The atheists I know are good moral individuals, intelligent, however they mistrust Christianity.
Yes, it's interesting you should mention that. I've come across a few American atheists like that who seem to have become atheist by specifically rejecting Christianity. I'm more of a second generation atheist myself, my parents gave it up through apathy more or less and I was raised without religion in a society where religion is a private matter and isn't taught in schools or anything. Religion is very much a non-issue for me, but I find it very interesting from a philosophical perspective.
It's very interesting the range of views people have about atheism - atheists included. Morals, for instance. There are narrow minded people who will say that atheists should be amoral because they have no higher power to answer to if they do wrong in life; some atheists will reply that, because there is no special authority which can forgive them, they must hold themselves to stricter morals and make right in the world rather than trusting someone else to fix it. It's all very interesting.
Anecdote: I once knew a Christian (evangelical) who said I was the kindest, most moral atheist he'd ever met:) I nearly punched* him for it - it's like saying that someone is very well spoken for a black person.
I've never been very impressed by Pascal's wager; any action you take because of it must assume some details about what God wants you to do. If those details are supported by evidence then there is some evidence for God, and Pascal's wager is unnecessary. If those details are unsupported, then you have no reason to act on them instead of the infinite number of other things God might want you to do which are equally unsupported. Personally, I think God would be annoyed that you were trying to game the system rather than live a good life;)
Sorry I forgot to mention that I also favor as atheist in the strict sense.
Fair enough, and I think I agree with your comments on that.
And thank you, religion is often a touchy subject and it's been very pleasant to talk to you.
*Actually, by 'nearly punched' I mean that I tried not to giggle at how obliviously rude he was being. His tone clearly meant that he was surprised and pleased by how nice I am despite being an evil atheist. What a backhanded compliment!
There is NO WAY logically in any philosophical debate that you can disprove or prove God, it is impossible...
Agreed.
...therefore atheism is just as much a religion and based on faith as any deity based belief.
That depends on a strict definition of atheism, which is currently out of favour in the modern world.
Sorry if I'm retreading old ground for you, but I consider myself strictly agnostic but functionally atheist. I act in every was as if God does not exist, but I know His existence cannot be disproven and I would be open to convincing evidence. I think this puts me in line with a large body of modern 'atheists'. Are you referring to strict/positive atheism, or would you say I am acting on faith also?
The terminology is vague though. I refer to myself as an atheist even though I might be agnostic in the strict sense. I no more believe in God than I do in unicorns, but I know I can't disprove the existence of either. Due to lack of evidence I am functionally atheist and referring to myself as agnostic implies that I wonder about the existence of God - I don't, any more than I wonder about the existence of unicorns.
Disregarding the melodrama of the GP, I know of several good reasons to measure CO_2 throughout the atmosphere and I'm sure the actual scientists know some more.
The atmosphere is actually quite complex, with different layers and surprisingly little mixing between different levels. I mostly know about the southern ozone hole, being from New Zealand which is still pretty fucked by it. The CFCs which destroyed the ozone were released all over the world - mostly in the northern hemisphere even, since that's where the majority of the population is. However the southern polar vortex is the major cause of mixing between the lower and upper atmosphere, so as the CFCs drifted down to Antarctica they were ejected to the upper atmosphere - where the ozone layer is - and reacted with the ozone there eating a big hole in it.
Similarly, CO_2 is released a ground level, but what effect does it have in different layers of the atmosphere? How fast does distribution to different layers occur? With a satellite which could measure this we could build up a body of data correlating CO_2 concentrations in different parts of the atmosphere with climate change and characterise the movement of CO_2 concentrations through the system, giving us an idea of the lead-in time for CO_2 climate change.
As for why CO_2 is important: it's one variable in a complex equation but it's the one we're directly fiddling with.
My prediction: Nasa will launch another satellite, and the research project will be set back 6 months. Yawn.
It's a particular capitalisation style. To shamelessly repeat someone else's response from last time this came up: the BBC style does not capitalise acronyms which are pronounced as words. [radar] would not be capitalised because it's a pronounced word which happens to be an acronym. [Nasa] has the first letter capitalised because it's used as a proper noun. [BBC] is all capitalised because it's an acronym pronounced B.B.C.
I was fortunate enough to be working with general practitioners during the bird flu scare, and between high school biology and the catch-up courses being run for the doctors about bird flu at the time I have a decent working knowledge of the subject.
