padren

"I don't care what's in the constitution, Income Tax is a legitimate means to fund public government" "I don't care what's in the constitution, individuals should not be allowed to own nuclear weapons for personal self defense." ... Would those statements be impeachment worthy? Do they even imply a violation of the Oath to upload the constitution? How many conservatives "Don't care about the constitution" when it comes to Roe V Wade? At least that issue got a ruling from the Supreme Court as to what the Constitution means as it applies to the reproductive rights of women - the disagreements over health care are far from tested. Yet conservatives have proudly fought against the Constitution with regards to abortion, and tried to impede what is the Law of the Land and the most official interpretation of the Constitution our nation can provide by subverting those rights through every avenue possible including those that don't overturn the Supreme Court's decision. On top of that he clearly states he feels "the pursuit of happiness" etc as written in the Constitution and affords room for this bill. I honestly think he doesn't care about "debating the Constitution with a hostile guy with a camera" since we do have a Supreme Court that will inevitably hear the matter and settle the argument.

I agree, but I also understand that generally, but I am curious how this is reconciled when it comes to issues of faith for people. Since most religions have what are considered undeniable absolute truths, do people generally treat those as truths, and their own personal views as fallible, or put their faith itself into that category as fallible when weighing things like political course-of-actions? I assume this is reconciled to the satisfaction of most people religious and otherwise, I am curious about how different people do this.

Is there any coherent, organized platform coming from the Tea Party movement? Even if the videos represent "Gotcha" moments of the worst of the lot, someone or some people organizing the movement must distill some semblance of a cause for the group. So far, the very best I've heard from this movement is a rejection of Obama's general policies because they don't fit with their "more government is always bad" philosophy. From those sympathetic to the movement, I've heard some abstract Randian ideas of how things "should" work but nothing resembling a plan and absolutely nothing resembling a functional strategy. For the members themselves, all I have seen are people protesting things that are completely separate from reality - Obama introducing Russian Monarchs into the government for the first time in American history, government healthcare, death panels... the only things they hit are either abstract (a general increase in spending, signing the healthcare bill) or are as large and vague as the broad side of a barn like "Signing the Health Care Bill." Again, these may not be representative of the whole but where is the "majority" of TPers who are telling those other guys to shut the hell up and read something for once? If there is a core within the movement that is in touch with reality with a coherent message, those on the fringe must really tick them off. The thing is while I could see how the intellectuals and organizers would be marginalized, I don't actually see any evidence they exist at all. I would very much welcome evidence to the contrary.

Speaking politically, when someone has absolute faith in a religion and it's moral authority, is it amoral for that person to use their political influence to (via voting, position of office, etc) towards coercing others to live in accordance with their view of absolute morality without considering they could be wrong? I am not saying that to support the same morals politically that one holds religiously is de-facto amoral - you can still oppose abortion, assisted suicide, premarital sex, stem cell research, theft and the coveting of thy neighbor's ass on moral grounds... but when we impact the freedoms that other people get to exercise in their brief time on this planet what are our moral obligations in weighing the impact we have? I would propose that as a baseline (which is not a description of the above) that it is amoral to limit the freedoms of other individuals thoughtlessly and arbitrarily without due consideration. That said, it gets sticky when we combine religious convictions with the concept of due consideration - most of us here would find it amoral to limit the freedom of women to learn to read, own property, work and vote. There are many religious leaders who have giving this a lot of consideration and painstakingly put together arguments as to why women should be limited with regard to these freedoms. I personally feel that if there is a religious absolute morality, it would be self apparent and reveal itself in the form of concise, logical arguments. My feeling being that if the world works based on a divine truth, it's workings should be apparent in how the world itself works - which works fine for murder, rape, theft and the like. I also have the convenience of not being religious so I really have no idea how that would impact this consideration. As for the morality, I would personally be satisfied with even religiously based political arguments (I may criticize them still of course) if the individual honestly considers "And if I am wrong about my personal beliefs*, what will my impact on others be?" and they are still satisfied. I think that's a good general consideration (not just a religious one) when it comes to political coercion. That's me though, what are other people's thoughts? * a personal belief need not be religious, just something too anecdotal to be communicated and shared with integrity. I could see a UFO and personally believe it had to be from an alien world based on what I saw, but I could never convey the information to another person verbally with enough data integrity for them to "know" it as I would know it. Thus I could still act politically as influenced by that event but I would have to consider the "if I'm wrong" part with more weight than say, the "if I'm wrong and we never landed on the moon" because while the latter would be weighed, it would have to be weighed also with the sheer amount of communal evidence supporting it.

