Have you tried reading up on the details of the Galileo affair, or even on the history of scientific contributions made by Catholic priests who weren't treated as heretics? Do you even know about Gregor Mendel and Georges Lemaître? Even a quick Wikipedia search would have cured you of your ignorance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
.. and had me wondering why this fellow isn't more widely known. Then you remember that he came up these ideas in the days when going public with them would likely get you burned at the stake (or worse).
Except... he did go public with them.
Read up on your history. Scholars who published their theories about nature were very rarely persecuted for their research in 13th century Europe.
It's funny how when sensationalist news articles talk about a Slashdotter's field of expertise, he is often skeptical. And rightly so, since he sees plenty of distortions and general shoddy journalism in popular news sources... when it comes to his field of expertise. But when an obviously sensational news article appears that is about some topic he knows almost nothing about... well! No need to be skeptical there! It must be the absolute truth!
This behavior is even more prevalent when the said news article is about something the Slashdotter hates and is not an expert on.
Have you even read any part of Summa Theologica? Aquinas knew enough critical thinking to come up with multiple non-silly arguments against his own beliefs.
Stupid title. Immaculate Conception does NOT mean virgin birth. The former (a member of a fallen race being free from Original Sin from conception) is a metaphysical concept that cannot be observed empirically. The latter (a female giving birth without having prior sexual intercourse) may, in fact, be observed empirically.
Sorry for the irrelevant comment. Anyway, interesting article!
Stupid title. Immaculate Conception does NOT mean virgin birth. The former (a member of a fallen race being free from Original Sin from conception) is a metaphysical concept that cannot be observed empirically. The latter (a female giving birth without having prior sexual intercourse) may, in fact, be observed empirically.
Sorry for the irrelevant comment. Anyway, interesting article!
It starts a new cycle - claiming that because of this the Mayans predicted the end of the world would be like saying at the end of every year that the world is about to end.
Yeah, it's also like saying at the end of every millennium that the world is about to end. Haha!
We might never know if some Mayans ascribed eschatological significance to their own calendar cycles. But if they did, they certainly weren't the last people to do it.
I expect if you humans don't wipe each other out with your stupidity and wars, that the next 50 years will be quite an interesting time for science.
Well, obviously you aren't one of "us humans". On behalf of all of us mere humans, I apologize that you and your fellow supermen, our moral and intellectual betters, have to witness our incredible stupidity. We are grateful for your patience as we try to sort out our various problems. You, of course, are free from stupidity or error of any kind, and it would be our undeserved privilege if you would deign to drop but a few hints from your infinite well of knowledge upon us on the matter of how we are to make our science more interesting to you. Should we, perhaps, abandon all else and focus our energies and our limited minds in developing our replacements: artificial minds that would surpass us in intelligence, and be therefore more worthy of you time? Please tell us, oh master. Our primitive brains thirst for a glimpse of true infallibility!
Your use of argumentum ad ignorantiam is... interesting. Would you, perhaps, claim that agnostics use argumentum ad ignorantiam when they say that we cannot prove or disprove the existence of God?
Well would you look at that. Radical environmentalism has gone full circle from wanting to give animals human rights to asking people to eat their own beloved pets. I loathe to see the day one of these people comes to power. Who knows when they'll start to take A Modest Proposal seriously. Save the Planet, Eat Your Children!
What you said makes absolutely no sense. How exactly does being part of a small list make you "ain't all that big"? How about, for example, a small list of billionaires, will you scoff at them, too?
If a language is being used for important things by big, credible, and important organizations, that fact is enough to refute the claim that "nothing important is done in Ruby or Python."
Work through the daytime, spend my nights and weekends
Perfecting my warrior robot race
Building them one laser gun at a time
I will do my best to teach them
About life and what it's worth
I just hope that I can keep them from destroying the Earth
The people my actions are going to affect (both in the present and the future generations) will themselves die eventually. The whole universe will inevitably end with either heat death or a Big Crunch, rendering all personal actions futile. So, in a purely materialistic and cosmological point of view, do the effects of my actions really matter? No, it doesn't.
