Wow, that's some industrial grade ignorance. Let me try to correct some of it.
So are you now making the claim that medical science has never been wrong?
See cross thread where I point out that all knowledge is provisional. If you get your news from pop science writers, or you read every paper as if it's been handed down by god on stone tablets, then you're going to be wrong a lot of the time. Stick with the scientific consensus and you're in a much better position.
And who, exactly, was it that figured out that Thalidomide was unsafe, and that antibiotic overuse leads to resistant strains of bacteria? Not the scientists, right? That was divined by new-age thinkers? Or the anti-vaxxers?
And like all drugs big pharma has an interest in seeing as much use (=sales) of those drugs as it possibly can. In the case of Thalidomide it took years for the effects to be revealed then many more to be corrected.
You realize that Thalidomide was never allowed to be sold in the United States by the FDA specifically because it did not have enough scientific evidence behind it proving it was safe?
Meanwhile I don't see you calling the doctors who applied it as directed or the pharma company pushing it "killers with blood on their hands" like is being said here about those that choose to disbelieve a particular claim.
This style of argumentation is very common on Slashdot. Your position is weak, so you pretend I've taken positions I haven't. I've said nothing about thalidomide up to this point, so please don't make shit up.
But since we're on the topic. I'd call any doctor that pushed thalidomide after the science was known to be directly responsible for the effects of having recommended it, even more so than Jenny McCarthy, since doctors are in a much more trusted position than Jenny McCarthy. That's the position the anti-vaxxers find themselves in today. Their conclusions have been shown conclusively to be incorrect, dangerous, and based on fraud. And yet they continue to push their agenda. This would be like doctors trying to prescribe Thalidomide today.
Also, the Thalidomide topic is much more complex than this. At the time, the regulatory framework simply wasn't in place. Did doctors jump the gun prescribing Thalidomide? Perhaps. And perhaps they should have read more into the studies and questioned more things about it. Some did, in fact. That's exactly why the FDA didn't approve it. But can we expect all doctors to do that? These days, the FDA is meant to serve this role, so doctors can rely on the FDA to ensure drugs are safe, but at the time, Thalidomide was really the first high profile example that showed that government regulation was capable of preventing these sorts of problems.
Skepticism of scientific claims is a good thing. It forces those making those claims to look deeper into them. Not too long ago it was scientifically accepted that the Earth was the center of the universe. It took skeptics and a large amount of time to disprove that claim.
Again, who was it who disproved that claim? Early scientists, obviously. And then the antiscience community railed against it for decades, if not centuries. Science makes progress with more science, not by saying, "Hey, I'm going to reject these conclusions because I don't like them." We have never made progress by choosing to believe what we prefer to believe over what the data tell us is true. Even Einstein in his famous "God does not play dice
Yeah, those you listed are basically opinions and not really anti-science or science.
These are opinions that are in direct conflict with well established scientific knowledge and they aren't antiscience? Um, right. The article makes clear that polemics such as the anti-vaxxer crap count as antiscience. As a description of what antiscience is, it's the closest I've seen to what they mean and what others mean by it, and what I mean when I use the term. I frankly don't care if you define the term some other way. It's what the article means, it's what I mean, people generally understand it, and that's all that matters.
It's not a rejection of science
Of course it's a rejection of science. A small piece of it, but it is a rejection nonetheless.
but an acceptance or denial to do anything about it based on something they deem more important
One might argue that if they deem this so important, they might bother to try to figure out what the facts are.
Could you imagine the state of science if no one was ever skeptical of the science put in front of them and never redid the testing or validated the numbers or whatever to see if it was accurate.
That's one of the stranger things you've said. In what world does science lack skepticism? Skepticism is built into science. The entire scientific method is about attempting to disprove things. You never prove anything in science - you just fail to disprove it. All knowledge is provisional. If you want to be educated, read some Carl Sagan. He goes on about the two-pronged approach of openness and skepticism needed to be a good scientist. You need openness to generate and consider novel hypotheses, but then you need skepticism to design good experiments to test them. Scientists generally aren't the kinds of people who need to be reminded to be skeptics.
