Here's a bigger, related question: a robot is a)not a person and b)maybe more durable. A human soldier is allowed to fire in defense. Picture a homeowner in wartime, guarding his house. Robot trundles by, x-rays the house, sees the weapon, charges in. He sees it heading for him, freaks out, fires at it. How can the robot possibly be justified in killing him? Even if it represents a threat, you're only threatening a machine!
That's a very interesting point. Even against opponents that are obviously completely hostile to it, it has no obvious moral right to self-defense because it's just a thing.
Nonlethal weapons are, obvious as they may seem, morally speaking probably not a solution; most methods of subduing someone, when applied without human awareness and wisdom, probably have a chance of accidentally maiming or killing the target in special circumstances.
Mr. Canning's laws could actually be interpreted as a solution, provided there's also a strict prohibition on all "collateral" damage to living beings. As applied to the situation: the robot may want to destroy an AK47, but because there's body-like heat emanating from somewhere close to it and the robot does not have a reliable way of disabling the weapon without hurting the human, it is unable to act. Of course, this makes robots pretty useless in war unless the other side has already acquired them, and as such, I fear that less ethical robots will be built.
Of course, though, these theoretical discussions present a very idealized picture of war. People—armed and unarmed—are killed in war who everyone in retrospect could've agreed shouldn't have been killed, even when only human soldiers are used. Sadly, adding robotic soldiers into the mix is very unlikely to make war significantly more humane.
If you truly mean that(the site looks half serious, half tongue-in-cheek): why work towards extinction? From what I know of biology, there's no reason why a steady state solution can't be found in which humanity can live on "forever"(on a biological time scale). Barring our achieving complete immortality, such a steady state solution would involve breeding.
I agree with the GP and the VHEMT that birth rates need to be reduced, but my motivation is purely selfish on behalf of the human species, and I certainly wouldn't want them reduced to zero. (My philosophical basis for this would be preferential treatment for mostly-sapient species, based on the thought that the universe has little value if there's no one there to observe it.)
I'm obviously aware that the VHEMT isn't a realistic threat to the survival of the human species, so I'm asking purely out of interest. Do you have a philosophically sound argument for preferring nonexistence to existence, if both are possible as equilibrium states?
I'd argue that there being a "left" and a "right" implies that there is a "center": and even if it's not immediately obvious that left and right aren't objective quantities here, it'd be unintuitive to have "center" mean anything but a point of view that's close to "average" among the population we're discussing. Thus, the definition of the "center" has to change: opinions that are considered centrist today would be unheard of(and thus not at all "centrist") fifty years ago—but the concepts of political "left", "right" and "center" did exist fifty years ago, even though they evidently meant something else at that point in time.
If the words we use, and the meaning of the words, isn't allowed to change with space and time, they rapidly become obsolete and irrelevant: it'd be absurd if all contemporary political discussion had to be phrased in, say, the terms used in Plato's Republic, or if one couldn't refer to social classes without assuming a strict Marxist definition of the term. Clearly, this isn't how human language works in practice, and I can't really see any good reason why it should work that way, either. Human language is constantly evolving, and sometimes it is ambiguous and imprecise; but we're able to understand each other nonetheless because we can explain to each other what we mean by the words we say.
Oh, and I'm not American either, I just thought your comment read like one written by someone who felt unjustly misclassified:). (From my point of view, I'd classify the American political parties like you did, actually, but I make no claims of objectivity for this classification.)
The terms "left" and "right" as used in politics have no meaning except within a context. Given that the Democrats can generally be placed to the left of the Republicans, and that those two parties seem to the vast majority of Americans to be the only realistic options available to them, it's only natural that the terms have acquired the meaning they now effectively have within an American context; each being identified with exactly one major party.
If you consider yourself a part of the American left-left, though, I can definitely see how the terminology might be frustrating for you.
Now, I don't believe that video games "cause violence"(these two words, of course, being a very simplistic description of what is likely a very complex issue) any more than other media to any significant degree, but this article's arguments in favour of that point of view are hardly valid.
No sane person is arguing that all people who commit crimes must do so because of video games. Some people(some sane, some seemingly less so, as with the rest of us) are saying that some people commit crimes because of video games. However, the author expects us to deduce that video games cannot inspire killers because there were no video games to inspire the political violence of the Soviet regime.
No sane person is arguing that all people who play video games must thereafter commit crimes, or that this will be "widespread"(for a definition of "widespread" implying that the relation is obvious even in the absence of a thorough statistical inquiry). Some people are arguing that there might be a link(and yes - some people are arguing that there is a link - people are making unwarranted assumptions on both sides of the fence here). Yet, because Madden does not generally cause people to become football players - an assertion from the author, who seems to think that because there is an obvious influence one way(people who are interested in football, and thus likely to be or become football players, tend to buy Madden) there cannot be one in the other direction - the author expects us to deduce that video games cannot inspire people to commit crimes.
The author ridicules the very concept of being "desensitized" to something. This is hardly productive; is he arguing that people cannot be desensitized to violence? Has he never heard of, e.g., the psychological effects war can have on people? Actually, I suspect that he intends to imply that video games do not desensitize people to violence, not that people cannot be "desensitized" in general. However, his critique of psychology as a whole is simplistic: he will seemingly accept no study on this subject as valid except ones where the test subjects are encouraged to commit actual real-life murders. The fact that psychologists tend to use, and acknowledge as to a degree valid, less drastic forms of feedback warrants no more than a "Huh?" from him. (One wonders how the author arrived at the conclusion that video games do not cause violence.)
The human psyche is a very complex thing. That doesn't mean that we can't have opinions about it, and expectations as to how it will react in different situations - but it does mean that we shouldn't ridicule scientists who study possibilities that go contrary to our expectations. Extrapolating from anecdotes is not, as most any Slashdotter would know if this were to concern something else than video game violence, real science.
Er, I really hope that was a joke or some kind of philosophical statement not meant to be taken literally, but it's modded at +5 Insightful so bear with me if I do anyway.
Do you believe that it's valid to measure the worth of human life solely by whether there's anyone left to mourn its loss?
