351. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173853 by Bonzai on May 1, 2008 at 9:43 am

Anna

Just because the incentive isn't supernatural or metaphysical doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

I didn't say there was no incentive, Did I?

I actually gave some, all of which are "secular", it therefore is not right to say that the Karmakazis were motivated by "religion" in the sense most people here, including Steve, use the word "religion".

EDIT: It is therefore wrong for Steve to barge in, gun blazing, to accuse me of being apologetic to religion. Yes, I was pissed off.

352. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173843 by Bonzai on May 1, 2008 at 9:35 am

Al,

I don't necessarily insist that there is a very cut and dry line between religiously induced fanaticism and other kinds.

But in context

1) religion is singled out on this site. Almost everyone assumes that it has a special meaning here, including Dawkins and Steve . I am sure Steve used religion in a very narrow sense in our debate above.


2) Words have meanings. As long as you make that distinction in (1), then it would be wrong to attribute the Karnmakazie and the Tamil Tigers to "religion"

Hope I made myself clear. I think you're barking up the wrong tree,.

353. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173832 by Bonzai on May 1, 2008 at 9:26 am

Irate

I edited it, I meant to say "metaphysical". People do "martyrdom" for all kinds of secular movements, some of them even noble: resistance, revolutions, liberations etc.

As I said there are many reasons why people would sacrifice their lives in suicide missions. It doesn't have to do with any supernatural belief or even any ideology except very loosely, Suicide missions don't have to be very dramatic. Taking on an assassination mission knowing that you will be killed in the process would be an example, or using yourself as a life target to distract the enemies and waste their ammunitions like many Russians did during the defence of Stalingrad.

354. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173814 by Bonzai on May 1, 2008 at 9:08 am

Your problem is that you hold religion is if it is some special kind of belief.

No, this is not my problem. To the extent that it is a problem, it is the problem of many people here including Dawkins. Religion is singled out here.

I can also make a finer point to distinguish "belief" in a dictionary sense as in holding on to some metaphysical principle or just conditioning, that is often unconscious. I don't think the Tamil tigers and the Kamakarzis have any metaphysical doctrine that encourages suicide attacks, which is unlike religiously motivated martyrdom say in certain sects of Islam.

It is misleading to label any irrational impulse "religious" since religion is a special kind of irrationality.

EDIT I am sure that Steve used "religion" in a very narrow sense here. If he were talking about some general "belief in belief" he would have said so.

355. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173796 by Bonzai on May 1, 2008 at 8:50 am

AL

Bonzai seems tied to certain ideas. His vigorous defense of a general idea of socialism (of course the metaphysical unimplemented version) was a clue

Excuse me? Where did I defend socialism, let a lone rigorously? Pointing out you misunderstood the concept is not "defence" by my understanding.

On the other hand, your rigourous defence of a libertarian version of Capitalism (unimplemented because it is not implementable) was a clue,--to whatever you try to allude to.

Yes, Steve makes many good points on a lot of topics, but he was simply wrong about the Kamakarzi pilots and the nature of suicide attacks in general (his rather simplistic analysis may only be valid for Muslim suicide bombers who put wet towels around their penises) It is dogmatism for him to continue sticking to it without any argument other than short brush off like "No, it isn't".

356. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #173612 by Bonzai on May 1, 2008 at 12:14 am

Hey, wonder what do you aussies think about this

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2008/2231782.htm

Australian university soliciting money from Saudi Arabia for its Islamic study program.

357. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #173406 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 6:21 pm

Titania

I am still confused because you seemed to indicate that you believe in the OT god and Jesus, yet there may be some third entity responsible for creation of the universe.

Sorry to butt in. Perhaps he meant "believe" in a more open ended and less definitive way than the dictionary definition of the word "belief" may suggest? I have that impression talking to many "believers".

358. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #173400 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 6:08 pm

Dick

I love Jesus, he was a great man, even if he didn't exist, we could still learn from Jesus as a man, mythical man at the very least.

Actually Dawkins (the real one) himself agrees with that idea. He wrote an article called "atheists for Jesus" I think.

359. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #173395 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 6:02 pm

Brian

I think anybody who keeps superfluous metaphysical suppositions out of their thinking and applies the scientific method can do good science.

Actually, doing good science is like being a detective of patterns. It requires insights, experience and yes, talents. "Applying the scientific method" is not like following a manual. The general philosophy about the scientific method though, is actually quite trivial even though philosophers write a big deal about it.

Good scientists always keep their personal metaphysical suppositions out of the science. But it doesn't mean these supposition cannot play a role in motivating them to look at problems in certain way, or pick certain problems to work on.

It is not necessary for a scientist to be free of all metaphysical supposition to do good science, as long as he compartmentalize them appropriately. Newton was probably one of the greatest scientific genius, yet he was also a loony in many ways beside his religious belief.

360. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #173380 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 5:30 pm

Dick

it dawned upon me that Ben Stein is Jewish. Jews don't believe in Jesus, so why is the article titled "Lying for Jesus"?

Interesting observation.

Maybe Ben Stein is a Jew for Jesus.

361. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173367 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 5:08 pm

I am fed up with ID nuts posting the same old nonsense, and religious sympathisers like Bonzai posting the same old apologetics.

So now the Stalinists have declared me a counter revolutionary and being in bed with the enemies?

362. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173363 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 5:02 pm

Cartomancer

The term Ki (Chi in chinese - energy or life force), which is often taken to be a term for supernatural magical force by western commentators, applies as much to the flow of blood or muscular force and the blowing of the winds as it does to the movements of dragons and the powers of gods

It is very perceptive for you to notice that. Actually "chi" is a very loose term and Chinese medicine is not intended to be an explanatory model like Western medical theories.

As a physiological model this "chi" business is nonsense, except most practitioners of Chinese medicine don't really give it the same epistemological status that Western commentators assume they do. It is very loose and almost allegorical.

It is very difficult to explain that to most Westerners.

363. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173350 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 4:53 pm

Mphil

Whether religion or nationalism (I think it's similar to Germany, where it was certainly nationalism - and racism - that got supported by religion), I think the they both have the same underlying problem - both nationalism and religion are based on not-epistemically-justified assumptions, about worship and sacrifice, about "knowing" certain objective moral values and "knowing" that one is doing a religious or quasi-religious duty, about dogma

Yes, I agree. But if you use "religion" in a very broad sense to just mean any dogmatic system, it make the word to flexible to have any specific meaning.

Also, tribalism is not a epistemological issue. Religion often provides the justifications, but it is not the only way. Often it doesn't even need justification.

364. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173349 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 4:45 pm

Cartomancer,

That is a good point about obedience.That is tied in with "honour" The idea of obedience being a high virtue didn't have anything to do with supernatural beliefs.

365. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173344 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 4:39 pm

I have a fixation on understanding motivation

This is one thing that you definitely don't understand. When it comes to what make people do things your posts read like bumper sticker slogans.

You seem to have a fixation on defending religion.

How exactly is it "defending religion" by showing a more nuanced picture rather than assuming, without evidence that "religion" is the culprit even when there are better explanations that fit the data?

No, it isn't. Religion was an utterly fundamental part of their lives, of their families. Their survival after death was not about rewards in the afterlife.

This is what you want to believe. They didn't see it that way. If people basically killed themselves for very concrete reasons such as those they described in their letters to their families, "religion" is just a label without conveying ANY substance.

366. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173332 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 4:16 pm

As usual, you present false dichotomies.

As usual, you present a grossly simplified and misleading caricature in order to validate your fixation on religion

No. But he was the leader of their Shinto religion, which states that those who die become family spirits. Students of Shinto were supposed to "offer themselves courageously to the state".

The Kamilkazi pilots belonged to the elite units in the Japanese imperial air force. They enjoyed many privileges and were worshiped by their peers.

There are anthologies of letters and diary entries of kamilkazie pilots before their suicide missions. They talked about family honour, loyalty to the fatherland and the Emperor and not letting others down, but almost never about any expected rewards in the afterlife. These are all secular reasons.

At certain levels, their motivations to sacrifice their lives for a higher cause was not very different from atheist Soviets who died like flies in the defence of Stalingrad knowing before almost certainly that they wouldn't return. Do you know that many Russians went to the front even without guns? The idea was to be live targets so that the Germans would use up their ammunitions.

