Share Your Most Dangerous Idea 1060
GabrielF writes "Every year The Edge asks over 100 top scientists and thinkers a question, and the responses are fascinating and widely quoted. This year, psychologist Steven Pinker suggested they ask "What is your most dangerous idea?" The 117 respondents include Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Daniel Dennett, Jared Diamond -- and that's just the D's! As you might expect, the submissions are brilliant and very controversial."
Similar piece from a year ago (Score:3, Interesting)
My Humble Submissions (Score:5, Funny)
2. Testing for the presence of pheromones in ball sweat by putting my hand down my pants, cupping my balls, and holding my hand over my sleeping girlfriend's face while she slept.*
+ I was going to do this while in the shower with the water running off to the side so I could hop into the water in the event of the inevitable accident
* Danger: She's a biter thus the reluctance to tea bag her directly
Re:My Humble Submissions (Score:4, Funny)
Re:My Humble Submissions (Score:3, Interesting)
evolution of evil (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:evolution of evil (Score:4, Informative)
Re:evolution of evil (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. First of all, if you want to use evolutionary theory then you have to take into fact that humans didn't live in huge cities like we do now. We lived in small collections of hunters/gatherers. You kill someone in your own group, then you get ostracized from the group which will lead to certain no-mating.
Second, murder of another competing group would be good and you'd be considered a hero in your group. Then you'd get more reproductive success if you're a hero.
So, murder is bad but a battlefield kill is good. We hate murderers but love war heros. Anyway, that's my view. So, just murdering someone in cold blood is hard but killing in a battlefield isn't as much.
72,500 words!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Here's my idea: If you have a Bose-Einstein condensate of heavy atoms, why happens when they radioactively decay? Does every atom decay simultaniously? Wouldn't that be kinda like a bomb?
No (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, there MAY be a way to use a BEC more destructively. If you have a BEC that consists of pure deuterium, use magnetic containment to prevent the BEC from expanding back out at all, raise the temperature as close to instantaneously as possible to the point where fusion can occur...
The BEC obviously can't remain a BEC at superhigh temperatures, so must unfold to some degree. The structure is guaranteed to move to the lowest possible energy state, because that is what atomic structures do. This is part of why it would be important to raise the temperature rapidly. You want it so that there simply is no valid state with deuterium nucleii.
If deuterium is simply not an option, the nucleii will fuse. They have no alternative. Here is where it gets fun, though. If the energies are high enough and the compression great enough, you can produce elements as far up the periodic table as you like. Unlike normal particle accelerator efforts to produce super-massive atoms, these will actually last for a while - there won't be room for them to fall apart.
The difficulty in producing the correct conditions would be enormous, but if you could crack that nut, there'd be no theoretical reason why you couldn't push for a nucleus with an atomic mass of a thousand or so.
The energy to produce such a monster atom would be guaranteed much greater than ALL of the energy output by the fusion reactions. (Iron takes more energy to fuse than it gives out and we're talking something a couple of orders of magnitude larger.) Sustaining it might even be worse.
The fun part, though, will be in letting it collapse after a time. A very substantial part of the energy put into the fusion of the nucleii would be released in a matter of microseconds over an extremely small space. Current physics predicts that if you exceed a certain energy density, space will "inflate". This might cause the whole of space/time to explode, it might form a pocket universe, or it might do all sorts of other strange things. Nobody knows much about energy densities of that magnitude.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No (Score:3, Interesting)
Over the billions of years the universe has existed, thousands of alien cultures have evolved just like ours, only to have there planet blipped out of existance by an accidential scientific discovery.
If such a case possible then any "advanced" society is constantly on the brink of destruction, by attempting to control higher and higher energies. We may think nuclear weapons are dangerous (and they are), an alien kid
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmmm. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a bit like taking liquid hydrogen and exerting enough pressure on it to turn it into solid metal. The temperature technically goes up, but it can't remain liquid or convert to a gas because the volume is too small. The most stable state it can enter is a "high-temperature" solid.
In this case, what we're doing is compressing a BEC "superatom" to a temperature in which it can no longer remain a BEC, but it cannot revert to deuterium atoms either. Neither is stable, under the conditions imposed. The only alternative is for the nuclei to fuse together, because it is the only valid way left that they can reduce the space requirements to what they have.
You'd need to be a little careful, though. You don't want to leave any nuclei with no valid state, or you're going to squish the lot into a quark-gluon soup. Again, that could be nasty, as I'm not sure you can magnetically contain the gluons... which ARE going to react with the containment system.
Re:72,500 words!!! (Score:4, Informative)
And the other poster's comments about "heating it up really quick" is pretty much wrong, as far as I can tell.
I work with BEC, and there's no way it could be used as a weapon.
But your question about nuclear decay from a group wavefunction is pretty interesting, but the nuclei should behave independently. When a BEC scatters a photon, for instance, a single atom is rejected.
m
My most dangerous ideas (Score:5, Funny)
"Better light a match to see where that gas is coming from."
"Yeah honey, you do look kind of fat in that dress."