A Buddhist can look at pictures of decomposing remains and conclude that he must not be worldly. Yet he can also (if he chooses to) look a the same pictures and conclude that nothing hinders him from being worldly, for the worldly and the non-worldly alike will end up rotting in the end; one might as well do as he wishes, for everything is an illusion (ah, that inspired Buddhist phrase!).
For the record, I do not subscribe to the cynical philosophy I tried to illustrate in the above paragraphs. But given that we do not live in a perfect Christian society where such a philosophy would not exist, environmentalists will have to look for better arguments than "it's nice to be nice to other people" and "you can't take your SUV with you when you die". Because in a doomed, absurd, or illusory universe of atheists or Buddhists, "clinging to the first rationalization that allows people to keep doing what they want" is a perfectly rational thing to do.
Exactly. But just as desensitization to Action X does not make Action X less immoral, neither does it make Action X immoral. You consider cow-eating as equally monstrous as murder for your own reasons (which I'd charitably assume are not *purely* sentimental), reasons that may not apply to us.
Instead of appealing to sentimentalism, try to realize that this is matter of what people hold as sacred (e.g. human life and, in your case, farm animals) and what they do not (e.g. tasty, tasty pig and, in the case of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, humans), and realize that it will be impossible to change people's minds unless you understand where their priorities lie. In my case, as of this very minute, having a nice bacon cheeseburger is high on my priority list. See you guys later!
Rights are given to individual humans, not to their component parts. The sperm and the egg that formed me didn't individually have rights in the same sense that my liver does not have rights. The fact that there was no individual living thing that could possibly be called *Me* until the moment of my conception invalidates your reasoning altogether.
The AC's point can be restated thus: There was a point in time where a living thing already existed with my DNA. It would grow and develop my nervous system and all my other organs. It would be born and be given my name. All evidence suggests that this newly-formed embryo was me and no one else. It wasn't my mother nor my father. It wasn't some subhuman Other. It was Me. If I have intrinsic human rights*, like the right to life, I must (by the definitions of intrinsic and human) have had those right for as long as I existed, i.e. since I was a mere human embryo.
--
*Reading the comments here, it would seem that the assumption of intrinsic human rights is not held by everyone on Slashdot. It seems for some of us human rights are not given to a human being unless some arbitrary requirement assigned by the Enlightened is accomplished, like being an Aryan, or something... oh wait, was that the Nazis? Sorry, I can't see clearly due to all the murdered subhuman punishments lying around.
...a world where garbage vaporizes can run amok, producing more energy than is put into them thereby destroying the universe. Screw your science, that's the world I want to live in.
The comment about abandoning principles for the sake of scientific progress was aimed at your assertion that "the observable world is all we have to work with". You see, certain things are quite outside the observable world. For example, I am sure you have yet to observe that "the observable world is all we have to work with", simply because you haven't worked with everything you have to work with yet, not until your last breath.
In order for any observation to be useful, we need to have some pre-conceived notions that are not observed but asserted. That's because data doesn't analyze itself. Observations do not make decisions, they merely suggest decisions based on what the decision-maker already asserts. If you give me a list of figures showing that Action A leads to Event B, that doesn't tell me anything about whether Event B should happen or whether Event B is worth doing Action A. Now, you could show me another list of data entitled "Why Event B is Right", but that already assumes that "Right" is already defined and asserted. My point is that you'll have to have an opinion first before you can have an informed opinion, and of course the original opinion would not have come from observations. Look at your own example:
If you could kill even a tiny fraction of that many people with impunity, than we as a society have made a huge mistake in entrusting a single (apparently insane) person with so much power. But I think this also just gets back to the fact that scientists are still human beings.
