I was not intending to set up a straw man (although I can see how it would be taken as one). My grammar was poor in my first line. I did not mean to equate science with evolution. Simply to point out that Scientific (scientific theories, not science, sorry) theories in generally and evolution in particular are unable to be falsified, as in proven false. I was trying to point out something similar to what you concluded. Namely, that science doesn't disprove one way or another it only shows one thing as more likely than another. As you said, 'evolution' cannot be falsified. The post I replied to amounted to saying that only things that are falsifiable are science. Evolution is not falsifiable. One may be able to show the probablity of evolution vs. ID, but this is not what the original post stated. Furthermore, Things can be shown as more likely or less likely outside of empirical observation and experimentation. Would these then be scientific theories? On what grounds does one determine which is more or less likely? Yes, one could experiment or take empirical observations, but these, like in the case with the litmus paper, only show likely-hood. At some point in order to say that it is true that theory x is more likely than theory Y one must assert some framework for making this judgment or face an infinite regress of experimentation. where does this framework come from? I recognize science (perhaps incorrectly) to work with pragmatism. What works is what is true. Or perhaps, to put it another way, the preferred theory is the one with greater explanatory power. On this basis ID can be treated as a scientific theory and compared with evolution. We can determine which has the greatest explanatory power, or is the most practical. This conclusion is incompatible with the original post's conclusion that in order to be science a theory must be falsifiable. I may be incorrect in this view of science, if so please correct me, I would like to see exactly how and where these ideas fall short.
I understand that one could test the alternate hypothesis that the litmus paper is faulty, but then that test allows for an alternate hypothesis, and then another alternate hypothesis ad infinitum. Yes, one can say that a given hypothesis appears more likely, but that doesn't mean it has been falsified. It has simply been shown to be highly unlikely. The point I am trying to get at, (perhaps unsuccessfully) is that it isn't falsification that matters in science. It's likelihood, or practicality, or some other desideratum that is required to conclude that evolution and not ID is a scientific theory. Thus your post that because ID is not falsifiable therefore not science isn't true. ID may not be science, but it is for a reason as yet unstated. Even in your reply you stated that one hypothesis become more likely. Yes, it may be highly likely that a particular empirical statement is false, but it is not proven (proven as in beyond a doubt, must be so, like 1+1=2) to be untrue. it has merely shown to be more likely to be true than another theory. If my reasoning here is faulty please correct me. I am very interested to see where I may or may not be going wrong, and how this plays out. (For what it's worth, I believe this is the going theory in Philosophy of Science, which doesn't necessarily mean anything, but may help clarify what I am saying)
Science, or evolution in this case, is not made up of falsifiable statements. No empirical observation, including those of evolution, are falsifiable. For example, if one were to say that litmus paper turns blue in substance A, and then said person were to put their litmus paper in substance A and it were to turn red, one would obviously conclude that the empirical observation, that litmus paper turns blue in substance A, were falsified. That is, shown to be false or otherwise lacking in truth-value. But it hasn't been shown that litmus paper doesn't turn blue in substance A. It could be the case that the litmus paper was faulty, or that the lab assistant but in substance B instead of substance A. We could even posit that magic elves changed the results. It is obviously absurd to conclude that magic elves played any part, but the point is that whenever falsification of empirical statements is said to occur one could just as easily make an ad-hoc change to their theory. Presumably a reasonable one such as: 'this litmus paper is faulty'. What this goes to show is that falsification through experimentation is not enough to account for something being a scientific theory. What more is needed can be argued. I will tentativly throw out that a Scientific theory is one that has to do with the natural world, which ID does. Your post, as it stands, fails to show that ID != science because not being falsifiable is something held by all scientific theories (with varying degrees of absurdity). Strictly speaking, evolution is not falsifiable. What discussion on evolution vs. ID vs. creationism, needs is to find the fundamental qualities that make something science or not, and then to judge these theories by those standards. Falsification is not such a standard (however much it is used as one in popular media and discussions).