In brief: please provide links for your paranoid delusions, I'd enjoy the read.
most of the affected people who got it were vaccinated, which also explains why the victims were mostly young adults, usually unaffected by these types of infectious diseases.
The flu variant believed to be responsible for the 1918 pandemic killed by causing a cytokine storm (wiki it yourself) - the host immune system overreacts and kills the host. Of course this is most effective against otherwise healthy people with a strong immune system that can really kick some ass... against their own body.
The so called bird flu is not inherently a virus either.
Yes it is. It's widely studied. All flu viruses are of avian origin and most of them can't even infect pigs and humans, the secondary carriers. The ones that can can be very deadly against humans because while human-specific diseases can't be deadly enough to kill their hosts often or the virus won't have anywhere to live, avian flu can persist as a minor annoyance in bird populations then leap out to massacre some humans from time to time.
there will be a forced vaccination of the whole population done in 2 phases (1 being optional with the suggestion that there is a limited supply of vaccine to maximize profits, second will be the forced vaccination of the whole population).
You suggest that the pharmaceutical industry has duped the entire medical profession into believing in a disease that doesn't even exist, and will inject the entire population with a potentially lethal disease causing agent, causing massive global economic collapse simply because they can get paid for every unit they produce? No comment.
This next generation of mice also had better memory, despite having the genetic defect and never having been exposed to the enriched environment.
I'm going to give the researchers the benefit of the doubt here and assume they found something apart from that the second generation were raised by smarter parents.
Lamarckian inheritance is very interesting and isn't a particularly stupid idea, apart from the fact that it doesn't match real world genetics. Because biological organisms have their phenotype largely specified by DNA, a parent would need to have their acquired characteristics transcribed back into their DNA somehow to pass it on - doesn't happen.
But before you forget about Lamarckian inheritance as just another idea that doesn't work, consider how many non-genetic acquired characteristics are passed on from generation to generation. Language, society, and knowledge in humans, and behaviours like hunting and bird songs in animals. Acquired characteristics ARE passed on, but not genetically. Influential teachers can pass their characteristics on far more widely than the most prodigious parents.
Using phrases like "Darwinian selection" or "Darwinian evolution" implies there must be another kind of evolution at work, a process that can be described with another adjective.
Harrumph. Of course there are other kinds of evolution. I compared Darwinian and Lamarckian* evolution in my AI course at university. The curiosity is that Darwinian evolution is what we observe in the world around us. I demonstrated that Darwinian evolution is superior to Lamarckian evolution in some situations involving environments which change within each generation.
*Lamarckian: A blacksmith's son is strong because his father developed such great muscles and if you cut the tails off mice you can breed tail-less mice from them. I think Pratchett mentions it from time to time. In Darwinian evolution, genotype is inherited. In Lamarckian evolution, phenotype is inherited.
(yes, I know that was a quote from the article not the parent - what, you think I actually read the article myself?)
Anecdote: just today I discovered that on my eeepc 901 (windows) when you create a new.doc it tries to open by default with MS Works, which then crashes because it thinks the file is malformed. Ah, MS Works, how I love thee.
Several years ago my boss asked me to test some locked down computers for data entry temps to use (no internet web browsing). IE was locked down tight, but ftp still worked fine so in 5 minutes I was merrily reading slashdot.
Corollary: If I'm going to join someone's empire, I'd prefer to pick the one with the nice guy in charge.
It all depends what you mean by 'nice' of course. Good leadership, like "our successes belong to the team, our failures belong to me" and acquiring the support and resources your team needs to do their job well could be considered 'nice'. It sure would be nice. *wistful look*
I work damned hard to earn money so I can buy the stuff I want.
Very few people can just work harder to get more money. I bet there's still stuff you want that you can't afford. There's also the problem of selling to different economies. If, in Malaysia, you can buy dinner out for US$1, who would buy a DVD for US$30?
learn to accept the fact that not everyone on earth can have everything they want all of the time.
Ah, but everyone on earth could have every item of digital media they want - it's all artificial scarcity once the item is created. As I'm sure you are acutely aware, the problem is fairly compensating the creators. Perhaps a subscription service could work; a service where the user pays a flat fee and content creators are compensated in proportion to how many minutes users spend using their work. Pie in the sky for now, but I hope to see such a service one day.