This is very different from people who kill themselves because of supernatural beliefs and the supposed rewards in heaven.

There are many reason other than religion why people would choose to die.

367. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173318 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 3:46 pm

The Kamikazi pilots were not motivated by religious beliefs and the rewards in the afterlife either. It was nationalism, honour and peer pressure. While they worshiped the Emperor he was not regarded as a god in the supernatural sense.

368. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173307 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 3:30 pm

AL

By that argument, we need religion. Why can't people reason for themselves? You don't trust them? Maybe they need to fear hell, or else they would be total assholes.

You must be joking because I can't believe an intelligent guy like you would honestly believe in that.

369. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173298 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 3:26 pm

Comment #173235 by kaiserkriss

You ARE leaving it a bit late... jcw

Not really. Have you seen how Homer Simpson did his taxes?

370. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173232 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 2:25 pm

Well got to sign off to do my taxes. :-)

371. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173230 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 2:23 pm

AL

No no no no no. Conscious is present in people, as atheists say.

We don't need religion to implement morality, why do we need a government to do so?

Well, by that argument we wouldn't need any law.

372. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173223 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 2:19 pm

AL

How do the people own something, collectively, if not through the state?

I think MPhil would want to deconstruct your fallacy symbolically. But I would just use words.

Socialism implies state ownership of certain key assets, but the converse that state owenership is socialism is not true. Otherwise all medieval kings would be "socialists" as the king was the state and he owns all the land.

373. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173218 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 2:15 pm

AL

I can't think of a situation where I want the government to regulate my purchases.

Neither do I. But this is the concern of someone who has disposable income. Many people who are working in sweatshops wouldn't really worry about it. Sweatshop is perfectly moral if you look at it from a purely "free market" perspective. Why pay people more than they can bargain for?

374. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173204 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 2:01 pm

Al,

IMO your fallacy is to confuse freedom of people with freedom of capital.

The market force can be as coercive as any government institution. In many third world countries controlled by orligarchies such as many U.S. allies in South Central America, the governments are essentially the enforcers of capitalist interests. Pure capitalism is about the freedom to make money at the expense of everything, including human right, health and the environment,

There is also a problem of double standard here. When someone points out problems in American capitalism, you would say that is not "real capitalism" (my long post above was directed at "ideal" capitalism) but you would attribute all failures to nominally socialist countries to "socialism". Whatever problem one may have with socialism, it means ownership by the people, not ownership by the state. The state doesn't represent the people if they have no meaningful participation in the running of the state,

EDIT If socialism is simply ownership by the state all absolute Monarchies would be "socialists" because the Emperor = the state in an absolute Monarchy and the Emperor ultimately owns everything,-- at least theoretically.

375. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173174 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 1:31 pm

The countries that have had the greatest trouble feeding their people are the countries that are run by socialistic governments.

Most third world countries with starving populations are not even remotely "socialist" by whatever reasonable definition.

376. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173158 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 1:08 pm

I think Al is too idealistic about capitalism.

Capitalism is not about working hard to make your fair pay, it means controlling the means of production,--capital,--and making others work for you.

All the goodies Al attributes to capitalism, science, new drugs, technology and so on are not the work of the capitalists, they are the fruits of people who work for them.Most scientists and researchers make a living earning wages. For the most part I am not sure it makes a difference who they work for as long as they are given a chance to exercise their skills and knowledge.

To attribute these achievements to capitalism is like crediting the Church for all the high attainments in the arts and sciences in the past.They occurred under Church patronage for very simple reason: almost everyone worked for the Church in some ways back then because it controlled so much land and assets, So it is true in our time, almost everyone works for some capitalists.

Even an ideal free market would not remain ideal because its dynamics would likely create concentration of wealth and hence power.

Adam Smith claimed (or at least the Adam Smith of the economist) that an ideal market if left to itself would settle in a happy equilibrium.

Forgetting about how to set up the initial condition of an ideal market, his argument that supply and demand would adjust themselves to maintain the equilibrium is pure fantasy and it should be a text book example for the inadequacy of plausible sounding word arguments so common in the social sciences.

