Really, between this and the magic battery stickers (not to mention everyone's misunderstanding of biology and physics), I think we've got conclusive evidence that Slashdot has jumped the shark. Anyone have suggestions for other tech news sites, ones which can differentiate science and pseudoscience?
...I'll teach my clones about the scientific method and make sure they vote (and post on Slashdot) with their brains and not their Bibles. Seriously, people, no one will attempt to clone a human baby until we've made damn sure that we know what we're doing. All genetic research != cloning a human baby.
Alex Chiu devlops a ring which grants immortality, homeopathy can preserve the effects of chemicals even when diluted to less than one molecule per world's oceans' worth of water, and scientology can help you get rid of evil body theatens.
Actually, in addition to the similarities you noted, both stories were posted at the exact same time. Literally the only difference is the date. This makes me wonder if there wasn't some sort of software error that somehow duplicated the post. Either that, or samzenpus decided to make the most dupeful dupe in the history of/.
The data is everything after the '3.' on one line, bzipped.
So, in order to reduce the space on the CD, they bzipped it? I could see that helping for the search code, etc., but for pi itself, isn't it impossible to represent it in less space than it already takes without actually using a mathematical formula which defines pi? I would think the only way to actually save space would be to use some non-ASCII encoding scheme such that each byte could hold two digits, not one. Or encode it in hexadecimal, and use five bits per digit.
...Because science admits it can't know everything. While you claim to know exactly how everything worked. (That is, you say "God did everything," which (according to you) is an explanation for everything.) And you guys always talk about fallability and humility.
Evolution doesn't claim to explain abiogenesis. That isn't to say that we have no ideas about how abiogenesis could have occured; rather, we admit the evidence on that one is a whole lot weaker than for evolution. If you want, you can have your "God of the gaps" do it, at least until the data improves.
What was that classic saying? "Old people tend to be more religious because they're cramming for the final exam." Besides, what does one person's opinion matter?
From what I remember of high school science, the first chapter of the text was always titled "What is Science?", and discussed how all scientific theories are just hypotheses which explain a whole bunch of observations. The repetition sort of annoyed me at the time, but judging from the state of science education in America today, more of it may be needed.
A scientific theory is defined as a scientific hypothesis which has gained a large ammount of support from a variety of different sources. Note, however, that nowhere in this definition did I use the word "truth." In fact, science never uses the word "truth." After all, we could all be massively deluded by Decartes's "evil genius." We could all be brains in vats. All science does is say that, assuming that there is an external reality and that we can make consistant observations of it, a given theory is the best explanation currently thought up to explain the observations. Thus, scientists know that their theories are not true in some abstract sense; all scientific theories are just models to explain the data. Note that this entire discussion applies to the Theory of Relativity, the Germ Theory of Disease, the Theory of Electromagnatism, the Theory of Heliocentricism, etc. Evolution is just as well supported as any other scienfitic theory; in fact, I would suggest that it is better supported than, say, relativity or quantum theory, both of which we know can't explain certain observations.
Old scientific theories aren't "considered bunk," they're just "considered supplanted by better theories which fit the data better." As soon as you can come up with a scientific theory (hint: it must be falsifiable) which explains all the data better than evolution, you can complain. Simply saying "Evolution doesn't perfectly explain this one data point!" doesn't count.
Let me rephrase that. I linked to the sub-section of the "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution" page which describes the word "evidences." This page is what I'd been hoping for.
In other words, the "Preview" button is there for a reason.
Also from that list, I greatly liked Michael Shermer's piece:
I believe, but cannot prove...that reality exists over and above human and social constructions of that reality. Science as a method, and naturalism as a philosophy, together form the best tool we have for understanding that reality. Because science is cumulative--that is, it builds on itself in a progressive fashion--we can strive to achieve an ever-greater understanding of reality. Our knowledge of nature remains provisional because we can never know if we have final Truth. Because science is a human activity and nature is complex and dynamic, fuzzy logic and fractional probabilities best describe both nature and the estimations of our approximation toward understanding that nature.
There is no such thing as the paranormal and the supernatural; there is only the normal and the natural and mysteries we have yet to explain.
What separates science from all other human activities is its belief in the provisional nature of all conclusions. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is the heart of its limitation. It is also its greatest strength. There are, from this ultimate unprovable assertion, three additional insoluble derivatives.
