Box 1 is random to the best of our ability. Sure we can discuss the philisophical question of free will vs determinism and absolute cause and effect, and whether or not something can be truly random.
But we can agree that rigth now, nobody has the faintest idea what's going to come out of box 1 next.
Box 2 isn't random at all. It runs in lock step to box 1. Anyone with access to box 1 knows what's going to come out of box 2.
Meanwhile Click-to-run Outlook (which short of a VLA is the only way to get outlook) won't run Outlook Add ons without some serious arm twisting -- breaking a great many apps... from Google apps sync to CRM stuff.
In essence, software like Start8 is actively fighting Microsoft.
Microsoft has never been particularly safe for heavy shell modifications.
If I were looking to deploy win8, and I wanted a start menu clone, I'd pick one that was merely a taskbar widget/app (and therefor just ran as a reglar app) that ran with windows 8 rather than try to go start8's whole hog pitched battle vs Microsoft. Honestly, I don't WANT windows 7 retrofit into windows 8. I think the start screen has its place -- like OSXs launchpad. So I'm happy to have it around. But I want windows 7 desktop search, too. I'd prefer an official widget from MS... but a 3rd party one for that is no more at risk of breaking than any other software I run.
They just drag their windows around until they get what they want.
Gee I wonder why someone thought that maybe it could be improved on. Personally I too like my free form layered multiple windows... but i acknowledge i spend a fair bit of time dragging them around, and worse after finding the right window looking for the right tab in the window. I also acknowledge that such a scheme is worse on a laptop with limited screen space, and abysmal on a touch enabled device.
Maybe a new paradigm would be better. I'm going to be open minded enough to at least give it a fair shake.
Indeed, plenty of SO/HO users are ready to whip up a few GPOs and deploy them through their AD.
Changing the defaults to something sensible is tedious but not difficult. SOHO users just have to do it once.
Now you have to buy a new computer and call the support contractor right away because the computer is not usable "out of the box."
Cleaning up the start screen and creating a couple good quicklaunch taskbar menus is hardly a huge problem.
At least he didn't go full-retard and inject a few random bits of punctuation... Modhri could have been Mod'hr@i.
But yeah, he fails rule #1 of how people use language. Foreign words collide with a language and they get modified to suit the convention of the language.
Modhri?... probably everyone calls them Mods or Moths. Kalixiri -> clackers. Zhirrzh -> Zeroes. Quanska? Quacks or Quanks. Pom? yeh... that gets to stay Pom.
People opposing the new tiles menu oppose regressions that impede work.
The same people that opposed the Windows XP start menu, for the same reason.
The same people that opposed the Windows Vista/7 start menu, for the same reason.
Does it really "impeded work" or is it just different? I mean, OSX doesn't have a start menu... nor do any of my linux boxes... and I've never said to myself... you know what this needs? A start menu!
Those 3rd party add-ons are not a good option for a business. Microsoft can break the functionality at any time - and they did it once already, with 8.1.
True of all 3rd party software. All the time.
Or can you really not think of a single microsoft patch or service pack that broke some line-of-business application, that needed a vendor supplied fix? Because its a pretty regular occurence.
It won't be because it is not an improvement, it's a regress to Windows 3.0. Full-screen, single window Program Manager.
No, its becoming a tiling window manager, something several linux users run on their own systems by choice and swear by it. So I'm actually quite interested to see how that whole experiment pans out.
But we're not talking about the 'metro apps'. We're talking about the start screen. I run win 8.1 on one of my laptops -- and honestly the start screen doesn't bug me, because I really rarely see it. Ive organized my desktop so that i don't have to, so the fact that it exists really isn't an issue.
I still want a good official desktop search widget that replicates that one aspect of the win7 start menu. And I think most of microsofts defaults for the start screen are stupid on a desktop... but that's all stuff that easily fixable with group policy.
Doesn't it bother you that many people in a social group coming to the same belief in something clearly false can and does occur spontaneously?
Yes.
The cargo cults, for example?
Cargo cults are particularly interesting, because unlike a typical religion they had direct evidence that the practices they were attempting to emulate did in fact "work". They'd seen with their own eyes the planes carrying supplies land after the westerners built a runway and then stood on it waving their batons. Surely if they could build a passable runway and wave their arms just so the planes carrying supplies would return...
Given their complete lack of education and understanding of what was going on, they had reached very rational, albeit completely false, conclusions.