Well, ideally the person on the machine has made a decision in the form of a living will, but in lieu of that you have to err on the side of caution which I personally would find to be the "less irreversible" one. So, you make the sort of effort on behalf of the patient that would be equivalent to them saying "try to keep me alive as much as possible." Doesn't mean you'd bogart the organ transport list from higher priority recipients, just give them the same care of someone who specifically indicated they wanted to "force the fight." The issue does get clouded when you have family members with ideas of what their loved one would want (often conflicting) and at the same time a potential crushing financial burden. I would suspect very few people would want to be kept alive as a vegetable knowing it was bankrupting three generations of their family. The only thing that is crystal clear is there is no good reason not to have a living will. I really have no idea how to think about where this topic "goes" but my feeling is it should start with trying to save those as if they asked, when they never had an opportunity to voice any directives. The interesting issue (in my mind) is really "Can someone in their right mind, want to commit suicide?" and while culturally the thought was unthinkable at one time, it's become more and more pertinent to end of life care. I think most of our current coping mechanisms are rather self serving - if you can get and take the pills, we can accept you "ended your pain" but if someone else got them for you, they better not know what you were intending, and god forbid they push a morphine button at your request. Push a different button that stops a machine - that's acceptable, even if it causes more suffering and takes longer. It seems like culturally the comfort of the living is the highest priority.

Re the OP, overall I have to agree that it is still the same person, but there are so many specifics to take into account it would be somewhat conditional to the case. I would do it in my old age or if I was suffering from a mental degrading illness. As a side note - what if the brain replacement couldn't quite handle all your previous memory and some of your personality algorithms suffered minor degradation? If you were 99% the same, a good night drinking would probably make you "less yourself" but 95%, 90%... would there be a point where the transhuman you tried to become was nothing more than an over glorified Atari console? Also, what if the copy was great but too good - and they made two of them? They are identical so both would have equal right to your stuff. If it was accidental could you sue the service provider because they just effectively cost you half of what you own?

Or right, since consciously allocating individual neurons probably involves a lot of neurons.

On the topic of whether ISPs would start censoring in the future, isn't one of the major issues potential litigation against the ISPs for the traffic that occurs on their networks? I don't know the specifics but I thought net neutrality was one of the ambiguous yet still successful defenses to date, and official net neutrality would safeguard ISPs. On the other hand, if we officially reject net neutrality then they can be sued because "they could have done something but did not" even if that "something" was draconian and overreaching. An ISP that fails to police torrent traffic could be considered profiting from the illegal downloads and legally liable for damages. If a website posts contested material that may or may not be illegal (for reasons outside of piracy, such as potential and yet unproven slander) then the ISP has to have their legal team weigh the likelihood of a bad ruling that could cost them in damages. One of the most tiresome characteristics in our society (in my mind at least) is the "when in doubt about if you can be sued, don't" mentality. It would be even worse in the "wild west" world of the internet because so many freedoms and limitations are still untested or unsettled.

