Wait, you need to take a polygraph test to get into an INTELLIGENCE AGENCY and you aren't supposed to know how a polygraph works?
If you do actually know how it works, you'll be more nervous about false positives than about any actual lying you might try to get away with. I guess it'll eliminate anxious candidates very efficiently, but doubtful those who already lie convincingly. Polygraphs don't sorta work, intimidation sorta causes predictably abnormal behavior. I'm glad we as a people have moved past superstition.
Don't Christians follow the teachings of Jesus "Christ?" Let's ignore the fact that there's no conceivable way to prove that he is "the Christ," that he performed miracles and actually resurrected. If you are a Christian now, just about the only source you have for learning the teachings of Jesus is a version of the Bible or one of many churches. The many versions of the Bible we have include Jesus' instructions to judge people on several instances. Even if you cherry-pick acts of tolerance out of context, it's just as self-serving as those who cherry-pick the homosexuality-condemning quotes, and slightly less rational than those who believe the dogma literally. Whatever religious texts there are have been in too many hands to be the word of Jesus, if you are a Christian through "faith," and on top of that, all are open to so much interpretation that you'd be better off relying on your own reason and conscience. Unfortunately, it may be that the great majority of people's reason is dismally uncritical and irrational and their conscience equally useless without the ultimate threat of eternal damnation.
Ah, the internet sheep, not a rare sight on slashdot apparently!
Go back and read Godwin's Law, you obviously don't understand it. There don't need to be millions of dead Jews for it NOT to hyperbolic. The same kind of people who would have been manipulated by Hitler's religious and racist tirades are being fooled into believing creationist nonsense and fundamentalist bullshit.
The atrocities that modern religion continues to commit on the otherwise rational thinking and education of the gullible masses is tantamount to Hitler's manipulation of millions of people to do terrible things. Monogamy-only, banned victimless crimes (restricted civil liberties), homosexual discrimination, pornography laws, profanity views/decency laws, all of these things are entirely irrational from an objective point, yet they exist, mostly thanks to peoples' willingness to accept one thing after another after another after they've made initial concessions. The psychological principle at work that manipulates the masses is the same one that led to POWs from the Korean War refusing repatriation. Accept the assumption of an imaginary friend, then assume he's still around, then assume that this book full of crappy fiction and contradicting stories is true in some places, but not in others, according to what your priest says you should believe, and ta-da, you have a bunch of Bush supporters and Left Behind Series nutjobs.
So are you going to argue your invocation of Godwin's (sheep-tool) Law was sound because the blood-count resulting from Hitler's similar manipulation of gullibles is more viscerally appalling than the huge number of rights and liberties that are being abused in the name of good old religion to this very day?
Being smug and quoting something that some nobody hack came up with doesn't invalidate an argument, it just betrays your own intelligence. Go watch Snakes on a Plane, preferably in a Church, with your bush cheney '04 shirt on. You'll fit right in, tool.
Religion can exist under the scrutiny of the scientific method. Just test the history, claims (explanatory power), and come up with reasonable hypotheses based on observation.
But wait, "The Bible is true" isn't an observation, it's an assumption masquerading as opinion based on no evidence whatsoever. But since they give it 'sacred' titles of "faith" and "religious views," they can't be touched.
I find it amusing that there are any scientists at all who extol the virtues of the scientific method, how effective it is, and how there's simply no better way to gather information, and then they turn around and create this artificial barrier between the sensible approach they use and their own personal beliefs on the grounds that its religion and thus cannot be treated like any other subject. Hypocrites, children, hardly rational human beings, and yet they have voting rights. Frightening.
The only reason Israel is even there is because of Zionists. Why do people of genetically jewish heritage need to have their own state? They can't live in a democratic society and build communities like every other culture?
Oh that's right, they're self-entitled to own the 'holy city.' Score another one for religion, because now it's too late and the religidiots are all killing themselves off, I just don't want to have to pay for it so keep my tax money out of it.
They should wait until one second after the account submits pay for the 2nd month, and then ban the accounts. Voila, it's like they're paying twice as much for the monthly fee!
List off the events of your life that suggest telepathy, then tell me the probability they would occur merely by chance, how many of these occurences there were, and how many unspectacular results there were, then tell me the probability that the sum of these events would make you "crazy not to believe in it." On the contrary, you'd be crazy or at the very least, irrational (something which in the realm of beliefs has suddenly become politically incorrect to take notice), to assume the universal existence of something based solely on fallible personal experience and judgment. Ever hear of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect? Didn't think so.