Mathematicians carried out simulations on even very simple models of ideal market and showed that Smith's conclusion was completely unjustified. The market is a chaotic system, there is no reason why an equilibrium would persist even if the market started out in an equilibrium, in fact, in the generic case, the equilibria are mostly unstable and cannot sustain themselves against small perturbations (like an egg standing on its end).

Moreover, once departed from an equilibrium, there is no way to estimate how long it will take the market to attain the next equilibrium again,--assuming that would happen. The "relaxation time" would be very long, so a depression that lasts for 20 years can be "market adjustment" as far as economists are concerned.

Of course "equilibrium" can also be brought about in many ways, say, mass starvations through the Malthusian mechanism."The economy" is indifferent to human miseries as they cannot be tallied on companies' balance sheets.

The market logic of savage competition is not hospitable for long term planning and risky undertakings that may take a long time to bring marketable returns, for example, scientific research. In the U.S. as well as all the developed countries,the advanced sectors of their economies are heavily subsidized and protected from the unpredictable market force. The government pays for the costs for all basic research and the private sector only takes over when development reaches the stages that has the profit potential. If the U.S. has adhered to the free market doctrine of pursuing comparative advantage, it would probably still be trading fur.

The pressure of short term survival also encourages behaviour that may be detrimental to long term well being such as over exploitation of resources, pollution and any way to pass on the cost to the future or places that don't show up in the balance book.

I find the argument that there must be someone doing "shit jobs" appalling. Yes, there are unpleasant jobs that have to be done, but it doesn't follow that people who do unpleasant but necessary jobs have to get shitty pay. The society can survive without some very high paid lawyers for a while, but it will be paralyzed without garbage removal for several weeks. There is also a strange logical difficulties here. If there is always x number of shit position to fill why does AL suggest that people should work hard to upgrade themselves and seek education? No matter how you reshuffle the deck someone will come out in the bottom in a society that operates like a zero sum game. Even if everyone has Ph.Ds in the sciences, society would still need X numbers of garbage cleaners.

As Michael Polayni pointed out, there is a big difference between a society with a market and capitalism (even idealized capitalism). In Capitalism society becomes an appendage to the market where market logic threatens to take over all aspects of life and subjugates all other considerations.

377. Museums teach society lacking in science literacy

Comment #173112 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 11:15 am

I love going to science museums, its like being a kid again!

I just love being a kid again.

378. Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

Comment #173106 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 10:47 am

Wooter is just a troll without a life. Ignore him and hopefully he'll get bored and go away. I wish there is a button to filter out his posts.

379. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #173105 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 10:44 am

MaxD

Yeah, it looks like some kind of cult thing. Very disturbing, though some of the pictures are not bad.
Didn't see the one where Jesus is taking a big hit on someone's heroin though.

380. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #173086 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 10:19 am

I think TruthID is honestly trying to ask questions, we shouldn't bear any grudge against him.

381. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #173063 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 9:44 am

Geoff

Bonzai, you were looking for biomorphs earlier:


http://physics.syr.edu/courses/mirror/biomorph/

Thanks for the link.

TruthID, I highly recommend this, See if it gives you a better feel about evolution. It is one thing to read about the idea in books, quite another to see a simple demonstration, even if it is only a caricature.

382. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172610 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 7:20 pm

Well gentlemen, nice chatting. Got to shut down the computer for some maintenance work. Have a good night, or good morning for Brian.

383. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172609 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 7:18 pm

Mphil

But since Platonism says that the universals are independently existent, and the Judaeo-Christian concept of god includes that everything depends on God, and only god has the property of aseity, that is incompatible with Platonism, as Craig correctly notes

I always said that even though never read Craig or know the word "aseity",--I thought it might have something to do with God being big, like obesity,

That proves that it is not necessary to know big words. :)

384. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172601 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 7:10 pm

Brian

couldn't the feeling of exploring with maths be that due to the 'laws' of our universe, numbers are just a reflection of the universe's parameters so to speak. Not anything preter or supernatural?