I have to admit I haven't read the book, and can only comment on the quotes within the context of the blog article posted, but I have to generally agree with the author in that, to either scientifically disprove or scientifically speculate on the odds of the existence of God is rather futile and hardly scientific. I get the impression that Dawkins misrepresents at least my understanding of science. I have my own misgivings with the various characterizations of a personal God that I could suggest are based on my own form of information theory, but I would hardly call such a theory scientific. I would hope to call it logically consistent or reasoned but science is an animal unto itself that simply utilizes logic and reason. I think Dawkins makes interesting arguments but they are certainly philisophical and not scientific, and since he goes to such pains to try and demonstrate a logically consistent philosophy, I hope he's open to logical criticisms of that philosophy. As for specific points of contention, I think a definition of God could arise from a simpler form, if that occurred in somewhere outside this Universe, and that complex individual ultimately created (by accident, by design, by "tweaking a few known parameters") our Universe. By existing outside our space/time any intervention (if any, as it isn't required to fit the God definition) could easily have always existed. It may not resolve "First Action" and be called a "sky hook" but no more than cranes resting on turtles all the way down. Is invocation of "sky hooks" may be valid in debating someone who says "in the beginning, there was..." but if your premise is to address the issue of whether a God - any god - exists it seems as out of scope as attacking Evolution for not explaining the Big Bang. It really seems to me that Religion and Science butt heads when they both attempt to explain or predict properties of the physical Universe. Estimates about the age of the Earth and the physical series of events that occurred from a time when the Earth was lifeless to how it is now have been provided by science that contests some religious views, and science has a pretty strong case in my mind on most of these sorts of issues - precisely because scientific discovery lead there. Where Dawkins states "Did Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead?....There is an answer to every such question, whether or not we can discover it in practice, and it is a strictly scientific answer." I have to disagree with him and say there is an objective fact one way or the other, but for a scientific answer that means anything you need evidence, and that is next to impossible. Conflating a "strictly scientific answer" with "an objective answer to the facts" misrepresents what science is about. Science even admits it does not seek to objectively know truth, just come as close to it as can be done through evidence, theories and predictions that test them. How can there be a "strictly scientific answer" if we have no hope of acquiring any evidence? It is possible to debate that question, and use theology, reason, logic and all manner of tools but unless there is evidence science won't be one of them. What bothers me is that while Religion and Science butt heads about the evidence supporting conflicting models of the physical world, it spills over into philosophy where many people seem to treat science as a philosophy, when some term like "rational minimalist/rationalist/etc" or any philosophical definition would fit better. It's like when someone claims that you can find a science to morality...you can use it to measure and quantify but ultimately how you weigh those measures fall under philosophy, not science. I really do wish "rationalists" wouldn't hijack the science label as it doesn't do anyone any good. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedAs a secondary note, I find the topic "A scientist's critique of Dawkins' Enemy of Reason" interesting because we tend to consider atheistic scientists as skeptical rationalists philosophically, which Dawkins also appears to consider himself to be. Theological critiques of skeptical rationalists' critiques of theology tend to be predictable, whereas to be critiqued within his own general school of thought becomes interesting. I mention the use of "scientist" in the title because it reinforces what I was saying about the conflation about science/scientists and philosophy/skeptical rationalists. It's probably fair in this case though as Dawkins is trying to use the Science Flag to wrap his own convictions in.

This is actually the best argument you could make in my mind - tell her that you enjoy her company but dread the frequency with which she brings this up, and you'd feel a lot more at ease if she would just accept you have a different set of priorities right now, and give it a rest for a while. What was her retort to this, out of curiosity? I don't entirely agree with this - I think it's good to try things just to try something new and it's easy to be surprised. The real issue is not benefit but risk, both to oneself and others. If something feels sketchy because of just a gut feeling or a well reasoned assessment, or the commitment of too many resources then by all means pass on it. It's okay to try things and find out whether unexpected benefits can pop up as long as you are comfortable with it. This topic of course, is not one you feel comfortable with it seems appropriate to reject it for that reason. I have to disagree with the serial killer analogy. It's not about the fact something "could end up being pleasurable" but the likely consequences. You probably wouldn't like the consequences of giving serial killing a try. You don't believe you'd like the consequences of having sex just for the sake of loosing your virginity either, so that's a pretty good reason not to. One thing to remember though, is not to get ahead of yourself. Being open to going on a date (regardless of your friend's ultimate agenda) is not going to set you up on a one way fast track to uncomfortable sex. It won't even mean having to go on a date. If you are comfortable with "being open to the possibility of a date" then you can tell her you'll consider dating, but you'll tell her when someone catches your eye and not to try to hook you up. The idea about the study group is good too, not to "swing a date" but for the academic reasons and to broaden your social circle.

