I guess you missed the part where I said "in origin", but even taking that it's "latinised Greek" (which I agree it is, despite that being irrelevant), as RedWizzard already said in his reply to you, it'd have to be a second declension noun for "Octopi" to be the plural, and it isn't, so it isn't.
"Octopuses" and "Octopodes" are both generally accepted (personally I prefer "Octopuses" to avoid confusion with my usage (right or wrong) of the word "Octopodes" as a synonym for "Octopoda" (the species order)). "Octopi" is considered almost universally wrong since it has NO linguistic sense behind it (the word isn't Latin in origin (it's Greek), so pluralising the "us" to an "i" is making a mistaken assumption).
except in a small set of common loanwords: "formulas", "nexuses", "moratoriums", etc
I agree with your post in general about how to pluralise loanwords using English endings, but did you have to give these examples? Maybe it's a dialect difference between where you are and where I grew up, but we'd lose marks in an English test if we ever wrote "formulas" or "moratoriums" - it'd have to be "formulae" and "moratoria". (I just did a quick check at "Dictionary.com" (hardly authoritative, but I'm in a hurry) and it agrees with me about "moratoria", but offers both plurals for "formula" (-s or -ae)). For me, in spoken speech I'd never consider a "-s" ending for a latin word ending in "ium", always "ia". The "formulas"/"formulae" thing also just sounds weird to me with an "-s", although it doesn't feel "as wrong" to me (I'd still use "formulae" in speech/writing).
As I said though, these may be dialect differences - English is drifting apart relatively quickly it seems - television may have slowed down the drift somewhat with US shows being viewed worldwide, but it doesn't seem to be sufficient to stop the drift - I can definitely say that the language I grew up speaking is VERY different to the language I tend to use today (I live in a non-English speaking country, so when I use English, I tend to use a simplified subset of "standard English" - all grammatically correct (no "Me go shop now" or whatever), but avoiding some sentence structures or words with a lot of ambiguity. I also do this online, but to a lesser degree (such as in this post) since I'm well aware that the local dialect I spoke growing up (Southern New Zealand by the way, which has a lot of influence from Scottish English, and is very different to Northern New Zealand which is what most people are familiar with) does not lend itself well to the written form if I really want others to understand me)
(oh, and sorry for the nested parentheses - it's a bad habit I picked up years ago (perhaps related to LISP programming (or perhaps just my own weird thought style)) and I have trouble breaking it)
I think companies would see real productivity gains from having the programmers (or whatever type of worker) manage themselves... either by meeting together regularly, rotating the leadership position, or preferably a mixture of both.
I absolutely agree, however the people that would be in charge of making the decision to do that are managers... half a seconds thought on that should be sufficient.
It'll also never happen in most companies, and especially where I work, as we're a Japanese company (although I work in the European HQ of the company, based in Germany, it's still run more "Japanese style" than German) and Japanese companies just LOVE as many layers of management as they can get.
I have a lot of respect for my current boss, and I know very well that he does an excellent job of shielding me and the rest of the team from the bureaucracy and annoying "non technical" details that we have neither the time nor inclination to deal with on top of our busy technical jobs, but looking above him, or at other areas of the company, I do see a lot of pointless management positions.
Some things are significantly cheaper, some are significantly more expensive. I can't really speak too much for the US as I've never lived there, only visited. I did notice hotel prices, and especially things such as food and alcohol were more than I'm used to (although, as is often mentioned, petrol is amazingly cheap there still).
I can better compare Hannover, Germany to Sydney, Australia though, as I used to live in Sydney and now live in Hannover. Yes, Sydney is a much bigger city, but when I moved here, my cost of living halved (actually, my rent here is about 40% of what it was in Sydney for slightly higher quality and slightly smaller size) and my income went up about 50%, so I really do feel significantly "richer". (not relevant to the US topic, but probably interesting to people reading this thread anyway)
I haven't noticed clothing being too expensive over here, but I've never looked at US prices (I don't tend to buy a lot of clothes on business trips!), but I can get a nice shirt here for about 10 to 15 euro, or a cheap nasty one for between 3 and 5. So, for perspective, a nice shirt costs around half an hours work for a moderately paid programmer (well, "Developer Support" technically - I write code specifically to help other people write code), which seems more than reasonable to me.
I can't find much on the link other than a list of names associated with studies, not the studies themselves... but I did a Google search and found the report you're referring to. It's definitely an interesting read (German's not my native tongue, but I can get by in it), but I'd wonder if perhaps the placebo effect of acupuncture is just "significantly better" than the effect of the painkillers they gave (it's also entirely possible that they were essentially useless and also only provided a placebo effect, but people weren't as "trusting" in them or whatever). But yes, definitely interesting.
