1. 'Framing Science' and The Dawkins Effect

Comment #181303 by Janus on May 16, 2008 at 9:39 pm

The only questions left are: which rules/systems are more efficient in furthering those goals. And this creates the ethical problems we endlessly talk about.

No, those aren't the only questions left, because you haven't yet established that all humans share these goals (they don't), nor have you explained why those humans who don't share these goals should share them (and you never will, because it's not logically possible to do so).

You're right that given a certain shared set of moral premises, moral problems become questions about objective reality that can therefore be solved, eventually. The real problem, of course, is getting everyone to share the same moral premises. That goal may be achievable, but not by evidence- and reason-based discourse, because evidence and reason don't apply to subjective preferences.

That our brains have built-in moral urges doesn't alter this fact. To use your analogy, it does NOT follow from the fact that I am hungry that therefore I should eat. What if I want to kill myself through starvation? It is only correct to say that if I want to eat, then I should eat. That is the difference between an urge and a desire. An urge is what "is", a desire is what "ought" to be. And as Henri has said so well, you can't derive ought from is.

2. 'Framing Science' and The Dawkins Effect

Comment #180615 by Janus on May 15, 2008 at 11:06 am

Sure he can write that.
It is a fact that there is a possibility. As opposed to saying, "It is a fact that there is no possibility".


The content of Henri's post is just as correct, btw.

3. Scientists Know Better Than You--Even When They're Wrong

Comment #177857 by Janus on May 9, 2008 at 8:45 pm

Please. As if theology has anything to do with religion as 99% of people practice it.

4. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #172192 by Janus on April 29, 2008 at 10:26 am

But can we reconcile the two Richard Dawkinses -- the literary one who has nary a good word to say about religion, and the personal one who admits that religion doesn't have a stranglehold on terror, may inspire ethical behaviour, and may even have contributed to the scientific enterprise?

Oh, I don't know. How about reading The God Delusion carefully and realizing that the 'literary' Dawkins has never written anything of the kind?


There are indeed two Richard Dawkinses, but not the personal one and the literary one. There's the real Dawkins, and there's Dawkins as his critics would like you to believe he is.

5. Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

Comment #167321 by Janus on April 23, 2008 at 10:31 pm

There is nothing wrong with certainty.

Is it dangerous to be certain that having a cigarette when you're doused in gasoline is going to result in your death?

Not only is it not dangerous to be certain in this case, it's very dangerous to be uncertain.


What is dangerous is to hold a belief with a degree of certainty that is not directly proportional to the quality and quantity of the evidence. Believing that God will alter the laws of physics to save you in that above scenario is extremely dangerous.

Being certain isn't wrong, what is wrong is being certain about faith-based beliefs.

6. Gods and earthlings

Comment #163522 by Janus on April 18, 2008 at 1:03 pm

In reply to Jack and Dr Benway:

I guess I should have specified, but by "universe" I meant our universe (i.e. the bubble in which we live, if there is a multiverse). People usually write "the Universe" with a capital U if they're talking about Everything That Exists.

Jack is right that it's silly to speculate about things which are unlike anything we know about. That's a good reason to not believe in a Designer. However, it also means that Dawkins' argument is an argument against something that may be unlike anything we know about. That's all right if it's only intended to show how silly the argument from design is, but it fails as an argument against a Designer.

I'm not trying to say that theists are rational. They're not. I'm simply trying to dispassionately figure out the approximate likelihood that God exists. I'm almost certain that the gods of all religions, with their miracles and prophets and ridiculous moralizing, don't exist. I'm not so sure about a generic supernatural Designer, however. Richard's argument is one attempt to show that a Designer that "just exists" is probably impossible. I'm pointing out the flaws in that argument.

Here's something else to think about: What if the Big Bang theory, accretion theory, nucleosynthesis theory, etc, had all been been 'proven' beyond reasonable doubt before the discovery of evolution? Wouldn't an uncaused Designer have been a pretty good explanation for the complexity of life?

Let me explain. I agree with Jack that positing a God to explain the origin of our entire universe is stupid, because the 'explanation' given for God's existence (He just exists) can be used just as easily for our universe (it just exists). However, as I pointed out, the same can't be said about animals and plants. We can't say that they "just exist", because we know from evidence that there was a time when they didn't exist.

