Wouldn't it be an A/C post if it were some sort of threat.
I'm serious, though. I have seen several cases where normal, non-rich people have had their lives trashed by unproven accusations, all because they tried to be nice to kids. Add celebrity to it and it's a recipe for disaster. Look at Michael Jackson! He was ruined long before anything was ever proven - and he was acquitted! Yet ask 100 people, and 99 will probably say "yeah, he did it".
All because he enjoyed enriching kids' lives. (I'm no Michael Jackson fan, but the public is waaaaay too quick to convict, just because someone looks or behaves differently than the norm).
If you have riches or fame and work with kids, paranoia is for your own safety!
I am definitely NOT an RIAA fan. But I've thought the same as you, really just as devil's advocate and as a way to question common conceptions on Slashdot.
My logic was more like this: If the RIAA is screwing the artists, then where's the money going? There must either be a small number of people getting very rich for no work, or there must be waste in the system. (i.e. foolish spending).
Market forces would take care of things over time, in both cases. If being a record label is so rewarding, then more and more companies would be jumping into it, and competition would cause prices to drop and artists' payments to go up, and force waste out of the system.
Granted, the frivolous lawsuits of Jammie and thousands of others makes me wonder about the waste. As does the triple-seal CD case (it's harder for me to open a "Poison" CD case than a container of poison). But "betting" on 9 acts that fail, out of ten (which is your guess at the percentage), this isn't necessarily waste. And the lawsuits, while perhaps a questionable strategy, will benefit artists (at no cost to them) if they end up benefiting the RIAA through increased CD sales (big "IF", I know. But if the threat of a lawsuit causes someone to buy a CD instead of downloading it, then the artist makes a little more money).
If few record execs are getting ridiculously rich, and there's not a ton of excess waste, and market forces are at play (i.e. no artificial monopoly), then it's reasonable to assume that the record labels are paying a fair price to artists. Seems to me that artist are eager to sign with labels (no one's forcing them). Sure, if they could get 20% instead of 10% (or whatever), they'd be happy. But I think smart artists recognize that 10% of a large pie is much better than 100% of nothing.
If the record labels are screwing artists by paying the "standard cut" (10%?), what would be fair? 11%? Don't say 100%, because then the labels have no incentive to "invest" in the unknown artist, and it won't happen. Seems to me that we have arrived at a "fair" percent based on market forces.
Am I the only one who thinks that Woz being a Kindergarten teacher is highly risky?
I think if I were a multi-millionaire looking to make a difference with kids, and I started working with 5-year olds, I would have a camera aimed at me, and another adult with me at all times.
Someone out there is going to go gold-digging and accuse him of some mis-doing. How hard would it be to paint Woz as an eccentric millionaire creepy pervert who likes kids just a little too much? All it takes is one greedy parent to ruin your reputation for life. And with stereotyping these days, it's not hard to see how the tide of public opinion could turn against him. Just look at his picture and his silly grin and unusual gaze, and it's not hard to imagine the general population of middle America (i.e., average moron, a.k.a. "jury of your peers") saying "yeah, he just looks like a creepy dude. Clearly he's guilty."
It doesn't follow that religion = ethics. I would have thought quite the opposite - a non-religious person has no real reason to attack his neighbour.
Well, religion is a broad topic. I was thinking more of religion as the old "set of rules" to get to heaven - which were really just a summary of ethical rules of thumb. There's nothing in the Ten Commandments, for instance, that says "Kill people who you can't convert."
The evolution was probably something like: People found the Rules of Thumb handy, and these ideas proved to be "good for survival" (within their small community of believers), so they propagated. Then there was a mutation of the idea, where people said "Gee, if EVERYONE lived by these rules, society would be better", so they started forcing "their religion" under penalty of death. And that idea has been proven to be "generally bad for survival", so it's fading out. (admittedly, there's still plenty of religious killing, but I think and hope that idea is fading).
