Would 3D be easier to handle if film makers made sure that everything in shot had clarity of focus (thus preventing the "I can't focus on that" issues)? I remember with The Hobbit that I got a little bit annoyed when I wanted to look at something in the background and couldn't because the camera focus was set to a foreground object.

(And no, I don't really have suggestions on how to actually achieve this with a real camera... well, not any simple ones, anyway).

Did you see it in 48 frames per second? I have been wondering what effect this has on the "3D headaches" - personally, I found that the faster frame-rate made it much easier to watch, though my wife still came away with a low-level migraine, so probably the issue is the focus/convergence difference. Still curious though.

I know you're just going for the troll/humour angle on this (BTW, I'm not an American, so I'm going to spell "humour" with a "u"!), but while a programmer (this is /. after all) would say it must be outside the quotes, however older style guides put it inside the quotes...

But, this is typical of those sort of reviews - they don't know the rules they claim to enforce, so your example still works well! :-)

Yeah, we've had this - a story got one review, not from the many who bought it, but from someone who got it on a free promo and sounded decidedly like a shill (1-star copypasta-but-for-the-title reviews on all ebooks of ours that had been on a promo). We tried reporting it, but Amazon didn't do anything about it. Most of our ebooks survived this as they had other, better reviews, but one has wallowed as it's only ever had that one review.

Or, the one where someone tried to point out spelling mistakes, not bothering to check that there were two acceptable spellings of the word ("yoghurt" vs "yogurt") in America, with the one we used the only acceptable version everywhere else in the world...

There's not much you can do (sadly), but I wish you all the best with your other projects.

(From the side of ebook authoring): this is a good idea, but won't help much. I would say that the biggest problems with reviews on Amazon are:

(1) "Shills" or "sock puppeting" to promote one's own product. We'll often see a new author appear with a single book, hardly any sales, and five or six 5-star reviews. One particular example had five 5-star reviews from new reviewers (no other activity), all with the same poor level of English. Interestingly, that ebook hasn't shown up again. I do know of other 5-star reviews that were removed as they looked suspect, so it seems that Amazon at least do something here.

(2) Shills to sabotage rivals. Example: we had a few kids' ebooks in the top of their categories over Christmas, then in one day all of those that were on the first page get 2-star reviews, all from different reviewers who had not reviewed anything else, with suspiciously similar wording. This one is probably a bit harder to police, but I'd like to hope that Amazon have the sense to look for this sort of thing. It's quite tragic really to realise how nasty authors - children's authors! - can be.

(3) Stupid people who have no idea about the concept of objectivity. There isn't much one can do here, but most user reviews seem to be either something to the effect of "OMG, this was the best thing evar!" with 5-stars, or "My daughter wasn't interested [as if that's an objective measure], this is crap. Oh, I liked the illustrations and the story though" with 1 star, or the reviews "This is not what I expected", followed by comments that make it obvious they didn't read the description, the other reviews, or information like the number of pages... This is perhaps where a "reviewer rating" system would be good - and I think this needs to happen; New Zealand's TradeMe website's user rating would be the sort of thing I would suggest, with reviews weighted by the reviewer's rating - in summary, highlight suspect (new) accounts, and give more credence to someone who has done lots of reviews and has been frequently marked as "Helpful".

It has made me realise that the average star rating is irrelevant - you'd have to look at individual reviews, and their quality and sense (or lack thereof) and judge for yourself.

But, your suggestion of marking author accounts would help, even if it didn't completely do away with the first two. I think that the first filter I'd put in place against shills is something that checks against IP address, credit card details, etc. Amazon's idea of stopping authors from reviewing other books in their categories is useless (and counter-productive) unless they make a really good effort to deal with sock puppeting, as that's where the real problems lie. I would say they should let authors review others' work, but have something that marks this, exclude it from the calculation of the average, and have a good "report abuse" system, which can hurt the author if they abuse it (e.g. a "Not helpful" on an author's review counts as negative points in the ranking of all their own books).

Also, they need to make the calculation of star ratings more comprehensive, and design it to filter abuses - like what IMDb does.

Abiogenesis is probably the main point of argument from a scientific perspective (i.e. we reckon that it might have been possible with some lightning and luck to get amino acids, but that's still a very long way from a viable replicator, let alone a complex cell). The shared ancestry is probably the second "somewhat speculative" one (i.e. we don't have a direct line established - there are quite a few holes in the fossil record), but I would agree that it's probably the one where there is more contention (because of its implications).

As for abiogenesis, depending on who you talk to, the probabilities range from "well, if we be optimisitic enough with the numbers, it's pretty good", to "it's so far into the impossible that it could never, ever happen [by being pessimistic with the numbers]." The annoying thing I find is that there are two groups trying to run said numbers (which are kind of guesswork anyway, as we don't have any processes established that we could measure) are those who need to prove it (because otherwise the whole idea of a naturalistic worldview collapses) and those who need to disprove it (out of a need to prove that God's input is required). I think if you take the balance, abiogenesis is actually a fairly good case for a possible place where "God did it" (started life) because it is very unlikely (from our current understanding at least). Of course, this runs afoul of Occam's Razor, as you then have to presuppose God's existence, but most of those of faith that I've met have a good lot of personal experience to back up their belief in God (also, Occam's Razor doesn't actually prove anything, it's just a helpful filtering tool).