Couldn't this policy be used when deciding, say, in a conflict situation, whether to use nuclear weapons? "If they don't answer our attack with their own missiles, we'll have won the conflict. If they do, no one will be around to worry about it!" ("Universal bereavement - an inspiring achievement", as Tom Lehrer puts it.) This being a win-win(or at least win-neutral) situation, every rational nation following our school of thought should make active use of nuclear weapons in every possible situation. Do you see any problems with this scenario?
(That said, this post isn't meant to imply that the experiments in question are dangerous or irresponsible. I'm not a physicist(neither a professional nor an amateur) and I don't care to pretend that I am, so I won't speculate on that matter at all - though I will observe that the scientific consensus seems to be that they're safe since it's been decided that they should be carried out. Still, as a matter of principle, your implication that scientific achievement is intrinsically more important than the survival of our entire species both scares and puzzles me.)
Still, I think it would've been mentioned if Brown's character subscribed to that theory(I'm assuming it's rather speculative, as you seem to imply as well), rather than just casually mentioning the Aztecs as an important influence on Christianity in a discussion about religion with students.
As for the Egyptians, are you talking about one of Thor Heyerdahl's theories? I believe that he's more respected as an adventurer than as a scientist; it seems to me that he founded his theories on less-than-solid ground(Wikipedia mentions the similarity between pyramidal structures in Egypt and South America) and then tried to "prove" their viability by building boats with the technology of the appropriate time and sailing the distance in question. In the case of Egypt and the Americas, he succeeded on his second attempt(Ra II) - but still, his methodology is obviously not scientific.
To quote Wikipedia again on the accuracy of his main claim to fame, the assertion that Polynesia was settled from east to west(famously tested with the Kon-Tiki expedition), since you seem to accept that as fact: "Most anthropologists continue to believe, based on linguistic, physical and genetic evidence, that Polynesia was settled from west to east, migration having begun from the Asian mainland."
I'm not an anthropologist, though, so I can't really say anything about how much faith one ought to put in the mainstream position on these issues.
I found the concept of "TRANSLTR" silly. They had the computer decrypting ciphertexts one-by-one, and the panic that ensued when one took longer than normal was a central plot point. Now, any good ciphertext will be indistinguishable from random data by most statistical means; what happens if a monitored person simply sends a random data file which enters the system?
There was also some nonsense about the only available implementation of the DF algorithm supposedly being "encrypted with itself", and only available once the key was found. Wouldn't the key be pretty meaningless without knowing the algorithm? (I know security by obscurity doesn't work in real life, and it's a common assumption that an attacker already knows your algorithm, but if an algorithm is completely unknown and completely different to all known algorithms, you would really have no idea how to apply that key, and you'd have a hard task ahead of you if you tried to find the algorithm by "brute force".)
Some guy's master plan was releasing the DF algorithm with a back door, and assuming that no one would ever thoroughly search through the code? (As the only unbreakable code in the novel's world, this would be code of great scientific and great commercial value, which it's fair to assume would be reverse engineered even if it was released as a binary or as hardware.) (Furthermore, wasn't the code supposedly already released in encrypted form, to prevent exactly this?)
The most horrible part of the book, however, was the blind acceptance of the NSA as "good guys". How can you use "quis custodiet ipsos custodes" in a book and still have a "hooray, now we can spy on everyone again, which is all right because we're saving the world all the time and none of us could possibly do anything bad" kind of ending? I'd accept that as a conclusion, but you can't just not discuss the problems involved.
Furthermore, there was no lack of flaws with the book that didn't pertain to the technical subject. The main characters were all supposedly extremely beautiful, athletic and intelligent(though the last quality is never actually displayed by anyone in the book - at at least one point, the author actually tries to demonstrate that a character is intelligent by simply specifying her IQ, which is pretty horrible writing).
The "heroine" is very passive both mentally and physically; her role is basically being confused, prompting other characters to explain the plot, and/or being used as a hostage. None of the characters have anything remotely resembling a personality, and the dialogue is stilted and constructed to suit plot purposes(A German tourist, when trying to express that a certain woman had a tattoo which said "Fuck off and die", simply says "Fuck off and die" to the male protagonist; this cartoonish misconception isn't cleared up until many, many pages later). The descriptions of Spain read very much like a tourist guide.
Furthermore, I've read the openings to some other Brown books and it seems they all follow a number of these conventions, suggesting he's pretty much writing the same book over and over again and cashing in on it. ("Christopher J. Whippenhopper, though a brilliant (linguist/entomologist/sociobiologist/astronomer) with an I.Q. of (153/236/304/435), was by no means a boring, bookish man, like most of his colleagues. He was in great physical shape for his age, and had been the undisputed victor of the university (tennis/ping-pong/foosball/Counterstrike) championship for (three/five/twenty/fifty) years straight. His (rugged good looks/roguish smile/fascinating tales/not-at-all-receding hairline) had always made him popular with his female students, but he believed he had now found the woman of his life: the young and stunningly beautiful new professor of Plotpointology; Phyllis Plotpoint.")
(If we are to believe the lawsuits flying around, of course, Mr. Brown only achieves his best work when he's ripping off a speculative "documentary" book for his plot instead of trying to thi
Seeing as approximately 75% of the comments on this story seems to be links to that very advertisement, I'd imagine funding that animation was a very good business decision(unless the animation somehow appears to have been very expensive to make; though I find that hard to believe, I'll leave the possibility open as I haven't got Flash or whatever plugin the animation uses installed on this computer and thus I haven't actually seen it).
You don't think what you are watching on TV might matter, do you? I don't think that the GP was implying that watching TV is always mentally stimulating and enriching, but rather that it can be, and I have to agree with him: a good movie or an informative documentary, tends to be much more intellectually advanced and mentally stimulating than a MMORPG. (In my experience, a good novel tends to be better than most things on TV in terms of stimulation of the mind, but I do feel that TV as a medium is unfairly disparaged as culturally worthless simply because some programmes might justifiably be deemed so.)
