mererdog

If they aren't confused, they are doing it wrong. I personally doubt robots could ever be Buddhists. The whole both not and not not thing wouldn't work for them. Binary thinkers, you know?

That just doesn't sound like our perception creating our reality. It sounds like our perceptions providing us with imperfect information about a reality that exists independently of our ability (or lack thereof) to perceive it.

I am going to hit the point again. Revelations was a stand alone book. It says not to add to it. It was added to in order to build the canon. You chastised others for ignoring the words. How is this not contradictory?The way I read it, the Sermon on the Mount says a false prophet is judged by their fruits, under the understanding that a good tree cannot give bad fruit. It is further explained that failing to follow the sayings in the Sermon equates to working lawlessness, which makes a person unknown to Jesus. This adds up to instruction to compare a prophet to the words in the Sermon to spot a false prophet. Comparison of Paul's doctrine with the Sermon shows them to be almost completely contradictory, by my account.

There are firsts, though, aren't there? First guy to get AIDS, first to get SARS? And kids who break an arm before they know its happened to other people? Toddlers who get sick with absolutely no idea what is happening to them, or why? You know, surprises?

And that claim is also made of latter writings. Why not? Paul did all those things. What makes his visions more credible than Joseph Smith's? More to the point, you spoke against ignoring what is written and quoted Revelations. So how does the quote from Revelations apply to one but not the other?

Correct me if I am wrong here. The Book of Revelations was a stand alone text. So wouldn't the prohibition against adding things apply as much to the testimony of Paul or Matthew as to the testimony of latter day people?

I am about as big a skeptic as you are likely to meet. I rarely take things at face value and while I don't normally assume people are lying I usually assume they are probably wrong. Yet, somehow, I still find myself regularly having to admit to myself that I've bought into some sort of bunk. It's so hard to find unadulterated truth and so hard to maintain a truly open mind, you know? So the urge to feel like I know keeps tricking me into believing nonsense and lies... And, come to think of it, that explanation may just be a convenient rationalization designed to keep me from acknowledging simple stupidity on my part....

I think the religious views of a young man are more likely to change than the scientific views of an old man. And I think some science teachers have a curriculum more set in stone than the dogma of most priests. I also think the scientific professions are every bit as insular as the clergy, often going to great lengths protecting themselves from the embarrassment of admitting error.

There are futurists who predict we will one day be able to transfer our consciousness into machine bodies. That we will, in other words, get first-hand experience as androids. Not even close to the weirdest prediction, either...

What about the people who build, program, install, and maintain self-checkout machines? Don't they deserve work, too? It's a strange state of affairs. As technology advances, there is less and less need for people to work in order to provide for everyone's needs. But we insist that everyone should work to earn what they need....

Religious beauracracies, like any bureaucracy, move slowly. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/31/world/after-350-years-vatican-says-galileo-was-right-it-moves.htmlThe laity, who make up the bulk of any religion, are usually more pragmatic, less dogmatic, and therefore more open to change.

There is nothing about the two that makes them fundamentally incompatible. But specific religions are incompatible with science and science is incompatible with specific types of religiosity.

In this case, it seems to not be about the word changing its meaning, but about your limited exposure to the word giving you a limited understanding of the word's meaning. Having only seen the word used in one context, you naturally assumed that the specifics of that context were inherent to the word's meaning. When you later saw it in contexts where those specifics didn't apply, you naturally assumed the meaning of the word had changed. In fact, however, you had simply been working under a false assumption. It's a pretty common thing. When its about people you care about, instead of words, it can be pretty rough. Did he change, or did I just never really know him? When its about androids- Is this the first to develop consciousness, or have I simply failed to recognize the consciousness of the others?

Since my dispute is with his etymology, rather than his definition, I scrolled down to the etymology section of the wiki link."The word was coined from the Greek root ἀνδρ- 'man' (male, as opposed to anthrop- = human being) and the suffix -oid 'having the form or likeness of'.[6] The Oxford English Dictionary traces the earliest use (as "Androides") to Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia, in reference to an automaton that St. Albertus Magnus allegedly created.[3][7] The term "android" appears in US patents as early as 1863 in reference to miniature human-like toy automatons" Nothing there about flesh and bone.

I looked it up, based on your words not matching my own memory of scifi history, and it looks like you've got the etymology wrong.....

You can't prove that!

The most honest answer to this sort of question is "I don't know."

When you approach a cliff, you can't see the shape of the drop-off until you're looking down at it. And the beach is not close to what I can see from it. I've been out there in boats. It's BIG. Like Yo Momma Joke big...

Really? It looks pretty lumpy to me. Even the flattest places I've lived had some rolling hills. Also, there is a clear curvature visible when I look out from the beach....

I just don't see how they could differentiate between a difference in how much two people believe and a difference in how two people see their own beliefs. It's a really tricky subject to create objective metrics for. Definitely interesting stuff. I just enjoy trying to come up with alternate explanations for data sets when I see this kind of study. It makes me try to look at it from as many angles as possible, which is kind of fun....

