Do you know of any societies that developed without religion or rejected religion to embrace atheism that have a moral code that holds that life has intrinsic value?
Well no... but, not to sound trite, I also don't know of any societies that are grounded in religion that have a moral code that holds that life has intrinsic value with the possible exception of Buddhism and some of the more obscure and lesser known religions. Christianity (and indeed the related Abrahamic religions) most certainly doesn't traditionally value life (it values the "soul" instead) - it's only a fairly modern view of Christianity that has changed to being life value based - which all relates back to my earlier point that it seems more to me that the morals come from society and go TO the religion rather than vice-versa.
While I don't disagree with any of your specific points on the morality, I'm not so sure about:
Christianity has provided a moral underpinning that has held our society together.
I'm not sure I would attribute the morals we have to Christianity, but rather the other way around - the Christian morals were defined by the morals of the society that it developed in. Those morals have changed over time, and the morals that modern Christians consider "Christian morals" are again just a reflection of the morals of society at large.
This part however, I would strongly disagree with:
Atheistic teachings on all these things boil down to survival of the fittest and could not create a society even close to what we have today.
You're implying an asocial aspect to atheism that simply isn't based in reality. Atheism is a lack of a belief in a god or gods - it in no way implies any attempt to extract a moral code from limited segments of science (e.g. Darwinian evolutionary theory). One probably CAN try to derive a moral code from purely non-religious grounds, using a fair amount of the "softer sciences" such as sociology and anthropology and I get the feeling that it wouldn't be all that different to the moral codes seen in most major religions. However speaking purely for myself, I've never tried to do so. My morals are primarily "gut feeling" about right and wrong, which I'm sure comes from a mix of genetics (humans are instinctively a social animal) and upbringing (which I'll freely admit was in a society that has a Christian background and that therefore did influence me).
I only intended to indicate that just because it feels good doesn't mean it's true. I support anything which allows us to consider deeper questions or opens our mind to new ideas. I very much include religious texts in this, by the way, as long as you don't drink the cool-aid.
Absolutely. Looking at things in new ways; (rationally and logically) considering alternatives that previously hadn't come to mind; and coming up with new ideas is, to me at least, the epitome of what drives us forwards as a species.
LSD came to mind because I'm debating one of my theist (I should rather say "spiritualist") friends, who experienced an out-of-body moment during an LSD trip which has now convinced him of the existence of the supernatural, and by a magical leap also the general truth of the bible.
It really does make me a little depressed when that happens. I've introduced countless people to LSD (as you can probably tell, I'm rather a proponent of the substance) and while it's rare that someone does get all "mystical" and start believing that their fantasies somehow had an element of truth them (especially when those fantasies get tied in with "mainstream" beliefs), it does happen from time to time.
I've always had kind of a "here's what you should know" speech before I let them take it the first time, and after about the twentieth person or so I started adding a bit about mysticism and "religious experiences" in there just to help clarify what's going on if they start thinking down this train of thought.
Perhaps I'll take your advice and investigate LSD more fully...;-)
For academic purposes, of course.
Hehe, well, I can of course highly recommend it. It is a lot of fun and I won't deny using it myself on occasion for the sole purpose of enjoying my own brain for a bit; but quite seriously on the "academic purposes" side, if you do try it, my biggest recommendation is to do a lot of deep introspection (which you'll likely find is much easier when under the influence - examining your own thoughts as you're thinking them is much easier when "time" has less personal meaning than it used to). You'll probably discover a lot about your own thought processes that you weren't aware of previously, and hopefully could use the insights gained to give a better explanation and clarification to your "spiritualist" friend about how and why he's deluding himself.
As a final note, I recommend a first timer that has a solid grip on reality and an inquiring mind to try around 1.5 micrograms per kg of body weight. It's a moderately large amount compared to common usage (about 1.5 to 2 times as much based on common street dosages) - this will avoid the problem where you "almost get there" but fail to reach the deep level that helps with introspection. Getting almost there but not quite can be a bit frustrating and leave you annoyed at feeling like there was something you almost understood but then lost again (similar to reading a complex textbook and not quite having it "click" despite feeling like you get all of the stuff around the main topic) You probably shouldn't go to 3 times higher or more until you're more familiar with it, as that's when both seriously powerful synaesthesia can kick in (e.g. "I can hear blue and see quietness" compared to the normal amount's "hey, that music is causing ripple effects in my vision!" and so on) - while interesting in itself, it can be very disconcerting what with everything else going on in your mind that you're really not so used to yet.
Um, this thing you call "belief"? Science doesn't use it.
Of course it does. There are frequently no absolute answers (especially at the leading edge of science) and scientists base their work on what they believe to be true.
While it's true that there are frequently (actually, I'd say "always") no absolute answers, "science" should work on what is the best assumption at this time. What "scientists" base their work on is not necessarily always this - they may base their work on their beliefs, but that's just them being human. Don't blame science for the scientists...
Occasionally, someone comes up with a new hypothesis and gets hell from the other scientists for their crazy theories. Sometimes those crazy ideas are shown to work better than the established theories and everyone has to shift their belief.
Or, they (theoretically) "start working from the clearly better new assumptions". It doesn't have to be a matter of belief.
