1. Scientists rally against creationist 'superstition'

Comment #186957 by Rtambree on June 1, 2008 at 12:54 am

7. Comment #186942 by quantum tuba

"Superstition" - it's tactical semantics.

Religion is a neutral term. Apologists for religion will spin it positively by referring to it as 'spiritual'.

But opponents of religion should always refer to religion as "superstition", which co-opts the pre-existing negative connotation it has. e.g. our children should be protected from superstition in the classroom.

2. Richard Dawkins lecture at ASU's Tempe Campus

Comment #184819 by Rtambree on May 26, 2008 at 8:51 am

Just a small point:

Dawkins opens the talk with the valid point that people almost always adopt the religion of their parents.

Then later, he says that we mustn't label children with the religion of their parents.

Both points are right. The children of Muslim parents will almost always become Muslims themselves, so by labelling you are predicting with a high degree of accuracy.

Because these two points are core tenants of Dawkins' speeches, he probably should spend a sentence or two to reconcile the apparent paradox here i.e. that labelling is not a prediction.

3. Kenya mob reportedly burns 11 'witches'

Comment #183828 by Rtambree on May 23, 2008 at 12:40 am

It's a test to see if they're witches. If they survive the burning, they really are witches, and if they burn, they were innocent and are pardoned.

4. In God's Name

Comment #183262 by Rtambree on May 21, 2008 at 4:29 pm

Aside from the school, it's a bit of a beat up. The nutcases protesting the mosque and at Westminster are only a few in number. They'll always be a few fringe crackpots in every society. At the legislative level, the nutcases are losing case after case. I can't see them being a real resurgent threat in England. Louder maybe, but their numbers are insignificant.

The issue of the school education, however, is serious - it shouldn't be given a license from the Department of Education.

5. Missing matter found in deep space

Comment #183260 by Rtambree on May 21, 2008 at 4:25 pm

This doesn't explain the flat rotation curve of galaxies. Some reporter has misrepresented this.

This is not the matter you are looking for. You can go about your business. Move along.

6. Geeks and Guinness: the formula for sexy science

Comment #182518 by Rtambree on May 20, 2008 at 10:16 am

I've been to many DANA events throughout 2007, but I must report they are organised and run by arts/humantiies students and they want to avoid the lecture format at all costs. So you get an expert reducing his spiel to soundbites and very brief Q&A with a crowd of people making so much noise that you can't hear anything.

Then sometimes DANA organises gimmicky presentations that don't work - e.g. setting up a roulette table when trying to explain about genes, but it wasn't well thought out. Science events are best organised by science literate people.

I found it underwhelming and unsatisfactory if you want to learn something. If you're there for socialising, fine.

The same problem exists with Horizon and NOVA and other science documentaries: full of explosions, repetitions, innae footage, flashbulb edits, soundbites, etc. You spend an hour watching a 'science program' and you're none the wiser.

7. These dim-wits believe in anything but God

Comment #181750 by Rtambree on May 18, 2008 at 6:39 am

Given that school education is a zero sum game - i.e. every hour spent learning about religion is one hour less about other subjects, I support the right of students interested in science, maths, history, etc to reprioritise their time.

Sure, learn about it, but not three hours a week for every school year throughout highschool. That's too much time to devote to Bronze Age hocus pocus. There's more important subjects students should be learning: statistics, civil rights & citizenship, critical thinking, all the branches of science, in order to help them understanding the cosmos and their place within it.

8. What really goes on at the Large Hadron Collider

Comment #175667 by Rtambree on May 5, 2008 at 8:27 pm

Take about hype. The LHC is being talked up like Deep Thought in Hitchhikers - the answer to everything, will solve all problems! What isn't it going to find? Supersymmetry? Dark matter? Higgs bosons? Mini black holes? Evidence of string theory? Other dimensions? My missing favourite sock?

