The best option in this scenario is was clearly and obviously B. It is not not just a little bit better, it's overwhelmingly better.
Having an elected president that isn't really liked by most Americans is hardly without precedent.
And that in no way excuses it. Our elected representatives should be the people that the most of us can agree one, not the person the largest minority liked most.
You'd get politicians who appeal to broader groups of people, and who didn't pander to "their base" all the time.
A book publisher is more likely to publish something by someone who has already written a couple years' of articles for magazines.
Or if you are some sort of celebrity. I mean, that's all I ever see doing book tours anymore... politicians, and pundits and whatnot peddling their ideas of what is right or wrong with some aspect of america in, now in book form for some extra cash.
I know it's pedantic, but it's your example... it's 4 hops. Learn to count. ("your" is implied to not be "the terrorist.")
It would be 4 hops to pull your records, but they don't need to pull your records. They get the fact that the mechanic serviced your car by pulling HIS records.
Nope. The real estate agent is 1 hop. They pull all his records. The daughter is 2 hops. They pull all her records. The mechanic is 3 hops. They pull all his records.
3 hops. The fact that the mechanic serviced your car will be captured, even though they never made the 4th hop to pull your records directly.
Plate is registered to an owner. Owner has driver's license. Driver's license has expiration date. License is expired? Pull the vehicle over. You'll either catch the owner driving with an expired license, another driver driving with an expired license, or a "Routine check, thank you for your time". What part aren't you getting?
The part where they leapt from owner has an expired drivrers license to probable cause to pull over the vehicle.
How many seniors are they hassling where the blind old guy stops driving and lets his license expire, but doesn't transfer the ownership title to his wife or girlfriend or kids...?
Or if someone gets their license suspended... points for speeding, a dui, etc.. law abiding citizens end up getting chauffered around by a friend, their spouse, significant other, etc... it would be nuts for them to get pulled over every time they drive past a police car because the owners license wasn't valid.
I can see the police pulling you over if they see an expired plate. That's just obvious.
But pulling over a vehicle where the owner has an expired license but zero information on whether the owner is the driver. That would require police to pull over vehicles with no actual evidence anything is wrong.
The voting system shouldn't be set up so that if I vote for the candiate I like most instead of the candidate I like 2nd most that it will ultimately be an advantage for the candidate i like least.
Its really that simple. Let us rank the candidates.
If 30% of the population like A, and is ok with B and hates C and 25% of the population likes B and is ok with A and hates C and 45% of the population likes C, is ok with B, and hates A
Then B should be selected. 100% of the population is ok with that choice. A group of toddlers choosing pizza toppings would figure this out.
But in grown-up politics... we select C. Supporters of A and B making up 55% of the population (a clear majority) end up with the candidate they are least happy with, while another option everyone was happy with is discarded. That's idiotic.
And people like you who willfully refuse to see a problem with it are the problem.
Defeatist attitudes and worrying about "wasting" your vote are the problem.
No, a voting system where we would even consider worrying about it is the problem. If you don't want us to worry about "wasting" our vote, or even worse worrying about "vote splitting" the two candidates we like most, then give us a system where that can't happen.
The only wasted vote is a vote for someone you don't like because you dislike their opponent even more.
Voting for the candidate I want most shouldn't EVER provide an advantage to the candidate I want least.
Scanning plates doesn't tell you if the drivers license registration is expired? Because scanning plates doesn't tell you who the driver is.
Scanning plates tells you the vehicles registration is expired; which is implicitly tied to the insurance. If the vehicles registration is expired, the vehicle is uninsured, and it is illegal to operate. If its involved in an accident while uninsured that causes all kinds of grief.
I have no issue with the police promptly and pro-actively removing obviously uninsured vehicles from the roads.
I don't really have an issue with them dealing with unlicensed drivers either; but I don't see how they would accomplish that with a license plate scanner.
Yeah the tech exists and can help find stolen cars and other flagged vehicles, but are you sure there isn't a simpler explanation? Around here for example, their are stickers on your plate that say when it expires.
It doesn't take a lot of time look at the plate, and see that its expired.
The stickers are even color coded so if its November 2013, and you've got an orange sticker indicating October 2013 they don't even have to read the date. All they have to do is see 'orange'.
Fair enough on all points, the only item I'd want to challenge:
So, in summary, religion is bullshit
Its a proposition of taking something on faith without proof. I agree that there is a lot of bullshit, but I don't think the idea of taking something on faith without proof is inherently utterly without merit.
