to children than the vast majority of those who enjoy sexy cartoons.
In the end, though, this is a lost cause. Evidence, truth and justice are not on the agenda of 99.99% of the people involved. Just look at the lineup. Politicians, lawyers, policemen. All people who stand to profit from more laws, more complicated laws, broader laws and more difficult to decide legal cases.
countries like Pakistan, being themselves consistently among the worst human rights abusers on the planet
Now, I wouldn't say that. From what I gather from reliable news sources, Pakistan and some others on the list are prettyy good in their human rights abuses. They provide a consistent quantity and pretty good quality of abuses. They might not be as technological advanced in some of their abuses as other abusers, say the US, but what they lack in academic research into pain effects, waterboarding training and electrocution technology, they make up with dedication and human experience. I'd rate them among some of the best human rights abusers, but even if you disagree on that, you can not possibly say they are among the worst!
"The UN Human Rights Council assaulted free expression today, in a 23-11 vote that urges member states to adopt laws outlawing criticism of religions.
It's much worse than free speech. Wake up people! This is an insulation layer for religion not only against unfounded, but also against reasonable criticism, and against critical research and publications. Depending on how the exact wordings of the law turn out, vast amounts of philosophical literature, but also psychological and even cognitive science research could become illegal, simply because it is (and by rights) critical of religions.
You can not maintain faith in a literal interpretation of the Bible and knowledge of evolution at the same time.
That much goes without saying.
Generalizing from that to all faith is the bigotry that I object to. What about, for instance, Deism--faith in the "watchmaker God", who made everything and set up the universal constants, then stood back to watch it unfold? Yes, you're correct that there's no discernible distinction between that kind of God and no God, but I challenge you to credibly claim that there is any conflict between that kind of faith and a belief in evolution.
"The Blind Watchmaker" answers that.
But the "god is to be found before the Big Bang" answer goes beyond evolution. As such in a strict sense, there is no conflict, I agree. But the theory of evolution still tells us that there is no need whatsoever for such a careful "setup" of the process. Life adapts to whatever the circumstances are instead of requiring specific circumstances.
The Anthropic Principle demolishes the "set up the universal constants" concept, as does (in a different way) the Many-Worlds view of quantum physics.
But the primary argument is complexity. Saying "god made the Big Bang" doesn't explain a thing. You still need a lot of handwaving in regards to questions such as "so where did this god come from?" and "how exactly did he do it?". The problem is that everything we know about the universe tells us that complexity builds up over time. Simple things come first, then more complicated things appear as combinations of simple things. A god who could do such a feat as you describe would by necessity be quite complicated (not even to mention all the other powers ascribed to him). Where did that complexity come from? How did it come into existence?
There's another argument along the same lines that's got to do with being inside or outside of the world, I'll spare you that.
Or, heck, faith in Buddhism, which does not posit any God, but rather an afterlife and a desirable state of the soul. No, it's not testable, and no, it's not science--but why should it be vilified for the sins of a small (if vocal) group of stupid fundamentalist Christians?
Yes, true. When I speak of "faith" in this context, I mean the usual mainstream religious kind of faith. There's also Buddhism, or Discordianism or several other -isms that are sufficiently different. I just don't make the differentiation every time I use the word. :-)
I know you're an aggressive atheist who believes that all religion is nothing but delusion, but I would like to think that you're not as closed-minded as those you deride. Please don't make the mistake of believing that the extremist nutjobs of Christianity represent our entire faith. That's just as bigoted and prejudiced as believing that all Muslims are suicide bombers just waiting for the right target.
Obviously it is.
Nevertheless, I maintain that you can not maintain both faith and knowledge of evolution at the same time, without some hush-hush here or there. Dawkins puts it much better than I can, and he knows more about evolution, too. The main point is that evolution completely removes not only god but also the need for a god from all life, including our own.
Hung on that are so many fundamental elements of almost all religions (creation, man in gods image, etc.) that as I said if you want to cling to both at the same time, you can only do that if you modify your religion so much that it doesn't match any of the mainstream versions anymore.
Which makes the GP argument a cheap trick of rhetorics, doesn't it?
So, either it isn't evolution simply because of the definition of the word - but similar scientific principles apply, and there's still no god anywhere in sight - or it is evolution if we don't define the word too strictly, with largely the same result.
One way or the other, if you look at the facts, creationism loses. Again. Anyone surprised? :-)
It seems hypocritical that they're not willing to perform combat operations in Afghanistan because of fears this will make people link it to it's Nazi past in being seen as an oppressive force
Nonsense. I've not heard that as a reason once, and I live in Germany.
The actual reason is that anyone who fights a land war in Afghanistan has completely lost his mind. Ok, in the case of Bush Jr. there wasn't much to lose in the first place, but still. Pretty much nobody has ever "won" in Afghanistan in any meaningful sense of the word, and that's if you go back 500+ years in history.
that "Zero Tolerance" policies are absurd.
That's putting it mildly.
I'd go so far to say that "zero tolerance" is a synonym for fascism. When you leave no room for doubt and exceptions, you definitely are far outside the realm of reason.
That's logical but incomplete. Just because something cannot be detected does not prove it does not exist. Your argument is a form of Black Swan Fallacy.
There's an important difference.
Case A: Something can not currently be detected here and now through the means available.
