This is one of those questions where everyone offers up a thousand answers. The diversity of the comments in slashdot alone are a testament to just how unsure we are about how to teach our kids math.
I am a math major. I love math. I started learning at a young age, but I don't remember a single thing school taught me. All the math I know my dad taught me, and by the time I got old enough, I taught myself. I had no understanding of what I was doing until I read the books for myself and worked out the proofs on my own.
Also, I say the following because it is funny, not because I believe it true.
Professor Peter Gray, a developmental psychologist and researcher at Boston College...
A psychologist would suggest teaching less math. He probably doesn't even know calculus beyond statistics.
Personally I think Sagan had it right - we pick someone who doesn't have a religious or political agenda, is broadly educated especially in sciences, and would be willing to perform the task.*
(Hmm... Richard Dawkins? *g*)
How is it that Richard Dawkins doesn't have a religious agenda? He is a self-proclaimed militant atheist.
His agenda on religion is very plain: he's out to destroy it.
If you're going to point out that Europa is different from Antartica at least take the time to point out how it's different. Namely, the complex life in Antarctica evolved in different, more comfortable conditions. Complex life under hundreds of feet of ice on Earth says nothing about whether or not it's possible for life to begin or become complex in those conditions. It just says that once started, life is very adaptable.
But did life really begin in such "comfortable" conditions? I don't think its too far-fetched to imagine most life beginning in even less habitable conditions than it currently thrives in.
Natural selection seems to suggest that life must be more robust than the pressures of its environment, and that life only becomes less robust if it can afford to do so. Not the other way around.
Sounds like a liar (read: lawyer?) to me. Maybe just not a very good one.
It just might be that his actions are his intentions. But his reasonings are rationalizations. Perhaps he means to do exactly what everyone here says will happen, but he can't bring himself to say so.
This guy reminds me of a cute little 5 year old. His heart is in the right place and he just wants everything fair and nice. However, those are some BIG ASSUMPTIONS he is making:
Why does everyone assume he is naive? What if he's manipulative, cunning? Do you think he got to Yale because he was cute?
Maybe his intentions are as the consequences of his proposed actions. Maybe he means what he does.
there's nothing setting god apart from a fairy tale in the eyes of someone demanding proof of his existence, the both lack any physical evidence.
Your criteria is far too broad.
Following your example, I could say: there is nothing setting math apart from a fairy tale in the eyes of someone demanding proof of its existence, they both lack any physical evidence.
Let's try an analogy. We are at the airport. Someone calls in that there is a bomb threat and that if we don't respond immediately, the whole thing is gonna go up in flames. Now, is it not the responsible thing to investigate these claims, no matter how outlandish they may seem?
And on the nature of truth, and for the sake of good quotes, I give you Spock: "If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
It's interesting how those who deny man's impact on global warming, or global warming itself, can claim victory if people like Gore and others succeed in preventing it. They'll sit back and say, "Told you so. The earth's still here, isn't it? We're still living, aren't we? No matter what we did, it would've happened like this anyhow."
I've heard another "Christian" say global warming is a good thing if it's part of the rapture (that 19th century weirdness from cutting and pasting bits of the Bible until it says what you want). I've put their self description in quotes because it was one of those groups that think the poor and the sick are being punished by God so should never be helped but merchants in the temple are fine.
Many Christians believe in a Millennial Kingdom which will be reestablished here on earth. If this particular person believed so, then he would not believe global warming is a good thing. Not that God wouldn't allow it to happen, but that God would punish those who try to prevent the kingdom from coming. This means that if global warming has its way and the earth is no longer habitable, I'm pretty sure God would do something about it, including but not limited to restoring it to Eden-esque perfection, and punishing those responsible for Earth's demise.
I count global warming as something both preventable and possible, and therefore punishable.
I am Chritian and do not care one way or the other but do try to do my best to mininze how much I polute the world.
Also, God should be capitalized since it is a proper noun. In fact, in your context, you used it as a name/title. If you were speaking of Obama by title, you would write "The American President would..." not "The American president would..."
I don't know why this matters to you. Is this some feeble attempt to restore the dignity of the name of God, and of all places, on the internet?
There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if the Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual." But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.
These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defence, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.
And my personal thoughts on the subject: You think you can defend the name of God? You do more to blasphemy it with your hypocrisy than they do with their unbelief.
I've found that's because most Atheists or Agnostics have better BS detectors and critical thinking skills. In short, we are skeptics, meaning we question most anything that doesn't have hard evidence to support it.
