Given the grandparent's sig, this response is actually a troll, and the most clever troll I have ever seen.
GP sig: "'Encyclopedia' is to 'Wikipedia' as 'Library' is to 'some people at a bus stop'"
Parent: "Wikipedia sez..."
Also, saying that Edison did not invent the lightbulb because other researchers had already produced light from a filament in a lab is rather misleading. Inventors are the ones who make it work. Edison deserves just as much credit for the light bulb as does Einstein for the theory of relativity.
Ok, I intend to avoid any escalation here. I wasn't agreeing with the OP, just pointing out a fault in your logic (which I believe I correctly identified).
I can't resist responding to a few things here, however.
ALL animals are dangerous.
This is an unqualified universal, and therefore not a very strong statement. 1. In context, this means dangerous to humans. How are sea cucumbers, for example, dangerous to humans? 2. We don't even know of all the animals that exist, so how can you say they are all dangerous?
In my opinion, the O.P. was over-reacting to something that was a very small risk. And, he could avoid that risk simply by not riding his bike in the wilderness.
What is currently a very small risk could become a not-so-small risk if the number of mountain lions (or big cats in general) dramatically increases. If it becomes a significant risk, such as it is in some areas in which humans coexist with megafauna, that would be undesirable. Mitigating the risk by avoiding the risky activity is never the right answer. To use your example, based on the risk of injury in the shower, we should all stop showering.
But, apparently, the moderators, when they read my comment, completely understood everything that I mapped out for you in my previous paragraph. Oh, and in case you you forgot the rules on moderation and posting
Ok, the mod points comment was a joke, sorry you didn't get it. I am still surprised that a response to a "trollish" post (which shouldn't get a response at all) became a +5, and it seems reasonable to assume that it got that score not because of the content of the post, but because of the status of the poster. You didn't have to award yourself the points to be rewarded simply for being a mod, which the rules point out would be detrimental to yourself (although possible, as I read it), because you identified youself as a mod. The other mods could have done it for any number of reasons, occupational courtesy being one of them.
Your family dog is not much more likely to kill you than any wild animal, because your family dog has been domesticated. Dogs that do kill people have been maltreated and trained to be aggressive, a problem in some southwestern cities, such that some municipalities have outlawed certain breeds. Furthermore, there is much more contact between humans and dogs than between humans and pumas. I venture to say that if they level of contact was the same, more deaths would occur because of pumas than because of dogs. It is true that one is more likely to die by dog than by puma, but it's not because dogs are more deadly as pumas. Shoot, I'm confident that I could take most dogs in a head-to-head (incidentally, the fact that wild dogs hunt in packs whereas pumas hunt alone says something about the relative lethality of the two), but a puma? Forget about it!
How did this become a +5? Oh right, you're a mod. I think I should get your mod points. ^^
I think you've partly characterized the position against which I was arguing. I feel that school should not be grounded more in science, because the grounding of school in so much science is part of the reason that this debate about whether the teaching of creation has a place in school. It does, but not in the science-heavy curriculum we now have. Skewing more toward science will do nothing to ameliorate this debate; just the opposite, as I see it. In fact, if there were more science education, the "creation debate" would become even more ridiculous: The teaching of the religious viewpoint would be advocated for every discipline, not just biology.
I also disagree that we would end up with a society of smart people. We would end up with a society of knowledgable people, but that knowledge would be limited in scope to the hard sciences. Why is it that Americans have a culture of entertainment? Perhaps because we have abandoned discourse about the things that really motive us, such as ethics, the meaning of things, metaphysics, and so forth: the intangibles. Your worldview precedes your actions; it is a presupposition. Naturalism is the simplest way to understand the world (what we see is all that is), and a purely scientific education tends to reinforce such a view. The result is a nation of people who seek meaning in consumption. If you want motivated schoolchildren, give them a motivation, not more of the stuff you want them to be motivated to study. Shame, even if it works overseas, should not be the motivation either.
Just by reading the comments moderated 3 and above, I can tell that most of what is being said is a rehash of stuff that has already been well-hashed. Hopefully I won't be adding to the hash...
