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As long as you consistently see grass, leaves, U.S. paper currency, guac, grasshoppers, etc., as the same color, and not things like blood, dirt, stop signs, the sky, as that color — that's green. I don't know why people complicate this. If two people can point to the same thing and use the same word to describe it and no one is confused, it DOES NOT matter if the brain chemistry behind their sensory experiences is different, because we already knew that no one has identical brain chemistry.
The word "green" has no inherent meaning. It is a label that I use to communicate a concept in idea-space to other people.
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This is classic correlation/causation.
If I gave a random student good grades, it would not affect their intelligence, i.e., cause them to be more intelligent. They might apply themselves more, boost their confidence etc., but it might also give them bad study habits/work ethic and give them poor outcomes later in life. I doubt this has ever really been studied at scale as lying about a student's actual grades would probably never get approved by modern ethics boards.
However, getting consistently good/excellent grades tends to correlate with higher intelligence. How well it correlates will depend on how well the grading system is designed. This is the explicit intent of grading systems, IQ scores, etc.; to measure intelligence.
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@TWS1405
The issue/matter/reality of abortion is solely a human being issue
Why?
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I'm not going to read what everyone's already said, but here's my two bits.
I don't have a lack of belief about God, I have a very strong belief against the concept of God, especially the Christian one. The stories from the Bible and other folklore is incompatible with my own observations of how the universe IS. It wouldn't require evidence to inform a belief in God in my case, it would require an overwhelming amount of evidence in the face of all the science I have learned, of all the prayers I've made unanswered, of every injustice in the world despite the claim of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God.
And I call that atheism. But the word isn't important.
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There's a lot of stuff I'll see debates for that I just haven't really thought about before. In terms of debates that I accept and put out, I have usually given at least an hour of serious thought about it. Part of that process includes trying to come up with counterarguments and different viewpoints. Because of this, my own debates are usually unlikely to change my mind, but there have been some.
Regardless, this website isn't about changing minds, it's about the ART of Debate. It's in the name and everything. A significant percentage of my votes have gone to people I disagreed with purely bc they did a much better job, and that's how it should be.
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All of these are regardless of gender or sex tho some I have only seen in one
Drawn on eyebrows above your grown in eyebrows (only seen it once but yikes)
Hair poking out of your nose/ears
the prison pants look (showing a bunch of underwear on purpose)
hollow gauges ESPECIALLY in the lip
Perfect hairless bodies. shaving is not worth the time for everything but the face. Trimming is fine everywhere else imo
Vaping (yes I know this isn't technically beauty, but you don't look cool when you do it) vaping is a great way for smokers to handle their nicotine addiction without getting lung cancer (i have done literally zero research into vaping health risks but there's no way they're worse than cigarettes in the U.S) but teens are just handicapping themselves by doing it.
And finally...
This is a rant but
WHY CAN'T MEN WEAR MAKEUP?!!
And don't say it makes them look feminine. You could wear makeup to accentuate masculine features too. It's like there's this expectation that women need to spend 2 hours getting ready in the morning and men should walk out the door after a single pass with a comb.
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I remember seeing this when it came out and forgot to do it, thanks for the reminder.
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@Intelligence_06
they probably can survive outside of womb thus classifying them as organism, wouldn't that be murder of some sort?
Organism: any organic, living system that functions as an individual entity. (Wikipedia)
By this definition, once an embryo is formed, it's a separate organism. Independence isn't a requirement. A parasite in your stomach is just as dependent on you for life as an embryo, but it is still classified as an organism.
And there's jumping straight to murder. You kill dozens if not thousands of microscopic organisms every time you move, and you most likely kill bugs in your house without a second thought. You might have even had a dog put down. Yet no one calls it murder. A dog is unequivocally more sentient by every human metric than a 22 week fetus, so why do you make the distinction?
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Nothing is perfectly safe. I would say that on balance early term abortion is likely safer than carrying a baby to term for the mother for her long-term health.
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@RationalMadman
Rats are only violent for three reasons; food, sex and gang/tribal alienation.
I mean, you could argue that humans are the same, we just take the third one entirely too far.
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Some of these questions lack SOO much nuance. Like
is it ok to assume non whites have mostly friends of the same race?
Yeah, I kinda do, and I assume the same for whites. It's not a non-white thing, it's a cultural divide thing. I went to a high school where about half the student body was Mormon and they mostly only hang out with other Mormons bc the culture is alienating.