The article also goes on to list many examples of anti-science. While not calling out anti-vaxxers explicitly, it does list some very similar antiscience beliefs:
Primary among the latter are the polemics about embryonic stem cell research, evolutionary theory[21] and modern cosmology teaching in high schools, contraception, and environmental issues related to global warming[22][23] and energy crisis.
Again, it's how people use the term - i.e. to reject well established scientific knowledge. You are welcome to believe what you want about the term, but at this point, I can only assume you're being deliberately obtuse now that you have been informed what people really mean by it when they use it.
Adults don't resort to calling people names because they can't make a case for their position.
Which position do you claim is unjustified? And what names have I called you, exactly?
No, she isn't. I agree, she's stupid and useless
Let me ask you something. If you think what you say is so unimportant, why is free speech so important to protect? Either speech is important or it's not. You can't have it both ways. This is where the childishness comes in. You want to be able to say what you want and not have to worry about the consequences. Adults take responsibility for their actions, including their own words. People who don't take responsibility for their actions are children.
In fact, this is getting absurd. It is obvious to all but the most idiotic that speech has implications and you are responsible for it. The law recognizes this. There are libel laws precisely because speech can be damaging and because you are responsible for what you say. The people who spread misinformation about vaccines are responsible for the results of spreading that misinformation. If you disagree, I'm sorry, but you're just wrong.
I never said vaccines don't work. They do work, most of the time.
You called them half-assed. What does that mean, exactly, if it you say they work? Make up your bloody mind.
They aren't abused yet, but they will be soon. It's too easy a vector with today's advances in micro sized technology.
More unjustified bullshit. If you pull any more of this shit out of your ass, you're going to be a qualified proctologist.
Your username is apt. You may attempt to redefine what antiscience means just by saying what the individual components mean and you can pretend that other people care about your definition, too. But that's not how English works and nobody gives a shit what your definition of the word is if it doesn't match with how it's used. I think this thread is basically over. I'll go argue with someone smarter.
well because people who think like you do are often the ones demanding that the law should force artificial 'responsibility' for speech instead of holding the people who took the action accountable instead.
Speak for your own bloody self. I think people who think like I do are called "adults".
speech is just words. Action is different. jenny mccarthy doesn't kill kids with her words.
She sure as hell is responsible. Maybe not as responsible as the parents who refuse to vaccinate, but she's still responsible for lying to people and misleading them.
guardians not giving some kids vaccines may cause some to die. Then again, giving them half baked vaccines shoved out the door by big pharma can also kill. If you want to blame mccarthy for it, then you also have to blame the relevant state agencies and big pharma.
Again, what in the fuck are you talking about? There's nothing wrong with the current vaccines. They work and complaining about "big pharma" is just so much bullshit. Or did you have some actual scientific data behind your paranoia?
What in the fuck does free speech have anything to do with this?
Jenny McCarthy is free to say whatever damn-fool thing she wants to say, but just because she's free to do so doesn't mean she isn't responsible for the bullshit that comes out of her mouth. There are people dying because of what these loons are saying, and they are responsible for that. You morons who dredge up free speech at the drop of a hat really generally mean "consequence-free speech." There's no right to that and there never will be. You get to live with the consequences of the things you say.
You don't have to hate all science to be anti-science anymore than you have to be against women's suffrage to be sexist. When you reject science when it disagrees with what you really wish to be true, you're anti-science. Either you accept the outcome of the scientific method or you don't.
Any article that begins with a put-down of a generalized segment of the population in my opinion is already tainted with bias. I'll look elsewhere for reliable information, thanks.
This will almost certainly fall on deaf ears, but here goes, anyway.
Just because people hold opposing opinions does not give them the right to respect for those opinions. Both sides of a debate don't deserve equal airtime, equal attention, or equal consideration. Sometimes people are just wrong. And it's OK to call them on it.
