Sandbox (3)

Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.

This is also a continuation of previous Sandbox threads (1) and (2) that have fallen victim to the dreaded page bug.

1,013 thoughts on “Sandbox (3)”

  1. Kantian Naturalist,

    Yes, its a good question; how many options are there for not being poor if one grows up in a village in Africa? How exceptional does one need to be?

    Or East St. Louis for that matter.

    On the other hand, if one grows up in San Mateo, and is white, you might be even a way below average motivated person, and you still probably won’t find it that hard to get by if you want.

  4. I know nothing about it, but it’s always struck me that regarding time as reversible in the same way as a direction in space is reversible is wrong. If anyone does, that is. Negative time isn’t like going the opposite way in xyz coordinate space, it’s like negative size.

  5. walto:
    Interesting article about “time’s arrow”:

    https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-defense-of-the-reality-of-time-20170516/

    Very well written article.

    I have always found the concept of spacetime frustrating, and its one of the reasons why I have always considered myself a real skeptic, rather than the phony skepticism of groupthink that goes on on the internet and at sites like this one.

    One (of the many) problems with the linking of space and time is that if one says one can’t talk about time, without including the spacial aspect, its doesn’t seem the reverse is true, one can indeed talk about the spacial aspect of things, without ever considering the time. Why should that be? If time depends on space, why doesn’t space depend on time? When we talk about an isosceles triangle or a 4 inch square, do we really need to know anything about the time aspect?

    Personally, one thought experiment involving spacetime that I really hate is the train in a tunnel problem. I think this is accepted as a true paradox, based on bad math combined with bad logic, combined with too few skeptics who have sufficient knowledge to be able to say..”Hey, come on, wait a second….”

  6. Allan Miller,

    I agree. If time is really just another word for change (which I say it is), then the opposite of time is non-change- not reverse change.

  7. phoodoo to Tom English:

    Pierre Omidyar is funding a project to give poor Kenyans free money for the next twelve years.The people then use that money to invest in their lives the best way they see fit, no strings attached.

    Now what the right (basically the 37% selfish sect of the US population) wants you to believe is that anytime you give poor people money, they will just use it to get drunk and high and play video games.But it turns out, that the 3% of the population that just wants to get high and play video games are going to do that whether they have money or not, but the rest of the people want to find a way to have a successful life, as hard as that can be sometimes on this planet.

    Someone else estimated that for what we spend on the Afghanistan war (one of the poorest countries in the world) in one year, we could lift the entire nations population out of poverty, every single person.

    And America can’t have universal healthcare, because its just not fair giving poor people things for free you know. We would much rather they sell crack cocaine then have them get anything they haven’t earned the same way Donald Trump earned his money when his father died and gave it to him.

    When you speak of matters that matter, you sound uncannily like me. Perhaps we could agree that ID, however engaging, counts for little in the grand scheme of things.

    What you make of me does not matter. I’ve got you down as a good guy.

  9. My understanding from Joe’s comments somewhere is that he just retired.

    I think we should throw him a celebration here in cyberspace as he is also ironically also revered in creationist circles for his work. I really wish to salute him.

    I do have one question for Joe, “how did you get the Atomic Energy Commission to fund your work on evolution (the cost of substitution paper for example.” That was pretty amazing.

  10. Tom English,

    Well, for what its worth, I don’t think how other people feel about ID matters one bit at all to me frankly. I have no religious affiliations, I just think its a subject that interests me, because there are so many unanswered questions, and those questions seem to have pretty profound implications as to how we look at our existence-and to how we live our lives-which I guess does have importance to me.

    But I am passionate about one aspect of this debate. There are a lot, not a little but a great lot, of skeptics who try very vigorously to prevent people from having an open mind about this subject. They are convinced they know what you need to think about it(just like there are a lot of skeptics who know exactly how everyone should feel about GMO foods and about vaccines, and a few other things they they believe they have corned the knowledge on).

