The discoveries of entanglement, fields of potential, the now measurable 10 dimensions, and the event horizons in our microtubules put us face to face with these age old mysteries.
I'm sorry, but no - they don't.
Cutting edge science and mysticism may SEEM very similar to the uneducated mind, but they really have little in common with each other.
Don't get me wrong - as you can probably see from my sig (and post history), I'm an advocate of the use of psychedelic substances for getting to know one's own mind better. I have had experiences that I *could* describe as "feeling the presence of the divine"; "touching God"; "embracing the universe"; or any other number of mystical sounding terms. These experiences have helped shape me as a person and given me insights that I never would have come to with several lifetimes of study. But they are NOT an excuse to start believing in fairy-tales, or attributing mystical causes to events in a universe that by all accounts and measures, appears to behave rationally and according to laws (even if we're still far off from understanding some of those laws).
Oh and on a side note, I'm not sure some of the things you mention as are "discovered" as you think... I'd like some kind of reference for the "now measurable 10 dimensions" if you don't mind...
Unlike other religion, Buddhism itself doesn't even have "rebirth" or "planes of existence" as necessary doctrine.
Quite true; if you remove all of the "optional" stuff, what you've got left is a rather nice bit of philosophy, but it's straining it a bit to call it "Buddhism" at that point. While I don't disagree that there are therefore many "flavours" of Buddhism, each with their own unique beliefs, this is true of pretty much any religion. Buddhism just lends itself significantly better to them all getting along (and accepting the others' beliefs/opinions) instead of fighting each other.
So, while it may technically be possible to have "non-mystical Buddhism", it's probably a fair statement to say that the majority of Buddhists subscribe to mystical beliefs as a part of their Buddhism.
Rebirth of what? There is no concept of soul in buddhism.
While I'm quite aware of that, you apparently are not. The word "Rebirth" has quite a specific (and complex) meaning in Buddhism. You can at least START here.
You really know nothing, and try to use weak common sense to explain the unexplainable.
At no point did I try to "explain the unexplainable" and there's nothing weak about common sense. Given the fact you're an AC and not making much sense, I'll assume you're a troll. Reply with something useful and I'll answer, but reply with more of this and I'll ignore you.
lol. you don't seem to know jack shit about buddhism. fix that.
lol.... mysticism...
I fully admit to not knowing as much about it as I'd like; but I am familiar with the basic concepts; including that of "rebirth" and "planes of existence", which I would put in to the concept of mysticism. It tends to be a LOT more grounded than the mysticism in other religions ("heaven" and analogues in the Abrahamic religions for example), but it's mysticism nevertheless.
Helping others can in fact make you feel miserable and often does. For example try helping refugees who have been raped and been through hell. Trust me you will feel miserable. Or go to a camp where there are thousands of people and you can hardly make a difference. You will feel like shit. Yet people do it. Even atheists do it.
I disagree that the (majority of) people doing such things feel "completely" bad about it if they continue doing it. They may feel bad for the people and even cry themselves to sleep every night; become depressed; or otherwise be miserable - but then they either stop doing it (i.e. they realised it doesn't make them happy) or continue doing it (because they also get positive feelings from helping; OR are batshit insane (as I already mentioned as an option))
For the "insane" ones, I really simply mean to say that I don't see how their behaviour can be reconciled as rational in any way whatsoever. I'm just not dressing it up in nice words.
You are assuming that people are motivated by the same things as you.
In a way, yes. I'm assuming that people are motivated to "feel good" - a very large part of which is "being happy". I'd argue that "feeling good" exists purely because without it, we wouldn't have motivation to do stuff. It's the trait that has allowed us, as a species, to not have died out before we really even began. In simpler creatures (insects, simple fish, coral, etc) I doubt there's enough consciousness to have a concept of happiness, so they're "motivated to do stuff" purely by instinct. We, along with most other larger creatures, have emotion and feelings as a layer on top of that and use them to justify our actions (humans probably more so than most other animals due to our reliance on our brains as our differentiator). Therefore "feeling good" / "being happy" is the only logical motivator of any kind. We can justify doing things that make us temporarily unhappy only by looking forward to more happiness in the future.
I could of course be wrong - but this is how I reason it and see it. I'm open to people trying to convince me otherwise, but it'll take a pretty strong argument I think.
There are many serial killers by the way, who believe in God and "know" they are going to suffer in hell, but they still keep their behavior.. maybe it's a selfishness against their future self. But anyway I know for a fact there are people who believe they are going to hell but don't care.
In most cases, I'm pretty certain these fall in to the "insane" grouping if they really do believe what they're doing is 100% wrong in every way shape and form. In my understanding, most serial killers believe they're doing the "right" thing in some way (even those who realise they're doing wrong justify it with some kind of belief that it has a long-term or more overreaching "right").
Most people prefer being surrounded by happy people instead of being surrounded by suffering unhappy people. Thus working to create more happiness in your surroundings is entirely rational even for a perfectly selfish person.
Absolutely, and that's essentially my reasoning for "being a nice guy" as stated. It's also one of the reasons I'm more "left" leaning politically - I want society to take care of the lesser fortunate people so I don't have to deal with as much poverty (and associated crime) in my surroundings.
However, I was arguing against the "don't be happy, because you're not helping people" angle that the OP seemed to be going for. To me, that's senseless.