1. There is no God, intelligent designer, or anything resembling the divinity as proffered by the world's religions (although an extra-terrestrial being of significantly greater intelligence and power than us would be indistinguishable from God).
After thousands of years of the world's greatest minds attempting to prove or disprove the divinity's existence or nonexistence, with little agreement or consensus amongst scholars as to the divinity's ultimate state of being, a reasonable conclusion is that the God question can never be solved and that one's belief, disbelief, or skepticism ultimately rests on a non-rational basis.
2. The universe is ultimately determined, but we have free will.
As with the God question, scholars of considerable intellectual power for many millennia have failed to resolve the paradox of feeling free in a determined universe. One provisional solution is to think of the universe as so complex that the number of causes and the complexity of their interactions make the predetermination of human action pragmatically impossible. We can even put a figure on the causal net of the universe to see just how absurd it is to think we can get our minds around it fully.
It has been computed that in order for a computer in the far future of the universe to resurrect in a virtual reality every person who ever lived or could have lived, with all causal interactions between themselves and their environment, it would need 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123 bits (a 1 followed by 10^123 zeros) of memory. Suffice it to say that no computer within the conceivable future will achieve this level of power; likewise no human brain even comes close.
The enormity of this complexity leads us to feel as if we are acting freely as uncaused causers, even though we are actually causally determined. Since no set of causes we select as the determiners of human action can be complete, the feeling of freedom arises out of this ignorance of causes. To that extent we may act as if we are free. There is much to gain, little to lose, and personal responsibility follows.
3. Morality is the natural outcome of evolutionary and historical forces, not divine command.
The moral feelings of doing the right thing (such as virtuousness) or doing the wrong thing (such as guilt) were generated by nature as part of human evolution.
Although cultures differ on what they define as right and wrong, the moral feelings of doing the right or wrong thing are universal to all humans. Human universals are pervasive and powerful, and include at their core the fact that we are, by nature, moral and immoral, good and evil, altruistic and selfish, cooperative and competitive, peaceful and bellicose, virtuous
Only by stating the evolution (or creationism) is merely a strongly (weakly) supported scientific theory
Creationism isn't a "weakly supported scientific theory*." It isn't even a "completely unsupported scientific hypothesis." In order to be scientific, it needs to be, in principle, falsifiable (among other things.) If you can insert "God works in mysterious ways" to explain away any counter-evidence, your theory isn't falsifiable, and thus isn't scientific.
* Actually, the phrase "weakly supported scientific theory" is self-contradictory. A scientific theory is by definition well-supported.
You guys are really hyper-paranoid for no reason at all. While the original post says "While not all of the components of a basic computer are working yet," it would be more accurate to say, "We hope that in a year or so, we may be able to build a full-adder*." Seriously, the only parts that work reliably are NOT and OR gates, and you can only use about three of each in your system before cumulative stochastic error makes it fail. (Not to mention that you can't use the same gate twice -- if you've got two NOT gates, but need three in your system, you've got to go back and design a whole new gate from more basic parts.) We're not anywhere near "playing God;" we're not even at the "playing Electrical Engineers" stage of being able to design and build systems. Yes, the long-term goal is to create a seed which grows into whatever we want, but at the moment, we can barely make E. coli fluoresce in response to a complex input. I know you fear slippery-slope effects, but really, when we get into eukaryotes, never mind multicellular organisms, then you may have some justification to worry.
* I was trying to use MIT's paradigm to design a full adder this past summer, and realized that even a half-adder would require parts which had not yet been characterized or even synthesized. The best system which has actually been built can direct a cell to secrete a specific chemical when bright light shines on it. Really.
Slashdot Mirror
Only if no intelligent observers read the first story...
In other words, yes.
Really, between this and the magic battery stickers (not to mention everyone's misunderstanding of biology and physics), I think we've got conclusive evidence that Slashdot has jumped the shark. Anyone have suggestions for other tech news sites, ones which can differentiate science and pseudoscience?
...I'll teach my clones about the scientific method and make sure they vote (and post on Slashdot) with their brains and not their Bibles. Seriously, people, no one will attempt to clone a human baby until we've made damn sure that we know what we're doing. All genetic research != cloning a human baby.
