anon_for_this_1

Interesting thought... Personally, I think we're affected by all media to a greater or lesser degree. A colleague disagreed with me so we discussed his movie viewing habits. He likes horror movies. When he started watching them, they really freaked him out and scared him. Now he just laughs -- ie has become somewhat numb to the display. To me, that is a real change that has taken place. Sure, we all know it's fake. But in those early days, something primal and empathetic was reacting to grotesque scenes. Somehow that has now been supressed.

I don't know anything about this, so yes I'm naive. But when I read this, I think about the Wright brothers. They were told something was impossible, and it was right up until they did it. So possible to communicate faster than light?? I have no idea, but I hope somebody keeps trying despite what the current accepted science says.

So they went from selling to 3 corporations to 5? Meaningless stat...

The USA is a huge economy, but debt can't just be swept under the rug forever -- interest payments are huge and getting bigger. Everyone is starting to realize we can't keep borrowing forever -- we're nearing the end of that way of living.

OK, so piracy is breach of contract. Still against the law and immoral, no?

So if someone hires me to do some work for them, and I do the work, but they don't pay me, what is that? There is no 'thing' in that case.

Piracy is similar. A band, video game maker, software producer, creates something for an audience with the expectation of getting paid for their work. When the work is pirated, that audience member has just done the equivalent of hiring someone and not paying them.

Ahh the Vic 20. Warms my heart just hearing about it :) My parents bribed me to do some stuff when I was younger with the reward of a floppy disk drive. I was living like a boss when I got that drive!

I'm not trying to equivocate at all. I'm just trying to show that 'evidence' works fine in the large -- at the society level. But it doesn't work at the individual level since most individuals don't actually have evidence -- they choose to believe what their culture calls 'evidence'. Call it faith, belief, whatever. But the individual doesn't have evidence.

It's easier to see when we pick something that the whole culture hasn't coalesced on yet. Like string theory and worm holes. Some people believe there's a worm hole at the center of our universe. They have 'evidence' that supports their theory. I can believe or not, but I'll never know one way or another. 100 years from now, if everyone believes the _exact_ same theories we have today, with the _exact_ same raw data, my great-grandkids will say they know the worm hole exists and the 'evidence' is obvious. The only difference between now and then is how widely those theories are dispersed and accepted. Yet today I (and you?) wouldn't say we know worm holes exist. And my great-grandkids won't 'know' any more than you and I do.

In other words, my 'evidence' is what is commonly known and accepted to be true. Yet I personally don't know it to be true -- I trust that it is. Isn't that blind?

"a belief in Australia and a belief in unicorns are both lumped under the category of blind faith, which I think is a really silly classification."

I'm not lumping them together. Lots of people that I trust tell me they've been to Australia. I don't have any reason to doubt them. I trust them, so accept that Australia is there. Lots of others also publish pictures, movies, etc so I trust them too. But that's a belief, not a knowledge -- I _personally_ have no evidence at this point.

Nobody I know professes to have seen a unicorn. I also have no personal evidence, so I don't believe that.

And like I said above, I'm not trying to go to the point of whether we can trust our senses, or know whether or not we actually exist or any of that. I'm just trying to show that individually, each of us live our lives with 99% belief (ie no personal experience/evidence), and 1% knowledge (things we've personally experienced).

Let's take the atom. How do YOU KNOW that atoms exist? What personal experience/evidence do YOU have that they exist? We both believe they exist, but neither of us have split one and know for a fact that there is a nucleus in there. We both choose to believe, based on the coherent story we hear from many other sources.

I don't think you're following my line of reason. You and I believe that red point is a planet because someone else taught us that. We don't have any independent evidence -- we simply believe what others have told us. I'm not arguing about the definition of a planet, or what 'Mars' is -- I'm arguing about what you and I _KNOW_. We don't KNOW that red point is planet -- we've simply been taught, and believe it. For the record, I believe Mars is a planet, despite having no personal experience or evidence whatsoever.

It is faith for _me_ since I've never looked through a telescope and seen that it is indeed a nearer-mass/rock, and not a star as it appears in the sky. Unless you have seen it with your own eyes, you too are believing based on the words of others. My point isn't that we can't verify some of the things we think are true, but my point is that we usually don't. Instead, we believe what we're taught because everyeone else around us believes.