If nothing else I take it on faith that my experience of the world is real; that you are real, and that when I die the world will go on without me. That this all isn't some elaborate figment of my imagination or dream. I have no proof of this, and no way to prove it.
and teaching it to young children as if it were fact is indoctrination.
Agreed. But one can also teach it to children without presenting it as fact, but merely as system of beliefs as a faith they can choose to accept or reject. And that is not indoctrination. Its how I was raised, and as a result I'm pretty agnostic. But I see some interesting stuff in religion too, and don't reject it all out of hand. And its worth noting that atheism is itself a faith proposition. Its rational and consistent with science... but there's no real proof.
But of course, it will never happen... because most voters spend far too much worrying about trying to cancel out votes for somebody they really *don't* want in... which is thinking more about how other people vote than how one really wants to vote themselves... and ultimately extremely silly way to exercise a right that as directly as possible puts citizens in charge of who will form their next government.
It is essentially a prisoners dilemma. The voters are behaving rationally.
That's why we have to change the rules.
The only advantage this style of voting has that I can see is that it doesn't take much effort.
Not to mention that games for windows are cheaper, have a wider selection, and go on sale more often.
Gaming on windows has gotten steadily better while the consoles have gotten steadily less appealing the last several years.
The only console I'll buy these days are the Nintendo ones because I like their first party exclusives, multi-player games, and unusual controllers (wii remotes, wii-u pad, enough to want them for the extra variety, and the family.)
Of course there is. It's right there in the word: Extrapolation.
Extrapolation doesn't prove that the data outside the set follow the the data inside the set. It only indicates what the data would look like if it is.
First, Goedel's argument is an argument about levels of abstraction
That's one way of looking at it. In any case I alluded to the possible existence of an 'analog of Godel's theory' in the physical world rather than a direct application of it.
Second, science doesn't bother with proving anything as true (outside of mathematics and logic), but with falsifying as many theories as possible so that we get ever closer to a best fit. It's a lot more like numeric math than logic.
In math and logic we start with axioms and then build up from there; while in the physical world we only have observations and are working out the 'axioms' by trial and error. And we have found very strong and useful ways of modelling the physical world with math.
Presumably if we "extrapolate" scientific progress to its logical conclusion in much the same way you have been then perhaps we will have the rules, and science and math converge. And if we can't, its just as interesting a question to ask why not.
As I said: They have a lot of experience in retreating into the areas where they are not easily falsified, so there is no such simple answer to your question.
You describe it as if it were a calculated approach. I don't see it that way.
But the small history you provided pretty much proves the point I'm making all the time.
We both agree religion has historically been used to explain the unexplainable; but that doesn't mean that there isn't stuff that eludes science. And modern religion isn't currently in any conflict or even forseeable conflict with it.
But - and that is my point again - even if we assume just for the sake of the argument that you are correct, then all the evidence we have indicates that all the current religions combined have no more clue about what lies beyond than my pet does.
Lol. I don't disagree with that. I guess that's where faith comes in. That Jesus had divine genesis or that Buddha's awakening was true enlightenment or whatever. Still your pet argument has merit, my cat appears thoroughly content with its life and maybe it knows something we don't.:)
I didn't bring up Iraq to bash Bush, I brought it up to contrast the tabloid-exaggeration of "eco-terrorism" with real violence.
I know, and I use it to bash Bush either. My argument there is that we can be motivated to war without religion. If religion were eliminated we'd stop using it as an excuse to kill people, but I'm doubtful we'd fight less. We'll just find other excuses.
Legally, the fourth amendment is generally held to mean that the government can't disrupt your life with its searches or target someone specifically without a good enough reason to convince a judge.
So it would be legal to search our homes with tiny insect drones as long as they search all our homes?
It doesn't disrupt our lives, and its not targeting someone specifically.
The argument really shouldn't be "is that legal?", it should be "that's not what we as a society want, so make it illegal and amend the constitution to do it if we have to."
This is -why- the constitution is a "living document"; we're supposed to be able to fix it when a hole like this shows up. We shouldn't have to make difficult reaching arguments about how a surveillance state is a 1st or 4th amendment violation.
False. 0.5^1000 == 0.5^1000 no matter how many trials there are
Your right of course. But he's saying the longer you flip a coin, the more likely you will see an occurrence of 1000 heads in a row, and this is true.
Lets look at a smaller set 2 heads in a row:
The odds when flipping a coin twice is 0.5^2. or 1 in 4. The odds when flipping a coin twice more is again 1 in 4. repeat ad nauseum, which is your argument.