Why exactly would society make a huge mistake if they allowed such a murderous experiment? Is it because the majority of people disapprove of murder? But if they entrust someone with the power to kill in order to research Technology A, then apparently they could approve murder if it meant Technology A. Now, you can go around showing them data, pie charts and all, shoving it in their faces ("Can't you see this pie chart?! A million people died!"), but if they see Technology A as something more valuable than a million people, then your data is useless. A person's values, his assertions, govern what observations matter to him. Even if society disapproved of murder, they can always redefine the definition of murder, and even label the victims as inferior and therefore expendable. Oh, how very easy it is to allow the slaughter of strangers when you start distancing away from them! "They're just blobs of flesh that no one wants, might as well use them for research", and all that.
Of course, assertions can be contradicted by logic, they can change, they can be added to, they can be temporarily ignored or denied. Yet that doesn't change the fact that without them no decision can possibly be made. Now, let me insert the topic of religion here. If someone subscribes to a particular religious assertion that has not been contradicted by logic and can be used for decision-making, why the devil should he forsake the religious assertion? You go on saying well golly, there's lots of morals that are held in common by everyone so religion isn't necessary, as if you don't read the news and see glaring moral disagreements everywhere, many of which involve people who are very intelligent and scientific but who just so happened to differ with each other on moral issues like when can a human being be willfully slaughtered. U.S. Catholics, for example, are having to face the moral dilemma of being stuck between someone who justifies the murder of infants and someone who justifies the murder of nations.
You can talk all you want about your so-called common morality, I say most of the time the things we have in common are so primitive that they might as well be truisms. Clearly the common morality isn't doing much in uniting Americans or anyone else. Something else is needed for a more mature moral mind, not just "observable experiences". And yet you don't seem to realize this, so you go on saying meaningless things like "scientists are still human beings" and ridiculous th
Slashdot Mirror
Obligatory: https://twitter.com/trumpdba
Have you tried reading up on the details of the Galileo affair, or even on the history of scientific contributions made by Catholic priests who weren't treated as heretics? Do you even know about Gregor Mendel and Georges Lemaître? Even a quick Wikipedia search would have cured you of your ignorance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
.. and had me wondering why this fellow isn't more widely known. Then you remember that he came up these ideas in the days when going public with them would likely get you burned at the stake (or worse).
Except... he did go public with them.
Read up on your history. Scholars who published their theories about nature were very rarely persecuted for their research in 13th century Europe.
"It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree." -G.K. Chesterton
It's funny how when sensationalist news articles talk about a Slashdotter's field of expertise, he is often skeptical. And rightly so, since he sees plenty of distortions and general shoddy journalism in popular news sources... when it comes to his field of expertise. But when an obviously sensational news article appears that is about some topic he knows almost nothing about... well! No need to be skeptical there! It must be the absolute truth!
This behavior is even more prevalent when the said news article is about something the Slashdotter hates and is not an expert on.
In short, I think we need to be a bit more skeptical about this supposed news. Here's a different perspective on it: http://tofspot.blogspot.jp/2012/06/fundies-are-coming-fundies-are-coming.html
Have you even read any part of Summa Theologica? Aquinas knew enough critical thinking to come up with multiple non-silly arguments against his own beliefs.
When Spain colonized the Philippines (which is where I live), they called the natives "Indios" as well.
Granted that I've barely started learning Latin, but shouldn't that be "Et mater tua una simia est"?
I suggest, Sir, that you learn to put things in perspective.
Stupid title. Immaculate Conception does NOT mean virgin birth. The former (a member of a fallen race being free from Original Sin from conception) is a metaphysical concept that cannot be observed empirically. The latter (a female giving birth without having prior sexual intercourse) may, in fact, be observed empirically.
Sorry for the irrelevant comment. Anyway, interesting article!
Stupid title. Immaculate Conception does NOT mean virgin birth. The former (a member of a fallen race being free from Original Sin from conception) is a metaphysical concept that cannot be observed empirically. The latter (a female giving birth without having prior sexual intercourse) may, in fact, be observed empirically.
