KipIngram

I think non-believers are way too "engaged" with the whole business of religion - something they don't even believe in. You'd think they'd view it as just another form of ignorance. Individual people that actually try to hurt you because of their beliefs - those people are a problem and you've every right to be concerned about / try to stop them. People who aren't bothering you? Don't bother them - who cares? Live and let live. I'm not a vegetarian either, but I don't feel any need to ban vegetarianism. The more time I spend minding the business of people that give me no reason to mind their business, the less time I have left to think about things actually worth thinking about.

One of the (junior) high school courses I value the most, on hindsight, was geometry. To the extent I've worked with geometrical things later in life, I've typically used trigonometry to solve the actual problems, which is an altogether different thing. So in that sense I don't really use the theorems of geometry that I labored to prove in that that class. But churning through all of those exercises shaped how my mind works in terms of "finding a way" from a starting point to a desired goal. Just knowing that such reasoning was possible wouldn't have done that - it was the hours and hours and hours of practice that I poured into it, in the context of geometric proofs, that had the lasting effect.

Examples are important in learning how to apply principles. Learning the "scientific principle," and then observing its application via subjects, is better than just stating a principle.

That sounds pretty far-fetched to me. Sounds like they're talking about using a magnetic field to contain a volume of stuff underneath, and then I guess it would compress until the pressure was able to hold the vehicle up. Doesn't seem to violate any principles, at least mechanically, but I don't see how they'd pull it off. After all, it's compressed air in tires that keep them holding their shape.

The ship has mass and so can't travel at c. If the ship is traveling very close to c, then the distance they measure that they have left to travel will be contracted. So they will see the light reach the target very quickly, since it's covering a small distance to them. But it will still get there ahead of them.

That's spot on.

Well, I'm aware of that limitation. But it looks like they're treating g2.f as a function (call it u) and then applying a rule to g1.u. Why is not permissible to first apply that same rule to g2.f? They worked from the outside in - I'm wondering why you can't work from the inside out, being careful in both cases not to commute an operator applications. I'm sure it does wind up breaking one of those simple rules, but it's just not clear to me how - it's not as obvious to me as ab != ba. Thanks for the reply, btw - I'd nearly forgotten about this post.

Perhaps because very few of us actually learn those things, and yet we've crafted systems of government that involve catering to the opinions of the many. Not criticizing democratic forms of government, but they do cause politicians to have to act on mass opinion.

He was better off during his life, due to a higher state of contentment. Well, I disagree with your use of the word "dangerous." But that's ok - we each get our own opinion.

Some would argue that a person that lived and died with hope in their heart was better off than one who felt "doomed." I don't think that sort of thing represents "danger" - we're talking about things much more tangible than that like people who kill others in the name of their religion. That's danger.

Exactly - totally agree. Believe what you wish, and campaign for your beliefs, but there are certain lines that just can't be crossed.

I hope it won't be OT for me to make a couple of points here. I think it's 100% clear that religion gives us some extremists. On the Christian side you have people like the aforementioned Westboro Baptists, who are some of the hateful people I've ever read about. On the Islamic side you have people who have certainly killed, and on a large scale (9/11 was large scale by anyone's standards, and then we have the recent events in Britain). But I think it's just utter nonsense to presume that characterizes the religion as a whole. As I noted above, that notion is fed to us by manipulative people on both sides of the aisle. Additionally, there are some people (a couple of whom I've encountered here on this forum), who seem to want to "cherry pick" problems like extremist behavior in a politically selective way. They've identified their "targets," and even mentioning examples of extremism from the other end of the spectrum seems to absolutely enrage them. This makes no sense whatsoever to me. Extremism is a general concept that applies all over the place, and seems to uniformly lead to problems (maybe that's a good way to define extremism - being so wound up over something that you're willing to lie, cheat, maim, and kill in the name of your particular beliefs). It's the extremism that's the problem - not the underlying institution that the extremism is built on. To me this sort of cherry picking behavior is no more rational that telling someone who's very philanthropic that they're not charitable because they don't contribute to one particular charity. "Being charitable" is a generic quality that has to do with sacrificing your own resources to help others, and extremism is a general trait that I've proposed a definition for above. The details don't really matter. One of the best things about our world is that we just do not get to tell one another how to think. What I just described is really quite ironic, when you note that in science we usually consider identifying a general principle that applies in diverse areas to be a good thing.