I would like to remark that science can only describe what is, providing a framework for understanding and hopefully manipulating it to good ends. I found it interesting that gravity was so often referenced, when, as far as I know, no-one actually knows why gravity works. The best we can do is make mathematical descriptions of it (ie, say how it works). Another way of saying it is that science studies and predicts effects, but it cannot really handle the question of cause. Think about it: science defines cause in terms of effect. Religion or more generally metaphysics deals with the converse: it focuses on causes, defining effects in terms of cause. The two types of thought are therefore complementary. IMO if you have one without the other, your education is incomplete.
So let me bring this back around to the issue at hand: I think the reason that this debate exists at all is because our education has become imbalanced toward science, having lost the other side [whatever/however you want to call it: religion, philosophy, art (in all its modes, not just painting)]. As a result, IDer's want to reinsert a particular debate within such disciplines back into our curricula, and have made the mistake of conflating science with religion, and therefore trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
The response that I would like to see is we who see that the two should be separate to advocate the teaching of religion as such, as well as philosophy, art, and all of those disciplines that complement scientific knowledge by giving us a framework for it. Let's talk about expanding the curriculum so that the proper place for a religious viewpoint exists, effectively pulling the rug out from beneath the feet of IDer's. None of this means that less attention should be paid to science. It should result in school becoming harder, a reflection of the growing complexity of our world, and will free up science class from dealing with such questions to concentrate on science. We lament that we may lose our technological advantage without realizing that we have already lost the vital ethical advantage that we had when we reacted against another kind of religious intolerance, an advantage that comes not from keeping such debates out of the public sphere, but welcoming them, in order that such folly as ID does not develop in secret only to show itself when it has the influence to be frighteningly damaging.
I know I much of what I wrote could be greatly expanded upon or critiqued, so if you reply, please do so.
Slashdot Mirror
Given the grandparent's sig, this response is actually a troll, and the most clever troll I have ever seen.
GP sig: "'Encyclopedia' is to 'Wikipedia' as 'Library' is to 'some people at a bus stop'"
Parent: "Wikipedia sez..."
Also, saying that Edison did not invent the lightbulb because other researchers had already produced light from a filament in a lab is rather misleading. Inventors are the ones who make it work. Edison deserves just as much credit for the light bulb as does Einstein for the theory of relativity.
a simple confusion of Newtonian with quantum physics?
Letter G copyright you!
I know if I lost an arm or a leg or more importantly a heart or lung
Shoot, if I too had more than one heart, I wouldn't be too worried about growing back the one I lost.
Ok, I intend to avoid any escalation here. I wasn't agreeing with the OP, just pointing out a fault in your logic (which I believe I correctly identified).
I can't resist responding to a few things here, however.
ALL animals are dangerous.
This is an unqualified universal, and therefore not a very strong statement. 1. In context, this means dangerous to humans. How are sea cucumbers, for example, dangerous to humans? 2. We don't even know of all the animals that exist, so how can you say they are all dangerous?
In my opinion, the O.P. was over-reacting to something that was a very small risk. And, he could avoid that risk simply by not riding his bike in the wilderness.
What is currently a very small risk could become a not-so-small risk if the number of mountain lions (or big cats in general) dramatically increases. If it becomes a significant risk, such as it is in some areas in which humans coexist with megafauna, that would be undesirable. Mitigating the risk by avoiding the risky activity is never the right answer. To use your example, based on the risk of injury in the shower, we should all stop showering.
But, apparently, the moderators, when they read my comment, completely understood everything that I mapped out for you in my previous paragraph. Oh, and in case you you forgot the rules on moderation and posting
Ok, the mod points comment was a joke, sorry you didn't get it. I am still surprised that a response to a "trollish" post (which shouldn't get a response at all) became a +5, and it seems reasonable to assume that it got that score not because of the content of the post, but because of the status of the poster. You didn't have to award yourself the points to be rewarded simply for being a mod, which the rules point out would be detrimental to yourself (although possible, as I read it), because you identified youself as a mod. The other mods could have done it for any number of reasons, occupational courtesy being one of them.