The genome project was hyped in a similar way in the late 1990s - and the payoffs haven't quite materialised. I'm sure they will sometime this century.

Anyway, back to the LHC - my prediction is they won't find a thing - perhaps a couple of fleeting minor exotic mesons. It's not sensitive enough, need more time, blah blah.

And certainly, no answer is also an answer, of sorts. That's the way science works. So it's not all wasted even if it finds nothing of interest - the technology spin-offs themselves might be worthwhile.

I just wish these projects don't get all hyped out of the proportion - as the public will become jaded when reality repeatedly doesn't meet expectations.

Where's our customised medicine? Holidays in space? Supersonic scramjet travel? Smart houses? Self-driving cars? Robot servants? 10 hour working week? Internet as heads-up display in your sunglasses? Paperless office? AI? Resurrection of extinct species?

9. Anti-Evolution Film Misappropriates the Holocaust

Comment #174735 by Rtambree on May 3, 2008 at 11:42 am

Having read a lot of Chomky and anti-Chomsky commentary, I find Chomsky makes a lot more sense and is less ideologically driven.

I agree with windweaver's assessment above - Al Rawandi just seems reflexive in this regard.

If one is genuine about reducing violence, one should always start in one's own backyard where one can have the greatest impact.

The west may be more sane than Islam, but it spreads around a lot more military clout (trillions in 'defense' spending), and the consequences are that the west causes more violence & suffering of innocent lives over the last 60 years (whether from negligence, incompetence or whatever) than the intentional actions of Islam's suicide bombers.

Then there's the question of 'blowback', as well as assessing where the violence is taking place i.e. where the troops are deployed, and calculating the respective death tolls in order to attribute which side in the 'war' is doing the most killing.

10. Interviews with Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer

Comment #169327 by Rtambree on April 25, 2008 at 7:13 pm

137. Comment #166550 by epeeist

>Newton's law's of gravity explain the orbits of the planets

Newton's laws described gravity - they didn't explain it. Newton had no idea how gravity's action-at-a-distance actually worked. Even with General Relativity describing gravity as a curvature of space by mass, and even throwing in the Standard Model's (as yet undetected) graviton, we still don't fully understand gravity today.

11. Interviews with Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer

Comment #164844 by Rtambree on April 20, 2008 at 6:38 pm

103. Comment #164704 by List_of_small_things

>I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought Shermer had departed from the spirit of sceptical enquiry and fallen into some of the traps that his organization should really be educating people out off upon reading his attempts at economics and political theory.

No - you're not the only one. I too am a little disappointed with Shermer's uncritical stance towards the free market, where the evidence clearly shows that countries that highly regulate their markets, such as Norway, Sweden and Finland, return much better standard of living indicators.

Shermer has made good original points in the past about why people are religious i.e. emotional reasons first, and the "rationalization" is then tacked on post hoc. All too often, atheists delude themselves into thinking if only they can combat the religious arguments with counter-arguments, then the theists will miraculously give up their invisible teddy bear. But the rationalizations that religious people employ are symptoms, not causes of religious belief.

12. Richard Dawkins on five of his favorite books

Comment #132208 by Rtambree on February 24, 2008 at 1:09 pm

1. Guns, Germs & Steel - Jared Diamond
2. The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker
3. Understanding Power - Noam Chomsky
4. Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan
5. Ancestors Tales - Richard Dawkins

13. Ayaan Hirsi Ali asks for protection

Comment #127965 by Rtambree on February 15, 2008 at 8:02 pm

When she was in London last year at the RSA, there were two large security guards there, but still I got right next to her when I walked out at the end (and no one even checked my ID, bags or ticket when I walked in). I could've had my choice of attack if I was so inclined.

Being followed around by two beefcakes is good for show, but a determined attacker that wasn't afraid of legal consequences could easily get to her if she's going to keep making public appearances. How many guards is enough? I don't know.

14. Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'

Comment #126864 by Rtambree on February 14, 2008 at 11:25 am

If it's OK to boycott China for its support of Sudan, then imagine boycotting the USA for its support of Saudi Arabia?

15. Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science

Comment #126231 by Rtambree on February 12, 2008 at 5:30 pm

RE: Davies. Replacing Dawkins with a Templeton Prize Winner wouldn't be a good move.

16. Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science

Comment #126205 by Rtambree on February 12, 2008 at 3:32 pm

I nominate Christopher Hitchens for the Johnnie Walker Chair for the Public Understanding of Rhetoric.

But seriously, my top ten are:

1. Charley Lineweaver - an original science communicator (American astrophysicist educated in Europe and now in Australia).

2. Michelle Thaller - JPL

3. Robert Sapolsky

4. Lawrence Krauss

5. Neil deGrasse Tyson - Hayden Planetarium

6. Simon Schaffer - Cambridge

7. Steve Squyres - Cornell - very enthusiastic

8. James Cameron - science literate, has done science documentaries and would have enormous reach through the media

9. Armand Le Roi - good communicator

10. Jill Tarter

17. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111964 by Rtambree on January 16, 2008 at 5:11 am

212. Comment #111864 by Radesq

>How much money should people in the West be allowed to accumulate while children are dieing of preventable diseases in Africa? Give me a number Rtambree

That's the wrong way of looking at things. The issue isn't the accumulation of money, it's the suffering from preventable diseases.

So the issue should be - how much would it cost to address those crucial problems? Extreme poverty, disease, hunger, lack of self-sufficiency, access to education. Estimates have been made (see the TED conferences online), and it's not that much - a few percentage points of western GDP. Certainly, no dramatic impact in our lifestyles. Don't worry, the rich would still have their billions.

In the future, if everybody on the world had the standard of living of today's Norwegians, than it would not be an ethical problem for the rich to swim in champagne, and accumulate fleets of Bugatis, yachts, and jets.

18. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111861 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 10:09 pm

>I am defending everyone's RIGHT to be rich. But I am also not defending the right of the rich to hoard all the money/resources in the world and let everyone else starve to death.

Talk about hedging your bets. Nice sentiments in principle, but if specific examples were laid out, you'd have to choose between your first statement or the second.

E.g. should the right to earn billions and buy private jets, art works, and dozens of holiday villas, trump the right of African children to be free from preventable diseases and have access to education?

I know there's lots of debate about this now in 2008, but it's my belief that by 2200, the moral zeitgeist will have moved on so that the question is a no-brainer, just as dynastic succession, absolute monarchy, slavery, and child labour were also once argued about in the same terms (freedom v justice v fairness v property rights).

You're defending whatever the status quo is today... a conservative position. But surely 2008 is not the final end state of humanity? The zeitgeist will continue to evolve. I may be wrong, but we've come a long way since the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

19. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111858 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 10:00 pm

Investing in a painting that increases 10-fold by the next year might entitle you to claim you "earned" it by your merit, but did you?

Is wealth "earned" through capital gains the equivalent to wealth "earned" by hard labour?

And where did you learn the skills to judge the art market in order to make the investment better than others? From a privileged education that was paid for my your parents... shouldn't this also be classed as a form of "inheritance"?

It becomes very complicated...

>doesn't mean that everyone must forcibly give up, or feel obligated to give up, what they have earned

Some, not all, as repeatedly stated throughout this thread.

20. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111854 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 9:46 pm

>Where are your studies that show this flattening of the happiness money curve? I'd have to say I'm clearly skeptical of this position

There's wealth of literature on it. Lord Richard Layard of the London School of Economics, provides an overview...

http://cep.lse.ac.uk/events/lectures/layard/RL030303.pdf

Alain de Botton also writes a less technical, more accessible introduction to the literature, in Status Anxiety.

21. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111847 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 9:29 pm

>It's not fair. IT'S NOT FAIR!

In other words, fuck 'em? Better luck next time, huh?

22. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111846 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 9:27 pm

Okay, let's say that humans only share 95% (or even 90%, which is way too low) of their genes - how can you account for some having billions and many having zilch? It surely can't be a fair allocation based on personal merit, so there must be other factors at play: environmental, luck, etc.

23. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111842 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 9:23 pm

>especially the US, anyone can achieve whatever they desire

The brainwashing is remarkably pervasive for a non-totalitarian society. I hear this so often.

24. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111841 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 9:16 pm

>I'm really interested to learn which creatures on Earth have DNA that evolved on Earth and which don't

That's a different point to the one that not all species have the same DNA. Lions have different genes from zebras, but all humans share 99%+ of their genes.

25. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111840 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 9:15 pm

>People are responsible for the harm they cause to other peoples' property

Are they? If only. I keep hearing on this site that intentions matter. The USA didn't intend to harm civilians in the Middle East, and therefore can't be held reponsible for the harm they caused civilians, even if it happens year after year.

By the same argument, the polluter didn't intend to harm the property downstream, and besides he has freedom to act on his property under the principles of libertarianism.

Diancu is just trying to point out the inherent paradoxes within the extreme libertarian mindset, in case you hadn't noticed, the argument is a parody. You don't need to argue against it.

26. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111838 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 9:10 pm

The point was that wealth doesn't reflect the initial starting differences when born.

Life on earth doesn't share the same DNA - your analogy is false.

Tzarist Russia? - you obviously don't know about recent Russian history since 1990. I'm talking about the "overnight" billionaires under Putin.

27. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111834 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 9:03 pm

>you could sue the pants off your upstream neighbor in civil court, win the case, bankrupt them for the cleanup costs, and then own their land.

But he'd argue that it's his land, he paid for it, and he can goddamn do what he wants with it. It's not his fault that gravity forces water downhill. Why should he be penalized for gravity? It's the other person's fault for buying land downstream. And now he's getting what's coming to him for his error. That's the market. He should be thanking him for teaching him a lesson in tough love, rather than sueing him.

28. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111832 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 8:58 pm

>182. Comment #111830 by Don_Quix

>What about the significant number of people who are born poor but who achieve extreme amounts of wealth or status through their efforts. I know this is a moderately rare

It can't be both "significant numbers" and "moderately rare".

I would contend this is the exception, not the rule. Yes it happens, and fortunately, social mobility is on the long term increase (although since 1996 Blair government, social mobility has gone backwards in the UK. I'm not sure what the equivalent stats are for the USA).

But the vast majority of wealth has been accumulated through inheritance, marrying into it, corruption (e.g. Russian oligarchs), etc, and not through personal effort.

If all humans share 99.9% of their DNA, why should there be people worth tens of billions and millions of others worth zilch?

The current system greatly AMPLIFIES any initial starting differences.

29. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111831 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 8:54 pm

181. Comment #111829 by Diacanu

>Course, I'm sure scooter will be along to resolve the inheritance paradox, and the pollution paradox

And the free market competition-monopoly paradox. So there's three things for him to solve before breakfast.

30. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111828 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 8:50 pm

Talking about land, another thing the 19th century libertarian social Darwinists claimed is that one should not claim rents from land - as no one brought the land into being. One would be claiming reward for no effort. The land was there for billions of years before someone came along and put a fence around it.

One can claim rents from buildings, improvements, but not the land itself.

31. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111825 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 8:44 pm

>And his Batman-ing made him worthy of it.

Classic reversal of cause-and-effect.

Just as most people think they're of above average intelligence, most high income earners believe they got to that station by effort (discounting any privileged upbringing or favourable genes bequeathed them).

Conversely, the poor may over-attribute the environment or bad luck to account for their circumstances, so I guess it works both ways.

So personal agency is either over-attributed if you're of above average wealth and under-attributed if you're of below-average wealth.

32. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111823 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 8:40 pm

172. Comment #111819 by Diacanu

I think the Randists do allow for a police force, to protect the rich from the poor (by enforcing property rights), but any regulations protecting the poor from the rich is "interference".

33. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111818 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 8:32 pm

And here's another paradox with the Rands...

1. We want a market free from government interference as only then can pure capitalism and competition occur, driven by the profit motive.
2. I have the right and freedom to buy out my competitors.
3. I am now a monopoly and can manipulate the market to eradicate competition and maximize my profits.

34. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111814 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 8:20 pm

Some 19th century libertarians, entranced by Social Darwinism, argued that anybody has the right to earn whatever they can, even trillions, but upon death, it all should revert back to the state, so that each new generation would have start afresh on their own merit, with no special headstarts for some.

That's an extreme view, and naive too, given the special headstart that meiosis offers to some.

It's certainly not an either/or option. One can have estate taxes on wealth/property handed down after death, with a rising scale proportional to the value of the property. So the children still get a big advantage (elite education, high society connections, and say half of the estate), but there are always loopholes (trusts, etc).

In England, property tax on estates is a middle class tax, as the upper classes can afford the best accountants/lawyers to evade it.

35. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111808 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 7:55 pm

159. Comment #111805 by Diacanu

>So, did scooter act like a stereotypical Randroid while I was away?

Sure did - check out #147 which I responded to in #154.

36. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111796 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 7:33 pm

>I think the problem I have is with who decides what amount of wealth redistribution is fair, and who decides what that amount is.

That's always a nice stalling tactic to do nothing and perpetuate the injustice and suffering. Throw up some arbitrary abstract problem and let's bicker about that for the next generation, as if that philosophical problem trumps the problems that currently exist due to extreme inequality.

How much? That's easy - enough so that all humans have their basic needs met - food, clothing and shelter. In addition all children have the right to be schooled and the right to be protected from diseases that currently only western children are protected from.

Who decides? Who decides anything? We all do in a democracy (assuming it's not a dysfunctional democracy in a failed state).

As for greed improving societies, there are plenty of countries in Africa where living standards have declined throughout the 20th century due to corruption, exploitation, influx of weapons, militia in-fighting over scarce resources, etc.

37. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111791 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 7:01 pm

The random reshuffling of our parents' genes during meiosis gives some people an advantage and others a disadvantage through no fault or effort of their own. Continually harping on about "personal responsibility" is naive. We're not all born clones in identical environments.

Compoundpng this initial injustice is "inheritance", with some people being able to attend elite schools (networking, etc), while some are confined to poorly resourced regions (rural, third world, etc).

What is inheritance, other than welfare for the rich? How does inheritance reconcile with reward-for-effort?

So when you throw meiosis and inheritance into the equation, together with the fact that $1,000 to a millionaire is not worth as much as $1,000 to a poor person, it makes perfect ethical sense to redistribute to somewhat address the inherent unfairness of the roulette wheel of life. It doesn't mean equalize all wealth, but just mitigate the extreme disparity where 1% of the world's population own >50% of its wealth.

Anyone arguing that the right of millionaires to become billionaries trumps the basic human right of people not to suffer en masse from preventable diseases is being psychopathic.

38. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111719 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 2:44 pm

>What shall we do?

Crygenically freeze yourself until the whole shithouse goes up in flames, then re-emerge from your cryopod and drink beer from the fountains, etc.

39. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111707 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 1:29 pm

>There is nothing in the history of the United States that suggests to me that they know how to spend money appropriately

True.

My proposals were predicated on a utopian alternative universe where the United States is run like Norway or Sweden. Preposterous of course.

40. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111700 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 1:22 pm

>Do you seriously think that the ultra-rich will consider it fair that you are taking away their money?

Firstly, it's not all their money, it's some of it - they can still accumulate hundreds of millions and fill their swimming pools full of the finest champagne.