What scares me A LOT is reading the posts here where people say that the world would be better off without religion. Comments like that are OK for discussion, but similar thoughts have justified religious killings in the past. "For the good of society, we must kill off that belief..." Let's face it, lack of belief is still a belief, and also provides a reason to attack a neighbor.
Good discussion here, I think! Some great points. I think that tolerance is best for society, which may be have religious nuts and atheist nuts and moderates. But an extension of my argument would be that "my believe in tolerance" could also ultimately provide reason to attack a neighbor who is not tolerant! Hmm.....
Why are you pushing your form of religion on other people through your book references. Just because you believe a book, doesn't mean you should push it on others - it seems totally hypocritical (and proving my point)!
There hasn't been an all atheist society ever, so we don't know if your hypothesis is correct.
If you are an atheist, then you probably think that humans existed before religion. (One could argue that Adam and Eve meeting God started religion... but I'm sure you don't subscribe to that story). Just curious, would you say that the society prior to religion was an all atheist society? Or just an all "never thought much about it" society.
If that was an all atheist society, how did it work out? (not trying to make a point here, just thinking and wondering).
As an atheist, I believe that the world would benefit from getting rid of religions, because people would no longer accept dogmas (of any kind), and thus be more involved in society's affairs.
So you think the world would benefit from "artificially" getting rid of religions? That is, you think it'd be a good thing to, say, exterminate all those who are religious and refuse to give it up?
Would it have made more sense if I said "fittest scenario for the human species"? Humans are absolutely in competition with other species. And they are in competition to survive. And the survival scenario itself is in competition with other scenarios in which humans do not survive.
I disagree with your statement that "survival of the fittest is [only] about individuals". It's about the survival of entire classes and sub-classes of species. And I am trying to extend it to the survival of ideas.
The general idea of religion has evolved over 3000 years. And the idea that you kill people in the name of religion has proven to be a bad strategy (and, while there are occasional mutations which cause lots of deaths in the name of religion, I suspect that this idea is on it's way to evolving out.)
Point is: a mixed environment of religious people and non-religious people is probably good for the "survival" of both.
Not that one group may necessarily kill the other group, but that one group may assimilate the other group. And in that case, mankind has less chance of survival, I hypothesize.
You appear to make the assumption that because religious belief may have been advantageous at some point, that it may still be so.
No, I am proposing the hypothesis that a society of mixed beliefs (some religious, some not, some who push their religion on other people, some who are offended by that pushing) is advantageous now, and that we evolved to that state and will continue to evolve.
Absolutely. Good thing that the religious, ethical tribes killed those nonreligious, unethical ones!
touche'
I really was speaking about inter-tribal murder. I'm not trying to justify religious atrocities.
We are where we are. No one has to justify past actions of people who are long since dead. Just learn from it. And one who believes in evolution can believe that atrocities were a natural part of the evolution of religious ideas.
And religious ideas have evolved as a natural part of ensuring the survival of our species.
To say that "men committed atrocities in the past in the name of religion, and therefore I will not be religious" is analogous to saying that "men failed in their attempt to walk upright in the past, and therefore I will not walk upright."
I honestly haven't been keeping track, but I can't imagine that Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson have cause much loss of life. It feels to me that you are demonstrating a tremendous amount of religious intolerance to suggest that the world would be better off without them (especially if your comment incites someone who believes as you do to take further action beyond speaking out on Slashdot).
You're focusing on the religious extremists who cause harm. There are religious "nutjobs" like Mother Theresa who are equally passionate (or perhaps more so) about their religion, and who have done a lot of good. (I'm not prepared to argue whether Mother Theresa herself did good, so I am saying people like her, for illustrative purposes). And for every extremist terrorist, you may be able to find ten or one hundred people whose lives have been influenced in a positive fashion (and have contributed to society in a positive fashion) because of their religious beliefs).
Adding up the body count is focusing on the negative. And honestly, we have no "alternate world" with no religion to compare it to. What would the body count be if there were no religion? We have no idea.
I suspect that many people contribute to humanitarian causes because of their religious beliefs. And these humanitarian causes lead directly to minimizing the "body count".