Don't know what you mean by preter or supernatural, I am not even sure if those questions are meaningful. In general I don't think about those things very much.

385. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172594 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 7:01 pm

Mphil

he[Craig] denies Platonism because it denies the aseity of God//

I always think that "Platonism",--or some of its variations,--is not particularly hospitable to the idea of a creator God. (EDIT we all know Socrates' argument against needing the gods to define justice)

As noted, for many ancient mystical cultures God,--or gods,--came from the primordial order, not the other way around. So the idea that God is required for logic and laws of nature is not only illogical, it is not even intuitively persuasive. It only sounds reasonable because of Juadeo-Christian cultural conditioning .

386. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172583 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 6:48 pm

Brian

I don't have a position to defend, but I am sympathetic to the Platonists in the sense of Penrose,.

It is how it feels when you actually do math, you are making discoveries. It is as though there is a mathematical landscape that you explore. There are many occasions of great synthesis in that people come to the same "facts" through completely different routes in that you can have several proofs for the same theorem starting from completely different ideas.

This is a personal feeling, I don't try to turn it into a philosiphical claim. What I find particularly annoying is the view that mathematics is just a formal system of symbols, axioms etc. Whatever mathematical "truth" means, that is a very bad caricature of what mathematicians actually do and it mistakens presentation as substance in my view.

387. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172572 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 6:37 pm

Quine,

I think they can at most claim that there is a Platonic world of mathematical forms and people like Ramanujun have an extra sense which allows him to access that world. Mystical, but not necessarily a case for ID or God. I would think Platonism probably renders personal Gods redundant.

EDIT (
In many ancient mystical religions (the Greeks, Taoism, e.g) the gods,--if there were any,--were not primal, but instead they arose out of some primordial order ("logos" or "the tao") Therefore I always think that it is weak argument to try to say that we need God for the law of physics or logic. It is a very culturally specific assumption of Judao- Christian beliefs.)

I am reminded of a story one of my math professors told us some years ago. He said there was a California mystic by the name of Hinton (IIRC) who claimed to have a secret method to see things in higher dimensions.By "seeing" he meant not visualizing, but literally.

According to my professors, the great Canadian geometer H. S. M. Coxeter for some years retained the service of Hinton's daughter. She would report what she saw in her trip to some high dimensions and Coxeter would prove them. Apparently Coxeter tried to find out how she did that but she never shared her secret,--thus keeping herself employed.

Coxeter was one of the greatest "classical" geometer in that his work was highly visual and he used the synthetic method extensively, which was very unusual for 20th century mathematics.

388. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172564 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 6:16 pm

Quine,

Actually, Ramanujan did say that "the goddess" whispered the mathematics to him, though as far as I know he didn't say it was Krishna or specifically which one.

389. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172560 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 6:11 pm

Mitchell

If necessarily I'll clarify or explain when asked about something, but won't correct it so other know what was talked about. For instance I was bothered when you pointed out a mistake to MPhil, and he fixed it. Now I have no idea what it was, or what you could have meant by your joke. I try to avoid that myself.

Normally I won't do it, but it was a funny mistake. He addressed the post to himself (instead of "MaxD" he typed "Mphil" in the opening)

390. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172556 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 6:06 pm

A teen accused of plotting to blow up his high school told police that he wanted to die, go to heaven and kill Jesus, federal authorities said Tuesday.

There you go. Religion inspires people to do horrible things, though in a way you won't expect.

391. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172482 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:48 pm

I can't think of many scientists who fit your description of the genius/crackpot. It seems to be mathematics that attracts (or generates?) that kind of mental instability. Cantor and Godel come to mind.

So were Newton and Heaviside, possibly Hamilton. Some may even think Penrose is a crackpot.

EDIT: Some may add wheeler (who passed away two weeks ago) to the list of great scientists having some really strange ideas.

392. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172471 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:32 pm

What I was trying to say was that it should not take much effort to know, for example, that business about not being able to travel back before the construction of a time machine.

Well I don't know. I think we are talking about things at a very speculative end of physics.

My attitude is "never say never" as many things we think we know can be wrong,

Now that is not to say we take all speculations equally seriously, but speculate away, if you can put together a mathematically solid formalism and get testable consequences out of it, we will look at it. There is no point telling people they are wrong because their speculations contradict some established ideas or philosophical dogmas.