I find pretty much all religion abhorrent. Buddhism however, while still abhorrent for believing in mystical ideas that go against the simplest (and therefore best) definitions of reality, is definitely less abhorrent than the others. I've seen a lot of quotes from the Dalai Lama that I really appreciate and can agree wholeheartedly with. This is something I can't often say for religious leaders of any other faiths.
What I'd really like to see is some good scientific research put in to this sort of thing, stripping away the associated mysticism and getting right to the core of it. Based on the rather limited article, it appears this might not be too difficult as he may already be keeping the mysticism to a minimum.
Nobody should be overly happy, not when there are so many sad things happening in the world. Instead of being happy, why not help those who aren't. Instead of feeling compassion why not make the sacrifice to act on it? If you are happy, you are probably at least a little selfish. Of course what I have said will anger many people, but it's truth. There are many things you can do to help others in your neighborhood, in your state, country, or planet that you aren't doing.
But the (horribly selfish, but nevertheless realistic) question is "why should I?"
I'm a nice guy in general. People seem to like me. But, I don't do it for the sake of it - I do it because being a nice guy is the best way to get those around me to be nice back, which makes me happy.
I contest that every human being is either inherently ENTIRELY selfish, or have something wrong with them (i.e. insanity). Even those ultra-religious types that beat themselves violently in repentance for sins are doing it on the promise of eternal happiness in heaven. If they truly believed that there was no afterlife, or that they'd suffer for all eternity; they wouldn't do it.
I've yet to see a convincing argument otherwise, including from the "I help others selflessly" crowd - they do it because the act of helping others makes them happy. If helping others made them miserable, they'd stop.
Always be analytical but fake emotions as appropriate. Also never be open with what you are thinking, nobody wants to hear the truth.
Examples:
wife: (some inane story about something that happened during the day that I'm not interested in)
incorrect answer: I have no interest in what you were just talking about
correct answer: thats interesting
My wife: (some inane story about something that happened during the day that I'm not interested in) Me: You know I have no interest in that topic; can't we talk about xyz that we both like? My wife: Sorry hon, my bad. But I actually don't like xyz, how's abc? Me: abc? Cool, yeh!
The secret to a good relationship is not lying all the time... one day, that'll fall down like a house of cards and you'll end up hating each other. My wife and I knew from the start we've got our differences and we accept those. We can then spend our time together REALLY enjoying each others company instead of one of us faking it and resenting the other.
Note that I generally suck at empathy. I require my wife to tell me if I'm being an arse; or boring; or otherwise inappropriate. She'll happily do so; and I learned to happily accept her doing so. It works out better for both of us that way.
That's I think where we disagree. A bad teacher - one that teaches "facts" - can't teach talent; but that doesn't mean it can't be taught.
I believe people can be taught to be creative. It's a different kind of teaching, and significantly more involved than simply getting people to memorise a bunch of facts and formulae. In my experience, the usual way it goes is simply do a lot of creative things; hand-holding significantly at the start and less and less with each task. The reward/grading system also needs to be tailored to novelty rather than meeting specific goals.
Right now art school is a four year dead show. Waste of the parents money.
Not having studied arts, I couldn't say for sure, but I get the feeling you may be underestimating what goes in to it. It's possible you simply don't see the creativity that they're instilling in the students and are focusing on raw measurable results; in which case something focused primarily on creativity will indeed seem like a waste of time as the measurable results (by standard metrics) will be lesser.
It's also worth pointing out that I'm not from the US. As I understand it, higher education is somewhat different there to the rest of the world both due to cultural differences and the fact that there, people pay excessive amounts of money for schooling, so a monetary return on investment isn't just a "good idea" but basically required in order to have any kind of decent life after education.
That said engineering school is very different from art school.
Essentially my point was that it probably shouldn't be if you want to turn out the best possible engineers... There are many aspects of engineering that art students don't need to concentrate so much on (however; the technical side of art like music theory; colour theory; and so on can get pretty hardcore); however I find that most engineering students aren't given anywhere near enough grounding in philosophy, human behaviour and so on.
Not as much acid, more beer, about the same amount of pot, much more math IIRC.
More acid and less beer would make for better engineers.
Performance degrading drugs have never been attractive to me anyway
Are you aware of which drugs are truly performance degrading and which ones aren't? It's a more complex topic than you might otherwise imagine as well, since some drugs will be "both". The most classic example of a drug with both positive and negative effects on performance is marijuana: for many people, it makes them a bit lazy and demotivated but in those same people it can stir up a decent amount of creativity which might be enough to overcome the laziness it instilled in them.
I myself don't enjoy pot (I've smoked it a few times, but for me it's basically a feeling akin to seasickness - not pleasant at all), but I do somewhat regularly (2 to 4 times a year) use LSD. Generally speaking I can say with certainty that my LSD use has improved my ability to do my job. It's given me insights that have helped me solve large problems; made me more able to think around complex problems; and made me more appreciative of the design aspects of the software we create. In my personal life, it's helped me deal with seeing other people's points of view; given me an appreciation of natural beauty; and helped me be more tolerant of people that I disagree with.
I'm also certainly far from the only person to attribute positive effects in my life to LSD... famous examples include (but are no means limited to) Kary Mullis, Paul McCartney, and Steve Jobs.