His observation is that if you flip it 3 times, the odds of two heads coming up in a row increases, and it does. It's now 3 in 8 which is greater than 1 in 4. If you flip it 4 times... its up to 8 in 16 (or 50%), 5 times, and your odds get to 19/32 which is almost 60%, 6 times 51/64 (almost 80%).
That doesn't change the odds of a superstorm happening next year, or next week. Its still a 1 in 700 year probability. But the thing about statistically unlikely things is not only that they can happen, but that they DO happen, and over a long enough period unlikely things are nearly inevitable.
I don't get how you got there from my argument, which has nothing to do with enumeration.
You are effectively enumerating the truths that fall to science, and extrapolating that because we keep enumerating more truths all of them will eventually fall to science.
There is no basis in logic for this extrapolation being valid. It only valid if we assume its true that everything can be explained by science, and that is a circular argument. The set of things that can be explained by science may or may not be complete. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised that an analog of Godel's Incompleteness theorem applies to the physical world... that there are true statements that can not be proven.
Basically, when you argue against religion, the opponent keeps claiming that A, B and C are absolute truths that religion knows thanks to divine messages and science can never know. [...]
Can you give an example from the last 50 years? We've had massive scientific advances over the last couple generations, and I don't recall there being anything that contradicted any modern religion. Sure 2000 years ago religion explained thunder, and 500 years ago religion still held sway over the motions of the stellar bodies. 150 years ago religion explained the origin of man, and came up against Darwin.
The catholic church for example accepted evolution under Pope Pius XII, the recent Pope Benedict refused to endorse Intelligent Design.
But recently? What absolute statement about anything does the modern church make that is disprovable with science? Religion has retreated pretty much entirely to the metaphysical and the philosophical rather than the physical.
And everybody, including educated religious people think people who believe "literal interpretations" of the bible are backwards and ignorant.
That's not to say that there aren't big piles of backwards ignorant religious people, because there are. But its not accurate to paint it all with that brush.
You are quoting from a source that has a vital interest in making the label "terrorism" as broad and threatening as possible.
Exactly.
But, as I said, the entire history of eco-terrorism sums up to less than what happens on an average day in Iraq.
We went to war in Iraq because of "sources that had a vital interest in making the "Iraq threat" as broad and threatening as possible. Result: Between 150,000 and 1,000,000 dead in Iraq. Over a threat that wasn't anywhere near as dire as those that needed a threat to justify the war.
Correct. But to the intelligent man, this is the most solid proof that all of religion is made-up bullshit.
I sympathize with the sentiment, but if that's the most solid proof we have, then its pretty weak sauce as "solid proof".
Its like "proving" something isn't an uncountable set by enumerating subsets of it. And then as your enumerated subsets get ever larger you point at it as solid evidence, if not solid proof that these so-called "uncountable" things are just forever retreating into the distance as we can keep enumerating forever, and therefore nothing is uncountable.
Yet there are uncountable sets. (An uncountable set is an infinite set that cannot be put into a 1:1 correspondence with the infinite set of natural numbers. Thus it cannot be enumerated, or "counted".)
The upshot is that I'm not convinced that even a grand unified theory would answer all our questions. Not that I'm saying the answer is "God did it", but there may well be things that science cannot answer.
Can you imagine a "climate change crusade" today where people would sign up to make war on, say, China because they pollute so much and we must stop them? Doesn't pass the giggle test, does it?
Its not as implausible as we'd like. I'll leave you with this:
"I am pleased to have the opportunity to appear before you and discuss the threat posed by eco-terrorism, as well as the measures being taken by the FBI and our law enforcement partners to address this threat."
[...]
"During the past decade we have witnessed dramatic changes in the nature of the terrorist threat. In the 1990s, right-wing extremism overtook left-wing terrorism as the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat to the country. During the past several years, special interest extremism, as characterized by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), has emerged as a serious terrorist threat... "
[...]
"The FBI and all of our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners will continue to strive to address the difficult and unique challenges posed by eco-terrorists. Despite the recent focus on international terrorism, we remain fully cognizant of the full range of threats that confront the United States."
Testimony of James F. Jarboe, Domestic Terrorism Section Chief, Counterterrorism Division, FBI Before the House Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health
The difference between education and indoctrination is what EXACTLY?
Wikipedia cites Wilson, J., 1964. "Education and indoctrination", in T.H.B. Hollins, ed. Aims in Education: the philosophic approach(Manchester University Press); and I think its reasonable:
"It is often distinguished from education by the fact that the indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned."