So that would make the *most* dangerous idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, duh... (Score:3, Funny)
Longest FA ever. (Score:4, Insightful)
The ones that are dangerous are not dangerous in the "omg someone could kill millions with this idea" way. They are dangerous in the "our society will be even more effed up if this idea catches on" way. Like the idea that we can't win the war on climate change. If everyone accepted this how many countries would even try to reduce emissions? Or the idea that there really are fundamental differences between the "races". That would make the next genocide just a little bit easier.
Melting (Score:4, Insightful)
Several times in my life, I've thought that I might be able to fix a broken object by using the process of melting. No matter how right I thought I was when I started, I've always, ALWAYS, regretted the idea.
Even knowing this, I'll probably try it again.
The Most Apt Response Out There (Score:5, Interesting)
DANIEL GILBERT
Psychologist, Harvard University
The idea that ideas can be dangerous
Dangerous does not mean exciting or bold. It means likely to cause great harm. The most dangerous idea is the only dangerous idea: The idea that ideas can be dangerous.
We live in a world in which people are beheaded, imprisoned, demoted, and censured simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence.
Well, Dan, have you read Slashdot lately? I think we're still all right. For now.
Re:The Most Apt Response Out There (Score:4, Funny)
So when my girlfriend makes me miserable she's making me less appealing to other women, which defends her turf. Damn, women are smart!
Most Dangerous Idea: (Score:4, Funny)
Lots of buzzword babble (Score:3, Interesting)
mind control (Score:5, Insightful)
I shall call it "thought vehicle" or short TV. - Sounds good too.. I should patent this idea.
device exists, and is in use! (Score:3, Informative)
People say that fluoride is "not lethal in small doses" - of course it isn't lethal in 1 or 4 ppm, but that's not the point: it still effects you, especially as the fluoride builds up in your body over time.
Unfortunately, fluoride in drinking water (common in the United States) is only one tiny part of your daily exposure - almost any product processed
Re:device exists, and is in use! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:mind control (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk _files=37759&pageno=86 [gutenberg.org]
However, I'm certain that this would not prove sufficient prior art in today's patent climate.
I highly recommend this book, as an amazing glimpse into the prescience of this man's predictions about the kinds of technologies and conveniences we would have in his future, and our today, and how
Shooting for mod points... (Score:4, Informative)
Teach people to think for themselves.
My most dangerous idea? (Score:5, Funny)
OK, here's one. "Alcohol Economy". (Score:5, Interesting)
We have an entire Midwest full of Great Plains which are very well suited to growing grains which could produce alcohol.
It has been demonstrated that you can run a car on alcohol. Dragsters do it all the time.
It has been demonstrated that a fuel cell can generate electricity from methanol.
Alcohol doesn't poison the environment if you spill some. It burns clean if you have a darwinian-selection moment and light it up. And in a pinch, you can drink it. Try THAT with petroleum.
Well? Wouldn't an alcohol economy be easier than a hydrogen one?
Just a thought...
The problem isn't really Oil (Score:5, Interesting)
Replacing oil with alcohol would not solve our problems.
Sure, it would invest in agriculture rather than exploiting technology to find, extract and refine crude oil. But It would replace the known problems associated with enriching arab states with a history of bad civil rights, with some unknown problems related to a huge mega-farm raising a monoculture crop. Pesticides, GMO, soil depletion are issues we know would be involved, but what else is involved with monobreed farming on that scale?
There's also the problem that American bio-energy fuel production could only generate a 10th of the fuel supply that the USA currently uses - and that's only gasoline. There are lots of products we get from crude oil that we can't press out of biomass: think about plastics, asphalt, lubricants.
Then there's the issue of what we're fueling in the first place: the realized dream of cheap fuel for vehicle freedom has resulted in a transportation engineering crisis that requires moving around and storing enormous cars rather than people. That creates sprawl that eats up farmland so we can have a parking lot around WalMart and sprawling acres of land devoted to roadways, driveways and freeways to link far flung suburban housing developments and equally sprawling office parks, and the previously mentioned WalMarts. Not to mention vehicle's polluting of the the environment.
And yes you can drink alcohol, but not the 85% Ethanol/15% Gasoline mix we create for cars. It also is only about 30% cleaner than burning raw gasoline, so you might not want to light up indoors. It's also significantly more expensive, even if you ignore the farming subsidies that artificially cheapen it.
Sometimes the simplest solution is also the least well thought out.
I would suggest determining the real problems before offering a solution. A nation designed around cars instead of people is definitely part of the problem, and alternative fuel doesn't solve that particular problem at all.
Nuclear Economy (Score:5, Interesting)
Forgo alcohol/biodiesel.
Switch to a large number of Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactors [wikipedia.org] like China is doing, and use this energy to run run cars on Hydrogen or electricity.
Believe it or not, Nuclear power is actually CLEANER ounce per ounce than most other energy methods (Try comparing it to coal, for example, which is still currently used, or many other things.) However, most people are scared of it, because they dont understand it.
