Calling it a 'pissing match' is a means of belittling the behavior of those involved. I think that's pretty lame. Do you always put the interests and opinions of others so far below your own?
Commenting on your points specifically:
1) Wrong. Student was not 'outside of the school environment'. If you use a very pedantic definition of 'school environment' which includes the physical boundaries of the school yard, then I guess you are right. But that's a pretty useless definition. Would you argue that a student can stand just off of school grounds and throw rocks at kids on school property and that this would be 'outside the school environment'? If so, your argument would be just as ridiculous. This student was explicitly engaged in the school environment because they slandered a school official. You don't have to be on school grounds during school hours for your actions to have any connection with your school.
2. False dilemma. There is a third alternative: "Principal can follow the law and use the means fully within his rights for punishing school-related behavior: suspending the student". That is the correct solution, and it is what was applied.
3. False dilemma. The correct alternative, which you did not mention, is "kid (and parents) can accept their responsibility for their actions and take the punishment which has been given to them". No need to involve any courts at all. What your false dilemma choices have really taught the kid is that they don't need to take responsibility for their actions; some parent with a self-centered viewpoint will try to get them off the hook by taking the principal to court, and lots of pedants writing their opinions on the internet will agree with them.
4. False dilemma. Given that the parents wrongfully sued the principle, the only real alternative for the school is to defend the principle's actions as a means for maintaining the integrity of the school system. Parents cannot and should not dictate the behaviors of school officials. Punishments as metered out by the school need to be accepted and respected by parents and students (except where they are clearly unfair or unjustified, and yes, this is a grey area that sometimes needs the courts to decide), or else the educational system will not work (and we can see the effects of parent and student disrespect for the school system already, it's the major cause for the deterioration of America's public education).
Also, I think it's pretty lame to categorize the school's actions as "pissing your and my money down the drain." Just by using such a statement I think you've revealed alot about your point of view and personal character. And I am thankful that intelligent judges hear cases such as this, and make the correct rulings, regardless of what people with attitudes such as yours ("I don't agree with them and they went to court, they're wasting my money!") write on Slashdot.
I dabbled in Arch Linux a bit a while back. I was booting it off of a USB flash drive (one of the slow cheap ones, not one of the fast new ones) and I am pretty sure it booted in less than 20 seconds. Of course, I had to patch their bootup scripts myself to have it boot that fast, because they had some dumb logic that was waiting a fixed period of time for detected usb devices to show up, rather than polling and exiting the wait loop when the devices were there. So whereas it would always take 10 or 15 seconds (whatever you had configured it to) with their scripts, my change allowed my system to usually wait only a few seconds. Net result, the thing booted pretty quickly. Of course, I submitted a patch to them, and they have done nothing with it, or the bug I opened for the issue, so that put me off Arch Linux pretty quick.
Anyway, there were alot of nice things about Arch Linux; it is vastly streamlined compared to normal Linux. And if you know what you are doing, you can definitely get it under the 20 second boot time with just a little tweaking. Then you have a full-fledged Linux system to work on instead of some hacked together boot/root disks or whatever.
1. I don't expect to serve as an example for anything, since I haven't even given my own opinion on global climate change. It is only you who are assuming that I am a part of the 'crowd' that you are giving straw man arguments against. I merely pointed out the fallacies of what you had written.
2. The best method for reducing global warming, assuming that you believe a) that it is caused to a significant degree by man's activity and b) that global warming is a bad thing, is whatever method is most effective and practically possible. These criteria are greatly influenced by technology, by the current energy infrastructure of human kind (or at least, industrialized nations), and also by how willing people will be to go along with disruptive changes to their lifestyles. Reducing resource usage requires little to no technology or changes to energy infrastructure, but it does require changes to people's lifestyles. Some people think that it's a good idea to push this approach because the only thing that has to change is people's behavior, which *seems* like an easier thing to do than coming up with new technology or changing energy infrastructure. Whether or not this is practical given people's resistance to change is debatable.
Whether or not you agree with the approach, your implication that people who continue to press for resource usage reductions are unreasonable is unwarranted. I expect that anyone who feels that this is important would not take the fact that attempts to get industrialized nations to reduce resource usage has only been partially successful, if at all successful (and once again, this can all be debated), as a reason to stop advocating what they think is right. And I would be very surprised if there is *anyone* who would advocate *only* resource usage reduction as the solution to the global climate change problem.