We do that a lot in English, primarily due to the switch from Old English to Middle English (pure Germanic to Germanic/Romance hybrid). Especially in the letter of the law, where there are many such "x and y" type of statements where both words mean the same thing. The most humorous to me though is that our farm animals generally use a germanic name (sheep, cow, "swine" (yes, I know "pig" is more common)) but the meat uses a romance name (mutton, beef, pork) - this makes it pretty clear what the social order was like at the time even if you don't know your history!
I FAR prefer Dutch to English. Dutch allows for a sort of "quirky style" that's almost impossible to emulate in English - especially for swearing or being crass, but also just for sarcasm and irony, which often sound so "forced" in English. I agree it's probably not the most "beautiful" of languages, but it's also a LOT more consistent than English (Dutch was my second language, and I found it easier than French or German, which are my 3rd/4th respectively).
You're of course right that English has a lot of variation compared to Dutch, but don't sell your language so short - you've got nuances than English doesn't as well (just try and tell me a SINGLE English word that encompasses the meaning of "gezellig" for example).
I often learn a new language (not to conversational level, but enough to "get around" and order food and so on) before I take a holiday somewhere. Really, after the 4th language or so, it's extra-ordinarily easy, especially if it's in the same family of languages as another you've already learned. And, as a poster above (from Luxembourg from the sounds of things) pointed out, there are subtleties in every language that don't exist in others, so by learning a new language, you learn a new way to think about things, which really is very good to do.
Just to note, I AM a native English speaker as well, so don't use that as a crutch as so many seem to.
Are there any good examples you know of that couldn't be explained by the placebo effect? If you go purely with statistics (which most of the research I've seen does) then you WILL see a positive result from acupuncture compared to "no treatment", but that doesn't mean it's actually doing anything.
And why do you assume the people responsible for those particular decisions within the military are any less gullible than anyone else? (note: some areas of the military absolute DO require high intelligence and sharp wits, however that doesn't mean ALL positions in the military do...)
poverty in general and overall standards of living are much lower, there are major distinctions in wealth, and a strong social class system still exists in some places and results in discrimination and unfair due process that couldn't be tolereated in many developed countries
Yep, that sounds like a fairly accurate description of the USA to me... (these people compared to these people as an example...
(that's intended as humour, but with a dark serious side, so I'll accept "Funny" or "Insightful". "Flamebait" is probably the most likely mod I'll get though)
Most people who declare themselves atheists follow that declaration with a tirade
Sorry for trotting out an old meme, but [citation needed]
Most people who consider themselves atheist just "get on with their lives" and don't give it a second thought unless someone brings it up. This is probably less true these days in countries like the US, since there's been quite a resurgence of more fundamentalist beliefs there over the past decade, but in most of the world, we just don't care.
My post was perhaps leaning towards the "tirade" side of things a little and I do apologise at least a bit for that (I stand by my views, but think I could have perhaps been more civil about it), but honestly, I didn't start the discussion...
Zealotry is the problem, not what it's aimed at or against
I agree wholeheartedly.
Horoscopes don't cause people to act irrationally
Usually not, but in some cases they do... especially when someone in a position of power makes business (or governmental) decisions based on their horoscope. It's rare, but it does happen and that's pretty scary really.
Besides, aren't horoscopes in newspapers usually of the "you need to be cautious in your affairs" variety ?
Sometimes, but sometimes they'll also say things like, "today is a day to take bold steps!" or whatever.
In general from your post, I think we're probably of a similar mindset, however have differing worldviews (possibly based on the cultures we live in and are most familiar with)...
Hmm, someone didn't proofread his post for self-contradictions!
I see no inherent contradiction in the sentence: "I'm not saying others shouldn't, only that they are mad if they do so", especially as I made no statement about whet someone should/shouldn't do. "Should/Shouldn't" a moral concern (and one I deliberately avoided completely in my post), whereas I was using "mad" in response to your wording, as I initially used the words "mental illness", which is a medical issue, not a moral one.
And if you were an accredited practitioner with the British Psychological Society, or its equivalent where you live, maybe we'd take your analysis seriously.
You've just readily admitted to accepting arguments from authority. It shouldn't matter who I am, or what my accreditations are (besides, how do you know what accreditations I do or don't have?) if my reasoning is sound. Clearly, I believe my reasoning is sound, and you believe it isn't.
You're more than welcome to reply again, but honestly, I'm done with this discussion since I don't think either of us will be able to say anything the other side would be willing to consider (unfortunately). I'm willing to consider rational arguments, but haven't received any yet in my opinion. I assume you're the same, but consider that you haven't received any yet, so continuing in this manner would probably be a little pointless. You may of course reply if you choose, but I won't reply again in this thread.
