Again, I'm talking about the ones in the debate
Whoops - I missed your original point. My bad.

there's not really anything to win.
I still disagree. The point of a (public) debate isn't to convince your opponent, it's to convince the audience.

By this measure, I'm certain that Nye won. Anyone who was over 18 and watching the debate has probably had their minds made up for a long time. But I imagine there were a ton of religious parents that sat their kids down to watch the debate. Nye's arguments had a chance of swaying kids who may not have been exposed to a scientific view before, and his arguments had the benefit of being based on observable evidence that anyone could at least understand. Ham's arguments are based on personal beliefs and an ancient book. He had little chance of convincing anyone not already thoroughly indoctrinated.

Not many people say it's impossible, just that there's no evidence.

There's no more reason to believe in a biblical God than Xenu or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Just because someone says something happened doesn't make it true - even if science could theoretically model it.

Exactly right, and there's an even more compelling reason. Consciousness is hard and motivation is hard. I'm convinced it's easier to create a neural interface than write a truly intelligent program, so all of that superintelligence will simply be add-ons to your average human, driven by a human, with your normal human feedback loop (physical sensations, emotional needs, etc).

Why are we afraid of AI? Because it can sift through thousands of computers near-instantaneously and collect the data it needs? Because it can control physical machinery halfway across the world?

We can do all of that. And with the right upgrades (which, again, are probably easier than inventing a conscious machine), we'll be able to do it as fast and as well as any machine.

Where does the freedom to "say what I don't like" end and harassment begin? You wouldn't be able to follow someone around while they're in public, yelling insults, all day, every day. Eventually you'd get a restraining order, and if you violated it, you'd go to jail. At some point "saying what I don't like" becomes more damaging to my quality of life than a punch in the face.

And tailgating is in the eye of the beholder. The type of person who would do 30 in the fast lane is exactly the type of person who would complain about the "tailgaters" hovering 100 feet back.

the Sun gives up a max of 1.3KW per square meter

Wow. Couldn't even bother to RTFS, could you? It clearly states that this device "increases the sun's radiation by 2,000 times", so feel free to rerun your calculations with 2.6MW.

Unfortunately, the summary doesn't state whether the increase occurs just around the device or for the entire sun. Just to be safe you might want to buy 3-foot lead sunscreen.

Thank You, raymorris. I'd read most of the thread and still didn't have a clear idea of the problem.

There's only one of it?

I know! The only thing more annoying than those bozos are the other bozos who preemptively call them out, as if their whiny comment will be of use to anyone.

Fortunately, I haven't seen any of the absolute worst scum, who feel the need to point out the faults of the other two bozos. Complains about complainers are the lowest form of comment.

That's a great point. At this point in the show, they could introduce a "normal" scientist and he'd be a complete outsider.

Why can't "god" be the default?

Because every phenomenon has the same effect when it doesn't exist, and only differentiates itself from other things when it does exist. So to explain lightning, you start from a default position that encompasses all possible explanations - "One or more phenomena exist and are causing this, and all others do not exist, or do not create lightning", and then try to narrow down which of the infinite imaginable phenomena are the ones causing lightning.

If "no X" weren't the default position (not just gods), then to be fair we'd have to assume that everything imaginable exists. And...well...Louis CK puts it far better than I could.

Wow.

Can someone help me out? What's the name for when someone acts like a crazy supporter of their opponents to make their opponents look crazy? (you can tell that's what's up because the only person named in the post is the right-wing boogeyman-of-the-day, Elizabeth Warren)

Anyone who is proficient in programming shouldn't have a problem picking up a book (or website) and learning a new langauge, API, etc. in a weekend or two.

This is true as long as you're hacking something together. If you're expected to work with other developers and create something maintainable, you've got to learn a million little standards, conventions, quirks, tricks, and optional 3rd-party libraries.

Picking up the basics is easy, but in my experience it takes a couple of years before one can truly be comfortable with a new language.

Absolutely not. There are, unfortunately, very good reasons to be skeptical. A lot of well-meaning dumbasses have ruined it for legitimate victims.

The original post wasn't just skeptical though, it was accusatory. Even worse, it used the "just asking questions" style of accusation, which (personal judgment here) is a very trollish style of debate.