I think what bothers me most of all is how highly regarded relgion and religious texts and leaders are held. You can't criticise them without blacklash - usually very strong backlash.
Yeah, as soon as someone ascribes a person or a text or an object as being divine or divinely influenced or doing god's work, it becomes offensive to them to have someone else question it.
This is deeply flawed critical thinking, and it does bother me that so many people have been indoctrinated to be hostile to introspection and questioning their own beliefs.
AND at least one service pack has been released to address outstanding issues since its public release,
Wouldn't you consider 8.1 as a service pack to 8.0 ?
AND we discover a way to disable the "Tiles" start screen
The 3rd party add-ons do that well enough today. If you haven't "discovered" them yet, you haven't been looking. But honestly, by the time your company is likely to move to consider moving past 7, maybe you'll want to reconsider that.
2-3 years from now, I figure the new start screen will have largely been adopted as mainstream (at least if Microsoft doesn't abandon it in favor of a whole new UI next year...) and by then using it at work might be acceptable for the vast majority of employees, with minimal training.
Sure you'll have a few luddites who still get angry if the desktop doesn't look like what they used in 1998 but they can either adapt or be replaced.
Not that I'm suggesting rolling out the start screen now... I'm just saying make that decision a few years out. When XP launched everybody in business always set the classic theme to make it look more like Windows 2000. by 2005 that practice was long dead... people all had XP at home, and had acclimatized to the new start menu.
I think we'll see that repeat again with the start screen, although it may take a bit longer. since its a lot more different and computers last longer now.
And again... it all depends on what microsoft does... sitcks with it and further improves it... or if they throw it under the bus with Zune and Silverlight...:)
I'm starting to see it. Defininitely not common yet, and mostly in small businesses or new businesses (e.g 1-2 servers and 20 computers, with 5-20 employees) but its out there.
I think I see 8 more than I saw Vista the same timeframe after launch... no hard data, just gut, So take it for the practically nothing that is worth.:)
Seriously, though, this is another utility to download ad server lists, fair enough, but when enough people do this, content providers will just switch to serving the ads directly, the ad companies will forward it to them.
Maybe.
The increased costs of serving the ads directly may outweigh the return on the ads, breaking the business model.
Or at least force the ads to be more relevant, less bandwidth heavy, etc...
Supposing those people believe it but the majority don't?
Those 5+ people specifically, were just chosen as examples. Singled out as being presumably more reliable and people that you would take as authority figures, vs 5 random people.
Whether or not its a "strict majority of people" isn't really the issue, but the idea that its several people you know and/or respect.
Its also worth pointing out here that the odds of belief in religion appear to be strongly correlated with how much of your social circle believes the same thing.
I think that's because any doubts you might personally develop are overwhelmed if you are surrounded the unwavering faithful... while if you belong to a circle of mixed religions, and non-beliefs you have a lot more diverse set of beliefs of people you respect ("authority figures") to draw on to develop your own position.
And more importantly, there is no evidence in favor?
For most people (ie not young earthers) religion is a largely a metaphysical question, and its evidence depends on how and what meaning you take away from the fact of your own existence and the existence of the universe around you.
For some that is compelling evidence for others it is no evidence at all. Personally I don't see much point in debating it, except as an interesting philisophical exercise -- I certainly don't think a conclusive satisfactory answer to how and why the universe exists is within our grasp... yet.
I'm not suggesting one should put religion in the same category as science in terms of how rational it is to believe in it.
But with religion, there is no expectation that any of it was based on evidence.
Exactly. So its perfectly rational not to believe in it. We both agree on that I'm sure.
However, belief in a religion is not a "delusion" just because its rational not to believe in it.
Lets take young earth creationism... at this stage of the game I consider that pretty delusional. The only way I could see anyone could rationally believe in it is if their education was badly lacking, their critical thinking skills were badly lacking, and they were surrounded by other people who believed it and who pressured them to believe it.
Unfortunately those people exist.
Now lets look back at your reasoned analysis of why belief in science was inherently on a much better foundation. And then start knocking the pillars out... lets take away some of your eduction so you don't really understand the scientific method, the implications of theory - prediction - experimentation - reproducibility. Then lets impair your logic and critical thinking skills a bit. Better still lets also indoctrinate you from birth to distrust scientists and those pushing 'science'.
Not only would you unable to formulate why science is better grounded than religion, but you'd be hostile and closed minded to anyone who tried.
You aren't "delusional" for believing young earth creationism, you are still a rational product of your upbringing.... but you are trapped by that upbringing and your circumstances.