Ahhh... so what you're saying is that you don't think the crossing of plane of the ecliptic and the Mayan calendar have anything to do with each other... sorry, I thought you were arguing against my point that crossing the plane of the ecliptic is an interesting event... I was basically completely ignoring the Mayan calendar side of it, and attempting to argue in favour of the astronomical event being interesting.
Most things I've seen about the Mayan calendar do seem to point to the relationship being pretty strong though, especially since the event is pretty clearly easy to work out if you're mathematically inclined and watch the stars for a couple of years/decades. Also, their "start date" for the "age" seems a little odd if there's no actual correlation there (it's so many years before their civilisation even began, and seems to hold no other significance other than it matches this astronomical event really quite well (although, as stated, not perfectly)), so I would appreciate if you could point me at some reading that shows otherwise.
I don't think this 'event' will do anything either and if someone tried to convince me it was the end of the world or even that it would be anything other than an unremarkable day, I'd probably tell them they're a loony. But it IS an event that happens only once every 26000 years (or a bit under, but who's counting). And, from an astronomical perspective, it's utterly irrelevant, but from the perspective of Earth, it's quite interesting (even though it will have absolutely no effect on anything). I'm not talking about the Mayan calendar rollover - that's just a system that the Mayans came up with that happens to track the cycle fairly nicely (certainly deliberately, otherwise the coincidence would be too much to believe). In case you didn't read the link (or Google it yourself for a less "kooky" link), I'm talking about the fact that we shall again cross through the plane of the ecliptic. Earth doesn't get such interesting things happening all the time. I contest the call of sharp shooter fallacy on these grounds, in that while there are always fairly amazing things going on in the universe, our Solar System tends to be a pretty dull place (which is good for us in general). This particular event is sort of a "birthday" for our solar system (nothing related to its birth, just that it's a periodic event that's worth noting and thankfully is totally without the kind of violence that most "interesting" astronomical events are made of), and I for one will definitely be having a beer and saying, "good on you for making it another cycle!" to the solar system in general.
I do apologise if my posts were not clear on this point.
Most of the site appears to be crap, and the last paragraph of the page I linked to is also crap, but the views of the person writing it in no way reflect on the fact that he did raise perfectly valid, scientific and interesting points. For reference, I have no affiliation with that website and just stumbled across that page with a quick google search for "mayan calendar" 2012 "plane of the ecliptic". It's the astronomical aspect of the occurrence that I'm interested in, not any mystical mumbo-jumbo surrounding it. (unfortunately, it's actually pretty hard to find links that AREN'T full of mystical mumbo-jumbo and I was too lazy to go hunting for them)
And the only thing that can motivate them to stark rationalism is? I dont see where Atheism is the answer. If I read you right it is Faith itself and not religion that is the problem. So why not hate every faith based thing? Why chose religion for your ire?
Most people that consider themselves atheist ARE against all "faith based things" - it's just that religion is the most pervasive and damaging one in our society at present, and so is an important target. If religion were stamped out tomorrow, we would probably then be complaining primarily about horoscopes in the newspaper (they cause people to act irrationally and often to the detriment of the society around them, so while it's nowhere near as bad as religion, that would be next on my personal hit-list).
You are no doubt aware there is some evidence (if nothing else at least you must be aware of the texts of the religious documents themselves
Yes, I am of course very aware of them and have read many of them (and thoroughly enjoyed most of them, although parts of the Christian Bible can be very repetitive)
but you don't personally find that evidence compelling
Also correct. I never stated that others shouldn't/couldn't/wouldn't find the evidence compelling enough to believe it, only that I consider it a mental illness if you do, as it is extra-ordinarily flimsy and relies on an incredible amount of very obvious logical fallacies such as circular reasoning. The evidence MAY be enough for some reasoning people to entertain it as a continued line of investigation, but after this continued investigation, I'd expect them to come to the conclusion that it's all a load of complete bollocks.
Firstly you will note that because you want to justify a libel, your requirement for evidence has suddenly disappeared -- you don't ask for studies or psychologists' reports, but are happy to take "this looks not very different to" as your only evidence
Actually, no I was just being lazy and didn't bother elaborating. By saying, "this looks not very different to", I was actually referring to an analysis of the symptoms of the mental illness that I had and the behaviour exhibited by religious people. It's also worth pointing out that the majority of psychologists wouldn't release a report to the effect that religion is madness, as it would be extremely damaging to them for pretty much no gain (and of course, any psychologists that hold these beliefs wouldn't do so, so that already rules out a large number). There are a few however who have either ignored this concern or considered it not as important as stating what they think, and so there ARE such reports.
based on an underlying arrogant claim that anybody who disagrees with you must be mad because your opinion could not possibly be wrong.
You may be right about me being someone arrogant with my opinions about this, but I feel it justified in doing so, because blind faith in anything is quite clearly not a normal state for a reasoning mind to follow. I find it interesting that blind faith in anything OTHER than major religions is viewed by the general populace as being "wrong" (or at the very least, a "little bit silly"), but they make an exception in the case of religion.