Oh, and if online gaming prevents people from developing short tempered personalities, then judging from various chat channels in online games I think we can all agree that the medium is certainly finding the people who need it the most.
Assuming that they are recording your Google searches, why would they wait for the database write to finish before sending you the results of your search? As the grandparent pointed out, the most intuitive way to monitor searches doesn't even involve any kind of middleman attack. They would have to go out of their way to insert that obviously superfluous delay.
Still assuming espionage is actually taking place, however, there is nothing you can do by examining your end of the wire unless your ISP is phenomenally incompetent at surveillance work. Packets can be examined by a sniffer at your ISP, then transmitted to you unchanged. Obviously, a copy of the packet may be retained in memory may even after it is sent to you, so there is no need for the examination of the packet to interrupt your transmission in any noticeable way, no matter how long the examination takes.
I shan't comment on whether or not your ISP is likely to be monitoring your Google searches, but I find it extraordinarily unlikely that the symptoms you are describing are the effects of such surveillance.
Firstly, you are wrongly presenting the official story to make it look unlikely; obviously the terrorists are not attacking because they are all clinically mad, but because they are, in simplified terms, very, very angry. They have been so for quite some time, and we have been aware of this. (Unless you are arguing that the organisations that claim credit for this don't exist at all? How many conspirators would that take to pull off?) I don't know which clues you are referring to as "too obvious"; remember that real life crimes tend to be rather less perfectly executed than those in crime fiction, and secondly that the terrorists are largely not trying to escape blame for their actions - in many situations they claim "credit" for them quite voluntarily.
Furthermore, hiring killers with nothing to lose for ruthless deeds is probably not quite as easy as in the movies(I mention popular culture merely because it seems to me that a lot of conspiracy theories are inspired by such, rather than the other way around, leading me to further question their credibility). If anyone approached me with such an offer, I would certainly consider talking to the press - especially in a "dying man" scenario where I've nothing to lose by being gunned down by the men in black afterwards. Remember that the top men would have to gauge the consciences of their potential agents perfectly to be able to even approach them without risking their political careers. Misjudge one potential agent out of fifty(I'd still say that a lot more people would have to get their hands dirty, but I'll go with your number), and that one person will start talking to the press, possibly while still pretending to go along with the plan, all the while gathering proof against you. Unwanted publicity, obviously, has devastated more tangible conspiracies before.
I really don't have much interest in debating the technicalities of these theories any further; you seem as unconvinced by my arguments as I am by yours. However, I will comment that the theories are an interesting psychological phenomenon. It seems to me that there is, to some degree, a "Middle Kingdom" syndrome: American conspiracy theorists are having trouble understanding that some political machinations occur outside the United States, and try to link their familiar government to the events in any way possible. Ironically, while I've been accusing the conspiracy theorists of disregarding Occam's Razor, their world view is in many ways simpler than that of the mainstream: All significant events tend to be planned and executed by one single, seemingly omnipotent, body of people.
Other comments seem to indicate that some conspiracy theorists believe that the act was not committed with planes at all, but rather by rigging the buildings with bombs or using a missile or somesuch. This was the reason for my "thousands" comment, and though it might have been a slight overestimate; such a plan would be noticed by many people.
Even if the government were to do things exactly as the terrorists did(bear with me here), I stand by my comment that hundreds of people would likely be involved. Government do not operate the same ways as terrorist cells do, and running planes into buildings is at least not usually what they do. Merely debating whether the plan should be put into action, and then planning it and finally finding and hiring contractors unscrupulous and fanatical enough for the job(contractors, I might add, who are somehow willing to take on a suicide mission, which I believe a U.S. government conspiracy would have a very zhard time finding) would likely involve hundreds of people(that is, excluding the agents who actually did the job).
Oh, and, as for your argument about only a few needing to know the true motives behind the act: this is stylish in spy movies, but less efficient in the real world. At some point, some people have to commit acts that are immoral and/or criminal, and while they may not know if these acts were commissioned by the government, they will know whether or not they did them because they were members of al-Qaeda or a similar fundamentalist terrorist organisation. Unless the government eliminates them all(in which case we'd see an abnormal wave of abductions or murders), some of them will eventually talk to the public. (And no, I don't believe that all of this has actually happened, but the contractors are all on Guantanamo. Apply Occam's Razor for a second.)
Surely you've heard of the concept of not dignifying something with a response? If the U.S. government were to publicly and explicitly deny that they orchestrated the events of September 11, 2001, then they would implicitly acknowledging that a significant number of people consider that to be a credible theory. If the government were tomorrow to vehemently deny that the moon is green, you would probably be perplexed, because we do not expect people to deny things that we feel extremely confident in believing to be untrue - doing such is more likely to make us begin to entertain the notion of their truth in spite of the denial than the opposite.
(For the record, I think it is pretty clear that the events of that day were not the result of an American conspiracy. As other people have pointed out, the easiest way to explain why this is extremely unlikely is the "house of cards" analogy: such an elaborate conspiracy could be defeated by a single leak, and hundreds or thousands of people would have to be involved in matters that would test their consciences immensely. Furthermore, by Occam's Razor, we should remember that there are people out there who actually had much clearer motives for performing the attacks - even though the stance of the al-Qaeda and similar fundamentalists may not be that of "hating our freedom", there is no denying that there is a significant amount of animosity in the world directed towards western civilization in general and the United States in particular. In other words - there is no need for a conspiracy to explain these attacks.)
My guess is that the whole article was somehow extrapolated from the comment about the virus "taking the law into its own hands"(made by an employee of Sophos) by an article writer who was totally unfamiliar with the subject matter and misunderstood the comment completely, but nonetheless wanted to use it because it was dramatically well-worded. The commenter probably meant that the virus took copyright law into its own hands, specifically targeting files that are very likely to be either illicitly copied or available for illicit downloading by other parties, not that the virus was in any way beneficial to users infected by it.
The article as it stands, however, is definitely utterly nonsensical.
As for proving 2 + 2 = 4. Hold up 2 finger on one hand, now do the same on the other, count the total number of fingers being held up.