We know that now, but we didn't two centuries ago. To put the previous scenario in different words, what if there had been a time when we knew that complex life didn't always exist, but hadn't yet discovered the real explanation for how it came to be? A theist could have said that life could only have been designed by an intelligent being, that this intelligent being "just exists", and atheists couldn't have said that the same pseudo-explanation could be used to explain life!

7. Gods and earthlings

Comment #163438 by Janus on April 18, 2008 at 11:02 am

complex -- and therefore, statistically improbable

Why? The relation between complexity and improbability is well supported empirically, but we're talking about things and beings outside of our universe, where this relation may not exist (or may exist in a weaker form). There's nothing logically incoherent about an intelligent being that "just exists".

They admit that their god is complex but assert that he had no beginning: He was always there and always complex. But if you are going to resort to that facile cop-out, you might as well say flagellar motors were always there.

We can't do that, because we have lots of evidence that flagellar motors (and life as a whole) have not always existed.

8. Richard Dawkins' secular army must be stopped. God is behind some of our greatest art

Comment #160302 by Janus on April 13, 2008 at 11:06 pm

This article's a joke, right? Right? Right?

9. The List: The World's Worst Religious Leaders

Comment #159047 by Janus on April 11, 2008 at 11:25 am

Where's the Pope?

10. Darwin told us so: Researcher shows natural selection speeds up speciation

Comment #154200 by Janus on April 2, 2008 at 9:08 pm

The FSM knows I'm no expert so don't trust me on this, but my impression is that this is a bit like the experimental findings that confirm general relativity that we hear about every once in a while. We already know with great certainty that GR is true, but scientists keep testing it in the hopes of finding something new... and even if nothing new is found, the theory has been verified to a slightly greater extent, which is always nice.

11. Faith healing church parents charged over toddler's death

Comment #153611 by Janus on April 1, 2008 at 4:39 pm

Sleeping humans are certainly conscious. And even if they weren't, all the brain complexity that allows for the wonderful abilities displayed by the human mind would still exist during sleep.

12. Who wants to kill the elderly?

Comment #153539 by Janus on April 1, 2008 at 2:42 pm

Ugh. I didn't think I'd derail the thread to this extent.

michabo wrote:

Janus,

A conclusion is not an opinion. They are not condemnations.

Saying "I believe religions are myths" is not an opinion, it is an evaluation of facts, it is a conclusion. If someone is upset by this, then they have a problem with reality.


Condemnations are reserved for moral disagreements, such as disagreeing over actions. You may condemn me for expressing my conclusions, but I don't think you fully understand what it means to say that a religion is a myth if you think this is a condemnation.

By the way, are you the michabo from christanforums? I stopped posting on that forum a while ago. Oh man, those were the days.

Anyway. You're right, obviously. Merely stating a fact (or something that is believed to be a fact) is not itself a moral judgment. However, some statements of fact can imply a moral judgment because most people who live in the same society (or similar societies) share certain moral premises. For example, stating that Louis the 14th "ruthlessly drove his own people into abject poverty so as to fund the building of various castles, bridges, monuments, etc" isn't a moral judgment, but if the speaker is like the vast, vast majority of people, we can assume that he harbors negative feelings towards the French king because of the stated fact.

Likewise, most people consider it at least somewhat morally reprehensible to be deluded, to willfully believe that a falsehood is true. Saying that religion is a myth implies a condemnation of religious believers for believing a myth.

13. Faith healing church parents charged over toddler's death

Comment #153522 by Janus on April 1, 2008 at 2:27 pm

SweatyPalmSunday,

I agree with you, although my final conclusion is a bit different from yours. Given the lack of a sharp cutoff point, I'd rather play it safe and make it illegal to kill a human more than 5 months after conception. Being 5 months old would only grant the foetus the right to exist. Other rights come slowly as the human brain develops and as it acquires experience/knowledge. That said, I would consider the murder of a 6 month old foetus to be a lesser crime than the murder of a 10 year old. The former might warrant a few months in prison, the latter a few decades.



fides_et_ratio wrote:

I presume from what you've said that abortion is equivalant to infanticide at 5 months old (in the womb).

Also, given your last statement, what gives any woman the right to have an abortion?

Yes to the first sentence, as I've explained above.

As for your question, before the 5th month after conception the foetus has no rights and is not considered a person. A pregnant woman is therefore free to have an abortion for the same reason that she's free to kill a squirrel or a cow. After the 5th month the foetus is granted the right to exist, which then takes precedence over the rights of the parents over their child.