HOWEVER, you are NOT right that my claim is that my opinion can not be wrong or that other people are mad because they disagree with me. People disagree with me a lot, and sometimes they're right. I accept this, and adjust my opinions accordingly. They're mad for believing fairy-tales, not for disagreeing with me.
I realise you could argue back that it's not a fairy-tale and therefore they're not mad for believing it, however I consider that I've already answered that point above when discussing the evidence.
It is NOT the Mayan calendar end of the world, it's just the end of this number of "places" in the recording system. It's designed so that when you run out of places, you can essentially just cycle it around, and you're in the next "age" as it were. See here for a fairly reasonable explanation. Theoretically, you could also just add another counter to it for the "age" that you're in and cycle the rest (like adding one more decimal place as we do when we count from 9999 to 10000 for example). Despite all this, it's still a pretty cool event from the perspective of the Mayan calendar or otherwise (note that they did have a good REASON for this date, which is far more interesting than a boring old end of world prophecy - see the link).
Actually, I've never read Dawkins, although I'm familiar with what is generally said about his views, and aware that they are probably fairly similar to my own.
I do lack absolute proof in a lack of a god/gods, however there's nothing wrong with that, because I lack absolute proof of everything (you can't ever really KNOW, just weigh the evidence at hand and come to conclusions). However, when it comes to god(s), not only do I lack absolute proof of them, but I also lack ANY compelling evidence for them, OR any evidence that anyone else might have evidence for them. Therefore, I can only come to the conclusion that these people have an equal or lesser amount of information regarding god(s), and yet on this information, somehow have managed to come to a belief. This looks not very different to a mental illness that I suffered as a child where I had difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality.
It's also worth pointing out that no, I DON'T think most of the world is mentally ill, because in my opinion, most people who claim to believe in a god/gods do not actually. They "hope" and "would like to believe", and in many cases will go through the motions "just in case", but they don't really believe. I think this basically when anyone talks about faith as an argument to a lack of evidence. I do not think "faith" itself is truly strong enough to ever really cause a belief, but it IS strong enough to cause one to act on it with similar results to belief.
To give an example of this: I BELIEVE I am sitting in my apartment right now. I BELIEVE there is a country called Canada. I BELIEVE that my wallet contains 475 euro in notes (I just counted it). These are all beliefs, and to discover I was wrong about any of these would be quite a shock - I would have to re-think a lot of things I assume about the world/universe. I HAVE FAITH that I will not be fired from my job today. I will go to work, do my job, and fully expect to go back again tomorrow. It would also be quite a shock to be fired, as, as far as I know, I am considered to be an excellent employee, there is no reason for me to be fired and under the laws of the country I live in they can't fire me without a good reason. But, I am aware it is possible, and it would not require that I re-think anything I assume about the world/universe around me.
If you're going for that kind of wordplay though, it's hard to beat: "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo", or "Mary, while John had 'had', had had 'had had', 'had had' had had been better". In German, I've always been a fan of "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach".
I was taught assembler
in my second year of school.
It's kinda like construction work --
with a toothpick for a tool.
So when I made my senior year,
I threw my code away,
And learned the way to program
that I still prefer today.
Now, some folks on the Internet
put their faith in C++.
They swear that it's so powerful,
it's what God used for us.
And maybe it lets mortals dredge
their objects from the C.
But I think that explains
why only God can make a tree.
For God wrote in Lisp code
When he filled the leaves with green.
The fractal flowers and recursive roots:
The most lovely hack I've seen.
And when I ponder snowflakes,
never finding two the same,
I know God likes a language
with its own four-letter name.
Now, I've used a SUN under Unix,
so I've seen what C can hold.
I've surfed for Perls, found what Fortran's for,
Got that Java stuff down cold.
Though the chance that I'd write COBOL code
is a SNOBOL's chance in Hell.
And I basically hate hieroglyphs,
so I won't use APL.
Now, God must know all these languages,
and a few I haven't named.
But the Lord made sure, when each sparrow falls,
that its flesh will be reclaimed.
And the Lord could not count grains of sand
with a 32-bit word.
Who knows where we would go to
if Lisp weren't what he preferred?
And God wrote in Lisp code
Every creature great and small.
Don't search the disk drive for man.c,
When the listing's on the wall.
And when I watch the lightning burn
Unbelievers to a crisp,
I know God had six days to work,
So he wrote it all in Lisp.
Yes, God had a deadline.
So he wrote it all in Lisp.
Slashdot Mirror
Octopus is latinized Greek not Greek
I guess you missed the part where I said "in origin", but even taking that it's "latinised Greek" (which I agree it is, despite that being irrelevant), as RedWizzard already said in his reply to you, it'd have to be a second declension noun for "Octopi" to be the plural, and it isn't, so it isn't.