And how many coincidences of what degree of probability suddenly makes telepathy proven?
There's no point to searching for the mechanism if we can't even figure out what, if any effect there is... But I'm sure it's alien mind control giving us ideas of which we shouldn't be aware. Oh, and Jesus. He talks to me.
"has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors"
The only thing harmful to minors are the attitudes taken by those who would define specific knowledge and experiences as harmful. It's unfortunate that we still debate whether any of these subjects are truly harmful, not the conditioning that our culture forces on us that causes us to have these unhealthy opinions and attitudes. In short, quit trying to legislate family values in my free country! Not that adding.xxx does this, but why would they list the above as motivation unless their hopes are to undermine pornography? The universally beneficial goal would be to open up new possibilities by adding the.xxx domain name ending.
Is that so? I was under the impression historians still haven't even verified the existence of many of the sites of biblical events (such as the infamous sodom and gomorrah) - conjecture aside. Of course, you can take any vague allegory or metaphor and find a real-life counterpart and claim its that which it represents. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy much like when you read a horoscope and miraculously everything it said comes true. Although, there are instances that the bible supposedly records, such as the great flood, which if my sources are correct, are now generally agreed as an exaggeration (i.e. the world did not entirely flood, most likely a river, whose name escape me, was what the writers were referring to, but not everyone who reads it knows that). To me, it seems a rather useless way to dictate strict behavior and beliefs through hyperbole and metaphor.
But, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and we'll say there are parts in the bible that are verified and valid. That does nothing to validate the rest of it, despite that it may suggest more credibility. In which case, you can't just pick and choose which truths you want to argue based on some historical accuracies in separate parts. Only the things which are verified can be treated as truths. Do any proponents of the bible follow this philosophy?
A problem arises when people start by assuming it is entirely true. Then they'll have license to deny the most likely truth for an extremely improbable possibility just because it conforms with their ideal.
Really though, the bible is a work of genius, throw in some historical truths that were kept alive by oral tradition, make up a background and moral to the story, and make vague predictions of the future while making demands of the behavior and beliefs of all those who follow its teachings. Just because all of the predictions haven't come true yet doesn't mean they won't all. And it contains some truth, so it must all be true, note the sarcasm. Surely those who could see into the future would have known that it would not be necessary to rely on oral tradition and that the printing press would allow for widespread reproducability without copying errors and biases (which plague the bible). In that case, the use of allegory would serve only an aesthetic function while detracting from the true purpose. If the language were explicit, the ability to abuse the messages in the bible would be all but nullified (and many of the rituals demanded explicitly by the bible are ignored by practitioners these days). Ironically, that's what made it such a useful tool and so powerful, for those who wished to abuse it (and please do not try to tell me that nobody could or did benefit by being the authority on the bible).
But, what about other statements in the bible that we have demonstrated as false. That the earth has four corners, or edges. The apologetic defense I've read refuting the four corners argument was that the word translated into 'corners' was similar to the word 'quarters' as in a sphere with 4 hemispheres, although from a more certain geometric point of view it would make more sense to divide a sphere into 8 equal sections, which provides the symmetry which the passage suggests. In any case, even if there are refutations that relate to the way in which the passage was translated, it would make one wonder what other truths have been obfuscated by human error in a supposedly infallible book.
To me, it's quite ridiculous that we learn lessons of easter bunnies and santa as children, and how the church believed the sun orbited the earth and oppressed science until the truth was undeniable (truth only reached by the scientific method), but in adulthood, many still believe in some figure whose qualities nobody can agree upon, but many assume, whose existence cannot be proven one way or another, but its existence is assumed, whose motives and authority cannot be verified, but goodness and supreme morality is assumed. All the while, in our pride, in our natural desires to be unique, an
Blizzard knows it's target demographic. This demographic tends to breed stupidity because of the anonymity they are allowed, also knowing that its hate speech (and this includes calling everything they dislike 'gay' and everyone they dislike a 'fag') is acceptable to Blizzard unless it is reported, which only warrants a warning. Blizzard wants to make money, and does so by supporting the masses who either intentionally prejudice or are so apathetic they use the above-mentioned terms without any thought of the profound consequences. If people started calling everything 'niggerish,' or 'kykeish,' the intelligent world that remains connected with reality would be outraged. Blizzard doesn't care to teach them a lesson by deleting their account and making their cd-key unusuable, they only care to prevent litigation that might result from their egregious negligence. This is one of the evils of a business that cares for little more than profit.