    So these skeptics perform a whole series of maneuvers online and in academia, attempting to decide what one should or shouldn’t read or believe. To me that is every bit unscientific, and unseemly as what they accuse the far right evangelicals of. I also don’t like far right evangelicals, so I guess I can find both those views equally unappealing. But hey, maybe if those skeptics would stop trying to mess with Wikipedia (of course Jimmy Wales is exactly one of those people, so that won’t happen) and stop trying to tell teachers what to think, and Jerry Coyne would just mind his own dam business, I wouldn’t care at all.

    Many skeptics seem to think they have some insider information on thought. I think they are wrong. But hey, I also think William Murray is a kook, so I take no sides really. I shout within my own wilderness of belief 🙂

  11. Tom English,

    BTW, I also happen to think that Allan Miller is probably a good guy in real life, I think Alan Fox is probably as well, and I am sure Walto is, and KN, and probably Joe and you as well. Maybe even DNA Jock too, who knows.

    But I can still disagree with them.

  12. phoodoo: There are a lot, not a little but a great lot, of skeptics who try very vigorously to prevent people from having an open mind about this subject.

    And I abhor that. Though I question how effective these skeptics are in influencing opinion in present-day US.

    I’m strongly of the opinion that the type of discussion forum that Lizzie envisaged, where people are encouraged to communicate their own ideas and also listen to those of others is worth developing and supporting.

    I’d point out there are facts and there are opinions. Opinions based on fact should carry more weight than fact-free rant and conjecture.

    But, well-said, anyway!

  15. phoodoo,

    I recall a now-legendary statement by a former UK education secretary during the Brexit debate: “I think we’ve all had quite enough of experts”. This was the same one who wanted all children to be above average. 😀 And look at Trump on environmental concerns. Some people do know what they are talking about, some just don’t want to listen – but they show up anyway.

    Having an open mind is (of course) perfectly allowable. But if you enter a debate, you’ve kind of got to expect to be debated with. It’s hard to pursue a viewpoint without appearing to consider it Da Troof.

  16. stcordova: I do have one question for Joe, “how did you get the Atomic Energy Commission to fund your work on evolution (the cost of substitution paper for example.” That was pretty amazing.

    Yes, that was surprising. It started when they were the Manhattan Project, and involved in dropping two atomic bombs on cities in Japan. They then funded studies of the effects of this on the survivors, including genetic effects through their Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. Then in the 1950s and early 1960s they were engaged in atmospheric testing, and were criticized for exposing people to radiation that would induce mutations and cause cancer.

    So they started funding, among other things, studies on the population genetics of mutants in populations. I had a grant from them for many years, starting in 1968.

  17. “Social Justice” Warriors demand white biology professor resign simply because he went to work on a day when students didn’t want white people on campus.

    https://youtu.be/y2XM6TmLJu4

    College has become an intellectual wasteland. How could a college present tolerate this garbage?

  18. Trump pulls out of climate accord. Here’s the UK ‘Independent’:

    [Headline]Donald Trump to withdraw US from Paris Agreement on climate change, sources claim

    [subhead]The departure of the world’s second biggest source of greenhouse gases from the international accord designed to reduce them would be a major blow

    I wonder if there’s an intentional dig in the wording? 🙂

  20. Allan Miller:
    I know nothing about it, but it’s always struck me that regarding time as reversible in the same way as a direction in space is reversible is wrong. If anyone does, that is. Negative time isn’t like going the opposite way in xyz coordinate space, it’s like negative size.

    My understanding is that time and space are analogous to matter and energy. Time and space cannot be created or destroyed, although they can be converted, to some extent. Thus, one can use speed across space to distort time or speed across time to distort space. Also, as an intimate relationship like matter and energy, time and space are conjoined in our universe. Thus, nothing can move across space without also moving across time and vice versa. Thus we know that information…say light for instance…coming from somewhere in the universe and arriving at Earth now is older than now. Much older in fact.

    Therefore, there can be no such thing as negative time, just as there can be no such thing as negative space. I suppose that would be The Law of Space-Time Conservation.

  21. stcordova:
    “Social Justice” Warriors demand white biology professor resign simply because he went to work on a day when students didn’t want white people on campus.

    https://youtu.be/y2XM6TmLJu4

    College has become an intellectual wasteland.How could a college present tolerate this garbage?