My point really is, if you believe in evolution, then it's not that big of a leap to believe that we have evolved as a species to a point now where we are in the best position for the survival of the species, and that point includes nutjobs and atheists and extremists and moderates. We'll continue to evolve.
But in reality I do believe the world would be a better place if religion would go away.
Perhaps.
Funny you use the word "believe".
Others believe that the world would be a better place if everyone were religious. And really, the only point I was trying to make is that perhaps this mixed world with different beliefs, which I contend that we have evolved to, is actually an equilibrium, and is the best case for survival of the species (at this time).
I'm not trying to push this idea (or my belief) on you. I'm just stating an idea that I just came up with this morning before my coffee set in. Sort of a "meta-religious" discussion: not that religion (pick a flavor) is right, or atheism is right, but that maybe society is healthier for having a mixed bag of beliefs. And we have evolved to that state using standard "evolutionary" steps.
It's cool to think about, because maybe people who believe in evolution can buy into it. And maybe religious people who recognize that religion should not be used as a "club" to torture disbelievers can buy into it. And then we can all get along...
I wasn't trying to take a position for or against birth control. I was trying to say that families who believe in having large families tend to grow. Families who believe in having small families don't tend to propagate their ideas or beliefs as rapidly. And if your parents are sterile, you will be too.
Evolution is a pretty slow process... I guess 3000 years or so isn't quite long enough to breed out the religious nutjobs.
Maybe a world with a few religious nutjobs is a more stable world than one with all moderates (or all atheists or all Christians, or whatever). Seems counter-intuitive, but that's the equilibrium that we have arrived at (although I will respect your point that maybe we're not at equilibrium because enough time hasn't passed).
Societies may have "invented" the notion of religion because religion led to ethics, which led to less killing of their neighbors. All of the sudden, it's survival of the fittest, as non-ethical tribes tended to be killed off, while religious tribes thrived.
That's a wild-ass guess. There are many alternatives that I find far more convincing, if you read "The God Delusion" there's a chapter devoted to a few alternatives.
One very simple alternative is that children are genetically disposed to believing their elders for obvious survival reasons, as a side-effect if you get a child to believe in your tribal religious system during their formative years for the rest of their life they are more likely to act in the best interest of your tribe. Seems to match history far better in the sense that religious groups have always been eager to be highly immoral in their dealings with outsiders.
I was trying to refer to the origin of religion, not the propagation of religion. I agree with you, in terms of how religion was passed down through the ages (and all ethics and morality for that matter - from parents to children). I suspect that tribes that did not pass down wisdom died off in an evolutionary way as well.
I suspect that the original humans had no notion of religion - not that everyone was an atheist, but that every human on earth had no notion of a higher being, one way or the other. Then one day, a very simple version of the "idea" came about, and it stuck. And it evolved to what it is today.
I'm not trying to say that it's right or wrong. I'm trying to say that ideas bounce around until they reach an equilibrium, and that's what's happened.
I really don't want to read "The God Delusion" as you suggest. Why are you pushing your religion on me?;-) That's my point!
I meant "better" as in more likely to survive. Or maybe a more stable equilibrium.
I suspect that if either side of the religious discussions "won", (that is, all the atheists went away, or all the religious went away), then either that society would be less likely to survive, or some more practitioners of the extinct ideas would pop up, working back to the equilibrium position.
So I advocate Rodney King's position: "Can't we all just get along?" (am I too old that I remember Rodney King?)
Interesting discussion, but the obvious missing piece is the evolution of ideas.
Societies may have "invented" the notion of religion because religion led to ethics, which led to less killing of their neighbors. All of the sudden, it's survival of the fittest, as non-ethical tribes tended to be killed off, while religious tribes thrived.
An obvious second example is the notion of being against birth control (or for large families). Tribes that were for large families and passed those beliefs down to their children tended to grow.
