But you can leave a hostel or college dorm at any time you want. You can go outside when the weather is good, you can go to a cinema, meet friends, be with your girlfriend, spend time on your hobbies, etc. etc. etc.
The defining part of prison is not that the rooms are uncomfortable, you know?
If we can't base those judgements by what kind of a person have they been, what do you suggest?
Going by facts instead of rumours, you jerk!
There is nothing simpler than accusing someone of a crime they didn't commit, and in the case of pedophilia, that is guaranteed to ruin a man's life and very likely to end his career. And now you want to judge him in the future as well, good job.
You want to base your judgement of a persons character on Internet searches and on things that they did years ago, wtf?
Have you heard about actually talking to people, and creating your own judgement from personal interaction?
What kind of "abuse" are you imagining here? The proper procedure for judging people is a trial and a courthouse, not the Internet. And negative stuff about people on the Internet has a roughly 50/50 chance of being made up anyways.
The system is self-defeating in making it much more likely that ex-cons actually have no option but to turn back to crime to even make a living.
What makes you think that's a defeat? In a world where running a prison is a highly profitable industry, keeping the prison filled is a business strategy, not a defeat.
What happened to "having paid your debt to society" ? Stop listening to the prison industry.
Also, "30% were about pedophiles" doesn't tell you anything. Quite a few accusations into that direction are false, sometimes mislead and sometimes intentionally fraudulent, because there's no easier way to ruin a man's life than having his face in the papers with the word "pedophile" next to it. And more often than not, when the court case reveals that everything was made up and doesn't have one leg to stand on, the papers won't report that on the front page. And if someone googles for it, they are much more likely to find something saying you are a pedophile than the tiny page-20 posting that said actually no, you aren't.
If you're wrongly accused of a crime, you absolutely have every right to have that forgotten. In fact, this is probably the prime example as to why we need such a right.
Gun violence in the US is black-on-black young black males doing almost all of it
Except, of course, for the school shootings and mass shootings that happen more often than in the rest of the western world combined. (they're not unheard of elsewhere, but most other countries have had a few since the end of WW2, not a few every fucking year).
I agree that internal gang violence is the main element, though. It's just not the only. And we're only talking about gun violence here, not accidents, which also add a couple dead bodies every year.
I find it unlikely that quantum loop gravity, string theory, pilot waves, and the Copenhagen all hold true. That doesn't mean they're all junk or that the people proposing the various theories are somehow dishonest or fools.
The difference between those and religious nonsense, however, is that they all share the same math. They arrive at the same conclusions from the same data. Their differences is in what those numbers mean, not the numbers themselves.
I'm certainly not demanding that you believe any of it. It would, however, be reasonable to show a little respect for those who do. At least for the ones willing to reciprocate.
I understand that, but I don't accept it. I do not believe that people who believe in nonsense should be spared that simple truth. I do believe that religion has been treated way too kindly, and that its demands for special treatment are met way too eagerly.
When religion stops being a liability to the human race, then we can talk about respect again. But right now, wherever you look, religion is pulling us down. Whether it's the suicide bombers of Islam, the religious right of american christianity, the catholic anti-progress christianity, the caste-system-supporting hinduism, the various religiously motivated massacres in China - no, I'm sorry, this crap does not deserve support.
And yes, I realize that most religious people aren't like those extremes. But they allow it to prosper, because they provide the baseline, the soil from which this crap grows. Arguing otherwise is like saying that fascism isn't all that bad because most Germans never personally killed a Jew. In both cases, strictly speaking it is true, but without the complacent masses of followers, the extremes would not be possible.
Very specific example: If the catholic church were any other kind of organisation, without its millions of harmless followers, the child-abuse scandals would've seen it dissolved and dozens if not hundreds of culprits behind bars.
Meanwhile, I don't think either of us would like to see science judged based on the crackpots that claim to be scientists...
I think we should judge it based on those crackpots that the scientific community accepts. Of course not based on those shunned and cast out, because otherwise every community could get a ruinous judgement simply by you and me joining them and behaving like assholes.
But if a community accepts and supports someone, it can be judged for that.
BOTTOM LINE: liberals, progressives, and socialists always want to disarm the public. But, disarming the public never makes the public any safer. It only makes it safer for GOVERNMENT TO OPPRESS THE PEOPLE!!
Then what else is it that makes the US the homicide capital of the civilized world? If it's not guns, what else is it?
And you do, of course, realize that both can be true, yes? Making the public safer and making the people easier to oppress are not mutually exclusive.
Finally, don't forget that the idea of people with guns fighting off the government is 50 years outdated. Look at the footage from China's Tianamen square. Do you think pistols and rifles would've made a difference? When the government can come to get you in tanks, it doesn't really matter if you have a gun at home or not.