You've made the insulting assumption that engineering is not an art.
Actually, I'd say daem0n1x made that assumption with his statement "I train engineers, not artists".
If he'd instead said something more like "I train engineers - artists with analytical skills" I would've had no beef with him.
But to make those great things scalable and maintanable, you need an engineer.
As a software developer that prides myself on the scalable, maintainable, elegant code that I write; I completely agree with you. I don't however accept that elegance can be achieved with the mechanical act of coding (or any other kind of engineering) alone... a level of art is needed to make it great.
Quite often I get the task of being the mentor of interns or newbies, many of them completely clueless.
And here:
If people start with a nice and cozy IDE they tend to think it's all magic going on. And then, when they need to solve any problem, they have no idea where the files are, their formats, their contents, etc.
In my opinion, if your students end up being like this due to usage of an IDE, the problem lies with you as a teacher, not the IDE.
Software Development is a rather "odd" thing in many ways. It's highly technical; painfully unforgiving in the rigidity of language syntax; and generally visually extremely unattractive (the code itself). However it's also something where you are creating something, from nothing, with your own unique style and way of doing things. That is almost the very definition of art.
When teaching, you need to remember both sides; otherwise you're - as I stated - churning out code monkeys and not software developers.
Depending on what you're aiming for, this might be your problem.
Turning out the necessary "code monkeys" to produce stuff to a spec written by someone better than them; sure... but if you want a software developer that produces something great, you need an artist.
calling me an uneducated, ignorant, narrow minded fool because I believe in something he does not strikes me as insulting.
Which it would be... but he didn't. He said, "Anybody who claims to be a Creationist is either stupid, ignorant, or insane. Probably ignorant.". He then went further to explain himself that statements of fact are not insulting. He is ignorant of baseball (apparently). Most creationists are ignorant of evolution.
The important thing here is the meaning of "ignorant". It doesn't mean stupid; it doesn't mean foolish; it doesn't mean narrow minded. It means "not knowing something".
It's worth noting he did give two other options instead of ignorant... stupid or insane. I actually used to tend to be a bit more cynical than Professor Dawkins - I leaned towards assuming insanity when I see people with "very strong faith". I have however over time come to realise he's probably right - there's probably not too many insane ones out there, but rather just a depressing amount of ignorance with no desire to change that.
My wife is Christian. She is ignorant of the scientific evidence (and unwilling to learn) surrounding matters that would likely shake her faith. It's something that irritates me from time to time, but I love her anyway and it's a topic that comes up less than once a month anyway, so I can deal with it (it won't stop me trying to teach her though).
On the other hand, my step-father - a brilliant physicist and man who taught me to question everything - is a minister in the Anglican church. I can only assume he has questioned everything carefully including his faith and found himself still believing it. Sadly, I think he's insane (not something to be hated; just pitied) since there's no other reasonable explanation.
And his assertions that many who believe in God do so because they were taught so by their parents, and have enver examined their faith critically nor independently.
Can you show any evidence otherwise? Note that i don't mean anecdotes - you personally may have examined your faith critically, but that doesn't argue against the statement that many who believe in God haven't.
That he even has to address this is proof that he is wrong. His arguments are largely insulting to me personally.
Which is exactly his point. His arguments seem insulting to you because religion has been given a special "pass" in the world. It's okay to tell you I think you're wrong about the composition of Jupiter's core; but it's not okay to tell you I think you're wrong about your religion?
Your question is very good, but I think Professor Dawkins has already answered it extremely well in the video linked from the summary...
The summary of the conclusion being that in his (well backed up) opinion (which I personally agree with), we're biologically wired to be essentially good and moral. Therefore doing away with religion would likely not influence us negatively - the religion is only the "excuse" that is often found to explain the reasons for the behaviours that we'd do anyway.
Note that in the video he of course goes in to the explanation of why, which I won't try to summarise here, as I'd probably butcher his rather excellent explanation were I to try.
There are many well known accounts of scientists and other thinkers using psychedelic drugs and having startling insights in their respective fields. Well known examples being Kary Mullis and Francis Crick; but also of course not forgetting Terence Mckenna, Timothy Leary and other more direct advocates of psychedelic substance use.
I recently heard an interview you did with Graham Hancock where you said you would find it interesting to take a substance like LSD. My question to you is whether or not you intend to actively pursue this as a potential course of action or whether you do not currently consider it important enough to pursue and would simply only take it should the opportunity present itself?
I think you made up numbers. The median senior software engineer makes the equivilent of $64,000 per year. In the United States $64,000 would be below the lowest 10%.
-- MyLongNickName
(source payscale.com)
I have a difficult time believing that as a software developer working in Germany... I live in a relatively cheap city (Hannover) and the average income of my team is around 80k USD according to Google's exchange rate calculator (I know the salaries for my team since I'm the supervisor and had a hand in hiring them).
I'm also pretty certain we don't pay well for developers since we're not even a software development company.
A SENIOR software developer working for a company that actually does development as their bread and butter should be on significantly more.
Note that sites like payscale get their data from people going to the site to see if they're earning a reasonable amount. Most people who do this are earning below the average, so it tends to skew the figures quite a bit.
You're mixing up traction control with stability augmentation
You're completely right...
