Dak

I felt this after getting my bacholorate... i was kinda surprised at how little stats i actually knew I also didn't learn too much about the scientific method, tbh. If anyone wants this split off from the main topic into it's own thread, just holler.

iirc, the lama dies and is re-encarnated into a baby, which will grow up to be the next lama. iow, whoever the next lama is will claim to be a re-incarnation of the last. I assume that if the last one didn't have permission to re-encarnate, then the new one will be held guilty of unlicenced re-encarnation (this is the stupidest serious conversation i've ever had), so effectively the communist party would be able to forse the monks to co-operate on threat of witholding licence to re-encarnate. iow, it seems like a guise to legalify putting their boss in jail if they don't co-operate.

no it doesn't, it just means that it's much more/less common in one race than another. for example, iirc blood type B is reeeeeally uncommon in native americans, but quite common in other 'races'. tada, a medically relevent race-based genetic difference. doesn't work with all alleles, obviously, but with some it does. Generally that's true, and often the distribution of an allele completely disreguards ethnic/racial boundries. however, it often doesn't, and is distributed along ethnic/racial lines. when that's the case, it allows for racially-targetted medisine.

why approve a drug with inherent risks for a group that has no need for it? It'd be like approving the contraseptive pill for use in males... they don't need it, ergo it's not worth any risks, so I wouldn't be surprised if you're not allowed to prescribe it to males.

it was in refference to pangloss' earlyer accusation of an unfair bias against conservatism, not directly related to the paper being discussed. the thread's all over the place, if you hadn't noticed with that bit, all i meant is that some conservatives/traditionalists don't want to conserve aspects of our society due to any aversion to tinkering, but rather because certain aspects of our societies are bigoted, and they quite like that because they themselves are bigots (of the 'don't like gays' variety). I'd be quite happy to differentiate them from 'true' conservatives, same as i'd like to differentiate the more loony 'tinker till it explodes without thinking' and 'femnazi' liberals from the majority, but the fact is that these bigots usually get lumped in under the umbrella term of 'conservatism'. when talking about 'liberalism' being intelectually superior to 'conservatism', i get the feeling somewhat that what's being compared is liberalism with bigotry, as opposed to with conservatism of the lets-not-do-anything-drastic variety. if that makes sense? lol, depends on wether you count sub-optimal as being broken, but i do recognise the kind of liberal to which you are alluding they're stoopid agreed. you certainly shouldn't tinker without thinking nor when it's unneccesary -- in fact, i'd go as far as to say that even when you do tinker you should be conservative (just not neccesarily so conservative that you don't tinker in the first place). doh. should've read the whole post first...

for the record, this is exactly what i meant! changing things that need changing is all well and good, but it is risky and can go wrong -- which isn't even addressing the cost of changing things -- neither of which are problems that conservatism has. otoh, sometimes things need changing, in which case there's nothing wrong with being conservative in your changes if that'll suffice (small, cheap, reletively risk-free cautious changes, rather than dramatic, expensive, risky ones). I guess I can see how 'easy and risk-free' could come across as glib, but they are the benifits of conservatism, same as 'actually improving the situation' is the benifit of progressivism. cheers

do i take it you get nature and have read these arguments and answres? if so, was the age factor that pangloss(?) D H brought up earlyer mentioned? i.e., that both conservatism and the mentioned mental traits correlate with age? ta.

so in other words, you're going to ignore anything good said about conservatism, assume anything else said about conservatism is bad, and complain about a persieved bias against conservatism on this board? well then, pangloss, give me an example of what you'd accept as non-dismissive, non-pejorative, relevent compliments of conservatism. what would you say conservatism's good points are? just so i know how to word it for future refference to make it clear im 'doing my bit for PC' and 'being fair' to conservatism.

did you not see my bit about it being less risky and less effort? and the bit where i pointed out those are good things?

it's a tad complicated, but genetically valid races often corrispond with what's culturally considered a race. eg, 'black' isn't a race, but 'negro' is a valid genetic race. ---- whenever the distribution of a medically relivent allele corrisponds with a visually-discernable race, i don't see what the problem is with capitalising on that fact. eg, the drug in question iirc works only if you have a certain receptor on your heart, which is usually only found in negros. no point in giving that drug to caucasians and mongaloids, nor in denying negroes it 'just to be fair' I think your third group should be orientals + misc. asians are cacasian, same as europeans... i think.

I didn't know this thread was about masturbating conservatism's ego, but conservatism is an easy, cheap, low-risk 'if it aint broke, don't fix it' approach afaict, which is cool tho theres a time and place for it. I mean, it's not as if i deside which knot would be ideal for tying my shoes each morning, i just use a double-bow-knott, 'cos that's how i've allways done it (and it's how my parents did it) and it works adequately theres a lot in favour of the less-effort/risk, lazy way of doing things.

by 'history', i kinda meant academic history (i.e., fact-based) as endorsed by whatever (inter)national academic bodie(s) deal with that kinda thing. what the majority of the population believe is somewhat irrelevent. 'several' is a tad too week tho, yes.