Why have any conversation about social issues? Since obviously opinions can't change.
You completely missed the point.
Of course conversation is good and necessary, and people can be convinced.
In marketing, there's a term: "overselling". It's when the customer is ready to buy and you keep talking about the product on and on and on - until he doesn't want to buy anymore. That really happens. If you continue selling something, you can lose the sale.
Same here. If you go on and on and on and on and on and on and on about equal rights and protection of women to someone who is fully on your side, you cannot convince him more - but you can turn him away.
Or since you said core belief, what are the odds of an announcement that the scientific method is a dead end?
Show us that it doesn't work and that all its results, like say this Internet thing we're using to communicate, were somehow the result of something else, and you'll have very interested listeners.
But consider, Only some denominations believe in confession, purgatory, etc. Some believe a private prayer is enough to be absolved of sin, others believe works are necessary. Even within Baptists there is disagreement on the holy trinity (a fairly central belief). Meanwhile, the Jews do not believe in Jesus. The Buddhists do not believe in God.
True, there are very many religions and even more cults, sects, alien conspiracies, pseudo-sciences, mediums - the whole thing.
Personally, I think you don't even need science to disprove religion, it's much simpler than that. Because every christian (I'm just using them for the argument, the same is true of other religions) already is an atheist - with respect to the hundreds and thousands of other gods of other religions.
If religion were true, then why the one particular one? Because almost every religion excluded that any other religion could be equally true (Judaism and Christianity, for example, cannot both be true, because either Jesus was the son of god or he wasn't).
It has been observed more than once that the revolutions in science become mainstream as the old guard literally die off. In between, there is a steady refinement and enlargement upon the working theory.
That's true, I've read my Kuhn as well. I did say this before, that science as pursued by humans is by necessity imperfect as psychological and other personal influences take effect.
Still, science adapts, I think we agree on that. Theories or even entire fields (alchemy?) are dropped when it turns out they're bollocks.
Compare the Catholic church, various Orthodox churches, the variety of protestant denominations, the recent fundamentalist churches and the Mormon church and you will see a great deal of differences in fairly fundamental beliefs. Some are more tolerant of other beliefs than others.
True, there are differences. I still haven't seen a pope standing in Rome declaring "it turns out we were wrong about this whole christ thing." -- nor, and that's the important part, is it imaginable that it would happen. That's my point. There are things on which religion cannot and will not change its mind, no matter the evidence.
It obviously had some resonance, especially with you, one way or the other.
It did, and I admit that a good part of that has nothing to do with you.
But overstating the obvious is one of the many ways that opinion is manipulated. It's like asking people repeatedly "but you know that you shouldn't xyz?" -- to an outside observer, you can create the impression that they would do it, if you didn't tell them.
The rest -- I ignore personal attacks on the Internet. You don't know me, I don't know you. I only judge the words you utter, not your past or family or whatever else that remains hidden.
It's 3D actually; each worksheet is a separate layer. And you completely neglect its charting and graphing abilities, plus it can automatically pull data from external sources (such as a database).
I know all of that, and yes, that, too, is useful at times. But as a graphing tool it's as bad as it is as a business logic tool. It's a great hack if you need a bar chart and you need it now and you don't care about the looks or it being very good.
Anyway, you're moving the goalposts with your whole letter vs. book analogy. Word may not be adequate for writing a complete novel, but it's still a word processor.
I was just making a metaphor. Word is good for short texts that don't need much structure, but it fails if you need to do "real work" (a book, thesis, etc.) -- same with Excel. It is a great tool for some simple work you need to get out of the way quickly, but if you do real work, better get something serious.
That's been my point all along, just tried to illustrate it with an example that might be easier to grasph than calculator vs. business logic.
The Apocrypha, the entirely discarded ancient Roman and Greek beliefs, etc.
That's an interesting argument. Yes, indeed, we as humans occasionally ditch entire belief systems.
I wouldn't count that as "adaptability" of religions, though. More as a kind of evolution with some of them dying out.
It's a good point, because we have such things as astrology or alchemy or some medical nonsense that was once considered scientific and was dumped entirely - though some of it has been revived as pseudo-science or mystical belief.
I don't know enough about the content of the Apocrypha to judge. I do know the Bible was constantly changed over the centuries. I don't recall any of the core elements of the christian faith being updated after Petrus, though.
Souls are created some time, aren't they? Eventually they are enlightened and break the cycle. Nothing says a soul comes back right away. That was easy and obvious for anyone not pointedly avoiding a logical solution.
Ok, that's acceptable. My apologies, most of the reincarnation theories I know have this origin problem and assume a largely unchanging soul "population".
So you assume everyone on/. is on the same page...
Make a poll if you want. Yes, I am quite sure that anyone with half a brain understands that marriage != slavery (outside of jokes).