For those about to reply OMG! Nuclear power ZOMG!!!111!!11One!!! You should perhaps read the wikipedia article.
Re:Nuclear Economy (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm all for nuclear power but, please, make giant super-sites with 20 huge reactors far from population centers that can be efficiently secured and guarded and where economies of scale can allow maintainance and monitoring to be top-notch and yet still cost less. And build an airforce base next to it (or it next to a base) to provide full milita
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:OK, here's one. "Alcohol Economy". (Score:3, Insightful)
It's easier then an Alcohol OR a Hydrogen economy.
Re:OK, here's one. "Alcohol Economy". (Score:3, Informative)
My idea (Score:4, Funny)
yea us? (Score:3, Interesting)
"The relative innocence and stable period of the last 50 years may spiral into a nearly inevitable exposure to real chaos. What if it isn't haphazard testosterone driven riots, where they cannibalize their own neighborhood, much like in L.A. in the 80s, but someone with real insight behind that criminal energy ? What if Slashdotters start musing aloud about "Gee, the L.A. water supply is rather simplistic, isn't it?" An Open Source crime web, a Wiki for real WTO opposition ? Hacking L.A. may be a lot easier than hacking IE."
Stolen from Star Trek (Score:5, Interesting)
ooh, ooh! pick me! (Score:5, Insightful)
the internet has replaced the encyclopedia
it is replacing want ads, real estate agents, auctions, music companies, publishers, etc.
it will someday replace government
but hold on, there's a catch:
if the internet does this, it will do it the same way it is defeating the music industry: not through any conscience effort, but just a gradual, inevitable, unfightable erosion of relevancy by little efforts made by individuals not even consciously trying to do anything coherent
in other words, if you are actively seeking to defeat government and promote anarchy/ libertarianism/ revolution, or whatever, you are way off
because you are making a conscience effort
because if and when it happens, no one will notice it starting
just like the guys who built the original arpanet in the 1960s didn't say "hey! let's build a radically superior music distribution model that cuts out the middle man and removes the economic incentive!"
except that's exactly what they did
Re:ooh, ooh! pick me! (Score:3, Interesting)
Not quite.
I personally suspect that if the Internet replaces aspects of government, it'll be by facilitating assurance contracts [wikipedia.org] between individuals. Sites like fundable.org [fundable.org] and PledgeBank [pledgebank.com] are some early im
The Most Dangerous Idea of Them All! (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry, couldn't help myself
-Brandon
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
most dangerous virus (Score:4, Funny)
Suppose a virus grepped your Outlook/Outlook Express address book for people's names. Then it grepped all the emails/documents/spreadsheets/whatever on all drives it could reach for those names.
Once it found a document with someone's name, it emails that document to them.
Imagine the chaos as confidential HR memos, payroll spreadsheets, legal documents, and just plain gossip are indiscriminately sent out.
Re:most dangerous virus (Score:4, Funny)
a) extract software name, serial #'s / keys
b) email the results to the BSA saying that they think their company is using unlicensed software
c) ask for the reward to go to a paypal acct
d) spread like crazy
Nice, Huh?
B
human ideas only matter on earth (Score:3, Interesting)
Modern science is a product of biology (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow. Only a psychologist would come up with an idea like this. It's clearly a straw-man argument. The simpler version we've all heard for years: if a tree falls in the forest and noone is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The answer is of course it does. The weight of the tree crashing against the ground via the force of gravity sends a shockwave through the air. Whether or not a person is in range of the shockwave is completely irrelevant.
This is the highest form of hubris: it takes people/intelligence for quantifications to have meaning. Bullshit.
Take a universe exactly like ours in every respect with the very minor alteration that life never got started on earth. Well guess what? It still takes a minimum threshold of matter to condense and form a burning star. The label we've given to that threshold is nothing; a mere convienience. The real important fact is that matter *can* condense into a burning star, and it will do so even if there's no humans around to pontificate.
End rant.
Re:Modern science is a product of biology (Score:4, Insightful)
He doesn't claim that the universe requires human interaction or observation. He's simply claiming that since humans have limited faculties, the content and scope of human understanding and knowledge is limited. In other words, there may very well be things about the universe that we will never be able to understand. It's an interesting conjecture, although I'm not sure how much I agree with it, since humans are able to aid themselves in their investigations with technology.
Well, let's look at history. (Score:3, Insightful)
Feeling lonely and asking god for a companion (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What are /. reader's most dangerous ideas? (Score:4, Funny)
Very dangerous idea.
Re:What are /. reader's most dangerous ideas? (Score:5, Funny)
So we're at the strip club, and this girl I know is giving me a table dance. Her gorgeous ass is bobbing back and forth in front of my face, right? And there's a good chance she'll come with us later in the evening for some clubbing. I'm happy and content, and all is well.
SUDDENLY! His hand flies into the scene from the left, and he sticks his thumb straight up her ass. She screams and shoots off him like a pershing missle, and sprints -- SPRINTS -- into the dressing rooms twenty feet away. My mouth is hanging open; I simply cannot believe what has just happened. The girl -- strawberry blonde with a surfer hairdo and freckles and the whitest, softest skin you have EVER seen -- is certainly NEVER going to speak to me again. I am in shock of course.
