Phi for All

I worry that I'm defining my belief system personally and then expecting everyone else to conform. But I need the definitions because I think too many people DON'T make distinctions between the types of things they claim to believe. I definitely see a difference between believing that the traffic light will turn green very soon (because I can see that it's yellow for the cross street), believing that my sports team will beat the rival team (because they've been doing OK this year and the other team has some injured players out), and believing that my place in the afterlife is assured as long as I pray for forgiveness for all the bad things I do to people on a regular basis (because Jesus died for my sins, past present and future, and God knows I'm not perfect anyway). They're completely different forms of belief that people often conflate. I trust in the traffic light, but not unwaveringly (99.9% of the time they work correctly, but I got burned recently by a malfunctioning light and had to eventually run the red when it was safe to do so). I hope my team will win but I don't bet my life savings on them (they've had streaks before but ended up losing to a worse team). And it really doesn't sit well with me personally when people talk about the forgiveness of their sins yet still commit them against each other. A lot of these folks act like total turds to people they don't know and feel little or no remorse when they "sin" against them. Their faith in Jesus' forgiveness of their sins allows them to treat others poorly, judge the religions of others as wrong, be completely intolerant of lifestyles that don't fit their ideals, and still have solid, Rock-of-Ages-type confidence that they'll get into heaven. I wouldn't bet my savings on hope. I wouldn't even bet the light will turn green (with enough conviction that I would approach the red light without slowing down, trusting my life and the lives of others it will function properly), even with 99.9% trust in the science of it. Why would I put 100% faith in something supernatural?

I can hope that my expectations of others are valid, and people give us bits of evidence as to their credibility all the time. If someone strikes me as someone who shares my understanding of the common good, my hope in them may turn into trust. I surely wouldn't have unwavering faith in the credibility of fallible humanity, and the supernatural gives me no reliability at all. Faith, after all, asks us to suspend judgement and simply believe, and asks us to believe strongly based on nothing but feelings about stories and myths and legends.

With that blanket, you can also say the people pay for all the manufacturing equipment, the buildings and the rest of the real assets businesses own. And personal attack aside, the complexity comes from the spin business has mastered. This spin makes them seem patriotic and wholesome while they withhold a fair share of taxes that help maintain the country whose protections and bounty they enjoy.

This is only partially true, but it's wielded like a big scary club by big business. In actuality, the market won't always allow prices to rise to cover costs like increased taxes. In fact, it can invite competition to come in at prices consumers prefer. It's actually more true to free market principles than what we have now, which is extreme salaries at the top due to lowered taxes that don't really represent a stronger corporation. Right now it's all about the number crunching, but I don't think many corporations would object to doubling or tripling their tax burdens if they knew it would bring back a robust economy. Heavens, no. I don't use the roads or airports nearly as much as businesses do. Take any random segment of citizens (to the number equaling that of any corporation) and their personal use of the infrastructure doesn't come close to rivaling what the corporation uses. Furthermore, the kinds of vehicles corporations use on the roadways are much heavier and cause considerably more wear and tear than the average individual vehicle. And even if the amount of use evened out between corporations and private citizens, we're still just asking that they pay their fair share instead of lobbying for special privileges. Sure, they supply the jobs and the goods, but we're the consumers of those goods. We're all needed to make the economy run and that includes tax revenues too.

We're part of the food chain like any other animal on this planet. Why do we have be excluded from top shelf predator methodology? We already make greater efforts to minimize suffering for animals we eat than any other animal does. Our livestock live sheltered lives. This tells me we may be the ONLY truly sentient species on the planet. We're already working on ways to engineer tissue in labs. When the costs of animal farming begin to exceed that of in vitro protein manufacture, one can assume it will become the preferred method of protein consumption. No need to poison anyone. Honestly, this is one of those issues where some people find out some cruelty exists, they react completely out of proportion and suddenly call for drastic, global, kneejerk reactions. We're supposed to be the smart ones, remember?