Anyone else: Please re-read my post with the words "stability augmentation" (or similar) anywhere it says "traction control" (and feel free to call me names for mixing it up).
Thanks for all the info - I'm sure it will be invaluable to someone who isn't aware of most of that...
You do seem to have misinterpreted my post though. I was referring to deliberately driving the car in a way that I knew (or at least strongly suspected) would cause it to spin out without traction control but not with... i.e. actually testing that the traction control does what it's supposed to do. I certainly COULD have controlled the car to avoid spinning out, but that would've defeated the purpose of the test.
For reference, I make no claim to be an excellent driver; but I do have a general idea what I'm doing behind the wheel.
Aye, I don't disagree. I just haven't seen any conclusive proof of such -- at most I've seen some "studies" from the manufacturers themselves, but no trustworthy studies from 3rd parties.
I don't disagree with you at all, but I'm leaning towards traction control being "in general" a good thing purely from personal experience.
I generally drive sports cars and that's what I'm used to. So, when being used to a "harder" feeling of the road and excellent handling at high speeds; I need to be significantly more careful when I get behind the boat of larger "family" or "luxury" cars (to me, most feel like piloting a boat rather than driving a car).
I had such a monster vehicle as a company car once. I wanted to see exactly what the traction control was doing for me, so I gave it a test on a wet road going around a small roundabout (after taking all necessary safety precautions regarding other vehicles). First time through, with traction control, at 40km/h; no problem. Second time, without traction control, 40km/h, same amount of steering; I spun around around 270 degrees before stopping.
Of course, even WITH the traction control I wouldn't normally take a tight roundabout on a wet road at 40km/h in such a vehicle. But, at least it gave me a very good feeling for what it does. Once I got used to it in that car, I knew exactly when it would kick in and what it felt like when doing so.
In my own sports car, I leave it on for normal city driving and am also now used to the feel of it and know when/how it behaves. Before having done those tests in my old company car though, I never turned it on. I only turn it off when racing or otherwise driving the car in a "sportier" manner.
All of that said, I'd also like to see some real trustworthy studies to back up my feeling and anecdote (or refute it). And also all of that said, I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of the car actually steering for me as described in TFA. I'd definitely want an even higher level of evidence for that than I would for traction control.
I'm curious about your opinion in the many areas where the Green & Libertarian (in the US at least) parties explicitly differ, for example:
1. gun control
That's a complex topic. I'm against the widespread availability of guns in general; however once they're out there, it's not easy to simply get rid of them.
In countries where widespread gun ownership never happened, it's fine to have very strict gun laws - both to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and to reduce the number of fatal accidents caused by non-criminals.
However, in a country like the US, I think it'd be a disaster to simply try to ban private gun ownership straight off the bat. The "pro gun" people argue that they need their guns to defend themselves from criminals who have guns. And sadly, I think they're right. When you live somewhere where people will break in to your house with a gun in hand (extremely rare to non-existent in most of the world); I think it's only rational that you can have a gun to defend yourself.
If there were some way to actually remove the guns from existence, then I'd favour strict gun law introduction there; but I don't see any way that can reasonably be achieved.
2. immigrant rights
I'm not sure what the main argument is for this topic. In general, my opinion is that all basic rights and laws should apply equally to citizens and immigrants.
I consider the US policy of granting US citizenship to anyone born in the US is a little crazy (if my pregnant wife and I are on holiday there and she unexpectedly gives birth early, I don't see any sensible reason our child "deserves" US citizenship); but it's offset by the ridiculous green-card system. It's very hard to immigrate to the US and it probably should be easier for skilled people to do so.
I do understand that "easier immigration" has downsides due to the fact that you get people coming there, earning money and sending a lot of it out of the country; but this is in my opinion not a common enough problem to have any real impact on the economy. Additionally, the people could be encouraged not to do that by also making it easier for the families of the skilled migrants to live there.
3. unions
Good in concept, but the implementation in the US is far too confrontational and controlling. The system in Germany of having a "worker's council" at companies seems far more effective.
4. social welfare & health services
Completely and totally in favour. Both should be managed transparently - no "go to doctor, pay, and then get refund", but instead "go to doctor, show card, done".
Prescriptions should also be free (but much harder to get... doctors who take and give out "free samples" or make deals to push a particular drug should be arrested for drug trafficking)
5. minimum wage
Should exist. However should be different for different age groups (minimum wage for someone under 18 should not necessarily be enough to live on but over 18 should be) and for different regions (perhaps by state if implemented in the US; but also perhaps more fine grained). I'd say it should be mandated by the federal government to exist with intentionally fuzzy wording reflecting "minimum required for living in the society" but then set by the state accordingly with more specific fixed values.
6. government funding for advanced education, arts, research
All of the above.
I'm not so much in favour of government funding for "the arts"; however I wouldn't object to some amount being spent in that direction. Research however should receive a significantly larger amount than it currently does (firmly looking at NASA here).
Higher education should be free to all who can show competency in passing high-school (and available to others if they're willing to pay - this pay should reflect the costs necessary to acc
Slashdot Mirror
The discoveries of entanglement, fields of potential, the now measurable 10 dimensions, and the event horizons in our microtubules put us face to face with these age old mysteries.
I'm sorry, but no - they don't.