I don't put stock in any fairy tale, whether it be about Santa Claus, God, or conspiracy theories, unless there is evidence to back it up. They do make fun thinking exercises, though.
Hasn't it become so easy these days to lump God in with Santa Claus, and conspiracy theories? You must have a great BS detector and all, but I question the open-mindedness of anyone (even Dawkins) who, without the slightest explanation, compares God, first, to Santa Claus, and second, to unnamed conspiracy theories. The implied nuances of your claims are so drastic, I doubt you understand the very things that you're saying.
The magnitude of the claims set forth about God are reason enough to consider the question of the existence of God. To lump God in with Santa Claus and to imply that he belongs with the rest of the conspiracy theories is to neglect these claims all together.
And please take notice that the foundation of your argument rests upon itself: In order to dismiss God as a fairy tale, you have presumed it. You yourself offer no evidence for your claims whatsoever. How sweetly ironic.
It's great and all to be able to find what things may have in common. But to have a truly precise intellect you can't forget what sets things apart.
Kind of sad. Your story has holes all over the place.
If you had access to his router, you should've been able to easily solve the problem. Rather, you chose to be a jerk. I love how you play the victim, as if you were helpless and powerless to do anything but what you did.
To sum up what other posters have suggested, and points you have not refuted all throughout this thread: 1) You claim your wife's wireless insisted on connecting to his router. But you did not for one moment consider that since you had access to his router you could've easily went into the settings and blocked your wife's MAC address. Again, according to your claims, this guy was an idiot. He would not have noticed at all. 2) You claim you could not fix your wife's laptop because replacing it would cost $2,000. Buy a USB wifi dongle, disable proprietary wifi. $20. 3) If he had changed the router, then why was your wife's computer still insisting on connecting to it, rather than your own router? PEBKAC.
As more and more of it piles up, I wonder, would they be legally responsible for their space junk and the damage it causes? When I was young and left toys out on the floor, I got in trouble whenever anyone stepped on it. Now older, if I left some nails on the road, surely someone would come looking for me.
To play off a famous Edsger Dijkstra quote, the question of when AI will surpass human intelligence is just about as interesting as asking when submarines will swim faster than fish...
Can the energy being transmitted be manipulated in any way? For example, can we choose to send a lot of energy, or a little energy? If that's the case, couldn't we use different amounts of energy to represent different information? How is it that energy can be transmitted instantly, but information cannot?
The common attribute to bullying is bullies. They are the source of the problem (as often a single link in a chain of abuse) and it would be wise to focus on identifying, exposing, and properly reacting to their abusive behavior against others.
I don't want to attack the entire study based on my perception of this article, and I'll support that having poor social skills can contribute to the likelihood of being a bully victim, but WTF?
Want to know my guess? A bully wrote this article.
Last time I called Dell about a laptop that was completely dead, no power lights, no fans, they asked me what the error message on screen was and it took a few minutes to explain to them something as simple as the fact that I couldn't get an error message on screen because the laptop was dead.
It was probably one of the most epic examples of human idiocy I have ever encountered. The worst part is that I understand these people are given little flow charts, or on screen wizards, so he must've managed to click past the first box that checked whether the system even turned on or not and then been incapable of handling the idea that my response didn't fit his next question.
I understand your pain, but it would be worthwhile to point out that the reason they ask questions the way they do is because the vast majority of their customers cannot distinguish between things like "Dead" and "Broken" and "Not working", etc.
The general populace is incompetent, inarticulate and cannot properly explain their own problems. Hence, customer service reps follow these flow charts and whatnot in order to diagnose the problem and they do not trust the customer to properly communicate that.
These reps are not necessarily stupid (well, they probably are), but in reality, they are treating you, the customer, like you have little to no knowledge no matter what you say. That isn't such a bad rule because most people who don't know anything think they know very much. This is commonly known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.
All of this makes them look stupid, you feel stupid (or superior, depending on your defense mechanism), and everything else a great big waste of time.
Slashdot Mirror
This is one of those questions where everyone offers up a thousand answers. The diversity of the comments in slashdot alone are a testament to just how unsure we are about how to teach our kids math.
I am a math major. I love math. I started learning at a young age, but I don't remember a single thing school taught me. All the math I know my dad taught me, and by the time I got old enough, I taught myself. I had no understanding of what I was doing until I read the books for myself and worked out the proofs on my own.