I'm not arguing who is delusional, but your definition leaves much to be desired.
Merely a clarification that extraordinary beliefs need correspondingly extraordinary evidence. An extraordinary belief with no evidence or weak evidence is a sign of delusion.
Religious beliefs handed down through parents and respected authority figures, coupled with wide public acceptance of the "truth of religion" qualifies as good evidence to rationally hold the same beliefs, even in the absence of strong personal evidence.
What if someone trusted (your parent, maybe) told you that his car turns into a dog when no one is looking and roams the neighbourhood stealing sausages, which it then turns into gasoline, and you believe it?
Suppose my father confirmed your story? And my grandmother? And my school teacher. And the neighbor. And the pastor at the church. And the mayor of my city. And the president of the united states? They all confirm it.
Yes, at that point, in the absence of good direct evidence that it WASN'T true then it would be rational to believe it.
Note though that your particular example has lots of tests. Is the neighborhood really losing sausages? Will my neighbors corroborate the story? Have they seen the dog, lost sausages, or even heard of this phenomena. If I leave sausages in the garage will they be there in the morning. If I watch my parents (and anyone else who habitually uses it) continually for a week, but not the car itself, does it have more gas in it the next day? One can rapidly become skeptical of this claim for a myriad of reasons. The main claims religion makes, in contrast, are not so easily testable --
Come to think of it... your sausage devouring car story has a lot of similarities to the story many of us believed as young children about a magical rabbit that tours the world in a single night producing and hiding chocolate eggs for them to find. Lots of young kids believe this, based on the word of their parents, other adults around them, and the sometimes elaborate hoax that is played on them. Why do we stop believing in the bunny? Because a we accumulate evidence that its not true, and as we grow up we learn the adults around us don't believe it either, and the hoax is admitted etc.
But religion? It avoids evidence like shadows avoid the sun, and unlike the easter bunny, the president still proclaims his belief in God and attends church... so while we can discard the bunny between the age of 5 and 10 religion's got a much better hold.
Why would that be inconsistent? What makes you think we couldn't diagnose someone as delusional despite them being coincidentally correct?
What did we not too long ago call someone who claimed that every phone call you make, every text message you send, and every email is recorded by the government. That they are spying on everyone including the president and the supreme court, and the have even bugged the UN. That they have inserted back doors into routers, and other network infrastructure, and as a result have compromised most the encryption on the internet?
The question to the people who thought that, in determining whether they are delusional or not is -why- they thought that? Did they read it in the toast pattern on their morning waffles? Did an alien mention it during an anal probing session?
What if Edward Snowden didn't have the documents to back up his claims? Would we diagnose him as having paranoid delusions? Quite possibly.
Even today a lot of people accuse Manning of being delusional... seeing massive human rights violations and massive illegal activity in 'business as usual'.
Was Manning deluded? Or are his critics deluding themselves? Or both?:)
Any definition of delusion that depends on the subject (i.e. WHO is doing the believing) is marred, in my opinion.
The definition hinges on "why you beleive" not "who you are", which makes perfect sense.
Beleiving something an authority figure told you is quite different than a belief with a spontaneous genesis.
If I spontaneously and without evidence believe my neighbor lady is in witness protection because she used to do hits for the mob, and is now an informant to the FBI that's delusional.
If I believe precisely the same thing, because a trusted family member in the FBI told me so. Then at worst I'm gullible, but not delusional.
This isn't as good as I'd hoped. But its not "bad". Its not taking anything away we didn't have before, and it gives us options we didn't used to have.
I am happy about this feature, but not satisfied with it.
It lets me create steam accounts for my kids and let them use my library. This is good -- now my friends won't message them, invite them to play games, etc. Now they can each have their own steam-cloud save files, and their own acheivements, etc.
Up until now I've just logged in for them, told them they aren't allowed to buy anything, and to ignore any messages or invites. And they've been good about it but this still makes it better.
But the big problem I had (and still have) with steam is the complete lock on the entire library. If my kids were playing on my account before, I couldn't play. I couldn't play the same game (and I was fine with that) but I also couldn't play a different game -- if my son is playing scribblenauts I can't play Left 4 Dead. And I have always disagreed with that.
As it stands now, the situation there hasn't changed. If my son is logged in to his account, playing a game on my library I still can't play a different game. So for me, although this feature is a step forward it still falls short.
Still no ability to play multiplayer with somebody without them buying the game, the one spot where I feel consoles definitely have the advantage over PC games.
