Sisyphus

There already is a kind of alcohol than makes you go blind, and it's already perfectly legal: methanol. Nobody tries to drink it. Maybe they would if it were legal and ethanol wasn't? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged If that's true, then it would imply that legalization would increase usage, because it would change the perception of it. That may be true. The first sentence is definitely true. People who want to smoke pot already do, and it is extremely popular. As a means of preventing that, the War on Some Drugs is a ridiculous failure. But maybe it is successful in influencing public perception? But if you just legalize everything, then maybe it would just remove the mental reliance on legal status to judge them, and people would actually think for themselves?

If all drugs were legalized, I don't think usage would change much. Are there really a lot of people out there thinking, "I wish I could be a heroin junky, if only it were legal!" Then again, I don't understand how anyone could do that to themselves in the first place, so anything's possible, I guess.

It's like taking "if you're not with us you're against us" one step further, to "if you're not with us you're with them." Aww, do I have to be? The cause seems to be a tendency to focus on what you don't like about the other guy more than what you do like about "your side." And probably a result is that people disagree a lot less than they think, if they think that elected representatives are... representative of half the country.

My prediction is that it will remained untested by SCOTUS for at least a while, because the federal government would just stop enforcing it in California, while still reserving the legal right to do so. On the other hand, somebody will probably find a way to force the issue. And if they do, I suspect the feds will win. I don't think the states rights case is strong enough* and I don't see how it's different than thousands of other federal laws, but IANAL. Which would just mean the "we can enforce it but we won't" status quo would be maintained. Which is good enough, frankly. If California can have de facto legalization, then other states will probably follow (after it fails to cause the collapse of civilization). Which would in turn make it be taken more seriously as a national issue. *Not to say that it shouldn't be a state issue, just that it Constitutionally doesn't have to be. I suspect weaker cases for interstate commerce have been upheld.

If the Republicans were in power and there was still a tea party movement, your point would have more weight. However, as is, it may as well be organized by the RNC. (Not that I'm saying it is.) They might not be satisfied with the Republican party, but they only seem to be targeting Democrats, and Republicans are lining up to co-opt the movement. (Now that they're out of power they seem to care a lot more about the Constitution and financial responsibility.) Also, I don't really think it's about fiscal conservatism. I think it's about social conservatism and populism (that is, anti-elitism) in general more than it is about any particular platform.

A "globally accelerating system" is another way of saying a system of uniform freefall, which is a local inertial reference frame (where "local" here means the entire visible universe). So no, you wouldn't see that. I also don't know what you mean by "appear in your past." And if it were, that still wouldn't be sufficient. You'd have to show not just that it appears to be receding, but that recession is equal in all directions. There is no geometrical solution to this that only relies on objects moving through space. Which, incidentally, is why it's so hard to come up with satisfactory analogies for inflation. The universe does have hot and cold spots. A star is hot. Deep space is cold. Space inside galaxies is warmer than space outside galaxies. Space inside galaxy clusters is warmer than space outside. And so on. However, on larger and larger scales, the universe gets smoother and smoother. And the same in every direction. In other words, it is what you would not expect if the universe itself were a 3d structure with a center and edges. Towards the edge would look different than towards the center, at the very least. How do you figure? But it is expanding in a constant form. Expansion is the same in every direction, for as far as we can see. That is not a theory. It is an idea. And, as you're applying it, it happens to be false. It is true, however, that there is structure on many scales, all the way up to galaxies, galaxy clusters, galactic filaments, etc.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large-scale_structure_of_the_cosmos However, the universe itself is not such a structure within space. It is space. In fact it's everything there is, by definition. "Come to grips with?" You've gone from proposing an idea to implying it's proven in an awfully short time. I'm sorry, but I have no idea what this means. Wow, michel. A post I almost entirely agree with. Historic! My only difference is that I'm not confident enough to be "extremely reticient" on that particular point.

Yeah, you can't "virtual reality" operate a robot on a different planet. The time lag means they either need a serious amount of autonomy, or just be willing to wait however many minutes or hours between every action. The Mars probes, for example, are not controlled in real time for this reason. On the other hand, that's not a huge problem on the moon, since it only adds 3 seconds to an Earth-based controller's reaction time. You could pretty much operate in real time, as long as you drive slow...

I know they're not "in favor of overpopulation." That's not what anyone is saying. I'm saying the same thing you are, that they ignore it. And that what they do encourage exacerbates the problem.

Following parallel trajectories in acceleration would not result in expansion being the same in every direction, though. Certainly "ahead" would look different than "to the side." There is, in fact, no possible solution that relies only on objects moving through space. You need space itself to expand for it to be mathematically possible.

Regarding the Catholic Church's position on birth control, "what atheism offers" in this case is the removal of a barrier to responsible behavior, and absence of a policy that results in overpopulation and the spread of diseases like HIV.

The problem with that is that expansion is the same in every direction.

The medium is the material that a wave travels through. For example, when you flick the end of a rope, a wave travels down it. The rope is the medium. No part of the rope is itself traveling down itself. Light is a wave that travels through space, that does not require any medium through which to travel.

"Easier than going to the moon" is a pretty low bar for "easy," don't you think?