The anti-vax crowd are nuts. We know this. They are wrong in every way it is possible to be wrong and we can be as sure of that as we are that gravity works, that things are made of atoms, or anything else. Arguing that they might have a point, or that acknowledging the truth is somehow biased is idiotic.
It's not biased to teach evolution to the exclusion of creationism, it's not biased to say that homeopathy is a sham, it's not biased to say that global warming is real, and it's certainly not biased to call people on their anti-science bullshit when they say that vaccines cause autism.
The purpose of the bible was very much to be an accurate history of the world. Saying it's not is a modern invention that came from the enlightenment after the waning power of the church after the dark ages. Denying this shows a poor understanding of history at best.
Also, the definition of "false" can be found in any dictionary. It means "not true". I don't know what Clintonian idiocy you are attempting here, but something is either true or false, and the bible is no different.
It's not a false analogy. Unicorns are invisible, you see, so you can't observe them. They fly, so they don't leave any footprints, and they are extremely good at avoiding collisions, so nobody has ever accidentally hit one.
Am I getting closer?
There is, of course, absolutely no reason why I should believe you that God is outside the universe and therefore unobservable. One does not imply the other and you have no evidence for either claim. God could be outside the universe, but have built it in such a way that his presence was observable, for example. Or God could be inside the universe, but completely unobservable. The Christian bible says he is both in the universe (or at least visits it from time to time), and is observable, so I fail to see why you believe god must have those qualities.
I repeat, in simpler terms: Without any evidence to suggest something exists, there's no good reason to believe in it. There most definitely are undiscovered species of birds, insects, and bacteria all over the place, but if you tell me that there's a particular bird out there with a particular description that matches no known species, the burden of proof is still on you to bring back pictures or a specimen, or at least find other people who have seen it.
The difficulty is that the bible has no claim to truth other than it being based on revelation. If the bible is not the word of god, then how does one begin to choose which parts are true and which are not? If some parts are false, then you have no basis to claim the rest is true.
Have you ever seen William Lane Craig debate? It's infuriating to watch. Everything he says is so very wrong, misinformed, misguided, or simply insane, but he says it so well that he often "wins" his debates (I put it in quotes because most debates have no formally defined winner). Even when Christopher Hitchens, a man who, if nothing else, can turn a phrase with the best of them, went against him, Craig looked like the victor. Of course, I could just be underestimating the audience's ability to spot the flaws in Craig's arguments, but I don't think I am.
Yes. We could visit every bank in the world and check, one by one. There are, after all, a finite number of them.
Yes, I know it's possible to open them in another name, but the point is you can prove the non-existence of something with enough conditions.
To put the distinction in the terms of this conversation, we know that the Christian god does not exist. Evolution, cosmology, and archeology all disprove the stories in the bible. The fact that we can disprove the Christian god does not mean that we can disprove all gods, though, just as you cannot disprove my claim that there is an invisible, incorporeal dragon in my garage that leaves no footprints and breathes undetectable fire as long as I am willing to tack on additional absurd attributes.
There can be evidence for a creator, obviously. Someone who pops into the universe, takes us out of it, shows us how he made it, does it again, and then tells us how to do it would be a pretty good start, for example.
The fact that the creator has left us no evidence of his existence suggests that there is no reason to believe in one. I cannot prove there is no creator, but why should I believe in one? The claims that there is and that there isn't a creator do not have equal merits just as the claim that unicorns do exist is not equally meritorious to the claim that unicorns do not exist. It is perfectly reasonable to say that in all likelihood, they do not, and it is not scientific to say that we cannot choose between these two claims. The evidence falls all on one side and it is distinctly unscientific to say both claims have equal merit.
I can categorically state that ghosts do not exist and be quite certain I'm correct. Why? Because the term "ghost" has no rigorous scientific definition. This is also why looking for them is foolish and unscientific.
If you want to scientifically look for ghosts, you must first come up with a definition and some of their properties that you can measure. Even if you could come into this "haunted" house of yours and find freaky measurements off the charts, it does not indicate that there is a ghost present. Simply not having an explanation does not mean that anything supernatural is going on. This is the fallacy that many on this thread are making.