14. Faith healing church parents charged over toddler's death

Comment #153426 by Janus on April 1, 2008 at 1:12 pm

SweatyPalmSunday,

secular liberals usually draw the line at the point in time when an organism attains a certain mental complexity, i.e. a set of mental functions and capabilities such as self-awareness, moral reasoning, understanding, introspection, etc. When exactly does this happen in the case of a developing human? Nearly every rational individual agrees that an organism with human DNA can't be considered a person before the 5th month of pregnancy, but that it can be considered a person around the time that it can communicate via spoken language (and most would say at birth, or a few months before birth).

Of course, if you're looking for an absolute determinant of what constitute a person, you're not going to get it. Human development is a continuum. The toddler who was so stupidly killed by her parents was 15 months old, and therefore capable of understanding simple concepts and of expressing her desires with simple words. I would say that this did not qualify her for all the rights that come with being an adult, but it did grant her the right to exist.

Finally, I find the saying "I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it" abhorrent. It is based on the assumption that parents inherently have rights over their children. Why should that be? Because they gave them birth? So the father had sex with the mother, and the mother carried the child for 9 months. I'm sure it can be a trying time, but that's not enough to grant someone the right of life and death over another person.

Parents only have rights over their children as a consequence of their responsibility to raise them to be reasonable, responsible adults. The right to spank a child (lightly) as a punitive and educational tool may logically follow from this responsibility. The right to kill a child does not.

15. Who wants to kill the elderly?

Comment #153330 by Janus on April 1, 2008 at 11:50 am

Well, the word 'condemnation' is a pretty strong one. Would you consider the simple statement "You are wrong" a condemnation?

At most, the "I think" may indicate a lesser level of certainty, but the belief is still held strongly enough to, well, be a belief. If this belief is strongly negative, it's a condemnation.


Okay, enough arguing about the meaning of words for today. :)

16. Who wants to kill the elderly?

Comment #153320 by Janus on April 1, 2008 at 11:36 am

One might be offended by someone's opinion. Yet that still doesn't make the opinion a condemnation.

Yes, it does. A strongly negative opinion is a condemnation. A condemnation is a strongly negative opinion.

If you want to prove me wrong, all you have to do is explain to me what the difference in meaning is between "Religion is a myth", and "I think religion is a myth".

There is no difference. The sentence "religion is a myth" implies an "I think" before it. To specify that a claim about reality is "only what I think" is redundant. Of course it's only what I think. What else could it be?

That electrons exist is "only" what scientists and scientifically literate people think. The same goes for the belief that the Earth is round and every other widely accepted belief. Likewise, that religion is a myth is "only" what rational people think.

I'm sorry if I sound harsh. I don't really blame you (or anyone else) for believing that specifying that a claim is "just an opinion" somehow makes it weaker or less offensive (if it's negative) or less subject to criticism. It's a logical fallacy that is very, very common, and very, very few people realize that it is a fallacy.

17. Who wants to kill the elderly?

Comment #153293 by Janus on April 1, 2008 at 11:03 am

No, he said that he thinks that it's a myth. That's just voicing an opinion.

I think you're an idiot.

Whoa there! Don't be offended. I said that I think you're an idiot. That's just voicing an opinion.

18. Who wants to kill the elderly?

Comment #153280 by Janus on April 1, 2008 at 10:47 am

I see religion as a cultural and psychological construct, which fulfils certain almost universal needs and which, as a consequence, I am disinclined to condemn.

Really?

I don't think I should be expected to acknowledge a public truth that I actually think is a public myth

You just called a strongly held belief of many people a "myth". Sounds like a condemnation to me.

19. Beware the Believers

Comment #151789 by Janus on March 29, 2008 at 11:44 am

I liked it.

If I had to guess, I'd say this was made by a theistic evolutionist, or an atheist who "believes in belief".

20. 'We Make Our Own Heaven'

Comment #151349 by Janus on March 28, 2008 at 2:34 pm

Just kill me now. The article makes it sound like a freaking cult.

21. Happy Birthday, Richard Dawkins!

Comment #150055 by Janus on March 26, 2008 at 12:22 pm

Happy birthday, Richard.

22. Austin Dacey - The Secular Conscience

Comment #149560 by Janus on March 25, 2008 at 11:32 pm

I take a different view. It seems obvious to me that the notion of objective morality is nonsensical. I assumed Dacey was merely talking about the moral values that people who call themselves secular liberals tend to share.