"Octopuses" and "Octopodes" are both generally accepted (personally I prefer "Octopuses" to avoid confusion with my usage (right or wrong) of the word "Octopodes" as a synonym for "Octopoda" (the species order)). "Octopi" is considered almost universally wrong since it has NO linguistic sense behind it (the word isn't Latin in origin (it's Greek), so pluralising the "us" to an "i" is making a mistaken assumption).
except in a small set of common loanwords: "formulas", "nexuses", "moratoriums", etc
I agree with your post in general about how to pluralise loanwords using English endings, but did you have to give these examples? Maybe it's a dialect difference between where you are and where I grew up, but we'd lose marks in an English test if we ever wrote "formulas" or "moratoriums" - it'd have to be "formulae" and "moratoria". (I just did a quick check at "Dictionary.com" (hardly authoritative, but I'm in a hurry) and it agrees with me about "moratoria", but offers both plurals for "formula" (-s or -ae)). For me, in spoken speech I'd never consider a "-s" ending for a latin word ending in "ium", always "ia". The "formulas"/"formulae" thing also just sounds weird to me with an "-s", although it doesn't feel "as wrong" to me (I'd still use "formulae" in speech/writing).
As I said though, these may be dialect differences - English is drifting apart relatively quickly it seems - television may have slowed down the drift somewhat with US shows being viewed worldwide, but it doesn't seem to be sufficient to stop the drift - I can definitely say that the language I grew up speaking is VERY different to the language I tend to use today (I live in a non-English speaking country, so when I use English, I tend to use a simplified subset of "standard English" - all grammatically correct (no "Me go shop now" or whatever), but avoiding some sentence structures or words with a lot of ambiguity. I also do this online, but to a lesser degree (such as in this post) since I'm well aware that the local dialect I spoke growing up (Southern New Zealand by the way, which has a lot of influence from Scottish English, and is very different to Northern New Zealand which is what most people are familiar with) does not lend itself well to the written form if I really want others to understand me)
(oh, and sorry for the nested parentheses - it's a bad habit I picked up years ago (perhaps related to LISP programming (or perhaps just my own weird thought style)) and I have trouble breaking it)
I think companies would see real productivity gains from having the programmers (or whatever type of worker) manage themselves... either by meeting together regularly, rotating the leadership position, or preferably a mixture of both.
I absolutely agree, however the people that would be in charge of making the decision to do that are managers... half a seconds thought on that should be sufficient.
It'll also never happen in most companies, and especially where I work, as we're a Japanese company (although I work in the European HQ of the company, based in Germany, it's still run more "Japanese style" than German) and Japanese companies just LOVE as many layers of management as they can get.
I have a lot of respect for my current boss, and I know very well that he does an excellent job of shielding me and the rest of the team from the bureaucracy and annoying "non technical" details that we have neither the time nor inclination to deal with on top of our busy technical jobs, but looking above him, or at other areas of the company, I do see a lot of pointless management positions.
Some things are significantly cheaper, some are significantly more expensive. I can't really speak too much for the US as I've never lived there, only visited. I did notice hotel prices, and especially things such as food and alcohol were more than I'm used to (although, as is often mentioned, petrol is amazingly cheap there still).
I can better compare Hannover, Germany to Sydney, Australia though, as I used to live in Sydney and now live in Hannover. Yes, Sydney is a much bigger city, but when I moved here, my cost of living halved (actually, my rent here is about 40% of what it was in Sydney for slightly higher quality and slightly smaller size) and my income went up about 50%, so I really do feel significantly "richer". (not relevant to the US topic, but probably interesting to people reading this thread anyway)
I haven't noticed clothing being too expensive over here, but I've never looked at US prices (I don't tend to buy a lot of clothes on business trips!), but I can get a nice shirt here for about 10 to 15 euro, or a cheap nasty one for between 3 and 5. So, for perspective, a nice shirt costs around half an hours work for a moderately paid programmer (well, "Developer Support" technically - I write code specifically to help other people write code), which seems more than reasonable to me.
I can't find much on the link other than a list of names associated with studies, not the studies themselves... but I did a Google search and found the report you're referring to. It's definitely an interesting read (German's not my native tongue, but I can get by in it), but I'd wonder if perhaps the placebo effect of acupuncture is just "significantly better" than the effect of the painkillers they gave (it's also entirely possible that they were essentially useless and also only provided a placebo effect, but people weren't as "trusting" in them or whatever). But yes, definitely interesting.