Briefly, the problem is finding someone with low enough skill that you can learn from playing against them. Being pwned isn't just an ego slap, if your opponent is too far above you you can't learn from the experience.
Playing tennis for the first time is useless unless you do something like joining a new players intake at a tennis club. When you start a new hobby it's usual to have other players at the same level or at least friendly opponents who will play training games with you, kindly pointing out when you do something dumb so you can learn from it. I haven't heard of an online game yet that can successfully match players of the same skill level, and there aren't many (any?) players willing to train up a noob they'll never meet again.
I played and enjoyed Dawn of War, a while after the Winter Assault expansion came out and it was in the bargain bin. Playing online was useless for me though; most online players had months of experience since the game wasn't new and the skill rating system in the online lobby was horribly broken at that point. Not sure if it ever got any better. I didn't have any IRL friends who played, so I enjoyed skirmish mode for a while then shelved it.
it can't be smaller, faster and cheaper. If you think about all the fuel that has to be carried, as well as the weapons and instruments, you'll end up with something as big and costly as the F-22 anyways.
How does that work? I won't pretend I know anything about aircraft, but if you take an F-22 and remove all of the pilot support and just transmit to a ground station instead how is it not going to be smaller and potentially more manoeuverable since the pilot can't black out? Faster and cheaper may be side effects.
If you're just arguing that the size of comparable UAV would have to be on the same order of magnitude as an F-22 I might agree with you.
Most people in the world don't move from country to country do they? Don't most people stay their live (aside from vacation) in the country of birth? Gay or straight?
Many people move to the most lucrative economy where they can get a work permit, particularly when young and unattached. If you're in America you probably see almost entirely people coming in. I'm in London and there's hardly an Englishman to be seen because anyone from the EU can work here (No, I'm not English either. Yes, I'm part of the problem. Yes, I'm being bigoted for effect)
Sorry, I guess my comment was redundant. I looked downthread for replies about minority/most... guess I didn't look far enough;) congratulations on getting so many replies.
Most gays are usually quite well educated... Gays are a minority in America. They're not a minority in higher-level jobs requiring an education.
Didn't you just say that the majority of highly educated workers are gay? Am I misreading something? Are we using a definition of 'minority' I'm not familiar with?
I find it offensive* that you're making gross generalisations about gay people, positive or not. My experience of homosexuals has been that they are people like any others, who find members of the same sex sexually attractive. Since any statistics on homosexuality will be based on self reporting, I think they would show how comfortable different demographics feel about revealing their sexuality more than anything else.
*Not very offensive. This is the internet. If I was actually offended that easily my head would have exploded some time in 1997.
Slashdot Mirror
OR BOTH, mister smarty pants lawyer! Didn't think of that didja?
I think you mean a facebook group claiming to own all and only facebook groups that do not own themselves.
Yes, it's interesting you should mention that. I've come across a few American atheists like that who seem to have become atheist by specifically rejecting Christianity. I'm more of a second generation atheist myself, my parents gave it up through apathy more or less and I was raised without religion in a society where religion is a private matter and isn't taught in schools or anything. Religion is very much a non-issue for me, but I find it very interesting from a philosophical perspective.
It's very interesting the range of views people have about atheism - atheists included. Morals, for instance. There are narrow minded people who will say that atheists should be amoral because they have no higher power to answer to if they do wrong in life; some atheists will reply that, because there is no special authority which can forgive them, they must hold themselves to stricter morals and make right in the world rather than trusting someone else to fix it. It's all very interesting.
Anecdote: I once knew a Christian (evangelical) who said I was the kindest, most moral atheist he'd ever met :) I nearly punched* him for it - it's like saying that someone is very well spoken for a black person.
I've never been very impressed by Pascal's wager; any action you take because of it must assume some details about what God wants you to do. If those details are supported by evidence then there is some evidence for God, and Pascal's wager is unnecessary. If those details are unsupported, then you have no reason to act on them instead of the infinite number of other things God might want you to do which are equally unsupported. Personally, I think God would be annoyed that you were trying to game the system rather than live a good life ;)
Fair enough, and I think I agree with your comments on that.
And thank you, religion is often a touchy subject and it's been very pleasant to talk to you.
*Actually, by 'nearly punched' I mean that I tried not to giggle at how obliviously rude he was being. His tone clearly meant that he was surprised and pleased by how nice I am despite being an evil atheist. What a backhanded compliment!