So, once armed with this hypothesis of what ghosts actually are and what they will look like to various instruments, you can begin to test it. You go into the house and check that hypothesis. If you can verify the hypothesis, then you have evidence that suggests it's true that there are ghosts there. If you don't, you must reject the hypothesis.
The difficulty, and the reason I can so confidently state that ghosts don't exist, is that you will never find consensus about what a ghost is and should anyone prove that they do exist, anything that matches what people previously thought about ghosts would be incidental. It is similar to the people who claim that spiritual nonsense predicted quantum mechanics. It's simply coincidental that certain aspects of quantum mechanics, such as the effect of an observer upon an experiment, are vaguely similar to some spiritual claims that conscious will has a tangible affect on the material world. While parallels can be drawn, the real science behind quantum mechanics looks nothing like the spiritual claims, mostly because quantum mechanics provides a formal framework in which to understand the result. Any such science of what is currently understood as "ghosts" would look nothing at all like what people currently think of them.
If I had been in the students' position, I'd have come forward. I never once cheated in college, but I know the basic competence level of most professors and I trust them not to think I cheated about as far as I can throw them, and given the weight of a lot of these faculty members, that's not very far.
I'm usually suspicious of claims like this by professors. I was once in a class where the lab tech accused most of the class of cheating because they had used an algorithm from the text book when implementing an assignment when they had been explicitly told by the professor to use it. Why were they accused of cheating? They had not included a citation. The algorithm, being trivial, was actually easily discoverable by accident and I know one person who did not have a copy of the text book was accused of cheating because his algorithm was so close to it. Most of the class got notes on their permanent records after that. One fellow student, who claimed to have avoided the scandal altogether by using a different algorithm, called it entrapment. Funny thing - this happened nearly ten years ago.
I was wrong about the 3+2. It is indeed 3+3. However, please try not to move the goal posts too much. My argument was not that H-1Bs don't harm a particular field. I admit that's entirely possible.
Please notice what I was responding to. I was complaining about the parent's talk about how H-1Bs are harmful to "most Americans," not "most Americans in IT jobs" or "most Americans in tech." You, in fact, quote me saying that and then talk about IT departments. You have not contradicted what I said in any way unless you also wish to claim that most Americans work in IT departments.
Thank you for pointing that out. Unfortunately, I don't have the numbers required to answer that, but I think it's probably a safe bet to say that more than 50% of Americans are of working age and therefore we can say it's less than 0.3%. However, I wasn't merely talking about skilled positions that are available to H-1Bs. Very few illegal immigrants, for example, would have skilled positions. My argument is that the number of H-1Bs don't contribute that significantly to the overall economy and unemployment rate. There may be professions where a large percentage of workers are H-1Bs and those fields could be severely harmed by the H-1B program. But I don't think that has a large effect on the overall economy and the ability of the average American to find a job. Remember that the thing I was responding to said that "most Americans" are harmed by H-1Bs.
The maximum duration of the H-1B visa is six years, unless the alien has applied for citizenship, in which has it is effectively indefinite. This does not mean they need to have any intention of becoming a citizen, only that they have applied for a green card. (which I see is mentioned but some what buried in the above post).
You mean applied for permanent resident status. At that point, they are effectively treated as permanent residents and that's how I was intending to count them. I'm not sure they count as H-1Bs at that point.
Prevailing Wage is based purely upon title, and not at all upon actual assigned duties. In many cases H-1B workers are hired with entry level titles but assigned senior level tasks. In other cases they are assigned similar but not exact titles (such as being titled and Application Programers title while doing Software Engineering, where the form title is often used by smaller lower paying companies).
I haven't seen this. I know how much many of my coworkers make, for example, and I know H-1Bs at the same level who make the same if not more who do the same tasks. I've worked at several companies in the US and I've know plenty of others who have worked at various other companies including Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, HP, and others and I've never witnessed the problem you describe (although at Apple, they tend to treat all their employees poorly from what I've seen).
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I don't believe it's as widespread as is claimed.