23. Austin Dacey - The Secular Conscience

Comment #149539 by Janus on March 25, 2008 at 9:50 pm

That was great. Ordering!

24. It looks like Man crucified

Comment #148556 by Janus on March 23, 2008 at 9:35 am

What the HELL is this guy talking about?

25. The Great Tantra Challenge

Comment #144582 by Janus on March 16, 2008 at 11:18 am

Awesome. Just awesome! There needs to be more stuff like this.

26. 'Anonymous' takes anti-Scientology to the streets

Comment #144517 by Janus on March 16, 2008 at 9:20 am

A few more links for those who are interested:

About the March 15 worldwide protests against Scientology:
http://march15.org/

The Ex-Scientology Kids website, which provides information about the inside workings of the Church of Scientology, as well as encouragement to people who might want to leave the Church:
http://www.exscientologykids.com/index.html

To give one small example:

http://www.exscientologykids.com/fairgame.html
If you've spent any time at all reading anti-Scientology articles or message boards, or if you've ever seen a Scientology protest, you may have heard the term "Fair Game".

"Fair Game" is a policy letter issued by L. Ron Hubbard in 1967 (ref: HCO Policy Letter of 18 October 1967, Issue IV) called "Penalties for Lower Conditions" which states that if someone is found to be an enemy of the CoS, they should be handled like this:

"SP Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."

Typical Scientology rebuttal: But that policy letter was cancelled AGES ago, in 1968. Fair Game isn't in use anymore.

Our response: True, the policy letter was indeed cancelled in 1968. In fact, we've got the text of the cancellation right here (ref: HCO Policy Letter of 21 October 1968). Read closely, 'cause this one is interesting:

"The practice of declaring people FAIR GAME will cease.

"FAIR GAME may not appear on any Ethics Order. It causes bad public relations.

"This P/L [policy letter] does not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP."

So as it turns out, the only thing that was actually cancelled was the use of the words "Fair Game", not the practice of Fair Game. From the testimonies of Scientology critics who have spoken out against the Church, critics who have been stalked, harassed, slandered, sued, criminally framed and maligned by Scientology, we can see that Fair Game (or whatever they're calling it now) is very much alive and well.

27. Leaving the Faith

Comment #136275 by Janus on February 29, 2008 at 4:34 pm

You know he's forty, right? :)

28. Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts

Comment #134971 by Janus on February 28, 2008 at 12:17 pm

Good.

Of course it's nonsense: They're not really "researching" or "reinterpreting" anything, they're twisting the meanings of words and sentences to make them fit with modern secular morality. But it's still a good thing. Since Islam is nonsense anyway, I would rather it become a harmless kind of nonsense rather than the oppressive, dangerous kind of nonsense that it currently is.

29. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #132435 by Janus on February 24, 2008 at 6:41 pm

Does this idiot really think that if we lived in a world where, say, Christian prayers to heal amputees actually worked, there would still be more than a handful of non-Christians?

Of course, if we lived in such a world, it could still be argued that even though there's good evidence that there is a very powerful being who cares about what Christians ask of Him, it doesn't follow that this being designed the universe, but if He had, it would have been extremely easy to provide conclusive evidence for His existence. All He would have had to do is put a message in the universe that only its designer could have put there.

For example, a message in binary code (with a translating key) could have been encoded in the cosmic microwave background radiation that resulted from the Big Bang. Or to give another example, the Judeo-Christian God could have designed the inter-molecular forces in such a way that if you put salt in a certain solution, it would self-assemble into the the text of the Bible written in all the human languages that have ever existed and will ever exist. The Bible itself would contain the instructions for making the solution. Then there would be no need for any of these silly debates. Anyone who doubted the existence of Yahweh could perform the experiment himself and see the evidence for himself. The truth of Christianity would be proven beyond all reasonable doubt, and only insane wackos would deny it.

That there is no such undeniable evidence for the existence of a God can only mean three things: He doesn't want to provide this evidence (in which case he's not benevolent), he's not able to provide this evidence (in which case he's far from omnipotent), or there is no God.

30. DLD08 - Life: a gene-centric view

Comment #130345 by Janus on February 20, 2008 at 11:30 am

Yup, I've given up too. It starts buffering every 10 seconds or so.