Your being far too cynical here; this is a HUGE deal.
Consoles require you to have two copies of a game to play multiplayer too for the same class of multiplayer play.
The notable exception being split-screen multiplayer, and steam supports split screen multiplayer with just one copy the same as any console -- its the games that don't offer it. Its nothing to do with steam that few pc games support split screen multiplayer games -- and as more people are hooking their PCs up to the TV and buying game controllers -- then there might soon be enough of a market for split screen games on the PC to justify making them.
When you can watch anything you want, any time you want, anywhere you want, why would anyone spend money on a single-use device like a TV to conform to a very outdated form of media consumption?
My family watches movies and plays video games on the big screen. Sure we could have tablets and laptops and headphones and use those instead to watch what we want and play what we want... oh wait we do have those.
And we still use the big screen TV. Maybe we're more sociable than you and like to do things together and all of us crowding around a 13" laptop to watch a movie is exactly as stupid as it sounds.
So I must answer the article's question with a question, why would I throw hundreds of dollars into a purchase which can only do one thing
Oh I get it, maybe your TV is broken. You are aware that its not just a dark mirror righ or some avant garde high-art concept piece that just dimly relfects you own life back you? Try plugging something into those holes at the back and turning it on.
My new 42" LED backlit screen consumes about 1/3rd the power (50-60W vs 140-150) of my first generation 1080p LCD,
What do you work out the payback of that to be? ~$30/year assuming you watch TV 8 hours a day, every day. I sure hope power consumption wasn't a major factor for you.
I probably wouldn't have upgraded if it hadn't been for a ghosting artifact caused by my HTPC menu getting burned in
So your old TV was basically broken. You'd probably have bought a new one fairly soon even if technology hadn't moved much.
I can see this being a problem for deaf people, but if you're not deaf, what's so horribly problematic with the model all manufacturers have been using the past 15 years
Not all manufacturers have been using that model. My phone has an LED. My phone before that had one. 15 years ago... lets see... I had a StarTAC... it had an LED that would flash if i had missed calls or voicemail too.
I had an iphone 3GS for a couple years, and that's probably the only phone i've ever had without one. And it was definitely a feature I missed. My wife refuses to consider a phone without an LED she relies on it so much. Her friends are pretty chatty, so she doesn't want it to beep or vibrate every time she gets a message, and she doesn't always want to answer texts right away from them if she's busy. But she also doesn't want "no notification" because then she has to OCD check it all the time and that's annoying too... LED is perfect for "check it at glance even from across the room"
repeating the relevant alarm sound (SMS etc.) once every minute until the user picks the phone up?
Maybe, just maybe, I don't want my phone to beep to bug me and everyone around me every single minute that I don't go fondle it?
Maybe I like being able to pop it on the charger and then tell at a glance whether I have new messages. So I can check when I want to check, without having to move, and without it disrupting me and everyone else around me, every minute.
And current phones with programmable multicolor led support, I can know at a glance whether its from someone important enough to get up and go deal with or not.
Critical system down at work is a different LED color than other stuff...
So, tell me how this is smarter and safer than letting people use low-risk investments, again?
Let me rephrase your two prongs:
"we're banking on the future faith and trust of the US government in the future, 100%"
In other words, we are guaranteeing people will have money for retirement as long as the will of the people is sufficient to maintain the system. Your right, that's a bit of a leap of faith.
vs* "letting people use low-risk investments"
In other words, some people aren't going to have enough money, guaranteed. Because making low risk investments isn't guaranteed to give every indiviidual enough return to live on after inflation. Most will. Some won't.
* lets go back to that 'vs'... why is it one or the other? Because its not. My financial advisers aren't telling me "go ahead spend all your money because SS will take care of you." Is that what they've been telling you? They're telling me to save up, and that SS is a safety net that may or may not be able to support my weight.
I hope not to need it. But equally, I hope its there to support the weight of those who do -- including possibly me if my life doesn't go as planned, and I support it on that principle.
Slashdot Mirror
We could but we don't have to.
Box 1 is random to the best of our ability. Sure we can discuss the philisophical question of free will vs determinism and absolute cause and effect, and whether or not something can be truly random.
But we can agree that rigth now, nobody has the faintest idea what's going to come out of box 1 next.
Box 2 isn't random at all. It runs in lock step to box 1. Anyone with access to box 1 knows what's going to come out of box 2.