Scientific belief is a lot more fluid than religious belief, but don't kid yourself - it is a fundamental part of science and there is always a lot of resistance to changing it.
No, it's a fundamental part of scientists (as a subset of "humans"), not of science.
Try taking LSD, it's even better, but it doesn't make your life any better or more meaningful.
While I agree with everything you said about religion, I have to disagree with this statement. Both religion and LSD can make your life significantly better and more meaningful. There's no external influence to either one of course (God doesn't exist; and nor do the fantasies that you experience with LSD), however they can help you shape your worldview and expand on it. They can give you a hand with looking at things from a different perspective (which is difficult for many people without help from religion or hallucinogens). And they can even spur imagination and creativity in people who otherwise lack a "muse" (as a software developer, I give a lot of credit to LSD for my work).
One place (amongst many) where LSD has the advantage over religion is that it doesn't require you believe anything untrue. You can be completely aware that your fantasies while under the influence aren't real and still get meaningful benefits.
(Yes, I know Occam was a monk. A pretty bright one, despite being a follower of the creed that "God is not accessible to the human Intellect". That was kind of the last line of defense. It has clearly fallen since then.)
On the plus side - he was a Franciscan. Generally a lot more level headed than many other orders (despite still believing in fairy tales).
I guess that's debatable. (Personally I call that the "Gould Gambit", and do not ascribe to it).
If you call this a gambit you seem to agree that stuff like wonders and virgin birth are only a small part of religions. Because a gambit is small sacrifice to get to a advantageous position.
So if you still believe this argument needs debate then you must think that science can prove moral values wrong or how rituals should be done. Scientific claims always need to satisfy the criterion of falsifiability. I don't see any way how anyone could ever falsify any moral claim, unless it is self-contradictory.
The thing is, when you get to that point, what's the difference between being "religious" and "following a moral code"? I'm an atheist. I have a moral code. A lot of the time (but not always) my moral code matches a lot of what the christian faith teaches as being moral. Am I christian?
No... I am definitely not christian. The reason I am not is because I do not believe in God; do not believe Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God; do not believe in the concept of heaven; and so on. These are all "wonders" and are required by the very definition of christianity.
My wife claims to be a christian. She doesn't believe Jesus was the son of God. She also doesn't believe Mary had a virgin birth. Nor does she believe most of the "miracles" in the Bible. She has basically the same argument as you - it's a base for a moral system (however she does believe in a soul and that after death she will go to heaven and be with others that have died before her). Fortunately it's a conversation topic that doesn't come up much. I call her crazy and deluded from time to time and in response she calls me depressing (for saying that in the grand scheme of the universe, we're totally irrelevant (but from our own point of view, we're extremely important)); but other than that we love each other and generally have the same outlook on moral behaviour, so our marriage works well anyway. What'll be interesting is when our daughter gets a bit older and starts wondering about this whole "religion" concept.
It's a real shame your post is hidden way down near the bottom of the comments where it's unlikely to be seen by a lot of people. While I learned nothing new from your post, I found it to be the best clarification I've heard in a very long time.
For any interested third parties reading this: No, I don't smoke pot. I don't like how it makes me feel and prefer to keep my mind actively engaged rather than being "slowed down" (for the exact same reasons, only more so, I don't enjoy alcohol consumption either). However I very strongly advocate the legalisation of marijuana for all of the reasons the parent poster points out.
For full disclosure: I do happen to use other substances that are illegal in most jurisdictions. Specifically LSD and Psilocybin. I'm also in favour of the legalisation of these substances; however due to the powerful mind altering effects of these stronger hallucinogens I do have some concerns that without decent education, it may lead to a lot of freaked out people who try it out expecting it to be a "bit of fun" only... That's an aside though and doesn't change my base opinion.
The boss is always right, because he pays you. That means you get to do whatever dumb thing he wants you to do, because it's his ass on the line.
As a "boss", I thoroughly disagree with you. I do NOT want my team to just "do what I tell them" or to think I'm "always right" - otherwise I may as well replace them all with a few simple bits of code hacked together in my spare. I want my team to be creative; have ideas that they run past me; tell me when they think I've done something wrong; tell me when they think the company as a whole is doing something wrong; and so on.
Maybe if you've got the kind of boss who expects blind obedience and no thought on your part AND you accept this as being perfectly okay, it's time you took a closer look at yourself to see if you're really making the most of your life.
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN
even funnier
Agreed. This is the petition to sign. Call them on their doublespeak.
Sadly, if D&D taught me anything, they regenerate fairly quickly. Gotta burn them to ashes for them to be gone.
Funny that, since NetHack taught me it's easiest to just eat their corpses (or feed them to my pets)... as an added bonus, it'd scare the bejeezus out of their fellow trolls as well.
Sorry, he was just a salesman. A good one, but just a salesman. Woz on the other hand... wait, what? Oh, you have not heard of him?
Great work on quoting me quite out of context there...
Yes, I am well aware of Woz, even having had the opportunity to meet him in person once (albeit very briefly and while he was surrounded by large numbers of other people also). Riddle me this: If Jobs was "just a salesman", why exactly is it that he got involved with Woz to begin with? And why did he push his staff so (famously) hard for what he perceived as "the right way"? He may not have been the kind of geek that Woz was; and he certainly annoyed the hell out of me with some of his decisions, but calling him "just a salesman" is doing a terrible disservice to history based solely on how he was often perceived towards the end of his career. I stand by my statement that he clearly had a passion for technology and cool toys including wanting to know how they work and how to make them better. That, in my eyes, is enough to call him a geek.