We do that a lot in English, primarily due to the switch from Old English to Middle English (pure Germanic to Germanic/Romance hybrid). Especially in the letter of the law, where there are many such "x and y" type of statements where both words mean the same thing. The most humorous to me though is that our farm animals generally use a germanic name (sheep, cow, "swine" (yes, I know "pig" is more common)) but the meat uses a romance name (mutton, beef, pork) - this makes it pretty clear what the social order was like at the time even if you don't know your history!
I FAR prefer Dutch to English. Dutch allows for a sort of "quirky style" that's almost impossible to emulate in English - especially for swearing or being crass, but also just for sarcasm and irony, which often sound so "forced" in English. I agree it's probably not the most "beautiful" of languages, but it's also a LOT more consistent than English (Dutch was my second language, and I found it easier than French or German, which are my 3rd/4th respectively).
You're of course right that English has a lot of variation compared to Dutch, but don't sell your language so short - you've got nuances than English doesn't as well (just try and tell me a SINGLE English word that encompasses the meaning of "gezellig" for example).
I often learn a new language (not to conversational level, but enough to "get around" and order food and so on) before I take a holiday somewhere. Really, after the 4th language or so, it's extra-ordinarily easy, especially if it's in the same family of languages as another you've already learned. And, as a poster above (from Luxembourg from the sounds of things) pointed out, there are subtleties in every language that don't exist in others, so by learning a new language, you learn a new way to think about things, which really is very good to do.
Just to note, I AM a native English speaker as well, so don't use that as a crutch as so many seem to.
Well, as an AC, no... but check your preferences, and you'll find the setting you're looking for.
Are there any good examples you know of that couldn't be explained by the placebo effect? If you go purely with statistics (which most of the research I've seen does) then you WILL see a positive result from acupuncture compared to "no treatment", but that doesn't mean it's actually doing anything.
And why do you assume the people responsible for those particular decisions within the military are any less gullible than anyone else? (note: some areas of the military absolute DO require high intelligence and sharp wits, however that doesn't mean ALL positions in the military do...)
poverty in general and overall standards of living are much lower, there are major distinctions in wealth, and a strong social class system still exists in some places and results in discrimination and unfair due process that couldn't be tolereated in many developed countries
Yep, that sounds like a fairly accurate description of the USA to me... (these people compared to these people as an example...
(that's intended as humour, but with a dark serious side, so I'll accept "Funny" or "Insightful". "Flamebait" is probably the most likely mod I'll get though)
Most people who declare themselves atheists follow that declaration with a tirade
Sorry for trotting out an old meme, but [citation needed]
Most people who consider themselves atheist just "get on with their lives" and don't give it a second thought unless someone brings it up. This is probably less true these days in countries like the US, since there's been quite a resurgence of more fundamentalist beliefs there over the past decade, but in most of the world, we just don't care.
My post was perhaps leaning towards the "tirade" side of things a little and I do apologise at least a bit for that (I stand by my views, but think I could have perhaps been more civil about it), but honestly, I didn't start the discussion...
Zealotry is the problem, not what it's aimed at or against
I agree wholeheartedly.
Horoscopes don't cause people to act irrationally
Usually not, but in some cases they do... especially when someone in a position of power makes business (or governmental) decisions based on their horoscope. It's rare, but it does happen and that's pretty scary really.
Besides, aren't horoscopes in newspapers usually of the "you need to be cautious in your affairs" variety ?
Sometimes, but sometimes they'll also say things like, "today is a day to take bold steps!" or whatever.
In general from your post, I think we're probably of a similar mindset, however have differing worldviews (possibly based on the cultures we live in and are most familiar with)...
Hmm, someone didn't proofread his post for self-contradictions!
I see no inherent contradiction in the sentence: "I'm not saying others shouldn't, only that they are mad if they do so", especially as I made no statement about whet someone should/shouldn't do. "Should/Shouldn't" a moral concern (and one I deliberately avoided completely in my post), whereas I was using "mad" in response to your wording, as I initially used the words "mental illness", which is a medical issue, not a moral one.
And if you were an accredited practitioner with the British Psychological Society, or its equivalent where you live, maybe we'd take your analysis seriously.
You've just readily admitted to accepting arguments from authority. It shouldn't matter who I am, or what my accreditations are (besides, how do you know what accreditations I do or don't have?) if my reasoning is sound. Clearly, I believe my reasoning is sound, and you believe it isn't.
You're more than welcome to reply again, but honestly, I'm done with this discussion since I don't think either of us will be able to say anything the other side would be willing to consider (unfortunately). I'm willing to consider rational arguments, but haven't received any yet in my opinion. I assume you're the same, but consider that you haven't received any yet, so continuing in this manner would probably be a little pointless. You may of course reply if you choose, but I won't reply again in this thread.
Ahhh... so what you're saying is that you don't think the crossing of plane of the ecliptic and the Mayan calendar have anything to do with each other... sorry, I thought you were arguing against my point that crossing the plane of the ecliptic is an interesting event... I was basically completely ignoring the Mayan calendar side of it, and attempting to argue in favour of the astronomical event being interesting.