Breakage of a random application
Is called patch Tuesday? :)
Meanwhile Click-to-run Outlook (which short of a VLA is the only way to get outlook) won't run Outlook Add ons without some serious arm twisting -- breaking a great many apps... from Google apps sync to CRM stuff.
In essence, software like Start8 is actively fighting Microsoft.
Microsoft has never been particularly safe for heavy shell modifications.
If I were looking to deploy win8, and I wanted a start menu clone, I'd pick one that was merely a taskbar widget/app (and therefor just ran as a reglar app) that ran with windows 8 rather than try to go start8's whole hog pitched battle vs Microsoft. Honestly, I don't WANT windows 7 retrofit into windows 8. I think the start screen has its place -- like OSXs launchpad. So I'm happy to have it around. But I want windows 7 desktop search, too. I'd prefer an official widget from MS... but a 3rd party one for that is no more at risk of breaking than any other software I run.
They just drag their windows around until they get what they want.
Gee I wonder why someone thought that maybe it could be improved on. Personally I too like my free form layered multiple windows... but i acknowledge i spend a fair bit of time dragging them around, and worse after finding the right window looking for the right tab in the window. I also acknowledge that such a scheme is worse on a laptop with limited screen space, and abysmal on a touch enabled device.
Maybe a new paradigm would be better.
I'm going to be open minded enough to at least give it a fair shake.
Indeed, plenty of SO/HO users are ready to whip up a few GPOs and deploy them through their AD.
Changing the defaults to something sensible is tedious but not difficult. SOHO users just have to do it once.
Now you have to buy a new computer and call the support contractor right away because the computer is not usable "out of the box."
Cleaning up the start screen and creating a couple good quicklaunch taskbar menus is hardly a huge problem.
At least he didn't go full-retard and inject a few random bits of punctuation... Modhri could have been Mod'hr@i.
But yeah, he fails rule #1 of how people use language. Foreign words collide with a language and they get modified to suit the convention of the language.
Modhri? ... probably everyone calls them Mods or Moths. Kalixiri -> clackers. Zhirrzh -> Zeroes. Quanska? Quacks or Quanks. Pom? yeh... that gets to stay Pom.
People opposing the new tiles menu oppose regressions that impede work.
The same people that opposed the Windows XP start menu, for the same reason.
The same people that opposed the Windows Vista/7 start menu, for the same reason.
Does it really "impeded work" or is it just different? I mean, OSX doesn't have a start menu ... nor do any of my linux boxes... and I've never said to myself... you know what this needs? A start menu!
Those 3rd party add-ons are not a good option for a business. Microsoft can break the functionality at any time - and they did it once already, with 8.1.
True of all 3rd party software. All the time.
Or can you really not think of a single microsoft patch or service pack that broke some line-of-business application, that needed a vendor supplied fix? Because its a pretty regular occurence.
It won't be because it is not an improvement, it's a regress to Windows 3.0. Full-screen, single window Program Manager.
No, its becoming a tiling window manager, something several linux users run on their own systems by choice and swear by it. So I'm actually quite interested to see how that whole experiment pans out.
But we're not talking about the 'metro apps'. We're talking about the start screen. I run win 8.1 on one of my laptops -- and honestly the start screen doesn't bug me, because I really rarely see it. Ive organized my desktop so that i don't have to, so the fact that it exists really isn't an issue.
I still want a good official desktop search widget that replicates that one aspect of the win7 start menu. And I think most of microsofts defaults for the start screen are stupid on a desktop... but that's all stuff that easily fixable with group policy.
I am claiming that the same data can be produced by a random process or a non-random process.
Therefore one cannot merely examine the data to determine if its truly random. One MUST examine the process.
Doesn't it bother you that many people in a social group coming to the same belief in something clearly false can and does occur spontaneously?
Yes.
The cargo cults, for example?
Cargo cults are particularly interesting, because unlike a typical religion they had direct evidence that the practices they were attempting to emulate did in fact "work". They'd seen with their own eyes the planes carrying supplies land after the westerners built a runway and then stood on it waving their batons. Surely if they could build a passable runway and wave their arms just so the planes carrying supplies would return...
Given their complete lack of education and understanding of what was going on, they had reached very rational, albeit completely false, conclusions.
I think what bothers me most of all is how highly regarded relgion and religious texts and leaders are held. You can't criticise them without blacklash - usually very strong backlash.
Yeah, as soon as someone ascribes a person or a text or an object as being divine or divinely influenced or doing god's work, it becomes offensive to them to have someone else question it.