tar, what you're describing to me is (belief) trust, not (belief) faith. When I work closely with those I know, they have demonstrated in the past what they're capable of, and I (believe) trust that they will perform to that level I know they're capable of. If I'm working with relative strangers, my (belief) trust in their capabilities is considerably less. Perhaps it's even (belief) hope that they will be capable enough to get the job done. If I happen upon a wrecked, overturned car with a driver who is unconscious, a lot will depend on who is with me to help. If I'm alone, the least helpful thing in the world would be (belief) faith in myself to save the driver. I have no training in emergency rescue. It would be much more reasonable to call for professional help, (believing) trusting that professional rescue services give the driver the best chance of survival. If there are other bystanders present, I still call the pros, but I also (believe) hope that myself and these strangers can attempt to open the bent door and remove the driver from the vehicle. I say (belief) hope because I don't know anyone else's capabilities. If one of the bystanders claims he's had EMT training, my (belief) hope changes to a greater degree of (belief) trust. I still can't claim (belief) faith, or unwavering confidence, because there are still too many things that can go wrong, and I need to be alert for these things. If I have complete unwavering confidence, or (belief) faith, in this EMT, I might miss signs that he was ignoring other dangers. Unwavering faith that the EMT was going to save this driver might make me forget to have someone run down the road to wave and warn oncoming traffic away from the accident, or to check to make sure the gas tank wasn't ruptured, or to check that an ambulance was on the way for when we did get the driver out. Does that make sense? I simply feel that trusting in the unknown with the complete acceptance of faith is dangerous in many situations, and ignorant (NOT stupid) in practically all of them. I get that many people take comfort in their faith, but I feel it's a blissful ignorance situation. Of all the forms of belief, faith has the least to support it, yet claims to be the strongest. I think it's a dangerous masquerade.

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I agree with this assessment. I never said faith was stupid, just that it's often touted as the strongest of beliefs while it actually seems weakest. I also never said it was a negative influence, nor did I attribute it to creationists alone. Again, I think its strength comes purely from what you invest into it, and since it has nothing rational to support it, the investment you make in faith is backed up by feelings alone. As I define faith, unwavering belief based on feelings about the supernatural, I have NO area of my life in which I use it. I believe in the human spirit, but I don't take it on faith. I have hope in most people's spirit, and I trust the spirit of those I know well. That's not faith, imo. That's muscle memory, training, focus, knowledge, acumen, and the belief part is more like hope to me. Sorry.

I'm supposed to eat cereal (which I'm ambivalent about at best) fortified with B12 because I can afford it, instead of meat (which I love) which I can afford, just because you think I enjoy it when an animal is killed? What about those of us who revere the animals that give up their lives for our grills? This part is foolish. How many people here want animals treated cruelly?

For anything meaningful to come of this discussion, I think the participants need to acknowledge certain common ground, otherwise it's just a wheel-spinning rant-fest with a fence dividing two opposing sides. And we all realize it's much more complicated than business good/business bad. For starters, there's really nothing wrong (basically) with the (free?) market concept. Commerce is necessary, and the capitalist market works better than most systems. The problems start cropping up when business starts asking for exceptions to the rules, exceptions that give one sector or corporation an edge over the rest. It's what every modern business model strives for, but it's at the heart of most of what's wrong with the system. Also, I'd like to hear why we still subsidize well-established industries like oil and sugar. Shouldn't this be common ground for practically everyone, from those who hate the bailouts to those who hate special interest groups to those who love free market principles? What's wrong about the OP is that these corporations are withholding revenue from the system while still using infrastructure paid for and sustained by that revenue. In fact, companies like GE use more of the infrastructure like roads, railways and airports than any other type of user. They get other protections and benefits by being US corporations without paying the full price for those benefits. I always like to remember that when I was born, US businesses accounted for 27% of tax revenue, and the country was strong and steady. Today, those businesses only account for less than 9% of tax revenue, and we're slashing good services and programs while corporations don't want to employ our citizens and don't want to pay their share for things they use the most of.

This ignores the problems involved in distributing enough protein to the numbers of humans currently inhabiting this planet. It also ignores the huge evolutionary leap made when our intelligence allowed us to create the divisions of labor that have made us so successful as a species. If we have to hunt our own food, we'll have time for little else, and large population centers will quickly hunt out every piece of protein in the area.

You are MISTAKEN. You quoted a 4 year old story. GM is actually looking for modest profit growth in 2013. You are MISTAKEN. You are MISTAKEN. They got bailed out 4 years ago and are doing pretty good today. They are NOT restructuring "yet again". You are MISTAKEN.

I still perceive this distinction more along the lines of "hope" rather than "faith". "All your experience" couldn't possibly be so completely negative that it "tells you to stay down". There are always some good experiences one draws from that give one "hope" despite the worst odds. You get up again because there is evidence that tells you, beyond simply "feeling" it, that you stand a better chance of succeeding if you get up and at least try. You "hope" that you can muster the strength to get out of bed and be successful with whatever you're dealing with, "hope" because you can't predict the outcome with any degree of "trust" but there is at least a slim probability you can count on to make success possible. "Faith", on the other hand, is nothing but feelings, even if you've used those feelings in the past to tell yourself that your god has helped you overcome adversity with its supernatural powers. Faith is reason-less, yet we're supposed to feed it as much strength as we can in order to make it work. I would suggest that faith is the weakest form of belief, and that's why we're required to artificially lend it strength in order to make it work. And when it doesn't, we're supposed to explain why with whatever vague justification we can come up with in order to keep feeding it our strength. And we're also supposed to not question why this is. "Hope" might make me play the lottery, but not take it too seriously. "Faith" might make me believe so strongly that I'm going to win that I buy a Ferrari before the winning number is announced. "Trust" might make me realize the odds are astronomical so I save my money for something better.