In mathematics, this would be called "intuition", not "proof". (And in anthropology, I suppose, "intuition" - or an extension thereof - would be called "religion".) What the GP was probably implying - as an analogy, obviously - was that to "prove" that 2 + 2 = 4 you need to make deductions that are ultimately based on axioms. Without these, things as basic as "equality" are uncertain and undefined, and you can't actually prove that 2 + 2 = 4.
When you say that the King of the Potato People is just as likely to exist as any other God, you are basically regarding the world from an atheist perspective, making the assumption that the world is wholly explainable and that all people who claim to have had spiritual experiences are wrong. (If you were not making the latter assumption, you would have to admit that I could claim that the King of the Potato People would be more likely to exist if he had told me(directly or otherwise) that he did. The same argument, obviously, could apply - and is slightly more relevant - for the Christian God, or any other actively worshipped deity. Atheist mock-deities such as the IPU, the FSM, etc. and your (to my knowledge improvised) KotPP differ from the true religions in that nobody seriously claims to have any kind of divinely inspired faith in the former. (This is obviously an assumption made on a sociological basis, but one in which I feel fairly confident.) )
Now, an atheist perspective is a perfectly valid perspective from which to view the world. But don't start thinking that it is the only valid perspective, or that you have somehow "proved" that one god or another doesn't exist, or that belief in gods is somehow "objectively" absurd.
(By the way, knowing that this is Slashdot: I'm not saying that use of mathematical axioms is equivalent to religious beliefs. That was an analogy. (Oh, and I know you all know what "analogy" means. That was an attempt at a snide joke.))
As I said in another part of the thread, I agree that this was a very poor choice of words. Sexism and misogyny are related, but certainly not equivalent. (I only used the word once in that post and I know what it means, but I suppose one should never waste an opportunity for a Princess Bride reference.)
As a minor point, though the definition of misogyny might indeed be stated as a "hatred of women", the distinction is not as clear-cut or as obvious as you make it out to be. If one were to seriously underestimate the entire female gender to the point of believing that women are all enthralled by ponies and pink, I would deem that misogyny even if there was no conscious hatred involved. (As another example, I would call August Strindberg a misogynist, even though he obviously could rationalize his beliefs to himself beyond mere hatred, which - by itself - is irrational.)
However, I agree that it is very improbable that there was any misogyny involved in the Slashdot joke - the clumsy execution of the joke merely left it slightly sexist, which I suppose was the word I was looking for.
Perhaps. However, I tend to see the idolisation of "geek girls" considered to be attractive as rather problematic. (I see a general tendency for such idolisation, not just a one-off case with this journalist. This tendency is probably rooted in male(and straight) geeks at least partly tending to long for an opposite-sex equivalent of themselves, which is probably quite natural. Furthermore, as some media personalities seem to brand themselves very deliberately(and sometimes unconvincingly) as "geek girls", probably seeking to cater to the male geek demographic, I tend to be a bit skeptical of the idolisation of "geek girls" that are presented explicitly as such, rather than simply arising naturally as the union of the sets "geeks" and "girls".)
Firstly, it seems to me to imply that attractive "geek girls" are exceptional cases - implicitly expressing that other intelligent girls are, as you say, compromising in one area in order to develop in another.
The second, and most important, point is the lingering implication that these girls' physical attractiveness needs to be mentioned. Even if RMS, Linus Torvalds, or Bill Gates(just to have all the factions covered) were extremely attractive, having them described regularly as such in anything other than the most joking fashion would get old after a very short while: complimenting them in this area(from the context of a random reader of technology news - I'm not arguing that it's somehow wrong to compliment them on their beauty in the appropriate contexts in their personal lives) would be awkward because they would quite rightly be expecting a discussion of their achievements, rather than one about how they look. In other words: discussing the messenger rather than the message devalues the message(and thus the messenger in his or her capacity as that).
I'll readily admit both that a mature 13-year old of any gender who is interested in technology might find Slashdot an interesting read, and that - on average - 13-year old girls tend to be more interested in pink and ponies than the rest of the population at the moment. You're missing, however, the rather important point that not all women are 13, and that your niece might not appreciate ponies and unicorns quite as much in ten years.
I'm glad that your niece found a website she liked, but I really don't think it's misogynistic to postulate that the average woman's interests do not necessarily coincide with the average 13-year old girl's interests. (In fact, many would label an assumption of the opposite as exactly that.)
(I realize now that "misogynistic" was a poor choice of words for describing the April Fool's joke, anyway. It was probably not intentionally sexist, which is what the word tends to imply.)
I didn't write at length about the April Fool's joke because it wasn't the primary subject of my post. I found it clumsy and somewhat sexist because it identified "the female demographic" as, just as you described, "pre-adolescent females". (This implication is taken from the original post with which the pink design was introduced. Specifically, the complement to the set "males", which Slashdot is said to be disproportionaly skewered towards, is "females", not merely the pre-adolescent ones, so unless one is willing to equate the two groups to some degree(beyond "same biological gender"), the switch to unicorns and cuteness is nonsensical.)
The sexism in that joke, however, is subtle and probably entirely unintentional, which is why I was "willing to let [it] slide." (I'm unsure about what your problem with this phrase is.) Though I didn't personally find it very offensive, however, I did read several comments from people who did find it bad enough to warrant a comment.
Re:Meta-commentary: "Gorgeous" really relevant?
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Fair point. But if the editors do occasionally edit(though I do know that's in question), they did make a choice by leaving it in there. Furthermore, they accepted the story, so it's not unreasonable to say that they have a bit of editorial responsibility.
If Slashdot was a celebrity magazine, physical looks would be - in a sense - relevant. As it is, I'd be surprised if they referred to Brad Pitt as "gorgeous" if they've ever mentioned him, and I would think them unprofessional if they did. However, Brad Pitt is, at least partly, paid to look pretty - so commenting on whether or not he does in the context of his films is not really horribly impolite, though I would certainly feel it awkward and out-of-place in many different contexts. This woman is a writer; her physical appearance is as irrelevant to the issue as that of a programmer, or for that matter, a Slashdot comment writer.