This is deeply flawed critical thinking, and it does bother me that so many people have been indoctrinated to be hostile to introspection and questioning their own beliefs.
AND at least one service pack has been released to address outstanding issues since its public release,
Wouldn't you consider 8.1 as a service pack to 8.0 ?
AND we discover a way to disable the "Tiles" start screen
The 3rd party add-ons do that well enough today. If you haven't "discovered" them yet, you haven't been looking. But honestly, by the time your company is likely to move to consider moving past 7, maybe you'll want to reconsider that.
2-3 years from now, I figure the new start screen will have largely been adopted as mainstream (at least if Microsoft doesn't abandon it in favor of a whole new UI next year...) and by then using it at work might be acceptable for the vast majority of employees, with minimal training.
Sure you'll have a few luddites who still get angry if the desktop doesn't look like what they used in 1998 but they can either adapt or be replaced.
Not that I'm suggesting rolling out the start screen now... I'm just saying make that decision a few years out. When XP launched everybody in business always set the classic theme to make it look more like Windows 2000. by 2005 that practice was long dead... people all had XP at home, and had acclimatized to the new start menu.
I think we'll see that repeat again with the start screen, although it may take a bit longer. since its a lot more different and computers last longer now.
And again... it all depends on what microsoft does... sitcks with it and further improves it... or if they throw it under the bus with Zune and Silverlight... :)
I'm starting to see it. Defininitely not common yet, and mostly in small businesses or new businesses (e.g 1-2 servers and 20 computers, with 5-20 employees) but its out there.
I think I see 8 more than I saw Vista the same timeframe after launch... no hard data, just gut, So take it for the practically nothing that is worth. :)
Seriously, though, this is another utility to download ad server lists, fair enough, but when enough people do this, content providers will just switch to serving the ads directly, the ad companies will forward it to them.
Maybe.
The increased costs of serving the ads directly may outweigh the return on the ads, breaking the business model.
Or at least force the ads to be more relevant, less bandwidth heavy, etc...
Both are wins.
Supposing those people believe it but the majority don't?
Those 5+ people specifically, were just chosen as examples. Singled out as being presumably more reliable and people that you would take as authority figures, vs 5 random people.
Whether or not its a "strict majority of people" isn't really the issue, but the idea that its several people you know and/or respect.
Its also worth pointing out here that the odds of belief in religion appear to be strongly correlated with how much of your social circle believes the same thing.
I think that's because any doubts you might personally develop are overwhelmed if you are surrounded the unwavering faithful... while if you belong to a circle of mixed religions, and non-beliefs you have a lot more diverse set of beliefs of people you respect ("authority figures") to draw on to develop your own position.
And more importantly, there is no evidence in favor?
For most people (ie not young earthers) religion is a largely a metaphysical question, and its evidence depends on how and what meaning you take away from the fact of your own existence and the existence of the universe around you.
For some that is compelling evidence for others it is no evidence at all. Personally I don't see much point in debating it, except as an interesting philisophical exercise -- I certainly don't think a conclusive satisfactory answer to how and why the universe exists is within our grasp... yet.
Actually, there is random data. That is, data generated by a random process.
I build 2 boxes
The first produces its data stream by a random process.
The 2nd box, as its process, copies the data from the first box.
Any test that would grade the first data stream as random would grade the 2nd data stream as random.
The 2nd data stream is not random, as the owner of the first box can tell you, in advance, what every output of the 2nd box will be.
With science...
I'm not suggesting one should put religion in the same category as science in terms of how rational it is to believe in it.
But with religion, there is no expectation that any of it was based on evidence.
Exactly. So its perfectly rational not to believe in it. We both agree on that I'm sure.
However, belief in a religion is not a "delusion" just because its rational not to believe in it.
Lets take young earth creationism... at this stage of the game I consider that pretty delusional. The only way I could see anyone could rationally believe in it is if their education was badly lacking, their critical thinking skills were badly lacking, and they were surrounded by other people who believed it and who pressured them to believe it.
Unfortunately those people exist.
Now lets look back at your reasoned analysis of why belief in science was inherently on a much better foundation. And then start knocking the pillars out... lets take away some of your eduction so you don't really understand the scientific method, the implications of theory - prediction - experimentation - reproducibility. Then lets impair your logic and critical thinking skills a bit. Better still lets also indoctrinate you from birth to distrust scientists and those pushing 'science'.