    It seems the happenings at an obscure college in Washington has given right wingers the vapors as evidence by Sal’s extrapolating

    “TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): What is so striking is how little coverage any of this gets. I mean, you got to think that ten years ago or twenty years ago, if a college campus, Evergreen is a place that I have heard of, I mean, it’s a real college apparently, demanded that people of a certain skin color leave and then threatened anyone who stayed and then occupied all of the buildings on campus, shut the place down, at least it would merit like a note on the front page of The New York Times. It’s not there.

    BRIT HUME: No it is not. And it is a story that newspapers, with their leftist sympathies don’t find as interesting as stories about white supremacists kills two in hate crime on a train or wherever. It is just the way it works, and this is part of what we experience daily in our biased media.”

    Nice ,” or whatever”. Imagine that , college students protesting is not as interesting and newsworthy as three commuters being stabbed while coming to the defense of fellow passengers by a lunatic. I can only imagine Fox News’ reaction if the lunatic had shouted ” allahu akbar”.

  22. stcordova:
    “Social Justice” Warriors demand white biology professor resign simply because he went to work on a day when students didn’t want white people on campus.

    https://youtu.be/y2XM6TmLJu4

    College has become an intellectual wasteland.How could a college present tolerate this garbage?

    Just so I understand, is the issue here that a liberal group of college students rather vociferously protested a professor who decided to disregard a symbolic tradition or that the fake news liberal media disregarded it as newsworthy?

  24. Robin: Just so I understand, is the issue here that a liberal group of college students rather vociferously protested a professor who decided to disregard a symbolic tradition or that the fake news liberal media disregarded it as newsworthy?

    I find apartheid rather disturbing, even when self imposed. I went to a Quaker college in the late 60s, and there was something of a kerfuffle when the black students demanded their own private residence. Perhaps off topic, but most of today’s hot campus controversies were played out there and then. Kind of like watching reruns for me.

  25. petrushka: Perhaps off topic, but most of today’s hot campus controversies were played out there and then. Kind of like watching reruns for me.

    Fox viewers love reruns about the scary,lazy other.

  27. stcordova: In other news, Sam Harris calls out the left:

    The worst thing is, of course, it that you have it all backwards. Terror is mostly coming from the white right wingers.
    http://www.newsweek.com/homegrown-terrorism-rising-threat-right-wing-extremism-619724

    Am I to take it you are hard right and do not believe in equality for all races, sexes and genders? What’s so terrible about equality? Even if you don’t believe there are more then two gender identities, why not support equality in the eyes of the law?

    You are not white. I’m sure you’ve experienced racism. Those racists, that’s you that is. That’s you. And you turn around and do that to others. How’s that going to play in heaven?

  28. OMagain: You are not white. I’m sure you’ve experienced racism. Those racists, that’s you that is. That’s you. And you turn around and do that to others. How’s that going to play in heaven?

    Depends if God loves a collaborator.

  31. The bad boy in the Evergreen College mess seems to be an evolutionary biologist.

  32. petrushka:
    The bad boy in the Evergreen College mess seems to be an evolutionary biologist.

    They can overlook that as long as he fuels the grievance machine.

  35. Note regarding the Sensuous Curmudgeon and his fried computer:

    I keep a database (just a list, really) of all my passwords (except for banks).

    I just looked, and there are 126 entries. There are passwords for things I almost never think about, like access to tech support forums and product warranty registrations. I try to use just a couple of passwords for forums like this, but every now and then, they have to be changed.

    Not long ago, Yahoo got hacked, and they required a password change. Most of my credit cards have upgraded their security and required new, complex passwords, plus security questions. Perhaps some of you can keep track of all this in your head, but I can’t.

    The other thing. When Yahoo got hacked, they suggested changing the passwords for all other accounts where I used the same password. Another reason for keeping a written record.

  36. petrushka: I keep a database (just a list, really) of all my passwords (except for banks).

    I do that, too. I include the banks. But I keep it encrypted. And I have copies in several places.

    If I forget the encryption key, I will have problems.

  41. Allan Miller:
    Here we go – balance of power in the shambolic UK now down to a bunch of Catholic-baiting Creationists. Some will crow.