She's barely gone and my knucklehead friend leaps up to the platform where some other poor girl is doing her little pole-dance thing, and starts screaming "they're all SLUTS! SLUTS! SLUTS!" I grab him in a headlock and drag him to the door, saying to the two Giant Navajo bouncers "Uh... I think he's on something, we're leaving, ok?" He's frothing at the mouth at this point. I barely get him outside and he takes off like a psycho rocket.
I spent the rest of the night chasing his psycho tripping ass all over Flagstaff, Arizona, hoping he wouldn't get himself killed, not having any idea whatsoever what was going on. At one point, he drove his head into four or five huge plate-glass windows in a row, all along San Francisco street, causing an enormous uproar (people getting out of bed with their shotguns, etc) and a police investigation that would go on for weeks. Unbelieveably, he wasn't injured at all. Not even a scratch.
I finally got him back in his apartment, and when he called me the next day, all of his clothes had been mysteriously tied in a huge rope which extended from his ankle to his door (or something, he wasn't really coherent when he told me the story), he was stark naked, and there was vomit all over every surface of his room. On the advice of a bartender friend of ours, he got out of town at first opportunity - EVERYONE was looking for him (and me, because they thought he might have killed me or something) -- and I haven't seen or heard of him since.
It was the weirdest-ass thing I ever witnessed.
Re:What are /. reader's most dangerous ideas? (Score:3, Funny)
That sounds like a most excellent movie idea. I even have a title for you. "What the hell is he on?"
Re:What are /. reader's most dangerous ideas? (Score:5, Funny)
2. (August 2001) "Maybe I should drop out and join the Army. Chicks really dig guys in uniforms, and besides, what are the chances we'll be in a war in the next few years."
3. (Shouting to the skymarshall in the aisle across from you) "Excuse me, I dropped my lip balm and it rolled over by you. That's my balm right there. Could you throw me my balm? Oh don't bother, I'll get it. It's okay everyone! I got my balm!"
4. (Visiting family in NYC) "This white hotel sheet sure made a great ghost costume. I'll show everyone how their cousin from Arkansas can party. Wow, I'm almost late for the halloween party. I'd better take a shortcut through this part of the map called Harlem. Oh darn, I think my tire is going flat."
My Name is Kiiiiiiiiiddd Rock (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:4, Interesting)
Now that in itself says nothing about it being required or useful in the modern day (or counterproductive). However, one of the above has been replaced with science and the other isn't required (atheists aren't all moraless bastards).
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:3, Insightful)
That's utter drivel. My cat knows the difference between being cold and wet and miserable and scared and being cuddled up before the fire in a pair of loving arms. My cat will signal her appreciation in a completely unequivocal manner by purring and loving up. Her level of appreciation is different, but it is not lacking.
Humans are simply animals. We're smarter, certainly, but there is zero evidence
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not appreciating the beauty of creation, that's appreciating
being in a comfortable situation.
Humans are simply animals.
They are if they don't ask why they're here. The Qur'an even puts
it as such:
They have eyes that don't see, ears that don't hear and hearts that
don't understand. They are like animals - no they are worse than
the animals.
The reason such humans are worse is because they use our advanced
reasoning and imagining capabilities to act
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:4, Insightful)
"Creation" is myth — or at the very least, unencountered objective fact. As such, there's no reason to appreciate it. There is reason to appreciate the portion of the universe one can wrap one's head around, and cats and people both do this.
Either we are, or we aren't. It's a question of biological objective fact, not opinion or subject to any number of philosophical angels, pins and dances.
Parrots use language - ours, in point of fact. Topically and with great humor. Cats and dogs use language as well, though they don't speak ours, they certainly understand some of it. As for what is under discussion betwen them, this is a matter of what the particular brain is specialized to do. Aside from language itself, sound processing is not something we're uniformly best at. Cats can do things like locate a sound to within 8 degrees, reliably and repeatedly. It's been useful to them to specialize this way. You and I really suck at this. We use our brains for other things, and frankly, these things would not benefit cats in the roles they have performed to date. Directivity does. That may change, what with our just beginning to get a handle on the control of DNA. Should be fun. :) In any case, mental and language superiority is not the hands-down win you seem to think it is. Then there is body language and sign language and scent language and gifting. It's almost never as simple as people would like it to be when they're trying to pretend they're really, really special. :) Oh, and I should also point out that cats experiment constantly. With how far their human's patience may be stretched, for one thing, but with many other things as well.
You think a cat doesn't have free will? Don't feed it and then tell me what you think motivated it to take a crap in your headphones one time. Or a piss in the toaster. Cat piss in a toaster is worse than mustard gas — press that level down and you've got what we call a serious situation. Classic free will is what every animal has. This one you don't even get a fraction of a point for.