So my question is: Even if there is no God, and you are an atheist, is it possible that a world containing religious people is actually a "better" society than a world full of atheists? The Earth's people evolved into a world of mixed beliefs (some religious, some not), which could be argued to be the survival of the fittest idea or world. The mixed-belief world appears to be the "fittest" world, as opposed to such less-fit worlds of all atheists or all Christians, as examples.
If we evolved to be a mixed world of beliefs, as the "fittest", perhaps we should accept that, and quit trying to convert people with arguments for our favorite religious/non-religious belief.
I won't get into a Holy War with you, but how hard would it be for a Supreme Being, who can create the universe and all living creatures, to scatter a few bones around?
The ultimate Troll: scatter a few bones, and you have people arguing about it for thousands of years!
I wasn't there. So I don't know. As far as I know, the world was created in 1967.
You make a good point, but it can easily be addressed.
A digitally signed health record, CONTROLLED by the consumer would work. If this consumer asked for a new prescription from you, you'd say "ok, let me see your record." He would release it to you, and you'd see instantly that he had zillions of prescriptions, and you wouldn't prescribe.
Or if you were the first doc, you'd prescribe, add this event to his record and register the new digital signature with a central authority (or 2). And the record can be stored encrypted in a single location (or 2), only able to be decrypted by select few (The consumer and their designates - the primary care physician, their next of kin, etc). Why some sysadmin at Google or (worse) some insurance company should have access to it is beyond me!
Sunspots come in cycles. In the 90's, there was Java. It caused a peak in the Sunspots, around the dotcom boom. Then Scott McNealey stepped down, and there has been much less flash, less brightness. Lately we've seen no Sunspots. This may be an indication that the Sun is going to fade into nothingness. If we're all lucky.
Slashdot Mirror
(see, I got your joke.)
Or is the county named after a copulating fruit?
Wouldn't it be an A/C post if it were some sort of threat.
I'm serious, though. I have seen several cases where normal, non-rich people have had their lives trashed by unproven accusations, all because they tried to be nice to kids. Add celebrity to it and it's a recipe for disaster. Look at Michael Jackson! He was ruined long before anything was ever proven - and he was acquitted! Yet ask 100 people, and 99 will probably say "yeah, he did it".
All because he enjoyed enriching kids' lives. (I'm no Michael Jackson fan, but the public is waaaaay too quick to convict, just because someone looks or behaves differently than the norm).
If you have riches or fame and work with kids, paranoia is for your own safety!
My logic was more like this: If the RIAA is screwing the artists, then where's the money going? There must either be a small number of people getting very rich for no work, or there must be waste in the system. (i.e. foolish spending).
Market forces would take care of things over time, in both cases. If being a record label is so rewarding, then more and more companies would be jumping into it, and competition would cause prices to drop and artists' payments to go up, and force waste out of the system.
Granted, the frivolous lawsuits of Jammie and thousands of others makes me wonder about the waste. As does the triple-seal CD case (it's harder for me to open a "Poison" CD case than a container of poison). But "betting" on 9 acts that fail, out of ten (which is your guess at the percentage), this isn't necessarily waste. And the lawsuits, while perhaps a questionable strategy, will benefit artists (at no cost to them) if they end up benefiting the RIAA through increased CD sales (big "IF", I know. But if the threat of a lawsuit causes someone to buy a CD instead of downloading it, then the artist makes a little more money).
If few record execs are getting ridiculously rich, and there's not a ton of excess waste, and market forces are at play (i.e. no artificial monopoly), then it's reasonable to assume that the record labels are paying a fair price to artists. Seems to me that artist are eager to sign with labels (no one's forcing them). Sure, if they could get 20% instead of 10% (or whatever), they'd be happy. But I think smart artists recognize that 10% of a large pie is much better than 100% of nothing.
If the record labels are screwing artists by paying the "standard cut" (10%?), what would be fair? 11%? Don't say 100%, because then the labels have no incentive to "invest" in the unknown artist, and it won't happen. Seems to me that we have arrived at a "fair" percent based on market forces.
I think if I were a multi-millionaire looking to make a difference with kids, and I started working with 5-year olds, I would have a camera aimed at me, and another adult with me at all times.