There is a big difference between a heuristic and a stereotype.
And no, I'm not going to go up to a random asian dude and say teach me martial arts because even if I DID assume a higher rate of people who know martial arts in Asian populations. (I don't by the way, I have no idea what the statistics are there) The odds of them knowing x odds of knowing a lot x odds of being a good teacher x odds of them having time/caring is going to be tiny no matter what.
A better question would have been about assumptions of what instructor to choose based on racial stereotypes (like the family guy cut with the Asian driving instructor and black math teacher)
And even then, there's still a lot of nuance. I honestly have no clue what my inclinations would be when going between say a white martial arts teacher and an asian one. Cuz you can take the art seriously either way, and that's honestly way too little info to go on.
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@Intelligence_06
Also, why is that thought unnerving? Would it be so bad if everyone looked the same? It doesn't stop people from hating each other for their religion, politics, place of birth, taste in music, etc., but people choose to advertise those. It's one of the reasons Nazis put badges on Jews and homosexuals; it's a lot easier to oppress and abuse someone after you put a target on them. If I decided that I didn't care what people think of my religion, I could wear a shirt that says ATHEIST on it. Black people don't get to take off their BLACK shirts.
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@Intelligence_06
Unnerving thought: If you tattoo your entire body without exceptions, then you would appear like a person of African heritage regardless of your genetic factors.
There are a lot more distinguishing features of race than skin color. Height, hair color and type, and facial structure are all highly influenced by ethnicity. It would still be fairly easy to pick out an Asian in a lineup of your theoretical tattooed "blacks."
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@Tradesecret
Genesis 2. In the day you eat the forbidden fruit, you shall surely die.
your original statement
Then humanity - through temptation - external temptation, decided it did not need God, even though God had clearly enunciated that without God, he would surely die.
"In the day you eat the forbidden fruit, you shall surely die."
vs
"without God, [humanity] would surely die."
In my opinion you are conflating renouncing God with eating the forbidden fruit. This is rather interesting because the forbidden fruit was representative of the knowledge of good and evil. So you are saying that to have knowledge of good and evil is to renounce God? (Perhaps because God is evil?)
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@Tradesecret
humanity - through temptation - external temptation, decided it did not need God, even though God had clearly enunciated that without God, he would surely die.
First, how do you qualify an external temptation? If everything is dependent on God, as you say, then the temptation was ultimately sourced from Him.
Second, when did God say that humanity would surely de without HIm?
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I think that the hacking abilities of potential AGI are not the concern, but their social abilities. In the AI Box Experiment proposed by Eliezer Yudkowsky, an AGI would be able to convince a human to release it from containment merely through text communication. If you gave the AGI other methods of communication, such as visual and auditory signals, it would be even more effective.
By no means do I think that AGI is necessarily dangerous, and neither does Eliezer Yudkowsky, which is why he and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute are dedicated to "identifying and managing potential existential risks from artificial general intelligence." [Wikipedia]
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Here's the trailer if you haven't seen it already.
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Octopodes is certainly more valid than octopi. the "-pus" suffix is Greek and therefore should be pluralized to -podes, whereas cactus -> cacti, hippopotamus -> hippopotami, etc., have roots in Latin. However, since the first recorded use of the word "octopus" was in the 1759, I am equally comfortable using the traditional English pluralization of "octopuses"
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A couple books that were a great influence over my childhood.
1. Ender's Game. I read this when I was about 8, before they made it into a movie. This is the first book I remember reading that swore and had realistic character deaths. I haven't read any of the sequels but I plan to someday.
2. LOTR and other Tolkien works. I read The Silmarillion in the 7th grade when I found out there was stuff besides The Hobbit and LOTR. I would also note that Tolkien wrote a couple smaller stories that aren't in the LOTR universe, my favorite being Roverandom.
3. The Eyes of the Amaryllis and other stories by Natalie Babbitt. I actually have no idea why this book spoke to me so much, but it was my favorite book for a solid year.
4. Brandon Sanderson. Pretty self-explanatory imo.
5. Worm. This is a webserial by Wildbow, and is basically a more gritty, noir, and physics-breaking exploitation superhero story. I can't recommend it enough.
6. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky. This is an excellent introduction to the rationality community and its beliefs and is also a lot of fun for HP fans. I don't read much fanfiction but "ratfic" as they call it is always worth taking a look at imo.