I don't blame the founders for later generations of followers pillaging, raping, flying into buildings and so forth. The founders had the perfectly common motivation to control their fellows, the very same motivation any modern politician, social worker, psychobabbler or cop has; they just had more of it. The thing is, not one of them was smart enough to see that it couldn't work. That's what all religious founders have in common: They were far too optimistic about human nature. I find that pitiful, but not blameworthy. I blame individuals for their own acts. If a Christian plants a bomb, I blame the Christian. If a corporate flunky rips me off because it is company policy, I blame the flunky directly. If a tax agent takes my money for a war I don't support, I blame the tax agent directly. Being a member of an immoral structure in no way magically propogates your own responsibilities elsewhere. It is a common thing to think it does, and that is one of the key reasons society is in such trouble — many people accept this shuffling off of blame by flunkies. Which is not to say that the structure can shuffle blame downhill, either.
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:3, Insightful)
Because we didn't understand their language, we wrote them off compl
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically correctly? Surely you don't agree with them that white peopl
Hamlet II, ii (Score:3, Interesting)
--From Hamlet (II, ii, 115-117ish)
Most of the people who are, or will argue with you will likely cite art, and the appreciation of abstract beauty in their proofs. For me, I'd include those, and also that it is what I want t
Re:Hamlet II, ii (Score:4, Informative)
You really don't understand the meaning of that passage, do you? Shakespeare wrote it before sarcasm tags were around, but anyone with passing familiarity with the subtext of that scene would never toss that quote up to support this particular point. The preceeding lines (from memory, so forgive misquotes...)
I have of late, but wherefore I know not lost all my mirth. This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with gold and fire, why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestulant congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is man!...
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I'm sure you're serious, I'll do you the courtesy of taking your assertions at face value, and treat them one by one.
Cats affect their environment. This is obvious and trivial. They exhibit numerous traits that we would consider to be environmentally enlightened, from burying their waste to grooming themselves to rarely killing for sport.
Cats can conserve or destroy. They make choices about this as well. For instance, my couch has been conserved. The doorjamb to the bathroom, however, has not. I think this is amusing, and the cat knows this because I take care to demonstrate it to her. From my point of view, the doorjamb is trivial and inexpensive to replace; consequently, I am delighted with the cat's choice of claw-sharpening targets.
Cats have rules/law. Drag a laser pointer across the floor. The cat will follow and play and pounce. Drag the laser pointer across another cat. The original, playful cat will proceed to ignore the laser, even if it was in the midst of crazed play with the beam. There are rules, and one of them is you don't pounce on things that are on other cats. This, interestingly, is a very good rule. Humans can be distinguished, perhaps, by the number of very bad rules we make, but not by rulemaking itself. Any tribe of monkeys has rules, as do many other types of animals, including, as I have shown, cats.
Cats have technology. They will create nests out of raw materials, they utilize knocking your crap off the dresser in order to get your attention. They understand that burial is good for anything that will reveal their presence, and anything that is dead and rotting. Other animals use sticks to fetch ants from holes, and will fashion tools from rocks and sticks. Beavers build dams. Termites build, arguably, castles.
Cats have morals. Mothers rarely eat their young. Cats rarely eat their owners, unless the owner dies. Even then, some cats cannot overcome that predjudice, though they will eat other animals.
Cats don't have religion, near as I can tell, but that's a point in their favor from where I stand, quite seriously. Cats do, however, exhibit faith. Both at the habituation level (they expect their human to come home to them again, because so far, that's what has happened) and they expect their human to take care of them, again because that's been established; and at the abstract level — once trust has been established, many wary behaviours are discarded. This occurs in cat-cat relationships and cat-human relationships, and more rarely, between cats and other species.
We do have science and science is a very complex product of advanced thinking. I don't expect science from cats for that reason. Doesn't change my point; I specifically said we differ in degree here.
Cats also experience every emotion humans do, as well as numerous behaviours and traits we like to think of as our own. They can be both selfish and generous, loving and hateful, vicious and kind, protective and defensive, careless and careful, clever and witless, and so on for quite a long list.
My position is that when we have established a level of hubris that disallows seeing that we are one of the set of animals, we have taken a step back on the very path most of us wish to tread. I recognize it's a handy mental trick when the task at hand is the consumption of a hamburger, but that makes it no more respectable.
One final point: If most humans behaved as well as my cat does, we'd be a damn sight better off. Your statement, in light of this, is ludicrous.
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not sure if I would describe cat religion as Secular Felinism or the simple belief that if one is a cat, one is a god. Does it count as polytheism if multiple cats believe that they are each the one and only True God?
Dogs, of course, clearly do have religion.
"Mere animal" (Score:3, Interesting)
The fundies demanding special treatment for human beings in these posts have obviously never
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:3, Insightful)
Agnosticism does not create a stance apart from atheism or theism. If you hold a belief in a god or gods, you're a theist. If you don't, you're an atheist. Agnosticism (usually) describes why the proponent doesn't hold a belief, so it's usually simply a description of the atheist stance.
There's a technical reason lying in wait as well; the theism/atheism boundry is defined by belief, or lack thereof. The stance of the self-professed agnostic is one predicated on kno
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, he is long gone...