31. What he wishes on us is an abomination

Comment #125476 by Janus on February 11, 2008 at 12:20 pm

What he did on Thursday was to convince other Britons, white, black and brown, that Muslims want not equality but exceptionalism and their own domains. Enlightened British Muslims quail. Friends like this churchman do us more harm than our many enemies.

You know, I can't help but think that Williams can't be so stupid that he hasn't seen this. I think there's a good possibility that he knew exactly what he was doing and what kind of reactions it would provoke. And by Iggy the Secular Elf, it has worked incredibly well. If that was his intent, the Archbishop is a genius of strategy, not to mention a very brave man for being willing to take the accusations that would inevitably follow (and have followed).

32. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118384 by Janus on January 30, 2008 at 4:19 pm

I don't get it. This guy says he's not arguing for the existence of God, and yet he denies that theism is irrational. If no one can come up with good evidence or a good logical argument for the existence of God, atheism wins by default.

33. MySpace: No place for Atheists?

Comment #118116 by Janus on January 30, 2008 at 11:09 am

Deleting our accounts isn't going to do any good; in fact, that's exactly what those bastards want us to do. Send e-mails to Myspace instead. Even better, send e-mails to various media to make them aware of this.

34. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #117479 by Janus on January 28, 2008 at 11:26 pm

Ridiculous beliefs need to be ridiculed sometimes, though. Never doing so creates the impression that they aren't ridiculous.

If you come across someone who believes that Elvis Presley is still alive, you don't nod politely, and carefully, non-offensively begin to point that the Elvis believer might have made one or two logical errors, do you? You just laugh, or stare incredulously, or shake your head in amazement, or ask if the guy is quite sane.

35. New atheists or new anti-dogmatists?

Comment #117176 by Janus on January 28, 2008 at 11:26 am

This is a great (and encouraging) article, but I disagree with part of it. True, we would have no problem with religion if it was stripped of all faith-based claims about reality and of all dogmatic propositions. But if it was... it wouldn't be religion anymore. What you get when you strip a religion of the claims it makes about reality is a moral philosophy, like secular humanism and some (non-theistic) brands of Buddhism and Confucianism.

So it's fallacious to say that we're against dogma but not against religion.

36. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #116796 by Janus on January 27, 2008 at 12:53 pm

Well said, Giskard. It's amazing how many otherwise rational people buy into the dogma that ridiculing ridiculous beliefs is intolerant or arrogant.

As you've implied, refraining from ridiculing religious beliefs in the name of politeness can only give the mistaken impression that these beliefs are perfectly normal and rational.

37. Ethical storm as scientist becomes first man to clone HIMSELF

Comment #113526 by Janus on January 19, 2008 at 11:57 pm

Excellent!

I see no problem with this as long as the embryo is killed swiftly enough. Better yet would be to keep its brain from forming at all, thus ensuring it doesn't even begin to become a person.

38. The Group Delusion

Comment #110659 by Janus on January 11, 2008 at 8:42 pm

wooter,

Dawkins has explained this in at least three books that I know of (The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and Climbing Mount Improbable), as have many other biologists. Asking for help in understanding certain of the more complex details of evolution on a message board is ok, but that's not what you're doing. You don't seem to have any understanding of what evolution is. Why should we (much less Dawkins) take the time to explain the basics to someone who has made no effort to educate himself? Read a book.

39. The Group Delusion

Comment #110288 by Janus on January 10, 2008 at 10:10 pm

"God Delusion 2: Scratching the fleas"


Hahaha! Ohh, that's brilliant.

40. Richard Dawkins on The Late Edition with Marcus Brigstocke

Comment #109954 by Janus on January 10, 2008 at 6:37 am

ADH:

Says it all really. That's about the level that we're dealing with. Next thing we know there'll be Benny Hinn style atheist tele-evangelists.

No, see, you're ignoring the fundamental difference:
Tele-evangelists are preaching lies, Dawkins is stating the truth.

41. Richard Dawkins on The Late Edition with Marcus Brigstocke

Comment #109837 by Janus on January 9, 2008 at 10:25 pm

Richard probably didn't mean that most religious people are like Jerry Falwell when it comes to morality, but when it comes to the ridiculousness (and lack of sophistication) of their beliefs, which is probably true.

42. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #107349 by Janus on January 4, 2008 at 12:10 pm

Wolpe did a fine job of countering Sam's (B. Russell's) teapot analogy in that the orbiting teapot can be verified yet God cannot so the analogy fails. Sam should have retorted that the teapot he is referring to is no-doubt etheral, or that he has an IPU in his garage, or that the FSM is touching him right now.

Yes he could have, but he didn't have to. That a claim can't be verified or falsified doesn't make it any more likely, so the teapot analogy still works.

43. Moderates Storm The Religious Battlefield

Comment #106317 by Janus on January 2, 2008 at 4:42 pm

Steve Zara:

Ideally, yes. The problem is that many religious believe that they do have quality evidence for their beliefs.

I am undecided about this, but sometimes I feel the promotion of uncertainty is a healthy antidote to faith.

Yes, many religious believers do believe that they have evidence for their beliefs, but they're wrong.

Your argument is an argument about tactics, not about truth. I could rephrase it like this: "Even though certainty is a good thing when it's backed up by evidence, shouldn't we pretend that it's a bad thing if it will make many religious believers less fanatical than they currently are?"

Since I put a lot of importance on truth, my answer is no. If you're someone who cares less about the truth than I do, you may be tempted to answer yes, but I think you'd be wrong to do so.

First, spreading a lie (because that's what you're proposing we do, despite your good intentions) is a dangerous thing to do, because if it's repeated often enough it will become a dogma, and dogmas are difficult to break. Accepting that there are such things as hard truths (which isn't to say that these truths are unquestionable and unfalsifiable) is an absolutely essential feature of critical thinking and discourse. If all of our knowledge is nothing but an obscure, muddled mass of uncertainty, if no belief is significantly more certain than any other, then any decision, any policy, any discussion about reality is pointless. That's what post-structuralists would have us believe. Of course, I don't think you really believe that, but that is what many people believe, and spreading post-structuralism in the name of winning the war against religious fundamentalism will only strengthen these people. We might rid ourselves of one kind of crazies only to be overwhelmed by another kind.

Second, as you can see in the article we're commenting on, religious moderates (and many fundies) use the alleged awfulness of certainty as a shield against criticism of their beliefs. The dogma that certainty is bad is what allows them to call atheists like Richard Dawkins mean, intolerant, strident, and militant.

Third, I think it's shortsighted to limit our criticism to religious certainties. You're right that many fundies think they have evidence for their beliefs, and convincing them that they can hold on to their ridiculous beliefs even if they have no evidence for them might be an adequate stopgap measure, a decent temporary tactic, but that's all it is. It might make some of them less intolerant and less dangerous, but it won't help us build a reality-based society.

The only real, permanent solution is to pull them out of their ignorance by educating them, and to arm them against faith by teaching them critical thinking.

I mean, can we really be sure of things...
The Earth is not quite round, there have been legal questions about both the 2000 and 2004 elections, and there is a theory that the unicorn was based on the rhinoceros, which is not (yet) extinct.

Pedantry.

44. Moderates Storm The Religious Battlefield

Comment #106243 by Janus on January 2, 2008 at 2:40 pm

Mark Smith,

You've hit the nail on the head. The sentence you've quoted is the usual mantra of the religious moderates. They look at religious fundies, they see how crazy they are, and they wonder why. Their conclusion is never that fundies are crazy because of their faith, because moderates have faith too, therefore the only possibility is that fundies are crazy because they're too certain. Ergo, certainty is bad, giving rise to the popular forms of postmodernism and post-structuralism (even if they don't realize that's what they believe).

Of course any thinking person can see that this is nonsense. Is it bad to be certain that the Earth is round, that our bodies are made of cells, that George W. Bush is the president of the USA, and that unicorns are mythical creatures?

There's nothing wrong with certainty, if this certainty is proportional to the quantity and quality of the evidence.

Religious fundamentalists aren't crazy because they're certain per se, they're crazy because they're certain about faith-based beliefs (and because these beliefs are inspired by a collection of superstitions and barbaric, outdated morality, of course).
Religious moderates aren't nicer than fundamentalists because they're less certain per se, they're nicer because they're less certain about their faith-based beliefs (and because they manage to fool themselves into ignoring the worst bits of the aforementioned collection of barbaric myths).
And better than either of those groups are people who take nothing on faith at all.

Certainty isn't the problem, faith is.

45. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #105831 by Janus on January 1, 2008 at 10:56 pm

Diacanu:

I'm just saying I have no emotional investment in them as continuers of the human species.