If that's all it is, then a great deal of religious teaching is not indoctrination. Its true that a 'critical examination' of a lot of religious belief yields the conclusion that they are untestable and unverifiable and must be taken on faith or not at all.
But then that isn't a surprise it's sort of the entire point. There is no reason to discourage critical examination, because all you'll find is that it comes down to a question of faith.
Basically, especially in the west, religious indoctrination has evolved (intentional choice of words, not as a pun) to be not too radical and not too esoteric and not too stupid, because otherwise we'd all have laughed it out of the room. But it has also become a lot less religious.
Fair comment. I think that as we learn that more questions can be answered competently and directly by science that it makes little sense to attempt to answer those questions with religion, and religion has rightly receded to the areas that remain unaddressable with science for most reasonable religious people.
Historically religion was the domain of the questions that didn't have answers. Its clear that a great deal that what was historically in the religious domain has over time been addressed by science, and its clear that as science advanced there was absolutely a sometimes violent power struggle as the people in the authority power structure in religion resisted the erosion of its domain of authority.
But please, show evidence for your claim and name a few whose anger was not on a particular other person, but on supporters of a rival theory in general. To the point of wanting to kill them.
Groups that prosecuted people on charges of heresy were primarily interested in maintaining a power structure, and it really didn't have much to do with the religion itself. If we lived in a technocracy with scientists in charge I'd fully expect them to perpetrate violence in the same way to protect their positions of power vs perceived threats to their authority.
I concede I doubt there are good examples of it. If we ever see a real technocracy we can revisit the argument.
Its not jsut a woman's body issue if the man is forced to pay for a child he doesnt want.
This is rather like saying we live in a world where if you plant a seed in someones garden that creates a legal obligation where youI have to help pay for the watering and care of the plant. You are well aware of this potential obligation in advance. Its been law for a while now after all, and its no secret or surprise.
The owner of the garden,should they decide to remove the plant, absolves you of any responsibility for it.
However, if they keep the plant, You are stuck with the legal obligation, and that isn't fair. That's pretty much your complaint right?
So you want to unilaterally be able to plant seeds in other people's garden without the legal obligation?
The solution seems obvious -- get a signed release waiving your legal obligations to support a child in advance. I expect that would even hold up in court.
Failing that don't plant seeds in other peoples gardens.
Everyone worries about forcing women to have kids they may not want
The owner of the garden should have more rights than you over what grows in their garden. Unless they raped you to harvest your seed you really don't have much sympathy from me.
, but never say a goddman thing about the men we jail for missing child support payments. We put people in jail for DEBT.
We put people in jail for failing to make court ordered payments. What else can the punishment be? A fine? You think we should punish people who fail to make a court ordered payment with another court ordered payment? What happens if they ignore that? I know, I know, another court ordered payment!!?
Men should have at least SOME say in the decision or at the very least be able to walk away if the woman decides to keep it.
You can walk away; but you have to buy out your share of responsibility. That's what the child support is. You don't have to be a parent.
Until a man can be absolved of responsibility, its our issue too.
You can be absolved. The woman has to agree to absolve you. Its pretty common, and happens a lot.
Oh, you want to be absolved after planting the seed, after the obligation to care for it has been created, and in defiance of the mother who expects (and is legally correct in expecting) you to provide support.
Yeah... I wish Vegas would let me say "practice round" and walk away after I make a big bet and lose too. Its so unfair that they don't.
Feel free to turn it off if you fear the NSA is going to send you a custom payload.
that's the problem with closed source code - who do you trust?
And in open source land I have to trust the repo maintainers. Could they be infiltrated by the NSA, could they also forward me something different from everyone else when do an apt-get update... I think they could.
Am I more or less likely to know the NSA is doing this? Hard to say... Red Hat, Canonical, etc are corporations just like Microsoft. Even something like slackware or gentoo...the vast majority of users put their trust in a small number of people who could be acting secretly on behalf of the NSA.
I think an open source equivalent of a custom payload is less likely... or maybe not... if the NSA knows you use linux, and they really want a peek at what you are doing... its implausible... but not as implausible as you might think.
Slashdot Mirror
You are not seeing the forest for the trees.
The best option in this scenario is was clearly and obviously B. It is not not just a little bit better, it's overwhelmingly better.
Having an elected president that isn't really liked by most Americans is hardly without precedent.
And that in no way excuses it. Our elected representatives should be the people that the most of us can agree one, not the person the largest minority liked most.
You'd get politicians who appeal to broader groups of people, and who didn't pander to "their base" all the time.
Way to take edge cases and claim that they're normal.
People driving other peoples cars is not an "edge case".