Well, maybe now that Steve's gone again they won't be so bad, who knows.
Actually, I'd be more worried it'll get much worse without Steve Jobs around. As much as people around here don't like to admit it, Steve Jobs was a geek. Not in the über-programmer kind of way or anything like that; but he had a passion for technology and sincerely loved "cool toys" in the same way as most of us. He put the products and user experience first (whether you agree or disagree with HOW he did it; it definitely appeared he was doing so). While Apple seem to have been going further and further down the road of becoming evil incarnate, I don't put all of that blame on Mr Jobs - I'd even say some of his efforts to improve the products and user experience would have hindered the evil at times.
In short, if Apple's overall vision changes and they stop concentrating so much on making stellar products (* again, as defined by what the masses seem to want rather than we as tinkerers and geeks), I can only see their future level of evil making their current level look like rainbows and ponies.
As a single guy I wouldn't care, but if I was a parent I'd probably use the firewall + categorization and ease-off slowly as my kid(s) got older.
My wife and I have agreed on the following for raising our daughter:
My (non technical) wife may ask me to install whatever security measures she wishes to prevent our daughter from accessing "bad things" online and I will do so.
I may not circumvent those things directly.
I MAY however teach our daughter the various skills necessary to figure out how to circumvent them on her own.
Once she is capable of circumventing them, we accept she's also probably ready to see whatever was blocked.
It may not be the perfect solution, but I'm kinda looking forward to the "game".
Steve Jobs was the insipiration for my first LSD trip. That in itself changed my life so dramatically that after it was over, I was a different person than I was before. A better person.
While Steve Jobs certainly wasn't the insipiration for my first time trying it, I can strongly agree with the dramatic life changing effects. So, whatever brought you to try it, I'm glad you're glad about it.
I can't find the exact quote you're referring to though - the best I can find is the reference on Wikipedia to the quote in John Markoff's "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry". Is there a more direct quote somewhere, or other quotes from Steve on the topic of his time(s) with LSD and other entheogens?
Not posting anonymously, since I'm happy for this to be associated with my user account.
Re:What he took away is more precious than given
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Steve Jobs Dead At 56
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Jobs was driven not by a desire to make things easy for the world or by altruism, but by his own ego and greed.
Why do you think that? Because he was very successful at getting rich?
Maybe he really did do it to make things easy for the world or for other altruistic reasons; maybe he didn't. I really don't think you or I could possibly know what was going on in the head of someone neither of us has ever met.
Even if you think he was generally doing "bad things" (I don't), perhaps it could be attributed to misdirected altruism - like when certain fringe religious groups picket at the funerals of gay men - they honestly believe they're doing good.
Basically speaking, you shouldn't make assumptions one way or the other about another person's motives for anything.
The hole itself hardly needs to be "over" NZ or Australia to have an effect. Whenever the ozone depleted air wanders a bit (when the hole "breaks up"), it reduces the levels of ozone for quite a distance around. More info...
Growing up in Southern NZ, I was always confused by how kids on TV got to play outside all day on a really hot and sunny day whereas for us, that'd mean a horridly painful sunburn in an hour or less. The news weather reports would tell us the temperature and "burn time" for the day - often a matter of tens of minutes even when the temperature was barely high enough to not be wearing a coat.
Quite often however, someone comes along and says, "ooh, can I get this on my Mac/Linux box/iPad/Android device?"
Ooh, can I get this on my Windows Phone 7 device? Be careful: it can't run standard C++; it runs only languages that can be compiled to safe IL.
Yep... irritating that. That said, in many cases, C# is what my original backend was all written in (like I said, the vast majority of my work is for Windows anyway), so WP7 isn't such a pain really...
In the rare cases where porting of the backend absolutely must happen for whatever reason, I try not to use too many "special tricks" of a language in my code, so theoretically porting of most projects is possible without too much pain... I do obviously prefer not to have to port all the backend when I can avoid it though.
Note that for most non Windows platforms, mono is my life-saver.
That doesn't mean that you can't reuse much of the core functionality. That's exactly what any sensible and competent developer or development team would do. But to provide a good user experience, you need unique UIs for each device type.
Indeed. In my day job, I write code "mostly" for Windows. Most of these apps have a fairly GUI rich front end. Quite often however, someone comes along and says, "ooh, can I get this on my Mac/Linux box/iPad/Android device?". Now, I could just write something with a generic front end that will work on any of those, but then my apps would be suboptimal. They'd be targetting something (or nothing) and not play to the strengths of each operating system and user interface.
I much prefer to spend the time to make sure my back-end code is as flexible as possible and doesn't "assume" any particular front end, and then just spend the time to write the correct front end for the device. I've even written a couple of different front ends for Windows for some apps based purely on the intended target customer (highly techie customer A that wants to see/use everything gets a tabbed UI with lots of stuff in it; less techie customer B gets a simple Wizard with most of the options only available by clicking "advanced" buttons at various stages).