he could allways have tought the adam and eve story with the cadevat that the current historical oppinion is that it's bs, which wouldn't stop you from teaching the fact that most people did, and several people still do, believe it, the impact of it etc. anyhoo, to those that believe the adam and eve story, the simple fact is that believing it requires that they ignore evidence-based history. given that they're going to have to do this anyway, i don't see why they couldn't just be expected to do it in the western civilisation class? y'know, without demanding that everyone else be forsed to ignore fact-based history aswell. I don't think the college in question is specifically a religious college, so by joining (to address paranoias comments about choice) they could only have expected a secular education (as did everyone else who attends the college and will be effected by this desision, if it's as appears).

doh! i missed that bit

if you define conservatism as 'sticking with what we've allways done', then i'd say it's lazy and cautious, which isn't neccesarily a bad thing: why bother going through the effort and risk of changing our society if our society allready works well enough? an improvement isn't allways worth the cost and risk. comparing conservatism with liberalism is like comparing cheese and chalk (or progressivism with bigotry) -- i think it's more the progressivism aspect of liberalism that is contrastable with conservatism. and, tbh, it's not surprising that someone who wants to see things how they are and not take any great effort/risk in changing them unless absolutely neccesary (i.e., conservative) would have different mental traits than someone who is more inclined to change things in order to improve them -- eg, i'd also guess that conservatives are more inclined towards realism, whilst progressives would lean towards idealism. otoh, you have to realise that the reason that the otherwize uncontrastable liberalism and conservatism get compared so often is that our societies, untill quite recently, have been bigoted, and so unselective conservatism will often work to conserve the bigoted aspects of our society (iow, conservatism can act like bigotry, which IS directly contrastable to liberalism) and if you happen to actually be bigoted -- say, a far-right christian who wants legally-enforsed adherance to aspects of the bible simply because it's what you believe -- what you'll want is often an aspect of our current/recent society, and thus you'll get labelled as a 'conservative' for wanting it; this is where, i would guess, the 'liberalism is more intelectual than conservatism' sentiment comes from -- not a comment on progressivism v conservatism (presumably, if our societies became truly liberal, then all the liberals would change to conservatism), but as a comment on liberalism v bigotry (which, i think, has some justification to the claim 'liberalism is smarter'). none of which implys that conservatives are stupid

but, as CDarwin said, aren't they mechanically identicall? and aren't they just slightly different instances of a phenomena that acts to 'idealise a species to its environment'? iow, isn't there just one 'natural selection'?

ah, cheers. in the uk it's: school till 16 (compulsary), then college generally from 16-18, then uni from, generally, 18-22. if, in the us, it's 'college of art + college of science + college of english language = university of detroit' then these 'colleges' would just be called departments in the uk, and sometimes unis are called 'research unis/departments' to show off the fact that they do research. sometimes a building teaches 'school' and 'college' degrees, in which case it's a 6th-form school. [/ot reciprocation] well, yes, if they're adults they can choose for themselves. otoh, if only half are for not getting taught factual history, it kinda screws the other half -- it's not as if you could threaten to sue the head if they sack the teacher (or could you?) that's again assuming that he was sacked for what he said, not how he said it.

i may be thinking of US college kids as younger than they actually are (i'm thinking 16-18, and i think they'd get treated as kids in the US... or is 'college' more analogouse to the UK's university?) so, maybe this isn't relevent to post-pre-college education, but: the parents should have this freedom; but the kids should also have the freedom from being exposed only to their parent's choice, and should have all options exposed to them. anyway, i'm not objecting to teaching them religion; i'm objecting to not teaching them facts (i.e., the facts indicate that the adam-and-eve story is BS). teaching facts + the literalist religious interpretation is fine imo. teaching just facts is also ok, and you can leave it up to churches and parents to instruct on religious matters. teaching just religion, tho, would turn the college from a place of education (possibly including religious education) into a place of indoctrination, which is not it's point.

i'd be inclined to draw the line at letting people do stupid things to their kids. teach them history in a history class and religion in a religion class, then let them choose which to believe. But to argue against teaching history in a history class because it conflicts with religion is to try to give the kids only one choice -- hardly consistant with 'freedom'.

If anyone's looking for the stuff about the sun getting smaller and evolution being a load of cacky poop, it's been split to here because it was crap.

I agree. Thread spliterkated!TM

if they publish in peer-reviewed journals so that any errors can be discovered by others who don't share their biases, then yeah -- tho i'd be sceptical at first (i.e., would wait untill it had actually survived peer-review for a bit). insidentally, i've seen on a few papers a 'full disclosure' bit, where it says something like 'this research was funded by blah', so maybe some journals demand that potential biases be stated?

list.append thing ? cool if so... i tend to make a lot of silly syntax mistakes (missing off brackets etc), so a more intuitive english-like language might be cool for what little i use it. now if i could just stop misspelling my variabels...

ah, cheers i missed that. hmm... seem's like it could be half over-reacting to critisisms of one's religion, and half thinking that being historically/scientifically correct gives one the right to be rude. reminds me of the P&R forum

yeah, but even so something along the lines of '2+2=4, not 5 you ****ing retard; you and you're ilk are prats for thinking otherwize' isn't really acceptable. without knowing how he worded his critisisim... pangloss, where did the 'pop a prozac' comment come from? I googled, but couldn't find any more info than in the original link