Sorry for the irrelevant comment. Anyway, interesting article!
Yeah, it's also like saying at the end of every millennium that the world is about to end. Haha!
We might never know if some Mayans ascribed eschatological significance to their own calendar cycles. But if they did, they certainly weren't the last people to do it.
Assuming comment #31144782 is from the same AC, I think we can safely say that he's not BadAnalogyGuy... just some random jerk.
Well, obviously you aren't one of "us humans". On behalf of all of us mere humans, I apologize that you and your fellow supermen, our moral and intellectual betters, have to witness our incredible stupidity. We are grateful for your patience as we try to sort out our various problems. You, of course, are free from stupidity or error of any kind, and it would be our undeserved privilege if you would deign to drop but a few hints from your infinite well of knowledge upon us on the matter of how we are to make our science more interesting to you. Should we, perhaps, abandon all else and focus our energies and our limited minds in developing our replacements: artificial minds that would surpass us in intelligence, and be therefore more worthy of you time? Please tell us, oh master. Our primitive brains thirst for a glimpse of true infallibility!
Your use of argumentum ad ignorantiam is... interesting. Would you, perhaps, claim that agnostics use argumentum ad ignorantiam when they say that we cannot prove or disprove the existence of God?
Wait, you mean this book isn't satirical?
Well would you look at that. Radical environmentalism has gone full circle from wanting to give animals human rights to asking people to eat their own beloved pets. I loathe to see the day one of these people comes to power. Who knows when they'll start to take A Modest Proposal seriously. Save the Planet, Eat Your Children!
What you said makes absolutely no sense. How exactly does being part of a small list make you "ain't all that big"? How about, for example, a small list of billionaires, will you scoff at them, too?
If a language is being used for important things by big, credible, and important organizations, that fact is enough to refute the claim that "nothing important is done in Ruby or Python."
From Jonathan Coulton's song, "The Future Soon":
Work through the daytime, spend my nights and weekends
Perfecting my warrior robot race
Building them one laser gun at a time
I will do my best to teach them
About life and what it's worth
I just hope that I can keep them from destroying the Earth
The people my actions are going to affect (both in the present and the future generations) will themselves die eventually. The whole universe will inevitably end with either heat death or a Big Crunch, rendering all personal actions futile. So, in a purely materialistic and cosmological point of view, do the effects of my actions really matter? No, it doesn't.
A Buddhist can look at pictures of decomposing remains and conclude that he must not be worldly. Yet he can also (if he chooses to) look a the same pictures and conclude that nothing hinders him from being worldly, for the worldly and the non-worldly alike will end up rotting in the end; one might as well do as he wishes, for everything is an illusion (ah, that inspired Buddhist phrase!).
For the record, I do not subscribe to the cynical philosophy I tried to illustrate in the above paragraphs. But given that we do not live in a perfect Christian society where such a philosophy would not exist, environmentalists will have to look for better arguments than "it's nice to be nice to other people" and "you can't take your SUV with you when you die". Because in a doomed, absurd, or illusory universe of atheists or Buddhists, "clinging to the first rationalization that allows people to keep doing what they want" is a perfectly rational thing to do.
Exactly. But just as desensitization to Action X does not make Action X less immoral, neither does it make Action X immoral. You consider cow-eating as equally monstrous as murder for your own reasons (which I'd charitably assume are not *purely* sentimental), reasons that may not apply to us.
Instead of appealing to sentimentalism, try to realize that this is matter of what people hold as sacred (e.g. human life and, in your case, farm animals) and what they do not (e.g. tasty, tasty pig and, in the case of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, humans), and realize that it will be impossible to change people's minds unless you understand where their priorities lie. In my case, as of this very minute, having a nice bacon cheeseburger is high on my priority list. See you guys later!
Answer:
No. Zero is a dwarf number.