Cutting edge science and mysticism may SEEM very similar to the uneducated mind, but they really have little in common with each other.
Don't get me wrong - as you can probably see from my sig (and post history), I'm an advocate of the use of psychedelic substances for getting to know one's own mind better. I have had experiences that I *could* describe as "feeling the presence of the divine"; "touching God"; "embracing the universe"; or any other number of mystical sounding terms. These experiences have helped shape me as a person and given me insights that I never would have come to with several lifetimes of study. But they are NOT an excuse to start believing in fairy-tales, or attributing mystical causes to events in a universe that by all accounts and measures, appears to behave rationally and according to laws (even if we're still far off from understanding some of those laws).
Oh and on a side note, I'm not sure some of the things you mention as are "discovered" as you think... I'd like some kind of reference for the "now measurable 10 dimensions" if you don't mind...
Unlike other religion, Buddhism itself doesn't even have "rebirth" or "planes of existence" as necessary doctrine.
Quite true; if you remove all of the "optional" stuff, what you've got left is a rather nice bit of philosophy, but it's straining it a bit to call it "Buddhism" at that point. While I don't disagree that there are therefore many "flavours" of Buddhism, each with their own unique beliefs, this is true of pretty much any religion. Buddhism just lends itself significantly better to them all getting along (and accepting the others' beliefs/opinions) instead of fighting each other.
So, while it may technically be possible to have "non-mystical Buddhism", it's probably a fair statement to say that the majority of Buddhists subscribe to mystical beliefs as a part of their Buddhism.
Rebirth of what? There is no concept of soul in buddhism.
While I'm quite aware of that, you apparently are not. The word "Rebirth" has quite a specific (and complex) meaning in Buddhism. You can at least START here.
You really know nothing, and try to use weak common sense to explain the unexplainable.
At no point did I try to "explain the unexplainable" and there's nothing weak about common sense. Given the fact you're an AC and not making much sense, I'll assume you're a troll. Reply with something useful and I'll answer, but reply with more of this and I'll ignore you.
lol. you don't seem to know jack shit about buddhism. fix that.
lol.... mysticism...
I fully admit to not knowing as much about it as I'd like; but I am familiar with the basic concepts; including that of "rebirth" and "planes of existence", which I would put in to the concept of mysticism. It tends to be a LOT more grounded than the mysticism in other religions ("heaven" and analogues in the Abrahamic religions for example), but it's mysticism nevertheless.
Helping others can in fact make you feel miserable and often does. For example try helping refugees who have been raped and been through hell. Trust me you will feel miserable. Or go to a camp where there are thousands of people and you can hardly make a difference. You will feel like shit. Yet people do it. Even atheists do it.
I disagree that the (majority of) people doing such things feel "completely" bad about it if they continue doing it. They may feel bad for the people and even cry themselves to sleep every night; become depressed; or otherwise be miserable - but then they either stop doing it (i.e. they realised it doesn't make them happy) or continue doing it (because they also get positive feelings from helping; OR are batshit insane (as I already mentioned as an option))
For the "insane" ones, I really simply mean to say that I don't see how their behaviour can be reconciled as rational in any way whatsoever. I'm just not dressing it up in nice words.
You are assuming that people are motivated by the same things as you.
In a way, yes. I'm assuming that people are motivated to "feel good" - a very large part of which is "being happy". I'd argue that "feeling good" exists purely because without it, we wouldn't have motivation to do stuff. It's the trait that has allowed us, as a species, to not have died out before we really even began. In simpler creatures (insects, simple fish, coral, etc) I doubt there's enough consciousness to have a concept of happiness, so they're "motivated to do stuff" purely by instinct. We, along with most other larger creatures, have emotion and feelings as a layer on top of that and use them to justify our actions (humans probably more so than most other animals due to our reliance on our brains as our differentiator). Therefore "feeling good" / "being happy" is the only logical motivator of any kind. We can justify doing things that make us temporarily unhappy only by looking forward to more happiness in the future.
I could of course be wrong - but this is how I reason it and see it. I'm open to people trying to convince me otherwise, but it'll take a pretty strong argument I think.
There are many serial killers by the way, who believe in God and "know" they are going to suffer in hell, but they still keep their behavior .. maybe it's a selfishness against their future self. But anyway I know for a fact there are people who believe they are going to hell but don't care.
In most cases, I'm pretty certain these fall in to the "insane" grouping if they really do believe what they're doing is 100% wrong in every way shape and form. In my understanding, most serial killers believe they're doing the "right" thing in some way (even those who realise they're doing wrong justify it with some kind of belief that it has a long-term or more overreaching "right").
Most people prefer being surrounded by happy people instead of being surrounded by suffering unhappy people. Thus working to create more happiness in your surroundings is entirely rational even for a perfectly selfish person.
Absolutely, and that's essentially my reasoning for "being a nice guy" as stated. It's also one of the reasons I'm more "left" leaning politically - I want society to take care of the lesser fortunate people so I don't have to deal with as much poverty (and associated crime) in my surroundings.
However, I was arguing against the "don't be happy, because you're not helping people" angle that the OP seemed to be going for. To me, that's senseless.