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@Fruit_Inspector
was evolution a primary factor in becoming an atheist?
It was definitely a factor, but I would not call it the primary one.
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@Fruit_Inspector
I did read it. I don't read a whole lot of Scientific American, so I don't know how much this stands out from other opinion pieces aside from the content matter. I will say that I disagree with the premise. If the subject matter was different I would expect a different opinion piece to disagree later on, but in this day in age once something is called racist it is basically impossible to defend it.
Having grown up in a highly religious and white community, I never got the impression that anyone was advocating for creationism as a form of white supremacy. Yes, the bible has and still does serve as a justification for racism to some people, but creationism is endorsed because it's in the bible, period. Accepting evolution would be anti-Christian, not anti-White Supremacy.
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@Fruit_Inspector
"Africans would presumably be the closest to original homo sapiens in terms of genetics"I should note that this does seem to be a fairly clear answer, but with a lot of unnecessary qualifications. What do you see wrong with simply stating what should be obvious from an evolutionary standpoint?
The reason I caveated my statement is that I'm not sure. Although modern Africans live in the same geographical region as the original homo sapiens, African is a very broad term and some certain conditions would still result in evolution pressures. For all I know one specific tribe is almost completely unchanged for millions of years, other than recent contamination as they marry other tribes, but I don't have the knowledge to prove that. It could also be that although Africans are still the most similar visually to the original homo sapiens, they could have a more changed genotype than, as an example, Arabs, due to factors such as climate change, or exposure to new diseases, bacteria, and foods.
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@Fruit_Inspector
If the first Homo sapiens arose in Africa, it seems we could presume they were dark-skinned.Would it be true then that lighter-skinned Homo sapiens are a later form of our species in terms of the evolutionary timeline?
Africans would presumably be the closest to original homo sapiens in terms of genetics, but the furthest would probably be Polynesians since many Pacific Islands were only populated within the last 10,000 years. It is notable that native African DNA is the only population of modern humans that don't show genetic markers indicative of inter-species breeding with Neanderthals. Article
As far as I can see, color has nothing to do with it, appropriate melanin levels are merely promoted by climate and geography.
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The way I've seen it is that future value must take into account the probability of occurring. For instance, if I could invest $1 and get $1 billion in 100 years then that has an expected payoff of 1 billion (minus 1) dollars, however, if the probability of me living another 100 years is only 10% (which is a ridiculously high estimate, unless life extension technology improves quite a bit) then I multiply the expected utility by the probability of the conditions being met.
1 billion x .10 = $100 million, so the future $1 billion, should only be valued at $100 million, and that's not even accounting for inflation. I would probably still accept this particular permutation because it has much better odds than the lottery and I can take specific actions to swing the odds more in my favor, i.e. living more healthily and investing in good health insurance.
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@Lemming
Eh, common in cultures or religions, to have customs.Whether behavior, clothing, so on.
I'm confused as to why this was addressed to me. It reads as an explanation or dismissal to me, but I never expressed any confusion over any customs.
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How many of you have come from a religious background?
Yes
And what was this background?
LDS
And what convinced you to become an atheist?
Slow process, but I would like to especially credit Eliezer Yudkowsky's Rationality: From AI to Zombies, as well as some discussion/debates both here and DDO.
Was it a journey or an epiphany?
Journey, but the moment I finally admitted to myself was after a coworker's murder.
Did it cause problems with your family or partner at the time?
My parents know I'm an atheist and there have been some arguments over it, but I wasn't kicked out of the house or anything (I'm 18 btw, came out last year.)
And are you still connected somehow with the people from your old religious affiliation?
The county I live in is approximately 50% LDS and about 80-90% religious overall. I have no trouble interacting with religious people in general and do my best to accommodate their beliefs, but generally keep my atheism to myself unless explicitly asked. I would likely get more shame for wearing Pride stuff or expressing leftist view such as being Pro Choice than being atheist. Obviously I still interact with my family, so the answer is definitely yes.
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@Timid8967
I was raised LDS, for context. Yes, endowed members (endowed doesn't refer to baptism but a ritual performed in the temple before you can get married) of the LDS church wear "garments" (I was never endowed, so my information is likely not quite as accurate as fauxlaw's) which consist of basically white shorts and shirts. You do wash them, and no one I knew of wore them swimming, but my parents wore them at all other times, sleeping and otherwise. They have some symbols stitched (embroidered?) on them that some people say have Illuminati/Freemason symbolism, but I couldn't speak to that.