More importantly, though the number of H-1B workers appears to be low, it has a fairly large impact since they are used to fill the higher paying positions. This higher pay, which is often taken completely out of the country, has a large impact on the over all economy. The wages of an H-1B, though lower than they would have to pay an american citizen, is orders of magnitude higher than that of most illegal immigrants.
This theory certainly sounds plausible, but things are more complex than that. For example, let's say the higher paying position really is given to an H-1B worker at a lower pay level. Then the company may hire another employee as well and end up paying out the same amount of money into the economy. The employees, being paid less, are probably going to spend a higher percentage of their salaries, so that goes back into the economy and so on (savings rate isn't constant with salary; the more you make, the higher percentage of your money you save, typically).
I am not saying, of course, that hiring more workers at lower pay is good for the economy. I'm just saying that the argument that hiring an H-1B at lower pay harms the economy as a whole is not clear cut. It certainly harms that job market, but my basic thesis - that there aren't enough H-1Bs to cause significant amounts of unemployment - is still plausible.
As you say, illegal immigrants make a lot less money and there are a lot more of them. I still think that and the green card lottery, which hands out 55k green cards every year, would do more harm to the job market than H-1Bs, especially given that H-1Bs are generally skilled workers.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, that's some industrial grade ignorance. Let me try to correct some of it.
See cross thread where I point out that all knowledge is provisional. If you get your news from pop science writers, or you read every paper as if it's been handed down by god on stone tablets, then you're going to be wrong a lot of the time. Stick with the scientific consensus and you're in a much better position.
And who, exactly, was it that figured out that Thalidomide was unsafe, and that antibiotic overuse leads to resistant strains of bacteria? Not the scientists, right? That was divined by new-age thinkers? Or the anti-vaxxers?
You realize that Thalidomide was never allowed to be sold in the United States by the FDA specifically because it did not have enough scientific evidence behind it proving it was safe?
This style of argumentation is very common on Slashdot. Your position is weak, so you pretend I've taken positions I haven't. I've said nothing about thalidomide up to this point, so please don't make shit up.
But since we're on the topic. I'd call any doctor that pushed thalidomide after the science was known to be directly responsible for the effects of having recommended it, even more so than Jenny McCarthy, since doctors are in a much more trusted position than Jenny McCarthy. That's the position the anti-vaxxers find themselves in today. Their conclusions have been shown conclusively to be incorrect, dangerous, and based on fraud. And yet they continue to push their agenda. This would be like doctors trying to prescribe Thalidomide today.
Also, the Thalidomide topic is much more complex than this. At the time, the regulatory framework simply wasn't in place. Did doctors jump the gun prescribing Thalidomide? Perhaps. And perhaps they should have read more into the studies and questioned more things about it. Some did, in fact. That's exactly why the FDA didn't approve it. But can we expect all doctors to do that? These days, the FDA is meant to serve this role, so doctors can rely on the FDA to ensure drugs are safe, but at the time, Thalidomide was really the first high profile example that showed that government regulation was capable of preventing these sorts of problems.
Again, who was it who disproved that claim? Early scientists, obviously. And then the antiscience community railed against it for decades, if not centuries. Science makes progress with more science, not by saying, "Hey, I'm going to reject these conclusions because I don't like them." We have never made progress by choosing to believe what we prefer to believe over what the data tell us is true. Even Einstein in his famous "God does not play dice
These are opinions that are in direct conflict with well established scientific knowledge and they aren't antiscience? Um, right. The article makes clear that polemics such as the anti-vaxxer crap count as antiscience. As a description of what antiscience is, it's the closest I've seen to what they mean and what others mean by it, and what I mean when I use the term. I frankly don't care if you define the term some other way. It's what the article means, it's what I mean, people generally understand it, and that's all that matters.
Of course it's a rejection of science. A small piece of it, but it is a rejection nonetheless.
One might argue that if they deem this so important, they might bother to try to figure out what the facts are.