A book publisher is more likely to publish something by someone who has already written a couple years' of articles for magazines.
Or if you are some sort of celebrity. I mean, that's all I ever see doing book tours anymore... politicians, and pundits and whatnot peddling their ideas of what is right or wrong with some aspect of america in, now in book form for some extra cash.
I know it's pedantic, but it's your example ... it's 4 hops. Learn to count. ("your" is implied to not be "the terrorist.")
It would be 4 hops to pull your records, but they don't need to pull your records. They get the fact that the mechanic serviced your car by pulling HIS records.
Nope. The real estate agent is 1 hop. They pull all his records. The daughter is 2 hops. They pull all her records. The mechanic is 3 hops. They pull all his records.
3 hops. The fact that the mechanic serviced your car will be captured, even though they never made the 4th hop to pull your records directly.
Oh I dunno. If a terrorist suspects real-estate agents daughter's mechanic fixes your car don't you think the NSA should have that information?
Plate is registered to an owner. Owner has driver's license. Driver's license has expiration date. License is expired? Pull the vehicle over. You'll either catch the owner driving with an expired license, another driver driving with an expired license, or a "Routine check, thank you for your time". What part aren't you getting?
The part where they leapt from owner has an expired drivrers license to probable cause to pull over the vehicle.
How many seniors are they hassling where the blind old guy stops driving and lets his license expire, but doesn't transfer the ownership title to his wife or girlfriend or kids...?
Or if someone gets their license suspended... points for speeding, a dui, etc.. law abiding citizens end up getting chauffered around by a friend, their spouse, significant other, etc... it would be nuts for them to get pulled over every time they drive past a police car because the owners license wasn't valid.
I can see the police pulling you over if they see an expired plate. That's just obvious.
But pulling over a vehicle where the owner has an expired license but zero information on whether the owner is the driver. That would require police to pull over vehicles with no actual evidence anything is wrong.
That shouldn't be police "routine".
The voting system shouldn't be set up so that if I vote for the candiate I like most instead of the candidate I like 2nd most that it will ultimately be an advantage for the candidate i like least.
Its really that simple. Let us rank the candidates.
If 30% of the population like A, and is ok with B and hates C
and 25% of the population likes B and is ok with A and hates C
and 45% of the population likes C, is ok with B, and hates A
Then B should be selected. 100% of the population is ok with that choice. A group of toddlers choosing pizza toppings would figure this out.
But in grown-up politics... we select C. Supporters of A and B making up 55% of the population (a clear majority) end up with the candidate they are least happy with, while another option everyone was happy with is discarded. That's idiotic.
And people like you who willfully refuse to see a problem with it are the problem.
I like to think that, if I had expiration stickers on my plates, I'd have thought of that. But no, I don't.
I figured I was going to get either the response above, or "Doh!".
cheers!
BULLSHIT.
Right back at you.
Defeatist attitudes and worrying about "wasting" your vote are the problem.
No, a voting system where we would even consider worrying about it is the problem. If you don't want us to worry about "wasting" our vote, or even worse worrying about "vote splitting" the two candidates we like most, then give us a system where that can't happen.
The only wasted vote is a vote for someone you don't like because you dislike their opponent even more.
Voting for the candidate I want most shouldn't EVER provide an advantage to the candidate I want least.
The voting system is fundamentally flawed.
I'm confused.
Scanning plates doesn't tell you if the drivers license registration is expired? Because scanning plates doesn't tell you who the driver is.
Scanning plates tells you the vehicles registration is expired; which is implicitly tied to the insurance. If the vehicles registration is expired, the vehicle is uninsured, and it is illegal to operate. If its involved in an accident while uninsured that causes all kinds of grief.
I have no issue with the police promptly and pro-actively removing obviously uninsured vehicles from the roads.
I don't really have an issue with them dealing with unlicensed drivers either; but I don't see how they would accomplish that with a license plate scanner.
Yeah the tech exists and can help find stolen cars and other flagged vehicles, but are you sure there isn't a simpler explanation? Around here for example, their are stickers on your plate that say when it expires.
It doesn't take a lot of time look at the plate, and see that its expired.
The stickers are even color coded so if its November 2013, and you've got an orange sticker indicating October 2013 they don't even have to read the date. All they have to do is see 'orange'.
Fair enough on all points, the only item I'd want to challenge:
So, in summary, religion is bullshit
Its a proposition of taking something on faith without proof. I agree that there is a lot of bullshit, but I don't think the idea of taking something on faith without proof is inherently utterly without merit.
