Re:Deity does not help analyze things
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Bad Science Awards
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· Score: 1
My understanding was that for a new species to be formed, it would have to be divergent enough to be unable to mate with members of the original species. I'd agree that the likelihood of a random mutation this large resulting in a functioning organism is reather unlikey, but I'm pretty sure the current model calls for small changes that build up over time rather than large changes all at once. A billion years is a lot of generations, so a bunch of little things that are relatively innocuous on their own can combine in cool ways in a nice big gene pool like our planet.
Also, I'm doubting the generalization that mutation is always harmful. We're talking a huge data set here, so even if the general trend lies toward harm, there are going to be beneficial outliers, and natural selection will expand them, or propagate them, or whatever its called.
Uh... actually, we are talking about a criminal here... It's quite illegal to compromise government property in this fashion, I'd think.
It's not like NASA hired this kid to test their security. He enterd illegally. Had he done this with a physical building, and been shot by a resident, it would have been written off as a case of self-defense. There is not a whole lot of legal protection in place for trespassers.
Also, given your analogy, I'd say that expensive checks to ensure that none of the guns had been sabotaged are entirely in order, and making the criminal pay for them is pretty much appropriate.
Many people have (a) unlisted phone numbers as noted or (b) more than one telephone number/line per household. Thus any data collected in that way would probably be meaningless.
True. But, in all honesty, it seems their intent was to rob a few thousand people. There's always uncertainty about intent... after all, after they'd actually stolen a bunch of money, it would still be entirely possible that they intended to give it back. There has to be some point at which we conclude that actions are malefic, though, and I think these guys crossed it. Their actions are basically analogous to getting into the bank and having the safe open... "I wasn't going to take anything" should probably be interpreted as a lie.
Yeah, but from a legal standpoint, the stuff stolen all belonged to one entity in the case of embezzlement, etc, whereas each credit card acocunt belongs to a distinct legal entity.
Uh... the fact that it's the placebo effect that causes a drug to be effective doesn't change the fact that the drug was effective. It just means that the effectiveness of the drug is contingent on the gullibility of the user.
What? We're just going to take his word for it? He could have put that in there at any time:-P
Re:Deity does not help analyze things
on
Bad Science Awards
·
· Score: 1
(1) Natural selection occurs. It has been observed and measured. It's also the reason why penicillin does precisely jack medicinally nowadays, to use th emost obvious example.
(2) Mutations occur. People have bombarded things with radiation and caused genetic reorganization. Cancer, for instance, is a result of this: something has caused an alteration of the genetic structure of some cells controlling the reproductive bits.
Those are two of the main forms of evolution, so far as I know. Both tested, both entirely reproducible. Do I get a cookie or something?
I'm not entirely sure how "intelligent design" is differentiated from creationism. However, I know that creationism suffers from a lack of evidence, as new organisms, or for that matter any form of matter or energy, have not been observed to appear spontaneously from nothingness. Well, at least not to my knowledge.
(1) Nobody has yet managed to demonstrate the soundness of the logical system.... because 'soundness' is only defined in terms of the logical system, so any such attempt is begging the question.
(2) Any valid logical construct begins with an assumption, or several assumptions.
(3)Science is a logical construct based on assumptions about the reliability of human perception (both individually and as a group) and about the regularity of certain characteristics of the universe (the existence of universal laws).
(4) Personally I don't think the assumption that universal laws governing the behavior of the universe exist is any less silly in the end than the assumption that a powerful intelligence makes a conscious descision to make everything the way it is. In fact, the more I think about it, the less I'm sure that the assertions are actually any different.
On a personal level, though, gotta say that I prefer the traditional scientific viewpoint of "I have no idea what the hell is going on - lets find out" to the traditional religious viewpoint of "We already know all there is to know - fuck you". I can't honestly say this is any more than a personal preference born of social training, though.
Yeah, when looking at the results of actual psychological studies, you get things like "Some people kinda like to have sex on a regular basis". The reason it sounds like soft science is that the media has a lot easier time turning statements about human behavior into sensationalist pap. "Oh, my god! Everyone is the world is a nymphomainac! Morality is dead!" It's a lot harder to do that with chemistry or biology, though it has been done ("Oh, my god! The nuclear winter! It will kill us all!").