That's one of the stranger things you've said. In what world does science lack skepticism? Skepticism is built into science. The entire scientific method is about attempting to disprove things. You never prove anything in science - you just fail to disprove it. All knowledge is provisional. If you want to be educated, read some Carl Sagan. He goes on about the two-pronged approach of openness and skepticism needed to be a good scientist. You need openness to generate and consider novel hypotheses, but then you need skepticism to design good experiments to test them. Scientists generally aren't the kinds of people who need to be reminded to be skeptics.
The article also goes on to list many examples of anti-science. While not calling out anti-vaxxers explicitly, it does list some very similar antiscience beliefs:
Again, it's how people use the term - i.e. to reject well established scientific knowledge. You are welcome to believe what you want about the term, but at this point, I can only assume you're being deliberately obtuse now that you have been informed what people really mean by it when they use it.
Which position do you claim is unjustified? And what names have I called you, exactly?
Let me ask you something. If you think what you say is so unimportant, why is free speech so important to protect? Either speech is important or it's not. You can't have it both ways. This is where the childishness comes in. You want to be able to say what you want and not have to worry about the consequences. Adults take responsibility for their actions, including their own words. People who don't take responsibility for their actions are children.
In fact, this is getting absurd. It is obvious to all but the most idiotic that speech has implications and you are responsible for it. The law recognizes this. There are libel laws precisely because speech can be damaging and because you are responsible for what you say. The people who spread misinformation about vaccines are responsible for the results of spreading that misinformation. If you disagree, I'm sorry, but you're just wrong.
You called them half-assed. What does that mean, exactly, if it you say they work? Make up your bloody mind.
More unjustified bullshit. If you pull any more of this shit out of your ass, you're going to be a qualified proctologist.
Your username is apt. You may attempt to redefine what antiscience means just by saying what the individual components mean and you can pretend that other people care about your definition, too. But that's not how English works and nobody gives a shit what your definition of the word is if it doesn't match with how it's used. I think this thread is basically over. I'll go argue with someone smarter.
Speak for your own bloody self. I think people who think like I do are called "adults".
She sure as hell is responsible. Maybe not as responsible as the parents who refuse to vaccinate, but she's still responsible for lying to people and misleading them.
Again, what in the fuck are you talking about? There's nothing wrong with the current vaccines. They work and complaining about "big pharma" is just so much bullshit. Or did you have some actual scientific data behind your paranoia?
What in the fuck does free speech have anything to do with this?
Jenny McCarthy is free to say whatever damn-fool thing she wants to say, but just because she's free to do so doesn't mean she isn't responsible for the bullshit that comes out of her mouth. There are people dying because of what these loons are saying, and they are responsible for that. You morons who dredge up free speech at the drop of a hat really generally mean "consequence-free speech." There's no right to that and there never will be. You get to live with the consequences of the things you say.
You don't have to hate all science to be anti-science anymore than you have to be against women's suffrage to be sexist. When you reject science when it disagrees with what you really wish to be true, you're anti-science. Either you accept the outcome of the scientific method or you don't.
This will almost certainly fall on deaf ears, but here goes, anyway.
Just because people hold opposing opinions does not give them the right to respect for those opinions. Both sides of a debate don't deserve equal airtime, equal attention, or equal consideration. Sometimes people are just wrong. And it's OK to call them on it.
The anti-vax crowd are nuts. We know this. They are wrong in every way it is possible to be wrong and we can be as sure of that as we are that gravity works, that things are made of atoms, or anything else. Arguing that they might have a point, or that acknowledging the truth is somehow biased is idiotic.
It's not biased to teach evolution to the exclusion of creationism, it's not biased to say that homeopathy is a sham, it's not biased to say that global warming is real, and it's certainly not biased to call people on their anti-science bullshit when they say that vaccines cause autism.
The purpose of the bible was very much to be an accurate history of the world. Saying it's not is a modern invention that came from the enlightenment after the waning power of the church after the dark ages. Denying this shows a poor understanding of history at best.
Also, the definition of "false" can be found in any dictionary. It means "not true". I don't know what Clintonian idiocy you are attempting here, but something is either true or false, and the bible is no different.