(As an aside, I'd say that Slashdot is sort of a "celebrity magazine" or a tabloid for geeks in that they are sensationalistic and oversimplify things for entertainment purposes - but still, focus on physical looks haven't been one of their vices until now. I'll be perfectly content to just find something else to read if this does become permanent policy. I note, however, that several other readers reacted to this superfluous description much as I did, so I'm not entirely alone in thinking that this would be a change for the worse.)
(Oh, and you'll note that my issue was not in particular with giving a compliment, but with bringing up the issue of physical looks when it is irrelevant. Thus, calling someone ugly is just as bad as calling them gorgeous when it is inappropriate - though, obviously, societal norms make the former a far worse faux pas.)
Meta-commentary: "Gorgeous" really relevant?
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Do the Slashdot editors really feel that introducing a woman by a description of her (in this context irrelevant) physical looks is appropriate? (I say "woman" because I have a hard time imagining that Slashdot would introduce a male with a similar adjective: a case in point is that it was obviously a joke when they commended Linus Torvalds on his physical looks yesterday. If they were to do it in a non-joking manner, that would obviously be just as inappropriate as this.)
As was pointed out yesterday by several posters, this year's April Fool's was more than a little misogynistic in that it seemed to imply(obviously through exaggerations as Slashdot normally does on April Fool's) that women would like pink and ponies rather than technology news. I'm quite willing to let that slide, knowing that subtle humour is not really Slashdot's forte - but really, they shouldn't push their luck by describing female writers as being "gorgeous" the day afterwards.
(I do know that "political correctness" is largely frowned upon at Slashdot, but really, this isn't about submitting to some ever-changing and arbitrary standard, it's about basic politeness and showing respect for the people you are describing. You don't bring things like physical looks into the picture unless they are somehow relevant, and you certainly don't set different standards for what is relevant depending on the gender of the person being described.)
(Oh, and if anyone feels the need to argue that though "gorgeous" in this context obviously wouldn't be said about a male subject - given the gender of the Slashdot editors - it is a harmless one-word compliment which doesn't lastingly change the focus of the discussion: do note that there's already a thread contesting that Ms. Newitz is "gorgeous" based on a 120x130 grayscale picture in her profile. (Which in and of itself confirms some stereotypes about geeks.) Would there be such a thread debating this unless the submitter/editor had seen it fit to mention this in the introduction?)
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That's a very interesting point. Even against opponents that are obviously completely hostile to it, it has no obvious moral right to self-defense because it's just a thing.
Nonlethal weapons are, obvious as they may seem, morally speaking probably not a solution; most methods of subduing someone, when applied without human awareness and wisdom, probably have a chance of accidentally maiming or killing the target in special circumstances.
Mr. Canning's laws could actually be interpreted as a solution, provided there's also a strict prohibition on all "collateral" damage to living beings. As applied to the situation: the robot may want to destroy an AK47, but because there's body-like heat emanating from somewhere close to it and the robot does not have a reliable way of disabling the weapon without hurting the human, it is unable to act. Of course, this makes robots pretty useless in war unless the other side has already acquired them, and as such, I fear that less ethical robots will be built.
Of course, though, these theoretical discussions present a very idealized picture of war. People—armed and unarmed—are killed in war who everyone in retrospect could've agreed shouldn't have been killed, even when only human soldiers are used. Sadly, adding robotic soldiers into the mix is very unlikely to make war significantly more humane.
If you truly mean that(the site looks half serious, half tongue-in-cheek): why work towards extinction? From what I know of biology, there's no reason why a steady state solution can't be found in which humanity can live on "forever"(on a biological time scale). Barring our achieving complete immortality, such a steady state solution would involve breeding.
I agree with the GP and the VHEMT that birth rates need to be reduced, but my motivation is purely selfish on behalf of the human species, and I certainly wouldn't want them reduced to zero. (My philosophical basis for this would be preferential treatment for mostly-sapient species, based on the thought that the universe has little value if there's no one there to observe it.)
I'm obviously aware that the VHEMT isn't a realistic threat to the survival of the human species, so I'm asking purely out of interest. Do you have a philosophically sound argument for preferring nonexistence to existence, if both are possible as equilibrium states?
I'd argue that there being a "left" and a "right" implies that there is a "center": and even if it's not immediately obvious that left and right aren't objective quantities here, it'd be unintuitive to have "center" mean anything but a point of view that's close to "average" among the population we're discussing. Thus, the definition of the "center" has to change: opinions that are considered centrist today would be unheard of(and thus not at all "centrist") fifty years ago—but the concepts of political "left", "right" and "center" did exist fifty years ago, even though they evidently meant something else at that point in time.
:). (From my point of view, I'd classify the American political parties like you did, actually, but I make no claims of objectivity for this classification.)
If the words we use, and the meaning of the words, isn't allowed to change with space and time, they rapidly become obsolete and irrelevant: it'd be absurd if all contemporary political discussion had to be phrased in, say, the terms used in Plato's Republic, or if one couldn't refer to social classes without assuming a strict Marxist definition of the term. Clearly, this isn't how human language works in practice, and I can't really see any good reason why it should work that way, either. Human language is constantly evolving, and sometimes it is ambiguous and imprecise; but we're able to understand each other nonetheless because we can explain to each other what we mean by the words we say.
Oh, and I'm not American either, I just thought your comment read like one written by someone who felt unjustly misclassified
The terms "left" and "right" as used in politics have no meaning except within a context. Given that the Democrats can generally be placed to the left of the Republicans, and that those two parties seem to the vast majority of Americans to be the only realistic options available to them, it's only natural that the terms have acquired the meaning they now effectively have within an American context; each being identified with exactly one major party.
If you consider yourself a part of the American left-left, though, I can definitely see how the terminology might be frustrating for you.
Now, I don't believe that video games "cause violence"(these two words, of course, being a very simplistic description of what is likely a very complex issue) any more than other media to any significant degree, but this article's arguments in favour of that point of view are hardly valid.
No sane person is arguing that all people who commit crimes must do so because of video games. Some people(some sane, some seemingly less so, as with the rest of us) are saying that some people commit crimes because of video games. However, the author expects us to deduce that video games cannot inspire killers because there were no video games to inspire the political violence of the Soviet regime.