But, it's not a race, or a religion, things which were at one time the basis of persecution and by many, thought acceptable. Now people have moved on to hate based on sexual orientation, or any cultural movement perceived by many to be unworthy. Take the emo stereotype as an example. I posted on a forum something that was deeply emotional, and in retrospect I can see how it could be perceived as melodramatic, because as I posted it, I was in a temporary state of depression. Many of the comments called me 'emo' as if it were an insult, and then wished my death. People always search for something to hate and there are justifications for just about anything, whether or not they are reasonable.
Back to the topic. Blizzard is interested in making money, if they were to ban everyone who said 'gay' or 'fag' as a response to any instance of such words used with derogatory intent, they would lose a lot of money. I would predict that if the number of GLBT players deeply offended (and would thus boycott) by Blizzard's current policy was greater than the number that using such hate speech, they would have a different policy. Unfortunately, there's no way to replicate the WoW experience without using illegal player-run servers, which, if they gained popularity (deemed necessary to the success of an MMORPG by most) and cost Blizzard money, they would be shut-down. It is a certified monopoly and thus has power to spare and abuse for one motive: profit.
I think we can all agree that the use of censorship is potentially dangerous, but when there are a large number of minors playing, it's entirely unacceptable to expose them to such hate-speech, or allow them to participate in it, which at the very least forms negative habits. The right solution is to ban those who use hate speech, but nobody who would use the language in a discussion that does not dissolve into harassment.
GLBT is a reality just like any other quality or quantity we can observe, and to shun its existence in any medium it will propagate is an abhorrent abuse of power. To say there would be no homosexuals in a world with 'humans' or other intelligent beings is against the evidence we have today. Thus, it must be accepted and if there are those who would undermine its acceptance without reason, the harm they cause must be prohibited.
To punish those who advertise as GLBT-friendly because of the irrational responses others might have is tantamount to punishing someone for making a mistake in a party raid that causes everyone to lose their temper and succumb to anger and abusive language when a GM gets wind of the chat filter working over-time. With a reasonable GM, I don't see the second scenario ever occuring, but profits motivates the first.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait, you need to take a polygraph test to get into an INTELLIGENCE AGENCY and you aren't supposed to know how a polygraph works? If you do actually know how it works, you'll be more nervous about false positives than about any actual lying you might try to get away with. I guess it'll eliminate anxious candidates very efficiently, but doubtful those who already lie convincingly. Polygraphs don't sorta work, intimidation sorta causes predictably abnormal behavior. I'm glad we as a people have moved past superstition.
Don't Christians follow the teachings of Jesus "Christ?" Let's ignore the fact that there's no conceivable way to prove that he is "the Christ," that he performed miracles and actually resurrected. If you are a Christian now, just about the only source you have for learning the teachings of Jesus is a version of the Bible or one of many churches. The many versions of the Bible we have include Jesus' instructions to judge people on several instances. Even if you cherry-pick acts of tolerance out of context, it's just as self-serving as those who cherry-pick the homosexuality-condemning quotes, and slightly less rational than those who believe the dogma literally. Whatever religious texts there are have been in too many hands to be the word of Jesus, if you are a Christian through "faith," and on top of that, all are open to so much interpretation that you'd be better off relying on your own reason and conscience. Unfortunately, it may be that the great majority of people's reason is dismally uncritical and irrational and their conscience equally useless without the ultimate threat of eternal damnation.
That means you value saving lives over MORE PORN. Everyone seems to have a hidden agenda.