Give Londoners not essential to the Olympics two weeks off during the Olympics, I'm sure they'll appreciate a chance to escape the madness...:)
Here in Hannover, Germany, we just take a couple of weeks off when CeBIT rolls around and rent our apartments out to visitors for about 5 to 10 times what we pay in rent ourselves. We then use that money to take a nice holiday somewhere. Well, that's the theory... being a geek, I tend to just go to CeBIT, much to the dismay of my wife who'd prefer a free holiday.
Londoners that aren't interested in hanging around for the Olympics should definitely consider the same.
I guess it really depends on the job and the environment. I started out with my current company as a third level support guy in a copier company helping out with print, scan and general network related stuff. Basically, end users had problems; they'd talk to technicians (who were generally of the "mechanically oriented" mindset rather than IT) who would then call me for IT help. Definitely an "IT job" rather than even vaguely CS related.
Definitely not glamorous at all... however, after a while I identified common questions and problems and started writing a bit of code to make the technicians lives easier - point and click interfaces for stuff that they previously had to do a lot more manually. This got noticed and after a while I found myself writing a bit of end user software as well. After 5 years with the company (a good 3 or 4 of which I was doing quite a lot of coding) I decided to move to a different country and since it's a large international firm, applied for a job in the European head office. They took me on as a specialist for an API that our company makes for interfacing to our devices. Four years here in Europe and now I'm the Software Development Supervisor, responsible for software development activities across Europe. I write code, look after a small team of other developers, design apps from "fuzzy" marketing ideas in to real products and generally have a lot of fun and creative freedom.
While I wouldn't say my current job is CS heavy - I don't spend much time coming up with cool new algorithms (except a little work on OCR that I did) or designing operating systems and languages - but nevertheless it's definitely moved a long way away from the "IT job" beginnings with the company and is now almost all creative software development and a just a tiny bit of management thrown on top. I'd imagine most CS grads would be happy to end up with a job like mine, so I guess it's relevant for you.
The speed of light in a vacuum (c) is a constant. The speed of light in a non-vacuum is not.
You're right, but I'd like to expand on what you're saying to clarify for all the people that seem not to get it.
Basically, it's just a problem of "really bad naming". Generally speaking, when a physicist uses the term "speed of light", he's thinking "c". "c" has nothing to do with the amount of time it takes for light to get from A to B. It just happens that light going from A to B in a perfect vacuum does so at "c" (due to the properties of light).
"c" is a value that can basically be described as a kind of "infinite speed" in that anything going at that speed would experience no time whatsoever and would therefore get anywhere instantly from their own perspective (it takes some time from other people's perspectives, but that's beside the point here).
So, when you hear "speed of light", you shouldn't think about someone getting out there and measuring how fast light is going in the same way you might imagine when someone says "speed of a Ferrari". Instead you should think about it as being the fastest that can exist in the same way as the north pole being "the most north there is". Going "north of the north pole" isn't just "hard to do", it's impossible because it's meaningless - in the exact same way, going "faster than the speed of light" is impossible because it's meaningless - "c" isn't just a rule about some kind of speed limit, but rather a part of the definition of the concept speed in and of itself.
So, "going faster than the speed of light" is as impossible as going "north of the north pole". What does this mean for this CERN experiment? Well, either there's a measurement error somewhere, or our entire understanding of physics is going to need some serious modification - as much confusion as finding out that you really CAN go north of the north pole.
And what happens when the Customs agent decides your daughter is cute and decides to check for contraband? You have even fewer rights at a border crossing than in an airport.
Is it not possible to simply say, "uh, I don't think we'll be crossing the border today. Bye!", then turn around and leave?
Forgive my ignorance - that's an honest question... I just assumed one could readily do so (I've never done a US border crossing except by plane). The difference in the airport is that by the time you're getting molested, you've already checked in your luggage and "turning around and leaving" is a tad more difficult (however, I'd imagine even that should still be possible).
It seems to me that if they disallow this, they're seriously restricting your freedom to move around within your own country, no? I'm not aware of any signs at the airport that say, "once you've gone beyond this point, you've given up your right to leave again".
Can you get the document to email feature on my office C35 to work for more than 3 months at a time?
We got a C35 in August of 2010 and we've had 7 service calls on it.
Drop me an email (myusername minus last 3 chars at google's well known mail service) with the details of what's going wrong and yeh, I'll be happy to help. I can even send you a few apps that'll help with general setup and troubleshooting (non official stuff that I wrote for use internally whenever I need something like that)
I've been with KM for 9 years now, and while most technical people working for a company tend to view their own products negatively (due to being intimately familiar with every little problem), I'm happy to say that the reason I've been with KM for so long is that I honestly and truly think our stuff is way better than what our competition can offer. Still not perfect, but nothing is.
Try the Konica Minolta bizhub C35... probably a bit pricey as a home machine, but does what you want and is easily in the budget of a small office. For larger offices, any of the larger A3 based devices will do these functions as well, but of course the price goes up accordingly.
Disclaimer: Yes, I do work for Konica Minolta (as a software developer)
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Do you know of any societies that developed without religion or rejected religion to embrace atheism that have a moral code that holds that life has intrinsic value?