No sane person is arguing that all people who play video games must thereafter commit crimes, or that this will be "widespread"(for a definition of "widespread" implying that the relation is obvious even in the absence of a thorough statistical inquiry). Some people are arguing that there might be a link(and yes - some people are arguing that there is a link - people are making unwarranted assumptions on both sides of the fence here). Yet, because Madden does not generally cause people to become football players - an assertion from the author, who seems to think that because there is an obvious influence one way(people who are interested in football, and thus likely to be or become football players, tend to buy Madden) there cannot be one in the other direction - the author expects us to deduce that video games cannot inspire people to commit crimes.
The author ridicules the very concept of being "desensitized" to something. This is hardly productive; is he arguing that people cannot be desensitized to violence? Has he never heard of, e.g., the psychological effects war can have on people? Actually, I suspect that he intends to imply that video games do not desensitize people to violence, not that people cannot be "desensitized" in general. However, his critique of psychology as a whole is simplistic: he will seemingly accept no study on this subject as valid except ones where the test subjects are encouraged to commit actual real-life murders. The fact that psychologists tend to use, and acknowledge as to a degree valid, less drastic forms of feedback warrants no more than a "Huh?" from him. (One wonders how the author arrived at the conclusion that video games do not cause violence.)
The human psyche is a very complex thing. That doesn't mean that we can't have opinions about it, and expectations as to how it will react in different situations - but it does mean that we shouldn't ridicule scientists who study possibilities that go contrary to our expectations. Extrapolating from anecdotes is not, as most any Slashdotter would know if this were to concern something else than video game violence, real science.
Er, I really hope that was a joke or some kind of philosophical statement not meant to be taken literally, but it's modded at +5 Insightful so bear with me if I do anyway.
Do you believe that it's valid to measure the worth of human life solely by whether there's anyone left to mourn its loss?
Couldn't this policy be used when deciding, say, in a conflict situation, whether to use nuclear weapons? "If they don't answer our attack with their own missiles, we'll have won the conflict. If they do, no one will be around to worry about it!" ("Universal bereavement - an inspiring achievement", as Tom Lehrer puts it.) This being a win-win(or at least win-neutral) situation, every rational nation following our school of thought should make active use of nuclear weapons in every possible situation. Do you see any problems with this scenario?
(That said, this post isn't meant to imply that the experiments in question are dangerous or irresponsible. I'm not a physicist(neither a professional nor an amateur) and I don't care to pretend that I am, so I won't speculate on that matter at all - though I will observe that the scientific consensus seems to be that they're safe since it's been decided that they should be carried out. Still, as a matter of principle, your implication that scientific achievement is intrinsically more important than the survival of our entire species both scares and puzzles me.)
Still, I think it would've been mentioned if Brown's character subscribed to that theory(I'm assuming it's rather speculative, as you seem to imply as well), rather than just casually mentioning the Aztecs as an important influence on Christianity in a discussion about religion with students.
As for the Egyptians, are you talking about one of Thor Heyerdahl's theories? I believe that he's more respected as an adventurer than as a scientist; it seems to me that he founded his theories on less-than-solid ground(Wikipedia mentions the similarity between pyramidal structures in Egypt and South America) and then tried to "prove" their viability by building boats with the technology of the appropriate time and sailing the distance in question. In the case of Egypt and the Americas, he succeeded on his second attempt(Ra II) - but still, his methodology is obviously not scientific.
To quote Wikipedia again on the accuracy of his main claim to fame, the assertion that Polynesia was settled from east to west(famously tested with the Kon-Tiki expedition), since you seem to accept that as fact: "Most anthropologists continue to believe, based on linguistic, physical and genetic evidence, that Polynesia was settled from west to east, migration having begun from the Asian mainland."
I'm not an anthropologist, though, so I can't really say anything about how much faith one ought to put in the mainstream position on these issues.
I found the concept of "TRANSLTR" silly. They had the computer decrypting ciphertexts one-by-one, and the panic that ensued when one took longer than normal was a central plot point. Now, any good ciphertext will be indistinguishable from random data by most statistical means; what happens if a monitored person simply sends a random data file which enters the system?
There was also some nonsense about the only available implementation of the DF algorithm supposedly being "encrypted with itself", and only available once the key was found. Wouldn't the key be pretty meaningless without knowing the algorithm? (I know security by obscurity doesn't work in real life, and it's a common assumption that an attacker already knows your algorithm, but if an algorithm is completely unknown and completely different to all known algorithms, you would really have no idea how to apply that key, and you'd have a hard task ahead of you if you tried to find the algorithm by "brute force".)
Some guy's master plan was releasing the DF algorithm with a back door, and assuming that no one would ever thoroughly search through the code? (As the only unbreakable code in the novel's world, this would be code of great scientific and great commercial value, which it's fair to assume would be reverse engineered even if it was released as a binary or as hardware.) (Furthermore, wasn't the code supposedly already released in encrypted form, to prevent exactly this?)
The most horrible part of the book, however, was the blind acceptance of the NSA as "good guys". How can you use "quis custodiet ipsos custodes" in a book and still have a "hooray, now we can spy on everyone again, which is all right because we're saving the world all the time and none of us could possibly do anything bad" kind of ending? I'd accept that as a conclusion, but you can't just not discuss the problems involved.
Furthermore, there was no lack of flaws with the book that didn't pertain to the technical subject. The main characters were all supposedly extremely beautiful, athletic and intelligent(though the last quality is never actually displayed by anyone in the book - at at least one point, the author actually tries to demonstrate that a character is intelligent by simply specifying her IQ, which is pretty horrible writing).
The "heroine" is very passive both mentally and physically; her role is basically being confused, prompting other characters to explain the plot, and/or being used as a hostage. None of the characters have anything remotely resembling a personality, and the dialogue is stilted and constructed to suit plot purposes(A German tourist, when trying to express that a certain woman had a tattoo which said "Fuck off and die", simply says "Fuck off and die" to the male protagonist; this cartoonish misconception isn't cleared up until many, many pages later). The descriptions of Spain read very much like a tourist guide.