If nothing else I take it on faith that my experience of the world is real; that you are real, and that when I die the world will go on without me. That this all isn't some elaborate figment of my imagination or dream. I have no proof of this, and no way to prove it.
and teaching it to young children as if it were fact is indoctrination.
Agreed. But one can also teach it to children without presenting it as fact, but merely as system of beliefs as a faith they can choose to accept or reject. And that is not indoctrination. Its how I was raised, and as a result I'm pretty agnostic. But I see some interesting stuff in religion too, and don't reject it all out of hand. And its worth noting that atheism is itself a faith proposition. Its rational and consistent with science... but there's no real proof.
But of course, it will never happen... because most voters spend far too much worrying about trying to cancel out votes for somebody they really *don't* want in... which is thinking more about how other people vote than how one really wants to vote themselves... and ultimately extremely silly way to exercise a right that as directly as possible puts citizens in charge of who will form their next government.
It is essentially a prisoners dilemma. The voters are behaving rationally.
That's why we have to change the rules.
The only advantage this style of voting has that I can see is that it doesn't take much effort.
Pretty much.
Both the voters and the candidates are playing the game according to the rules of the game.
Change the rules of game. That's the problem. The first-past-the-post elections are part of the problem, but there are several others.
Not to mention that games for windows are cheaper, have a wider selection, and go on sale more often.
Gaming on windows has gotten steadily better while the consoles have gotten steadily less appealing the last several years.
The only console I'll buy these days are the Nintendo ones because I like their first party exclusives, multi-player games, and unusual controllers (wii remotes, wii-u pad, enough to want them for the extra variety, and the family.)
Of course there is. It's right there in the word: Extrapolation.
Extrapolation doesn't prove that the data outside the set follow the the data inside the set. It only indicates what the data would look like if it is.
First, Goedel's argument is an argument about levels of abstraction
That's one way of looking at it. In any case I alluded to the possible existence of an 'analog of Godel's theory' in the physical world rather than a direct application of it.
Second, science doesn't bother with proving anything as true (outside of mathematics and logic), but with falsifying as many theories as possible so that we get ever closer to a best fit. It's a lot more like numeric math than logic.
In math and logic we start with axioms and then build up from there; while in the physical world we only have observations and are working out the 'axioms' by trial and error. And we have found very strong and useful ways of modelling the physical world with math.
Presumably if we "extrapolate" scientific progress to its logical conclusion in much the same way you have been then perhaps we will have the rules, and science and math converge. And if we can't, its just as interesting a question to ask why not.
As I said: They have a lot of experience in retreating into the areas where they are not easily falsified, so there is no such simple answer to your question.
You describe it as if it were a calculated approach. I don't see it that way.
But the small history you provided pretty much proves the point I'm making all the time.
We both agree religion has historically been used to explain the unexplainable; but that doesn't mean that there isn't stuff that eludes science. And modern religion isn't currently in any conflict or even forseeable conflict with it.
But - and that is my point again - even if we assume just for the sake of the argument that you are correct, then all the evidence we have indicates that all the current religions combined have no more clue about what lies beyond than my pet does.
Lol. I don't disagree with that. I guess that's where faith comes in. That Jesus had divine genesis or that Buddha's awakening was true enlightenment or whatever. Still your pet argument has merit, my cat appears thoroughly content with its life and maybe it knows something we don't. :)
I didn't bring up Iraq to bash Bush, I brought it up to contrast the tabloid-exaggeration of "eco-terrorism" with real violence.
I know, and I use it to bash Bush either. My argument there is that we can be motivated to war without religion. If religion were eliminated we'd stop using it as an excuse to kill people, but I'm doubtful we'd fight less. We'll just find other excuses.
Isn't that the websites problem?
Yes it is, that's why they reported it as a problem with Office 365, Netflix, Amazon, etc you know... websites.
Legally, the fourth amendment is generally held to mean that the government can't disrupt your life with its searches or target someone specifically without a good enough reason to convince a judge.
So it would be legal to search our homes with tiny insect drones as long as they search all our homes?
It doesn't disrupt our lives, and its not targeting someone specifically.
The argument really shouldn't be "is that legal?", it should be "that's not what we as a society want, so make it illegal and amend the constitution to do it if we have to."
This is -why- the constitution is a "living document"; we're supposed to be able to fix it when a hole like this shows up. We shouldn't have to make difficult reaching arguments about how a surveillance state is a 1st or 4th amendment violation.
False. 0.5^1000 == 0.5^1000 no matter how many trials there are
Your right of course. But he's saying the longer you flip a coin, the more likely you will see an occurrence of 1000 heads in a row, and this is true.
