I generally find these anti-censorship threads boring, because they end up being long rants by wankers worried about the loss of easy access to their free porn and movies. In this context, "free speech" is usually just camouflage for "free porn".
If you really want to worry about "free speech", go post in some threads about Google and China! Or, go blog about the US "Fairness Doctrine". Both topics offer you an opportunity to rant about political censorship pure and simple, with no subterranean porn issues.
Nevertheless, let me say I don't care that much about porn, per se. If you want to watch porn on your home or office PC (as long as MY tax dollars aren't paying for it) till you have a right arm the size of a pro wrestlers and a pecker so calloused it's always hard . . . have at it! It's no worse than spending your life on Warcraft or a some redneck virtual football pool.
But, this kind of filtering matters for reasons most of you wankers miss: its absence totally cripples the use of computers in public schools!
Public schools -- at least in the US -- specialize in educating kids whose parents don't give a sh$$, but who will $ue at the drop of a hat. Teachers, and especially administrators, live in terror of Johnny Pervert pulling up Wikipedia's illustrated pages on pornography. Johnny Pervert may see his mom or 'aunt' screwing around with 'Uncle Bob' at home, or may leaf through Hustler on his weekends with Dad, and nobody gives a sh$$. But mom is likely to become "upset -- just totally upset" if he sees a pecker or pu##-E on a PC at school. And she's likely to stay outraged till there's a school board hearing and hush-up settlement involving $$$. At that point, either the administrator or teacher or possibly both will be unemployed, and possibly sued or charged with a crime.
At least, that's what the teachers and admins believe -- and act upon -- thanks to some highly public cases and news accounts.
As a result, PCs at schools -- elementary through high school in my school district -- are so restricted and filtered as to be useless. They essentially have no internet access, except maybe to National Geography, Discovery Kids and the like.
I have to laugh, every time some PC industry titan, like Gates or Cuban, pontificates about needed more technology in schools. It's a big joke, because you until you give EVERY student one, PCs have to be used for largely unsupervised activities like research or using targeted programs for reading, math or typing. Because these activities have to be somewhat unsupervised -- since the REST of the class is doing something else -- teachers don't want, and won't use more PCs. They can sort of keep an eye on 2 or 3, while teaching the class, but they can't keep up with 6 or 8.
The bottom line here is simple: until you can find a way to keep PCs from being a threat to teacher's and admin's jobs, all the talk of technology in the schools will remain just talk, no matter how many millions or billions you spend. Even teachers with AOL level tech skills can find the off-switch!
In order for them to be able to use 6 or 8 PCs, they HAVE to have reliable and trusted filtering. It's doesn't have to let everything good through, it just has to keep almost everything bad out. AND -- and this is VERY, VERY important -- it has to be provided by someone official enough to create a high CYA factor. That is, if Johnny Pervert does manage to show Cindy Angel a stiff pecker, the classroom teacher has to be able to SUCCESSFULLY defend him or herself by saying, "But, we've been told we could trust the filter -- after all it's provided by the GOVERNMENT!"
Almost by definition, a private company's filter is useless for this purpose -- unless it's PERFECT -- because it will NOT be effective at protecting the teacher or administrator. At the outside, a private filter -- selected by the school board -- will only move blame from the teacher to the board . . . and THAT is NOT going to happen. By contra
I might observe that absence of evidence is not proof of the non-existence of such evidence, much less proof of the non-occurrence of the event itself; if it were, many evolutionary transitional processes would be disproved.
There is evidence, but how it's perceived depends greatly on who's doing the perceiving. Those on one side are claiming merely to censure / block / deny tenure to / reject the incompetent. Those on the other side observe that the claims of incompetence arose suddenly and coincidently with the revelation of the applicant's / candidate's / professor's doubts about evolutionary process.
But trying to argue the nature of the evidence is not something I wish to pursue here, so I'm not going to list the cases I'm aware of, here. If you choose to believe that I'm a liar, and that no such cases exist, feel free.
But I did find it amusing that another critic of my post fundamentally had the SAME observation I did, though from the opposite point of view. And, tellingly, he evinced precisely the prejudice I've described: namely, that anyone doubting evolution any aspect of current evolutionary dogma is self-evidently an idiot, and therefore unacceptable in any Ph.D. biology program. Clearly, no skeptics of evolution will graduate from any Ph.D. process he / she influences!
But, I believe that in legal cases, it's customary to assume that events reported by both friendly and hostile witnesses did in fact occur, even if the proper interpretation of those events is disputed.
I find it amusing, that the very next poster attacking me confirms -- if inadvertently -- the very observation which you doubt.
Obviously (!), those who find evolution to be as factually evident as heliocentrism see the rejection of Ph.D candidates who question evolution as simply the rejection of the incompetent.
But, the reason is irrelevant to observation.
If Ph.D. programs reject idiots on general (and reasonable) principle, and then define evolutionary skeptics as idiots, it remains true that Ph.D. departments will neither accept nor graduate evolutionary skeptics, much less Creationists. Thus, the suggestion offered originally is futile.
And, for the poster who doubts I grasp how very specialized and narrowly educated todays scientists are, I can only offer the assurance that he's quite wrong. In fact, some of my professional career has involved 'mining' the research of specialists in the chemistry, reactivity, and anti-microbial activity of various microbiocides. I found, years ago, that scientific workers often work so myopically that they have no idea when they've done work that has important practical implications. Amusingly, I've found that several didn't 'get it', even after I explained the application to them: they knew so very little of the world outside their labs that even when told, they couldn't to grasp the utility of their work.
"When uninformed people have opinions on science that smell of belief and bias, my suggestion to them is to go spend five to seven years to get a PhD in a field of natural science."
Your idea would seem a reasonable suggestion. As a Christian, I've been troubled, and even dismayed, by the paucity of actual scientists among writers who question the theory of evolution. I know from first-hand that many Christians are not really interested in the scientific evidence, no matter where it goes. I've often wished that as many Creationist writers were Ph.D's, as are D.D.'s! I think that suspicion is a reasonable response, when most of the writers on a topic aren't actually expert on the topic.
But, there are some obstacles.
One of the greatest is the fact that reputable biology programs will accept, much less graduate, Ph.D. students who express the slightest doubt about evolution. For this reason, it's simply not possible for honest Christians to obtain respectable versions of the credentials you recommend. To be fair, I must acknowledge that it's also virtually impossible for anyone who expresses doubt in the inerrancy of the much bally-hooed "original autographs" of the Bible to gain a D.D. from a respectable conservative seminary. So, both sides play the game.