Ah, the internet sheep, not a rare sight on slashdot apparently! Go back and read Godwin's Law, you obviously don't understand it. There don't need to be millions of dead Jews for it NOT to hyperbolic. The same kind of people who would have been manipulated by Hitler's religious and racist tirades are being fooled into believing creationist nonsense and fundamentalist bullshit. The atrocities that modern religion continues to commit on the otherwise rational thinking and education of the gullible masses is tantamount to Hitler's manipulation of millions of people to do terrible things. Monogamy-only, banned victimless crimes (restricted civil liberties), homosexual discrimination, pornography laws, profanity views/decency laws, all of these things are entirely irrational from an objective point, yet they exist, mostly thanks to peoples' willingness to accept one thing after another after another after they've made initial concessions. The psychological principle at work that manipulates the masses is the same one that led to POWs from the Korean War refusing repatriation. Accept the assumption of an imaginary friend, then assume he's still around, then assume that this book full of crappy fiction and contradicting stories is true in some places, but not in others, according to what your priest says you should believe, and ta-da, you have a bunch of Bush supporters and Left Behind Series nutjobs. So are you going to argue your invocation of Godwin's (sheep-tool) Law was sound because the blood-count resulting from Hitler's similar manipulation of gullibles is more viscerally appalling than the huge number of rights and liberties that are being abused in the name of good old religion to this very day? Being smug and quoting something that some nobody hack came up with doesn't invalidate an argument, it just betrays your own intelligence. Go watch Snakes on a Plane, preferably in a Church, with your bush cheney '04 shirt on. You'll fit right in, tool.
Religion can exist under the scrutiny of the scientific method. Just test the history, claims (explanatory power), and come up with reasonable hypotheses based on observation. But wait, "The Bible is true" isn't an observation, it's an assumption masquerading as opinion based on no evidence whatsoever. But since they give it 'sacred' titles of "faith" and "religious views," they can't be touched. I find it amusing that there are any scientists at all who extol the virtues of the scientific method, how effective it is, and how there's simply no better way to gather information, and then they turn around and create this artificial barrier between the sensible approach they use and their own personal beliefs on the grounds that its religion and thus cannot be treated like any other subject. Hypocrites, children, hardly rational human beings, and yet they have voting rights. Frightening.
The only reason Israel is even there is because of Zionists. Why do people of genetically jewish heritage need to have their own state? They can't live in a democratic society and build communities like every other culture? Oh that's right, they're self-entitled to own the 'holy city.' Score another one for religion, because now it's too late and the religidiots are all killing themselves off, I just don't want to have to pay for it so keep my tax money out of it.
Don't you EVER call pacman VIOLENT OR I'LL DEVOUR YOU IN ONE BITE!!! Except the eyes. Those are for later.
They should wait until one second after the account submits pay for the 2nd month, and then ban the accounts. Voila, it's like they're paying twice as much for the monthly fee!
I know you're a fraud because you didn't end with, "God Bless America"
List off the events of your life that suggest telepathy, then tell me the probability they would occur merely by chance, how many of these occurences there were, and how many unspectacular results there were, then tell me the probability that the sum of these events would make you "crazy not to believe in it." On the contrary, you'd be crazy or at the very least, irrational (something which in the realm of beliefs has suddenly become politically incorrect to take notice), to assume the universal existence of something based solely on fallible personal experience and judgment. Ever hear of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect ? Didn't think so.
And how many coincidences of what degree of probability suddenly makes telepathy proven?
There's no point to searching for the mechanism if we can't even figure out what, if any effect there is... But I'm sure it's alien mind control giving us ideas of which we shouldn't be aware. Oh, and Jesus. He talks to me.
-The Offended and Oft Sarcastic Voice of Reason
Isn't anyone else worried it might develop a mind of its own?
"has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors" The only thing harmful to minors are the attitudes taken by those who would define specific knowledge and experiences as harmful. It's unfortunate that we still debate whether any of these subjects are truly harmful, not the conditioning that our culture forces on us that causes us to have these unhealthy opinions and attitudes. In short, quit trying to legislate family values in my free country! Not that adding .xxx does this, but why would they list the above as motivation unless their hopes are to undermine pornography? The universally beneficial goal would be to open up new possibilities by adding the .xxx domain name ending.
But, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and we'll say there are parts in the bible that are verified and valid. That does nothing to validate the rest of it, despite that it may suggest more credibility. In which case, you can't just pick and choose which truths you want to argue based on some historical accuracies in separate parts. Only the things which are verified can be treated as truths. Do any proponents of the bible follow this philosophy?
A problem arises when people start by assuming it is entirely true. Then they'll have license to deny the most likely truth for an extremely improbable possibility just because it conforms with their ideal.