*rimshot*
Rights are given to individual humans, not to their component parts. The sperm and the egg that formed me didn't individually have rights in the same sense that my liver does not have rights. The fact that there was no individual living thing that could possibly be called *Me* until the moment of my conception invalidates your reasoning altogether.
The AC's point can be restated thus: There was a point in time where a living thing already existed with my DNA. It would grow and develop my nervous system and all my other organs. It would be born and be given my name. All evidence suggests that this newly-formed embryo was me and no one else. It wasn't my mother nor my father. It wasn't some subhuman Other. It was Me. If I have intrinsic human rights*, like the right to life, I must (by the definitions of intrinsic and human) have had those right for as long as I existed, i.e. since I was a mere human embryo.
--
*Reading the comments here, it would seem that the assumption of intrinsic human rights is not held by everyone on Slashdot. It seems for some of us human rights are not given to a human being unless some arbitrary requirement assigned by the Enlightened is accomplished, like being an Aryan, or something... oh wait, was that the Nazis? Sorry, I can't see clearly due to all the murdered subhuman punishments lying around.
Oh, of course we don't. Everybody knows Filipinos are too mentally-retarded to understand sarcasm. ;-)
But not for long, I take it?
The comment about abandoning principles for the sake of scientific progress was aimed at your assertion that "the observable world is all we have to work with". You see, certain things are quite outside the observable world. For example, I am sure you have yet to observe that "the observable world is all we have to work with", simply because you haven't worked with everything you have to work with yet, not until your last breath.
In order for any observation to be useful, we need to have some pre-conceived notions that are not observed but asserted. That's because data doesn't analyze itself. Observations do not make decisions, they merely suggest decisions based on what the decision-maker already asserts. If you give me a list of figures showing that Action A leads to Event B, that doesn't tell me anything about whether Event B should happen or whether Event B is worth doing Action A. Now, you could show me another list of data entitled "Why Event B is Right", but that already assumes that "Right" is already defined and asserted. My point is that you'll have to have an opinion first before you can have an informed opinion, and of course the original opinion would not have come from observations. Look at your own example:
Why exactly would society make a huge mistake if they allowed such a murderous experiment? Is it because the majority of people disapprove of murder? But if they entrust someone with the power to kill in order to research Technology A, then apparently they could approve murder if it meant Technology A. Now, you can go around showing them data, pie charts and all, shoving it in their faces ("Can't you see this pie chart?! A million people died!"), but if they see Technology A as something more valuable than a million people, then your data is useless. A person's values, his assertions, govern what observations matter to him. Even if society disapproved of murder, they can always redefine the definition of murder, and even label the victims as inferior and therefore expendable. Oh, how very easy it is to allow the slaughter of strangers when you start distancing away from them! "They're just blobs of flesh that no one wants, might as well use them for research", and all that.
Of course, assertions can be contradicted by logic, they can change, they can be added to, they can be temporarily ignored or denied. Yet that doesn't change the fact that without them no decision can possibly be made. Now, let me insert the topic of religion here. If someone subscribes to a particular religious assertion that has not been contradicted by logic and can be used for decision-making, why the devil should he forsake the religious assertion? You go on saying well golly, there's lots of morals that are held in common by everyone so religion isn't necessary, as if you don't read the news and see glaring moral disagreements everywhere, many of which involve people who are very intelligent and scientific but who just so happened to differ with each other on moral issues like when can a human being be willfully slaughtered. U.S. Catholics, for example, are having to face the moral dilemma of being stuck between someone who justifies the murder of infants and someone who justifies the murder of nations.
You can talk all you want about your so-called common morality, I say most of the time the things we have in common are so primitive that they might as well be truisms. Clearly the common morality isn't doing much in uniting Americans or anyone else. Something else is needed for a more mature moral mind, not just "observable experiences". And yet you don't seem to realize this, so you go on saying meaningless things like "scientists are still human beings" and ridiculous th