tfty

Other synthetic states that allow for "less will power" among other things: Medicine Cooked food Preserved and refrigerated food Artificial "extra skin" for localized climates (ie, clothing) It is not "natural" for humans to use fire, have food stockpiled that actually keeps, or bundle up in extra warm clothes. What criteria do you use to cherry pick the "good" synthetic states from from the ones that make us more like "unconscious animals" and thus are bad? A secondary point of contention: "unconscious animals" are the ones that breed at every opportunity, fighting the natural instinct to reproduce and using artificial birth control is an act of will. It also creates more options as you can stop taking it and have children. Without Birth Control: [1] Have sex, probably have children [2] Don't have sex, don't have children With Birth Control [1] Have sex without protection, probably have children [2] Have sex with protection, probably don't have children [3] Don't have sex, don't have children Frankly, birth control increases your options. It's also worth noting that birth control doesn't mean "instantly no consequences" for sleeping with people. Depending on the method STDs are still a factor. If you or someone you are attracted to is in a monogamous relationship, then you still need will power and to figure out how to express yourself within the confines of that type of relationship. I already addressed the brain power issue but to side track... why do you refer to a "religious human branch" and then to "the ape descendants" like they are different groups? While atheism and "evolution proponents" aren't an exact overlap by any means (many religious people believe in evolution, and some atheists don't) I am pretty sure all evolutionary proponents and pretty much all conventional religions at least agree that all humans came from one place or another, but not a combination of the two. It sounds like you are saying there are two "groups" coexisting, one going back to creationism and one going back to evolution. Could you please provide some material that demonstrates that atheists have higher rates of ADD? I'm pretty sure the disorder is equally common between people of all faiths and atheists who have been screened. I am also pretty sure that critical thinking centers are pretty active in an atheist's brain. I think iNow posted some stuff on that awhile back with regard to the contrast with MRIs of religious people, but I can't recall the links. I'll ask him about that research if you do actually contend that atheists think less and act more like unconscious animals.

I understand where you are coming from there. We have always behaved this way, whether we used a methodology such as science, or superstition and anecdotal trial and error. Some New Age spiritualist will come up with a way to get rid of pests, explain it as something to do with "aura vibrations" and it will turn out to be just as deadly as DDT. Humanity doesn't have the stones for this reality. Science is a very useful tool that allows humans to create larger messes than could be achieved by other means, but science itself is entirely neutral in the situation. The real fault is people have trouble telling pseudoscience from the real thing and that is primarily a lack of time spent learning the fundamentals (not the facts, the process) and anywhere you find science misused, you also find appeals to authority, to popularity, and every other non-scientific argument misused. Not only is science not the problem (although, misuse of science is a symptom, displaying along side misuse of everything else) it has proven to be a mitigating factor to lessen these abuses. If we used DDT because "hey, we tried something random and it works" or explained it's effects through some metaphysical explanation, it would have been much harder to come to the realization that we had a mess that needed to be cleaned up - science makes the "abusers" work a lot harder to carry their biased claims. While they have to work harder it usually still pays off for them for a time, but it is a lot more work for them under the guise of science than any other socially influential format. Science also helped us clean up a lot of messes that have always been around such as diseases we now vaccinate against. Without science we'd be using very crude methods to try and create vaccines and ascribing their effectiveness to whatever idea the most charismatic or influential advocate has to offer, increasing risk and lessening effectiveness. Science only measures objective things, and then people decide both what to measure and how heavily those measurements are scrutinized. Luckily science requires a basic amount of scrutiny or it's not considered science at all, but it is true that science can be "led around" in the sense that people decide what to measure and how hard to scrutinize those measurements in hopes of creating a biased outcome they are already predisposed to - just less so than any other discipline. I guess that's a lot of words to say "Science actually helps mitigate the negative aspects of human nature better than any other discipline, but not enough to fully mitigate them entirely."

I'd have to say that if time is just a distance along another dimensional axis, along which you can always measure a fixed distance out (either due to an infinite plane, or space/time being curved and spherical) then both 24 hrs ahead and behind any given point always exists - they just may not be accessible from any person's given vantage point. However, since you stated that as "if tomorrow never comes" which implies the term is relevant to one's specific perspective in a given moment, and it can only make sense to define "yesterday" by a similar metric which is effectively the memory pattern imprint in a person at a given moment (present) resulting from the cause and effect relationship to events in the past. So yesterday "isn't" but it certainly "was" since, that was specifically a past-tense term.