Also, I say the following because it is funny, not because I believe it true.
Professor Peter Gray, a developmental psychologist and researcher at Boston College...
A psychologist would suggest teaching less math. He probably doesn't even know calculus beyond statistics.
Personally I think Sagan had it right - we pick someone who doesn't have a religious or political agenda, is broadly educated especially in sciences, and
would be willing to perform the task.*
(Hmm... Richard Dawkins? *g*)
How is it that Richard Dawkins doesn't have a religious agenda? He is a self-proclaimed militant atheist.
His agenda on religion is very plain: he's out to destroy it.
If you're going to point out that Europa is different from Antartica at least take the time to point out how it's different. Namely, the complex life in Antarctica evolved in different, more comfortable conditions. Complex life under hundreds of feet of ice on Earth says nothing about whether or not it's possible for life to begin or become complex in those conditions. It just says that once started, life is very adaptable.
But did life really begin in such "comfortable" conditions? I don't think its too far-fetched to imagine most life beginning in even less habitable conditions than it currently thrives in.
Natural selection seems to suggest that life must be more robust than the pressures of its environment, and that life only becomes less robust if it can afford to do so. Not the other way around.
I'm not so sure he's naive.
Sounds like a liar (read: lawyer?) to me. Maybe just not a very good one.
It just might be that his actions are his intentions. But his reasonings are rationalizations. Perhaps he means to do exactly what everyone here says will happen, but he can't bring himself to say so.
This guy reminds me of a cute little 5 year old. His heart is in the right place and he just wants everything fair and nice. However, those are some BIG ASSUMPTIONS he is making:
Why does everyone assume he is naive? What if he's manipulative, cunning? Do you think he got to Yale because he was cute?
Maybe his intentions are as the consequences of his proposed actions. Maybe he means what he does.
I don't know. GP sounds pretty sarcastic to me.
If his comment was simply about grammar, the OP would've spelled "Chritian" right.
Why thank you. This is precisely why I find the basis for his argument lacking. :).
Whoosh. :).
I'm confused. Can someone please explain to me why I was modded troll?
Oh, and to address your specific point:
there's nothing setting god apart from a fairy tale in the eyes of someone demanding proof of his existence, the both lack any physical evidence.
Your criteria is far too broad.
Following your example, I could say: there is nothing setting math apart from a fairy tale in the eyes of someone demanding proof of its existence, they both lack any physical evidence.
I didn't claim victory. I pointed out closed-mindedness, and a lazy intellect.
Understood.
Let's try an analogy. We are at the airport. Someone calls in that there is a bomb threat and that if we don't respond immediately, the whole thing is gonna go up in flames. Now, is it not the responsible thing to investigate these claims, no matter how outlandish they may seem?
And on the nature of truth, and for the sake of good quotes, I give you Spock: "If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
It's interesting how those who deny man's impact on global warming, or global warming itself, can claim victory if people like Gore and others succeed in preventing it. They'll sit back and say, "Told you so. The earth's still here, isn't it? We're still living, aren't we? No matter what we did, it would've happened like this anyhow."
I've heard another "Christian" say global warming is a good thing if it's part of the rapture (that 19th century weirdness from cutting and pasting bits of the Bible until it says what you want). I've put their self description in quotes because it was one of those groups that think the poor and the sick are being punished by God so should never be helped but merchants in the temple are fine.
Many Christians believe in a Millennial Kingdom which will be reestablished here on earth. If this particular person believed so, then he would not believe global warming is a good thing. Not that God wouldn't allow it to happen, but that God would punish those who try to prevent the kingdom from coming. This means that if global warming has its way and the earth is no longer habitable, I'm pretty sure God would do something about it, including but not limited to restoring it to Eden-esque perfection, and punishing those responsible for Earth's demise.
I count global warming as something both preventable and possible, and therefore punishable.
P.S. On my personal thoughts, that was not aimed at anyone specific. Just, my thoughts in general. No offense Jackie Brown.
I am Chritian and do not care one way or the other but do try to do my best to mininze how much I polute the world.
Also, God should be capitalized since it is a proper noun. In fact, in your context, you used it as a name/title. If you were speaking of Obama by title, you would write "The American President would..." not "The American president would..."
I don't know why this matters to you. Is this some feeble attempt to restore the dignity of the name of God, and of all places, on the internet?
From the Life of Pi:
There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if the Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual." But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.
These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defence, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.
And my personal thoughts on the subject: You think you can defend the name of God? You do more to blasphemy it with your hypocrisy than they do with their unbelief.