Furthermore, I've read the openings to some other Brown books and it seems they all follow a number of these conventions, suggesting he's pretty much writing the same book over and over again and cashing in on it. ("Christopher J. Whippenhopper, though a brilliant (linguist/entomologist/sociobiologist/astronomer) with an I.Q. of (153/236/304/435), was by no means a boring, bookish man, like most of his colleagues. He was in great physical shape for his age, and had been the undisputed victor of the university (tennis/ping-pong/foosball/Counterstrike) championship for (three/five/twenty/fifty) years straight. His (rugged good looks/roguish smile/fascinating tales/not-at-all-receding hairline) had always made him popular with his female students, but he believed he had now found the woman of his life: the young and stunningly beautiful new professor of Plotpointology; Phyllis Plotpoint.")
(If we are to believe the lawsuits flying around, of course, Mr. Brown only achieves his best work when he's ripping off a speculative "documentary" book for his plot instead of trying to thi
Seeing as approximately 75% of the comments on this story seems to be links to that very advertisement, I'd imagine funding that animation was a very good business decision(unless the animation somehow appears to have been very expensive to make; though I find that hard to believe, I'll leave the possibility open as I haven't got Flash or whatever plugin the animation uses installed on this computer and thus I haven't actually seen it).
Sorry, just an attempt at humour - the sentence looked pretty absurd to me taken out of context.
Frankly, I think there are more illiterates where people can't read or write.
You don't think what you are watching on TV might matter, do you? I don't think that the GP was implying that watching TV is always mentally stimulating and enriching, but rather that it can be, and I have to agree with him: a good movie or an informative documentary, tends to be much more intellectually advanced and mentally stimulating than a MMORPG. (In my experience, a good novel tends to be better than most things on TV in terms of stimulation of the mind, but I do feel that TV as a medium is unfairly disparaged as culturally worthless simply because some programmes might justifiably be deemed so.)
Oh, and if online gaming prevents people from developing short tempered personalities, then judging from various chat channels in online games I think we can all agree that the medium is certainly finding the people who need it the most.
Assuming that they are recording your Google searches, why would they wait for the database write to finish before sending you the results of your search? As the grandparent pointed out, the most intuitive way to monitor searches doesn't even involve any kind of middleman attack. They would have to go out of their way to insert that obviously superfluous delay.
Still assuming espionage is actually taking place, however, there is nothing you can do by examining your end of the wire unless your ISP is phenomenally incompetent at surveillance work. Packets can be examined by a sniffer at your ISP, then transmitted to you unchanged. Obviously, a copy of the packet may be retained in memory may even after it is sent to you, so there is no need for the examination of the packet to interrupt your transmission in any noticeable way, no matter how long the examination takes.
I shan't comment on whether or not your ISP is likely to be monitoring your Google searches, but I find it extraordinarily unlikely that the symptoms you are describing are the effects of such surveillance.
Furthermore, hiring killers with nothing to lose for ruthless deeds is probably not quite as easy as in the movies(I mention popular culture merely because it seems to me that a lot of conspiracy theories are inspired by such, rather than the other way around, leading me to further question their credibility). If anyone approached me with such an offer, I would certainly consider talking to the press - especially in a "dying man" scenario where I've nothing to lose by being gunned down by the men in black afterwards. Remember that the top men would have to gauge the consciences of their potential agents perfectly to be able to even approach them without risking their political careers. Misjudge one potential agent out of fifty(I'd still say that a lot more people would have to get their hands dirty, but I'll go with your number), and that one person will start talking to the press, possibly while still pretending to go along with the plan, all the while gathering proof against you. Unwanted publicity, obviously, has devastated more tangible conspiracies before.
I really don't have much interest in debating the technicalities of these theories any further; you seem as unconvinced by my arguments as I am by yours. However, I will comment that the theories are an interesting psychological phenomenon. It seems to me that there is, to some degree, a "Middle Kingdom" syndrome: American conspiracy theorists are having trouble understanding that some political machinations occur outside the United States, and try to link their familiar government to the events in any way possible. Ironically, while I've been accusing the conspiracy theorists of disregarding Occam's Razor, their world view is in many ways simpler than that of the mainstream: All significant events tend to be planned and executed by one single, seemingly omnipotent, body of people.
Even if the government were to do things exactly as the terrorists did(bear with me here), I stand by my comment that hundreds of people would likely be involved. Government do not operate the same ways as terrorist cells do, and running planes into buildings is at least not usually what they do. Merely debating whether the plan should be put into action, and then planning it and finally finding and hiring contractors unscrupulous and fanatical enough for the job(contractors, I might add, who are somehow willing to take on a suicide mission, which I believe a U.S. government conspiracy would have a very zhard time finding) would likely involve hundreds of people(that is, excluding the agents who actually did the job).
Oh, and, as for your argument about only a few needing to know the true motives behind the act: this is stylish in spy movies, but less efficient in the real world. At some point, some people have to commit acts that are immoral and/or criminal, and while they may not know if these acts were commissioned by the government, they will know whether or not they did them because they were members of al-Qaeda or a similar fundamentalist terrorist organisation. Unless the government eliminates them all(in which case we'd see an abnormal wave of abductions or murders), some of them will eventually talk to the public. (And no, I don't believe that all of this has actually happened, but the contractors are all on Guantanamo. Apply Occam's Razor for a second.)
(For the record, I think it is pretty clear that the events of that day were not the result of an American conspiracy. As other people have pointed out, the easiest way to explain why this is extremely unlikely is the "house of cards" analogy: such an elaborate conspiracy could be defeated by a single leak, and hundreds or thousands of people would have to be involved in matters that would test their consciences immensely. Furthermore, by Occam's Razor, we should remember that there are people out there who actually had much clearer motives for performing the attacks - even though the stance of the al-Qaeda and similar fundamentalists may not be that of "hating our freedom", there is no denying that there is a significant amount of animosity in the world directed towards western civilization in general and the United States in particular. In other words - there is no need for a conspiracy to explain these attacks.)