I think virtually every solution that calls for a drastic, abrupt and universal change orchestrated by artificial intervention is unethical. Suddenly making animal protein poisonous would be a huge disaster, even if nobody got poisoned.

Do you have a new ISP after your recent move? Are you getting other emails through them?

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One of the earliest female scientists, Cleopatra the Alchemist, who is sometimes credited with inventing the alembic. Brava!

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The first paragraph of my last post covered the basic difference. CFLs are mainly to replace incandescent bulbs with fluorescent technology, in fixtures designed for incandescent bulbs (usually having round sockets). Did you need more than that?

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I don't know for sure that it will happen. I trust fairly strongly that it will because of everything I've learned about the phenomenon, and I know that at any time I can test it myself, changing parameters like height dropped, altitude, type of bullet, etc. There is a possibility I may discover an exception, and that keeps my certainty from being complete and unwavering. Who claimed they oppose each other? I'm asking why faith in things we can't know for certain is often claimed by believers to be stronger than trust in things we can explain based on empirical evidence we can test ourselves, tests that can even be reproduced by others? Again, to separate this type of belief from other types, I call this hope. I can hope that there are things we can't understand due to an inherent limitation, but so many religious people invest so much strength and infallibility in this hope that they call it faith, and claim it's strong enough to allow them special access to vague powers. Nothing they claim as evidence of this miraculous power is ever reproducible or explainable only by supernatural means, yet so many these days place far more strength in religious beliefs than they do in more trustworthy explanations. At least this is what we hear a lot of in the USA, faith in God's will and distrust in science. It seems ass-backwards to me and not very well thought out.

Ah, here's where the misunderstanding lies. I wasn't trying to validate anything with pure reason. I will try to simplify. When I first heard someone say that two bullets, one fired from a gun and one dropped straight down at the same time and same height, will hit the ground at the same time, I didn't believe it. It was counter-intuitive for me and made no sense. I read up on the phenomenon, but still couldn't believe it. I worked out the math using the formulas I found and began to grudgingly accept it. I had it explained to me by a physicist I know and it made much more sense. I slowly began to trust the scientific explanation for this phenomenon, and have even explained it to others who shared my initial skepticism. Then I came across this experiment done by the Mythbusters and the strength of my trust increased tremendously: I didn't have to accept the explanation by reason alone. There was plenty of math, but also empirical evidence and actual experimentation to eventually make the explanation worthy of my strongest form of belief, my TRUST. When I compare that kind of belief with faith, which many religions ask me to have, I find nothing to support it but feelings. I'm supposed to have very strong feelings about beings that purposely avoid the kind of empirical evidence that evokes my strongest form of belief, my trust. I'm asked to have faith, abiding, unwavering faith in forces that followers can't explain. Indeed, some of those followers even seem proud that their God works in such mysterious ways, that His will is unfathomable. And try as I might, all I hear from those statements is, "You need to believe strongly in things you can't possibly know". So why is faith considered stronger than trust by so many believers?

How are you making calculations that take existing satellites into account?

The CFL is meant to replace old incandescent bulbs of varying types and sizes with fluorescent technology. They go into the standard round hole fixtures with screw-in or bayonet type bases. The tubes go into specific luminaires designed to accommodate them, usually in combinations of 2, 3 or 4 tubes per fixture, with lengths from 1 foot to 8 feet. The tubes provide a more even lighting where continuity is important (usually in commercial buildings). All fluorescent bulbs/tubes are much more energy efficient and have better longevity than incandescents (incandescent bulbs use about 95% of their energy in non-visible spectrums, mostly IR as heat), but they contain mercury, they still use low-pressure glass casings which can shatter, they take time to come to full brightness, they can't be used with rheostats. Personally, I think the CFL is an attempt to use existing manufacturing processes to reduce energy expenditures and get the best return on the investments made in the technology. IMO, it's better to leap right over the latest fluorescent technology and go straight to LED lighting. Instead of tubes fixed in ceiling troffers that illuminate in 360 degrees and have to be reflected, LED tubes can be directed just where you want them. The visible light spectrum can be precisely tuned (I've seen LED lights that use only the red and blue spectrums that plants use, perfect for hydroponic greenhouses). LEDs use much less electricity, you can get them with no harmful chemicals, and plastic casings that resist breakage.