Not only would you unable to formulate why science is better grounded than religion, but you'd be hostile and closed minded to anyone who tried.
You aren't "delusional" for believing young earth creationism, you are still a rational product of your upbringing.... but you are trapped by that upbringing and your circumstances.
I'm not arguing who is delusional, but your definition leaves much to be desired.
Merely a clarification that extraordinary beliefs need correspondingly extraordinary evidence. An extraordinary belief with no evidence or weak evidence is a sign of delusion.
Religious beliefs handed down through parents and respected authority figures, coupled with wide public acceptance of the "truth of religion" qualifies as good evidence to rationally hold the same beliefs, even in the absence of strong personal evidence.
What if someone trusted (your parent, maybe) told you that his car turns into a dog when no one is looking and roams the neighbourhood stealing sausages, which it then turns into gasoline, and you believe it?
Suppose my father confirmed your story? And my grandmother? And my school teacher. And the neighbor. And the pastor at the church. And the mayor of my city. And the president of the united states? They all confirm it.
Yes, at that point, in the absence of good direct evidence that it WASN'T true then it would be rational to believe it.
Note though that your particular example has lots of tests. Is the neighborhood really losing sausages? Will my neighbors corroborate the story? Have they seen the dog, lost sausages, or even heard of this phenomena. If I leave sausages in the garage will they be there in the morning. If I watch my parents (and anyone else who habitually uses it) continually for a week, but not the car itself, does it have more gas in it the next day? One can rapidly become skeptical of this claim for a myriad of reasons. The main claims religion makes, in contrast, are not so easily testable --
Come to think of it... your sausage devouring car story has a lot of similarities to the story many of us believed as young children about a magical rabbit that tours the world in a single night producing and hiding chocolate eggs for them to find. Lots of young kids believe this, based on the word of their parents, other adults around them, and the sometimes elaborate hoax that is played on them. Why do we stop believing in the bunny? Because a we accumulate evidence that its not true, and as we grow up we learn the adults around us don't believe it either, and the hoax is admitted etc.
But religion? It avoids evidence like shadows avoid the sun, and unlike the easter bunny, the president still proclaims his belief in God and attends church... so while we can discard the bunny between the age of 5 and 10 religion's got a much better hold.
Otherwise something true could be a delusion!
Why would that be inconsistent? What makes you think we couldn't diagnose someone as delusional despite them being coincidentally correct?
What did we not too long ago call someone who claimed that every phone call you make, every text message you send, and every email is recorded by the government. That they are spying on everyone including the president and the supreme court, and the have even bugged the UN. That they have inserted back doors into routers, and other network infrastructure, and as a result have compromised most the encryption on the internet?
The question to the people who thought that, in determining whether they are delusional or not is -why- they thought that? Did they read it in the toast pattern on their morning waffles? Did an alien mention it during an anal probing session?
What if Edward Snowden didn't have the documents to back up his claims? Would we diagnose him as having paranoid delusions? Quite possibly.
Even today a lot of people accuse Manning of being delusional... seeing massive human rights violations and massive illegal activity in 'business as usual'.
Was Manning deluded? Or are his critics deluding themselves? Or both? :)
they would yet again introduce the Lisa and the crowd would go wild.
http://www.ijailbreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/iPhone-5-44s-4-3gs-3g-2g-boot.png
Any definition of delusion that depends on the subject (i.e. WHO is doing the believing) is marred, in my opinion.
The definition hinges on "why you beleive" not "who you are", which makes perfect sense.
Beleiving something an authority figure told you is quite different than a belief with a spontaneous genesis.
If I spontaneously and without evidence believe my neighbor lady is in witness protection because she used to do hits for the mob, and is now an informant to the FBI that's delusional.
If I believe precisely the same thing, because a trusted family member in the FBI told me so. Then at worst I'm gullible, but not delusional.
This isn't as good as I'd hoped. But its not "bad". Its not taking anything away we didn't have before, and it gives us options we didn't used to have.
I am happy about this feature, but not satisfied with it.
It lets me create steam accounts for my kids and let them use my library. This is good -- now my friends won't message them, invite them to play games, etc. Now they can each have their own steam-cloud save files, and their own acheivements, etc.
Up until now I've just logged in for them, told them they aren't allowed to buy anything, and to ignore any messages or invites. And they've been good about it but this still makes it better.
But the big problem I had (and still have) with steam is the complete lock on the entire library. If my kids were playing on my account before, I couldn't play. I couldn't play the same game (and I was fine with that) but I also couldn't play a different game -- if my son is playing scribblenauts I can't play Left 4 Dead. And I have always disagreed with that.