I was happily married
So? This is not about your marriage record nor mine. It's about what you think of your fellow men. Apparently, you've bought into the feminist agenda that all men are some kind of half-ape would-rape-any-girl-given-the-chance psychopaths.
You mean they adjust their beliefs to accommodate new data? How terrible!:-) How completely unlike string theorists, cosmologists, particle physicists, etc.
Yes, very unlike, because they don't adjust their beliefs. They change details and interpretations of it, but never core elements.
Yes, very unlike science. There are plenty of theories in science that were dropped completely when they turned out to be wrong. The Aether is probably the most famous, but you can find many more like it in every field of science.
Pray, tell, where's the Aether of religion? The most I've seen them change their mind is declaring that some bullshit part of their holy book is truly meant metaphorically.
An increasing population leaves plenty of room for reincarnation. Where's the problem?
Really, it does? Where do all the souls come from or go to when the population changes dramatically?
If you go the Hindu way and claim that the circle includes animals, we could do a study of the total amount of creatures on the planet, but unless you doubt evolution and the planetary history, there can be no doubt that this number used to be different some billion years ago.
And there's that faith thing again.
wtf? How is it faith to claim that the scientific approach actually works, and the religious doesn't? Science has given us modern medicine (twice the lifespan of your ancestors, man! some gratitude would be appropriate!), and cars and planes and computers and the Internet and mobile phones and skyscrapers and trains and WiFi and space probes and men on the moon and rockets and submarines and literally millions of other things.
Meanwhile, religion and mysticism has given us... err... uh... some interesting music, a few famous books of doubtful literary value, some art and sometimes a positive feeling.
How is it faith if I say that I doubt a reinterpretation of the Koran will bring the first man to Mars, or that I'm quite sure the cure to cancer will not turn out to be prayer? I'm simply looking at past successes and extrapolating.
Religion and mysticism has ruled humanity for at least ten millenia. In the past 100 years alone, science has done more even in the fields that many religions claim as being close to their hearts - like caring for the ill or providing food to the poor - and you say that's an article of faith?
I don't know about you, but I personally do not live in one of those steampunk fantasy worlds where science and magic compete against each other, each having its own way to solve the problems of society, both being equally effective but mutually exclusive. It's a nice storyline, but in the real world you have doctors with medicine that actually works and priests with prayers that - in every study I know about - do squat nothing. Witch doctors and miracle healers are debunked on a routine basis.
It has nothing to do with faith to state the obvious, that the primary advantage of science over religion is that one of them works and the other doesn't.
Yeah, right, and Word was designed to write books, as anyone who's lost his doctoral thesis to it can attest to.
Word is good for letters, and Excel is a good 2D calculator. If you want to get real work done, get real tools. It's true in every field, not just computing.
You can ask the GP himself if he thinks that marrying someone gives you a legal right to her body, and I would take pretty much any wager you want that his answer is a puzzled look and some variation of "what are you, retarded?"
Stating incredibly obvious facts is an insult, because by doing so you doubt that the other side knowns about it.
That you need to reassert yourself on this speaks volumes.
Yes, I do not know every religion of the world in detail, you got me there.
Buddhism has - even though I am quite fond of it - quite a number of beliefs that clash with fact-based knowledge, such as the whole reincarnation cycle (world population numbers alone are enough argument ad absurdum on that topic).
More to the point, my argument was that religion does in fact retreat when fact-based knowledge has proven to be true and religious superstition has been solidly debunked. However, they do not retreat to update their Bible or Koran or whatever, they merely re-define their belief system just enough to maintain it. I'm not sure if I can properly explain the difference, but it is important:
Evidence-based knowledge will change what it beliefs if proof is supplied.
Mysticism and religion will change details of their belief to evade the places where they've clashed with reality and lost, but will always strive to maintain the core elements and leave the belief as much unchanged as possible.
Further, by declaring that science need not yield where it has no answer, you are effectively suggesting that scientists make stuff up if necessary.
To the contrary. I vote for maintaining "I don't know" as a perfectly acceptable answer, and one superior to some made-up nonsense.
And I see science as the champion of "I don't know", because science is as much about asking questions as it is about having answers. And I maintain that you should not yield to the first answer that comes running just because you don't know, but should maintain your position of not claiming an answer until you know more.
I maintain that science should not yield to religion just because it doesn't have an answer to a specific question, yet. Because the track record of science is quite good, and if we don't have an answer today, chances are good that we will have one in the future.
If you need any proof that misandry is equally active and doesn't even raise eyebrows, that the parent was modded "insightful" is just... wow... If you really think that needed saying, you're part of the problem. Just the assumption that it needs saying is so unbelievably misandric, you should be ashamed.
