Iggy

[channeling frank oz] Hello, Yoda. Interesting post, that was. [/channeling frank oz] You have it almost exactly the opposite from how I've ever heard it. Both realism and anti-realism consist of finding the "least wrong description". That doesn't distinguish them. The second half of your paragraph you have the wrong way around. Compare what you say to what Michael Dummett (who coined the term anti-realism) says: Most of the versions of Anti-Realism make the distinction between believing a theory is true and accepting that it is empirically adequate. -You The conflict between realism and anti-realism is a conflict about the kind of meaning possessed by statements of the disputed class. For the anti-realist, an understanding of such a statement consists in knowing what counts as evidence adequate for the assertion of the statement, and the truth of the statement can consist only in the existence of such [adequate] evidence... -Dummett Or, compare to the first two lines of the SEP article on constructive empiricism: Constructive empiricism is the version of scientific anti-realism promulgated by Bas van Fraassen in his famous book The Scientific Image (1980). Van Fraassen defines the view as follows: Science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate. (1980, 12) So... for the anti-realist, the truth of a statement consists *only* of the evidence of the statement. To be empirically adequate is to be true. They are one and the same. Put in math terms: the proof of the statement is the validity of the statement. Scientific realism requires more than empirical adequacy. Dummett's quote continues to explain, ...For the realist, the notion of truth plays a more crucial role in the manner of determining the meaning of the statement. To know the meaning of the statement is to know what it is for the statement to be true: we may in the first place derive such knowledge from learning what is counted as evidence for its truth, but in this case we do so in such a way as to have a conception of the statement’s being true even in the absence of such evidence. -Michael Dummett, Realism, 1959 The anti-realist considers empirical support to be the truth of a thing, while the realist finds empirical support indicative of the truth of a thing, but there is an additional aspect of truth for the realist. Truth involves something like a Platonic form -- a quality independent of evidence. Your conclusion assumes the truth of the premise. A correspondence theory of truth obviously corresponds. A coherence theory of truth wouldn't necessarily. I don't see a basis for picking the former.

Is this child pornography? Prior restraint would mean that gatekeepers who run the internet must answer that question before it is posted and either allow it or disallow it. The publication medium is censored by controlling the medium. The judgement happens before the publication. The key here is that the information would not be available. Assange wouldn't have posted classified US diplomatic cables and the public would not have seen those cables. Non-prior restraint means that the publication has no gatekeeper. If you do something illegal with a publication then a jury can judge you guilty only after the offense is committed. This is the situation Assange actually found himself in when he was briefly imprisoned in the UK. Because the internet is so anonymous, the only realistic way of keeping bomb-making instructions away from the public is with prior restraint (like China does)

If you significantly walled up the water then you wouldn't get the bulge that Janus is talking about. With no tides you'd have no friction from earth trying to spin its way free underneath them, so the program is right. That would slow the moon's recession rate. If you imagine *no* equatorial obstacle, the recession rate is very low. As you add obstacles, the rate goes up. Eventually as you add more obstacles, and start trapping enough water, the rate will start to fall as you add more.

LD debates are common in high school. They are won in cross. Ask yes / no questions that you've already planned out. Ask them quick and interrupt your opponent if they get much past yes / no with their answer. You can highlight inconsistencies that don't necessarily exist (It's cheap, but it works.) Example: You support the exploration of space? ... Yes... You don't support the president's initiative for a trip to mars? No... You do realize mars is in space? Then keep going. Don't give them time to answer that one. Lincoln Douglas debates are won in cross.