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I was raised by a conservative household and have always been told that raising the minimum wage will only increase costs on everything from housing to food. What is the liberal or libertarian counter-argument?
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As a (mostly) utilitarian, I would consider a necessary evil to be something that has a negative utility in a vacuum, but either facilitates a numerically greater positive utility or at least is the least negative possible outcome.
I'm not reading through 21 pages, so if someone said something similar, that's my bad.
An example of this in my opinion would be an abortion. The potential for life (an therefore moral value) in a human fetus is nonzero, so killing one has negative utility. However, the pain, physically or mentally, that a woman wishing to undergo an abortion is likely to go through if forced to carry a child to term is much worse.
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Don't know why this post had to become about religion.
If someone wanted to be a slave; only receiving basic amenities in return for total service, then I say all power to them, so long as they're allowed to back out if they want/need to and aren't forced to do anything illegal.
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Hurricane Harvey - hey, maybe we should get food storage.
COVID 19 shutdown - we'll have food storage for the next crisis
Epic snowstorm shuts down the state - sh*t
-Paraphrased from a Facebook post made by a Texan.
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@Stephen
I may take up this argument again some time, but I'm currently too busy to argue about the Bible, I've wasted enough hours on the Internet doing that already.
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@Stephen
you have an argument on your hands if you are saying that Jesus isn't god
and yet you also say that
Satan ... was, thousands of years before Jesus, sentenced to crawl on his belly
If Jesus was not around when Satan was sentenced to crawl on his belly, then he could not have been the God who sentenced him, and the Bible only allows one God. Point: me. Jesus is (as described in the Bible) the Messiah, a Son of God who perfectly served his will.
How was Satan ever in a position to temp Jesus/god in the first place. From where did his authority come?
Simple. He doesn't have authority. Why would he need to tempt Jesus if he had any authority over him? He was in a position to do so because, as most translations insist, "Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." (Matt 4:1 NIV) the Spirit put Jesus in a position where he could be tempted.
it looks like Smith's translation is outnumbered, doesn't it.? Or are you saying that all of those bibles are wrong and only Joseph Smith's translation is the correct translation.
Christianity is outnumbered. I merely wanted to point out that there are technically other interpretations than yours.
By the way, did Joseph Smith understand and speak ancient Greek?
That hardly matters, as the original biblical texts were largely written in Hebrew and Aramaic as well. Ancient (or Koine) Greek reads almost the same as modern Greek, so that one would be the easiest for Joseph Smith to learn.
Why would Jesus go out into the desert "to be with god" if he is god? If you cannot accept that Jesus is god ( as millions of Christians do) regardless of what Joseph Smith says on the matter, answer the original question, Why would Jesus go to the "wilderness " to be tempted in the first place?
Jesus is the Son of God. He did this the same reason he was baptized, to set an example of a holy life.
I see. Are you telling me that the devil believed that Jesus- god and son of god - was naive enough and gullible enough to be "tricked" .
The devil has never had to tempt a perfect person before. These would likely be very tempting offers, enough to break nearly anyone. It didn't matter if Satan believed that he could do it. He was desperate to foil God's plan to save humanity. He had to try, even if it wasn't likely to work.
how would anyone know what was spoken between these two out there in the "wilderness"?
The same way the Apostles wrote of Jesus' birth. They were told about it (in this case by Jesus) and wrote it down. Or you can admit that the Bible is false, in which case I win.
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I had the idea of a specific debate style that people could try where they had to write their arguments without reading their opponents' (possibly enforced by having both parties finish before the one publishing). This would force you to try to anticipate any arguments your opponent may make and just make as many arguments as possible.
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@Stephen
Jesus didn't ask Satan to prove who he/Jesus was for himself. Satan asked Jesus to prove who he was. Why?
I didn't say Jesus asked Satan to prove something. I agree that Satan asked Jesus to prove who he was, as a challenge, to goad him into misusing his power, not because he didn't already know that Jesus was the Messiah.
And who was Satan to demand proof from God?
Satan doesn't talk to God in this passage, he talks to Jesus. Why Jesus allowed him to, I don't know, because the scripture isn't written in the first person.