Why does every single discussion about women in tech immediately result in a bunch of denials, followed by pats on the back (upvotes) as dudes congratulate other dudes on how much of a not-problem there is?
Because we are sick and tired of being blamed for crap we hate ourselves.
Of all the men I know and for whom I know their personal opinion on the matter, not one of them is the male chauvinist pig that feminists try to label us all as. The typical man by my experience likes women, generally enjoys it when they're sexy and beautiful, while at the same time appreciating them as human beings and treasuring intelligence, empathy and other mental traits. None of these men wants to take away womens right to vote, or decide for themselves who to marry, or to take any job they want, or to earn a proper wage defined by their performance and qualification. None of these men sees women as inferior in any way.
However, we are all so fucking tired of the labels and blaming going on in feminist circles, and the inability to speak out against it without being branded even worse immediately, that many men I know have taken to the defense you take when other options aren't easily available: Ridicule, sarcasm - humor in general.
That's how and why I joke with some of my friends that women belong into the kitchen and the kitchen into the cellar and (the joke goes on a bit, but it doesn't translate well into english as it's a play on words). Or why we laugh about chauvinist jokes. Or why we sometimes behave in the exact way the feminists hate all male chauvinist pigs for, in an innocent way (i.e. it stays purely verbal and within the group).
Because that's how human beings react to unjust blame. Call me a chauvinist and depending on my mood I might answer things like "so true my man, oppressing women worked for 10,000 years and as soon as we stopped doing it - bam - two giant world wars." -- which to any even slightly intelligent human being is immediately recognizable as a joke, but to extremists with an agenda, things such as humor apparently don't exist.
And the same is true of the other push-backs you see. Different forms of basically saying "stop lumping me in with those assholes you stupid piece of shit", just in a more indirect way because geeks don't say things like that to your face.
Women are treated equally to men in tech? Really? Really?
It's a self-fullfilling prophecy. The more you run around with a "treat me equal you assholes" sign, the less you'll get it.
It's also because you want others to solve your problems for you. If you feel inferior, that's your problem, not mine. If you think you are verbally abused - do you even have one fucking clue what many male geeks went through in school? When you're complaining about a dirty joke to someone who has been bullied for a decade of his life, the fact that he's an introvert and insecure is the only reason he's not laughing straight in your face.
The world is a cruel place, accept it. Nobody here is perfect, and when you encounter enough human beings in your life, a considerable portion of them will be a) assholes, b) on a bad day, c) misunderstood or d) just as bitter about the world as you are.
If you want to make the world a better place - great! Maybe you should start with not blaming people who have been on the receiving end of a lot of that themselves. They could be your allies. As soon as you stop treating them like shit.
The whole point is women can't know a-priori who the good guys are and the penalty is being raped or killed. If only 1-2% of the guys are the bad apples (probably a bit low), then in a conference of 5000 men there are 50-100 who would do her harm.
This is utter and complete bullshit.
The high-end statistics (the ones that claim that 19% of women have experienced rape) come to this conclusion by re-defining "rape" as any kind of sexual abuse, including verbal.
Actual criminal statistics arrive at numbers like 0.2%, plus estimated half as many again that go unreported. However, more than half of those actual cases happen between partners or former partners. In other words: Breaking up with your boyfriend puts you at a much higher risk of being raped then going to a conference.
warning, math content below
Even for rapes committed by strangers (the smallest category, the 2nd largest after (ex)partners is friends or relatives), only a tiny percentage happen somewhere in the open, the total of all those categories (2% in bars, 3% outdoors, etc.) sums up to about 10% give or take a few. The by far largest number of rapes happen in either your or his/her (yes, women rape too, though it's only about 9% of the cases) home.
Taking everything into account, being in a public place with a large group of strangers is, from a risk-of-rape perspective, one of the safest places you could possibly be.
Summing up percentages, the probability of being raped (0.3%) by a stranger (~10%) somewhere in public (10%) is 0.003 * 0.1 * 0.1 = 0.003% ~= 1/33,000 lifetime risk. The risk of being raped (0.3%) by a partner or ex-partner (~50%) in your or his home (ca. 30% each) is 0.003 * 0.5 * 0.6 = 0.09% ~= 1/1,000 lifetime risk.
So if you are a woman and you are worried about getting raped, look at your hubby, before you write a rant about the danger of nerd conferences.
Source: Go fucking Google it yourself, I did for an earlier reply but I'm too fucking lazy to dig it out again, doing the work you should've done before posting that drivel of yours.
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever you're smoking, I strongly recommend doing less of it. Nothing of what you just posted there makes even the slightest bit of sense.
But you can leave a hostel or college dorm at any time you want. You can go outside when the weather is good, you can go to a cinema, meet friends, be with your girlfriend, spend time on your hobbies, etc. etc. etc.