Anyway, I haven't even said what I think of global climate change or its causes, or what I think the best solution might be. I've just pointed out that there are rational arguments for global climate change that contradict your straw men. My point was entirely about how you trivialize and misrepresent other people's opinions and additionally disparage them by calling them "the global climate change crowd", not about the specific merits of any particular approach to reducing global warming.
It's kind of funny though that you replied to my post about what a straw man you'd set up against "the global climate change crowd" with another straw man in which you describe weak arguments which you assume I'd make or believe in about climate change. I guess you'd win another award, for "best straw man in defense of a straw man."
As a final point, please don't be so disingenuous about using the word 'crowd'. You know full well what you were implying when you used that term instead of any of a number of less loaded terms you could have used.
That's really awesome how you trivialized, misrepresented, AND over-generalized climate change arguments all in one single post! You should win an award for the best straw man of the day!
Just a few specifics on why your post was stupid:
1. There are many people in this world with an opinion about global warming. Grouping everyone together into one 'they', and calling them a 'Global Climate Change crowd' both misrepresents a position as if it is held by everyone with an opinion about global climate change (it isn't), and seeks to discredit that opinion by giving the label 'crowd' to the group, insinuating that they are just a rabble-rousing mob. Lame.
2. Many/most people who think that climate change is an important issue, and accept scientific evidence that it is caused to a large degree by human activity, want to directly address climate change itself, not press some personal philosophy of minimalism. It just so happens that reducing resource usage is the single most effective and eminently most available way to reduce the causes of climate change. You are confusing the most practical solution with a moral agenda. Lame.
In conclusion: your post is lame. And it's lame that people have given in a +5 insightful mod, which only demonstrates that your fallacious logic indeed pulled the wool over the eyes of many. Or more likely, that you have supporters in people who also don't mind using fallacious logic to advance their OWN ideological agenda.
I am pretty sure the O.P. is asking, how much CO2 is generated by the process that takes the Nitrogen out of air? That must be an energy-intensive process, and most energy-intensive processes that we know of generate lots of CO2.
Well, good for you for overcoming your racist upbringing, and I mean that. But I find it hard to believe that you don't have the same natural racial bias that I think pretty much everyone else in the world has. Lots of other posters in this thread have noted that preferring one's own race in a variety of situations is a part of the tribal instinct for protecting one's own genetic heritage. If you believe in evolution, then you will surely see the logic in this.
Please understand that racism and racial bias really are two different things, and while it's great that you got beyond your racist upbringing, don't falsely believe that you somehow no longer have a racial bias, or that it's something that you should (or could!) get rid of.
That depends alot on what you believe the instinctive social behavior of human beings is, and indeed, if you believe that there is an instinctive social behavior at all.
I personally do believe that much of how people behave socially is based on instincts which are "programmed into us by our DNA" (for lack of a better, more verbose, description), to a large degree. I do believe that if you take two people without any knowledge of the world into a room together, they would follow, to a large degree, the same social patterns that we are familiar with. Of course, the expression of these instincts may be quite different than what we would recognize for people who have grown up with the conditioning of a particular society at play, but still, they would be there, and probably would not be unrecognizeable to us.
So if those two people happened to be of different skin color, or in some other way appear very different from each other, and if they had a mirror such that they could compare themselves to the other, I would not be surprised if there were a slight difference in how they treated each other than if they looked much more similar. I would expect a certain level of identification to occur between two people who "looked" like they came from a similar group, resulting in a slightly higher degree of mutual trust, at least initially, until they got to know each other and the much greater body of knowledge that comes from actually *knowing* somebody versus judging them based on an initial feeling about them came into play.
Anwyay, that's what I believe and it's why I think that racial bias is natural. I also think that gender bias, age bias, "attractiveness" bias, and a whole host of other biases based on physical appearance, are natural. That doesn't mean that I think that it's acceptable to have social policies which include such biases, or that outright racism is acceptable in any way.
If you don't believe in instinctive human social behavior, then I can see how you wouldn't believe in natural racial bias. However, I gotta wonder where you think social behavior comes from. Do you really think it's 100% learned? That seems so implausable to me.
I had never heard of the Foot-In-The-Door experiment or Door-In-The-Face experiments before reading the article. Turns out they are actually very interesting and clever experiments which reveal behavioral tendencies the explanation of which is plausably related to how a person sees themselves (in the FITD case) or how they see others (in the DITF case).