There are a few true scientists, who are both expert and doubtful about at least some aspects of evolutionary theory. Behe is a notable example. But, if we are too judge from the way his work has been handled, the presence of more Christian Ph.D.s might do little to resolve the debate.
As someone who's read Behe's published "intelligent design" work rather carefully, I can assure you that far more people refer to his work than read it. Many opponents of evolutionary theory have lifted the "intelligent design" moniker from Behe's work, and applied it to concepts that Behe neither supports nor discusses. Likewise, many 7-day Creationists cite him approvingly, apparently unaware that Behe does not believe hold a 7-day creation or young earth view. Alternatively, many advocates of evolution announce that they will vigorously oppose Behe's ideas, but then offer arguments against almost everything EXCEPT against Behe's major points.
My son is currently an undergraduate biology major and who is hoping to work as an aquarist for a major facility. He's found it intriguing that all of his professors are vehemently against Behe, but that not one of them has read Behe's work. So far, my son has found that none of them can name or even describe one of Behe's key points. (He doesn't count "Intelligent design", unless they can state it in other words, for the purposes of this test since the phrase has been used to refer to so many things OTHER than what Behe asserts.)
So, all my son's Ph.D. biology professors oppose Behe's ideas with only vague or erroneous concepts of what those ideas might be!
(For what it's worth, Behe takes the view that the theory of evolution encompasses three key concepts: common descent, natural selection, and random mutation. In his view, common descent explains WHAT happened, natural selection explains WHY it happened, and random mutation explains HOW it happened. Behe believes the evidence for common descent is overwhelming. He also believes that both natural selection and random mutation occur but at a rate, and in a manner, sufficient to explain only minor adaptations, such as antibiotic resistance. He believes that the mechanisms of natural selection and random mutation function in a primarily negative manner, and that the evidence that these two mechanisms have resulted in the formation of NEW (rather than minorly modified) somatic features is almost completely lacking.
Because he accepts common descent, his views will make few Creationists happy if they bother to actually read his books. But because he rejects natural selection and random mutation as inadequate to explain the development of major new features in descendant organisms, he's equally unlikely to be acc
At least in the literature arising from the religious side of the debate, the term "intelligent design" is less than 25 years old. Granted, the old "argument from design", that Augustine and others proposed in various forms quite a while ago (though nothing like 5,000 years ago). But, the specific term, "ID", and the arguments specific to it arose at the tail end of the 20th century.
I'd be rather surprised if you can find a pre-1985 bibliographic citation (on or off the web) for the term "ID" or "intelligent design", in the context of the debate about biological origins.
OTOH, I get the impression that some of the more fundamentalist Creationists have latched onto ID -- without undertanding it much better than the secular media does -- and begun waving the ID flag, not realizing that many of the arguments associated with ID undercut their own belief in a young earth and a 168-hour creation. If this is in fact occuring, it's virtually certain to lead to confusion on the part of ID opponents.
"1) You have no evidence that it DID happen that way.
Actually, I have Behe's book, and read it carefully, though that was several years back. My recollection is that the challenge was not that there was no evidence for random emergence of a particular system -- a state that was assumed, but not particularly challenged. Rather the challange was that no one had even proposed a theoretical process by which such a system could emerge from a random process, or at least, that no one had made any such proposal that was sufficiently plausible to gain publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
If, since that time, such proposals have been published, then Behe's original challenge (as best I can recollect) would have been met.
However, I can imagine that there might be some dispute about whether the plausibility was actually present, or whether some lightweight thinking was being given a sympathetic pass by the reviewers, given that Behe is much dispised by many of his peers.
All substantial debates tend to be waged by parties who are anything but dispassionate and disinterested. But this particular issue has been particularly contentious. Since the time of Huxley, it seems many of the most vocal disputants show every evidence of knowing which side they are on, long before the evidence is examined. And, both sides tend to treat the issue as a proxy for what is fundamentally a religious debate. I think this is granted as obvious, when the pro-ID side is considered, but often not so, when the 'scientific' side is examined. I won't debate that, though.
But, I do wish someone could offer direct links to journal articles -- or at least to the abstracts. Given the lack of time, I'm reluctant to trudge through all the histronics I remember as characteristic of talk.origins, to search for the actual citations. I'm made even more reluctant by past experiences hunting citations which turn out, once run to ground, to be far less substantial than the disputant promised.
I did run through a number of the links found at talk.origins . . . and it's clear that there has been some publication of peer-reviewed articles which address elements of the systems Behe described as "irreducibly complex". Unfortunately, the links I pursued, before I ran out of time, seemed not to meet the challenge Behe raised. Granted, I was reading abstacts, not full articles, and I'm not a biochemist, so to begin to fully understand those articles requires of me more time than I have right now. But . . . the 8 or 9 links I followed out seemed to dicuss bits of the systems Behe mentioned, but seemed not to offer a COMPLETE plausible hypothetical random emergence pathway the whole distance from a living organism totally lacking the system considered, to a living organism in which the system the system was both present and essential for life.
And, while I'm not a biochemist, I do have some genuine expertise in some particular types of field chemistry, and have seen, over and over, 'professional reporters' write scientific idiocies which flow directly from their own abysmal technical ignorance generously mixed with their own unfounded preferences and prejudices. So, my trust of the general media's reportage of these events is nil: they can't even get simpler stuff right, when writing on topics that are far less inflammatory!
I remain hopefully that someone can post a link to a full text article which does offer more than the bits and snippets I found. For, while I'm open to the the possibility that Behe's wrong, and I grant in a heartbeat that many Creationists will twist facts to fit theory . . . I've seen more than enough evidence to satisfy me that ID is being tried in hostile courts, in cases being reported on by a hostile media.
"Then it's an entirely useless term, as we cannot yet claim to have exhaustive comprehension of much."
Limited scope does not mean useless: it just means limited. Behe does not argue that we "exhaustive comprehension of much"; rather he argues that now, for the first time in the history of the biochemistry, we have exhaustive comprehension of SEVERAL very significant systems.
As noted earlier, those politicizing the debate on both sides want to use what arguments they have to go further than those arguments will take them
As I understand it, all that's being claimed (at least by the original ID'rs) is that there are some systems in biochemistry that (a) are essential, and (b) inexplical -- even theoretically -- by any currently suggested process of random emergence.
The problem for non-ID'rs is that these systems apparently ARE essential. And, so far, they do appear to be inexplicable by any described process of random emergence.