Lets look at a smaller set 2 heads in a row:
The odds when flipping a coin twice is 0.5^2. or 1 in 4.
The odds when flipping a coin twice more is again 1 in 4.
repeat ad nauseum, which is your argument.
His observation is that if you flip it 3 times, the odds of two heads coming up in a row increases, and it does. It's now 3 in 8 which is greater than 1 in 4. If you flip it 4 times... its up to 8 in 16 (or 50%), 5 times, and your odds get to 19/32 which is almost 60%, 6 times 51/64 (almost 80%).
That doesn't change the odds of a superstorm happening next year, or next week. Its still a 1 in 700 year probability. But the thing about statistically unlikely things is not only that they can happen, but that they DO happen, and over a long enough period unlikely things are nearly inevitable.
I don't get how you got there from my argument, which has nothing to do with enumeration.
You are effectively enumerating the truths that fall to science, and extrapolating that because we keep enumerating more truths all of them will eventually fall to science.
There is no basis in logic for this extrapolation being valid. It only valid if we assume its true that everything can be explained by science, and that is a circular argument. The set of things that can be explained by science may or may not be complete. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised that an analog of Godel's Incompleteness theorem applies to the physical world... that there are true statements that can not be proven.
Basically, when you argue against religion, the opponent keeps claiming that A, B and C are absolute truths that religion knows thanks to divine messages and science can never know. [...]
Can you give an example from the last 50 years? We've had massive scientific advances over the last couple generations, and I don't recall there being anything that contradicted any modern religion. Sure 2000 years ago religion explained thunder, and 500 years ago religion still held sway over the motions of the stellar bodies. 150 years ago religion explained the origin of man, and came up against Darwin.
The catholic church for example accepted evolution under Pope Pius XII, the recent Pope Benedict refused to endorse Intelligent Design.
But recently? What absolute statement about anything does the modern church make that is disprovable with science? Religion has retreated pretty much entirely to the metaphysical and the philosophical rather than the physical.
And everybody, including educated religious people think people who believe "literal interpretations" of the bible are backwards and ignorant.
That's not to say that there aren't big piles of backwards ignorant religious people, because there are. But its not accurate to paint it all with that brush.
You are quoting from a source that has a vital interest in making the label "terrorism" as broad and threatening as possible.
Exactly.
But, as I said, the entire history of eco-terrorism sums up to less than what happens on an average day in Iraq.
We went to war in Iraq because of "sources that had a vital interest in making the "Iraq threat" as broad and threatening as possible. Result: Between 150,000 and 1,000,000 dead in Iraq. Over a threat that wasn't anywhere near as dire as those that needed a threat to justify the war.
Correct. But to the intelligent man, this is the most solid proof that all of religion is made-up bullshit.
I sympathize with the sentiment, but if that's the most solid proof we have, then its pretty weak sauce as "solid proof".
Its like "proving" something isn't an uncountable set by enumerating subsets of it. And then as your enumerated subsets get ever larger you point at it as solid evidence, if not solid proof that these so-called "uncountable" things are just forever retreating into the distance as we can keep enumerating forever, and therefore nothing is uncountable.
Yet there are uncountable sets. (An uncountable set is an infinite set that cannot be put into a 1:1 correspondence with the infinite set of natural numbers. Thus it cannot be enumerated, or "counted".)
The upshot is that I'm not convinced that even a grand unified theory would answer all our questions. Not that I'm saying the answer is "God did it", but there may well be things that science cannot answer.
Can you imagine a "climate change crusade" today where people would sign up to make war on, say, China because they pollute so much and we must stop them? Doesn't pass the giggle test, does it?
Its not as implausible as we'd like. I'll leave you with this:
"I am pleased to have the opportunity to appear before you and discuss the threat posed by eco-terrorism, as well as the measures being taken by the FBI and our law enforcement partners to address this threat."
[...]
"During the past decade we have witnessed dramatic changes in the nature of the terrorist threat. In the 1990s, right-wing extremism overtook left-wing terrorism as the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat to the country. During the past several years, special interest extremism, as characterized by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), has emerged as a serious terrorist threat... "
[...]
"The FBI and all of our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners will continue to strive to address the difficult and unique challenges posed by eco-terrorists. Despite the recent focus on international terrorism, we remain fully cognizant of the full range of threats that confront the United States."
Testimony of James F. Jarboe, Domestic Terrorism Section Chief, Counterterrorism Division, FBI Before the House Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health
http://web.archive.org/web/20080311231725/http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress02/jarboe021202.htm
.