In a nutshell, if someone makes a small request of you that you are likely to agree to, then you will be more likely to agree to a second, larger request, because you will have seen yourself as being helpful in complying with the first request and want to continue being helpful by complying with the second request.
And, if someone makes a large request of you, a request so onerous that most people would not accept it, then you will be more likely to agree to a smaller second request, to a greater extent than you would have had you not been asked the first, more onerous request. The explanation for this is that you are trying to reciprocate on the asker's reducing the size of their request by increasing your willingness to respond to a request beyond what your base level would otherwise be. It's a kind of a subconscious negotiation process that you are engaging in with someone else, basically meeting them halfway.
However, this second scenario is affected by how worthy you subconsciously believe that the other person is of this kind of negotiation (the first scenario is not because your response is affected by how you see yourself, not how you see the asker). And apparently, if you perceive the other person as being unworthy of this kind of negotiation, then you are less likely to meet them halfway and agree to the second request.
OK, so, this article basically says that darker-skinned avatars in virtual worlds essentially are less likely to be met halfway, ostensibly because, on average, they are perceived as being less important than lighter-skinned avatars.
I don't think it should come as a surprise to anyone that people's racial biases are carried through to a virtual world from the real world. So in a sense, this whole article, aside from being informative about some interesting psychological tests and their results, is kind of one big 'no duh'.
What would be really interesting to know is if, in these situations, there is a greater degree of this kind of bias in one race or socioeconomic class than another, or if it's universal.
Also, I would just like to point out that racial bias does not necessarily mean racism. I personally believe that racial bias is a natural part of the human psyche, and as long as it is recognized, and understood, and does not adversely disadvantage any particular group of people, should be accepted. But that's just me.
Thanks for the information, it is interesting. However, I don't really appreciate the ad hominems. If you tone the attacks down in the future, you will save yourself from having an otherwise informative post leaving a sour tasts in readers mouths.
Fine. Educate me. Can you point out the parts of the bible that specifically say that the ways of the Old Testament are no longer applicable? Do they say that none of it is true any longer? Or selectively indicate which parts of the old testament are no longer true? Or do they leave it up to interpretation?
Also, is there any explanation for why all of the stuff that god sanctioned during the times of the old testament (presumably at least a few people were stoned to death according to its laws before the new testament came about) was allowed to occur? I mean if it went like this:
- god says that a person who disrespects his/her parents should be stoned to death - people spend a couple hundred (thousand?) years stoning people to death according to these laws - god says, "ok, those old laws - they're totally bogus. Forget them, here's some new laws"
Now what about all of those people who were stoned according to god's old laws? Are we supposed to feel like that was justified because it's what god said was the way to go at the time? Are we supposed to feel like these laws aren't awfully arbitrary if they result in people being killed for reasons that god can later say, 'oh, yeah, that was all bogus, I didn't really mean it"? And finally, why did god ever have to put laws in place such that people would be killed for what would later be changed to minor offenses? I mean, he's god. He could have immediately sent Jesus down before any of this killing had to happen. Or even, just not made those laws that had to be repealed by Jesus in the first place.
Any rational response to this? I'm hoping not - I hope you take my previous advice and just say "Christianity doesn't need to be rationalized - it's just the truth and you either accept it or you don't". Because honestly, I don't anticipate anything really convincing to come of this and I'd rather it ended sooner than later.
Your explanation for why the old testament laws are so jacked up is not very convincing. It sounds an awful lot like a rationalization. Why exactly are some parts of the bible meant to be interpreted more literally and some parts meant only to be interpreted as posing a "sharp contrast"? Can you give a reason that is more convincing than the obvious explanation that Christians simply spin the bible however best fits their preconceived notions of what it should say?
I have nothing against Christians or their beliefs, except when those impinge upon my personal freedom not to be a part of Christianity. Unfortunately, religions have a way of trying to force themselves upon everyone else even when they claim that they are benign, and the modern political climate of the USA is downright frightening in how strongly it is influenced by religion.
I always find it really ridiculous when Christians try to invoke logic in any form when discussing their belief system. The arguments are so poor and contrived, that it's really hard to even try to argue anything about religion with a Christian (or any religion, for that matter), because the fundamental basis for logical argument isn't anywhere to be found. Simply put - if you have a religion that you insist has any objective truth to it that can be logically argued, then you are already so far beyond understanding the basic concepts of rational logic that you shouldn't even try. Just say, "I don't have to justify my religious beliefs with logical arguments, they simply are true without any rational explanation needed." I can respect that approach much more than an approach that attempts to dress up exceedingly faulty and ridiculous logic as a justification for religion.
