Sisyphus

Huh? How is this the fault of the United States? What are you talking about?

Well, by definition, compared to anything else...

It baffles me how she gets away with claiming that at all. She makes a big deal about "saying no thanks" to the "Bridge to Nowhere," but that's bullshit. She was completely in favor of it - campaigned on it, even - until after it was defeated in Congress. Sorry, but you don't get credit for turning down nonexistent earmarks, and certainly not when you were asking for it, earlier. She was also perfectly willing to keep and spend the big fat porkbarrel check Alaska got in lieu of the bridge fund, so she didn't even save the taxpayers any money. It's just blatant hypocrisy on multiple levels, and I don't see how you could excuse it even if you totally accept Ron Paul's rationale.

Wait, what? I wasn't accusing any particular person of anything. I agree with everything you've said, and in fact said much the same thing earlier in the thread. To talk about religion is inevitable, but having a religious discussion is pointless.

Pete, a few things: "Philosophers" don't say any one thing. Philosophy has been evolving for thousands of years, and there is always disagreement, and at any given time the number of people who call themselves philosophers greatly outnumber those who actually are. If one says that "humans don't have instincts" or something, then they're either misinformed or just a hack. A lot of times people will have a preconceived notion about something, which they then try to find arguments to justify. This is not philosophy, it's sophistry. Philosophy examines the facts as they are, and derives what conclusions it can from them. The facts here are that the evidence points towards a particular narrative of the evolution and development of moral impulses and ideas. Only a weak mind would think that makes morality meaningless, and only a dishonest one would ignore the facts in order to maintain its meaning. As for the curtness you encounter, you have to understand that this thread doesn't exist in a vacuum. Yes, it was obvious to me and probably most what the real question in your mind was, because this kind of thing comes up so often. Any regular poster at a place called "science forums" is going to be used to people coming in with religiously motivated rants, and many of them start out with innocent (but transparent) "questions" that they think they already know the answers to. That might not be you, but they look like you. People are annoyed because arguing with religion is a waste of time, and from experience they suspect you of being more close-minded than your questions imply. Anyway, is your question answered? Even if you don't accept it, you have seen that "an atheist" can indeed "account for morality," yes?

I think merit is an appropriate term, here. You use the methods that are the most effective, obviously. If your goal is to keep kids out of trouble, then you find out which method works better, and you follow it. In this case, sex education definitely works better than abstinence education. If your goal is to impart accurate information (imagine that), sex ed wins again. Now, the arguments arise when different goals are put forth. I admit I have a hard time understanding what abstinence education is trying to accomplish aside from humoring parents' denial and squeamishness, so I'm pretty one-sided on this particular issue. They'll say they "don't want to send mixed messages" or simply that they don't want their kids learning "that stuff," no elaboration.

To the contrary, I think Pete's observation about "murder" is very important. I don't think he's appealing to the Bible as an authority so much as holding it up as a very important example in sociology, which it most certainly is. Morality as an instinctive adaptation to exist in social groups wouldn't be inherently generalized. It would only apply to those individuals considered to be in the same group, because that is where its advantage would lie, just as there is an advantage to literally dehumanize the "other." If killing a foreigner isn't "murder" in the Bible, then that supports that idea, as that would mean that generalizing morality to all humanity would be a more recent development, perhaps resulting from rationalizing and intellectually resolving contradictions in the inherent instinctive drive, as well as finding the advantages to larger and larger social groups. You can even see the change happening in the New Testament vs. the Old Testament, in the rise of humanism and egalitarianism in the Enlightenment, the slow decline of nationalism and the rise of an "international community," and even in movements such as "ethical Veganism."

Apparently they released that information to counter rumors that Bristol (the daughter) is the real mother of Palin's youngest son. I wasn't going to post anything about it because it could easily just have been crazy rumors and it's a distraction from the real issues, even though my bullshit detector is still going crazy about the official version of events. I suspect that we still haven't heard the truth and that the public drama isn't over, which is unfortunate. Her family's private life is none of my business. The only remotely relevant aspect would be if she abused her power in a cover up of some kind.

Hehe, I heard Cindy McCain saying that. "Alaska is actually the closest state to Russia, so Sarah knows what's at stake." I assumed she was just being typically silly. I didn't realize that had become an actual talking point.