    My old mum would say “trouble comes in threes”. (Brexit, Trumpit and Maybot.)

    I wonder whether May would have called an election had HM’s Official Opposition been less shambolic, making claims that Labour missed an open goal rather moot. In any event, I certainly wouldn’t want to bump into Arlene Foster on a dark night.

    I think the parallels between Bernie Sanders and his youthful supporters and Corbyn are signs of something. When the young and self-disenfranchised find out what a vote is for, gerontocracies should start to worry.

    *glows with schadenfreude*

    In other news, Macron goes from a standing start to being in line to take over 400 of the 570 seats in the French Assembly.

  42. Watching the interchange between Jack Krebs and Stephen Bussell [at Uncommon Descent] has been enlightening. Here is StephenB’s latest thought:

    Leftist elitists do not really love gays. Their real aim is to control them politically by encouraging and feeding their sexual slavery. Otherwise, they would inform gays that, on average, their behavior will hasten their death by 20 years.

    ?
    ETA UD

  43. Alan Fox,

    I wonder whether May would have called an election had HM’s Official Opposition been less shambolic

    Definitely not. I think that her stated reason – mandate for ‘hard Brexit’ – is pure smokescreen for an opportunity to destroy Labour. The second time Brexit has been used for Party reasons rather than national ones, and I had a hilarious night watching it all unravel this time round!

    Brexit was barely even mentioned during the campaign on either side (to be honest, Corbyn is a fucking wet fish on the subject!). Both parties are in thrall to the 51.9% majority in that vote last June – ‘the will of the people’. Ironically she couldn’t call a snap election without a 2/3rds majority vote in Parliament, but we can slice our noses off for 51.9%!

    In that election (to the extent that treating ‘the people’ as an entity really works), ‘the people’ told her to shove hard Brexit where the sun don’t shine. But still on she goes, ‘will of the people’ is mumbled incessantly, and the tired old non-argument that you can’t have neverendums is trotted out by the sloganising rump of the Brexiteers (yet we are looking at our third GE in 3 years, precipitated by precisely that topic!).

    Sadly, while I am more enthused by Corbyn (shit performance on Brexit aside), political realities soon tarnish every saviour. But …

    In other news, Macron goes from a standing start to being in line to take over 400 of the 570 seats in the French Assembly.

    Yes, many of us envy the centrist jubilation over there! And a much more sensible voting system.

  44. Alan Fox:
    Watching the interchange between Jack Krebs and Stephen Bussell [at Uncommon Descent] has been enlightening. Here is StephenB’s latest thought:

    ?
    ETA UD

    Who needs evidence when you’ve got self-evident moral truths on your side?

  45. Alan Fox quotes StephenB: Leftist elitists do not really love gays. Their real aim is to control them politically by encouraging and feeding their sexual slavery. Otherwise, they would inform gays that, on average, their behavior will hasten their death by 20 years.

    Only a very sick person would put such a spin on a high suicide rate.

  47. There is disturbing scene where the student mob bullies the University President for defending the right of evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein to teach the class to the students that enrolled in his class!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ys2ihv_wSs

    That’s a picture of the regressive left wing Stalinist, Maoist post-modern neo-Marxist truth hating garbage that is now invading western culture.

    Also watch black professor Naima Lowe bullying two white professors.

  48. Sal,

    That’s a picture of the regressive left wing Stalinist, Maoist post-modern neo-Marxist truth hating garbage that is now invading western culture.

    What is the “truth” then?

  49. Also we generally dispose of garbage. How should this particular garbage be disposed of Sal? Shall we mark them with a symbol first, so we know who is garbage and who is not? What solution do you propose to the garbage problem, once we have identified those people properly?

  50. What is the “truth” then?

    Something that might be found out through free speech, something that won’t happen if faculty like Evolutionary Biologist Bret Weinstein are mobbed by students merely because he’s a white guy who showed up to teach a class to students that enrolled in his class. You have a problem with that or are you loving the way that Evolutionary Biologist was abused by the student mob.

    As a card carrying creationist, I thought the treatment of this evolutionary biologist was reprehensible. What do you think?

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