The article as it stands, however, is definitely utterly nonsensical.
In mathematics, this would be called "intuition", not "proof". (And in anthropology, I suppose, "intuition" - or an extension thereof - would be called "religion".) What the GP was probably implying - as an analogy, obviously - was that to "prove" that 2 + 2 = 4 you need to make deductions that are ultimately based on axioms. Without these, things as basic as "equality" are uncertain and undefined, and you can't actually prove that 2 + 2 = 4.
When you say that the King of the Potato People is just as likely to exist as any other God, you are basically regarding the world from an atheist perspective, making the assumption that the world is wholly explainable and that all people who claim to have had spiritual experiences are wrong. (If you were not making the latter assumption, you would have to admit that I could claim that the King of the Potato People would be more likely to exist if he had told me(directly or otherwise) that he did. The same argument, obviously, could apply - and is slightly more relevant - for the Christian God, or any other actively worshipped deity. Atheist mock-deities such as the IPU, the FSM, etc. and your (to my knowledge improvised) KotPP differ from the true religions in that nobody seriously claims to have any kind of divinely inspired faith in the former. (This is obviously an assumption made on a sociological basis, but one in which I feel fairly confident.) )
Now, an atheist perspective is a perfectly valid perspective from which to view the world. But don't start thinking that it is the only valid perspective, or that you have somehow "proved" that one god or another doesn't exist, or that belief in gods is somehow "objectively" absurd.
(By the way, knowing that this is Slashdot: I'm not saying that use of mathematical axioms is equivalent to religious beliefs. That was an analogy. (Oh, and I know you all know what "analogy" means. That was an attempt at a snide joke.))
As I said in another part of the thread, I agree that this was a very poor choice of words. Sexism and misogyny are related, but certainly not equivalent. (I only used the word once in that post and I know what it means, but I suppose one should never waste an opportunity for a Princess Bride reference.)
As a minor point, though the definition of misogyny might indeed be stated as a "hatred of women", the distinction is not as clear-cut or as obvious as you make it out to be. If one were to seriously underestimate the entire female gender to the point of believing that women are all enthralled by ponies and pink, I would deem that misogyny even if there was no conscious hatred involved. (As another example, I would call August Strindberg a misogynist, even though he obviously could rationalize his beliefs to himself beyond mere hatred, which - by itself - is irrational.)
However, I agree that it is very improbable that there was any misogyny involved in the Slashdot joke - the clumsy execution of the joke merely left it slightly sexist, which I suppose was the word I was looking for.
Firstly, it seems to me to imply that attractive "geek girls" are exceptional cases - implicitly expressing that other intelligent girls are, as you say, compromising in one area in order to develop in another.
The second, and most important, point is the lingering implication that these girls' physical attractiveness needs to be mentioned. Even if RMS, Linus Torvalds, or Bill Gates(just to have all the factions covered) were extremely attractive, having them described regularly as such in anything other than the most joking fashion would get old after a very short while: complimenting them in this area(from the context of a random reader of technology news - I'm not arguing that it's somehow wrong to compliment them on their beauty in the appropriate contexts in their personal lives) would be awkward because they would quite rightly be expecting a discussion of their achievements, rather than one about how they look. In other words: discussing the messenger rather than the message devalues the message(and thus the messenger in his or her capacity as that).
I'm glad that your niece found a website she liked, but I really don't think it's misogynistic to postulate that the average woman's interests do not necessarily coincide with the average 13-year old girl's interests. (In fact, many would label an assumption of the opposite as exactly that.)
(I realize now that "misogynistic" was a poor choice of words for describing the April Fool's joke, anyway. It was probably not intentionally sexist, which is what the word tends to imply.)
The sexism in that joke, however, is subtle and probably entirely unintentional, which is why I was "willing to let [it] slide." (I'm unsure about what your problem with this phrase is.) Though I didn't personally find it very offensive, however, I did read several comments from people who did find it bad enough to warrant a comment.
Fair point. But if the editors do occasionally edit(though I do know that's in question), they did make a choice by leaving it in there. Furthermore, they accepted the story, so it's not unreasonable to say that they have a bit of editorial responsibility.
(As an aside, I'd say that Slashdot is sort of a "celebrity magazine" or a tabloid for geeks in that they are sensationalistic and oversimplify things for entertainment purposes - but still, focus on physical looks haven't been one of their vices until now. I'll be perfectly content to just find something else to read if this does become permanent policy. I note, however, that several other readers reacted to this superfluous description much as I did, so I'm not entirely alone in thinking that this would be a change for the worse.)
(Oh, and you'll note that my issue was not in particular with giving a compliment, but with bringing up the issue of physical looks when it is irrelevant. Thus, calling someone ugly is just as bad as calling them gorgeous when it is inappropriate - though, obviously, societal norms make the former a far worse faux pas.)
As was pointed out yesterday by several posters, this year's April Fool's was more than a little misogynistic in that it seemed to imply(obviously through exaggerations as Slashdot normally does on April Fool's) that women would like pink and ponies rather than technology news. I'm quite willing to let that slide, knowing that subtle humour is not really Slashdot's forte - but really, they shouldn't push their luck by describing female writers as being "gorgeous" the day afterwards.
(I do know that "political correctness" is largely frowned upon at Slashdot, but really, this isn't about submitting to some ever-changing and arbitrary standard, it's about basic politeness and showing respect for the people you are describing. You don't bring things like physical looks into the picture unless they are somehow relevant, and you certainly don't set different standards for what is relevant depending on the gender of the person being described.)
(Oh, and if anyone feels the need to argue that though "gorgeous" in this context obviously wouldn't be said about a male subject - given the gender of the Slashdot editors - it is a harmless one-word compliment which doesn't lastingly change the focus of the discussion: do note that there's already a thread contesting that Ms. Newitz is "gorgeous" based on a 120x130 grayscale picture in her profile. (Which in and of itself confirms some stereotypes about geeks.) Would there be such a thread debating this unless the submitter/editor had seen it fit to mention this in the introduction?)