I find pretty much all religion abhorrent. Buddhism however, while still abhorrent for believing in mystical ideas that go against the simplest (and therefore best) definitions of reality, is definitely less abhorrent than the others. I've seen a lot of quotes from the Dalai Lama that I really appreciate and can agree wholeheartedly with. This is something I can't often say for religious leaders of any other faiths.
What I'd really like to see is some good scientific research put in to this sort of thing, stripping away the associated mysticism and getting right to the core of it. Based on the rather limited article, it appears this might not be too difficult as he may already be keeping the mysticism to a minimum.
Nobody should be overly happy, not when there are so many sad things happening in the world. Instead of being happy, why not help those who aren't. Instead of feeling compassion why not make the sacrifice to act on it? If you are happy, you are probably at least a little selfish. Of course what I have said will anger many people, but it's truth. There are many things you can do to help others in your neighborhood, in your state, country, or planet that you aren't doing.
But the (horribly selfish, but nevertheless realistic) question is "why should I?"
I'm a nice guy in general. People seem to like me. But, I don't do it for the sake of it - I do it because being a nice guy is the best way to get those around me to be nice back, which makes me happy.
I contest that every human being is either inherently ENTIRELY selfish, or have something wrong with them (i.e. insanity). Even those ultra-religious types that beat themselves violently in repentance for sins are doing it on the promise of eternal happiness in heaven. If they truly believed that there was no afterlife, or that they'd suffer for all eternity; they wouldn't do it.
I've yet to see a convincing argument otherwise, including from the "I help others selflessly" crowd - they do it because the act of helping others makes them happy. If helping others made them miserable, they'd stop.
Always be analytical but fake emotions as appropriate. Also never be open with what you are thinking, nobody wants to hear the truth.
Examples:
wife: (some inane story about something that happened during the day that I'm not interested in)
incorrect answer: I have no interest in what you were just talking about
correct answer: thats interesting
My wife: (some inane story about something that happened during the day that I'm not interested in)
Me: You know I have no interest in that topic; can't we talk about xyz that we both like?
My wife: Sorry hon, my bad. But I actually don't like xyz, how's abc?
Me: abc? Cool, yeh!
The secret to a good relationship is not lying all the time... one day, that'll fall down like a house of cards and you'll end up hating each other. My wife and I knew from the start we've got our differences and we accept those. We can then spend our time together REALLY enjoying each others company instead of one of us faking it and resenting the other.
Note that I generally suck at empathy. I require my wife to tell me if I'm being an arse; or boring; or otherwise inappropriate. She'll happily do so; and I learned to happily accept her doing so. It works out better for both of us that way.
You can't teach talent (so don't try)
That's I think where we disagree. A bad teacher - one that teaches "facts" - can't teach talent; but that doesn't mean it can't be taught.
I believe people can be taught to be creative. It's a different kind of teaching, and significantly more involved than simply getting people to memorise a bunch of facts and formulae. In my experience, the usual way it goes is simply do a lot of creative things; hand-holding significantly at the start and less and less with each task. The reward/grading system also needs to be tailored to novelty rather than meeting specific goals.
Right now art school is a four year dead show. Waste of the parents money.
Not having studied arts, I couldn't say for sure, but I get the feeling you may be underestimating what goes in to it. It's possible you simply don't see the creativity that they're instilling in the students and are focusing on raw measurable results; in which case something focused primarily on creativity will indeed seem like a waste of time as the measurable results (by standard metrics) will be lesser.
It's also worth pointing out that I'm not from the US. As I understand it, higher education is somewhat different there to the rest of the world both due to cultural differences and the fact that there, people pay excessive amounts of money for schooling, so a monetary return on investment isn't just a "good idea" but basically required in order to have any kind of decent life after education.
That said engineering school is very different from art school.
Essentially my point was that it probably shouldn't be if you want to turn out the best possible engineers... There are many aspects of engineering that art students don't need to concentrate so much on (however; the technical side of art like music theory; colour theory; and so on can get pretty hardcore); however I find that most engineering students aren't given anywhere near enough grounding in philosophy, human behaviour and so on.
Not as much acid, more beer, about the same amount of pot, much more math IIRC.
More acid and less beer would make for better engineers.
Private sector pays IT sec folks 6 figures+
I should bloody well hope so... 6 figures in today's money isn't what it was 20 years ago... $100k a year is NOT rich these days at ALL.
Those FBI salaries are just shocking!
Performance degrading drugs have never been attractive to me anyway
Are you aware of which drugs are truly performance degrading and which ones aren't? It's a more complex topic than you might otherwise imagine as well, since some drugs will be "both". The most classic example of a drug with both positive and negative effects on performance is marijuana: for many people, it makes them a bit lazy and demotivated but in those same people it can stir up a decent amount of creativity which might be enough to overcome the laziness it instilled in them.
I myself don't enjoy pot (I've smoked it a few times, but for me it's basically a feeling akin to seasickness - not pleasant at all), but I do somewhat regularly (2 to 4 times a year) use LSD. Generally speaking I can say with certainty that my LSD use has improved my ability to do my job. It's given me insights that have helped me solve large problems; made me more able to think around complex problems; and made me more appreciative of the design aspects of the software we create. In my personal life, it's helped me deal with seeing other people's points of view; given me an appreciation of natural beauty; and helped me be more tolerant of people that I disagree with.