That there even was a rule (used by government and other institutions) was indicative of a problem. I look forward to a time when our official institutions are strictly "color blind." That would mean not even having data indicating race, not having race checkboxes on forms, and so on. It's utterly irrelevant, or at least should be.

Don't forget free energy.

Also, given that I had just that one brief exposure to the person, it's entirely possible they were trolling me. No way to be sure, is there?

In a lot of systems the loss mechanism goes up with power, so in that sense raising energy density or power level can cause you to lose a larger fraction of the energy before you use it.

Amen to that last part. I'm astounded by the degree of pseudoscience manipulation that gets attempted, and even more astounded by the extent to which it's successful.

Yes, I do believe it's very rare. I think the people that try to tell us that the majority of Islamic people are radicals are purely trying to manipulate us to their own ends. Examples were requested, though, and I had one so I shared.

I agree - I'm all for a sound basic knowledge in all the areas covered in high school. Several of the things you mentioned, though, come with instructions on the package, so I think one could function without having the knowledge. Please don't take me as implying it's not good knowledge to have, though - that's not the case at all.

Do we have any sort of believable metric about precisely how religious the US is? I chat on an IRC channel with a small group of guys spread out over the world, and it's clear that the European members think of the US as religious to the point of it causing problems. And I guess my own general sense is that the US is more religious than a lot of European countries, but that sense is based mostly on the media and other "observer inputs" like that IRC channel. And yet as I go about my day-to-day life I rarely encounter religion as the driving factor in events unfolding around me. So while I recognize that we're probably more religious than Europe in some measurable way, I question whether we are "massively religious" in the way some people seem to think. I've had the sense that religion is on the decline in the US - it's certainly a lot more "acceptable" not to be religious than it was when I was a small child. If you regard it as a problem, I think it's a problem that is largely taking care of itself. I'm speaking of mainstream US citizens here, not the nuts that make the news (Westboro Baptist Church, etc.) And this post is a query more than a claim - I'm inviting quantitative input.

Ah, yeah - bleach and ammonia - good one!

Agreed - no real benefit and has led to plenty of problems.

I think you're on the right track noting that differences within a race are as significant, or more significant, than differences between races. We've built our social conception of race on a few specific variations that happen to produce visible effects. Obviously you can get problems if you start breeding within your family, but other than that I don't think it's going to make any real difference. If you really want to factor the health, intelligence, etc. of future children into your choice of mate then I'd say try to find a mate that comes from a healthy, intelligent family. At least then you know that the qualities you're hoping for are present in the gene line. But if you wind up choosing a mate on that basis that you're not compatible with in terms of personality, shared interests, and so on then you'll be more likely to have other sorts of problems. My first wife was Vietnamese; we had two children. My second and current wife is half Latina, and we have three children. All five are healthy and (in my obviously biased opinion) beautiful. My current wife and I are both quite intelligent, but I've seen our kids underperform to some extent in school. I think cultural influences have a lot to do with that particular thing as well. So, it's more or less a crap shoot - follow your heart and love those kids and it will all be fine.

None of us are the definitive authority on any of the others. I get quite amazed at how quickly people start telling me how to think. Each one of us is entirely unique and individual and more familiar with their own life than anyone else breathing.

As far as race being a social construct, I don't think they mean purely - as swansont just pointed out there are real physical differences at the genetic level. But we've certainly taken race and made it a much bigger deal than it should be on the genetic basis alone, and you could call that a social construct. As far as I'm concerned the sooner we get over that the better. I think each new generation that comes along does a better job on that front (at least here in the US).