Well, when marijuana does get legalized, Marlboro starts producing chronic packs and inevitably buys up Doritos - will we trust them any more than when Big Tobacco was getting sued left and right for advertising to minors and such? Even if you don't see people smoking on TV like you used to, there will be the 15-18 TV shows that even now appear to cater exclusively to the really frick'n high crowd sponsored by their subsidiary snack franchises. It's not individual character that concerns me so much as the macro scale issues of parents letting their kids be babysat by the television and total disregard for corporate conduct (being against their conduct, without actually applying legislative pressure to change the conduct is still complicity) that worries me. This is a highly anecdotal biased opinion on my part and not something I am mentioning as objective fact, but it's really the area of this topic I find most concerning. While I don't think it warrants the illegal status of marijuana our current self destructive love affair with fast food with no regard for the health effects does at least raise in my mind, that you may have a valid point.

It's worth noting that when marijuana is hyped as an incredibly addictive, hardcore drug to scare kids off, it's those government agencies that are doing these kids an incredible disfavor - giving them an entirely unrealistic scale for what to expect if they do try heroin or meth. If they've been force fed all manner of propaganda that says marijuana is this horrible beast of a drug that will destroy their lives instantly with just one puff how are they to really be vigilant against those that actually do have much higher risks? (Like Vicodin ) If there is a gateway aspect to marijuana, it's due to the factors created by it's prohibition: from the hyperbole of the dangers, to the acclimation of illegal transactions, and the horrible boom and bust cycles of availability in small towns (due to erratic effectiveness in law enforcement) that gives drug dealers the opportunity to push other drugs (especially 'make it anywhere' meth) the average smoker normally has no interest in. As a side note: it may be worth considering the issue of "altered state escapism" as a phenomenon outside of drug use, that is simply enabled by drugs and is technically a social activity, not inherently a criminal one. There are genuine issues to be considered within that scope - people who's lives and health suffer or their children suffer due to excess, people who are a threat to the welfare of others due to their excesses (DUI, etc), and the effects on young people. This would cover everything from alcohol to pharmaceuticals (legally prescribed or otherwise) controlled substances and even huffing glue. As a society we need to explore those issues and how we feel about them, and draw a drug policy as one aspect of the conclusions we come to from that endeavor. Otherwise, it will always be disjointed, hypocritical, and highly disruptive.

What's this about the avatar?

RE OP: Religion offers an incredibly strong capacity for maintaining the fidelity of social patterns (from marriage rites, to food preparation, hygiene and even laws) across multiple generations. It is naturally imperfect, some do it better than others (some Amazon tribes appear to have maintained incredible fidelity but there is no way to know without a written history) but even with their deviations the rate of fidelity appears to be higher than one would expect for secular societies. I say this mostly because in ancient times we didn't know why a lot of things worked, just that they did and religion helped us attach important reasons to why we did them that way. I don't know if the benefits would outweigh the drawbacks in modern society but it has certainly played a critical role historically.

When someone makes an assertion, they are "pro" that assertion. You asserted that animals do not have religion. Therefore you are "pro" animals do not have religion and should carry the burden of proof. I'm not making this up to make your life more difficult, it's just how debate works. Otherwise someone can use wording to create any "con" assertion and burden you with it. First, I have no idea how anyone could prove or disprove whether animals have religion. Many have demonstrated an amazing capacity for abstract thought previously considered improbable - but "proof" is a pretty tall order either way. Secondarily, I don't see the relevance of whether animals have religion or not. Whether they do or not, their outward behavior is what it is - so how could their internal behavior impact me in any way? Still don't see the connection or relevance. Can you clarify? What phenomenon are you referring to? Dreaming? Hallucinations? Psychotic breaks? You mention psychosis as an example, but what is the phenomenon that impacts humans in shaping early religions? It sounds rather visceral. To get technical, as far as I know the subconscious is just the part of the mind that isn't being constantly measured by other parts of the mind to create and maintain an internal state of reflection. A lot of thinking goes into thinking about what you are thinking, which slows down your thinking. Letting your mind just take care of certain tasks is often faster than thinking it out. Interestingly, I actually "sorta" agree with you, but I think of it the other way around: Humans developed procedures that were beneficial, and at times were very complex (preparing foods so not to spoil, hygiene) and developed through social natural selection of successful habits as apposed to any actual understanding of microbiology. Knowing only that the procedures worked, and not why, the first religions allowed us to attach stories and meanings that help very high importance to the steps to ensure their fidelity over generations. If people simply said "this works, dunno why" then a person may skip a step, get lucky, and die three years later when a specific bacteria is more prevalent along with all the villagers who started skipping that step. In that sense, the "mainframe" is the hard earned set of processes that when followed can produce a reliable result and the "terminal" is the means by which we try to design new processes based on sets of underlying principles. At least that's my take on what I think is the same thing you are describing. For what it's worth, I actually have a lot of respect for the former and have to say in all humility, I am sure we don't nearly know enough today to fully understand all of what may unravel if we take all our traditions for granted and throw them out as obsolete.