All that being said, the "bible is repulsive" YouTube video that the O.P. gushed over was really poorly done. Anyone can find countless examples of indefensible ridiculousness in the bible, all you have to do is open the book up, it's all plainly self-evident. So finding a bunch of passages that show that the bible is complete bunk, and totally at odds with modern Christian theology, is about the most simple exercise one could engage in. Presenting this like it's some kind of major insight is intellectually disingenuous. And doing it in such a repetitive and annoying fashion, results in a video that isn't worth anyone's time.
And how would you know this? Did you pirate the game from wherever it showed up on Sept. 3 or 4? Or did you just happen to notice it while you were pirating other stuff? Or maybe there is another explanation? Do tell.
You're right, I misread the post. It is hard to tell all of the piracy whiners apart when discussions like this come up on Slashdot. I thought he was another one of those people who claim that they *have to* pirate software because game companies charge too much/use DRM/whatever. Instead, he is a whiner who doesn't realize that pirating the game is NOT a "choice" that EA has given anyone.
Anyway, thanks for pointing out my error, although I'm not sure exactly what the difference is between being an ass when posting and making an ass of one's self when posting.
Hmmm... third-hand anecdotal evidence from "the buyer of the car of the brother of an anonymous coward"? Did you really think that would be at all convincing? If so, you might like to know that my friend heard from his uncle-in-law's ex-wife that her doctor's pilates instructor had a Toyota Prius whose batteries lasted 20 years and 15 million miles before wearing out.
You do have another choice. You can not play the game. I am sure that even someone who cannot grasp basic concepts like this can find something else to fill your time with.
Re:If EA is reading this
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Review: Spore
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Holy crap, your analogy was about 1000 times worse than the O.P.'s. Check a few posts back for a response that actually made sense, where someone corrected the O.P.'s analogy by citing that the DRM is only applied to you if you buy the product, but not applied to pirates.
All that being said, you are just a whiny loser trying to justify your selfish actions if you try to claim that you are pirating the software to try to teach the company a lesson. Not buying or playing the game is the way to accomplish this. Pirating it is for one reason and one reason only, no matter how you try to spin it: to play the game without paying the people who created it.
I think the original poster may respond to you with something like:
But the hypothesis that there was a hamster in the flashlight was not discredited; it was only shown that at the time that you opened the flashlight, there was a battery in there. Maybe the act of opening the flashlight turned the hamster into a battery. Or maybe a battery was teleported in there as the hamster was teleported out, at the instant that you opened the flashlight.
Of course, all this really means is that the hamster hypothesis is just being modified to match the results of the experiment, and such a process could be continued indefinitely, with the hamster hypothesis becoming more and more convoluted as it has to fit into smaller and smaller spaces of possibility.
So is it valid to continue to refine the hamster hypothesis to fit the results of experiments, and continue to claim that it hasn't been discredited by experiment after experiment that show that aspect after aspect of the hypothesis are verifiably false? I would say no, but I think the O.P. would say 'yes'. It seems to me that the only way that the O.P. would be satisfied is if there was some way to, in one fell swoop, show the entirety of a complex theory to be false, using a single experiment. But for most of us, the theory stops being interesting the moment that it starts to contort itself around experimental evidence. Unfortunately, many people do not, and hence we have Intelligent Design being pushed.
1. The definition of addiction seems to be in dispute given all of the comments on this topic. I would venture a guess that even among scientific professionals, it is not always clear cut. Therefore, trying to turn the topic from an interesting discussion of the addictive nature of video games, to a pedantic quarrel about the specific definition of addiction, doesn't seem very useful.
2. Who said anything about treating video game addiction as a chemical addiction?
Do you think that gambling addiction is a real addiction? If so, then I can assure you, video game addiction is just as real, because I have experienced it. If not, then I think you'd be fighting an uphill battle trying to convince anyone else.
That is a great rule to have. But a person who is truly addicted to a game, will find it nigh impossible to follow such a rule. Not being able to follow such a rule is basically the same thing as being addicted, in fact.
Slashdot Mirror
Calling it a 'pissing match' is a means of belittling the behavior of those involved. I think that's pretty lame. Do you always put the interests and opinions of others so far below your own?