It makes me sad to see you so upset, I feel compelled to have you nerve stapled.
Agreed.
That depends on a strict definition of atheism, which is currently out of favour in the modern world.
Sorry if I'm retreading old ground for you, but I consider myself strictly agnostic but functionally atheist. I act in every was as if God does not exist, but I know His existence cannot be disproven and I would be open to convincing evidence. I think this puts me in line with a large body of modern 'atheists'. Are you referring to strict/positive atheism, or would you say I am acting on faith also?
The terminology is vague though. I refer to myself as an atheist even though I might be agnostic in the strict sense. I no more believe in God than I do in unicorns, but I know I can't disprove the existence of either. Due to lack of evidence I am functionally atheist and referring to myself as agnostic implies that I wonder about the existence of God - I don't, any more than I wonder about the existence of unicorns.
Farnsworth paracusia?
Pardon me, you're right of course and I should have been more careful with casual usage when I was trying to make a point.
Ah, that sucks. My mistake. Much less exciting than I thought.
Disregarding the melodrama of the GP, I know of several good reasons to measure CO_2 throughout the atmosphere and I'm sure the actual scientists know some more.
The atmosphere is actually quite complex, with different layers and surprisingly little mixing between different levels. I mostly know about the southern ozone hole, being from New Zealand which is still pretty fucked by it. The CFCs which destroyed the ozone were released all over the world - mostly in the northern hemisphere even, since that's where the majority of the population is. However the southern polar vortex is the major cause of mixing between the lower and upper atmosphere, so as the CFCs drifted down to Antarctica they were ejected to the upper atmosphere - where the ozone layer is - and reacted with the ozone there eating a big hole in it.
Similarly, CO_2 is released a ground level, but what effect does it have in different layers of the atmosphere? How fast does distribution to different layers occur? With a satellite which could measure this we could build up a body of data correlating CO_2 concentrations in different parts of the atmosphere with climate change and characterise the movement of CO_2 concentrations through the system, giving us an idea of the lead-in time for CO_2 climate change.
As for why CO_2 is important: it's one variable in a complex equation but it's the one we're directly fiddling with.
My prediction: Nasa will launch another satellite, and the research project will be set back 6 months. Yawn.
It's a particular capitalisation style. To shamelessly repeat someone else's response from last time this came up: the BBC style does not capitalise acronyms which are pronounced as words. [radar] would not be capitalised because it's a pronounced word which happens to be an acronym. [Nasa] has the first letter capitalised because it's used as a proper noun. [BBC] is all capitalised because it's an acronym pronounced B.B.C.
The greatest pain of reading at +4 is that when something like this comes up I can't mod it any higher. I salute you, sir.
I was fortunate enough to be working with general practitioners during the bird flu scare, and between high school biology and the catch-up courses being run for the doctors about bird flu at the time I have a decent working knowledge of the subject.
In brief: please provide links for your paranoid delusions, I'd enjoy the read.
The flu variant believed to be responsible for the 1918 pandemic killed by causing a cytokine storm (wiki it yourself) - the host immune system overreacts and kills the host. Of course this is most effective against otherwise healthy people with a strong immune system that can really kick some ass... against their own body.
Yes it is. It's widely studied. All flu viruses are of avian origin and most of them can't even infect pigs and humans, the secondary carriers. The ones that can can be very deadly against humans because while human-specific diseases can't be deadly enough to kill their hosts often or the virus won't have anywhere to live, avian flu can persist as a minor annoyance in bird populations then leap out to massacre some humans from time to time.
You suggest that the pharmaceutical industry has duped the entire medical profession into believing in a disease that doesn't even exist, and will inject the entire population with a potentially lethal disease causing agent, causing massive global economic collapse simply because they can get paid for every unit they produce? No comment.
I'm going to give the researchers the benefit of the doubt here and assume they found something apart from that the second generation were raised by smarter parents.
Lamarckian inheritance is very interesting and isn't a particularly stupid idea, apart from the fact that it doesn't match real world genetics. Because biological organisms have their phenotype largely specified by DNA, a parent would need to have their acquired characteristics transcribed back into their DNA somehow to pass it on - doesn't happen.
But before you forget about Lamarckian inheritance as just another idea that doesn't work, consider how many non-genetic acquired characteristics are passed on from generation to generation. Language, society, and knowledge in humans, and behaviours like hunting and bird songs in animals. Acquired characteristics ARE passed on, but not genetically. Influential teachers can pass their characteristics on far more widely than the most prodigious parents.