Monorail cat has to make an appearance somewhere - perhaps the invisible bike hits an invisible rock, and Suspicious cat has to find alternative transportation to the press conference?

Firstly, nothing can be separated from political or private influences - not science, secular philosophy, or religion. Science is a methodology to identify, catalog, verify measurable information and create predictive theories how one set of measurements can allow us to extrapolate what we find in another set of measurements. We can take a set of measurements of where Venus is in the sky now and was at other points in the past, and use that in combination with a theory to extrapolate a prediction on where it will be tomorrow. It is not designed to tell us about where we came from, why we are here, give our lives any special kind of meaning or provide comfort. Science has been able to come up with some very interesting pieces of information that do affect what people feel about their place in the universe, shed light on billions of years of natural history and the mechanics of our coming to be but how people feel about those facts are entirely up to them and have nothing to do with science. Science also doesn't make moral judgments - it just helps us understand likely consequences of certain actions that gives us more information to help us make our own moral judgments. It's not surprising that lots of scientists feel very strongly about the ethical and moral implications of their research and also act as activists for their beliefs like anyone else (by beliefs, I mean moral beliefs religious or otherwise) since we naturally can be very empathic/sympathetic creatures. Science cannot take us down "the wrong road" morally because it does not "take us" anywhere - we can only use science to illuminate possible paths and we then decide based on our own moral views what roads we want to go down. Lastly to be clear: Sometimes I get the feeling that people think of science and religion as two aspects of life, and when someone is not religious they rely on science to fill the "gap" that is left. Speaking for myself, one does not fall back to science in the absence of religion: reason, empathy, sympathy, logic - perhaps (and more) but that is not science. The only role science may have in helping a child through the "why your mother died" scenario is in acquiring facts the child may find comforting but honestly any person would go with their sense of humanity in comforting the kid, independent of scientific or religious backgrounds. To me, my exploration of science helps me understand facts about the world and how it may unfold, my exploration of my sense of humanity helps me determine what I want to do with that knowledge. Religion exists as an interesting side-note in my exploration of humanity, but it's prevalence or lack thereof has more to do with my exploration of humanity than science in any way.

Btw, just as a followup - I went with a 320Gb Caviar Blue, instead of green and it works perfectly. Thanks for the help both of you, I really thought the odds were low I'd pick up a defective brand new drive, so I could have been looking in the wrong places for a while.

If they want to get into the mud fight, they should propose them all identically verbatim as part of a bill that also requires all members of congress and the senate to volunteer for surgical castration should they be convicted of criminal corruption associated with their public service.

I think there's a huge difference between being skeptical of whether or not we should enact a specific plan, and being confident that (after committing to it) it can be made to work. I think people were skeptical of the plan because it sounds risky and like a lot of work to pull it off due to it's many imperfections. Those imperfections haven't changed, but lacking another option people coming around to giving it a try. You don't have to think duct tape the best material for fixing that lawnmower and may only give it 5:1 odds, but when you realize you have that duct tape in hand and nothing else at your disposal in sight, you'll suddenly get that "okay, this could work" feeling regardless of the reservations. Honestly I thought it was all an intellectual exercise until very recently since it appeared to be doomed. If you want to talk about Health Care Bills that are doomed to never pass this one really is pretty lame. When this bill is considered within the context of something that actually can and did pass - suddenly it doesn't seem that bad of a place to start. And as irrational as it may be, you don't have to see the odds as favorable to believe they can be overcome.

Thanks for the link - I ran the program and it cut itself short because it had already encountered too many bad sectors... so it seems the drive is bad. Hopefully I can replace it and get back on track