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:4, Funny)
That is not the original meaning of agnostic (Score:3, Interesting)
It is right there in the word: "a-gnostic", where gnostic refers to knowledge, and agnostic refers to the lack of it.
Nowadays, "agnosticism" is often taken to mean decla
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:3, Informative)
As a former religion major, I've got to jump in here. I have yet to see a good definition of an agnostic on Slashdot, so I'll clarify.
Agnostics believe that it is logically impossible to understand God (or the Divine, or
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:3, Insightful)
"well known"? To who?
Sorry but you simply don't understand the meaning of the word. Theist believes in God. Atheist believes there is no God. Agnostic does not KNOW if there is a God. Notice the agnostic definition is about knowledge NOT belief.
To Muslims, Christians were considered "infidels" ie those without faith. If you do not believe in Allah, then some may consider you to be an atheist by your definition. Is this the definition you want? Or perhaps you should consider that the opposite of an idea is
Re:The Most Dangerous Idea of All (Score:3, Informative)
atheist: one who believes that there is no deity
agnostic: one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/atheist [m-w.com]
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/agnostic [m-w.com]
Re: In SOVIET RUSSIA maybe. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: In SOVIET RUSSIA maybe. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Incorrect again (Score:4, Informative)
Atheism/Agnosticism (Score:4, Informative)
- Strong Agnosticism
- The view that the existence (or not) of a supernatural God (or gods) is not something that can be classified as knowledge. By this definition, a person can simultaneously be a strong agnostic and a theist (or atheist) if he believes that no kind of evidence justifies belief in the existence or nonexistence of God, but chooses believe that God exists (or not) anyhow as a matter of faith or principle.
- Weak Agnosticism
- The weak agnostic does not take a position on whether the existence of God is a possible subject of knowledge, but merely asserts that he is not aware of any evidence that justifies belief one way or the other. A weak agnostic could also be a theist or atheist, but will typically hold the position only tentatively on the basis that a proof one way or the other may show up eventually.
- Non-Agnostic
- ("Gnostic" not used because it is associated with an early quasi-Christian sect.) Someone who is not agnostic takes the position that there exists an acceptable proof either for or against the existence of God or gods. We might further categorise this as "weak" (the belief that such proof is possible in principle) or "strong" (the assertion that a specific argument constitutes valid proof).
- Strong Atheism
- A strict denial of all god-like entities. A bold assertion that no such thing exists.
- Weak Atheism
- Scepticism with regard to the proposition that there exists a God or god-like entities in general. Weak atheists feel that the non-existence of godlike beings is more likely to be true than the alternative, but aren't certain about it.
- Weak Theism
- Scepticism with regard to the proposition that no godlike beings exist. Symmetric opposite of weak atheism. Weak theists suspect that there is some kind of supernatural God, but lack assurance as to detail.
- Strong Theism
- A bold assertion that a specific God or gods exist. Also covers "deism", which is the position that God exists, but is disinterested and/or impersonal.
If there is a genuinely neutral position between the weak forms of theism and atheism, I'm neither familiar with its name, nor sure how such a person would behave (although "erratically" springs to mind).Slashdot got a shoutout, (and a compliment) (Score:4, Funny)
My first thought was: what if any really smart set of people really set their mind to it...how utterly and scarily trivial it would be, to disrupt the very fabric of life, to bring society to a dead stop?
The relative innocence and stable period of the last 50 years may spiral into a nearly inevitable exposure to real chaos. What if it isn't haphazard testosterone driven riots, where they cannibalize their own neighborhood, much like in L.A. in the 80s, but someone with real insight behind that criminal energy ? What if Slashdotters start musing aloud about "Gee, the L.A. water supply is rather simplistic, isn't it?" An Open Source crime web, a Wiki for real WTO opposition ? Hacking L.A. may be a lot easier than hacking IE.
oh - and the "war" on drugs, sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A radical idea - Fredom Matters Most (Score:5, Insightful)
It's always nice when someone new walks into a process that's been going on for hundreds of years and gets angry that no one sees his simple solution, even though that's where we started and we've been fixing the problems with it ever since.
In public education - everyone talks about what kind of education the kids need, and noone talks about the financial freedom lost in paying for it, or the very influence that such has on the kids.
They're too busy talking about the financial freedom lost when you have a work force of illiterates who can't add.
In social security and medicade/ medical care - everyones worried about how will we take care of the needy and elderly and noone talks about the people that need to be financially coerced to make these systems work.
And your constructive solution is then to let thousands and thousands of people either die or turn to crime? Step one, end social security. What's step two? Please answer. If you've got a way to make this work, please tell us. I really, really want to be on your side, because that's a lot of money.
In the genocide of the poor - noone would even dare mention that the best solution would be to arm them and seciure their right to bear arms first.
Genius! How could that possibly go bad? Combine this with your no-free-schooling idea and we've got ourselves a plan that just might solve everybody's problem.