Is that the only way to do it, do you think? I imagine that since we are talking about information on the internet that software could be used to flag questionable material. Heck, even just passing a law making it illegal to teach kids how to make pipe bombs might be enough to deter some content from showing up. I imagine if you got some smart people together, they could come up with a reasonable approach to limiting some type of information without it being too restrictive. McAfee knows lots of things about sites that come up during my Google searches. Perhaps something like that will be able to flag sites for 'nail filled pressure cookers' instead of just porn or viruses. Yes, it is the only way to do it. A useful model is classified information. Because limited dissemination of classified information is necessary (some people need it) you have to have a controlling entity (a censor) that not only grades information (how classified is it?), you also have to grade individual people (what clearance level do they have?). Both the information and the people have to be judged. Your individual points, Yes, you can "make it illegal to teach kids how to make pipe bombs", but that is worlds away from the prior restraint we were talking in terms of earlier. Software can no doubt serve as a tool of censorship, but the censor has to program it, and certain people (first responders, military, hospital, etc.) would need to be treated differently by the software, and thereby judged differently by the censor.

Because quite a lot of people have to be trained in explosives for legitimate reasons, the government censor would not only have to examine each new case of questionable material to determine if it is acceptable, they would also have to determine who is acceptable. To become a fireworks manufacturer, for example, one needs explosives information, so we can't just burn all the illicit books. Someone would have to control the information -- deciding which college textbooks could be awarded to which students. It would be a lot of work. Each case is a judgement call. In what language can the master plumber teach his young apprentice how to turn a hot water heater into a bomb? The censor has to decide, and he may not be very qualified to make that decision.

But you agree the difference is intent, no? I mean... when VCRs first came out there were a lot of objections and lawsuits too saying they could distribute copyrighted material. Beta max was relieved that kind of punishment, but in the end the justice system said that the criminals doing the injustice deserved the punishment and not the technology they relied upon. You agree, no<? The psychopathic people using the information need prosecuted and not the information itself?

Yeah, that would make for some bloody Olympic shooting events.

and we really need to get a handle on this "how to start a fire" information. Apparently, millions of people have been killed by fires, and nobody is doing anything to stop the spread of information. Arsonists have everything they need. I was in a convenience store just the other day and they were selling lighters willy-nilly. Don't they know how many lives have been lost? Insane what people are allowed to do these days.

+1 I couldn't agree more. I built m80 sized pipe bombs in high school out of emptied out co2 bb gun cartridges. Set them off in a field, me and a buddy did. Fun. I built a potato gun... I call it that... it was more the size of a cannon. Fun. You can't imagine how far we launched a can of peaches. 15 years on now and I've shot a watermelon with a .50 cal. Fun. I can't abide being regulated of these things. I can't imagine people being denied such experiences if they seek them, either through their own ingenuity or the ingenuity of a confidant. It somehow seems all or nothing to me.

Of that I had no doubt. Point is that I could tell you how to make it in seven words. Effective instructions are that short. Bombs are common because they are simple, not because of the availability of information. If you can build a model airplane then you can make an incredibly effective bomb through pure intuition. Having the skill set to do the first means that you could to the second. No instructions needed.

I have fond memories of this because I got caught trading a digital copy of the Anarchist Cookbook over our high school's primitive computer network in... probably about 1996. I got in a lot of trouble for it, but the highlight that day was in chemistry class where my chemistry teacher was almost pleased to see my interest. She got that my interest was motivated out of curiosity for knowledge and couldn't be malicious. Nobody else got that. A week later I decided that her permissive spirit was enough encouragement to ask her if I could use some of the back room's supply of iodine crystals. She asked why and I said "I was thinking about trying to make some nitrogen triiodide". Without taking a beat, she said "come by after school, we'll make some, it'll be ready by morning" It was inspiring. Do you want to know how to make nitrogen triiodide, Airbrush? It's a high explosive. It's the fun kind of high explosive. The kind you might only really manage to hurt yourself with. Fourth of July kind of fun. Can I tell you that, or should I be prosecuted by law for doing it?

Nope. Sorry, we've been over this... not gonna happen. You can keep typing out long winded sermons all day long. One of us isn't reading them. If you have something truly honest to say then I imagine you'd sharpen it down to a point and throw it at me like you mean it to stick, but nothing resembling that there... nope...