Commenting on your points specifically:
1) Wrong. Student was not 'outside of the school environment'. If you use a very pedantic definition of 'school environment' which includes the physical boundaries of the school yard, then I guess you are right. But that's a pretty useless definition. Would you argue that a student can stand just off of school grounds and throw rocks at kids on school property and that this would be 'outside the school environment'? If so, your argument would be just as ridiculous. This student was explicitly engaged in the school environment because they slandered a school official. You don't have to be on school grounds during school hours for your actions to have any connection with your school.
2. False dilemma. There is a third alternative: "Principal can follow the law and use the means fully within his rights for punishing school-related behavior: suspending the student". That is the correct solution, and it is what was applied.
3. False dilemma. The correct alternative, which you did not mention, is "kid (and parents) can accept their responsibility for their actions and take the punishment which has been given to them". No need to involve any courts at all. What your false dilemma choices have really taught the kid is that they don't need to take responsibility for their actions; some parent with a self-centered viewpoint will try to get them off the hook by taking the principal to court, and lots of pedants writing their opinions on the internet will agree with them.
4. False dilemma. Given that the parents wrongfully sued the principle, the only real alternative for the school is to defend the principle's actions as a means for maintaining the integrity of the school system. Parents cannot and should not dictate the behaviors of school officials. Punishments as metered out by the school need to be accepted and respected by parents and students (except where they are clearly unfair or unjustified, and yes, this is a grey area that sometimes needs the courts to decide), or else the educational system will not work (and we can see the effects of parent and student disrespect for the school system already, it's the major cause for the deterioration of America's public education).
Also, I think it's pretty lame to categorize the school's actions as "pissing your and my money down the drain." Just by using such a statement I think you've revealed alot about your point of view and personal character. And I am thankful that intelligent judges hear cases such as this, and make the correct rulings, regardless of what people with attitudes such as yours ("I don't agree with them and they went to court, they're wasting my money!") write on Slashdot.
I am a good citizen, I submitted the patch in the Arch Linux bug database, you can find it at:
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/10483
I dabbled in Arch Linux a bit a while back. I was booting it off of a USB flash drive (one of the slow cheap ones, not one of the fast new ones) and I am pretty sure it booted in less than 20 seconds. Of course, I had to patch their bootup scripts myself to have it boot that fast, because they had some dumb logic that was waiting a fixed period of time for detected usb devices to show up, rather than polling and exiting the wait loop when the devices were there. So whereas it would always take 10 or 15 seconds (whatever you had configured it to) with their scripts, my change allowed my system to usually wait only a few seconds. Net result, the thing booted pretty quickly. Of course, I submitted a patch to them, and they have done nothing with it, or the bug I opened for the issue, so that put me off Arch Linux pretty quick.
Anyway, there were alot of nice things about Arch Linux; it is vastly streamlined compared to normal Linux. And if you know what you are doing, you can definitely get it under the 20 second boot time with just a little tweaking. Then you have a full-fledged Linux system to work on instead of some hacked together boot/root disks or whatever.
Response to your response:
1. I don't expect to serve as an example for anything, since I haven't even given my own opinion on global climate change. It is only you who are assuming that I am a part of the 'crowd' that you are giving straw man arguments against. I merely pointed out the fallacies of what you had written.
2. The best method for reducing global warming, assuming that you believe a) that it is caused to a significant degree by man's activity and b) that global warming is a bad thing, is whatever method is most effective and practically possible. These criteria are greatly influenced by technology, by the current energy infrastructure of human kind (or at least, industrialized nations), and also by how willing people will be to go along with disruptive changes to their lifestyles. Reducing resource usage requires little to no technology or changes to energy infrastructure, but it does require changes to people's lifestyles. Some people think that it's a good idea to push this approach because the only thing that has to change is people's behavior, which *seems* like an easier thing to do than coming up with new technology or changing energy infrastructure. Whether or not this is practical given people's resistance to change is debatable.
Whether or not you agree with the approach, your implication that people who continue to press for resource usage reductions are unreasonable is unwarranted. I expect that anyone who feels that this is important would not take the fact that attempts to get industrialized nations to reduce resource usage has only been partially successful, if at all successful (and once again, this can all be debated), as a reason to stop advocating what they think is right. And I would be very surprised if there is *anyone* who would advocate *only* resource usage reduction as the solution to the global climate change problem.
Anyway, I haven't even said what I think of global climate change or its causes, or what I think the best solution might be. I've just pointed out that there are rational arguments for global climate change that contradict your straw men. My point was entirely about how you trivialize and misrepresent other people's opinions and additionally disparage them by calling them "the global climate change crowd", not about the specific merits of any particular approach to reducing global warming.
