Randi's trick for disproving psychic phenomena is blind and double-blind testing.
Randi's trick is convincing you that that's what he does.
How he gets away with his nonsense when all his followers are (admittedly, self-described) skeptics is beyond me.
Speaking of
Yahweh, of course.
"Lol, watch this! I'm gonna put this bitchin' fruit out there, and then tell those jerks who don't even know right from wrong to not eat it. When they do, I'll totally fuck over their entire race from now until the end of time and blame them for it!"
-- Genesis 3:2, Standard Slashdot Translation
This was my point in the other discussion
Odd, as you make entirely different points in the other discussion. Perhaps you should review your old posts to see why you were (rightly) thrashed.
The part about psychology supports what I was saying completely.
I strongly disagree. You may want to clarify your position, as the article and your posts from the older thread appear to stand in contradiction.
Oh I see, Dawkins, a great evolutionary biologist, is a philistine. The evidence?
Evidence? How about any one of of his recent books written for a popular audience? That should be more than sufficient.
Science is not any single geometry, and so has no fundamental set of definitional axioms.
Are you sure about that? Hume would disagree with you
those don't exhaust the space of possible science
If you think that the scope of science is unbounded, you're very much alone. The limits and scope of science have been well understood for centuries.
The scope of science is unlimited, and it is the only way of creating knowledge.
Science isn't the end of epistemology. The scope and limits of science are well known. Congratulations, you've not only failed basic science, you've turned it in to a religion.
Because science is Bayesian
Oh, you're one of those. Never mind, you're beyond help.
Science is the means by which we know what is true
Total fail. Science doesn't deal in truth. It wouldn't work if it did!
^^^ This, folks, is what happens when you get your education from internet discussion boards and not from a university. Take note.
Really? I'm not seeing the connection here. The closest thing is the bit in the article about psychology, but that contradicts you.
Of course, the author is just a columnist with no known scientific background. Take it for what it's worth.
I'm in the wrong business!
Okay, staring now, you can get certified in Fad Oriented Programming for just $500! It's always the hottest trend!
Similarly, 6% of men experience sexual assault seems on the high side
Have you considered that you may just be unattractive?
"Oh they must be mismeasuring, because the results challenge my assumptions!" is not a hallmark of rationalism.
That's flamebait now? WTF Slashdot!?
it didn't sound like he was open to any sort of reasonable discussion
Well, you're right about that. A "reasonable discussion" isn't possible here. Can you have a "reasonable discussion" with a creationist? Neither can I. All you can do is show them the facts. It's up to them to accept reality, just as it's up to you.
Just look at the parent here:
designing complex systems for reliability and maintainability is not
Ah, but it is! (Hell, if it's actually complex, it's not maintainable.) See, most "complex systems" are only complex because of how their designed (poorly). Yes, some things are actually complex but that's generally completely unrelated to programming (see my earlier post).
Personally, I blame the OOP craze for the dramatic increase in unnecessary complexity. We've got two generations, now, of programmers who know nothing about modularity, but believe (inexplicably) that OOP gives them modularity for free.
This shouldn't be controversial. The only explanation I have for the need to believe that programming is difficult is fear.
That's delusional. I've been at this longer than a lot of users here have been alive, yet the only "complex" applications I've seen are either unnecessarily complex or complex for reasons completely unrelated to programming.
It's not like cooking at all. That's just wishful thinking.
Programming is easy. Ridiculously easy. You know this, I know this. Why hide it?
Why not produce easy tools for non-programmers to use? We use programming languages to make writing software easier, after all. Why are modern languages and tools becoming increasingly more complex? Software isn't getting more complex in general, so why are our tools? What are we afraid will happen? That we'll lose our jobs? That people won't admire us for a skill easily attainable by young children?
there's nothing wrong with making tuna casserole (using Hypercard to create a simple database application), but don't try to kid yourself it's basically the same thing as creating a full course meal at a four-star restaurant (writing low-level, high-performance code in C).
But it is! The EXACT same skills and principles apply equally in both cases. (Note: This is not the case for cooking. Your analogy breaks immediately.) The only difference is that you need to know a few additional technical details to use C effectively. That's tangential to programming, no different than something like domain specific knowledge you'd need writing programs for use in different industries.
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