Meh, prison isn't supposed to rehabilitate anyone. It's supposed to serve as a deterrent to crime, and in the case of those who just don't get it, remove them from society permanently so that they cause no more damage.
The only reason we don't simply kill off the unredeemable ones, by the way, is a matter of making political principles align with each other: our particular government is designed to protect individual citizens at least to the extent of keeping them alive. In terms of the prison system itself, there's no ethical problem with frying up anyone who proves to be overly resistant to the lesson.
Oh, right, I almost forgot: Prisons are around so that personal level revenge-type justice doesn't come into prominence, i.e. we don't go find the home of the bastard who ruined our credit rating and blow him away with a shotgun. Not that there's anything wrong with that in principle, but vigilante justice tends to hit the wrong target, so the feds really can't let it reach that level.
Uh, they're not hurting anyone yet because they've been incarcerated. I don't want the policeman to stop holding back the guy trying to kill me with a knife because he 'hasn't hurt anyone yet', and I tend to apply the same philosophy to people attempting to take my money.
Yeah, ok, how about four hours for attempted theft. Fair 'nuff? Ok, then... let's see, four hours x the number of credit cards the store processed in the time period the software was present... yeah, i think this guy got off light.
A court ordered ban isn't meant to be a deterrent in itself. It's more of a "we're letting you off this time, as long as you're cooperative" type thing. Three strikes, save that there's only two. The deterrent is that if you're caught doing similar things again, there will be no mercy, regardless of the severity of the crime.
Hm, in Texas, at least, I believe it's perfectly legal to shoot trespassers, though preferable if you warn them first. The only recent court case I recall involving a man shooting a burglar was not, in fact, over the fact that he had shot someone: he was penalized for the fact that he set up a mantrap involving a gun, some string, and a doorknob.
So there you have it: shoot burglars: a-ok. Set up an automatic, deadly mechanism that could potentially kill a policeman or firefighter with a good reason to be there, and you're going to jail. And, uh, also an idiot.
Of course, I can't be entirely certain the laws are still set up this way, but I'd think someone would have brought it up had they changed.
Ok, if you put it that way, then I guess the duty comes out more on the lines of "know enough to judge who actually knows what they're doing". For instance, simple empirical test tell me that the 'expert' who tells me what the wether is going to be like tomorrow is unreliable at best, making his analyses useless. Likewise, I know that I can trust the guy who built my house on how to build houses, because my house hasn't fallen down yet. The ideal, the state to be achieved, is to be educated enough in the everything to be able to make that kind of call with everyone.
Yeah, it's practically impossible. But I'm getting closer every day. And if I can't judge the reliability of my source, I just refrain from judging the analysis as well.
In all honesty, you seem to do the same thing, you just have a more regular criterion for trusting people's judgement. If "it's their *job* to study it" then you accept. I guess that's more efficient than my way, but I'm going to hold off on adopting it, as it would force me to become a member of at least 100 different religious groups. After all, it's the *job* of a fundamentalist southern baptist preacher to tell me what god wants, but I'm still not entirely certain of his assessment that the world will be a better place if we burn out all the gays and non-whites.
Americans have modified the language from UK english at least as much as the UK modified it from latin and old english. Probably more, given expansions in technical vocabulary since the 1800s and our predilection for turning slang and acronyms into common-use words. In fact, a bunch of our slang has been adopted by the Europeans in their futile quest to understand what the hell we're talking about.
Also, the ACS is a private organization that makes money by distributing information, so they owe us and our governments nothing beyond what is set out in law.
Now all of us ChemEs who keep track of Google are aware of the SciFinder product. And you didn't even need to win the suit to do it! I salute you, you clever bastards!
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My understanding was that for a new species to be formed, it would have to be divergent enough to be unable to mate with members of the original species. I'd agree that the likelihood of a random mutation this large resulting in a functioning organism is reather unlikey, but I'm pretty sure the current model calls for small changes that build up over time rather than large changes all at once. A billion years is a lot of generations, so a bunch of little things that are relatively innocuous on their own can combine in cool ways in a nice big gene pool like our planet.