Whereas you do have an emotional investment in humans as we are today, i.e. my first post in this thread wasn't me putting words in your mouth, it was 100% correct.

I'm with Ashton Black. Wanna bet on that?

That immortality is possible is a certainty. Do you think immortality won't sell once it's made available to the public? Of course it will sell, like nothing has ever sold before! It therefore seems reasonable that immortal beings will begin to think on the scale of decades, centuries, and millenia rather than months and years, doesn't it? It also seems reasonable that removing the fear of death will radically change the human psyche, don't you agree?

Something similar can be said of super-intelligence. Do you think that many people will be happy to have an IQ of 100 when they know they can purchase a brain restructuring operation that will raise it to 400? And don't you think that a massive increase in intelligence won't have an incredible effect on society?


mezzanoche:

I think perhaps we are jumping the gun a bit with all this talk on "immortality" and "super modified humans". I mean last time I checked millions of people every year are still dying of all sorts of illnesses and diseases, so I am going to hold off on popping the bottle of champagne just yet.

You can think that immortality, super-intelligence, and the rest of transhumanism are a long way off, you can think that we'll destroy ourselves before it will happen, and you might even be right. But there's no doubt that these things are possible. Short of an apocalypse, if it can happen, it will happen.

I'm not sure I understand the relevance of your argument. Sure, a large fraction of the world are still living in the Middle-Ages, in many respects. That may mean an utopia is a long way off, but it has nothing to do with the coming technological singularity.

46. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #105825 by Janus on January 1, 2008 at 10:15 pm

Well, if you won't take immortality, I imagine you'll be free to live your short life as you see fit.

Yes, someday transhumans will be to "normal" humans what humans are to whales today. I don't see that as a terrible thing, but then I think that all conscious beings should have rights.

47. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #105817 by Janus on January 1, 2008 at 9:34 pm

Diacanu:

Was there a certain part that confused you?

Yes, what the hell does it have to do with Ashton's point (that is, the one that you claim to be making)?

It looks like a knee-jerk reaction to progress to me. What's wrong with fishmen and nanite clouds? Well, they're certainly very different from humans as they exist today, but beside that?



In any event, I don't think there's much to worry about on that particular front. Yes, there will probably be a period during which humanity as a species will be guided by what is fashionable and profitable, and a lot of that represents something that's distasteful to many of us; that's a reasonable extrapolation from the current state of our culture. But that won't last. As soon as we achieve immortality and get the means to alter our own minds, we'll quickly become more concerned with the longterm view, less easily guided by our petty instincts, and much, much smarter. By then, "fashionable" and "profitable" will mean something completely different.

A much more scary possibility is that defensive technology won't be able to keep up with the offensive technology that is certain to become widely avaible.


Ashton:

For example, what if a gene sequence was discovered that changed behaviour in say, social situations, that made us crave to "fit in", to agree with the majority or respect authority.
I personally am not so sure. Look at the controlling influence of modern mass media.

What if it is discovered? I thought your worry was that profitability would shape humanity in the decades to come. What makes you think that people will want to pay to become spineless sheep?

48. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #105807 by Janus on January 1, 2008 at 9:09 pm

Diacanu:

Don't why it's so hard to digest for some here. *Shrug*

Because you haven't made the clear statement of opinion that Ashton has. And because you've said things like this:

"It's pretty much curtains for anything I ever gave a shit about.

Humanity is going to mutate itself into something unrecognizable, so I have no emotional investment in the futurity of...fishmen, or nanite clouds, or whatever the fuck they're gonna be."

49. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #105801 by Janus on January 1, 2008 at 8:53 pm

Diacanu,

If you don't want me to put words in your mouth, you should say something of substance. You've made 18 posts in this thread. EIGHTEEN POSTS, and you haven't stated your opinion clearly in any one of them. Are you embarrassed? Ashamed of your beliefs? Or are you just choosing to remain ambiguous for the hell of it?

Yes, technology is dangerous and humanity might not be "wise" enough to handle what will be invented in the next few decades. Any idiot knows that much, or thinks he does. Is that all you want to say?

50. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #105795 by Janus on January 1, 2008 at 8:39 pm

It's pointless to debate this particular topic with Diacanu. He has a particularly strong emotional attachment to the way humans have existed for so many centuries, that's all. It's a subjective preference, so there's nothing to debate.