As it stands now, the situation there hasn't changed. If my son is logged in to his account, playing a game on my library I still can't play a different game. So for me, although this feature is a step forward it still falls short.
Still no ability to play multiplayer with somebody without them buying the game, the one spot where I feel consoles definitely have the advantage over PC games.
Your being far too cynical here; this is a HUGE deal.
Consoles require you to have two copies of a game to play multiplayer too for the same class of multiplayer play.
The notable exception being split-screen multiplayer, and steam supports split screen multiplayer with just one copy the same as any console -- its the games that don't offer it. Its nothing to do with steam that few pc games support split screen multiplayer games -- and as more people are hooking their PCs up to the TV and buying game controllers -- then there might soon be enough of a market for split screen games on the PC to justify making them.
I'd been drinking coffee, I'd be wearing coffee.
Thanks for this absolutely perfect post.
When you can watch anything you want, any time you want, anywhere you want, why would anyone spend money on a single-use device like a TV to conform to a very outdated form of media consumption?
My family watches movies and plays video games on the big screen. Sure we could have tablets and laptops and headphones and use those instead to watch what we want and play what we want... oh wait we do have those.
And we still use the big screen TV. Maybe we're more sociable than you and like to do things together and all of us crowding around a 13" laptop to watch a movie is exactly as stupid as it sounds.
So I must answer the article's question with a question, why would I throw hundreds of dollars into a purchase which can only do one thing
Oh I get it, maybe your TV is broken. You are aware that its not just a dark mirror righ or some avant garde high-art concept piece that just dimly relfects you own life back you? Try plugging something into those holes at the back and turning it on.
My new 42" LED backlit screen consumes about 1/3rd the power (50-60W vs 140-150) of my first generation 1080p LCD,
What do you work out the payback of that to be?
~$30/year assuming you watch TV 8 hours a day, every day. I sure hope power consumption wasn't a major factor for you.
I probably wouldn't have upgraded if it hadn't been for a ghosting artifact caused by my HTPC menu getting burned in
So your old TV was basically broken. You'd probably have bought a new one fairly soon even if technology hadn't moved much.
I can see this being a problem for deaf people, but if you're not deaf, what's so horribly problematic with the model all manufacturers have been using the past 15 years
Not all manufacturers have been using that model. My phone has an LED. My phone before that had one. 15 years ago... lets see... I had a StarTAC... it had an LED that would flash if i had missed calls or voicemail too.
I had an iphone 3GS for a couple years, and that's probably the only phone i've ever had without one. And it was definitely a feature I missed. My wife refuses to consider a phone without an LED she relies on it so much. Her friends are pretty chatty, so she doesn't want it to beep or vibrate every time she gets a message, and she doesn't always want to answer texts right away from them if she's busy. But she also doesn't want "no notification" because then she has to OCD check it all the time and that's annoying too... LED is perfect for "check it at glance even from across the room"
repeating the relevant alarm sound (SMS etc.) once every minute until the user picks the phone up?
Maybe, just maybe, I don't want my phone to beep to bug me and everyone around me every single minute that I don't go fondle it?
Maybe I like being able to pop it on the charger and then tell at a glance whether I have new messages. So I can check when I want to check, without having to move, and without it disrupting me and everyone else around me, every minute.
And current phones with programmable multicolor led support, I can know at a glance whether its from someone important enough to get up and go deal with or not.
Critical system down at work is a different LED color than other stuff...
So, tell me how this is smarter and safer than letting people use low-risk investments, again?
Let me rephrase your two prongs:
"we're banking on the future faith and trust of the US government in the future, 100%"
In other words, we are guaranteeing people will have money for retirement as long as the will of the people is sufficient to maintain the system. Your right, that's a bit of a leap of faith.
vs*
"letting people use low-risk investments"
In other words, some people aren't going to have enough money, guaranteed. Because making low risk investments isn't guaranteed to give every indiviidual enough return to live on after inflation. Most will. Some won't.
* lets go back to that 'vs' ... why is it one or the other? Because its not. My financial advisers aren't telling me "go ahead spend all your money because SS will take care of you." Is that what they've been telling you? They're telling me to save up, and that SS is a safety net that may or may not be able to support my weight.
I hope not to need it. But equally, I hope its there to support the weight of those who do -- including possibly me if my life doesn't go as planned, and I support it on that principle.