Sorry also to have responded so belligerently. It must just be exhausting constantly dragging science through the mud and propping up God. One wonders how an atheist such as yourself can keep it up. You're correct. Science is reproducible. If someone accomplishes something scientific then someone else with entirely different biases and subjective experiences can get exactly the same result. Human judgment is therefore removed by the furthest extent that it can be. But, good try.

I can't deal with that. There is probably about a paragraph's worth of meaning in all that mess. If you could condense it down to that and tell it to me then I could respond intelligently, but as it is your posts get longer and greater worded by the further you get from the truth, and I just don't feel like dealing with it. What, really, are you trying to say? A paragraph's worth of meaning. What is it?

I don't mean to make this all about you, and it probably is off topic, but it is true you do equivocate a lot. When you do it to prevent yourself from looking at a thing straight you're just misleading yourself. You appear to be the only one misled by it, but, yeah, it is misleading to that extent. yeah, being ambiguous... that's about the definition of equivocating. yeah.

Nothing disappointing about that. I can agree with all that. It doesn't exactly answer my question nor negate what you said earlier, but all around well appointed and agreeable.

If i knew what you were asking I might have an answer too.

Ah, that's disappointing. Your last post was so good. We agreed so strongly (I thought) that God wasn't possible. Now you say the exact opposite. And, I can see already that your post below is so superfluously worded. This isn't gonna be good. This is gonna be a struggle at best... Right. It appears you know you are wrong. It appears you know you are equivocating (that you are equivocating, by the way, means that you are wrong). An atheist can leave things to be figured out later. An atheist can understand that the full and complete picture is yet to be solved. That isn't God, and you only degrade yourself and the honestly devoutly religious by trying to equate that with God. You offend everyone on all sides of the argument by even trying that. So, without equivocating... without redefining God... do you still believe that good acts can't be done by people without their belief in God? Are you sure on this?

Ok, try it this way. The sun produces 384.6 yotta watts (3.846×1026 W) of energy. That comes from Nasa's online sun fact sheet which I hope is young enough for us both to trust. Significant fusion only happens in the sun's core. The sun's core is roughly 1030 kg. That makes 0.00038 Watts per kg (if you do the math), or 0.038 watts per 100 kilograms. That is comparable to a human no matter how difficult it is to believe. A human might produce 80 watts (a reptile 10). To an order of magnitude these are comparable. The rate of fusion in the sun's core is a bit less than the heat produced by a human. If the issue is that you just can't find it believable then I don't know how to help more than I have. *** edited the redundant "per second" after "watts"

Yes, I definitely agree.

Oh, ok... Iggy is damn hot! No, I think you're wanting me to confirm what I said... let me find a source... wikipedia -- sun -- core There we go. Wikipedia never fails to impress. So, I'm a bit hotter than a reptile, can we agree? edit... You ask how come the heat produced is so low. Well, it is just what it is. At that pressure under that gravity the exact fusion that takes place is compatible to the human metabolism. It is perhaps surprising, but it shouldn't be. Fusion is, after all, a difficult thing to accomplish.

They both create heat. What is your question. There was a question mark there.

Oooh, I liked that Short. Sweet. Had a point. Brilliant. Good question. I think it probably has something to do with your constant argument for the benefits of faith and god. Makes the denials seems somewhat less than ingenuous. But, I'm happy to be proven wrong and I think that post may have done it. Let me get back to the question then. I jumped ahead. You say some people do need God to accomplish things of value. That was the question I asked. So, can you give me an example of "something of value" that *could not be done* by a particular person, or a type of person, unless they believed in God. I don't think such a thing exists. If God isn't real (and I think we just very strongly agreed on that point) then I highly doubt that any real beneficial action should, or could, depend on having faith in that unreal thing.

More massive stars live shorter lives. A very small star can easily radiate for a trillion years. Our sun, believe it or not, doesn't generate much energy per volume. Deep in the sun if you looked at a hundred kilograms of hydrogen being fused into helium at the rate it's happening, the heat created is actually less than the heat a hundred kilogram person creates just walking around every day. The enormous energy radiated by the sun is a result of its enormous size.