I have an alternate explanation for the results. Because people are scoring their own level of belief, perhaps the analytical thinking simply leads to more conservative scoring. Giving more weight to small doubts when ranking personal faith, rather than having more doubts or less faith, make sense?

At this point i will remind you of the study i posted earlier regarding our inability to tell when we don't understand stuff. That's just an admission of prejudice, no? That you do not know how to use the data does not mean the data cannot be used. So success in business is a matter of luck? No amount of skill or expertise gives an advantage in product design or business modeling, because you can't have a better than random chance of correctly identifying market trends? That is seriously your claim? "some" yes. Other things are expensive because people are willing to pay and the people controlling supply want a high price. Nothing more or less complex. As for having to pay, a lot of what people do creates benefits for others that cannot be monetized. You are currently benefitting from risks taken by others without paying them anything. Where did the word "demand" come from? We were talking about owing debts, not trying to collect them. You would be dead without the efforts of men you will never meet. Isn't it only fair to acknowledge that you owe them a debt you can never really repay?

You are still being unfair. You have admitted that your knowledge on this subject is limited. It is therefore only fair to admit that others may know things you do not know that justify them holding positions contrary to your own. Once again, the danger of this sort if unfairness lies in programming yourself to dismiss new information out of hand, thus preventing you from learning when you are wrong. Of course it would be greater than random. How, exactly, do you think that Wal-Mart decides how many toasters to buy in a given month? Getting greater predictive value than guesswork is routine. The problem centralized schemes have is that they aren't good at absorbing losses when predictions don't pan out. That whole Too Big To Fail thing, you know? Redundancy always seems inefficient until something breaks... So, you want someone else to do the work, and take all the risks, but you'll be glad to benefit from it when it all works out? That's your idea of fair? Maybe. But remember Wal-Mart. This isn't science fiction. It's how markets work. Every retail business out there is eager to figure out what you want and what you are willing to do to get it. They are also eager to shape your desires and make you more desperate to have those desires fulfilled. The bigger they are, the bigger the populations they are working to understand and manipulate. And they get a little better at it every day. Of course, using force to impose monopoly would reduce variables and make the job easier, but I doubt anyone would call it fair play...

You're mangling Hayek, but, anyway. You do not know how to do it. You are therefore ill-equipped to recognize if someone else can. When you assume that no one can do it, you are creating a prejudicial bias that prevents you from fairly judging on merit. Note that past failures in no way indicate that success is impossible. They simply indicate that past methodologies did not work. Absence of evidence is not evidence of anything, right?On a more personal level, would you rather be the Wright Brothers, or the people who said they couldn't do it? Here's some sciency stuff about this kind of unfairness... http://m.livescience.com/18678-incompetent-people-ignorant.html

And how do you prove that something cannot be proven? I mean, if your claim is that something is unknowable, how do you prove your claim? It can be. Sharing is also a way to handle issues of joint ownership or non-ownership. It is also a way to cooperate, when you have a joint goal, whether it be trying to build a barn or enjoy a play date. What do you mean by "the meaning here"? Up to this point, you've been fairly vague about what you are talking about, and everyone else has been talking about a broad range of things. The paper I linked to, that you were commenting on, is about a theory of an evolutionary biology theory about fairness as a general concept. If you are only talking about the one narrow definition, it would appear you are the only one. And I would say unequivocally that you cannot understand the one kind without understanding all the others, because social transactions do not occur in a vacuum. You have to read The Theory of Moral Sentiments to really understand The Wealth of Nations... Buyers are rarely that rational. People will pay more because a seller us pretty, or pay less because a seller is an ass. Price as a reward/punishment system should not be ignored. One of the things the fairness experiments show clearly, for example, is that people will gladly gladly get nothing to prevent someone else from getting too much. You understand that transactions do not exist in a vacuum, and instead of trying to fulfill your obligation, you assume that you are always obligated, as is everyone else. Since you owe your life to the actions of people you will never meet, how could it be otherwise? Reasonable not being the same as fair. After all, it is reasonable to not feel obligated for things you do not know you have been given, but it is not fair to take without giving in return. Acting unfairly, simply by virtue of using a narrow focus when determining what others deserve is fairly commonplace... Transactions do not occur in a vacuum. A baby has never contributed. We understand the babies potential, and we value it, thus we do not consider this an unfair use of resources. To protect yourself and your family without doing the same for others is to say that you and yours have more value than others. That is unfair. It may be reasonable or a good idea. It is also patently unfair. How fairness can be a survival trait, despite leading to actions that can seem unreasonable, or a bad idea is a fascinating question the paper is trying to address. All societies are based on both. Societies cannot learn to trade without first learning how to share. Who said it was? Yet one cannot be fair and act selfishly. It can. It does not always. Fair dealing, fair pricing, fair trade, and fair market value all use different meanings of fairness.