Mr Skeptic

Well, the speed of light is actually one of the few things we do Know. It is 299,792,458 meters per second, exactly. And I have in fact measured it myself (albeit with huge error margins), but that is not the reason that I can say that I Know the speed of light. The reason is because we have defined the meter via the speed of light. So what I don't Know is not the speed of light, but rather whether it is constant, and also exactly what a meter and second are. But again you are talking about having personally verified something, as if seeing it with your own eyes actually verified it. No, you assume that seeing it with your own eyes is verification. And as reasonable an assumption as that may be, it is still nevertheless an assumption.

Well, all are most likely impossible for one thing. 1) is rather useless since we have such short distances overall. 2) is useful but not that many people would make use of it. 3) would solve all our food and energy problems forever, and also allow interstellar travel in generation ships. So 3) seems the best option.

Just ask one of the mods. You've been around for a while, so I'm sure they'll let you in. Or, you could just make more posts (outside of the sections that don't count like General Discussion).

Well as you know, the sheer size of the observable universe (and there could very well be an infinite universe but the observable part is limited), the number of stars, of habitable planets, all that is a good start. On Earth, life started almost as soon as conditions became tolerable for life, so that suggests that abiogenesis is not as difficult as might seem. There's also the theory that life arrived on earth via space traveling microbes, although that seems to be less popular nowadays. The anthropic principle in my opinion is rather silly, since of course we live in a universe in which we can live in.

A right is a liberty that is considered so important that it is allowed to restrict other liberties. The right to life, for example, restricts the liberty to randomly shoot people.

A more trivial example, if someone prepared some of your favorite food while you were gone, and then everyone ate it all before you got back, would you prefer that they tell you about this or would you rather be blissfully ignorant?

I submit that nothing about the real world can be truly Known. At some point we're dealing with assumptions, very reasonable assumptions to be sure, but assumptions nonetheless. You assume that what you see is real, you assume that it is consistent and repeatable and objective, so that if someone claims to have a real pen you can demand to look at it. These assumptions we take on by faith, and from them we construct what we call reality.

Nope, lasers will only produce one frequency of light, and so can't be white (which is a mixture of all colors).

Ah, but how many of them stick around to listen to the discussion on whether Jesus founded the Catholic church or not?

Well the game is still rather buggy, though that should be no surprise for an alpha version. They have funny physics that allows for perpetual motion machines, for example.

To clarify, I didn't mean that people have a right to all information. What I mean is that the government shouldn't be denying people the right to look up information that others have published. It shouldn't be the government keeping you out of libraries. Think of it as the other side of free speech -- the right to speak is worthless without the right to listen to what others are saying.

However, that may still be problematic. Consider for example, I heard a story of some person who volunteered to be a judge, for free. In reply, he got "the people can't afford that". So long as there is money to be made via corruption, the salary of important people could be rather insignificant. There's also the chance that people would vote a really low salary on principle, since they themselves earn a low salary. So if anything, let me suggest that what people vote on is a percentage of a given salary, rather than directly for a dollar amount.

Which they don't; otherwise they would have no problem switching it to satisfy the folks who are upset about it.

I'm going to go with "her estimated risk of dying times the value she places on her life was less than her estimated chance of saving you times the value she places on your life", or perhaps "she instinctively tried to save you without worrying about the risks involved". I'm sure science could put some reasons to explain why the above may have been true. From a religious perspective, just because someone thinks you'd go to heaven if they just let you drown, for some reason they don't just stand there praising god that you're going to heaven and instead usually try to help you out.

Access to information is a fundamental human right, and the internet is the single source with by far the most information. The right to express oneself, and to organize, are also fundamental human rights, which are also met by the internet. This doesn't mean that someone should pay your internet bill -- in fact, that would be very problematic because then that someone might take an interest in how you use it. However, no one should be able to deny you the right to pay to receive internet service. In answer to your actual question, the internet provides a very convenient, searchable form of access to information, both to people and people's machines, it provides a medium to learn, to organize, to speak out, to be heard across huge distances and perhaps across time. With electric cars coming out, the more popular charger has internet access, for practical reasons. This should give you an idea of just how important the internet is. For people who don't personally use the internet, such as my grandpa, it still is very useful to them that others have access. I'm kind of an intermediary for my grandpa to this vast sea of knowledge. And we all benefit from research done across the internet, from the positive effects of some political or activist groups, from the sharing of culture and knowledge, even if indirectly via a friend. I think we are at the point where we could substitute high schools and universities for the internet, provided the student had the desire and self-control to educate himself on it. And while us (relatively) rich folks might not think much of that, for people from poor countries this could be by far the cheapest and perhaps best education they could get. Knowledge gained via the internet can be used in starting a business, with positive economic benefits to the entire city the person lives in, even if no one else there was using the internet.

And no one has any right to tell you otherwise. Now if it is just shyness, fear, or embarrassment that is holding you back, then your friend might have a point. Even so, a blind date does not seem like the right way to do this. Her suggesting a blind date, suggests to me that you also don't date much if at all. It certainly wouldn't hurt you to go on a date. If what is holding you back is that that you want to remain virgin for "the one", then you might be in for a bit of a disappointment. Sure, plenty of guys would appreciate you having stayed a virgin just for them. On the other hand, if you make a mistake on who you think is "the one" and end up breaking up, you'll probably resent it all the more.

Well think about it: a Christian disbelieves in almost as many gods as an atheist does. This website has descriptions of almost 3000 gods, and I'm sure there are thousands more -- maybe millions, especially if you count prehistoric tribal gods. Now, Christianity is a monotheistic religion, and most sects profess not just a lack of belief in the other gods, but outright disbelief. On the other hand, most atheists are agnostic atheists, and so they do not express a disbelief in the various gods, just a lack of belief in them. So for most gods, a Christian would have less belief in them than the average atheist. With, of course, one exception. But what's that one exception among thousands or millions? OK, so Christians and atheists do behave significantly differently, so saying they are almost alike via belief in the various gods is rather silly. But then the question is, why are they not almost atheists?

No, you have not argued, you have baselessly and repeatedly asserted, that a zygote is a living human being. You have never ever given any evidence for that assertion, only that it would be convenient. And let me say yet again, that a chimera is formed from two different zygotes (or more). Which means that each zygote turns into less than one life. So, a zygote is not guaranteed to turn into at least one living human being, it could be 0, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... Just because it will frequently become one, doesn't mean it is one now.

No, defecting is always, always the best strategy in the Prisoner's Dilemma. That, in fact, is the whole point of that game. However, if you play an iterated prisoner's dilemma, then cooperation becomes the best strategy, with some mechanism to deal with defection.

You don't think one can claim extremes in binary because there is only extremes and no middle?

Please do consider that light can have a longer wavelength than the radius of the Earth.

Looks like life to me.

Well, I'll take a shot at this whole pledge thing: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one secular nation under the Christian God, divided along party lines, with the largest prison population in the world, and justice for all who can afford it." Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Unfortunately, crossing one's heart and hoping to die seems to be taken more seriously than the pledge these days, at least among children.

Of course you can't answer a numerical question without numbers. Not even with your binary system -- you still answer with numbers (1 or 0 in that case, or 100% and 0% if you prefer). Show me a number that isn't a fraction or a percent.

Oddly enough, the answer to both may very well be the same: The one that wins.