Someone out there is going to go gold-digging and accuse him of some mis-doing. How hard would it be to paint Woz as an eccentric millionaire creepy pervert who likes kids just a little too much? All it takes is one greedy parent to ruin your reputation for life. And with stereotyping these days, it's not hard to see how the tide of public opinion could turn against him. Just look at his picture and his silly grin and unusual gaze, and it's not hard to imagine the general population of middle America (i.e., average moron, a.k.a. "jury of your peers") saying "yeah, he just looks like a creepy dude. Clearly he's guilty."
I like Woz. I just think he should be careful.
The evolution was probably something like: People found the Rules of Thumb handy, and these ideas proved to be "good for survival" (within their small community of believers), so they propagated. Then there was a mutation of the idea, where people said "Gee, if EVERYONE lived by these rules, society would be better", so they started forcing "their religion" under penalty of death. And that idea has been proven to be "generally bad for survival", so it's fading out. (admittedly, there's still plenty of religious killing, but I think and hope that idea is fading).
What scares me A LOT is reading the posts here where people say that the world would be better off without religion. Comments like that are OK for discussion, but similar thoughts have justified religious killings in the past. "For the good of society, we must kill off that belief..." Let's face it, lack of belief is still a belief, and also provides a reason to attack a neighbor.
Good discussion here, I think! Some great points. I think that tolerance is best for society, which may be have religious nuts and atheist nuts and moderates. But an extension of my argument would be that "my believe in tolerance" could also ultimately provide reason to attack a neighbor who is not tolerant! Hmm.....
Why are you pushing your form of religion on other people through your book references. Just because you believe a book, doesn't mean you should push it on others - it seems totally hypocritical (and proving my point)!
If that was an all atheist society, how did it work out? (not trying to make a point here, just thinking and wondering).
So you think the world would benefit from "artificially" getting rid of religions? That is, you think it'd be a good thing to, say, exterminate all those who are religious and refuse to give it up?I disagree with your statement that "survival of the fittest is [only] about individuals". It's about the survival of entire classes and sub-classes of species. And I am trying to extend it to the survival of ideas.
The general idea of religion has evolved over 3000 years. And the idea that you kill people in the name of religion has proven to be a bad strategy (and, while there are occasional mutations which cause lots of deaths in the name of religion, I suspect that this idea is on it's way to evolving out.)
Point is: a mixed environment of religious people and non-religious people is probably good for the "survival" of both. Not that one group may necessarily kill the other group, but that one group may assimilate the other group. And in that case, mankind has less chance of survival, I hypothesize.
I really was speaking about inter-tribal murder. I'm not trying to justify religious atrocities.
We are where we are. No one has to justify past actions of people who are long since dead. Just learn from it. And one who believes in evolution can believe that atrocities were a natural part of the evolution of religious ideas.
And religious ideas have evolved as a natural part of ensuring the survival of our species.
To say that "men committed atrocities in the past in the name of religion, and therefore I will not be religious" is analogous to saying that "men failed in their attempt to walk upright in the past, and therefore I will not walk upright."
Queue Godwin's Law.
You're focusing on the religious extremists who cause harm. There are religious "nutjobs" like Mother Theresa who are equally passionate (or perhaps more so) about their religion, and who have done a lot of good. (I'm not prepared to argue whether Mother Theresa herself did good, so I am saying people like her, for illustrative purposes). And for every extremist terrorist, you may be able to find ten or one hundred people whose lives have been influenced in a positive fashion (and have contributed to society in a positive fashion) because of their religious beliefs).
Adding up the body count is focusing on the negative. And honestly, we have no "alternate world" with no religion to compare it to. What would the body count be if there were no religion? We have no idea.
I suspect that many people contribute to humanitarian causes because of their religious beliefs. And these humanitarian causes lead directly to minimizing the "body count".
My point really is, if you believe in evolution, then it's not that big of a leap to believe that we have evolved as a species to a point now where we are in the best position for the survival of the species, and that point includes nutjobs and atheists and extremists and moderates. We'll continue to evolve.