Taking away slaves from the rich was considered not fair in the late 18th century. They paid good money for those slaves. Why penalize the rich? We should respect the rich's property rights, huh?

41. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111686 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 12:55 pm

I wouldn't pose a limit, but I'd introduce increasingly higher tax percentages on high income bands. Say 40% over 100,000, 50% over 1,000,000, 67% over 10,000,000 and 90% over 50,000,000.

Something liket that anyway - so millionaires could still become billionaires under this system.

Or alternatively, one could tax luxury goods with an "Africa Tax" or something like that: private jets, cars over $50,000 in value, etc.

42. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111682 by Rtambree on January 15, 2008 at 12:45 pm

The simple truth is that the happiness-money curve flattens out once your basic needs are met.

The higher your income (above providing for food, clothing and shelter), the more of a percentage is spent on frivolous luxuries, so that by the time you get to 7 figures, most of your consumption is on crap: caviar, fine wine, shiny cars, artworks, and other conspicious gaudy trinklets.

The ethical question is: why should millionaires have the freedom to become billionaires when that money would make such a big difference at the bottom end of the scale. It's a win-win situation - the rich will not be any unhappier, while the poor will be a lot happier.

In this case, the morality of fairness trumps the morality of freedom. The morality zeitgeist will continue to evolve - 2008 is not the end state of humanity. One day, great disparities in wealth (opulence co-existing with starving, suffering millions will be seen as dispicable, just like we look back on slavery, racism, women not having the vote, etc).

43. Monkey, Business

Comment #111503 by Rtambree on January 14, 2008 at 8:38 pm

362. Comment #108115 by Roger Stanyard

>>""Defense" is a nice euphemism when the last country to attack the USA was England in 1812"

>So, um, what about Pearl Habour in 1941?

Pearl Harbour was not part of the USA in 1941.

44. US 'doomed' if creationist president elected: scientists

Comment #108885 by Rtambree on January 7, 2008 at 7:33 pm

Doomed...

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bush_begins_preparations_for

45. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #108029 by Rtambree on January 5, 2008 at 9:03 pm

The argument that seems to make them squirm most is not so much the evil (as that's "free will", or "Satan", etc), but the natural disaster argument (Lisbon Earthquake, Tsunami, Katrina, volcanoes, etc). Why God would indiscriminately kill babies, the devout as well as infidels, doesn't fit as well into the theist worldview as the other counter-arugments above.

Sure, they can always confabulate some half-baked response that permits their cognitive dissonace to perpetuate, but I've always found it to be the argument that gives them the most problems.

46. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #108018 by Rtambree on January 5, 2008 at 8:34 pm

Theist responses:

1. The opinion that the arguments are weak is subjective. In any case, God wants you to have faith as it's a test, so He's not going to offer much proof.
2. God is not of this universe, so we can't see Him. It's a test - see #1.
3. God is mysterious and our puny brains can't cope with it, just like they can't cope with higher dimensional space, quantum mechanics, blah blah
4. Evil proves the Bible, because it proves the Devil exists, just as the Bible says.
5. The mediocrity of Mankind is explained in Genesis - dust, rib, fallen, sinful, blah blah.
6. That we all have exactly those wishes proves that there's truth to them.

And so on - there's always a response they can come back with.

47. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #108008 by Rtambree on January 5, 2008 at 8:15 pm

5. Comment #108000 by GodlessHeathen

>Rtambree, if that sense were common, the whole argument would be moot, wouldn't it?

Actually, it's very common. Almost all life on Earth doesn't believe in any God. :)

48. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #107996 by Rtambree on January 5, 2008 at 7:44 pm

Yeah, ok, Freud was a crazy old man.

49. Researchers use neuroimaging to study ESP

Comment #107993 by Rtambree on January 5, 2008 at 7:37 pm

Ig Nobel Prize candidate?

50. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #107989 by Rtambree on January 5, 2008 at 7:11 pm

7. Simple common sense.