Well no... but, not to sound trite, I also don't know of any societies that are grounded in religion that have a moral code that holds that life has intrinsic value with the possible exception of Buddhism and some of the more obscure and lesser known religions. Christianity (and indeed the related Abrahamic religions) most certainly doesn't traditionally value life (it values the "soul" instead) - it's only a fairly modern view of Christianity that has changed to being life value based - which all relates back to my earlier point that it seems more to me that the morals come from society and go TO the religion rather than vice-versa.
While I don't disagree with any of your specific points on the morality, I'm not so sure about:
Christianity has provided a moral underpinning that has held our society together.
I'm not sure I would attribute the morals we have to Christianity, but rather the other way around - the Christian morals were defined by the morals of the society that it developed in. Those morals have changed over time, and the morals that modern Christians consider "Christian morals" are again just a reflection of the morals of society at large.
This part however, I would strongly disagree with:
Atheistic teachings on all these things boil down to survival of the fittest and could not create a society even close to what we have today.
You're implying an asocial aspect to atheism that simply isn't based in reality. Atheism is a lack of a belief in a god or gods - it in no way implies any attempt to extract a moral code from limited segments of science (e.g. Darwinian evolutionary theory). One probably CAN try to derive a moral code from purely non-religious grounds, using a fair amount of the "softer sciences" such as sociology and anthropology and I get the feeling that it wouldn't be all that different to the moral codes seen in most major religions. However speaking purely for myself, I've never tried to do so. My morals are primarily "gut feeling" about right and wrong, which I'm sure comes from a mix of genetics (humans are instinctively a social animal) and upbringing (which I'll freely admit was in a society that has a Christian background and that therefore did influence me).
I only intended to indicate that just because it feels good doesn't mean it's true. I support anything which allows us to consider deeper questions or opens our mind to new ideas. I very much include religious texts in this, by the way, as long as you don't drink the cool-aid.
Absolutely. Looking at things in new ways; (rationally and logically) considering alternatives that previously hadn't come to mind; and coming up with new ideas is, to me at least, the epitome of what drives us forwards as a species.
LSD came to mind because I'm debating one of my theist (I should rather say "spiritualist") friends, who experienced an out-of-body moment during an LSD trip which has now convinced him of the existence of the supernatural, and by a magical leap also the general truth of the bible.
It really does make me a little depressed when that happens. I've introduced countless people to LSD (as you can probably tell, I'm rather a proponent of the substance) and while it's rare that someone does get all "mystical" and start believing that their fantasies somehow had an element of truth them (especially when those fantasies get tied in with "mainstream" beliefs), it does happen from time to time.
I've always had kind of a "here's what you should know" speech before I let them take it the first time, and after about the twentieth person or so I started adding a bit about mysticism and "religious experiences" in there just to help clarify what's going on if they start thinking down this train of thought.
Perhaps I'll take your advice and investigate LSD more fully... ;-)
For academic purposes, of course.
Hehe, well, I can of course highly recommend it. It is a lot of fun and I won't deny using it myself on occasion for the sole purpose of enjoying my own brain for a bit; but quite seriously on the "academic purposes" side, if you do try it, my biggest recommendation is to do a lot of deep introspection (which you'll likely find is much easier when under the influence - examining your own thoughts as you're thinking them is much easier when "time" has less personal meaning than it used to). You'll probably discover a lot about your own thought processes that you weren't aware of previously, and hopefully could use the insights gained to give a better explanation and clarification to your "spiritualist" friend about how and why he's deluding himself.
As a final note, I recommend a first timer that has a solid grip on reality and an inquiring mind to try around 1.5 micrograms per kg of body weight. It's a moderately large amount compared to common usage (about 1.5 to 2 times as much based on common street dosages) - this will avoid the problem where you "almost get there" but fail to reach the deep level that helps with introspection. Getting almost there but not quite can be a bit frustrating and leave you annoyed at feeling like there was something you almost understood but then lost again (similar to reading a complex textbook and not quite having it "click" despite feeling like you get all of the stuff around the main topic)
You probably shouldn't go to 3 times higher or more until you're more familiar with it, as that's when both seriously powerful synaesthesia can kick in (e.g. "I can hear blue and see quietness" compared to the normal amount's "hey, that music is causing ripple effects in my vision!" and so on) - while interesting in itself, it can be very disconcerting what with everything else going on in your mind that you're really not so used to yet.
Um, this thing you call "belief"? Science doesn't use it.
Of course it does. There are frequently no absolute answers (especially at the leading edge of science) and scientists base their work on what they believe to be true.
While it's true that there are frequently (actually, I'd say "always") no absolute answers, "science" should work on what is the best assumption at this time. What "scientists" base their work on is not necessarily always this - they may base their work on their beliefs, but that's just them being human. Don't blame science for the scientists...
Occasionally, someone comes up with a new hypothesis and gets hell from the other scientists for their crazy theories. Sometimes those crazy ideas are shown to work better than the established theories and everyone has to shift their belief.
Or, they (theoretically) "start working from the clearly better new assumptions". It doesn't have to be a matter of belief.
Scientific belief is a lot more fluid than religious belief, but don't kid yourself - it is a fundamental part of science and there is always a lot of resistance to changing it.