sorry, but if we switched everyone over to linux, the only way joe user would ever figure out to install something is through apt (or other like package manager depending on distro). which if i remember correctly would eliminate the problem of users installing trojans/crap that lies about what it does due to the fact that it is 1) open source so someone would notice what it really does, and 2) if said system were ubuntu for example, wouldn't canonical check the packages listed in apt and not allow such programs. While it is still possible that such infections could get through, botnets would cease to be worth while due to the low numbers. I may be wrong about this, if so, sorry for wasting your time.
what if those who edit anonymously have a lower rank than those that edit with a name. Those that prove their identity as an "expert" (say department head at an ivy league school) can lock their posts from editing by anyone that does not meet their higher level of expertise. Perhaps place "expert" text in blue, "knowlegeble persons" text in red, and the average anonymous editor in black. blue can edit blue, red can edit red, and black can edit black. while it will take a full time staff to verify the identites of "experts" and subsequently allow them blue text on pages they are experts in, it shouldn't require too much overhead, while possibly giving wikipedia more authority.
just an idea, would there be any major problems with such an approach?
The "After all, if something couldn't come from nothing how did God come about?" question is not a valid one. For an indepth explanation please read augustine, aquinas, c.s. lewis, I think descartes version of the ontological argument even hits on this, but really any book on christian apologetics will help you out. A very rough sketch of the arguement is that God, by definition, needs to exist without being casued. Everything in this universe needs a cause, so what caused it? For Aristotle it was the unmoved mover, for creatonists it is the Christian God. That which necesarily exists without needing to be caused. That is one of the attributes of the creationist God (or really anybodys God). To say what caused God, ok say x caused God then what caused x? It goes on forever eventually something must exist that needs no cause. That something is God. While I and many other christians don't agree with the creationists attack on evolution, it is a logical fallacy to commute one wrong step with all of christianity being false. As I can't prove it in depth in a post on/. please refer to any apologist, c.s. Lewis is my favorite for a more conclusive step by step account.
i hope this isn't me being stupid...but i've used several different clients on windows, linux and mac. mostly all can do file transfers. how about sending a folder, namely several files at once, sending one at a time is soooooo annoying and seems kind of stupid
maybe its just me
i had the same problem, google it!! on vlc's website there is a solution, its a bug and invovles deleting a few preference files in/Users//library/preferences/ im recalling this from memory from a few months ago as i am too lazy to give exact instructions but once the right file and folder are deleted problem solved, for me at least. now when you go into preferences only change one item at a time until you figure out which one is causing the bug:)
so if someone(s) were to set up a server to host files that users place on it to be retreived only by the user that posted said files, and said files must be say.mp3 and there is no password, i.e. anyone can log on as anyone else adn all data sent encrypted, and a list of all files and there associated users was posted on a website, besides bandwidth problems why wouldn't this work especially if the someone(s) charged say a one time fee of $5 for access to "store your files" as a safe backup. also a program to keep duplicate "files" (tracks) would be needed so there aren't 12 copies of "thriller" on the server.
this is similar to what.mac is, the backing up data on third party servers part, so theoretically it should be legal, IANAL and wouldn't konw how to set this up but shouldn't it be legal for me to do, hard to punish users of and effectively allow all the same p2p music sharing anyone wants? without worry of problems, also should cut down on malware in system since only one copy would be retained, validating a single copy of all songs is much easeir then keeping malware out of say limewire
well the good news for all this is that it seems we now must have relative privacy. the fbi wouldn't be making a fuss and wouldn't need help to establish their police state if they already had it.
if the fbi could at this moment tap into your computer they wouldn't be attempting to force others to let them in. i think this shows what the fbi is currently capable of and all we need are some "ineffective" networks admins at college campuses to keep this from working.
i.e. saying it will cost too much b/c they don't want to implement the fbi's spying on students
so we have an fbi that can't watch us without help and universities that are unwilling to help, all seems well right now, hopefully that won't change.
ok so all the/. community gets pissed and boycots sony. does sony care that much? when will a disgruntled/.er break into sony's computers and install there very own f****** rootkit except with a whole slew of $sys$ viruses? anything to cause them the pain they are causing windows users with this.
