Phi for All

Millions of years? Or six thousand? Why not have the creator pop the universe into existence just as you were born, a few decades ago, complete with deceptive structure that mimics an ancient Earth with trillions of generations before you? Compared to wishful thinking like that, I much prefer the neatly ordered and gathered evidence for evolution. If it's a counterfeit, it's a counterfeit worthy of admiration on its own.

It sounds like the first offer was pretty firm about you getting paid. But that verbal contract got broken. What assurances do you have that the second offer, which contains a "maybe", will be more trustworthy? I would approach the head researcher, explain that you really appreciate the opportunity to train under his process, and feel you've done your work very well and would continue to grow professionally. Your situation, however, requires that you cover your expenses in a responsible manner. You've enjoyed the rapport that's been established but you have to turn down his nebulous offer and find a position that better suits your goals.

User-friendly is usually what Apple is all about, that and connectivity between their products. I always found Apple's OS to be much more intuitive and less clunky than DOS-based Windows, but I haven't had any Apple products for quite a while. Perhaps the best part about Apple is their support, at least in the US. They have genius bars where you can go to ask any question about any of their products any time. They teach you how to use their products for free in a hands-on approach I find pretty refreshing.

Norton has a free 30 day trial on many new computers. They figure you'll be too lazy to unsubscribe, so your purchase will happen if you DON'T do anything. Avast and others offer free versions that only offer the basics. They figure it's best to stay in front of you, protecting you minimally, so that if you decide you need something more robust you don't have far to look. Avast makes money from ads as well as upgrades to their free protection. Is this really the case, or is it because the hackers simply have more of a market with Windows machines? I'm not sure about Linux, but I remember reading once that Apple is safer simply because it's not as prolific a target.

The free Avast is great. I got Norton loaded free on my newest laptop, and I'll be removing that and installing Avast. Just me personally, but I would avoid Trend Micro Security. I had that installed on a work machine and couldn't uninstall it completely. There was always little prompts telling me I was out-of-date even after being uninstalled. And they pretend not to understand when you complain about it.

This isn't driven completely by Pharma, though. Our own insistence on convenience has allowed Pharma and the medical profession to treat symptoms instead of root causes. We take the pill instead of the advice to exercise more. We opt for the stomach bypass so we can keep eating crap. And we beg for the antiviral instead of missing work and taking bed rest. I recently had the flu as bad as I've ever had it. I was fortunate enough to have most of my work wrapped up for the year, so I stayed in bed for six days. I spent another couple days with an annoying cough and stuffy head, and then it was gone. I know two other people who had it as bad as I did, but they couldn't take bed rest, and so they're still sick four weeks later. I don't know how much this would help poverty, but our health should always take precedent over our work. US employers have adamantly denied this since the HMO revolution of the early 70s. This needs to be addressed at multiple levels.

It can be frustrating when you take the time to formulate a great response, only to realize the person you're talking to has no interest in learning, and only wants to argue without a valid point, or just to "win". I always try to remember that others are reading too. Watching the Views count on a thread will tell you that others besides those participating are reading as well, and so your great responses are seldom wasted. Those who love learning outnumber the trolls by quite a bit here. It's a good community full of rational thinkers who can spot trolling a mile away. I think the vast majority respect the knowledge they come here to gain, and they pass that respect on to the members who share it.

iNow gave a comprehensive list of projects; more jobs, improved infrastructure, better social response, more aggressive banking and lending regulations to prevent further harm, education reform (my personal favorite), prison reform and let's not forget finally acknowledging that American citizen's health is just as important as as those of Canada, the UK, France and other 1st world countries. And you call that a bandaid?! Our education and healthcare systems do need a lot of work. Maybe that's why you don't know what a bandaid looks like.

As with our no personal attacks rule, people can troll without being a troll. There are those who come here to do nothing but. Practically everyone has, at some time or other, failed to concede a point gracefully and continued to argue past where even we believed in what we were saying. It's in our competitive nature to win arguments, and sometimes we push it too far and we troll the discussion just trying to rattle some cages, or lash out for some kind of vindication. It's not good form, but it doesn't make us trolls, any more than the candy bar we lifted from the convenience store when we were ten makes us thieves. I think we can wear these hats for a short time without getting our hair too mussed up, without taking on the taint of our actions.