Well, if you're using OS X to infect the mothership, then maybe you can get the Unix-like core to do the real work, then port that to Linux.
Alex Chiu devlops a ring which grants immortality, homeopathy can preserve the effects of chemicals even when diluted to less than one molecule per world's oceans' worth of water, and scientology can help you get rid of evil body theatens.
Oh, and you've all been educated stupid.
Sheesh, it's one thing to report on out-of-date speculation, and another thing to report on blatent hoaxes. What is this, the Weekly World News?
Sure, it's a dead horse, but Dvorak is the one beating it, not Slashdot. Slashdot is just reporting on Dvorak's beating of the dead horse.
Actually, in addition to the similarities you noted, both stories were posted at the exact same time. Literally the only difference is the date. This makes me wonder if there wasn't some sort of software error that somehow duplicated the post. Either that, or samzenpus decided to make the most dupeful dupe in the history of /.
The data is everything after the '3.' on one line, bzipped.
So, in order to reduce the space on the CD, they bzipped it? I could see that helping for the search code, etc., but for pi itself, isn't it impossible to represent it in less space than it already takes without actually using a mathematical formula which defines pi? I would think the only way to actually save space would be to use some non-ASCII encoding scheme such that each byte could hold two digits, not one. Or encode it in hexadecimal, and use five bits per digit.
What do the authors who donated the items think of the auction?
Am I the only one who has no idea what a SID tune is?
This toaster is the greatest invention since sliced bread.
How does a page full of 404's count as "raw images"? I've gotten more pictures of Titan from web forums than from that page.
...Because science admits it can't know everything. While you claim to know exactly how everything worked. (That is, you say "God did everything," which (according to you) is an explanation for everything.) And you guys always talk about fallability and humility.
Evolution doesn't claim to explain abiogenesis. That isn't to say that we have no ideas about how abiogenesis could have occured; rather, we admit the evidence on that one is a whole lot weaker than for evolution. If you want, you can have your "God of the gaps" do it, at least until the data improves.
What was that classic saying? "Old people tend to be more religious because they're cramming for the final exam." Besides, what does one person's opinion matter?
From what I remember of high school science, the first chapter of the text was always titled "What is Science?", and discussed how all scientific theories are just hypotheses which explain a whole bunch of observations. The repetition sort of annoyed me at the time, but judging from the state of science education in America today, more of it may be needed.
A scientific theory is defined as a scientific hypothesis which has gained a large ammount of support from a variety of different sources. Note, however, that nowhere in this definition did I use the word "truth." In fact, science never uses the word "truth." After all, we could all be massively deluded by Decartes's "evil genius." We could all be brains in vats. All science does is say that, assuming that there is an external reality and that we can make consistant observations of it, a given theory is the best explanation currently thought up to explain the observations. Thus, scientists know that their theories are not true in some abstract sense; all scientific theories are just models to explain the data. Note that this entire discussion applies to the Theory of Relativity, the Germ Theory of Disease, the Theory of Electromagnatism, the Theory of Heliocentricism, etc. Evolution is just as well supported as any other scienfitic theory; in fact, I would suggest that it is better supported than, say, relativity or quantum theory, both of which we know can't explain certain observations.
Old scientific theories aren't "considered bunk," they're just "considered supplanted by better theories which fit the data better." As soon as you can come up with a scientific theory (hint: it must be falsifiable) which explains all the data better than evolution, you can complain. Simply saying "Evolution doesn't perfectly explain this one data point!" doesn't count.
Let me rephrase that. I linked to the sub-section of the "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution" page which describes the word "evidences." This page is what I'd been hoping for.
In other words, the "Preview" button is there for a reason.
Also from that list, I greatly liked Michael Shermer's piece:
I believe, but cannot prove...that reality exists over and above human and social constructions of that reality. Science as a method, and naturalism as a philosophy, together form the best tool we have for understanding that reality. Because science is cumulative--that is, it builds on itself in a progressive fashion--we can strive to achieve an ever-greater understanding of reality. Our knowledge of nature remains provisional because we can never know if we have final Truth. Because science is a human activity and nature is complex and dynamic, fuzzy logic and fractional probabilities best describe both nature and the estimations of our approximation toward understanding that nature.