Case B: Something can in principle never, through any means whatsoever, be detected.
In case A I do agree that we do not have a prove of non-existence. In case B, however, I claim that there is no difference between B and non-existence. Therefore, the two cases are identical. Therefore, the subject of case B does not exist.
For the record I'm a raving atheist. But trying to prove the existence or non-existence of somebody's myths is a giant waste of time and effort.
Just like everything else here on /. - it's a kind of mental sports or play. No purpose beyond itself. :-)
Evolution does not explain where life started. It only explains how life become so diverse.
You need to read more books. :-)
There are several extensions of evolution that go beyond what we call "life" today. One very interesting one explains how life could have started from crystals using a process very similar to evolution.
But even that is a strawman. The usual creation myths also claim that the god of the day created the earth, every rock and stone, the sun and moon and everything else. It's become fashionable for believers to answer "no, before that" to every scientific explanation of how these things actually came to be, so no surprise the same trick is played on evolution. But it's rhetorics, nothing else.
Funny thing is - these people are arguing that the strip search was ok.
Yet if they had taken a picture of it, they would each spend 500 years in the slammer for posession of child porn.
Wierd how that doesn't match, don't you think? Having a picture of a half-naked girl carries a higher sentence than forcing her to strip?
And you call that a legal system?
Guns are the first tool only of those too weak and too stupid to apply any other means to solving their problem.
As always, context is relevant.
I'm a pretty peaceful guy, almost never got into a brawl even as a kid. I don't think violence is the answer, and my primary problem with war, even before all the horrors and destruction, is that is almost never solves the problem it was started for.
And still, there are some hypothetical situations where I would kill a guy, bare-handed if necessary, and readily admit it afterwards. Raping my girlfriend comes to mind. In fact, if I had time to think about what I'm doing, I would make sure it's a painful death.
So, depending on context, sometimes guns are the first tool.
"This is how it happened, there is no other explanation."
Which is not what anyone is asking for, so put your strawman back into the field where it belongs.
"This is how our best available theory explains it." is what every respectable teacher will say. And that's a pretty good answer given that on a reliability scale of one to ten, the theory of evolution is at 9.x and then there's nothing else for a very, very long time.
I mean, scientists still can't give a definitive answer on how the first cells were formed, only some scifi-esque ideas.
Uh, no?
There is not one "definite answer", that's correct. However, there is a number of competing, plausible theories. Definitely a far cry away from "scifi-esque".
I've never understood why religious folk have such a hard time with evolution. I mean, can't they just say "okay, fine, evolution is the process, and God is the architect". Far as I can see, that kind of solves it.
No, it doesn't. The theory of evolution is fundamentally hostile to faith because it explains one of the great mysteries that form a core part of pretty much every religion, and shows very clearly that for a seemingly incomprehensible process, no creator god of any form or shape is even required.
the theory of evolution does not, ipso facto, rule out the possibility of a supernatural creator.
Not ipso facto, true, but for all practical purposes, it does. I've outlined the reasoning before.
While democracy and majority decisions are quite a great tool for decision makings, and in fact groups usually make better decisions than individuals(*) - facts are not something that's subject to majority decisions and the processes of democracy. Like it or not, 1+1 equals two, the earth isn't flat, and evolution holds up to the most rigorous tests.
I would be in favour of "more variety" if that would mean something like "teachers must present all widely accepted scientific theories on a particular subject", but not this political, religious bullshit that teaches kids the entirely wrong things, namely to accept nonsense as truth.
(* despite all "design by commitee" cries - yes, design is one of the few areas that are exceptions
Yes, most of the times I don't care for the source, either.
However, several times already I came across a piece of Free Software that did almost exactly what I needed, or that did what I needed but hadn't been updated for quite a while. I could take it and add the feature I wanted, or take it over and continue developing it, or simply fix a few bugs that prevented it from running/compiling in the current compiler/webserver/whatever environment.
Just because you don't use a freedom 99% of your time doesn't mean it isn't valuable. I very rarely make use of my freedom to assemble, and elections are only every few years - but still these are important freedoms to have.
Then try landing head first. If your skull (i.e. pain-processing unit) is destroyed first, the nerve signals from the rest of your body as it gets flattened have nowhere to go anymore. :-)
In a specific sense, the term does in fact make sense.
The so-called "natural religions" are based on a worship of nature, with at most one level of abstraction inbetween (spirits of nature or natural forces).
The "other" religions do not worship nature, but see it as a by-product, or subservient to a higher being that is not itself part of the nature that surrounds us (i.e. you can't touch it).
There's also the interesting fact that "natural religions" tend to have a dramatically different viewpoint on human natural instincts, especially sexuality, than the later religions do. Mostly pretty opposite viewpoints.
So there's a fairly solid distinction, that has to do with the view on nature. The term is a little misleading, but not wrong.
the simplest explanation is the anthropic principle, but really it doesn't explain anything
Actually, it does, just not in the sense that we've all been brought up with. But the very point of it is that there is no meaning. We are searching for meaning and reason, and the anthropic principle tells us that we can stop doing that. It tells us that there's no point in trying to find out why the world is all pinkish when in fact due to those pink glasses we're wearing, we could not possibly see it in any other colour.
It doesn't give us the answer - it tells us that we were asking the false question.