The ethics of trolling, remember? This current line is starting to swirl in circles, headed down the pipes.

One of the distinctions we make at SFN is that we urge people to attack ideas, but leave the person alone. Often people conflate the two, but it's easy to separate ideas from those who have them. It's also easier to look at your own ideas more objectively when you remove yourself from the equation. I'm not a bad person, but I've had some bad ideas before. Edit: Cross-posted with Endy0816.

Look, trolling and slurs against groups are against the rules here. If you see it, report it. If this is a thread about trolling in general, then it's a good discussion. If it's about a specific instance here, please go through the right procedure. We don't want to make threads about specific members, ever.

There's a sensitivity switch on your Troll-o-meter. This seems like a catch with the gain set on "10".

This statement tells me you've shut your mind down on the subject and are willing to sacrifice intellectual honesty to maintain this grievance. This should be unacceptable to a smart person like you. I know you're not interested in the opinions of anyone here, you've said as much, but I think you're under the impression that the mods have made you look bad. I think you give us too much credit. I also think you completely misunderstood the reasoning behind our actions and chose to interpret them as a personal censoring attack. If any one of us gave you that impression, if any of us has made a mistake that caused anyone humiliation, we deeply apologize. That was NEVER our goal.

Criticizing someone for being on a high horse is compromised while doing it from the saddle yourself. You are choosing, very visibly and very demonstrably, to take this personally. You are choosing to see modnotes as humiliating when they were never intended to be such. You are choosing to ignore what most of the members are saying to you about this. It's obvious that you're not used to being criticized, which probably means you're not used to making mistakes. That's great, but in the estimation of the entire staff, you made one here and are now reacting very badly and avoiding responsibility for that mistake. Your intentions are not the issue here. Your behavior is, and I for one was banking on you being responsible enough to see it. I truly hope you stay and can get over this incident.

Technology pirates and press ganging. Steal the stuff you don't already have and force the indigenous species capable of work into service. It's the invader way.

! Moderator Note Trimidity, this isn't the thread that will start the discussion you and others would like to participate in. Please respect the responsibility of the opening poster to set a tone that invites discussion instead of aggression. Perhaps starting the thread in Psychology might be a good place to start?

Every single point both those sites make is refuted cleanly, thoroughly and honestly over at http://www.talkorigins.org. Edit to add: Sorry, didn't see Ringer's mention of the same site. That's OK, it's worth mentioning twice.

Reality disagrees with you. Humans are every bit as real and natural as any other specimen on this planet. What you suggest denies the responsibility we have to this world as it's most intelligent inhabitant. You'll never convince people to be more aware of nature if you keep claiming what we do isn't natural. We need to be more careful with our environment, but trying to claim humans are outside of nature is the worst way to go about it. We need to be our intelligent selves in order to find a balance. It serves no purpose for us to be just like other animals, it's not natural for us to suppress our intelligence. We just need to realize what an evolutionary gift it is and use it more wisely.

Perhaps in a hunter/gatherer society. When we went agrarian, and started collecting things like animals and land, suddenly love ensured that a man was leaving his stuff to his own offspring, and not some other guy's kids. Love became very important as a tool for men to trap women into monogamous relationships.

So some great ideas were quickly dismissed in our history. This is true. "Most of the greatest ideas"? Definitely an exaggeration. Trivially, this idea was based on the Bohr model of the atom, wasn't it? That's a crude model to start with and I think it lent itself to the mistaken metaphors in the OP. It's pretty natural for us to match patterns and imagine small things being larger. And we love anthropomorphizing EVERYTHING, why not the universe?

Love is not the bubble, love is the air that keeps the bubble afloat and inflated. The air surrounds two people in love and the bubble can't burst by itself or someone outside it. It must be purposely and maliciously skewered from the inside by one or both of the people it surrounds. The bubble itself is the relationship, the commitment. The relationship keeps the trapped love from escaping. And if the bubble remains unburst, and the two people inside remain committed to each other and the bubble, eventually asphyxiation will kill them both. [/Montague v Capulet]

I think he meant "critical" instead of "objective" when he said, "Why is science so objective of a combined belief??"

... and dried, possibly gumming up something that needs to move to signal that there's no more paper jam?

[Citation needed]