Also, I'm doubting the generalization that mutation is always harmful. We're talking a huge data set here, so even if the general trend lies toward harm, there are going to be beneficial outliers, and natural selection will expand them, or propagate them, or whatever its called.
Uh... actually, we are talking about a criminal here... It's quite illegal to compromise government property in this fashion, I'd think.
It's not like NASA hired this kid to test their security. He enterd illegally. Had he done this with a physical building, and been shot by a resident, it would have been written off as a case of self-defense. There is not a whole lot of legal protection in place for trespassers.
Also, given your analogy, I'd say that expensive checks to ensure that none of the guns had been sabotaged are entirely in order, and making the criminal pay for them is pretty much appropriate.
Many people have (a) unlisted phone numbers as noted or (b) more than one telephone number/line per household. Thus any data collected in that way would probably be meaningless.
It was a decent guess, though.
True. But, in all honesty, it seems their intent was to rob a few thousand people. There's always uncertainty about intent... after all, after they'd actually stolen a bunch of money, it would still be entirely possible that they intended to give it back. There has to be some point at which we conclude that actions are malefic, though, and I think these guys crossed it. Their actions are basically analogous to getting into the bank and having the safe open... "I wasn't going to take anything" should probably be interpreted as a lie.
The guy holding a knife wasn't toting a nuke capable of levelling a small city, either. What's your point?
Yeah, but from a legal standpoint, the stuff stolen all belonged to one entity in the case of embezzlement, etc, whereas each credit card acocunt belongs to a distinct legal entity.
Uh... the fact that it's the placebo effect that causes a drug to be effective doesn't change the fact that the drug was effective. It just means that the effectiveness of the drug is contingent on the gullibility of the user.
What? We're just going to take his word for it? He could have put that in there at any time :-P
(1) Natural selection occurs. It has been observed and measured. It's also the reason why penicillin does precisely jack medicinally nowadays, to use th emost obvious example.
(2) Mutations occur. People have bombarded things with radiation and caused genetic reorganization. Cancer, for instance, is a result of this: something has caused an alteration of the genetic structure of some cells controlling the reproductive bits.
Those are two of the main forms of evolution, so far as I know. Both tested, both entirely reproducible. Do I get a cookie or something?
I'm not entirely sure how "intelligent design" is differentiated from creationism. However, I know that creationism suffers from a lack of evidence, as new organisms, or for that matter any form of matter or energy, have not been observed to appear spontaneously from nothingness. Well, at least not to my knowledge.
(1) Nobody has yet managed to demonstrate the soundness of the logical system.... because 'soundness' is only defined in terms of the logical system, so any such attempt is begging the question.
(2) Any valid logical construct begins with an assumption, or several assumptions.
(3)Science is a logical construct based on assumptions about the reliability of human perception (both individually and as a group) and about the regularity of certain characteristics of the universe (the existence of universal laws).
(4) Personally I don't think the assumption that universal laws governing the behavior of the universe exist is any less silly in the end than the assumption that a powerful intelligence makes a conscious descision to make everything the way it is. In fact, the more I think about it, the less I'm sure that the assertions are actually any different.
On a personal level, though, gotta say that I prefer the traditional scientific viewpoint of "I have no idea what the hell is going on - lets find out" to the traditional religious viewpoint of "We already know all there is to know - fuck you". I can't honestly say this is any more than a personal preference born of social training, though.
Yeah, when looking at the results of actual psychological studies, you get things like "Some people kinda like to have sex on a regular basis". The reason it sounds like soft science is that the media has a lot easier time turning statements about human behavior into sensationalist pap. "Oh, my god! Everyone is the world is a nymphomainac! Morality is dead!" It's a lot harder to do that with chemistry or biology, though it has been done ("Oh, my god! The nuclear winter! It will kill us all!").
And if you didn't vote for them, nobody must've. ;)
stealing from a company = one victim = one crime
stealing thousands of credit card numbers = thousands of victims = thousands of crimes
I guess number of crimes wins over magnitude of crimes.