Really though, the bible is a work of genius, throw in some historical truths that were kept alive by oral tradition, make up a background and moral to the story, and make vague predictions of the future while making demands of the behavior and beliefs of all those who follow its teachings. Just because all of the predictions haven't come true yet doesn't mean they won't all. And it contains some truth, so it must all be true, note the sarcasm. Surely those who could see into the future would have known that it would not be necessary to rely on oral tradition and that the printing press would allow for widespread reproducability without copying errors and biases (which plague the bible). In that case, the use of allegory would serve only an aesthetic function while detracting from the true purpose. If the language were explicit, the ability to abuse the messages in the bible would be all but nullified (and many of the rituals demanded explicitly by the bible are ignored by practitioners these days). Ironically, that's what made it such a useful tool and so powerful, for those who wished to abuse it (and please do not try to tell me that nobody could or did benefit by being the authority on the bible).
But, what about other statements in the bible that we have demonstrated as false. That the earth has four corners, or edges. The apologetic defense I've read refuting the four corners argument was that the word translated into 'corners' was similar to the word 'quarters' as in a sphere with 4 hemispheres, although from a more certain geometric point of view it would make more sense to divide a sphere into 8 equal sections, which provides the symmetry which the passage suggests. In any case, even if there are refutations that relate to the way in which the passage was translated, it would make one wonder what other truths have been obfuscated by human error in a supposedly infallible book.
To me, it's quite ridiculous that we learn lessons of easter bunnies and santa as children, and how the church believed the sun orbited the earth and oppressed science until the truth was undeniable (truth only reached by the scientific method), but in adulthood, many still believe in some figure whose qualities nobody can agree upon, but many assume, whose existence cannot be proven one way or another, but its existence is assumed, whose motives and authority cannot be verified, but goodness and supreme morality is assumed. All the while, in our pride, in our natural desires to be unique, an
Blizzard knows it's target demographic. This demographic tends to breed stupidity because of the anonymity they are allowed, also knowing that its hate speech (and this includes calling everything they dislike 'gay' and everyone they dislike a 'fag') is acceptable to Blizzard unless it is reported, which only warrants a warning. Blizzard wants to make money, and does so by supporting the masses who either intentionally prejudice or are so apathetic they use the above-mentioned terms without any thought of the profound consequences. If people started calling everything 'niggerish,' or 'kykeish,' the intelligent world that remains connected with reality would be outraged. Blizzard doesn't care to teach them a lesson by deleting their account and making their cd-key unusuable, they only care to prevent litigation that might result from their egregious negligence. This is one of the evils of a business that cares for little more than profit.
But, it's not a race, or a religion, things which were at one time the basis of persecution and by many, thought acceptable. Now people have moved on to hate based on sexual orientation, or any cultural movement perceived by many to be unworthy. Take the emo stereotype as an example. I posted on a forum something that was deeply emotional, and in retrospect I can see how it could be perceived as melodramatic, because as I posted it, I was in a temporary state of depression. Many of the comments called me 'emo' as if it were an insult, and then wished my death. People always search for something to hate and there are justifications for just about anything, whether or not they are reasonable.
Back to the topic. Blizzard is interested in making money, if they were to ban everyone who said 'gay' or 'fag' as a response to any instance of such words used with derogatory intent, they would lose a lot of money. I would predict that if the number of GLBT players deeply offended (and would thus boycott) by Blizzard's current policy was greater than the number that using such hate speech, they would have a different policy. Unfortunately, there's no way to replicate the WoW experience without using illegal player-run servers, which, if they gained popularity (deemed necessary to the success of an MMORPG by most) and cost Blizzard money, they would be shut-down. It is a certified monopoly and thus has power to spare and abuse for one motive: profit.
I think we can all agree that the use of censorship is potentially dangerous, but when there are a large number of minors playing, it's entirely unacceptable to expose them to such hate-speech, or allow them to participate in it, which at the very least forms negative habits. The right solution is to ban those who use hate speech, but nobody who would use the language in a discussion that does not dissolve into harassment.
GLBT is a reality just like any other quality or quantity we can observe, and to shun its existence in any medium it will propagate is an abhorrent abuse of power. To say there would be no homosexuals in a world with 'humans' or other intelligent beings is against the evidence we have today. Thus, it must be accepted and if there are those who would undermine its acceptance without reason, the harm they cause must be prohibited.
To punish those who advertise as GLBT-friendly because of the irrational responses others might have is tantamount to punishing someone for making a mistake in a party raid that causes everyone to lose their temper and succumb to anger and abusive language when a GM gets wind of the chat filter working over-time. With a reasonable GM, I don't see the second scenario ever occuring, but profits motivates the first.