So, although this is not necessarily a fatal flaw in the theory of evolution, it is a check point, and does appear to require an answer.
Another way to look at it is like this: evolutionists say, we have an explanation that's complete, at least in theory, if not yet in evidence. Behe has come along and offered several counter examples , claiming that the theory of evolution cannot, in any form presently articulated, account, even in theory, for these (now) known facts.
So, while Behe's original analysis goes much less far than most Creationists would like, it remains -- until answered -- a serious roadblock for evolutionists. The fact that his fundamental and central argument is seemingly going unanswered, and indeed, unmentioned, would imply that it may be a very strong argument indeed.
The other bit, implying that I suggested that a Supreme Being, if any might be "termed a non-complex thing", is merely a distractor. I neither said, nor implied, any such thing. I'm trying very, very hard to avoid any discussion of theism versus agnosticism or atheism, since it would be OT here. In argument, focus is a valuable thing, if you are actually trying to think carefully about a problem, and arrive at even a provisional answer. OTOH, if you are only firing away to increase the noise and the smoke, well then, you are doing precisely what I have supposed the popular media to be doing on this topic.
As noted before (and again, and again), the phrase "irreducible complexity" is a carefully defined 'special term' in Behe's argument. To get into a discussion of complexity in general is simply irrelevant to Behe's argument.
This is partly what I hate about this debate: it tends to immediately move from specific and less uncertain, to general and more uncertain.
The concept of "irreducible complexity" does not address or postulate concerning who, or what, designed these systems. It only asserts that these systems are of a kind for which currently the only known plausible explanation is deliberate design, rather than random emergence.
Regarding a "supreme being" of the generic type common to such 'beings' . . .
No, I don't find them (or him or her or it) to be "irreducibly complex" in the specific sense offered by Behe. If you'll go back to my first post, you'll see that an element of "irreducible complexity" is exhaustive comprehension of a system, and all its components. This exhaustive comprehension very specifically includes identification of ALL the system components, AND understanding of each component's function. Since there are no "supreme beings", of whatever kind, which anyone understands exhaustively, no one can 'find' such beings to be "irreducibly complex" in the specific sense relevant to the ID discussion.
More to the point of the discussion about ID, and the flaws in that discussion as popularly presented, your question itself exhibits precisely the sort of loosey-goosey linguist 'phase-shifting' that has transformed the whole debate into a useless "Is to! -- is not! -- Is so to!" shouting match.
". . . I remember this exact example being given during my parochial school days . .."
Just so.
And, I'd bet those "days" preceded the 'invention' of ID by years, or maybe even, decades?
As an orthodox -- but not particularly fundamentalist -- Christian, I'm so sick of this debate, I could puke. Both sides seem to fluff their own 'evidence' beyond all reason, engage in endless ad hominem arguments, and most annoyingly, refuse to engage with their opponent's stronger ideas.
In this particular debate, the most egregious refusal to face up to the 'strong' arguments, seems to lie with the anti-ID groups. As the previous poster notes (perhaps unintentionally?), unexplainable bee flight is the basis of an OLD argument against evolution, so old that it predates ID by at least 30 or 40 years, and possibly by more than that.
I'll freely confess I've found most of the public debate, and the ensuing legal case, tiresome beyond all tolerance. So, I haven't followed it as closely as I might have.
But I have yet to encounter a SINGLE instance of an anti-ID debater engaging the 'strong' idea behind ID, which is the concept of "irreducible complexity"*. So far as I know, this idea has not even been addressed in any general discussion of ID, much less demolished! My guess is that 99% or more of those who have heard of ID via the popular media has NOT heard of "irreducible complexity".
Perhaps the argument from "irreducible complexity" is flawed, perhaps even fatally flawed. But, at least based on the public media discussions of ID which I've seen, there's is ZERO evidence that the opponents of ID have found any such flaw. And, since "irreducible complexity" is PRECISELY the point at which the current ID arguments diverge from the centuries old 'argument from design', AND the point at which the ID case is strongest, failure to attack ID at that point guarantees that the controversy will continue unabated.
One would think, if the anti-ID forces were serious about their opposition to ID, that they would go for a knock-out blow by demolishing this foundational ID concept. The fact that they do not, leaves me wondering if it's because they can't.
PoolDoc
* FWIW, "irreducible complexity" is the idea that there are certain biological (actually, microbiological or biochemical) systems which are
exhaustively understood by current science; and are both
complex (ie, having multiple components); &
irreducible (ie, the system fails if a single component is removed); &
composed of individually useless components (which would, by themselves, have a negative effect on species survival).
AFAIK, both this concept, and the half dozen or so specific cases, were originally proposed by the biochemist, Michael Behe. His challenge, offered some 15 or so years ago, was that no biochemist or evolutionary biologist has offered even a plausible theoretical process by which such "irreducibly complex" biological systems could develop. I know that, in the interim, some claims have been made that such proposals have been made, but the references I can find all appear in 'popular' scientific media, and not in the peer-reviewed journals referred to in Behe's origial challenge. It's my understanding that Behe still considers his original challenge unanswered.
I know it's too much to ask of SlashDotters, but it would be nice if the folks who are agin' "intelligent design" (ID) would bother to understand what ID is, before they launch their attacks against it. I haven't read every post below, but the ones I read attack a wide variety of ideas and concepts, which unfortunately DO NOT include the Intelligent Design hypothesis.
The situation is complicated because the cited Kuro5shin article, authored by "benna", doesn't bother to keep make the necessary distinctions, either. Of course, if you have a sympathetic and uncritical audience, who all agree on the conclusion they want to reach, before they begin the argument, it's not too hard to 'convince' them that you've offered a powerful analysis. Heck, many of the posters here could recognize that the argument was "powerful" and "cogent" just from the fact that it reached the right conclusion!
But, on the odd chance that someone here is actually interested in knowing what ID is, and how it differs from the old probablistic 'argument from design', I'll try to distinguish them briefly and clearly.
The classical argument from design (usually for the existence of a Deity, and not just against naturalistic evolution) is precisely what the Kuro5hin begins attacking. Kuro5hin user 'benna' describes ID like this:
"The premise of Intelligent Design is that the universe is so unimaginably complex and perfect that it must have been created by an intelligent designer.
This is a false and misleading definition of ID, but a very good description of the classical 'argument from design'.