I'm also certainly far from the only person to attribute positive effects in my life to LSD... famous examples include (but are no means limited to) Kary Mullis, Paul McCartney, and Steve Jobs.
You've made the insulting assumption that engineering is not an art.
Actually, I'd say daem0n1x made that assumption with his statement "I train engineers, not artists".
If he'd instead said something more like "I train engineers - artists with analytical skills" I would've had no beef with him.
But to make those great things scalable and maintanable, you need an engineer.
As a software developer that prides myself on the scalable, maintainable, elegant code that I write; I completely agree with you. I don't however accept that elegance can be achieved with the mechanical act of coding (or any other kind of engineering) alone... a level of art is needed to make it great.
When did I exactly said I had a problem?
Personally, I'd say here:
Quite often I get the task of being the mentor of interns or newbies, many of them completely clueless.
And here:
If people start with a nice and cozy IDE they tend to think it's all magic going on. And then, when they need to solve any problem, they have no idea where the files are, their formats, their contents, etc.
In my opinion, if your students end up being like this due to usage of an IDE, the problem lies with you as a teacher, not the IDE.
Software Development is a rather "odd" thing in many ways. It's highly technical; painfully unforgiving in the rigidity of language syntax; and generally visually extremely unattractive (the code itself). However it's also something where you are creating something, from nothing, with your own unique style and way of doing things. That is almost the very definition of art.
When teaching, you need to remember both sides; otherwise you're - as I stated - churning out code monkeys and not software developers.
I train engineers, not artists.
Depending on what you're aiming for, this might be your problem.
Turning out the necessary "code monkeys" to produce stuff to a spec written by someone better than them; sure... but if you want a software developer that produces something great, you need an artist.
calling me an uneducated, ignorant, narrow minded fool because I believe in something he does not strikes me as insulting.
Which it would be... but he didn't. He said, "Anybody who claims to be a Creationist is either stupid, ignorant, or insane. Probably ignorant.". He then went further to explain himself that statements of fact are not insulting. He is ignorant of baseball (apparently). Most creationists are ignorant of evolution.
The important thing here is the meaning of "ignorant". It doesn't mean stupid; it doesn't mean foolish; it doesn't mean narrow minded. It means "not knowing something".
It's worth noting he did give two other options instead of ignorant... stupid or insane. I actually used to tend to be a bit more cynical than Professor Dawkins - I leaned towards assuming insanity when I see people with "very strong faith". I have however over time come to realise he's probably right - there's probably not too many insane ones out there, but rather just a depressing amount of ignorance with no desire to change that.
My wife is Christian. She is ignorant of the scientific evidence (and unwilling to learn) surrounding matters that would likely shake her faith. It's something that irritates me from time to time, but I love her anyway and it's a topic that comes up less than once a month anyway, so I can deal with it (it won't stop me trying to teach her though).
On the other hand, my step-father - a brilliant physicist and man who taught me to question everything - is a minister in the Anglican church. I can only assume he has questioned everything carefully including his faith and found himself still believing it. Sadly, I think he's insane (not something to be hated; just pitied) since there's no other reasonable explanation.
And his assertions that many who believe in God do so because they were taught so by their parents, and have enver examined their faith critically nor independently.
Can you show any evidence otherwise? Note that i don't mean anecdotes - you personally may have examined your faith critically, but that doesn't argue against the statement that many who believe in God haven't.
That he even has to address this is proof that he is wrong. His arguments are largely insulting to me personally.
Which is exactly his point. His arguments seem insulting to you because religion has been given a special "pass" in the world. It's okay to tell you I think you're wrong about the composition of Jupiter's core; but it's not okay to tell you I think you're wrong about your religion?
Your question is very good, but I think Professor Dawkins has already answered it extremely well in the video linked from the summary...
The summary of the conclusion being that in his (well backed up) opinion (which I personally agree with), we're biologically wired to be essentially good and moral. Therefore doing away with religion would likely not influence us negatively - the religion is only the "excuse" that is often found to explain the reasons for the behaviours that we'd do anyway.
Note that in the video he of course goes in to the explanation of why, which I won't try to summarise here, as I'd probably butcher his rather excellent explanation were I to try.
There are many well known accounts of scientists and other thinkers using psychedelic drugs and having startling insights in their respective fields. Well known examples being Kary Mullis and Francis Crick; but also of course not forgetting Terence Mckenna, Timothy Leary and other more direct advocates of psychedelic substance use.
I recently heard an interview you did with Graham Hancock where you said you would find it interesting to take a substance like LSD. My question to you is whether or not you intend to actively pursue this as a potential course of action or whether you do not currently consider it important enough to pursue and would simply only take it should the opportunity present itself?
I think you made up numbers. The median senior software engineer makes the equivilent of $64,000 per year. In the United States $64,000 would be below the lowest 10%.
-- MyLongNickName
(source payscale.com)
I have a difficult time believing that as a software developer working in Germany... I live in a relatively cheap city (Hannover) and the average income of my team is around 80k USD according to Google's exchange rate calculator (I know the salaries for my team since I'm the supervisor and had a hand in hiring them).
I'm also pretty certain we don't pay well for developers since we're not even a software development company.
A SENIOR software developer working for a company that actually does development as their bread and butter should be on significantly more.