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I was not intending to set up a straw man (although I can see how it would be taken as one). My grammar was poor in my first line. I did not mean to equate science with evolution. Simply to point out that Scientific (scientific theories, not science, sorry) theories in generally and evolution in particular are unable to be falsified, as in proven false. I was trying to point out something similar to what you concluded. Namely, that science doesn't disprove one way or another it only shows one thing as more likely than another. As you said, 'evolution' cannot be falsified. The post I replied to amounted to saying that only things that are falsifiable are science. Evolution is not falsifiable. One may be able to show the probablity of evolution vs. ID, but this is not what the original post stated. Furthermore, Things can be shown as more likely or less likely outside of empirical observation and experimentation. Would these then be scientific theories? On what grounds does one determine which is more or less likely? Yes, one could experiment or take empirical observations, but these, like in the case with the litmus paper, only show likely-hood. At some point in order to say that it is true that theory x is more likely than theory Y one must assert some framework for making this judgment or face an infinite regress of experimentation. where does this framework come from? I recognize science (perhaps incorrectly) to work with pragmatism. What works is what is true. Or perhaps, to put it another way, the preferred theory is the one with greater explanatory power. On this basis ID can be treated as a scientific theory and compared with evolution. We can determine which has the greatest explanatory power, or is the most practical. This conclusion is incompatible with the original post's conclusion that in order to be science a theory must be falsifiable. I may be incorrect in this view of science, if so please correct me, I would like to see exactly how and where these ideas fall short.
I understand that one could test the alternate hypothesis that the litmus paper is faulty, but then that test allows for an alternate hypothesis, and then another alternate hypothesis ad infinitum. Yes, one can say that a given hypothesis appears more likely, but that doesn't mean it has been falsified. It has simply been shown to be highly unlikely. The point I am trying to get at, (perhaps unsuccessfully) is that it isn't falsification that matters in science. It's likelihood, or practicality, or some other desideratum that is required to conclude that evolution and not ID is a scientific theory. Thus your post that because ID is not falsifiable therefore not science isn't true. ID may not be science, but it is for a reason as yet unstated. Even in your reply you stated that one hypothesis become more likely. Yes, it may be highly likely that a particular empirical statement is false, but it is not proven (proven as in beyond a doubt, must be so, like 1+1=2) to be untrue. it has merely shown to be more likely to be true than another theory. If my reasoning here is faulty please correct me. I am very interested to see where I may or may not be going wrong, and how this plays out. (For what it's worth, I believe this is the going theory in Philosophy of Science, which doesn't necessarily mean anything, but may help clarify what I am saying)
Science, or evolution in this case, is not made up of falsifiable statements. No empirical observation, including those of evolution, are falsifiable. For example, if one were to say that litmus paper turns blue in substance A, and then said person were to put their litmus paper in substance A and it were to turn red, one would obviously conclude that the empirical observation, that litmus paper turns blue in substance A, were falsified. That is, shown to be false or otherwise lacking in truth-value. But it hasn't been shown that litmus paper doesn't turn blue in substance A. It could be the case that the litmus paper was faulty, or that the lab assistant but in substance B instead of substance A. We could even posit that magic elves changed the results. It is obviously absurd to conclude that magic elves played any part, but the point is that whenever falsification of empirical statements is said to occur one could just as easily make an ad-hoc change to their theory. Presumably a reasonable one such as: 'this litmus paper is faulty'. What this goes to show is that falsification through experimentation is not enough to account for something being a scientific theory. What more is needed can be argued. I will tentativly throw out that a Scientific theory is one that has to do with the natural world, which ID does. Your post, as it stands, fails to show that ID != science because not being falsifiable is something held by all scientific theories (with varying degrees of absurdity). Strictly speaking, evolution is not falsifiable. What discussion on evolution vs. ID vs. creationism, needs is to find the fundamental qualities that make something science or not, and then to judge these theories by those standards. Falsification is not such a standard (however much it is used as one in popular media and discussions).