By contract, one might well describe ID as the theory that certain specific bits of the universe are so knowably complex, as to constitute systems recognizably similar to systems created by other designers (men!) and recognizably dissimilar from all systems which are known to result from natural or probablistic processes. Michael Behe, a microbiochemist cited by "benna" makes the point that no one (as of the date of the publication of his book) has published in ANY peer-reviewed journal biology, microbiology, biochemistry, etc. so much as even a HYPOTHETICAL process by which these mechanisms, such as the hemoglobin based oxygen transport system, could have evolved in an incremental biological process dependent on random mutation.
So, in a sense, ID is the OPPOSITE of the classical argument from design. The classical argument piles up improbability upon improbablity, collecting them first from quantuum mechanics (such as the extreme sensitivity of the gravitational constant), then from biology (such as the very poor ratio of beneficial mutations to destructive ones) and thence from astrophysics (such as the critical, and improbable relationship between the mass of the sun and the orbital radius of planets theoretically capabable of sustaining life. Once a sufficiently high odds ratio is produced (it's apparently not hard to achieve odds ratios in excess of 1 : 10^100), the argument is offered that no conceivable amount of time is sufficient to make it likely that life emerged.
This argument can be, and is answered, more or less by say, 'Well, yes, it's improbable, but improbabilities happen daily, and this one (ie, the existence of life) did. So, there!'
ID is completely different. ID asserts that there are numerous (I've seen numbers from half a dozen to several dozen) biochemical processes or systems which are fully comprehended and "irreducibly complex". The comprehended bit simply asserts that all these systems' parts are known, and the functions of each part is also known. Behe goes on to state (apparently without challenge) that (a) the parts are numerous and that thus the systems are "complex" and that (b) the function by each part is essential, making the systems "irreducible". While Behe means, more or less what you might think by "complex", he intends something specific and perhaps not obvious by his use of the term "irreducible , and that is that the system is such tha
Few of the possible ways to mistate, misrepresent, or mischaracterize the history of research on the
Shroud have been overlooked here. One would have hoped, regardless of the attitudes held by various posters toward Catholic relics generally, or the Shroud particularly, that they would have had a greater regard for truth and accuracy then has here been displayed.
Lest there be any misunderstanding: I'm not Catholic, and have never venerated a relic of any sort, whether Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu or even a SETI moonrock!
1. "The clerics simply assume that the shroud belongs to Jesus (assuming that he existed at all) and then direct their scientists to prove that the shroud belonged to Jesus."
While there may well be a case where this occurred, the Catholic church does not now, nor has it ever
in the past, recognized or authenticated the Shroud as an official relic. It's been the subject of some intense disputes with in the RC church, to the point that Pope Clement VII ordered that in the case of all future exhibitions, a priest present should "declare in a loud voice that it was not the real shroud of Christ." In fact, the theory that Shroud was only a painting -- whether forgery or 'representation' -- was advanced WITHIN the Catholic church over 600 years ago!
As an apparent result of these and other dispures, the Shroud seems to have been treated more as an embarrassment, than a relic the church wished to display or advertise.
See the Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) article for details:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13762a.htm
2. "It is doubtful he (Rogers) will ever have findings that will be contrary to his own beliefs."
Raymond Rogers, who authored the study, published in "Thermochimica Acta", that has generated all the
hubbabaloo does NOT now claim that he, or anyone else has proved that the Shroud of Turin is the Shroud of Christ. To the contrary, he's been quoted as saying that "It's a shroud from the right time, but you're never going to find out (through science) if it was used on a person named Jesus".
http://tinyurl.com/68jfl (www.smh.com.au)
ABSTRACT OF THE ROGERS ARTICLE:
In 1988, radiocarbon laboratories at Arizona, Cambridge, and Zurich determined the age of a sample from the Shroud of Turin. They reported that the date of the cloth's production lay between A.D. 1260 and 1390 with 95% confidence. This came as a surprise in view of the technology used to produce the cloth, its chemical composition, and the lack of vanillin in its lignin. The results prompted questions about the validity of the sample.
Preliminary estimates of the kinetics constants for the loss of vanillin from lignin indicate a much older age for the cloth than the radiocarbon analyses. The radiocarbon sampling area is uniquely coated with a yellow-brown plant gum containing dye lakes. Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the shroud.
"Thermochimica Acta", Volume 425, Issues 1-2
http://tinyurl.com/4vy6r
(www.sciencedirect.com)
3.Results of comprehensive STURP study of the Shroud, the consortium of scientists who physically examined the Shroud in 1978, was NOT sponsored or encouraged by the Catholic church, did NOT include many Catholics, and did NOT conclude that the Shroud of Turin was the Shroud of Christ. Raymond Rogers, who was a member of that team, was quoted at that time, when asked that question at a public press conference, as saying, "We do not have test for Jesus Christ. So, we can't hypothesize or test for that question."
"Report on the Shroud of Turin", Heller, 1983
used copies from Amazon - http://tinyurl.com/46fln
4. "So at best you can show that it was the death shroud of someone who died 2000 years ago via a mo
"Honestly, I can't believe people even consider this approach."
I assume that your statement is hyperbolic, and that you don't *actually* have a difficulty believing that people consider this approach, when so many report here that they've actually adopted it? I'll assume that what you are indicating is moderately polite disapproval.
Some people's attitude toward the Internet is religious; typically they have some sort of utopian anarchist belief-committment, that they worship to the point of irrationality. It's not that they are dumb; some are brilliant, like Richard Stallman. To these sort of folk, anything that blocks ANYTHING on the Internet -- spam, kiddie porn, what -- is an immorality, and thus a heinous offense.
Other people have a political view of the Internet -- it's for the people who they imagine they are politically and culturally compatible with, or at least people they feel sympathy towards. Thus, they are offended if you block China or Nigeria, but would probably help you block the "red states".
Then, there people who simply see the Internet as a new and powerful tool, but one that is being badly damaged by spammers and hackers. These folks often apply a cost-benefit approach (formally, or informally) to security steps, including spam blocking. In the US, many of these folks have found that the benefits of receiving email from, or allowing web traffic to, China are minimal and thus they drop the routes. Likewise, many have found blocking email from dynamic IPs (US and European cable and DSL ips) has little cost and great benefits, so they do that, too. But, in the US, such folks can't afford to block south Florida (arguably, spam headquarters of the world!) because they do have a lot of legitimate traffic to/from those areas.
I would assume, however, that Chinese network managers of this stripe WOULD block as much of south Florida as they could. And I, for one, wouldn't assume that their doing so with in any way racists, zenophobic, or even political. In fact, I wish that China would block access from the entire state of Florida, thus cutting off the spammer's access to their websites!