There is no such thing as the paranormal and the supernatural; there is only the normal and the natural and mysteries we have yet to explain.
What separates science from all other human activities is its belief in the provisional nature of all conclusions. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is the heart of its limitation. It is also its greatest strength. There are, from this ultimate unprovable assertion, three additional insoluble derivatives.
1. There is no God, intelligent designer, or anything resembling the divinity as proffered by the world's religions (although an extra-terrestrial being of significantly greater intelligence and power than us would be indistinguishable from God).
After thousands of years of the world's greatest minds attempting to prove or disprove the divinity's existence or nonexistence, with little agreement or consensus amongst scholars as to the divinity's ultimate state of being, a reasonable conclusion is that the God question can never be solved and that one's belief, disbelief, or skepticism ultimately rests on a non-rational basis.
2. The universe is ultimately determined, but we have free will.
As with the God question, scholars of considerable intellectual power for many millennia have failed to resolve the paradox of feeling free in a determined universe. One provisional solution is to think of the universe as so complex that the number of causes and the complexity of their interactions make the predetermination of human action pragmatically impossible. We can even put a figure on the causal net of the universe to see just how absurd it is to think we can get our minds around it fully.
It has been computed that in order for a computer in the far future of the universe to resurrect in a virtual reality every person who ever lived or could have lived, with all causal interactions between themselves and their environment, it would need 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123 bits (a 1 followed by 10^123 zeros) of memory. Suffice it to say that no computer within the conceivable future will achieve this level of power; likewise no human brain even comes close.
The enormity of this complexity leads us to feel as if we are acting freely as uncaused causers, even though we are actually causally determined. Since no set of causes we select as the determiners of human action can be complete, the feeling of freedom arises out of this ignorance of causes. To that extent we may act as if we are free. There is much to gain, little to lose, and personal responsibility follows.
3. Morality is the natural outcome of evolutionary and historical forces, not divine command.
The moral feelings of doing the right thing (such as virtuousness) or doing the wrong thing (such as guilt) were generated by nature as part of human evolution.
Although cultures differ on what they define as right and wrong, the moral feelings of doing the right or wrong thing are universal to all humans. Human universals are pervasive and powerful, and include at their core the fact that we are, by nature, moral and immoral, good and evil, altruistic and selfish, cooperative and competitive, peaceful and bellicose, virtuous
Only by stating the evolution (or creationism) is merely a strongly (weakly) supported scientific theory Creationism isn't a "weakly supported scientific theory*." It isn't even a "completely unsupported scientific hypothesis." In order to be scientific, it needs to be, in principle, falsifiable (among other things.) If you can insert "God works in mysterious ways" to explain away any counter-evidence, your theory isn't falsifiable, and thus isn't scientific. * Actually, the phrase "weakly supported scientific theory" is self-contradictory. A scientific theory is by definition well-supported.
Just because you say macroevolution has been observed doesn't mean you are right. Please site examples. Thanks.
Here you go.
You guys are really hyper-paranoid for no reason at all. While the original post says "While not all of the components of a basic computer are working yet," it would be more accurate to say, "We hope that in a year or so, we may be able to build a full-adder*." Seriously, the only parts that work reliably are NOT and OR gates, and you can only use about three of each in your system before cumulative stochastic error makes it fail. (Not to mention that you can't use the same gate twice -- if you've got two NOT gates, but need three in your system, you've got to go back and design a whole new gate from more basic parts.) We're not anywhere near "playing God;" we're not even at the "playing Electrical Engineers" stage of being able to design and build systems. Yes, the long-term goal is to create a seed which grows into whatever we want, but at the moment, we can barely make E. coli fluoresce in response to a complex input. I know you fear slippery-slope effects, but really, when we get into eukaryotes, never mind multicellular organisms, then you may have some justification to worry.
* I was trying to use MIT's paradigm to design a full adder this past summer, and realized that even a half-adder would require parts which had not yet been characterized or even synthesized. The best system which has actually been built can direct a cell to secrete a specific chemical when bright light shines on it. Really.
...yes, he's made a girl out of Legos. Only a mosaic, unfortunately.
The worse cruelty is that no female, mice nor women, would sleep with such a person/thing.
In that regard, how do they differ from the typical Slashdot reader?
(I fully include myself in that category, so don't be offended.)