Hey, guys, watch this!
and they didn't even get any credit card information
But, officer, the squad defused the bomb I planted under the orphanidge! I shouldn't be punished for something I didn't do!
Meh, prison isn't supposed to rehabilitate anyone. It's supposed to serve as a deterrent to crime, and in the case of those who just don't get it, remove them from society permanently so that they cause no more damage.
The only reason we don't simply kill off the unredeemable ones, by the way, is a matter of making political principles align with each other: our particular government is designed to protect individual citizens at least to the extent of keeping them alive. In terms of the prison system itself, there's no ethical problem with frying up anyone who proves to be overly resistant to the lesson.
Oh, right, I almost forgot: Prisons are around so that personal level revenge-type justice doesn't come into prominence, i.e. we don't go find the home of the bastard who ruined our credit rating and blow him away with a shotgun. Not that there's anything wrong with that in principle, but vigilante justice tends to hit the wrong target, so the feds really can't let it reach that level.
Uh, they're not hurting anyone yet because they've been incarcerated. I don't want the policeman to stop holding back the guy trying to kill me with a knife because he 'hasn't hurt anyone yet', and I tend to apply the same philosophy to people attempting to take my money.
Yeah, ok, how about four hours for attempted theft. Fair 'nuff? Ok, then... let's see, four hours x the number of credit cards the store processed in the time period the software was present... yeah, i think this guy got off light.
Actually, banning people from the electrical grid would be a highly effective punishment if it could be enforced. We should go for it.
In the case of a pedophile, they won't have a child in school. At least, not after they're convicted.
Seems fair enough to me.
A court ordered ban isn't meant to be a deterrent in itself. It's more of a "we're letting you off this time, as long as you're cooperative" type thing. Three strikes, save that there's only two. The deterrent is that if you're caught doing similar things again, there will be no mercy, regardless of the severity of the crime.
Hm, in Texas, at least, I believe it's perfectly legal to shoot trespassers, though preferable if you warn them first. The only recent court case I recall involving a man shooting a burglar was not, in fact, over the fact that he had shot someone: he was penalized for the fact that he set up a mantrap involving a gun, some string, and a doorknob.
So there you have it: shoot burglars: a-ok. Set up an automatic, deadly mechanism that could potentially kill a policeman or firefighter with a good reason to be there, and you're going to jail. And, uh, also an idiot.
Of course, I can't be entirely certain the laws are still set up this way, but I'd think someone would have brought it up had they changed.
Ok, if you put it that way, then I guess the duty comes out more on the lines of "know enough to judge who actually knows what they're doing". For instance, simple empirical test tell me that the 'expert' who tells me what the wether is going to be like tomorrow is unreliable at best, making his analyses useless. Likewise, I know that I can trust the guy who built my house on how to build houses, because my house hasn't fallen down yet. The ideal, the state to be achieved, is to be educated enough in the everything to be able to make that kind of call with everyone.
Yeah, it's practically impossible. But I'm getting closer every day. And if I can't judge the reliability of my source, I just refrain from judging the analysis as well.
In all honesty, you seem to do the same thing, you just have a more regular criterion for trusting people's judgement. If "it's their *job* to study it" then you accept. I guess that's more efficient than my way, but I'm going to hold off on adopting it, as it would force me to become a member of at least 100 different religious groups. After all, it's the *job* of a fundamentalist southern baptist preacher to tell me what god wants, but I'm still not entirely certain of his assessment that the world will be a better place if we burn out all the gays and non-whites.
Just my 2 cents, eh.
Americans have modified the language from UK english at least as much as the UK modified it from latin and old english. Probably more, given expansions in technical vocabulary since the 1800s and our predilection for turning slang and acronyms into common-use words. In fact, a bunch of our slang has been adopted by the Europeans in their futile quest to understand what the hell we're talking about.
Also, the ACS is a private organization that makes money by distributing information, so they owe us and our governments nothing beyond what is set out in law.
Now all of us ChemEs who keep track of Google are aware of the SciFinder product. And you didn't even need to win the suit to do it! I salute you, you clever bastards!