However, there's no way to reconcile the various approaches to blocking (or not blocking) spam, without considering underlying attitudes toward the Internet. In particular, it's a waste of electrons for someone with a utilitarian view to discuss spam management with someone holding a religious view!
Slashdot Mirror
I generally find these anti-censorship threads boring, because they end up being long rants by wankers worried about the loss of easy access to their free porn and movies. In this context, "free speech" is usually just camouflage for "free porn".
If you really want to worry about "free speech", go post in some threads about Google and China! Or, go blog about the US "Fairness Doctrine". Both topics offer you an opportunity to rant about political censorship pure and simple, with no subterranean porn issues.
Nevertheless, let me say I don't care that much about porn, per se. If you want to watch porn on your home or office PC (as long as MY tax dollars aren't paying for it) till you have a right arm the size of a pro wrestlers and a pecker so calloused it's always hard . . . have at it! It's no worse than spending your life on Warcraft or a some redneck virtual football pool.
But, this kind of filtering matters for reasons most of you wankers miss: its absence totally cripples the use of computers in public schools!
Public schools -- at least in the US -- specialize in educating kids whose parents don't give a sh$$, but who will $ue at the drop of a hat. Teachers, and especially administrators, live in terror of Johnny Pervert pulling up Wikipedia's illustrated pages on pornography. Johnny Pervert may see his mom or 'aunt' screwing around with 'Uncle Bob' at home, or may leaf through Hustler on his weekends with Dad, and nobody gives a sh$$. But mom is likely to become "upset -- just totally upset" if he sees a pecker or pu##-E on a PC at school. And she's likely to stay outraged till there's a school board hearing and hush-up settlement involving $$$. At that point, either the administrator or teacher or possibly both will be unemployed, and possibly sued or charged with a crime.
At least, that's what the teachers and admins believe -- and act upon -- thanks to some highly public cases and news accounts.
As a result, PCs at schools -- elementary through high school in my school district -- are so restricted and filtered as to be useless. They essentially have no internet access, except maybe to National Geography, Discovery Kids and the like.
I have to laugh, every time some PC industry titan, like Gates or Cuban, pontificates about needed more technology in schools. It's a big joke, because you until you give EVERY student one, PCs have to be used for largely unsupervised activities like research or using targeted programs for reading, math or typing. Because these activities have to be somewhat unsupervised -- since the REST of the class is doing something else -- teachers don't want, and won't use more PCs. They can sort of keep an eye on 2 or 3, while teaching the class, but they can't keep up with 6 or 8.
The bottom line here is simple: until you can find a way to keep PCs from being a threat to teacher's and admin's jobs, all the talk of technology in the schools will remain just talk, no matter how many millions or billions you spend. Even teachers with AOL level tech skills can find the off-switch!
In order for them to be able to use 6 or 8 PCs, they HAVE to have reliable and trusted filtering. It's doesn't have to let everything good through, it just has to keep almost everything bad out. AND -- and this is VERY, VERY important -- it has to be provided by someone official enough to create a high CYA factor. That is, if Johnny Pervert does manage to show Cindy Angel a stiff pecker, the classroom teacher has to be able to SUCCESSFULLY defend him or herself by saying, "But, we've been told we could trust the filter -- after all it's provided by the GOVERNMENT!"
Almost by definition, a private company's filter is useless for this purpose -- unless it's PERFECT -- because it will NOT be effective at protecting the teacher or administrator. At the outside, a private filter -- selected by the school board -- will only move blame from the teacher to the board . . . and THAT is NOT going to happen. By contra
I might observe that absence of evidence is not proof of the non-existence of such evidence, much less proof of the non-occurrence of the event itself; if it were, many evolutionary transitional processes would be disproved.
There is evidence, but how it's perceived depends greatly on who's doing the perceiving. Those on one side are claiming merely to censure / block / deny tenure to / reject the incompetent. Those on the other side observe that the claims of incompetence arose suddenly and coincidently with the revelation of the applicant's / candidate's / professor's doubts about evolutionary process.
But trying to argue the nature of the evidence is not something I wish to pursue here, so I'm not going to list the cases I'm aware of, here. If you choose to believe that I'm a liar, and that no such cases exist, feel free.
But I did find it amusing that another critic of my post fundamentally had the SAME observation I did, though from the opposite point of view. And, tellingly, he evinced precisely the prejudice I've described: namely, that anyone doubting evolution any aspect of current evolutionary dogma is self-evidently an idiot, and therefore unacceptable in any Ph.D. biology program. Clearly, no skeptics of evolution will graduate from any Ph.D. process he / she influences!
But, I believe that in legal cases, it's customary to assume that events reported by both friendly and hostile witnesses did in fact occur, even if the proper interpretation of those events is disputed.
I find it amusing, that the very next poster attacking me confirms -- if inadvertently -- the very observation which you doubt. Obviously (!), those who find evolution to be as factually evident as heliocentrism see the rejection of Ph.D candidates who question evolution as simply the rejection of the incompetent.
But, the reason is irrelevant to observation.
If Ph.D. programs reject idiots on general (and reasonable) principle, and then define evolutionary skeptics as idiots, it remains true that Ph.D. departments will neither accept nor graduate evolutionary skeptics, much less Creationists. Thus, the suggestion offered originally is futile.
And, for the poster who doubts I grasp how very specialized and narrowly educated todays scientists are, I can only offer the assurance that he's quite wrong. In fact, some of my professional career has involved 'mining' the research of specialists in the chemistry, reactivity, and anti-microbial activity of various microbiocides. I found, years ago, that scientific workers often work so myopically that they have no idea when they've done work that has important practical implications. Amusingly, I've found that several didn't 'get it', even after I explained the application to them: they knew so very little of the world outside their labs that even when told, they couldn't to grasp the utility of their work.
"When uninformed people have opinions on science that smell of belief and bias, my suggestion to them is to go spend five to seven years to get a PhD in a field of natural science."
Your idea would seem a reasonable suggestion. As a Christian, I've been troubled, and even dismayed, by the paucity of actual scientists among writers who question the theory of evolution. I know from first-hand that many Christians are not really interested in the scientific evidence, no matter where it goes. I've often wished that as many Creationist writers were Ph.D's, as are D.D.'s! I think that suspicion is a reasonable response, when most of the writers on a topic aren't actually expert on the topic.
But, there are some obstacles.
One of the greatest is the fact that reputable biology programs will accept, much less graduate, Ph.D. students who express the slightest doubt about evolution. For this reason, it's simply not possible for honest Christians to obtain respectable versions of the credentials you recommend. To be fair, I must acknowledge that it's also virtually impossible for anyone who expresses doubt in the inerrancy of the much bally-hooed "original autographs" of the Bible to gain a D.D. from a respectable conservative seminary. So, both sides play the game.