All religious teaching is indoctrination.
The difference between education and indoctrination is what EXACTLY?
Wikipedia cites Wilson, J., 1964. "Education and indoctrination", in T.H.B. Hollins, ed. Aims in Education: the philosophic approach(Manchester University Press); and I think its reasonable:
"It is often distinguished from education by the fact that the indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned."
If that's all it is, then a great deal of religious teaching is not indoctrination. Its true that a 'critical examination' of a lot of religious belief yields the conclusion that they are untestable and unverifiable and must be taken on faith or not at all.
But then that isn't a surprise it's sort of the entire point. There is no reason to discourage critical examination, because all you'll find is that it comes down to a question of faith.
Basically, especially in the west, religious indoctrination has evolved (intentional choice of words, not as a pun) to be not too radical and not too esoteric and not too stupid, because otherwise we'd all have laughed it out of the room.
But it has also become a lot less religious.
Fair comment. I think that as we learn that more questions can be answered competently and directly by science that it makes little sense to attempt to answer those questions with religion, and religion has rightly receded to the areas that remain unaddressable with science for most reasonable religious people.
Historically religion was the domain of the questions that didn't have answers. Its clear that a great deal that what was historically in the religious domain has over time been addressed by science, and its clear that as science advanced there was absolutely a sometimes violent power struggle as the people in the authority power structure in religion resisted the erosion of its domain of authority.
But please, show evidence for your claim and name a few whose anger was not on a particular other person, but on supporters of a rival theory in general. To the point of wanting to kill them.
Groups that prosecuted people on charges of heresy were primarily interested in maintaining a power structure, and it really didn't have much to do with the religion itself. If we lived in a technocracy with scientists in charge I'd fully expect them to perpetrate violence in the same way to protect their positions of power vs perceived threats to their authority.
I concede I doubt there are good examples of it. If we ever see a real technocracy we can revisit the argument.
Its not jsut a woman's body issue if the man is forced to pay for a child he doesnt want.
This is rather like saying we live in a world where if you plant a seed in someones garden that creates a legal obligation where youI have to help pay for the watering and care of the plant. You are well aware of this potential obligation in advance. Its been law for a while now after all, and its no secret or surprise.
The owner of the garden,should they decide to remove the plant, absolves you of any responsibility for it.
However, if they keep the plant, You are stuck with the legal obligation, and that isn't fair. That's pretty much your complaint right?
So you want to unilaterally be able to plant seeds in other people's garden without the legal obligation?
The solution seems obvious -- get a signed release waiving your legal obligations to support a child in advance. I expect that would even hold up in court.
Failing that don't plant seeds in other peoples gardens.
Everyone worries about forcing women to have kids they may not want
The owner of the garden should have more rights than you over what grows in their garden. Unless they raped you to harvest your seed you really don't have much sympathy from me.
, but never say a goddman thing about the men we jail for missing child support payments. We put people in jail for DEBT.
We put people in jail for failing to make court ordered payments. What else can the punishment be? A fine? You think we should punish people who fail to make a court ordered payment with another court ordered payment? What happens if they ignore that? I know, I know, another court ordered payment!!?
Men should have at least SOME say in the decision or at the very least be able to walk away if the woman decides to keep it.
You can walk away; but you have to buy out your share of responsibility. That's what the child support is. You don't have to be a parent.
Until a man can be absolved of responsibility, its our issue too.
You can be absolved. The woman has to agree to absolve you. Its pretty common, and happens a lot.
Oh, you want to be absolved after planting the seed, after the obligation to care for it has been created, and in defiance of the mother who expects (and is legally correct in expecting) you to provide support.
Yeah... I wish Vegas would let me say "practice round" and walk away after I make a big bet and lose too. Its so unfair that they don't.
they call it "software update"
Feel free to turn it off if you fear the NSA is going to send you a custom payload.
that's the problem with closed source code - who do you trust?
And in open source land I have to trust the repo maintainers. Could they be infiltrated by the NSA, could they also forward me something different from everyone else when do an apt-get update... I think they could.
Am I more or less likely to know the NSA is doing this? Hard to say... Red Hat, Canonical, etc are corporations just like Microsoft. Even something like slackware or gentoo...the vast majority of users put their trust in a small number of people who could be acting secretly on behalf of the NSA.
I think an open source equivalent of a custom payload is less likely... or maybe not... if the NSA knows you use linux, and they really want a peek at what you are doing... its implausible... but not as implausible as you might think.