So, as for an alternative theory, one (the naturalist) says "this is very unlikely, but it had to happen somehow", i.e. faith in the natural processes, even when there is no evidence for one, nor any known process; the other (the creationist) says "this is very unlikely, therefore God must have done it", i.e. faith in a Creator. When you're dealing with total unknowns (the origin of the Universe itself is probably an even better example, as that's by definition meta-physical (for a strict, not a colloquial, meaing of "meta-physical")), then positing God's existence isn't really any less sensible than positing any other cause, as we simply don't know (and might not ever be able to know).

As for belief, having had discussions with a lot of people on this, I find most self-described atheists actually do have a "faith" in "science" (i.e. what other scientists have said, not in things they've tested themselves) not unlike a Christian's faith in God. Yes, there is a trust of the scientific method, which is different, and while it may (and often does) appear similar, I do understand that it's a reliance on evidence. However, if and when you start to find a point that genuinely challenges an atheist's non-belief in god, they can get very defensive, and unsurprisingly so, because if an atheist was presented with rock-solid proof of God, they have a very big problem with very big consequences for them personally. I have found that most atheists I've met have personal, non-rationally-derived reasons why they don't want to believe in God. (I'm certainly not saying that is the case for all atheists, but it has been the case for most that I have had decent conversations with, and I think is a reasonable question to ask oneself - what are the implications if I'm wrong?)

So, I think that you'll find that a person (anyone) likes to hold a belief system that supports their way of life, and will get quite upset at anyone trying to challenge it, because they don't want to be wrong and don't want to have to change. I think if more of us approached these debates with an understanding that we are treading on potentially upsetting territory, there'd perhaps be a little less angst... (Just winning the argument, even convincingly, is only the start as there will be a lot of re-structuring of thinking required).

Apologies for the long post. :-)

Does anyone else think it will be interesting to see how the above /. votes compare with the actual election outcome? I'm predicting that /. will be significantly more to the Left (D), particularly as at the writing of this comment, it's at more than 2:1, which is a pretty unlikely final result. Maybe this could be an interesting way to see how the /. readership is swung, relative to the US as a whole? (Left-wing and tech-loving seem to be a reasonably common pairing, as are other common /. opinions like those on religion, climate change, etc).

I am actually glad I'm not in America, as I have strong reasons not to vote for either party, so it'd be a tough call. I think that the more one understands politics, the less sense a two-party, adversarial system makes.

Good point about that term being awkward - would "agnostic atheist" be better? (It's the slightest shade of meaning different, but probably closer than either term alone). You could call yourselves "AAs"... ok, maybe not. ;-)

Perhaps it would be worth bringing another term into use then? Maybe we need to educate people about the difference between an "atheist" and an "anti-theist"? (Kind of like the difference between amoral and immoral). I guess the problem there though is that someone would meet the nasty kind of anti-theist who still called themselves an atheist, and forever be stuck with that meaning for the term, just as someone could meet the nasty kind of person who calls themselves a Christian and react whenever they met better, more fair-minded ones with the same label...

Is the answer then to not assume you understand someone simply from their label...?

Ok, agnostic atheist I can respect. :-) (By the way, you're less likely to get into arguments if you introduce yourself as that rather than as an "atheist" - just because the unqualified term can carry unintended connotations - such as the above, where I took it as meaning the assertive kind).

Faith in your own senses, faith that the people teaching your and who did experiments were trustworthy and not themselves misinformed, faith that the scientific method actually works and isn't illusory, faith that what you're testing is within the realm of what the scientific method can actually test (not everything is)... In some areas of science (psychology comes to mind), there is a fair amount of guesswork or "trying to prove that I'm right" among scientists, and I have come across the same in evolutionary biology, along with a peculiar tendency to avoid talking about known hoaxes (embyonic development looking like fish etc, the white/black moth thing as examples), along with quite a lot of trying to force things to fit the gaps in the evolutionary tree. Anyway, I'm getting off-topic. Sufficient to say that everything (even the scientific method) takes some degree of faith - even if only a little, and no more than it takes to function in everyday life. :-)

I do note, however, that this particular thread has been bouncing back-and-forth around the same point. So I might summarise: atheism, where it is an assertion that there is no god, is a meta-physical belief inseparable from religion and can therefore be treated as such, however agnostic atheism only asserts that it does not know, and, by extension, awaits a burden of proof from the theist before accepting their hypothesis, so isn't a religion per se, as it actually makes no assertion but to merely ask others to prove their assertions.

But, I would add that I think even agnostic atheism can become "religious" if and when it attempts to spread non-belief in the supernatural or to discourage another's religion. (Meaning that someone like Dawkins is sort of religious, in that he is encouraging others to believe in a particular interpretation of the metaphysical in favour of another - in his specific case, he substitutes belief in god with a belief in the multiverse, which is a similarly unproven concept at this point).

