Comment Re:Factual beliefs? (Score 1) 725
Telling people who collect stamps they're idiots could be a hobby.
Telling people who collect stamps they're idiots could be a hobby.
Peer reviewed. Yeah, right. And just who is reviewing the peers?
Ha! I knew the denialists would come swarming out of the woodwork on this one.
Consider the stem cell paper that we're talking about here. It was published in January and immediately started going down in flames. Here we are six months later, watching scientists gleefully kick the cold corpse of the authors' reputations. And you're still wondering who keeps the reviewers and editors of a scientific journal honest?
Peer review isn't some kind of certification of a paper's truth. It can't reliably weed out misconduct, experimental error, or statistical bad luck. It's just supposed to reduce the frequency of fiascos like this one by examining the reasoning and methods as described in the paper. It doesn't have to be perfect; in fact it's preferable for it to let the occasional clunker through onto the slaughterhouse floor than to squelch dissenting views or innovation.
That's why climate change denialists still get published today, even the ones who disbelieve climate change because it contravenes their view of the Bible. Peer review allows them to keep tugging at the loose threads of the AGW consensus while preventing them from publishing papers making embarrassingly broad claims for which they don't have evidence that has any chance of convincing someone familiar with the past fifty years of furious scientific debate.
Here's what I think is the confounding factor (there always is one): I'd be wondering, "Does that button REALLY deliver a shock, or is it some kind of sham social psychology experiment prop? I bet it's a prop. If it isn't, it won't deliver THAT bad a shock. If it is, I wonder what the researchers will do when I push it?"
The confounding factor is curiosity. They'd have to do *two* sessions with the overly curious.
This statement is not the conclusion of the article, it's the headline of the article.
The journalist is using a basic journalistic technique of stating the position in the simpliest, bluntest and most provacative way possible. That makes it easy for the casual browser to grasp the topic, and hopefully draws them in.
The article then goes on to modify and explain.
Not necessarily. If you're a secular moral relativist you don't think there is any kind of absolute moral truths etc.
Imho, morals are a human construct, there are no morals as inherent properties of the universe, this is generally described as moral nihilism.
The question is, and or at least definitely should be, are you doing harm to something that can suffer? here's the key issue: Does it have a nervous system, and does that nervous system couple to something sophisticated enough to convert those signals into suffering?
Aside from our own personal biases that lend us toward favouring our own systems, how would you define suffering?
If it is reacting to stimuli that causes it harm, plants, vegetables and many forms of life do that. If you try to not eat anything of that nature you'll quickly find yourself starving.
Why should only harm that can be applied to us or things like us be considered harm?
They don't care because it happened naturally without interference. Much like how if an old man dies in his sleep naturally people don't tend to care, but if he dies in his sleep with a pillow shoved over his face by a party conscious of what it will do, people do care.
Like how you don't see PETA activists trying to fight off all the violent animal deaths that happen in nature.. because there was no interference.
However, if I needed "little blue pills" and was employed at Hobby Lobby, they would be more than happy to provide them to me. They also see nothing wrong in investing in the contraception companies in their 401K. Apparently, making money off of "godless abortion pills" is perfectly fine religiously.
Wouldn't the abortion pills they're against in this case not count as contraception? I mean.. isn't the point of contraception to stop conception?
The only reason I can see to try to avoid the name "abortion pill" is the social stigma, but that can be worked on. (imitation of kang's voice) "Abortions for all!"
Saying "Wiki" when you mean "Wikipedia" is like saying "internet" when you mean "slashdot".
Except that if you read the majority opinion they actually open up any provision of the law to challenge on the same grounds. They warn that the ruling should not be taken as covering anything covered by insurance, but presumably any such thing could in principle be challenged on the same basis, and depending on the circumstances might likewise be exempted. The majority has opened the door to challenging the application of any provision of this law to a closely held corporation -- indeed any provision of any law. They just don't know how the challenge will turn out.
It's interesting to note that the court broke down almost exactly on religious lines when dealing with contraception. Five of the six Roman Catholic justices voted with the majority, and all three Jews joined by one dissenting Catholic. I think this is significant because the majority opinion, written exclusively by Catholics, seems to treat concerns over contraception as sui generis; and the possibility of objections to the law based on issues important to other religious groups to be remote.
Another big deal in the majority opinion is that it takes another step towards raising for-profit corporations to the same status as natural persons. The quibbling involved is astonishing:
....no conceivable definition of 'person' includes natural persons and non-profit corporations, but not for-profit corporations.
Which may be true, but it's irrelevant. The question is whether compelling a for-profit corporation to do something impacts the religious liberties of natural persons in exactly the same way as compelling a church to do that same thing. If there is any difference whatsoever, then then the regulations imposed on the church *must* be less restrictive than the regulations imposed on a business. Logically, this is equivalent to saying the regulations imposed on a business *may* be more restrictive than the regulations imposed on a church.
That's simply not true.
I wasn't trying to "invalidate" anything
Can you spot where people might think you were?
"carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas tied to climate change, is being released into Earth's atmosphere on a global scale."
And here was me thinking it was being released on a inter-galactic scale.
Isn't that exactly what LG have done?
Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.