Note that sites like payscale get their data from people going to the site to see if they're earning a reasonable amount. Most people who do this are earning below the average, so it tends to skew the figures quite a bit.
You're mixing up traction control with stability augmentation
You're completely right...
Anyone else: Please re-read my post with the words "stability augmentation" (or similar) anywhere it says "traction control" (and feel free to call me names for mixing it up).
Thanks for all the info - I'm sure it will be invaluable to someone who isn't aware of most of that...
You do seem to have misinterpreted my post though. I was referring to deliberately driving the car in a way that I knew (or at least strongly suspected) would cause it to spin out without traction control but not with... i.e. actually testing that the traction control does what it's supposed to do. I certainly COULD have controlled the car to avoid spinning out, but that would've defeated the purpose of the test.
For reference, I make no claim to be an excellent driver; but I do have a general idea what I'm doing behind the wheel.
Aye, I don't disagree. I just haven't seen any conclusive proof of such -- at most I've seen some "studies" from the manufacturers themselves, but no trustworthy studies from 3rd parties.
I don't disagree with you at all, but I'm leaning towards traction control being "in general" a good thing purely from personal experience.
I generally drive sports cars and that's what I'm used to. So, when being used to a "harder" feeling of the road and excellent handling at high speeds; I need to be significantly more careful when I get behind the boat of larger "family" or "luxury" cars (to me, most feel like piloting a boat rather than driving a car).
I had such a monster vehicle as a company car once. I wanted to see exactly what the traction control was doing for me, so I gave it a test on a wet road going around a small roundabout (after taking all necessary safety precautions regarding other vehicles). First time through, with traction control, at 40km/h; no problem. Second time, without traction control, 40km/h, same amount of steering; I spun around around 270 degrees before stopping.
Of course, even WITH the traction control I wouldn't normally take a tight roundabout on a wet road at 40km/h in such a vehicle. But, at least it gave me a very good feeling for what it does. Once I got used to it in that car, I knew exactly when it would kick in and what it felt like when doing so.
In my own sports car, I leave it on for normal city driving and am also now used to the feel of it and know when/how it behaves. Before having done those tests in my old company car though, I never turned it on. I only turn it off when racing or otherwise driving the car in a "sportier" manner.
All of that said, I'd also like to see some real trustworthy studies to back up my feeling and anecdote (or refute it). And also all of that said, I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of the car actually steering for me as described in TFA. I'd definitely want an even higher level of evidence for that than I would for traction control.
So you're somewhere in the green area on this, then?
Looking at it... yep!
I'm curious about your opinion in the many areas where the Green & Libertarian (in the US at least) parties explicitly differ, for example:
1. gun control
That's a complex topic. I'm against the widespread availability of guns in general; however once they're out there, it's not easy to simply get rid of them.
In countries where widespread gun ownership never happened, it's fine to have very strict gun laws - both to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and to reduce the number of fatal accidents caused by non-criminals.
However, in a country like the US, I think it'd be a disaster to simply try to ban private gun ownership straight off the bat. The "pro gun" people argue that they need their guns to defend themselves from criminals who have guns. And sadly, I think they're right. When you live somewhere where people will break in to your house with a gun in hand (extremely rare to non-existent in most of the world); I think it's only rational that you can have a gun to defend yourself.
If there were some way to actually remove the guns from existence, then I'd favour strict gun law introduction there; but I don't see any way that can reasonably be achieved.
2. immigrant rights
I'm not sure what the main argument is for this topic. In general, my opinion is that all basic rights and laws should apply equally to citizens and immigrants.
I consider the US policy of granting US citizenship to anyone born in the US is a little crazy (if my pregnant wife and I are on holiday there and she unexpectedly gives birth early, I don't see any sensible reason our child "deserves" US citizenship); but it's offset by the ridiculous green-card system. It's very hard to immigrate to the US and it probably should be easier for skilled people to do so.
I do understand that "easier immigration" has downsides due to the fact that you get people coming there, earning money and sending a lot of it out of the country; but this is in my opinion not a common enough problem to have any real impact on the economy. Additionally, the people could be encouraged not to do that by also making it easier for the families of the skilled migrants to live there.
3. unions
Good in concept, but the implementation in the US is far too confrontational and controlling. The system in Germany of having a "worker's council" at companies seems far more effective.
4. social welfare & health services
Completely and totally in favour. Both should be managed transparently - no "go to doctor, pay, and then get refund", but instead "go to doctor, show card, done".
Prescriptions should also be free (but much harder to get... doctors who take and give out "free samples" or make deals to push a particular drug should be arrested for drug trafficking)
5. minimum wage
Should exist. However should be different for different age groups (minimum wage for someone under 18 should not necessarily be enough to live on but over 18 should be) and for different regions (perhaps by state if implemented in the US; but also perhaps more fine grained). I'd say it should be mandated by the federal government to exist with intentionally fuzzy wording reflecting "minimum required for living in the society" but then set by the state accordingly with more specific fixed values.
6. government funding for advanced education, arts, research
All of the above.
I'm not so much in favour of government funding for "the arts"; however I wouldn't object to some amount being spent in that direction. Research however should receive a significantly larger amount than it currently does (firmly looking at NASA here).
Higher education should be free to all who can show competency in passing high-school (and available to others if they're willing to pay - this pay should reflect the costs necessary to acc