Most things I've seen about the Mayan calendar do seem to point to the relationship being pretty strong though, especially since the event is pretty clearly easy to work out if you're mathematically inclined and watch the stars for a couple of years/decades. Also, their "start date" for the "age" seems a little odd if there's no actual correlation there (it's so many years before their civilisation even began, and seems to hold no other significance other than it matches this astronomical event really quite well (although, as stated, not perfectly)), so I would appreciate if you could point me at some reading that shows otherwise.
I don't think this 'event' will do anything either and if someone tried to convince me it was the end of the world or even that it would be anything other than an unremarkable day, I'd probably tell them they're a loony. But it IS an event that happens only once every 26000 years (or a bit under, but who's counting). And, from an astronomical perspective, it's utterly irrelevant, but from the perspective of Earth, it's quite interesting (even though it will have absolutely no effect on anything). I'm not talking about the Mayan calendar rollover - that's just a system that the Mayans came up with that happens to track the cycle fairly nicely (certainly deliberately, otherwise the coincidence would be too much to believe). In case you didn't read the link (or Google it yourself for a less "kooky" link), I'm talking about the fact that we shall again cross through the plane of the ecliptic. Earth doesn't get such interesting things happening all the time. I contest the call of sharp shooter fallacy on these grounds, in that while there are always fairly amazing things going on in the universe, our Solar System tends to be a pretty dull place (which is good for us in general). This particular event is sort of a "birthday" for our solar system (nothing related to its birth, just that it's a periodic event that's worth noting and thankfully is totally without the kind of violence that most "interesting" astronomical events are made of), and I for one will definitely be having a beer and saying, "good on you for making it another cycle!" to the solar system in general.
I do apologise if my posts were not clear on this point.
Most of the site appears to be crap, and the last paragraph of the page I linked to is also crap, but the views of the person writing it in no way reflect on the fact that he did raise perfectly valid, scientific and interesting points. For reference, I have no affiliation with that website and just stumbled across that page with a quick google search for "mayan calendar" 2012 "plane of the ecliptic". It's the astronomical aspect of the occurrence that I'm interested in, not any mystical mumbo-jumbo surrounding it. (unfortunately, it's actually pretty hard to find links that AREN'T full of mystical mumbo-jumbo and I was too lazy to go hunting for them)
You have anything other than faith to go on when you declare that people who truly believe are mentally ill?
Yep... logic and reasoning.
(hey, you gave a crappy post, I'll give a crappy reply)
And the only thing that can motivate them to stark rationalism is? I dont see where Atheism is the answer. If I read you right it is Faith itself and not religion that is the problem. So why not hate every faith based thing? Why chose religion for your ire?
Most people that consider themselves atheist ARE against all "faith based things" - it's just that religion is the most pervasive and damaging one in our society at present, and so is an important target. If religion were stamped out tomorrow, we would probably then be complaining primarily about horoscopes in the newspaper (they cause people to act irrationally and often to the detriment of the society around them, so while it's nowhere near as bad as religion, that would be next on my personal hit-list).
You are no doubt aware there is some evidence (if nothing else at least you must be aware of the texts of the religious documents themselves
Yes, I am of course very aware of them and have read many of them (and thoroughly enjoyed most of them, although parts of the Christian Bible can be very repetitive)
but you don't personally find that evidence compelling
Also correct. I never stated that others shouldn't/couldn't/wouldn't find the evidence compelling enough to believe it, only that I consider it a mental illness if you do, as it is extra-ordinarily flimsy and relies on an incredible amount of very obvious logical fallacies such as circular reasoning. The evidence MAY be enough for some reasoning people to entertain it as a continued line of investigation, but after this continued investigation, I'd expect them to come to the conclusion that it's all a load of complete bollocks.
Firstly you will note that because you want to justify a libel, your requirement for evidence has suddenly disappeared -- you don't ask for studies or psychologists' reports, but are happy to take "this looks not very different to" as your only evidence
Actually, no I was just being lazy and didn't bother elaborating. By saying, "this looks not very different to", I was actually referring to an analysis of the symptoms of the mental illness that I had and the behaviour exhibited by religious people. It's also worth pointing out that the majority of psychologists wouldn't release a report to the effect that religion is madness, as it would be extremely damaging to them for pretty much no gain (and of course, any psychologists that hold these beliefs wouldn't do so, so that already rules out a large number). There are a few however who have either ignored this concern or considered it not as important as stating what they think, and so there ARE such reports.
based on an underlying arrogant claim that anybody who disagrees with you must be mad because your opinion could not possibly be wrong.