Though well-designed to come up with restrictions we are poorly designed to follow. Are we? Adequately designed, necessarily, but the artifacts of the "design process" can certainly be a pain. And not so well designed that there wasn't room for lots of ways to improve it artificially. Though I suppose "ability to devise and implement modern medicine" could be considered part of the "design" as well...?

This is inaccurate. It's a very common misconception that the expansion of the universe is like an explosion from a single point. It is not. The universe does not have a center and it does not have edges. Everything is simply getting farther away from everything else, on average. There is no point at which you can say the Big Bang occured. It occured everywhere. Which is why.... ...this is not an accurate picture. The universe is not like a star or a galaxy, because those things have boundaries. The universe is unbounded. It is either infinite, or it "folds back on itself," but either way, there is no amount of distance you can travel to reach an "edge." Please, please let's not. That's an insanely loaded word. It doesn't matter in this case because what you're describing doesn't exist, but there's never any reason to open that can of worms. Why does everything have to be bound together?

I don't see how that answers the objection. He's saying two things: that there is an objective "ought, if," and that there is an objective "if," which he calls "living the best lives possible." He seems to be addressing objections to the second statement by defending the first.

True. Actually, not even quite that far. The very early universe was opaque, so the the light we see which has been traveling the longest is from when the universe first became transparent. However, because space itself is expanding, those things were much closer than ~14 billion lightyears when the light was emitted, and are much farther away now. Objects can get farther away from one another at faster than the speed of light, but they aren't moving, exactly. They are carried along with space, not moving through it. Define "other universes." And why would that mean something traveling faster than light? I'm not sure I understand this statement. Could you rephrase? True... ...and not true. Light cannot escape because space is bent so much that there is no path that leads outwards. What is your reasoning for saying something has to be traveling faster than light? What would lead you to guess that?

Then perhaps the Boy Scouts is a religion?

The ocean floor would be easier, I'm sure, just because it's so much easier to get there. You can just lower down whatever you need from a ship on the surface. But even assuming they're both already established, and both cut off from everyone else (so the ease of resupply and assistance isn't relevant), the ocean floor would probably still be easier. You're surrounded by a limitless source of water, oxygen, and food, and areas where the temperature would be comfortable. On the moon, at best you've got a small concentration of ice crystals, and extreme temperature swings. On the ocean floor you have a higher pressure differential and a more dynamic environment and whatever problems living things can cause, but on the moon you've got radiation and exposure to meteorites of all sizes. Shifting silt on the ocean floor vs. sharp (unweathered), staticy moon dust. Abundant solar power for 2 weeks then darkness for 2 weeks on the moon, vs. probably geothermal power on the ocean floor. I'd say the ocean floor is more hospitable, over all.

pioneer: If only humans can have religion, then it's necessarily also true that only humans can reject religion, and all that implies. However, "religion" is so amorphous and non-human psychology so poorly understood that I wouldn't be willing to make either statement with certainty. I don't have "faith" that other animals have religion, I just a) don't think humans are different enough to justify assuming such a thing, and b) don't think it's necessarily even a meaningful statement.

There are many people who don't understand how morality of any kind could exist without being imposed externally, e.g. through religion. These people (sociopaths?) being religious could benefit everyone else, since it keeps them under control. (That is, as long as the rules they follow happen to be beneficial.) In a similar vein, religion might offer that extra motivation (perhaps through fear of unavoidable punishment) to do what you aspire to or know you ought to but might otherwise be too weak to do. For example, step two of the "Twelve-step programs" is "recognizing a greater power that can give strength," which often means religion. Essentially, there are a lot of people who just really desire structure. Lots of institutions can give this, but only religions deny that they are merely invented, and hence anything else is arguably not fundamentally different than being on one's own, since it's just substituting other humans' rules instead of one's own.

Not just physics. Any math or science that employs more than very basic geometry. The reason is pretty straightforward: it makes most equations and formulae simpler. This is to be expected, as it is a naturally derived measure, as opposed to an arbitrary subdivision like 360 degrees, which has nothing to do with pi. On the other hand, 360 is still user friendly for a lot of basic applications, mostly because it's evenly divisible by many whole numbers.

The only purpose of the barriers is to allow and promote constructive discussion.

Atheism is a lack of something, by definition, so the question only really makes sense in the context of a particular religion being a default. So I guess you could say what it "offers" is freedom from whatever the religion in question demands of you. Which, generally speaking, involves some practices of worship, some unquestionable rules, and most importantly some avenues of thought that you cannot permit yourself to explore, either because it's already decided for you, because "faith" is considered inherently virtuous, or just because a certain amount of cognitive dissonance is required for faith in the first place. In a particularly religious society, I guess being specifically atheist can make you feel superior in intellectual honesty and courage, if feeling superior is important to you. I'm not saying that you can't necessarily be intellectually honest and still be a "theist," BTW. But the question "what does it offer" implies intellectual dishonesty. It's the question of someone deciding what to believe not based on what is true, but what is to be gained by belief.

Photons don't exist at rest. They only exist moving at C. It is correct that when a photon is created, something else has necessarily lost energy: whatever gave off the light.