Why did God go out into the wilderness to be tested by Satan in the first place anyway?
Matthew 4:1 Joseph Smith Translation: "Then Jesus was led up of the Spirit, into the wilderness, to be with God."
Jesus also visits a mountaintop, which is a common practice for prophets seeking to be closer with God (See Moses, Elijah, Muhammed, and Jesus once again at the Mount of Olives.)
The mountain has clear theological symbolism. Almost every religion uses the same imagery. A mountaintop is far from the everyday mundane life, and higher up, closer to the heavens. Native Americans would travel to mountaintops to receive guidance, the Ancient Greeks called Mount Olympus, the tallest mountain in Greece, the home of the gods.
I am an atheist, but from a symbolic perspective, Jesus visiting a mountaintop makes perfect sense.
It appears that god needed Satan's approval or at least Satan thought he needed, why?
Satan, the Father of Deceit, was trying to trick Jesus into thinking that he needed approval.
And again, we see Satan, wondering about AGAIN as he was doing in the sad story of Job after being sentenced to a punishment of crawling on his belly and eating dirt for the rest of eternity??????
This is not a question.
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Idea: Buy a hot air balloon and spend the Purge 3,000 feet up.
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@Stephen
@fauxlaw
F!? It appears then that the devil didn't even know who Jesus was.No, that is not demonstrative of Satan not knowing who Jesus was, that is Satan attempting to plant doubt in Jesus that he was who he was.
I interpret it more as a challenge, similar to when someone makes fun of you for being unable to do something.
"Well, IF you're so smart, why don't you do it yourself?"
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Constructs are inherent to a system.
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This reminds me of the P Zombie thought experiment: the idea of people who don't have "souls", but behave exactly the same as actual sentient humans. Since there is no way to measure sentience, it can be presumed that either no such thing exists or that everyone is a P Zombie. Since I don't subscribe to solipsism, I will assume the prior. Presumably, anything complex enough to be able to argue its own intelligence without being told to say so is intelligent.
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PE is not graded on a curve. As long as you improve by a measurable amount (which is super easy to cheat by not trying at first) and show up regularly, you will get a good grade.
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@ebuc
Thanks for the explanation. It seems to me that a lot of yours were really aimed at the furtherment of math and the pure sciences, whereas mine resulted in large changes in day-to-day life for the entire population. It's interesting that we thought of different things.
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@ebuc
If you look through history of huge discoveries that made truly changed human society, there are fsix primary ones;1} abacus counting tool,2} phonetics,3} Hindu-Arabic { sifr/ziphra } numeral system, ergo the non-counting place holder zero arose and most likely as resultant of the abacus tool that has a zero column,4} printing press,5} E = mc^2 --and may be the provide the quickest way for the end humanties existence on Earth---6} electronic digital computing based on a binary on-of system.The hybrid electron may turn out to be one such technological discovery and may provide the answers --via scenario models-- for humanities continued longer term existence on Earth.
I'm curious, why did you choose these for your list? If I were to name six "huge discoveries that made truly changed human society," it would probably be more like
1. Domestication of animals
2. Agriculture/irrigation
3. Metal-making and metalworking
4. Printing Press (really writing in general, but the printing press scaled things up exponentially)
5. Industrialisation and mass production techniques (i.e., large numbers of factory-made goods that are standardized in shape and size)
6. Harnessing of electricity.
That would just be the first six really important ones. I would also probably mention:
1. Physics in general- Newton proved that the universe had universal laws. Post-Newtonian (Relativity and quantum models) physics will continue to be important to future discoveries.
2. The computer- I'm not super knowledgeable about the nuance and history of how computers were developed, but this has without a doubt changed the world.
3. Electronic communications- telegrams and telephones united the world
4. Flight- also united the world
5. Space travel- though still in development, this one will almost definitely play a large role in humanity's future.
6. AI- Also still developing, bound to be a big gamechanger.
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Didn't bother reading what everyone else said, so this might have already been said, but the best argument I can think of is that humans haven't managed to wipe themselves out yet.
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@fauxlaw
I've imposed a personal hiatus from debate for a while until I have a sense that I have just one opponent in any given debate.
Are you talking about people in the comments, multiple debates on the same topic, or what?
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@seldiora
Oromagi used up 30k in my debate about whether to reduce the 30k limit
I think we can agree that that was more to prove a point then it was that he needed that many characters.
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