There are a few true scientists, who are both expert and doubtful about at least some aspects of evolutionary theory. Behe is a notable example. But, if we are too judge from the way his work has been handled, the presence of more Christian Ph.D.s might do little to resolve the debate.
As someone who's read Behe's published "intelligent design" work rather carefully, I can assure you that far more people refer to his work than read it. Many opponents of evolutionary theory have lifted the "intelligent design" moniker from Behe's work, and applied it to concepts that Behe neither supports nor discusses. Likewise, many 7-day Creationists cite him approvingly, apparently unaware that Behe does not believe hold a 7-day creation or young earth view. Alternatively, many advocates of evolution announce that they will vigorously oppose Behe's ideas, but then offer arguments against almost everything EXCEPT against Behe's major points. My son is currently an undergraduate biology major and who is hoping to work as an aquarist for a major facility. He's found it intriguing that all of his professors are vehemently against Behe, but that not one of them has read Behe's work. So far, my son has found that none of them can name or even describe one of Behe's key points. (He doesn't count "Intelligent design", unless they can state it in other words, for the purposes of this test since the phrase has been used to refer to so many things OTHER than what Behe asserts.)
So, all my son's Ph.D. biology professors oppose Behe's ideas with only vague or erroneous concepts of what those ideas might be!
(For what it's worth, Behe takes the view that the theory of evolution encompasses three key concepts: common descent, natural selection, and random mutation. In his view, common descent explains WHAT happened, natural selection explains WHY it happened, and random mutation explains HOW it happened. Behe believes the evidence for common descent is overwhelming. He also believes that both natural selection and random mutation occur but at a rate, and in a manner, sufficient to explain only minor adaptations, such as antibiotic resistance. He believes that the mechanisms of natural selection and random mutation function in a primarily negative manner, and that the evidence that these two mechanisms have resulted in the formation of NEW (rather than minorly modified) somatic features is almost completely lacking.
Because he accepts common descent, his views will make few Creationists happy if they bother to actually read his books. But because he rejects natural selection and random mutation as inadequate to explain the development of major new features in descendant organisms, he's equally unlikely to be acc
Actually, it did.
At least in the literature arising from the religious side of the debate, the term "intelligent design" is less than 25 years old. Granted, the old "argument from design", that Augustine and others proposed in various forms quite a while ago (though nothing like 5,000 years ago). But, the specific term, "ID", and the arguments specific to it arose at the tail end of the 20th century.
I'd be rather surprised if you can find a pre-1985 bibliographic citation (on or off the web) for the term "ID" or "intelligent design", in the context of the debate about biological origins.
OTOH, I get the impression that some of the more fundamentalist Creationists have latched onto ID -- without undertanding it much better than the secular media does -- and begun waving the ID flag, not realizing that many of the arguments associated with ID undercut their own belief in a young earth and a 168-hour creation. If this is in fact occuring, it's virtually certain to lead to confusion on the part of ID opponents.
PoolDoc
"1) You have no evidence that it DID happen that way.
Actually, I have Behe's book, and read it carefully, though that was several years back. My recollection is that the challenge was not that there was no evidence for random emergence of a particular system -- a state that was assumed, but not particularly challenged. Rather the challange was that no one had even proposed a theoretical process by which such a system could emerge from a random process, or at least, that no one had made any such proposal that was sufficiently plausible to gain publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
If, since that time, such proposals have been published, then Behe's original challenge (as best I can recollect) would have been met.
However, I can imagine that there might be some dispute about whether the plausibility was actually present, or whether some lightweight thinking was being given a sympathetic pass by the reviewers, given that Behe is much dispised by many of his peers.
All substantial debates tend to be waged by parties who are anything but dispassionate and disinterested. But this particular issue has been particularly contentious. Since the time of Huxley, it seems many of the most vocal disputants show every evidence of knowing which side they are on, long before the evidence is examined. And, both sides tend to treat the issue as a proxy for what is fundamentally a religious debate. I think this is granted as obvious, when the pro-ID side is considered, but often not so, when the 'scientific' side is examined. I won't debate that, though.
But, I do wish someone could offer direct links to journal articles -- or at least to the abstracts. Given the lack of time, I'm reluctant to trudge through all the histronics I remember as characteristic of talk.origins, to search for the actual citations. I'm made even more reluctant by past experiences hunting citations which turn out, once run to ground, to be far less substantial than the disputant promised.
I did run through a number of the links found at talk.origins . . . and it's clear that there has been some publication of peer-reviewed articles which address elements of the systems Behe described as "irreducibly complex". Unfortunately, the links I pursued, before I ran out of time, seemed not to meet the challenge Behe raised. Granted, I was reading abstacts, not full articles, and I'm not a biochemist, so to begin to fully understand those articles requires of me more time than I have right now. But . . . the 8 or 9 links I followed out seemed to dicuss bits of the systems Behe mentioned, but seemed not to offer a COMPLETE plausible hypothetical random emergence pathway the whole distance from a living organism totally lacking the system considered, to a living organism in which the system the system was both present and essential for life.
And, while I'm not a biochemist, I do have some genuine expertise in some particular types of field chemistry, and have seen, over and over, 'professional reporters' write scientific idiocies which flow directly from their own abysmal technical ignorance generously mixed with their own unfounded preferences and prejudices. So, my trust of the general media's reportage of these events is nil: they can't even get simpler stuff right, when writing on topics that are far less inflammatory!
I remain hopefully that someone can post a link to a full text article which does offer more than the bits and snippets I found. For, while I'm open to the the possibility that Behe's wrong, and I grant in a heartbeat that many Creationists will twist facts to fit theory . . . I've seen more than enough evidence to satisfy me that ID is being tried in hostile courts, in cases being reported on by a hostile media.
PoolDoc
"You should read the transcript for the Dover Intelligent Design case."
Are there links?
PoolDoc
"Then it's an entirely useless term, as we cannot yet claim to have exhaustive comprehension of much."
Limited scope does not mean useless: it just means limited. Behe does not argue that we "exhaustive comprehension of much"; rather he argues that now, for the first time in the history of the biochemistry, we have exhaustive comprehension of SEVERAL very significant systems.