Yeah, pretty much every part of that argument is complete bull (as I'm sure you realize). Congrats on making it work anyway. If I was debating you, I probably wouldn't bother picking it apart, though, and instead argue that pie doesn't exist, either...

That's actually pretty awesome. How do you track them? EDIT: Ah, I see. "Contact if found " tags.

Obviously, an effective intelligence test would be measuring to what degree they agree with me.

Nah. When the weather works out in your favor, it's theology. When it turns against you, it's just meteorology. Confirmation bias is a powerful tool.

A lot of things have that law - anything that "emanates." If you think about it, it's just a matter of geometry, specifically the equation for the surface area of a sphere, A=4pi(r^2), more specifically the fact that surface area increases with the square of the radius. Think about a light source giving off radiation. Picture a sphere around it with a ten foot radius, then one with a twenty foot radius. Each one intercepts all the light from the source, but the larger one has four times the surface area, and hence 1/4 the intensity per unit area. So intensity varies with the inverse square of the distance from the source.

There certainly is. Obama gets a lot more attention than McCain (perhaps because both campaigns seem to be mostly about Obama?), but he also gets a much greater percentage of negative attention. Frankly, I think McCain has the advantage. When he screws up, you generally don't even hear about it. So can we finally drop all this "liberal media" B.S.? It's almost become conventional wisdom from sheer repetition, and the mainstream media itself seems to be overcompensating.

The choice is easy to understand: a female Republican governor known for an independent streak. That she's female takes some of the "historic" wind out of the Democrat's sails, and her persona meshes well with McCain's. She also isn't on record with harsh words about McCain, something pretty much all the most prominent Republicans would be. On the other hand, I can definitely see it backfiring. McCain's primary and most persistent criticism of Obama has been his lack of experience, and Palin has even less than Obama. Does all of a sudden experience not matter any more? The VP's primary duty is to be ready to assume the Presidency. How can Obama not be ready if she is? Also, a criticism from the right (though not explicitly from the McCain campaign itself) is that Obama is an "affirmative action candidate" and wouldn't be there if he wasn't black. Well, can anyone seriously claim that Palin would be the pick if she wasn't a woman?

For personal qualities, I would want the candidate primarily to be extremely intelligent, extremely hard-working, and extremely cool-headed. I would want them to be able to demonstrate understanding not just of the issues, but of all viewpoints, as well, to the point where they could could convincingly argue in favor of positions they strongly disagree with. The ability to think quickly on their feet would be a positive, of course, but to me it is less important than the ability to ponder questions deeply and arrive at thoughtful answers of appropriate subtly and depth. Of secondary but still substantial importance would be personal charisma and general openness. It would obviously be too much to ask that the candidate be personally unambitious (they're asking to be President, so they pretty much have to be a megalomaniac of one kind or another), but they can still demonstrate the wisdom, restraint, and patriotism not to let that ambition dominate their decisions. No specific educational requirements are necessary, but of all academic fields, law is probably the most relevant, and having demonstrated great legal aptitude and having earned the respect of legal academia would go a long way towards demonstrating the qualities I look for in a leader. (Note that that is not the same as a "successful" lawyer.) I would also put a lot of value in someone who had been trained to think like a scientist, to apply strict rationality and empiricism to problems. They should at least understand how and why science works, and be able to apply that mode of thinking outside of their own field (although they also need to be able to think not like a scientist). As for experience, I would say anything which demonstrates leadership and familiarity with the issues and workings of the job they are going to assume. I can't think of any resume that would actually be sufficient qualification for the Presidency. As much as I value academia, in itself the academic life is entirely insufficient training. Holding a high command in the military and being governor of a state (although this varies greatly from state to state, both in the states themselves and the role the governors play in them) are generally cited as leadership experience, which I guess they are, but are not nearly enough in themselves, and a candidate who claims they are probably doesn't know what he's getting in to. I would like to see someone who has good experience in all levels of politics, from local to international.