The defining part of prison is not that the rooms are uncomfortable, you know?
Comcast has a disincentive to invest because, if things bog down, people will blame content providers like Netflix
Uh, no? When my Internet is slow, I blame my ISP first. Is that different for normal people or is the Comcast CEO living under a rock?
If we can't base those judgements by what kind of a person have they been, what do you suggest?
Going by facts instead of rumours, you jerk!
There is nothing simpler than accusing someone of a crime they didn't commit, and in the case of pedophilia, that is guaranteed to ruin a man's life and very likely to end his career. And now you want to judge him in the future as well, good job.
You want to base your judgement of a persons character on Internet searches and on things that they did years ago, wtf?
Have you heard about actually talking to people, and creating your own judgement from personal interaction?
Are you for real?
What kind of "abuse" are you imagining here? The proper procedure for judging people is a trial and a courthouse, not the Internet. And negative stuff about people on the Internet has a roughly 50/50 chance of being made up anyways.
The system is self-defeating in making it much more likely that ex-cons actually have no option but to turn back to crime to even make a living.
What makes you think that's a defeat? In a world where running a prison is a highly profitable industry, keeping the prison filled is a business strategy, not a defeat.
What a setback to stone-age ethics.
What happened to "having paid your debt to society" ? Stop listening to the prison industry.
Also, "30% were about pedophiles" doesn't tell you anything. Quite a few accusations into that direction are false, sometimes mislead and sometimes intentionally fraudulent, because there's no easier way to ruin a man's life than having his face in the papers with the word "pedophile" next to it. And more often than not, when the court case reveals that everything was made up and doesn't have one leg to stand on, the papers won't report that on the front page. And if someone googles for it, they are much more likely to find something saying you are a pedophile than the tiny page-20 posting that said actually no, you aren't.
If you're wrongly accused of a crime, you absolutely have every right to have that forgotten. In fact, this is probably the prime example as to why we need such a right.
Gun violence in the US is black-on-black young black males doing almost all of it
Except, of course, for the school shootings and mass shootings that happen more often than in the rest of the western world combined. (they're not unheard of elsewhere, but most other countries have had a few since the end of WW2, not a few every fucking year).
I agree that internal gang violence is the main element, though. It's just not the only. And we're only talking about gun violence here, not accidents, which also add a couple dead bodies every year.
I find it unlikely that quantum loop gravity, string theory, pilot waves, and the Copenhagen all hold true. That doesn't mean they're all junk or that the people proposing the various theories are somehow dishonest or fools.
The difference between those and religious nonsense, however, is that they all share the same math. They arrive at the same conclusions from the same data. Their differences is in what those numbers mean, not the numbers themselves.
I'm certainly not demanding that you believe any of it. It would, however, be reasonable to show a little respect for those who do. At least for the ones willing to reciprocate.
I understand that, but I don't accept it. I do not believe that people who believe in nonsense should be spared that simple truth. I do believe that religion has been treated way too kindly, and that its demands for special treatment are met way too eagerly.
When religion stops being a liability to the human race, then we can talk about respect again. But right now, wherever you look, religion is pulling us down. Whether it's the suicide bombers of Islam, the religious right of american christianity, the catholic anti-progress christianity, the caste-system-supporting hinduism, the various religiously motivated massacres in China - no, I'm sorry, this crap does not deserve support.
And yes, I realize that most religious people aren't like those extremes. But they allow it to prosper, because they provide the baseline, the soil from which this crap grows. Arguing otherwise is like saying that fascism isn't all that bad because most Germans never personally killed a Jew. In both cases, strictly speaking it is true, but without the complacent masses of followers, the extremes would not be possible.
Very specific example: If the catholic church were any other kind of organisation, without its millions of harmless followers, the child-abuse scandals would've seen it dissolved and dozens if not hundreds of culprits behind bars.
Meanwhile, I don't think either of us would like to see science judged based on the crackpots that claim to be scientists...
I think we should judge it based on those crackpots that the scientific community accepts. Of course not based on those shunned and cast out, because otherwise every community could get a ruinous judgement simply by you and me joining them and behaving like assholes.
But if a community accepts and supports someone, it can be judged for that.
BOTTOM LINE: liberals, progressives, and socialists always want to disarm the public. But, disarming the public never makes the public any safer. It only makes it safer for GOVERNMENT TO OPPRESS THE PEOPLE!!
Then what else is it that makes the US the homicide capital of the civilized world? If it's not guns, what else is it?
And you do, of course, realize that both can be true, yes? Making the public safer and making the people easier to oppress are not mutually exclusive.