It's not a false analogy. Unicorns are invisible, you see, so you can't observe them. They fly, so they don't leave any footprints, and they are extremely good at avoiding collisions, so nobody has ever accidentally hit one.
Am I getting closer?
There is, of course, absolutely no reason why I should believe you that God is outside the universe and therefore unobservable. One does not imply the other and you have no evidence for either claim. God could be outside the universe, but have built it in such a way that his presence was observable, for example. Or God could be inside the universe, but completely unobservable. The Christian bible says he is both in the universe (or at least visits it from time to time), and is observable, so I fail to see why you believe god must have those qualities.
I repeat, in simpler terms: Without any evidence to suggest something exists, there's no good reason to believe in it. There most definitely are undiscovered species of birds, insects, and bacteria all over the place, but if you tell me that there's a particular bird out there with a particular description that matches no known species, the burden of proof is still on you to bring back pictures or a specimen, or at least find other people who have seen it.
The difficulty is that the bible has no claim to truth other than it being based on revelation. If the bible is not the word of god, then how does one begin to choose which parts are true and which are not? If some parts are false, then you have no basis to claim the rest is true.
Have you ever seen William Lane Craig debate? It's infuriating to watch. Everything he says is so very wrong, misinformed, misguided, or simply insane, but he says it so well that he often "wins" his debates (I put it in quotes because most debates have no formally defined winner). Even when Christopher Hitchens, a man who, if nothing else, can turn a phrase with the best of them, went against him, Craig looked like the victor. Of course, I could just be underestimating the audience's ability to spot the flaws in Craig's arguments, but I don't think I am.
We understand none of it and therefore goddidit? Yeah, that's going to advance our understanding.
Yes. We could visit every bank in the world and check, one by one. There are, after all, a finite number of them.
Yes, I know it's possible to open them in another name, but the point is you can prove the non-existence of something with enough conditions.
To put the distinction in the terms of this conversation, we know that the Christian god does not exist. Evolution, cosmology, and archeology all disprove the stories in the bible. The fact that we can disprove the Christian god does not mean that we can disprove all gods, though, just as you cannot disprove my claim that there is an invisible, incorporeal dragon in my garage that leaves no footprints and breathes undetectable fire as long as I am willing to tack on additional absurd attributes.
There can be evidence for a creator, obviously. Someone who pops into the universe, takes us out of it, shows us how he made it, does it again, and then tells us how to do it would be a pretty good start, for example.
The fact that the creator has left us no evidence of his existence suggests that there is no reason to believe in one. I cannot prove there is no creator, but why should I believe in one? The claims that there is and that there isn't a creator do not have equal merits just as the claim that unicorns do exist is not equally meritorious to the claim that unicorns do not exist. It is perfectly reasonable to say that in all likelihood, they do not, and it is not scientific to say that we cannot choose between these two claims. The evidence falls all on one side and it is distinctly unscientific to say both claims have equal merit.
You seem to be confused about what Occam's razor means. It does not say that the simplest explanation is more likely to be right.
That is the whole point of science. You take a guess and then see if you're wrong. Without that initial guess, you're not doing science.
Not the best source, apparently, if they're still spouting this crap:
I can categorically state that ghosts do not exist and be quite certain I'm correct. Why? Because the term "ghost" has no rigorous scientific definition. This is also why looking for them is foolish and unscientific.
If you want to scientifically look for ghosts, you must first come up with a definition and some of their properties that you can measure. Even if you could come into this "haunted" house of yours and find freaky measurements off the charts, it does not indicate that there is a ghost present. Simply not having an explanation does not mean that anything supernatural is going on. This is the fallacy that many on this thread are making.
So, once armed with this hypothesis of what ghosts actually are and what they will look like to various instruments, you can begin to test it. You go into the house and check that hypothesis. If you can verify the hypothesis, then you have evidence that suggests it's true that there are ghosts there. If you don't, you must reject the hypothesis.