This is incorrect. It seems like you're misapplying the idea that two different sized objects fall at the same speed. This is true when you have an opposing massive body in common, in that case the Earth. Your example is a different situation. Just remember two things: First, that the gravitational force exerted by each object on the other is exactly equal, and opposite in direction. And second, the equation f=ma. So in your example, you have the same force acting on each paper (the "f" is the same in each equation), but one of them is ten times as massive as the other (the "m" is different). Hence, as the "m" gets larger, the "a" gets smaller. The 1 mile square piece will accelerate ten times as quickly as the 10 mile square piece, and they will meet at their center of gravity, not halfway between them. The same thing happens when you drop a rock off a cliff, just with a more extreme difference. The same force is acting on the rock as on the entire rest of the Earth, but since the Earth is so much more massive than the rock, that force only accelerates the Earth an immeasurably small amount.

It seems like you're also mixing up math and physics. Physically, there's no such thing as a circle, and there's no such thing as a polygon, either. There is no minimum size of a polygon's side in the "real world," because polygons aren't in the real world. Planck's constant has nothing to do with it. You can still describe a circle of any size, but you could never "make" one anyway. I can't tell what you're trying to say, here. Especially since, according to your above post, the ratio you're talking about is just an approximation. You said the real ratio is 7:22.00008478, not 7:22. But even if it were exactly 7:22, I don't understand what significance you're claiming that would have.

What's your point?

It also assumes money spent by the government has no effect on the economy.

Not n. It's the symbol for pi. Well, yes, you are wrong. The value of pi is pi. Exactly. Just like the value of 1 is 1, or the value of sqrt2 is sqrt2. It's an exact value. There's nothing else to "know." It just happens to be the case that you can't write it as decimal, because it's irrational, but that doesn't make it imprecise. I don't know what this means. Hence I don't know how you get here. However, you are correct in a way, as circles are indeed "fantasy" in the sense that they are mathematical concepts, and don't correspond to any physical object. I have no idea what you're talking about with lines being "dimensionless objects," though. They're not "objects" at all. Yes and no. Sometimes it is necessary to approximate pi in decimal form, in which case the "different values" arise from the degree of precision required. When dealing with pure mathematics, however, there is no need to approximate. Pi is simply pi. The area of a circle with radius 2 is not 6.28 (4*3.14), it is simply 4pi. Not in Euclidian geometry it can't.

Dennisg, you might want to read a little bit about irrational numbers, since - and I don't mean this in an insulting way - you obviously don't really grasp what they are yet. Check out the Wikipedia article, for one thing. It's not the best, but it's a pretty good place to start.

Of course we can know the exact area of a circle. It's pi(r^2). Just because pi is irrational doesn't mean it's indefinite. Nature is not obligated to make things simple, and mathematics is not dependent on nature, anyway. You're mixing up math and physics. Less than a plank length is not mathematically "meaningless," it's just the maximum observable resolution of physical objects, hence physical descriptions on a smaller scale are pointless. Also, a definition can't be "wrong." If you change the definition, you're just defining something else. I think one of my favorite Einstein quotes applies here: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

*steps delicately over crazy rants* The more I think this whole mess, the more unsettling it is, because nobody is really wrong. Sure, pretty much all parties have behaved badly, and unnecessarily made a bad situation worse. But all parties also have legitimate - and irreconcilable - claims. Georgia is trying to maintain its territorial sovereignty, a basic duty of the nation state. The breakaway regions are asserting their self-determination, a core democratic principle. And Russia is just protecting its own citizens! This, combined with fairly indefensible conduct by both Russia and Georgia, makes it impossible to support one side or the other without being hypocritical. And sure enough, there are plenty of double standards being applied. It strikes me that the situation in South Ossetia and Georgia is quite similar to the situation in Kosovo and Serbia, and yet the "sides" are almost exactly reversed. How can either Russia or the United States even pretend to ideologically reconcile their respective positions? For that matter, how do we approach separatist factions all over the world? Unevenly. Kosovo is ok, Palestine is ok, even Quebec is ok if they decide to leave Canada. South Ossetia, Kurdistan, and Northern Cyprus are apparently not. For that matter, the United States of America is ok, but the Confederate States of America is not. I guess that's inevitable, though. Either idealogical position, self-determination or territorial sovereignty, becomes absurd if taken to its logical extreme. On the one hand, I could secede my apartment from the United States, stop paying taxes, ignore all laws, and if the police came I could ask for protection from the UN. On the other extreme, the whole world could still technically be divided between Spain and Portugal.