No, it's a fundamental part of scientists (as a subset of "humans"), not of science.
Try taking LSD, it's even better, but it doesn't make your life any better or more meaningful.
While I agree with everything you said about religion, I have to disagree with this statement. Both religion and LSD can make your life significantly better and more meaningful. There's no external influence to either one of course (God doesn't exist; and nor do the fantasies that you experience with LSD), however they can help you shape your worldview and expand on it. They can give you a hand with looking at things from a different perspective (which is difficult for many people without help from religion or hallucinogens). And they can even spur imagination and creativity in people who otherwise lack a "muse" (as a software developer, I give a lot of credit to LSD for my work).
One place (amongst many) where LSD has the advantage over religion is that it doesn't require you believe anything untrue. You can be completely aware that your fantasies while under the influence aren't real and still get meaningful benefits.
(Yes, I know Occam was a monk. A pretty bright one, despite being a follower of the creed that "God is not accessible to the human Intellect". That was kind of the last line of defense. It has clearly fallen since then.)
On the plus side - he was a Franciscan. Generally a lot more level headed than many other orders (despite still believing in fairy tales).
And of course, who can fault an order that is responsible for the best tasting beer in the world?
I guess that's debatable. (Personally I call that the "Gould Gambit", and do not ascribe to it).
If you call this a gambit you seem to agree that stuff like wonders and virgin birth are only a small part of religions. Because a gambit is small sacrifice to get to a advantageous position. So if you still believe this argument needs debate then you must think that science can prove moral values wrong or how rituals should be done. Scientific claims always need to satisfy the criterion of falsifiability. I don't see any way how anyone could ever falsify any moral claim, unless it is self-contradictory.
The thing is, when you get to that point, what's the difference between being "religious" and "following a moral code"? I'm an atheist. I have a moral code. A lot of the time (but not always) my moral code matches a lot of what the christian faith teaches as being moral. Am I christian?
No... I am definitely not christian. The reason I am not is because I do not believe in God; do not believe Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God; do not believe in the concept of heaven; and so on. These are all "wonders" and are required by the very definition of christianity.
My wife claims to be a christian. She doesn't believe Jesus was the son of God. She also doesn't believe Mary had a virgin birth. Nor does she believe most of the "miracles" in the Bible. She has basically the same argument as you - it's a base for a moral system (however she does believe in a soul and that after death she will go to heaven and be with others that have died before her). Fortunately it's a conversation topic that doesn't come up much. I call her crazy and deluded from time to time and in response she calls me depressing (for saying that in the grand scheme of the universe, we're totally irrelevant (but from our own point of view, we're extremely important)); but other than that we love each other and generally have the same outlook on moral behaviour, so our marriage works well anyway. What'll be interesting is when our daughter gets a bit older and starts wondering about this whole "religion" concept.
It's a real shame your post is hidden way down near the bottom of the comments where it's unlikely to be seen by a lot of people. While I learned nothing new from your post, I found it to be the best clarification I've heard in a very long time.
For any interested third parties reading this: No, I don't smoke pot. I don't like how it makes me feel and prefer to keep my mind actively engaged rather than being "slowed down" (for the exact same reasons, only more so, I don't enjoy alcohol consumption either). However I very strongly advocate the legalisation of marijuana for all of the reasons the parent poster points out.
For full disclosure: I do happen to use other substances that are illegal in most jurisdictions. Specifically LSD and Psilocybin. I'm also in favour of the legalisation of these substances; however due to the powerful mind altering effects of these stronger hallucinogens I do have some concerns that without decent education, it may lead to a lot of freaked out people who try it out expecting it to be a "bit of fun" only... That's an aside though and doesn't change my base opinion.
The boss is always right, because he pays you. That means you get to do whatever dumb thing he wants you to do, because it's his ass on the line.
As a "boss", I thoroughly disagree with you. I do NOT want my team to just "do what I tell them" or to think I'm "always right" - otherwise I may as well replace them all with a few simple bits of code hacked together in my spare. I want my team to be creative; have ideas that they run past me; tell me when they think I've done something wrong; tell me when they think the company as a whole is doing something wrong; and so on.
Maybe if you've got the kind of boss who expects blind obedience and no thought on your part AND you accept this as being perfectly okay, it's time you took a closer look at yourself to see if you're really making the most of your life.
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN even funnier
Agreed. This is the petition to sign. Call them on their doublespeak.
Not a US citizen, but I'd personally go for: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/develop-policies-based-science-and-research-not-ideology-or-politics/nrn6YXwB
Basically the same concept as the above petition, just not as snarky and sounds a bit more "serious" in general (i.e. more likely to be listened to).
Sadly, if D&D taught me anything, they regenerate fairly quickly. Gotta burn them to ashes for them to be gone.
Funny that, since NetHack taught me it's easiest to just eat their corpses (or feed them to my pets)... as an added bonus, it'd scare the bejeezus out of their fellow trolls as well.
Steve Jobs was a geek
Sorry, he was just a salesman. A good one, but just a salesman. Woz on the other hand... wait, what? Oh, you have not heard of him?
Great work on quoting me quite out of context there...
Yes, I am well aware of Woz, even having had the opportunity to meet him in person once (albeit very briefly and while he was surrounded by large numbers of other people also).