Re:A radical idea - Fredom Matters Most (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, stop using the word "coerce." Pick up a thesaurus. Second, most parents aren't qualified to even teach fractions, which makes homeschooling on a large scale impossible, and private school is too expensive for the majority. Again, your solution isn't "radical", it's unworkable.
After all, who could ever possibly accept the notion that millions won't die unless the government coerces people to p
Re:A radical idea - Fredom Matters Most (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A radical idea - Fredom Matters Most (Score:5, Insightful)
I do. I know it worked in at least one case, as I'm able to read your post. Worked in a bunch of others, too.
You assume that the government is the only institution capable of providing education
I assume it's the only institution capable of doing it on a consistent basis at tiny cost to the people that can't afford it. Unless you know of a few thousand private schools that will take kids for free, we don't have much of an alternative. Homeschooling is the only possible option for people without money, but that counts on the parents being well-educated.
You ignore the terrible social effects public schools have on children (conditioning them to obedience to authority, squeltching individualism and diversity, taking away their privacy, age and skill segregation)
Oh, good heavens!
If that's the point of school, they're really not doing as well as I thought.
We don't all share your absolute faith in government
I have virtually no faith in government. It's inefficient, bloated, and corrupt.
and government is not the only model of social cooperation that we are able to comprehend.
Good for you.
that might be hard for someone to grasp who has been conditioned that the state is everything.
Dick.
[quote]And your constructive solution is then to let thousands and thousands of people either die or turn to crime? Step one, end social security. What's step two? Please answer. If you've got a way to make this work, please tell us. I really, really want to be on your side, because that's a lot of money.[/quote]
Once again, your statement has many assumptions
I made no assumptions. I want to know what happens on the second fucking day. Please fill in the gaping holes so we can properly discuss this.
You assume that Medicare is the only social structure capable of providing health care to those that need it. (In fact, there are any number of models of healthcare that we could use,
I'm listening.
You assume that Medicare somehow makes healthcare more available (instead of, say, pumping money in without increasing supply, and thus raising the price of medical care for everyone
You've calculated this in healthcare units? ("Healthies", I like to call them.)
You're thinking economics, I'm thinking child of poor parents breaks his leg.
You assume that Medicare is a sustainable, viable system.
And, for the thousandth time, I'm waiting for the plan.
"You must all send me $10,000...
The only possible response to that is, "You're an idiot." I'm sorry, but if you can't understand that taking the small amount of survivability that people have away from them is going to have negative affects, at least in the short term, you're just not that bright.
Switzerland has the lowest violent crime rate and murder rate of any industrialized nation, and have the absolute highest private ownership of firearms in the industrialized world (basicly, nearly all able bodied men have full access to military style weapons).
All able-bodied men have access to military style weapons after 17 weeks of mandatory basic training. Let's not pretend we're all nations of soldiers. And let's not compare the US to Switzerland at all, because we're very, very different.
You need to try to convince us that gun ownership is bad, not call people stupid because they don't have absolute faith in your belief system.
I would never try to convince you that gun ownership is bad because I don't think it is. I think arming the poor to combat violence is profoundly stupid. I don't know what argument you're extending to this one, but please don't assume I meant to say bad things I didn't say.
Re:A radical idea - Fredom Matters Most (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A radical idea - Fredom Matters Most (Score:5, Interesting)
Somalia has a free market economy with everything privatised, and no government - freedom for all. Let's see how it stacks up:
In monitary policy - everyone seems to think that other measures of inflation and growth are more important, than the freedom from controll that the gold standard offers.
Well there is no real central bank for Somalia anymore as far as I can find, and due to counterfeiting and other problems the Somali currency was so seriously debased that they may as well be using gold instead and use the gol standard.
In public education - everyone talks about what kind of education the kids need, and noone talks about the financial freedom lost in paying for it, or the very influence that such has on the kids.
All education in Somalia is private. It's a free market economy with no government. We get a big check for this one.
In social security and medicade/ medical care - everyones worried about how will we take care of the needy and elderly and noone talks about the people that need to be financially coerced to make these systems work.
There is no government so there is certainly no social security of medicare equivalent. At worst there is a certain amount of foreign aid and World Bank assistance, but I think that counts as outside charity. A big check for this one too.
In copyrights and patents - everyone talks about the poor starving inventor or creator, and noone talks about all the people that need to be coerced to make these systems of incentive work.
We're perfectly good for this one - there is no government of court system to enforce any such thing. A big check here too.
In the genocide of the poor - noone would even dare mention that the best solution would be to arm them and seciure their right to bear arms first.
Wow. That's just what Somalia is! A free for all where anyone at all can arm themselves and take part. Sounds perfect.
And from elsewhere...I'm sorry for responding to my own post, but no argument about freedom would be complete without mentioning the "war on drugs".
A big check for this one too! Somalia seems to have everything you're looking for. No government coercion, just freedom for everyone and a truly free market economy. The imminent arrival of Somalia as a significant player on the world economic stage seems inevitable given it's almost utopian society. It's been without government for 15 years now, but I'm sure Somalia will well and truly be on it's feet any year now. I expect you'll be moving there, given it's fulfillment of your radical dream, very soon, so perhaps you cna help really get the economy moving.