"...shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is basically the separation doctrine in its most succinct form: don't put one religion above the others (or force it on people), and don't stop people's right to practice their religion. What I think is often misunderstood about the idea is that it was about keeping the influence of politics out of the church and the influence of the church out of politics, insofar as you shouldn't have the same people running both, but should have two separate spheres of influence, both able to have a healthy input into society. The same would go for (for example) the free press (outside of government influence), or separating the judiciary and the legislature (e.g. so you can still arrest the president for breaking the law).

Saying that it means that the church should not be able to comment on politics is somewhat insane, in the same way that one could say a newspaper shouldn't run a story about a financial scandal involving the local governor. I would be interested to see a society where each sphere of influence (e.g. government, judiciary, media, business, church, education) was in a healthy balance to all the others, rather than the mess we have now...

Cases like taking prayer out of the schools are kind of tricky, because in fact: (a) the government and schools and judiciary shouldn't have any right to stop it there, (b) the same shouldn't be establishing it, either. Rightfully, it should be that anyone can observe - or choose not to observe - their religion without interference.

"...shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is basically the separation doctrine in its most succinct form: don't put one religion above the others, and don't stop people's right to practice their religion. What I think is often misunderstood about the idea is that it was about keeping the influence of politics out of the church and the influence of the church out of politics, insofar as you shouldn't have the same people running both, but should have two separate spheres of influence, both able to have a healthy input into society. The same would go for (for example) the free press (outside of government influence), or separating the judiciary and the legislature (e.g. so you can still arrest the president for breaking the law).

Saying that it means that the church should not be able to comment on politics is somewhat insane, in the same way that one could say a newspaper shouldn't run a story about a financial scandal involving the local governor. I would be interested to see a society where each sphere of influence (e.g. government, judiciary, media, business, church, education) was in a healthy balance to all the others, rather than the mess we have now...

Cases like taking prayer out of the schools are kind of tricky, because in fact: (a) the government and schools and judiciary shouldn't have any right to stop it there, (b) the same shouldn't be establishing it, either. Rightfully, it should be that anyone can observe - or choose not to observe - their religion without interference.

Wow, where are you from? Remind me not to go there. :-( I would have a few choice verses to show those people (along with perhaps a few other choice words...)

Just a comment though: while torment done to you makes inflicting insult on others understandable, it does not make it justifiable, as all you will do is inflame another generation of nastiness. It's a bit like the generations of infighting in certain African countries - someone sees oppression, so rises up and ousts the oppressors... but then become oppressors themselves when they get the power, as it's all they knew.

If you are wanting to be able to have peaceful interaction with those of belief, then being nasty on the internet isn't going to help any... At some point, someone has to act with humility, forgiveness and fair-mindedness. (My hope is that everyone would, but I guess I'm a bit of an optimist!)

Also, it is entirely possible that almost that whole list could be from the "well-intentioned but misled". :-/

And thus, you prove your opponent's point.

You claim actual intellectual superiority, and yet the atheist is the one who asserts something that he cannot know, ever, without actually being omniscient (and therefore god, and therefore proving himself wrong). An agnostic could make the claim that their position is the default correct position, but not an atheist. (And, as an aside, the correct scientific approach is to be "agnostic" about what you are testing, not to assume knowledge either way as then you open yourself up to bias).

You make bold assertions about religion being bunk and god not existing, when in fact there is no way you could know that for certain - it's possible you are correct, perhaps even probable, but in no way certain. Your claim is hollow, your arrogance unfounded, and your point disproven by your very attempts to prove it.

Now, had you have answered with some humility, you might have been able to make some headway against the claim that atheists come across with a kind of intellectual superiority. But, by immediately saying that all supernatural beliefs are rubbish, you have made a claim about the nature of the meta-physical that is actually harder to prove than the theist's position (he at least, in theory, could have God show Himself one day - proof for is possible, even when proof against is not). But, by making that meta-physical claim so boldly, either: (a) you have perfect knowledge about the universe and are therefore yourself god, (b) you're significantly less intellectually superior to me, as I can see a gaping hole in your position. As your claim itself disputes point (a), I must therefore conclude point (b). :-)

So... "I'm an atheist who thinks religious people are silly, who has no problem insulting them, and don't see how anyone could find most atheists insulting."

Huh?

But, I do generally agree with your comment that most people on the internet are just consumers not contributors, but would also point out that you may not be the best judge of whether or not atheists tend to be insulting. Most atheists I've encountered (on- and off-line) do seem to take insulting religion as a kind of sport - often it's in jest, even if it doesn't always come across like that.

Definitely a secret evil atheist bit. ;-)

Context: specific instruction to one specific person (and that possibly only to prove a point). Still not "all his followers" giving away "all their things".

But, y'know, don't let something as trivial as audience and context get in the way of trying to find problems with the Bible. Sigh.