As noted earlier, those politicizing the debate on both sides want to use what arguments they have to go further than those arguments will take them
As I understand it, all that's being claimed (at least by the original ID'rs) is that there are some systems in biochemistry that (a) are essential, and (b) inexplical -- even theoretically -- by any currently suggested process of random emergence. The problem for non-ID'rs is that these systems apparently ARE essential. And, so far, they do appear to be inexplicable by any described process of random emergence.
So, although this is not necessarily a fatal flaw in the theory of evolution, it is a check point, and does appear to require an answer.
Another way to look at it is like this: evolutionists say, we have an explanation that's complete, at least in theory, if not yet in evidence. Behe has come along and offered several counter examples , claiming that the theory of evolution cannot, in any form presently articulated, account, even in theory, for these (now) known facts.
So, while Behe's original analysis goes much less far than most Creationists would like, it remains -- until answered -- a serious roadblock for evolutionists. The fact that his fundamental and central argument is seemingly going unanswered, and indeed, unmentioned, would imply that it may be a very strong argument indeed.
The other bit, implying that I suggested that a Supreme Being, if any might be "termed a non-complex thing", is merely a distractor. I neither said, nor implied, any such thing. I'm trying very, very hard to avoid any discussion of theism versus agnosticism or atheism, since it would be OT here. In argument, focus is a valuable thing, if you are actually trying to think carefully about a problem, and arrive at even a provisional answer. OTOH, if you are only firing away to increase the noise and the smoke, well then, you are doing precisely what I have supposed the popular media to be doing on this topic.
As noted before (and again, and again), the phrase "irreducible complexity" is a carefully defined 'special term' in Behe's argument. To get into a discussion of complexity in general is simply irrelevant to Behe's argument.
PoolDoc
Gee whiz!
This is partly what I hate about this debate: it tends to immediately move from specific and less uncertain, to general and more uncertain.
The concept of "irreducible complexity" does not address or postulate concerning who, or what, designed these systems. It only asserts that these systems are of a kind for which currently the only known plausible explanation is deliberate design, rather than random emergence.
Regarding a "supreme being" of the generic type common to such 'beings' . . .
No, I don't find them (or him or her or it) to be "irreducibly complex" in the specific sense offered by Behe. If you'll go back to my first post, you'll see that an element of "irreducible complexity" is exhaustive comprehension of a system, and all its components. This exhaustive comprehension very specifically includes identification of ALL the system components, AND understanding of each component's function. Since there are no "supreme beings", of whatever kind, which anyone understands exhaustively, no one can 'find' such beings to be "irreducibly complex" in the specific sense relevant to the ID discussion.
More to the point of the discussion about ID, and the flaws in that discussion as popularly presented, your question itself exhibits precisely the sort of loosey-goosey linguist 'phase-shifting' that has transformed the whole debate into a useless "Is to! -- is not! -- Is so to!" shouting match.
PoolDoc
Just so.
And, I'd bet those "days" preceded the 'invention' of ID by years, or maybe even, decades?
As an orthodox -- but not particularly fundamentalist -- Christian, I'm so sick of this debate, I could puke. Both sides seem to fluff their own 'evidence' beyond all reason, engage in endless ad hominem arguments, and most annoyingly, refuse to engage with their opponent's stronger ideas.
In this particular debate, the most egregious refusal to face up to the 'strong' arguments, seems to lie with the anti-ID groups. As the previous poster notes (perhaps unintentionally?), unexplainable bee flight is the basis of an OLD argument against evolution, so old that it predates ID by at least 30 or 40 years, and possibly by more than that.
I'll freely confess I've found most of the public debate, and the ensuing legal case, tiresome beyond all tolerance. So, I haven't followed it as closely as I might have.
But I have yet to encounter a SINGLE instance of an anti-ID debater engaging the 'strong' idea behind ID, which is the concept of "irreducible complexity"*. So far as I know, this idea has not even been addressed in any general discussion of ID, much less demolished! My guess is that 99% or more of those who have heard of ID via the popular media has NOT heard of "irreducible complexity".
Perhaps the argument from "irreducible complexity" is flawed, perhaps even fatally flawed. But, at least based on the public media discussions of ID which I've seen, there's is ZERO evidence that the opponents of ID have found any such flaw. And, since "irreducible complexity" is PRECISELY the point at which the current ID arguments diverge from the centuries old 'argument from design', AND the point at which the ID case is strongest, failure to attack ID at that point guarantees that the controversy will continue unabated.
One would think, if the anti-ID forces were serious about their opposition to ID, that they would go for a knock-out blow by demolishing this foundational ID concept. The fact that they do not, leaves me wondering if it's because they can't.
PoolDoc
* FWIW, "irreducible complexity" is the idea that there are certain biological (actually, microbiological or biochemical) systems which are
AFAIK, both this concept, and the half dozen or so specific cases, were originally proposed by the biochemist, Michael Behe. His challenge, offered some 15 or so years ago, was that no biochemist or evolutionary biologist has offered even a plausible theoretical process by which such "irreducibly complex" biological systems could develop. I know that, in the interim, some claims have been made that such proposals have been made, but the references I can find all appear in 'popular' scientific media, and not in the peer-reviewed journals referred to in Behe's origial challenge. It's my understanding that Behe still considers his original challenge unanswered.
I know it's too much to ask of SlashDotters, but it would be nice if the folks who are agin' "intelligent design" (ID) would bother to understand what ID is, before they launch their attacks against it. I haven't read every post below, but the ones I read attack a wide variety of ideas and concepts, which unfortunately DO NOT include the Intelligent Design hypothesis.
The situation is complicated because the cited Kuro5shin article, authored by "benna", doesn't bother to keep make the necessary distinctions, either. Of course, if you have a sympathetic and uncritical audience, who all agree on the conclusion they want to reach, before they begin the argument, it's not too hard to 'convince' them that you've offered a powerful analysis. Heck, many of the posters here could recognize that the argument was "powerful" and "cogent" just from the fact that it reached the right conclusion!
But, on the odd chance that someone here is actually interested in knowing what ID is, and how it differs from the old probablistic 'argument from design', I'll try to distinguish them briefly and clearly.
The classical argument from design (usually for the existence of a Deity, and not just against naturalistic evolution) is precisely what the Kuro5hin begins attacking. Kuro5hin user 'benna' describes ID like this:
"The premise of Intelligent Design is that the universe is so unimaginably complex and perfect that it must have been created by an intelligent designer.
This is a false and misleading definition of ID, but a very good description of the classical 'argument from design'.