It's kind of funny though that you replied to my post about what a straw man you'd set up against "the global climate change crowd" with another straw man in which you describe weak arguments which you assume I'd make or believe in about climate change. I guess you'd win another award, for "best straw man in defense of a straw man."
As a final point, please don't be so disingenuous about using the word 'crowd'. You know full well what you were implying when you used that term instead of any of a number of less loaded terms you could have used.
That's really awesome how you trivialized, misrepresented, AND over-generalized climate change arguments all in one single post! You should win an award for the best straw man of the day!
Just a few specifics on why your post was stupid:
1. There are many people in this world with an opinion about global warming. Grouping everyone together into one 'they', and calling them a 'Global Climate Change crowd' both misrepresents a position as if it is held by everyone with an opinion about global climate change (it isn't), and seeks to discredit that opinion by giving the label 'crowd' to the group, insinuating that they are just a rabble-rousing mob. Lame.
2. Many/most people who think that climate change is an important issue, and accept scientific evidence that it is caused to a large degree by human activity, want to directly address climate change itself, not press some personal philosophy of minimalism. It just so happens that reducing resource usage is the single most effective and eminently most available way to reduce the causes of climate change. You are confusing the most practical solution with a moral agenda. Lame.
In conclusion: your post is lame. And it's lame that people have given in a +5 insightful mod, which only demonstrates that your fallacious logic indeed pulled the wool over the eyes of many. Or more likely, that you have supporters in people who also don't mind using fallacious logic to advance their OWN ideological agenda.
I am pretty sure the O.P. is asking, how much CO2 is generated by the process that takes the Nitrogen out of air? That must be an energy-intensive process, and most energy-intensive processes that we know of generate lots of CO2.
Well if it makes you feel any betters, yours is the first one I saw, and I enjoyed it.
Well, good for you for overcoming your racist upbringing, and I mean that. But I find it hard to believe that you don't have the same natural racial bias that I think pretty much everyone else in the world has. Lots of other posters in this thread have noted that preferring one's own race in a variety of situations is a part of the tribal instinct for protecting one's own genetic heritage. If you believe in evolution, then you will surely see the logic in this.
Please understand that racism and racial bias really are two different things, and while it's great that you got beyond your racist upbringing, don't falsely believe that you somehow no longer have a racial bias, or that it's something that you should (or could!) get rid of.
That depends alot on what you believe the instinctive social behavior of human beings is, and indeed, if you believe that there is an instinctive social behavior at all.
I personally do believe that much of how people behave socially is based on instincts which are "programmed into us by our DNA" (for lack of a better, more verbose, description), to a large degree. I do believe that if you take two people without any knowledge of the world into a room together, they would follow, to a large degree, the same social patterns that we are familiar with. Of course, the expression of these instincts may be quite different than what we would recognize for people who have grown up with the conditioning of a particular society at play, but still, they would be there, and probably would not be unrecognizeable to us.
So if those two people happened to be of different skin color, or in some other way appear very different from each other, and if they had a mirror such that they could compare themselves to the other, I would not be surprised if there were a slight difference in how they treated each other than if they looked much more similar. I would expect a certain level of identification to occur between two people who "looked" like they came from a similar group, resulting in a slightly higher degree of mutual trust, at least initially, until they got to know each other and the much greater body of knowledge that comes from actually *knowing* somebody versus judging them based on an initial feeling about them came into play.
Anwyay, that's what I believe and it's why I think that racial bias is natural. I also think that gender bias, age bias, "attractiveness" bias, and a whole host of other biases based on physical appearance, are natural. That doesn't mean that I think that it's acceptable to have social policies which include such biases, or that outright racism is acceptable in any way.
If you don't believe in instinctive human social behavior, then I can see how you wouldn't believe in natural racial bias. However, I gotta wonder where you think social behavior comes from. Do you really think it's 100% learned? That seems so implausable to me.
I had never heard of the Foot-In-The-Door experiment or Door-In-The-Face experiments before reading the article. Turns out they are actually very interesting and clever experiments which reveal behavioral tendencies the explanation of which is plausably related to how a person sees themselves (in the FITD case) or how they see others (in the DITF case).
In a nutshell, if someone makes a small request of you that you are likely to agree to, then you will be more likely to agree to a second, larger request, because you will have seen yourself as being helpful in complying with the first request and want to continue being helpful by complying with the second request.