We're not so different from the people at the time of Columbus that were taught the world was flat. They didn't (most couldn't verify it), but everyone 'knew' it was true. That had been taught it, they had books describing it, and maps showing it. They had as much evidence as I do about mars.

Many people really have seen mars through telescopes, and a number of rocket scientists have built devices to go and look at it indirectly. THOSE people KNOW mars exists. The rest of us believe, blindly, what we are told about it. I don't doubt mars exists in the least, only because I _choose_ to believe it exists.

Evolution is a good example. Why do you believe it happened? Because someone told you. You read someone else's words. It sort of makes sense. You saw what you assume are dinosaur bones in a museum. All of that is faith, and perhaps blind faith.

I'm assuming you're not a geneticist, so you probably didn't verify that the bones that were stacked nicely into a skeleton actually came from the same being. You likely weren't part of the dig team that found them. You don't know where they came from, or even if they are actual bone. And I'm not even talking about people purposely misleading us, but rather the fact that we have to take at face value what we are told. That's blind faith. We both _assume_ we could dig and verify the facts (with enough time, money and education), but we don't -- we just believe.

My argument is the 'evidence' we think we have, is nothing more than blind faith in 99% of the time, simply because we don't have the time and resources to follow up on everything. We simply believe because everyone else does.

I, personally, have no _evidence_ that the big bang really happened. I have heard people tell me it's so. I've read books claiming it's so. I have to have faith in these books and these people. That's the essence of my argument -- very, very few of us have actual evidence. What we have is the words of others. In other words, there are only a small handful of people that have built a device that can measure background microwave radiation and devices to measure red-shift, etc. Those few people know what they have observed and can interpret that information. Everything else that is built on those observations (many more theories, etc) is based on a belief in those original few peoples' work. And we, the masses, then have to believe those secondary interpretations. Heck, I haven't even gotten the information from the data interpreters, but rather from other writers who have interpretted it further and written text books, blog posts, etc. So yeah, it's pretty close to blind faith since I'm so many steps away from the truth, and don't have the ability (currently, with my existing education) to truely know it anyway even if I could speak directly to one of those scientists that built the space probe. I'd STILL have to trust him when he showed me the raw data.

... says the "astronomy priest" to me :) I have to take your word for it. I know there is what appears to be a star that looks brighter than most others. I, personally, don't have a means at my disposal to know it's mars. I just have to believe you.

I agree with cookiecaper. I've never seen mars. I believe (blindly) that the books, pictures and lectures I've seen are real, and that other people's pronouncements (from NASA, etc) are real too, so I believe (ie have blind faith) that mars is real. I _assume_ (ie have faith) that I could do some research and become a little more sure.

Heck, that goes for atoms, electricity, just about everything. All I KNOW (without getting existential, etc) are things I've personally experienced. Everything else is pure belief (and blindly at that) based on trusting the sources.

OK, agreed. And did that guy just get up one day and decide to do this out of the blue? No way -- he fantasized about it first. Thoughts lead to actions -- it's always worked that way. Granted, not ALL thoughts lead to ALL actions, but no action ever happened before the thought. Encouraging or feeding a _destructive_ fantasy doesn't have any positive outcomes (neutral at best).

Damn. Getting all teary-eyed reading the posts in the other thread. Life on this little rock can be so hard sometimes... RIP Bill.

Like my other account is any less anonymous? (didn't realize I was signed in with this account).

Journalistic convention is more related to the topic??

We've just found out about someone that suffered through a hell-filled life because of some sicko's fantasy. I'd hope we would try and figure out a way to spare others the same aweful fate.

Drivers licenses are mandatory, and you get heavily fined if caught driving without it. This on the other hand is supposed to be voluntary. I certainly won't be volunteering any time soon.

That was really sad. I'm a Christian, but fully recognize there is some sickening hypocrisy in the 'Christian' world (and probably all religious and non-religious groups), but it's especially sick when these attitudes are propagated by supposed love. Truly, 'they worship me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me'.

This makes me question anything that supports rape fantasies. Anything that would even remotely encourage someone to act out this horrible, life ruining crime on another human being is very bad for society. It's one form of censorship I would support.

Man, I hate hearing about someone so gifted throwing their life away. Can you imagine if he had gotten interested in stopping the spam epidemic? That would have been awesome.

You just described the reason my father-in-law (and now I) believe that the best outcome is no movement. Thus we both vote (in the US) to try and create a stalemate in house vs Senate - both parties are so screwed up they damage everything they touch.