You may be right about me being someone arrogant with my opinions about this, but I feel it justified in doing so, because blind faith in anything is quite clearly not a normal state for a reasoning mind to follow. I find it interesting that blind faith in anything OTHER than major religions is viewed by the general populace as being "wrong" (or at the very least, a "little bit silly"), but they make an exception in the case of religion.
HOWEVER, you are NOT right that my claim is that my opinion can not be wrong or that other people are mad because they disagree with me. People disagree with me a lot, and sometimes they're right. I accept this, and adjust my opinions accordingly. They're mad for believing fairy-tales, not for disagreeing with me.
I realise you could argue back that it's not a fairy-tale and therefore they're not mad for believing it, however I consider that I've already answered that point above when discussing the evidence.
It is NOT the Mayan calendar end of the world, it's just the end of this number of "places" in the recording system. It's designed so that when you run out of places, you can essentially just cycle it around, and you're in the next "age" as it were. See here for a fairly reasonable explanation. Theoretically, you could also just add another counter to it for the "age" that you're in and cycle the rest (like adding one more decimal place as we do when we count from 9999 to 10000 for example). Despite all this, it's still a pretty cool event from the perspective of the Mayan calendar or otherwise (note that they did have a good REASON for this date, which is far more interesting than a boring old end of world prophecy - see the link).
Actually, I've never read Dawkins, although I'm familiar with what is generally said about his views, and aware that they are probably fairly similar to my own.
I do lack absolute proof in a lack of a god/gods, however there's nothing wrong with that, because I lack absolute proof of everything (you can't ever really KNOW, just weigh the evidence at hand and come to conclusions). However, when it comes to god(s), not only do I lack absolute proof of them, but I also lack ANY compelling evidence for them, OR any evidence that anyone else might have evidence for them. Therefore, I can only come to the conclusion that these people have an equal or lesser amount of information regarding god(s), and yet on this information, somehow have managed to come to a belief. This looks not very different to a mental illness that I suffered as a child where I had difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality.
It's also worth pointing out that no, I DON'T think most of the world is mentally ill, because in my opinion, most people who claim to believe in a god/gods do not actually. They "hope" and "would like to believe", and in many cases will go through the motions "just in case", but they don't really believe. I think this basically when anyone talks about faith as an argument to a lack of evidence. I do not think "faith" itself is truly strong enough to ever really cause a belief, but it IS strong enough to cause one to act on it with similar results to belief.
To give an example of this: I BELIEVE I am sitting in my apartment right now. I BELIEVE there is a country called Canada. I BELIEVE that my wallet contains 475 euro in notes (I just counted it). These are all beliefs, and to discover I was wrong about any of these would be quite a shock - I would have to re-think a lot of things I assume about the world/universe.
I HAVE FAITH that I will not be fired from my job today. I will go to work, do my job, and fully expect to go back again tomorrow. It would also be quite a shock to be fired, as, as far as I know, I am considered to be an excellent employee, there is no reason for me to be fired and under the laws of the country I live in they can't fire me without a good reason. But, I am aware it is possible, and it would not require that I re-think anything I assume about the world/universe around me.
If you're going for that kind of wordplay though, it's hard to beat: "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo", or "Mary, while John had 'had', had had 'had had', 'had had' had had been better". In German, I've always been a fan of "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach".
VHDL is used by God
No! Not true I tell you!
I was taught assembler
in my second year of school.
It's kinda like construction work --
with a toothpick for a tool.
So when I made my senior year,
I threw my code away,
And learned the way to program
that I still prefer today.
Now, some folks on the Internet
put their faith in C++.
They swear that it's so powerful,
it's what God used for us.
And maybe it lets mortals dredge
their objects from the C.
But I think that explains
why only God can make a tree.
For God wrote in Lisp code
When he filled the leaves with green.
The fractal flowers and recursive roots:
The most lovely hack I've seen.
And when I ponder snowflakes,
never finding two the same,
I know God likes a language
with its own four-letter name.
Now, I've used a SUN under Unix,
so I've seen what C can hold.
I've surfed for Perls, found what Fortran's for,
Got that Java stuff down cold.
Though the chance that I'd write COBOL code
is a SNOBOL's chance in Hell.
And I basically hate hieroglyphs,
so I won't use APL.
Now, God must know all these languages,
and a few I haven't named.
But the Lord made sure, when each sparrow falls,
that its flesh will be reclaimed.
And the Lord could not count grains of sand
with a 32-bit word.
Who knows where we would go to
if Lisp weren't what he preferred?
And God wrote in Lisp code
Every creature great and small.
Don't search the disk drive for man.c,
When the listing's on the wall.
And when I watch the lightning burn
Unbelievers to a crisp,
I know God had six days to work,
So he wrote it all in Lisp.
Yes, God had a deadline.
So he wrote it all in Lisp.