Riddle me this: If Jobs was "just a salesman", why exactly is it that he got involved with Woz to begin with? And why did he push his staff so (famously) hard for what he perceived as "the right way"?
He may not have been the kind of geek that Woz was; and he certainly annoyed the hell out of me with some of his decisions, but calling him "just a salesman" is doing a terrible disservice to history based solely on how he was often perceived towards the end of his career.
I stand by my statement that he clearly had a passion for technology and cool toys including wanting to know how they work and how to make them better. That, in my eyes, is enough to call him a geek.
Well, maybe now that Steve's gone again they won't be so bad, who knows.
Actually, I'd be more worried it'll get much worse without Steve Jobs around. As much as people around here don't like to admit it, Steve Jobs was a geek. Not in the über-programmer kind of way or anything like that; but he had a passion for technology and sincerely loved "cool toys" in the same way as most of us. He put the products and user experience first (whether you agree or disagree with HOW he did it; it definitely appeared he was doing so). While Apple seem to have been going further and further down the road of becoming evil incarnate, I don't put all of that blame on Mr Jobs - I'd even say some of his efforts to improve the products and user experience would have hindered the evil at times.
In short, if Apple's overall vision changes and they stop concentrating so much on making stellar products (* again, as defined by what the masses seem to want rather than we as tinkerers and geeks), I can only see their future level of evil making their current level look like rainbows and ponies.
As a single guy I wouldn't care, but if I was a parent I'd probably use the firewall + categorization and ease-off slowly as my kid(s) got older.
My wife and I have agreed on the following for raising our daughter:
My (non technical) wife may ask me to install whatever security measures she wishes to prevent our daughter from accessing "bad things" online and I will do so.
I may not circumvent those things directly.
I MAY however teach our daughter the various skills necessary to figure out how to circumvent them on her own.
Once she is capable of circumventing them, we accept she's also probably ready to see whatever was blocked.
It may not be the perfect solution, but I'm kinda looking forward to the "game".
Steve Jobs was the insipiration for my first LSD trip. That in itself changed my life so dramatically that after it was over, I was a different person than I was before. A better person.
While Steve Jobs certainly wasn't the insipiration for my first time trying it, I can strongly agree with the dramatic life changing effects. So, whatever brought you to try it, I'm glad you're glad about it.
I can't find the exact quote you're referring to though - the best I can find is the reference on Wikipedia to the quote in John Markoff's "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry". Is there a more direct quote somewhere, or other quotes from Steve on the topic of his time(s) with LSD and other entheogens?
Not posting anonymously, since I'm happy for this to be associated with my user account.
Jobs was driven not by a desire to make things easy for the world or by altruism, but by his own ego and greed.
Why do you think that? Because he was very successful at getting rich?
Maybe he really did do it to make things easy for the world or for other altruistic reasons; maybe he didn't. I really don't think you or I could possibly know what was going on in the head of someone neither of us has ever met.
Even if you think he was generally doing "bad things" (I don't), perhaps it could be attributed to misdirected altruism - like when certain fringe religious groups picket at the funerals of gay men - they honestly believe they're doing good.
Basically speaking, you shouldn't make assumptions one way or the other about another person's motives for anything.
The hole itself hardly needs to be "over" NZ or Australia to have an effect. Whenever the ozone depleted air wanders a bit (when the hole "breaks up"), it reduces the levels of ozone for quite a distance around. More info...
Growing up in Southern NZ, I was always confused by how kids on TV got to play outside all day on a really hot and sunny day whereas for us, that'd mean a horridly painful sunburn in an hour or less. The news weather reports would tell us the temperature and "burn time" for the day - often a matter of tens of minutes even when the temperature was barely high enough to not be wearing a coat.
Quite often however, someone comes along and says, "ooh, can I get this on my Mac/Linux box/iPad/Android device?"
Ooh, can I get this on my Windows Phone 7 device? Be careful: it can't run standard C++; it runs only languages that can be compiled to safe IL.
Yep... irritating that. That said, in many cases, C# is what my original backend was all written in (like I said, the vast majority of my work is for Windows anyway), so WP7 isn't such a pain really...
In the rare cases where porting of the backend absolutely must happen for whatever reason, I try not to use too many "special tricks" of a language in my code, so theoretically porting of most projects is possible without too much pain... I do obviously prefer not to have to port all the backend when I can avoid it though.
Note that for most non Windows platforms, mono is my life-saver.
That doesn't mean that you can't reuse much of the core functionality. That's exactly what any sensible and competent developer or development team would do. But to provide a good user experience, you need unique UIs for each device type.
Indeed. In my day job, I write code "mostly" for Windows. Most of these apps have a fairly GUI rich front end. Quite often however, someone comes along and says, "ooh, can I get this on my Mac/Linux box/iPad/Android device?". Now, I could just write something with a generic front end that will work on any of those, but then my apps would be suboptimal. They'd be targetting something (or nothing) and not play to the strengths of each operating system and user interface.
I much prefer to spend the time to make sure my back-end code is as flexible as possible and doesn't "assume" any particular front end, and then just spend the time to write the correct front end for the device. I've even written a couple of different front ends for Windows for some apps based purely on the intended target customer (highly techie customer A that wants to see/use everything gets a tabbed UI with lots of stuff in it; less techie customer B gets a simple Wizard with most of the options only available by clicking "advanced" buttons at various stages).