Harrumph. Of course there are other kinds of evolution. I compared Darwinian and Lamarckian* evolution in my AI course at university. The curiosity is that Darwinian evolution is what we observe in the world around us. I demonstrated that Darwinian evolution is superior to Lamarckian evolution in some situations involving environments which change within each generation.
*Lamarckian: A blacksmith's son is strong because his father developed such great muscles and if you cut the tails off mice you can breed tail-less mice from them. I think Pratchett mentions it from time to time. In Darwinian evolution, genotype is inherited. In Lamarckian evolution, phenotype is inherited.
(yes, I know that was a quote from the article not the parent - what, you think I actually read the article myself?)
Anecdote: just today I discovered that on my eeepc 901 (windows) when you create a new .doc it tries to open by default with MS Works, which then crashes because it thinks the file is malformed. Ah, MS Works, how I love thee.
ftp download.opera.com!
Several years ago my boss asked me to test some locked down computers for data entry temps to use (no internet web browsing). IE was locked down tight, but ftp still worked fine so in 5 minutes I was merrily reading slashdot.
Obama's first act is to shut down DC for two days? Truly, our saviour is here! ;)
Corollary: If I'm going to join someone's empire, I'd prefer to pick the one with the nice guy in charge.
It all depends what you mean by 'nice' of course. Good leadership, like "our successes belong to the team, our failures belong to me" and acquiring the support and resources your team needs to do their job well could be considered 'nice'. It sure would be nice. *wistful look*
For the sake of argument...
Very few people can just work harder to get more money. I bet there's still stuff you want that you can't afford. There's also the problem of selling to different economies. If, in Malaysia, you can buy dinner out for US$1, who would buy a DVD for US$30?
Ah, but everyone on earth could have every item of digital media they want - it's all artificial scarcity once the item is created. As I'm sure you are acutely aware, the problem is fairly compensating the creators. Perhaps a subscription service could work; a service where the user pays a flat fee and content creators are compensated in proportion to how many minutes users spend using their work. Pie in the sky for now, but I hope to see such a service one day.
Briefly, the problem is finding someone with low enough skill that you can learn from playing against them. Being pwned isn't just an ego slap, if your opponent is too far above you you can't learn from the experience.
Playing tennis for the first time is useless unless you do something like joining a new players intake at a tennis club. When you start a new hobby it's usual to have other players at the same level or at least friendly opponents who will play training games with you, kindly pointing out when you do something dumb so you can learn from it. I haven't heard of an online game yet that can successfully match players of the same skill level, and there aren't many (any?) players willing to train up a noob they'll never meet again.
I played and enjoyed Dawn of War, a while after the Winter Assault expansion came out and it was in the bargain bin. Playing online was useless for me though; most online players had months of experience since the game wasn't new and the skill rating system in the online lobby was horribly broken at that point. Not sure if it ever got any better. I didn't have any IRL friends who played, so I enjoyed skirmish mode for a while then shelved it.
How does that work? I won't pretend I know anything about aircraft, but if you take an F-22 and remove all of the pilot support and just transmit to a ground station instead how is it not going to be smaller and potentially more manoeuverable since the pilot can't black out? Faster and cheaper may be side effects.
If you're just arguing that the size of comparable UAV would have to be on the same order of magnitude as an F-22 I might agree with you.
Many people move to the most lucrative economy where they can get a work permit, particularly when young and unattached. If you're in America you probably see almost entirely people coming in. I'm in London and there's hardly an Englishman to be seen because anyone from the EU can work here (No, I'm not English either. Yes, I'm part of the problem. Yes, I'm being bigoted for effect)
Sorry, I guess my comment was redundant. I looked downthread for replies about minority/most... guess I didn't look far enough ;) congratulations on getting so many replies.
Didn't you just say that the majority of highly educated workers are gay? Am I misreading something? Are we using a definition of 'minority' I'm not familiar with?
I find it offensive* that you're making gross generalisations about gay people, positive or not. My experience of homosexuals has been that they are people like any others, who find members of the same sex sexually attractive. Since any statistics on homosexuality will be based on self reporting, I think they would show how comfortable different demographics feel about revealing their sexuality more than anything else.
*Not very offensive. This is the internet. If I was actually offended that easily my head would have exploded some time in 1997.