Jedidiah.
Re:Sexuality is going to change (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sexuality is going to change (Score:4, Interesting)
But that doesn't tell us whether the bi-curious settle because society treats them better for doing that... or if they settle because they finally discover their "innate" sexual orientation...
Certainly, I have met a relatively large proportion of people who identify as bi, who complain that both the hetero world, and the homo world (i.e. gay friendly environments), often reject or dismiss bisexuals as somehow fence-sitters, or undecided, or likely to change and therefore dump their partner, or are traitors, or something.
Unfortunately, those compaints are consistent with the theory that people who settle into one of the homo/hetero orientations may be doing it because that's more socially comfortable. It doesn't prove the theory, but it supports it's plausibility.
I wonder what people would do, in a society where they are encouraged to be sexual in whatever way they enjoy each day... rather than trying to please other people or stay out of trouble.
Perhaps the next 50 years will gives us some clue.
-- Jamie
Re:Blow up the Moon (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The United States is the biggest threat (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mmmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Here is one they won't ever implement (Score:5, Insightful)
As one glance at either (or both) Einstein and a person with a typical case of Down's syndrome will tell you, equal mental capacities are not uniformly available.
As one glance at either (or both) Arab women and US feminists will tell you, equal rights are not uniformly available.
As one glance at either Jeffery Dalmer (or both) and Martin Luther King will tell you, equal consideration is not uniformly available.
In summary, the very idea that "we are all created equal" is a mindless, pointless statement that speaks only to turning a blind eye to reality.
I have always thought that we should be saying that we would attempt to afford equal opportunity to our fellows at each set of choices in life, and let them make of it both what they may, and what they are capable of.
But as your premise is trivially demonstrated to be false, you should probably reformulate. :)
Re:Here is one they won't ever implement (Score:4, Interesting)
A thought that weighed heavily on Shakespeare's mind, among many others, were the things that are universal, the things that do bind us as equals. Life and death.
Choice! Aye there is the rub. We do not choose the manner of our birth nor (for the most part) our death. I think it was Adam Johnson who first linked this concept with that of equality. The analogy of birth was taking all the characteristics of humanity; our personality, our physicality, our experiences, our potential and our opportunities and putting them in a opaque bag which, once shuffled, would be redistributed at birth. With this is mind, now design a society, a government, an economy and a culture around this limitation. With this in mind, design how you would wish to live and what kind of world you would want passed on to your descendants.
This is the only way I have been able to retain my sanity and hold the apparently mutually exclusive concepts of 'there is no equality' and 'striving for equality is noble' as both true.
And I applaud this article, because I have long believed that the most dangerous of all things is thought.
Re:Here is one they won't ever implement (Score:5, Insightful)
"Tous les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et egaux en droits."
"All men are born and remain free and equal in rights."
The sentence is to be understood in the context of the French Revolution, as a rejection of the concept of hereditary aristocracy.
Thomas-
Re:Here is one they won't ever implement (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Here is one they won't ever implement (Score:5, Insightful)
The Libertarians have it wrong. Swinging your fists around within inches of my nose is an act of agression. I have no way of telling whether you are just posturing or whether you intend to hurt me until after you have hurt me. Therefore, as soon as you start swinging fists close to my face my rights are violated because I have to drop everything I am doing and pay full attention in order to make certain that I don't get hurt in case I move unexpectedly or you decide to go from posturing to fighting.
Re:Put all my company's sensitive data.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Economic subjugation becomes real subjugation (Score:4, Insightful)
When people complain about inequity, the solution they are usually talking about is to give more power and resources to the state (i.e. a centralized top down command structure controlled by a small political elite). And when you talk about Socialism, Communism, or any one of the the 19th century ideologies that are popular with people complaining about inequality, you are talking about a giant, massive, centralized, authoritarian state.
The state IS inequality... it is by it's very nature and structure a system of hierarchy and authority, and so increasing the power and resources of the state can only increase inequality and subjugation. People may say that they want to use the state to end inequality, but what they really mean is that they want their own ethnic/political/social group to be the authority in power subjigating others.
If you truly want equality, then you would support decentralization of power, and the reduction and/or elimination of the state. Inequality comes from violence... it comes from situations where people are not allowed to make decisions for themselves and instead are forced to do something under the threat of violence. The economic underclass we have in the western world are victims of government violence or threat of violence (the violence/threat might be prompted by corporations, religions, or powerful interests bribing the government to act on their behalf... or the violence/threat might be some real but misguided attempt to "help" people).
Free people from a giant, violent, centralized authority like a government, and equality, prosperity, and peace are the natural result. But government and equality are fundamentally opposed and incompatible situations. Most likely (and if I am misinterpreting you and you are not advocating some centralized government plan, I apologize), the very political policies you support are the cause of the inequality you are against.
Re:Ooh, I know this one! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What the..? Emotional Intelligence? (Score:3, Insightful)