And, if someone makes a large request of you, a request so onerous that most people would not accept it, then you will be more likely to agree to a smaller second request, to a greater extent than you would have had you not been asked the first, more onerous request. The explanation for this is that you are trying to reciprocate on the asker's reducing the size of their request by increasing your willingness to respond to a request beyond what your base level would otherwise be. It's a kind of a subconscious negotiation process that you are engaging in with someone else, basically meeting them halfway.
However, this second scenario is affected by how worthy you subconsciously believe that the other person is of this kind of negotiation (the first scenario is not because your response is affected by how you see yourself, not how you see the asker). And apparently, if you perceive the other person as being unworthy of this kind of negotiation, then you are less likely to meet them halfway and agree to the second request.
OK, so, this article basically says that darker-skinned avatars in virtual worlds essentially are less likely to be met halfway, ostensibly because, on average, they are perceived as being less important than lighter-skinned avatars.
I don't think it should come as a surprise to anyone that people's racial biases are carried through to a virtual world from the real world. So in a sense, this whole article, aside from being informative about some interesting psychological tests and their results, is kind of one big 'no duh'.
What would be really interesting to know is if, in these situations, there is a greater degree of this kind of bias in one race or socioeconomic class than another, or if it's universal.
Also, I would just like to point out that racial bias does not necessarily mean racism. I personally believe that racial bias is a natural part of the human psyche, and as long as it is recognized, and understood, and does not adversely disadvantage any particular group of people, should be accepted. But that's just me.
Thanks for the information, it is interesting. However, I don't really appreciate the ad hominems. If you tone the attacks down in the future, you will save yourself from having an otherwise informative post leaving a sour tasts in readers mouths.
Fine. Educate me. Can you point out the parts of the bible that specifically say that the ways of the Old Testament are no longer applicable? Do they say that none of it is true any longer? Or selectively indicate which parts of the old testament are no longer true? Or do they leave it up to interpretation?
Also, is there any explanation for why all of the stuff that god sanctioned during the times of the old testament (presumably at least a few people were stoned to death according to its laws before the new testament came about) was allowed to occur? I mean if it went like this:
- god says that a person who disrespects his/her parents should be stoned to death
- people spend a couple hundred (thousand?) years stoning people to death according to these laws
- god says, "ok, those old laws - they're totally bogus. Forget them, here's some new laws"
Now what about all of those people who were stoned according to god's old laws? Are we supposed to feel like that was justified because it's what god said was the way to go at the time? Are we supposed to feel like these laws aren't awfully arbitrary if they result in people being killed for reasons that god can later say, 'oh, yeah, that was all bogus, I didn't really mean it"? And finally, why did god ever have to put laws in place such that people would be killed for what would later be changed to minor offenses? I mean, he's god. He could have immediately sent Jesus down before any of this killing had to happen. Or even, just not made those laws that had to be repealed by Jesus in the first place.
Any rational response to this? I'm hoping not - I hope you take my previous advice and just say "Christianity doesn't need to be rationalized - it's just the truth and you either accept it or you don't". Because honestly, I don't anticipate anything really convincing to come of this and I'd rather it ended sooner than later.
Your explanation for why the old testament laws are so jacked up is not very convincing. It sounds an awful lot like a rationalization. Why exactly are some parts of the bible meant to be interpreted more literally and some parts meant only to be interpreted as posing a "sharp contrast"? Can you give a reason that is more convincing than the obvious explanation that Christians simply spin the bible however best fits their preconceived notions of what it should say?
I have nothing against Christians or their beliefs, except when those impinge upon my personal freedom not to be a part of Christianity. Unfortunately, religions have a way of trying to force themselves upon everyone else even when they claim that they are benign, and the modern political climate of the USA is downright frightening in how strongly it is influenced by religion.
I always find it really ridiculous when Christians try to invoke logic in any form when discussing their belief system. The arguments are so poor and contrived, that it's really hard to even try to argue anything about religion with a Christian (or any religion, for that matter), because the fundamental basis for logical argument isn't anywhere to be found. Simply put - if you have a religion that you insist has any objective truth to it that can be logically argued, then you are already so far beyond understanding the basic concepts of rational logic that you shouldn't even try. Just say, "I don't have to justify my religious beliefs with logical arguments, they simply are true without any rational explanation needed." I can respect that approach much more than an approach that attempts to dress up exceedingly faulty and ridiculous logic as a justification for religion.