I've found that's because most Atheists or Agnostics have better BS detectors and critical thinking skills. In short, we are skeptics, meaning we question most anything that doesn't have hard evidence to support it.
I don't put stock in any fairy tale, whether it be about Santa Claus, God, or conspiracy theories, unless there is evidence to back it up. They do make fun thinking exercises, though.
Hasn't it become so easy these days to lump God in with Santa Claus, and conspiracy theories? You must have a great BS detector and all, but I question the open-mindedness of anyone (even Dawkins) who, without the slightest explanation, compares God, first, to Santa Claus, and second, to unnamed conspiracy theories. The implied nuances of your claims are so drastic, I doubt you understand the very things that you're saying.
The magnitude of the claims set forth about God are reason enough to consider the question of the existence of God. To lump God in with Santa Claus and to imply that he belongs with the rest of the conspiracy theories is to neglect these claims all together.
And please take notice that the foundation of your argument rests upon itself: In order to dismiss God as a fairy tale, you have presumed it. You yourself offer no evidence for your claims whatsoever. How sweetly ironic.
It's great and all to be able to find what things may have in common. But to have a truly precise intellect you can't forget what sets things apart.
Kind of sad. Your story has holes all over the place.
If you had access to his router, you should've been able to easily solve the problem. Rather, you chose to be a jerk. I love how you play the victim, as if you were helpless and powerless to do anything but what you did.
To sum up what other posters have suggested, and points you have not refuted all throughout this thread:
1) You claim your wife's wireless insisted on connecting to his router. But you did not for one moment consider that since you had access to his router you could've easily went into the settings and blocked your wife's MAC address. Again, according to your claims, this guy was an idiot. He would not have noticed at all.
2) You claim you could not fix your wife's laptop because replacing it would cost $2,000. Buy a USB wifi dongle, disable proprietary wifi. $20.
3) If he had changed the router, then why was your wife's computer still insisting on connecting to it, rather than your own router? PEBKAC.
Plank eyes are not very good for seeing.
As more and more of it piles up, I wonder, would they be legally responsible for their space junk and the damage it causes? When I was young and left toys out on the floor, I got in trouble whenever anyone stepped on it. Now older, if I left some nails on the road, surely someone would come looking for me.
You've never seen the way I do it.*
*Unless you have remote access to my webcams.
Have you seen the movie World's Greatest Dad?
I don't want to ruin the movie, but the son dies of erotic self-asphyxiation. Does that count as self-abuse?
To play off a famous Edsger Dijkstra quote, the question of when AI will surpass human intelligence is just about as interesting as asking when submarines will swim faster than fish...
Can the energy being transmitted be manipulated in any way? For example, can we choose to send a lot of energy, or a little energy? If that's the case, couldn't we use different amounts of energy to represent different information? How is it that energy can be transmitted instantly, but information cannot?
The common attribute to bullying is bullies. They are the source of the problem (as often a single link in a chain of abuse) and it would be wise to focus on identifying, exposing, and properly reacting to their abusive behavior against others.
I don't want to attack the entire study based on my perception of this article, and I'll support that having poor social skills can contribute to the likelihood of being a bully victim, but WTF?
Want to know my guess? A bully wrote this article.
Last time I called Dell about a laptop that was completely dead, no power lights, no fans, they asked me what the error message on screen was and it took a few minutes to explain to them something as simple as the fact that I couldn't get an error message on screen because the laptop was dead.
It was probably one of the most epic examples of human idiocy I have ever encountered. The worst part is that I understand these people are given little flow charts, or on screen wizards, so he must've managed to click past the first box that checked whether the system even turned on or not and then been incapable of handling the idea that my response didn't fit his next question.
I understand your pain, but it would be worthwhile to point out that the reason they ask questions the way they do is because the vast majority of their customers cannot distinguish between things like "Dead" and "Broken" and "Not working", etc.
The general populace is incompetent, inarticulate and cannot properly explain their own problems. Hence, customer service reps follow these flow charts and whatnot in order to diagnose the problem and they do not trust the customer to properly communicate that.
These reps are not necessarily stupid (well, they probably are), but in reality, they are treating you, the customer, like you have little to no knowledge no matter what you say. That isn't such a bad rule because most people who don't know anything think they know very much. This is commonly known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.
All of this makes them look stupid, you feel stupid (or superior, depending on your defense mechanism), and everything else a great big waste of time.