Finally, don't forget that the idea of people with guns fighting off the government is 50 years outdated. Look at the footage from China's Tianamen square. Do you think pistols and rifles would've made a difference? When the government can come to get you in tanks, it doesn't really matter if you have a gun at home or not.
Why have any conversation about social issues? Since obviously opinions can't change.
You completely missed the point.
Of course conversation is good and necessary, and people can be convinced.
In marketing, there's a term: "overselling". It's when the customer is ready to buy and you keep talking about the product on and on and on - until he doesn't want to buy anymore. That really happens. If you continue selling something, you can lose the sale.
Same here. If you go on and on and on and on and on and on and on about equal rights and protection of women to someone who is fully on your side, you cannot convince him more - but you can turn him away.
Or since you said core belief, what are the odds of an announcement that the scientific method is a dead end?
Show us that it doesn't work and that all its results, like say this Internet thing we're using to communicate, were somehow the result of something else, and you'll have very interested listeners.
But consider, Only some denominations believe in confession, purgatory, etc. Some believe a private prayer is enough to be absolved of sin, others believe works are necessary. Even within Baptists there is disagreement on the holy trinity (a fairly central belief). Meanwhile, the Jews do not believe in Jesus. The Buddhists do not believe in God.
True, there are very many religions and even more cults, sects, alien conspiracies, pseudo-sciences, mediums - the whole thing.
Personally, I think you don't even need science to disprove religion, it's much simpler than that. Because every christian (I'm just using them for the argument, the same is true of other religions) already is an atheist - with respect to the hundreds and thousands of other gods of other religions.
If religion were true, then why the one particular one? Because almost every religion excluded that any other religion could be equally true (Judaism and Christianity, for example, cannot both be true, because either Jesus was the son of god or he wasn't).
It has been observed more than once that the revolutions in science become mainstream as the old guard literally die off. In between, there is a steady refinement and enlargement upon the working theory.
That's true, I've read my Kuhn as well. I did say this before, that science as pursued by humans is by necessity imperfect as psychological and other personal influences take effect.
Still, science adapts, I think we agree on that. Theories or even entire fields (alchemy?) are dropped when it turns out they're bollocks.
Compare the Catholic church, various Orthodox churches, the variety of protestant denominations, the recent fundamentalist churches and the Mormon church and you will see a great deal of differences in fairly fundamental beliefs. Some are more tolerant of other beliefs than others.
True, there are differences. I still haven't seen a pope standing in Rome declaring "it turns out we were wrong about this whole christ thing." -- nor, and that's the important part, is it imaginable that it would happen. That's my point. There are things on which religion cannot and will not change its mind, no matter the evidence.
It obviously had some resonance, especially with you, one way or the other.
It did, and I admit that a good part of that has nothing to do with you.
But overstating the obvious is one of the many ways that opinion is manipulated. It's like asking people repeatedly "but you know that you shouldn't xyz?" -- to an outside observer, you can create the impression that they would do it, if you didn't tell them.
The rest -- I ignore personal attacks on the Internet. You don't know me, I don't know you. I only judge the words you utter, not your past or family or whatever else that remains hidden.
It's 3D actually; each worksheet is a separate layer. And you completely neglect its charting and graphing abilities, plus it can automatically pull data from external sources (such as a database).
I know all of that, and yes, that, too, is useful at times. But as a graphing tool it's as bad as it is as a business logic tool. It's a great hack if you need a bar chart and you need it now and you don't care about the looks or it being very good.
Anyway, you're moving the goalposts with your whole letter vs. book analogy. Word may not be adequate for writing a complete novel, but it's still a word processor.
I was just making a metaphor. Word is good for short texts that don't need much structure, but it fails if you need to do "real work" (a book, thesis, etc.) -- same with Excel. It is a great tool for some simple work you need to get out of the way quickly, but if you do real work, better get something serious.
That's been my point all along, just tried to illustrate it with an example that might be easier to grasph than calculator vs. business logic.
The Apocrypha, the entirely discarded ancient Roman and Greek beliefs, etc.
That's an interesting argument. Yes, indeed, we as humans occasionally ditch entire belief systems.
I wouldn't count that as "adaptability" of religions, though. More as a kind of evolution with some of them dying out.
It's a good point, because we have such things as astrology or alchemy or some medical nonsense that was once considered scientific and was dumped entirely - though some of it has been revived as pseudo-science or mystical belief.
I don't know enough about the content of the Apocrypha to judge. I do know the Bible was constantly changed over the centuries. I don't recall any of the core elements of the christian faith being updated after Petrus, though.
Souls are created some time, aren't they? Eventually they are enlightened and break the cycle. Nothing says a soul comes back right away. That was easy and obvious for anyone not pointedly avoiding a logical solution.
Ok, that's acceptable. My apologies, most of the reincarnation theories I know have this origin problem and assume a largely unchanging soul "population".