There is a very thin line between a competent crackpot and a genius. A genius is often a crackpot who hits on some right ideas among many failed ones.

It is a mistake to think that scientists are rational people, Science is a rational enterprise, but original ideas often come from irrational places. The difference between a great scientist, and a competent but mediocre one is often that the great scientist is willing to entertain wild ideas which may seem totally nonsensical and crackpotish. As Pauli said, interesting physics has to be crazy enough. But then of course the process of testing and validating the original insights consists of hard and careful work, Verification is a rational process.

That I think may also answer to some extent the question why some outstanding scientists are religious or entertain other crazy ideas. "Compartmentalization" is probably only one mechanism, but at some level perhaps great scientists are like great artists, who are not necessarily very rational people to begin with and that is part of the reason behind their greatness. Newton was a crackpot through and through, and that was not just because of his religion.

393. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172439 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:57 pm

One time I accidentally flagged myself as a troll

394. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172437 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:55 pm

About editing. I edit a lot sometimes because there is no preview function. It is only after I post the comment and read it that I find it needs modification.

P.S. I will be posting my nude pic next. :)

395. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172428 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:47 pm

do try not to post nonsense. All those matters I have mentioned have, in fact, been dealt with by the very "pop science" you are talking about. Pick up almost any book by Kaku or Davies from a store and this will be mentioned. There will be very little detail, to be sure.

I didn't say you post nonsense. I am saying the assertion that you can actually *understand* physics and assess physical theories by just reading popular account "nonsense".

General relativity can be summarized as "matter creates curvature in spacetime, and curvature in turns tell matter how to move in it"

But I doubt that one can say he understands general relativity just by being able to form a mental picture with this. Otherwise no one would need to spend a whole year just to get the basics.

Pop science accounts by necessity are only suggestive. I can make a suggestive picture with words and analogies, but I cannot really tell you what "curvarture of spacetime" really means without getting into differential geometry and the Riemann curvature tensor etc, not to mention formulate precise enough program that can be tested.

396. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172416 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:40 pm

... and reportedly treated the women who did this in a true asshole-manner.

He wasn't a role model father and husband, apparently.

397. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172410 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:32 pm

False dichotomy. It is possible to have considerable understanding of the state of knowledge in a subject, even a detailed understanding of the subject itself, without being able to make mathematical models

Sorry, that is nonsense, A journalist would love to believe that, I am sure.

Einstein had major insights into physics, but had to get help with the math

You make it sounds like he was flunking math or something, it wasn't like that.

398. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172405 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:26 pm

Steve

But it is very selective. The issue of wormholes, their stability, the expansion of the universe and the limits of theories of time machines and so on aren't that deep physics at all.

Those are very speculative stuffs even though it is not so easy if you want to actually make mathematical models rather than just making pop science-tish assertions.

However, I have respect for anyone who has actually sweated through a few courses in field theory and published papers on it. May not be terribly sexy comparing to pop science, but that is real meat and butter hard stuff.

399. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172397 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:17 pm

Quine

I wonder how people would have reacted if Srinivasa Ramanujan had told us that his mathematical ideas were passed to him by the voice of Krishna.

I don't know. When I heard that I just said "fuck me!" and thought maybe I should shave my head.

The thing is he burped things out as if he could "see" theorems and you can't really say his mind has "worked on it" From what I heard he never proved anything himself, he just made assertions and then other mathematicians, such as Hardy would prove them only after great efforts.

But then I cannot vouch for the authenticity of those accounts. Mathematicians' attitude towards the history of mathematics seems to be "never let the facts get into a good story". For example, it is widely believe that the reason why there is no Nobel prize in mathematics is because Mittag Leffler, a famous Swedish mathematician, was sleeping with Nobel's wife and Nobel worried that if there was ever a Nobel prize in math this guy would get it and laughing on his grave. The fact is Nobel never had a wife.

400. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172311 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 1:07 pm

At least we know the women in the compound have access to internet..

How do you know Kyrie is a woman? This is the internet.