Give Londoners not essential to the Olympics two weeks off during the Olympics, I'm sure they'll appreciate a chance to escape the madness... :)
Here in Hannover, Germany, we just take a couple of weeks off when CeBIT rolls around and rent our apartments out to visitors for about 5 to 10 times what we pay in rent ourselves. We then use that money to take a nice holiday somewhere.
Well, that's the theory... being a geek, I tend to just go to CeBIT, much to the dismay of my wife who'd prefer a free holiday.
Londoners that aren't interested in hanging around for the Olympics should definitely consider the same.
I guess it really depends on the job and the environment. I started out with my current company as a third level support guy in a copier company helping out with print, scan and general network related stuff. Basically, end users had problems; they'd talk to technicians (who were generally of the "mechanically oriented" mindset rather than IT) who would then call me for IT help. Definitely an "IT job" rather than even vaguely CS related.
Definitely not glamorous at all... however, after a while I identified common questions and problems and started writing a bit of code to make the technicians lives easier - point and click interfaces for stuff that they previously had to do a lot more manually. This got noticed and after a while I found myself writing a bit of end user software as well. After 5 years with the company (a good 3 or 4 of which I was doing quite a lot of coding) I decided to move to a different country and since it's a large international firm, applied for a job in the European head office. They took me on as a specialist for an API that our company makes for interfacing to our devices. Four years here in Europe and now I'm the Software Development Supervisor, responsible for software development activities across Europe. I write code, look after a small team of other developers, design apps from "fuzzy" marketing ideas in to real products and generally have a lot of fun and creative freedom.
While I wouldn't say my current job is CS heavy - I don't spend much time coming up with cool new algorithms (except a little work on OCR that I did) or designing operating systems and languages - but nevertheless it's definitely moved a long way away from the "IT job" beginnings with the company and is now almost all creative software development and a just a tiny bit of management thrown on top. I'd imagine most CS grads would be happy to end up with a job like mine, so I guess it's relevant for you.
The speed of light in a vacuum (c) is a constant. The speed of light in a non-vacuum is not.
You're right, but I'd like to expand on what you're saying to clarify for all the people that seem not to get it.
Basically, it's just a problem of "really bad naming". Generally speaking, when a physicist uses the term "speed of light", he's thinking "c". "c" has nothing to do with the amount of time it takes for light to get from A to B. It just happens that light going from A to B in a perfect vacuum does so at "c" (due to the properties of light).
"c" is a value that can basically be described as a kind of "infinite speed" in that anything going at that speed would experience no time whatsoever and would therefore get anywhere instantly from their own perspective (it takes some time from other people's perspectives, but that's beside the point here).
So, when you hear "speed of light", you shouldn't think about someone getting out there and measuring how fast light is going in the same way you might imagine when someone says "speed of a Ferrari". Instead you should think about it as being the fastest that can exist in the same way as the north pole being "the most north there is". Going "north of the north pole" isn't just "hard to do", it's impossible because it's meaningless - in the exact same way, going "faster than the speed of light" is impossible because it's meaningless - "c" isn't just a rule about some kind of speed limit, but rather a part of the definition of the concept speed in and of itself.
So, "going faster than the speed of light" is as impossible as going "north of the north pole". What does this mean for this CERN experiment? Well, either there's a measurement error somewhere, or our entire understanding of physics is going to need some serious modification - as much confusion as finding out that you really CAN go north of the north pole.
And what happens when the Customs agent decides your daughter is cute and decides to check for contraband? You have even fewer rights at a border crossing than in an airport.
Is it not possible to simply say, "uh, I don't think we'll be crossing the border today. Bye!", then turn around and leave?
Forgive my ignorance - that's an honest question... I just assumed one could readily do so (I've never done a US border crossing except by plane). The difference in the airport is that by the time you're getting molested, you've already checked in your luggage and "turning around and leaving" is a tad more difficult (however, I'd imagine even that should still be possible).
It seems to me that if they disallow this, they're seriously restricting your freedom to move around within your own country, no? I'm not aware of any signs at the airport that say, "once you've gone beyond this point, you've given up your right to leave again".
Can you get the document to email feature on my office C35 to work for more than 3 months at a time?
We got a C35 in August of 2010 and we've had 7 service calls on it.
Drop me an email (myusername minus last 3 chars at google's well known mail service) with the details of what's going wrong and yeh, I'll be happy to help. I can even send you a few apps that'll help with general setup and troubleshooting (non official stuff that I wrote for use internally whenever I need something like that)
I've been with KM for 9 years now, and while most technical people working for a company tend to view their own products negatively (due to being intimately familiar with every little problem), I'm happy to say that the reason I've been with KM for so long is that I honestly and truly think our stuff is way better than what our competition can offer. Still not perfect, but nothing is.
Try the Konica Minolta bizhub C35... probably a bit pricey as a home machine, but does what you want and is easily in the budget of a small office. For larger offices, any of the larger A3 based devices will do these functions as well, but of course the price goes up accordingly.
Disclaimer: Yes, I do work for Konica Minolta (as a software developer)