So you assume everyone on /. is on the same page...
Make a poll if you want. Yes, I am quite sure that anyone with half a brain understands that marriage != slavery (outside of jokes).
I was happily married
So? This is not about your marriage record nor mine. It's about what you think of your fellow men. Apparently, you've bought into the feminist agenda that all men are some kind of half-ape would-rape-any-girl-given-the-chance psychopaths.
You mean they adjust their beliefs to accommodate new data? How terrible! :-) How completely unlike string theorists, cosmologists, particle physicists, etc.
Yes, very unlike, because they don't adjust their beliefs. They change details and interpretations of it, but never core elements.
Yes, very unlike science. There are plenty of theories in science that were dropped completely when they turned out to be wrong. The Aether is probably the most famous, but you can find many more like it in every field of science.
Pray, tell, where's the Aether of religion? The most I've seen them change their mind is declaring that some bullshit part of their holy book is truly meant metaphorically.
An increasing population leaves plenty of room for reincarnation. Where's the problem?
Really, it does? Where do all the souls come from or go to when the population changes dramatically?
If you go the Hindu way and claim that the circle includes animals, we could do a study of the total amount of creatures on the planet, but unless you doubt evolution and the planetary history, there can be no doubt that this number used to be different some billion years ago.
And there's that faith thing again.
wtf? How is it faith to claim that the scientific approach actually works, and the religious doesn't? Science has given us modern medicine (twice the lifespan of your ancestors, man! some gratitude would be appropriate!), and cars and planes and computers and the Internet and mobile phones and skyscrapers and trains and WiFi and space probes and men on the moon and rockets and submarines and literally millions of other things.
Meanwhile, religion and mysticism has given us... err... uh... some interesting music, a few famous books of doubtful literary value, some art and sometimes a positive feeling.
How is it faith if I say that I doubt a reinterpretation of the Koran will bring the first man to Mars, or that I'm quite sure the cure to cancer will not turn out to be prayer? I'm simply looking at past successes and extrapolating.
Religion and mysticism has ruled humanity for at least ten millenia. In the past 100 years alone, science has done more even in the fields that many religions claim as being close to their hearts - like caring for the ill or providing food to the poor - and you say that's an article of faith?
I don't know about you, but I personally do not live in one of those steampunk fantasy worlds where science and magic compete against each other, each having its own way to solve the problems of society, both being equally effective but mutually exclusive. It's a nice storyline, but in the real world you have doctors with medicine that actually works and priests with prayers that - in every study I know about - do squat nothing. Witch doctors and miracle healers are debunked on a routine basis.
It has nothing to do with faith to state the obvious, that the primary advantage of science over religion is that one of them works and the other doesn't.
Ignoring trolls does work, though some of them are so persistant that I see my mental disorder theory strongly verified.
Yeah, right, and Word was designed to write books, as anyone who's lost his doctoral thesis to it can attest to.
Word is good for letters, and Excel is a good 2D calculator. If you want to get real work done, get real tools. It's true in every field, not just computing.
Dig deeper, it's your hole.
You can ask the GP himself if he thinks that marrying someone gives you a legal right to her body, and I would take pretty much any wager you want that his answer is a puzzled look and some variation of "what are you, retarded?"
Stating incredibly obvious facts is an insult, because by doing so you doubt that the other side knowns about it.
That you need to reassert yourself on this speaks volumes.
Yes, I do not know every religion of the world in detail, you got me there.
Buddhism has - even though I am quite fond of it - quite a number of beliefs that clash with fact-based knowledge, such as the whole reincarnation cycle (world population numbers alone are enough argument ad absurdum on that topic).
More to the point, my argument was that religion does in fact retreat when fact-based knowledge has proven to be true and religious superstition has been solidly debunked. However, they do not retreat to update their Bible or Koran or whatever, they merely re-define their belief system just enough to maintain it. I'm not sure if I can properly explain the difference, but it is important:
Evidence-based knowledge will change what it beliefs if proof is supplied.
Mysticism and religion will change details of their belief to evade the places where they've clashed with reality and lost, but will always strive to maintain the core elements and leave the belief as much unchanged as possible.
Further, by declaring that science need not yield where it has no answer, you are effectively suggesting that scientists make stuff up if necessary.
To the contrary. I vote for maintaining "I don't know" as a perfectly acceptable answer, and one superior to some made-up nonsense.
And I see science as the champion of "I don't know", because science is as much about asking questions as it is about having answers. And I maintain that you should not yield to the first answer that comes running just because you don't know, but should maintain your position of not claiming an answer until you know more.
I maintain that science should not yield to religion just because it doesn't have an answer to a specific question, yet. Because the track record of science is quite good, and if we don't have an answer today, chances are good that we will have one in the future.