The difficulty, and the reason I can so confidently state that ghosts don't exist, is that you will never find consensus about what a ghost is and should anyone prove that they do exist, anything that matches what people previously thought about ghosts would be incidental. It is similar to the people who claim that spiritual nonsense predicted quantum mechanics. It's simply coincidental that certain aspects of quantum mechanics, such as the effect of an observer upon an experiment, are vaguely similar to some spiritual claims that conscious will has a tangible affect on the material world. While parallels can be drawn, the real science behind quantum mechanics looks nothing like the spiritual claims, mostly because quantum mechanics provides a formal framework in which to understand the result. Any such science of what is currently understood as "ghosts" would look nothing at all like what people currently think of them.
If I had been in the students' position, I'd have come forward. I never once cheated in college, but I know the basic competence level of most professors and I trust them not to think I cheated about as far as I can throw them, and given the weight of a lot of these faculty members, that's not very far.
I'm usually suspicious of claims like this by professors. I was once in a class where the lab tech accused most of the class of cheating because they had used an algorithm from the text book when implementing an assignment when they had been explicitly told by the professor to use it. Why were they accused of cheating? They had not included a citation. The algorithm, being trivial, was actually easily discoverable by accident and I know one person who did not have a copy of the text book was accused of cheating because his algorithm was so close to it. Most of the class got notes on their permanent records after that. One fellow student, who claimed to have avoided the scandal altogether by using a different algorithm, called it entrapment. Funny thing - this happened nearly ten years ago.
I was wrong about the 3+2. It is indeed 3+3. However, please try not to move the goal posts too much. My argument was not that H-1Bs don't harm a particular field. I admit that's entirely possible.
Please notice what I was responding to. I was complaining about the parent's talk about how H-1Bs are harmful to "most Americans," not "most Americans in IT jobs" or "most Americans in tech." You, in fact, quote me saying that and then talk about IT departments. You have not contradicted what I said in any way unless you also wish to claim that most Americans work in IT departments.
Thank you for pointing that out. Unfortunately, I don't have the numbers required to answer that, but I think it's probably a safe bet to say that more than 50% of Americans are of working age and therefore we can say it's less than 0.3%. However, I wasn't merely talking about skilled positions that are available to H-1Bs. Very few illegal immigrants, for example, would have skilled positions. My argument is that the number of H-1Bs don't contribute that significantly to the overall economy and unemployment rate. There may be professions where a large percentage of workers are H-1Bs and those fields could be severely harmed by the H-1B program. But I don't think that has a large effect on the overall economy and the ability of the average American to find a job. Remember that the thing I was responding to said that "most Americans" are harmed by H-1Bs.
You mean applied for permanent resident status. At that point, they are effectively treated as permanent residents and that's how I was intending to count them. I'm not sure they count as H-1Bs at that point.
I haven't seen this. I know how much many of my coworkers make, for example, and I know H-1Bs at the same level who make the same if not more who do the same tasks. I've worked at several companies in the US and I've know plenty of others who have worked at various other companies including Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, HP, and others and I've never witnessed the problem you describe (although at Apple, they tend to treat all their employees poorly from what I've seen).
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I don't believe it's as widespread as is claimed.
This theory certainly sounds plausible, but things are more complex than that. For example, let's say the higher paying position really is given to an H-1B worker at a lower pay level. Then the company may hire another employee as well and end up paying out the same amount of money into the economy. The employees, being paid less, are probably going to spend a higher percentage of their salaries, so that goes back into the economy and so on (savings rate isn't constant with salary; the more you make, the higher percentage of your money you save, typically).
I am not saying, of course, that hiring more workers at lower pay is good for the economy. I'm just saying that the argument that hiring an H-1B at lower pay harms the economy as a whole is not clear cut. It certainly harms that job market, but my basic thesis - that there aren't enough H-1Bs to cause significant amounts of unemployment - is still plausible.
As you say, illegal immigrants make a lot less money and there are a lot more of them. I still think that and the green card lottery, which hands out 55k green cards every year, would do more harm to the job market than H-1Bs, especially given that H-1Bs are generally skilled workers.