Your family dog is not much more likely to kill you than any wild animal, because your family dog has been domesticated. Dogs that do kill people have been maltreated and trained to be aggressive, a problem in some southwestern cities, such that some municipalities have outlawed certain breeds. Furthermore, there is much more contact between humans and dogs than between humans and pumas. I venture to say that if they level of contact was the same, more deaths would occur because of pumas than because of dogs. It is true that one is more likely to die by dog than by puma, but it's not because dogs are more deadly as pumas. Shoot, I'm confident that I could take most dogs in a head-to-head (incidentally, the fact that wild dogs hunt in packs whereas pumas hunt alone says something about the relative lethality of the two), but a puma? Forget about it!
How did this become a +5? Oh right, you're a mod. I think I should get your mod points. ^^
"Overall it's performance was impressive..."
So it = performance? Finally, a pure performance PU.
Who cares about a toaster? I won't be satisfied until it's on the kitchen sink.
I think you've partly characterized the position against which I was arguing. I feel that school should not be grounded more in science, because the grounding of school in so much science is part of the reason that this debate about whether the teaching of creation has a place in school. It does, but not in the science-heavy curriculum we now have. Skewing more toward science will do nothing to ameliorate this debate; just the opposite, as I see it. In fact, if there were more science education, the "creation debate" would become even more ridiculous: The teaching of the religious viewpoint would be advocated for every discipline, not just biology.
I also disagree that we would end up with a society of smart people. We would end up with a society of knowledgable people, but that knowledge would be limited in scope to the hard sciences. Why is it that Americans have a culture of entertainment? Perhaps because we have abandoned discourse about the things that really motive us, such as ethics, the meaning of things, metaphysics, and so forth: the intangibles. Your worldview precedes your actions; it is a presupposition. Naturalism is the simplest way to understand the world (what we see is all that is), and a purely scientific education tends to reinforce such a view. The result is a nation of people who seek meaning in consumption. If you want motivated schoolchildren, give them a motivation, not more of the stuff you want them to be motivated to study. Shame, even if it works overseas, should not be the motivation either.
Just by reading the comments moderated 3 and above, I can tell that most of what is being said is a rehash of stuff that has already been well-hashed. Hopefully I won't be adding to the hash...
I would like to remark that science can only describe what is, providing a framework for understanding and hopefully manipulating it to good ends. I found it interesting that gravity was so often referenced, when, as far as I know, no-one actually knows why gravity works. The best we can do is make mathematical descriptions of it (ie, say how it works). Another way of saying it is that science studies and predicts effects, but it cannot really handle the question of cause. Think about it: science defines cause in terms of effect. Religion or more generally metaphysics deals with the converse: it focuses on causes, defining effects in terms of cause. The two types of thought are therefore complementary. IMO if you have one without the other, your education is incomplete.
So let me bring this back around to the issue at hand: I think the reason that this debate exists at all is because our education has become imbalanced toward science, having lost the other side [whatever/however you want to call it: religion, philosophy, art (in all its modes, not just painting)]. As a result, IDer's want to reinsert a particular debate within such disciplines back into our curricula, and have made the mistake of conflating science with religion, and therefore trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
The response that I would like to see is we who see that the two should be separate to advocate the teaching of religion as such, as well as philosophy, art, and all of those disciplines that complement scientific knowledge by giving us a framework for it. Let's talk about expanding the curriculum so that the proper place for a religious viewpoint exists, effectively pulling the rug out from beneath the feet of IDer's. None of this means that less attention should be paid to science. It should result in school becoming harder, a reflection of the growing complexity of our world, and will free up science class from dealing with such questions to concentrate on science. We lament that we may lose our technological advantage without realizing that we have already lost the vital ethical advantage that we had when we reacted against another kind of religious intolerance, an advantage that comes not from keeping such debates out of the public sphere, but welcoming them, in order that such folly as ID does not develop in secret only to show itself when it has the influence to be frighteningly damaging.
I know I much of what I wrote could be greatly expanded upon or critiqued, so if you reply, please do so.