If you need any proof that misandry is equally active and doesn't even raise eyebrows, that the parent was modded "insightful" is just ... wow... If you really think that needed saying, you're part of the problem. Just the assumption that it needs saying is so unbelievably misandric, you should be ashamed.
Why does every single discussion about women in tech immediately result in a bunch of denials, followed by pats on the back (upvotes) as dudes congratulate other dudes on how much of a not-problem there is?
Because we are sick and tired of being blamed for crap we hate ourselves.
Of all the men I know and for whom I know their personal opinion on the matter, not one of them is the male chauvinist pig that feminists try to label us all as. The typical man by my experience likes women, generally enjoys it when they're sexy and beautiful, while at the same time appreciating them as human beings and treasuring intelligence, empathy and other mental traits.
None of these men wants to take away womens right to vote, or decide for themselves who to marry, or to take any job they want, or to earn a proper wage defined by their performance and qualification. None of these men sees women as inferior in any way.
However, we are all so fucking tired of the labels and blaming going on in feminist circles, and the inability to speak out against it without being branded even worse immediately, that many men I know have taken to the defense you take when other options aren't easily available: Ridicule, sarcasm - humor in general.
That's how and why I joke with some of my friends that women belong into the kitchen and the kitchen into the cellar and (the joke goes on a bit, but it doesn't translate well into english as it's a play on words). Or why we laugh about chauvinist jokes. Or why we sometimes behave in the exact way the feminists hate all male chauvinist pigs for, in an innocent way (i.e. it stays purely verbal and within the group).
Because that's how human beings react to unjust blame. Call me a chauvinist and depending on my mood I might answer things like "so true my man, oppressing women worked for 10,000 years and as soon as we stopped doing it - bam - two giant world wars." -- which to any even slightly intelligent human being is immediately recognizable as a joke, but to extremists with an agenda, things such as humor apparently don't exist.
And the same is true of the other push-backs you see. Different forms of basically saying "stop lumping me in with those assholes you stupid piece of shit", just in a more indirect way because geeks don't say things like that to your face.
Women are treated equally to men in tech? Really? Really?
It's a self-fullfilling prophecy. The more you run around with a "treat me equal you assholes" sign, the less you'll get it.
It's also because you want others to solve your problems for you. If you feel inferior, that's your problem, not mine. If you think you are verbally abused - do you even have one fucking clue what many male geeks went through in school? When you're complaining about a dirty joke to someone who has been bullied for a decade of his life, the fact that he's an introvert and insecure is the only reason he's not laughing straight in your face.
The world is a cruel place, accept it. Nobody here is perfect, and when you encounter enough human beings in your life, a considerable portion of them will be a) assholes, b) on a bad day, c) misunderstood or d) just as bitter about the world as you are.
If you want to make the world a better place - great! Maybe you should start with not blaming people who have been on the receiving end of a lot of that themselves. They could be your allies. As soon as you stop treating them like shit.
The whole point is women can't know a-priori who the good guys are and the penalty is being raped or killed. If only 1-2% of the guys are the bad apples (probably a bit low), then in a conference of 5000 men there are 50-100 who would do her harm.
This is utter and complete bullshit.
The high-end statistics (the ones that claim that 19% of women have experienced rape) come to this conclusion by re-defining "rape" as any kind of sexual abuse, including verbal.
Actual criminal statistics arrive at numbers like 0.2%, plus estimated half as many again that go unreported. However, more than half of those actual cases happen between partners or former partners. In other words: Breaking up with your boyfriend puts you at a much higher risk of being raped then going to a conference.
warning, math content below
Even for rapes committed by strangers (the smallest category, the 2nd largest after (ex)partners is friends or relatives), only a tiny percentage happen somewhere in the open, the total of all those categories (2% in bars, 3% outdoors, etc.) sums up to about 10% give or take a few. The by far largest number of rapes happen in either your or his/her (yes, women rape too, though it's only about 9% of the cases) home.
Taking everything into account, being in a public place with a large group of strangers is, from a risk-of-rape perspective, one of the safest places you could possibly be.
Summing up percentages, the probability of being raped (0.3%) by a stranger (~10%) somewhere in public (10%) is 0.003 * 0.1 * 0.1 = 0.003% ~= 1/33,000 lifetime risk.
The risk of being raped (0.3%) by a partner or ex-partner (~50%) in your or his home (ca. 30% each) is 0.003 * 0.5 * 0.6 = 0.09% ~= 1/1,000 lifetime risk.
So if you are a woman and you are worried about getting raped, look at your hubby, before you write a rant about the danger of nerd conferences.
Source: Go fucking Google it yourself, I did for an earlier reply but I'm too fucking lazy to dig it out again, doing the work you should've done before posting that drivel of yours.