Funny you use the word "believe". Others believe that the world would be a better place if everyone were religious. And really, the only point I was trying to make is that perhaps this mixed world with different beliefs, which I contend that we have evolved to, is actually an equilibrium, and is the best case for survival of the species (at this time).
I'm not trying to push this idea (or my belief) on you. I'm just stating an idea that I just came up with this morning before my coffee set in. Sort of a "meta-religious" discussion: not that religion (pick a flavor) is right, or atheism is right, but that maybe society is healthier for having a mixed bag of beliefs. And we have evolved to that state using standard "evolutionary" steps.
It's cool to think about, because maybe people who believe in evolution can buy into it. And maybe religious people who recognize that religion should not be used as a "club" to torture disbelievers can buy into it. And then we can all get along...
I wasn't trying to take a position for or against birth control. I was trying to say that families who believe in having large families tend to grow. Families who believe in having small families don't tend to propagate their ideas or beliefs as rapidly. And if your parents are sterile, you will be too.
I suspect that the original humans had no notion of religion - not that everyone was an atheist, but that every human on earth had no notion of a higher being, one way or the other. Then one day, a very simple version of the "idea" came about, and it stuck. And it evolved to what it is today.
I'm not trying to say that it's right or wrong. I'm trying to say that ideas bounce around until they reach an equilibrium, and that's what's happened.
I really don't want to read "The God Delusion" as you suggest. Why are you pushing your religion on me? ;-) That's my point!
I suspect that if either side of the religious discussions "won", (that is, all the atheists went away, or all the religious went away), then either that society would be less likely to survive, or some more practitioners of the extinct ideas would pop up, working back to the equilibrium position.
So I advocate Rodney King's position: "Can't we all just get along?" (am I too old that I remember Rodney King?)
Societies may have "invented" the notion of religion because religion led to ethics, which led to less killing of their neighbors. All of the sudden, it's survival of the fittest, as non-ethical tribes tended to be killed off, while religious tribes thrived.
An obvious second example is the notion of being against birth control (or for large families). Tribes that were for large families and passed those beliefs down to their children tended to grow.
So my question is: Even if there is no God, and you are an atheist, is it possible that a world containing religious people is actually a "better" society than a world full of atheists? The Earth's people evolved into a world of mixed beliefs (some religious, some not), which could be argued to be the survival of the fittest idea or world. The mixed-belief world appears to be the "fittest" world, as opposed to such less-fit worlds of all atheists or all Christians, as examples.
If we evolved to be a mixed world of beliefs, as the "fittest", perhaps we should accept that, and quit trying to convert people with arguments for our favorite religious/non-religious belief.
The ultimate Troll: scatter a few bones, and you have people arguing about it for thousands of years!
I wasn't there. So I don't know. As far as I know, the world was created in 1967.
Regarding base-3, I've seen posts that don't talk about it, and posts that use the term "trinary", and posts that use the term "ternary".
Seems about right...
I don't think that the intent is to scan and catalog information regarding feces, or to copulate with said feces. However, that might be in Rev 2.
A digitally signed health record, CONTROLLED by the consumer would work. If this consumer asked for a new prescription from you, you'd say "ok, let me see your record." He would release it to you, and you'd see instantly that he had zillions of prescriptions, and you wouldn't prescribe.
Or if you were the first doc, you'd prescribe, add this event to his record and register the new digital signature with a central authority (or 2). And the record can be stored encrypted in a single location (or 2), only able to be decrypted by select few (The consumer and their designates - the primary care physician, their next of kin, etc). Why some sysadmin at Google or (worse) some insurance company should have access to it is beyond me!
Looks like you were first post on this one.
Sunspots come in cycles. In the 90's, there was Java. It caused a peak in the Sunspots, around the dotcom boom. Then Scott McNealey stepped down, and there has been much less flash, less brightness. Lately we've seen no Sunspots. This may be an indication that the Sun is going to fade into nothingness. If we're all lucky.