sorry, but if we switched everyone over to linux, the only way joe user would ever figure out to install something is through apt (or other like package manager depending on distro). which if i remember correctly would eliminate the problem of users installing trojans/crap that lies about what it does due to the fact that it is 1) open source so someone would notice what it really does, and 2) if said system were ubuntu for example, wouldn't canonical check the packages listed in apt and not allow such programs. While it is still possible that such infections could get through, botnets would cease to be worth while due to the low numbers. I may be wrong about this, if so, sorry for wasting your time.
what if those who edit anonymously have a lower rank than those that edit with a name. Those that prove their identity as an "expert" (say department head at an ivy league school) can lock their posts from editing by anyone that does not meet their higher level of expertise. Perhaps place "expert" text in blue, "knowlegeble persons" text in red, and the average anonymous editor in black. blue can edit blue, red can edit red, and black can edit black. while it will take a full time staff to verify the identites of "experts" and subsequently allow them blue text on pages they are experts in, it shouldn't require too much overhead, while possibly giving wikipedia more authority. just an idea, would there be any major problems with such an approach?
The "After all, if something couldn't come from nothing how did God come about?" question is not a valid one. For an indepth explanation please read augustine, aquinas, c.s. lewis, I think descartes version of the ontological argument even hits on this, but really any book on christian apologetics will help you out. A very rough sketch of the arguement is that God, by definition, needs to exist without being casued. Everything in this universe needs a cause, so what caused it? For Aristotle it was the unmoved mover, for creatonists it is the Christian God. That which necesarily exists without needing to be caused. That is one of the attributes of the creationist God (or really anybodys God). To say what caused God, ok say x caused God then what caused x? It goes on forever eventually something must exist that needs no cause. That something is God. While I and many other christians don't agree with the creationists attack on evolution, it is a logical fallacy to commute one wrong step with all of christianity being false. As I can't prove it in depth in a post on /. please refer to any apologist, c.s. Lewis is my favorite for a more conclusive step by step account.
your friendly neighborhood philosophy student
i hope this isn't me being stupid...but i've used several different clients on windows, linux and mac. mostly all can do file transfers. how about sending a folder, namely several files at once, sending one at a time is soooooo annoying and seems kind of stupid maybe its just me
i had the same problem, google it!! on vlc's website there is a solution, its a bug and invovles deleting a few preference files in /Users//library/preferences/ im recalling this from memory from a few months ago as i am too lazy to give exact instructions but once the right file and folder are deleted problem solved, for me at least. now when you go into preferences only change one item at a time until you figure out which one is causing the bug :)
so if someone(s) were to set up a server to host files that users place on it to be retreived only by the user that posted said files, and said files must be say .mp3 and there is no password, i.e. anyone can log on as anyone else adn all data sent encrypted, and a list of all files and there associated users was posted on a website, besides bandwidth problems why wouldn't this work especially if the someone(s) charged say a one time fee of $5 for access to "store your files" as a safe backup. also a program to keep duplicate "files" (tracks) would be needed so there aren't 12 copies of "thriller" on the server.
.mac is, the backing up data on third party servers part, so theoretically it should be legal, IANAL and wouldn't konw how to set this up but shouldn't it be legal for me to do, hard to punish users of and effectively allow all the same p2p music sharing anyone wants? without worry of problems, also should cut down on malware in system since only one copy would be retained, validating a single copy of all songs is much easeir then keeping malware out of say limewire
this is similar to what
well the good news for all this is that it seems we now must have relative privacy. the fbi wouldn't be making a fuss and wouldn't need help to establish their police state if they already had it.
if the fbi could at this moment tap into your computer they wouldn't be attempting to force others to let them in. i think this shows what the fbi is currently capable of and all we need are some "ineffective" networks admins at college campuses to keep this from working.
i.e. saying it will cost too much b/c they don't want to implement the fbi's spying on students
so we have an fbi that can't watch us without help and universities that are unwilling to help, all seems well right now, hopefully that won't change.
IMHO
ok so all the /. community gets pissed and boycots sony. does sony care that much? when will a disgruntled /.er break into sony's computers and install there very own f****** rootkit except with a whole slew of $sys$ viruses? anything to cause them the pain they are causing windows users with this.