All that being said, the "bible is repulsive" YouTube video that the O.P. gushed over was really poorly done. Anyone can find countless examples of indefensible ridiculousness in the bible, all you have to do is open the book up, it's all plainly self-evident. So finding a bunch of passages that show that the bible is complete bunk, and totally at odds with modern Christian theology, is about the most simple exercise one could engage in. Presenting this like it's some kind of major insight is intellectually disingenuous. And doing it in such a repetitive and annoying fashion, results in a video that isn't worth anyone's time.
Hey, thanks! A kind word is always appreciated.
And how would you know this? Did you pirate the game from wherever it showed up on Sept. 3 or 4? Or did you just happen to notice it while you were pirating other stuff? Or maybe there is another explanation? Do tell.
You're right, I misread the post. It is hard to tell all of the piracy whiners apart when discussions like this come up on Slashdot. I thought he was another one of those people who claim that they *have to* pirate software because game companies charge too much/use DRM/whatever. Instead, he is a whiner who doesn't realize that pirating the game is NOT a "choice" that EA has given anyone.
Anyway, thanks for pointing out my error, although I'm not sure exactly what the difference is between being an ass when posting and making an ass of one's self when posting.
Hmmm ... third-hand anecdotal evidence from "the buyer of the car of the brother of an anonymous coward"? Did you really think that would be at all convincing? If so, you might like to know that my friend heard from his uncle-in-law's ex-wife that her doctor's pilates instructor had a Toyota Prius whose batteries lasted 20 years and 15 million miles before wearing out.
You do have another choice. You can not play the game. I am sure that even someone who cannot grasp basic concepts like this can find something else to fill your time with.
Holy crap, your analogy was about 1000 times worse than the O.P.'s. Check a few posts back for a response that actually made sense, where someone corrected the O.P.'s analogy by citing that the DRM is only applied to you if you buy the product, but not applied to pirates.
All that being said, you are just a whiny loser trying to justify your selfish actions if you try to claim that you are pirating the software to try to teach the company a lesson. Not buying or playing the game is the way to accomplish this. Pirating it is for one reason and one reason only, no matter how you try to spin it: to play the game without paying the people who created it.
I think the original poster may respond to you with something like:
But the hypothesis that there was a hamster in the flashlight was not discredited; it was only shown that at the time that you opened the flashlight, there was a battery in there. Maybe the act of opening the flashlight turned the hamster into a battery. Or maybe a battery was teleported in there as the hamster was teleported out, at the instant that you opened the flashlight.
Of course, all this really means is that the hamster hypothesis is just being modified to match the results of the experiment, and such a process could be continued indefinitely, with the hamster hypothesis becoming more and more convoluted as it has to fit into smaller and smaller spaces of possibility.
So is it valid to continue to refine the hamster hypothesis to fit the results of experiments, and continue to claim that it hasn't been discredited by experiment after experiment that show that aspect after aspect of the hypothesis are verifiably false? I would say no, but I think the O.P. would say 'yes'. It seems to me that the only way that the O.P. would be satisfied is if there was some way to, in one fell swoop, show the entirety of a complex theory to be false, using a single experiment. But for most of us, the theory stops being interesting the moment that it starts to contort itself around experimental evidence. Unfortunately, many people do not, and hence we have Intelligent Design being pushed.
1. The definition of addiction seems to be in dispute given all of the comments on this topic. I would venture a guess that even among scientific professionals, it is not always clear cut. Therefore, trying to turn the topic from an interesting discussion of the addictive nature of video games, to a pedantic quarrel about the specific definition of addiction, doesn't seem very useful.
2. Who said anything about treating video game addiction as a chemical addiction?
Do you think that gambling addiction is a real addiction? If so, then I can assure you, video game addiction is just as real, because I have experienced it. If not, then I think you'd be fighting an uphill battle trying to convince anyone else.
"It's not fucking addiction--it's a psychological dependency which mimics addiction. Got it?"
I fail to see the point in even trying to make that distinction. What is the difference what you call it if the effect on a person's life is the same?
Well before you get *too* smug, realize that fewer people using gyms, trails, and museums mean that there will be fewer gyms, trails, and museums.
Correction: You can measure any kind of PHYSICAL addiction by the withdrawal symptoms.
That is a great rule to have. But a person who is truly addicted to a game, will find it nigh impossible to follow such a rule. Not being able to follow such a rule is basically the same thing as being addicted, in fact.