By contract, one might well describe ID as the theory that certain specific bits of the universe are so knowably complex, as to constitute systems recognizably similar to systems created by other designers (men!) and recognizably dissimilar from all systems which are known to result from natural or probablistic processes. Michael Behe, a microbiochemist cited by "benna" makes the point that no one (as of the date of the publication of his book) has published in ANY peer-reviewed journal biology, microbiology, biochemistry, etc. so much as even a HYPOTHETICAL process by which these mechanisms, such as the hemoglobin based oxygen transport system, could have evolved in an incremental biological process dependent on random mutation.
So, in a sense, ID is the OPPOSITE of the classical argument from design. The classical argument piles up improbability upon improbablity, collecting them first from quantuum mechanics (such as the extreme sensitivity of the gravitational constant), then from biology (such as the very poor ratio of beneficial mutations to destructive ones) and thence from astrophysics (such as the critical, and improbable relationship between the mass of the sun and the orbital radius of planets theoretically capabable of sustaining life. Once a sufficiently high odds ratio is produced (it's apparently not hard to achieve odds ratios in excess of 1 : 10^100), the argument is offered that no conceivable amount of time is sufficient to make it likely that life emerged.
This argument can be, and is answered, more or less by say, 'Well, yes, it's improbable, but improbabilities happen daily, and this one (ie, the existence of life) did. So, there!'
ID is completely different. ID asserts that there are numerous (I've seen numbers from half a dozen to several dozen) biochemical processes or systems which are fully comprehended and "irreducibly complex". The comprehended bit simply asserts that all these systems' parts are known, and the functions of each part is also known. Behe goes on to state (apparently without challenge) that (a) the parts are numerous and that thus the systems are "complex" and that (b) the function by each part is essential, making the systems "irreducible". While Behe means, more or less what you might think by "complex", he intends something specific and perhaps not obvious by his use of the term "irreducible , and that is that the system is such tha
Lest there be any misunderstanding: I'm not Catholic, and have never venerated a relic of any sort, whether Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu or even a SETI moonrock!
1. "The clerics simply assume that the shroud belongs to Jesus (assuming that he existed at all) and then direct their scientists to prove that the shroud belonged to Jesus."
While there may well be a case where this occurred, the Catholic church does not now, nor has it ever in the past, recognized or authenticated the Shroud as an official relic. It's been the subject of some intense disputes with in the RC church, to the point that Pope Clement VII ordered that in the case of all future exhibitions, a priest present should "declare in a loud voice that it was not the real shroud of Christ." In fact, the theory that Shroud was only a painting -- whether forgery or 'representation' -- was advanced WITHIN the Catholic church over 600 years ago!
As an apparent result of these and other dispures, the Shroud seems to have been treated more as an embarrassment, than a relic the church wished to display or advertise.
See the Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) article for details: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13762a.htm
2. "It is doubtful he (Rogers) will ever have findings that will be contrary to his own beliefs."
Raymond Rogers, who authored the study, published in "Thermochimica Acta", that has generated all the hubbabaloo does NOT now claim that he, or anyone else has proved that the Shroud of Turin is the Shroud of Christ. To the contrary, he's been quoted as saying that "It's a shroud from the right time, but you're never going to find out (through science) if it was used on a person named Jesus".
http://tinyurl.com/68jfl (www.smh.com.au)
ABSTRACT OF THE ROGERS ARTICLE:
In 1988, radiocarbon laboratories at Arizona, Cambridge, and Zurich determined the age of a sample from the Shroud of Turin. They reported that the date of the cloth's production lay between A.D. 1260 and 1390 with 95% confidence. This came as a surprise in view of the technology used to produce the cloth, its chemical composition, and the lack of vanillin in its lignin. The results prompted questions about the validity of the sample.
Preliminary estimates of the kinetics constants for the loss of vanillin from lignin indicate a much older age for the cloth than the radiocarbon analyses. The radiocarbon sampling area is uniquely coated with a yellow-brown plant gum containing dye lakes. Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the shroud.
"Thermochimica Acta", Volume 425, Issues 1-2
http://tinyurl.com/4vy6r (www.sciencedirect.com)
3.Results of comprehensive STURP study of the Shroud, the consortium of scientists who physically examined the Shroud in 1978, was NOT sponsored or encouraged by the Catholic church, did NOT include many Catholics, and did NOT conclude that the Shroud of Turin was the Shroud of Christ. Raymond Rogers, who was a member of that team, was quoted at that time, when asked that question at a public press conference, as saying, "We do not have test for Jesus Christ. So, we can't hypothesize or test for that question."
"Report on the Shroud of Turin", Heller, 1983
used copies from Amazon - http://tinyurl.com/46fln
4. "So at best you can show that it was the death shroud of someone who died 2000 years ago via a mo
"Honestly, I can't believe people even consider this approach."
I assume that your statement is hyperbolic, and that you don't *actually* have a difficulty believing that people consider this approach, when so many report here that they've actually adopted it? I'll assume that what you are indicating is moderately polite disapproval.
Some people's attitude toward the Internet is religious; typically they have some sort of utopian anarchist belief-committment, that they worship to the point of irrationality. It's not that they are dumb; some are brilliant, like Richard Stallman. To these sort of folk, anything that blocks ANYTHING on the Internet -- spam, kiddie porn, what -- is an immorality, and thus a heinous offense.
Other people have a political view of the Internet -- it's for the people who they imagine they are politically and culturally compatible with, or at least people they feel sympathy towards. Thus, they are offended if you block China or Nigeria, but would probably help you block the "red states".
Then, there people who simply see the Internet as a new and powerful tool, but one that is being badly damaged by spammers and hackers. These folks often apply a cost-benefit approach (formally, or informally) to security steps, including spam blocking. In the US, many of these folks have found that the benefits of receiving email from, or allowing web traffic to, China are minimal and thus they drop the routes. Likewise, many have found blocking email from dynamic IPs (US and European cable and DSL ips) has little cost and great benefits, so they do that, too. But, in the US, such folks can't afford to block south Florida (arguably, spam headquarters of the world!) because they do have a lot of legitimate traffic to/from those areas.
I would assume, however, that Chinese network managers of this stripe WOULD block as much of south Florida as they could. And I, for one, wouldn't assume that their doing so with in any way racists, zenophobic, or even political. In fact, I wish that China would block access from the entire state of Florida, thus cutting off the spammer's access to their websites!
However, there's no way to reconcile the various approaches to blocking (or not blocking) spam, without considering underlying attitudes toward the Internet. In particular, it's a waste of electrons for someone with a utilitarian view to discuss spam management with someone holding a religious view!
PoolDoc