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If the brain were simple enough to understand, then we would be too simple to understand it.
This is a statement that is appealing to the masses, but there is no reason to believe it is true, and plenty of reason to believe it is false.
On a daily basis I understand software code that is far too big to be loaded into my memory at once. Yet, I do understand the code. I could never hand-execute the code, but I can trace down any problem and fix it. I can develop new features. I can integrate the software with other software. I can do all this because of several things including modularization.
The brain also has modules, subnets of neurons, and those subnets have subnets. The same pattern of neural circuitry is repeated. The same ideas used over and over. Sure, the human brain is complicated, but it's not irreducibly complicated, and so it can be understood.
A problem may be hard, damn hard, so hard that it remains unsolved for centuries. Yet, this does not mean the problem is unsolvable.
If we may please return to the topic of the thread
This can only happen if trolls are banned. There is a reason I say they disrupt conversations and derail threads. This thread proves that beyond any doubt, reasonable or otherwise.
If we may please return to the topic of the thread
This can only happen if trolls are banned. There is a reason I say they disrupt conversations and derail threads. This thread proves that beyond any doubt, reasonable or otherwise.
Once again Dan is wrong. The "flame war" is very pertinent to this thread. Patrick is expressing the hypocrisy of the liberal left, and the pitfalls of accomodating Islam. Many of us on this thread have called Dan out for doing the exact same thing, by banning people who he disagrees with from posting on his threads. You see, those of us who are willing to call bullshit to the many lies Dan slings around this site have been banned JUST LIKE that liberal radio station BANNED Richard Dawkins for speech that they disagree with. Dan is just like Patrick says
KPFA Radio 94.1 FM
If the brain were simple enough to understand, then we would be too simple to understand it.
This is a statement that is appealing to the masses, but there is no reason to believe it is true, and plenty of reason to believe it is false.
On a daily basis I understand software code that is far too big to be loaded into my memory at once. Yet, I do understand the code. I could never hand-execute the code, but I can trace down any problem and fix it. I can develop new features. I can integrate the software with other software. I can do all this because of several things including modularization.
The brain also has modules, subnets of neurons, and those subnets have subnets. The same pattern of neural circuitry is repeated. The same ideas used over and over. Sure, the human brain is complicated, but it's not irreducibly complicated, and so it can be under...
Once again Dan is false and Patrick is right. Software code is.... wait for it.... SOFTWARE!
The brain is hardware. But Dan if you are so good, please tell us how to reboot a brain once it is turned off completely by the death of the organic unit that supports that hardware. I am sure it is only a matter of time before geniuses like you learn how to reanimate a brain right?
Show me how liberal philosophy is ever bad. I've shown you how belief in Christ is bad.
It is not my intention to paint "liberal philosophy" in a negative light. But your misrepresentation of my intentions is one of the reasons why I am repeatedly forced to call you on your bullshit. You simply won't let me or many of the others who disagree with you speak for ourselves and define our own positions.
Oh, and by the way you have not shown how belief in Christ is bad, you have shown how you misunderstand what it means to believe in Christ.
What is shocking to me is that the analogy is nearly perfect. Earlier in this thread you have argued that liberals are not liberals unless they pass your definition of what it means to be a liberal. I am also making that SAME ARGUMENT that Christians are not Christians unless they live up the Christ's definition of what it means to be a a Christian.
You allow yourself the liberty to define liberalism and evaluate a person's actions to determine if the label applies to an individual or organization. But you deny the liberty of Christ or Christians to define Christianity and evaluate a person's actions to determine if the label applies to an individual or organization. You are such a hypocrite.
The constant childish attempts by trolls to insult me in this thread demonstrates exactly why such trolls need to be banned from productive threads. All other non-troll users on this site should read through this thread and ask if you really want trolls like PeopleUnited, Blue Sardine (Shrek), CBOEtrader, and P N Dr Lo R doing the same thing on your threads. Once they get a stick up their ass regarding someone, they never quit. The only way to handle them is to ban them so they can only jerk off in their own threads.
Translation: please, Patrick and anyone else who will listen to his whining, Dan doesn't feel safe, he needs other people to expand his safe zone because he is one of, if not the most special snowflakes on the Christmas tree and there are too many people who are not accepting his false logic despite many years and numerous hours of typing and posting and crying like a baby when his thread is derailed, (even though he repeatedly does the exact same thing when given the opportunity). You must make them accept him or ban them from posting.
Does that sound like anything else today???
Dans logic.... Hitler was a man therefore all men are pure evil. That's how his mind reasons.
The constant childish attempts by trolls
Am I the only one that justs scans through Dan's long tedious posts?
Edit: Dan does have some good ideas but gets caught up in his own egotism.
@patrick reinstate the comment limit to enforce succinctness. Thanks
Dans logic.... Hitler was a man therefore all men are pure evil. That's how his mind reasons.
Are you really so stupid that you don't realize I was demonstrating that such reasoning is wrong? Or are you just lying because you think the ends justify the means?
Richard Dawkins censored in Berkeley because he does not like Islam
Dan censors 28 Patnetters from posting on his threads because he does not like people who disagree with him. Patrick supports this.
A Corte Madera bookstore has stepped up to host an event with evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins just days after Berkeley public radio station KPFA abruptly canceled a similar event, citing Dawkins’ criticism of Islam.
“As an independent bookseller, we are in strong support of independent thinking,†Karen West, events director for Corte Madera’s Books Passage, said in a statement. “We would never censor one of the greatest thinkers of our time!â€
Book Passage will hold a book signing and discussion of Dawkins’ latest work, “Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist.†The event is scheduled for 7 p.m. Aug. 9 — the same date the original Berkeley event had been planned.
This is a bookstore that deserves everyone's support! Good on them.
Female reproduction definitely goes down as IQ goes up, but it's the opposite for men IIRC.
Female reproduction definitely goes down as IQ goes up, but it's the opposite for men IIRC.
No, women prefer bad boys, not smart boys. Women used to prefer smart men because there was a high correlation to the intelligence of the man of the house and the survivability of the children as well as with income. Today that is not true. Ultimately, this is a bad thing for the species.
Maybe there should be a part where posts are structured as propositions, with one person taking the pro stance, and one taking con, and points awarded by everyone else for:
1. providing good evidence and reasoning
2. answering the question
3. being civil
This would not work. Assholes will simply award points to their butt buddies and assign penalties to those they hate regardless of the content.
You have two choices to make this work.
1. Hire professional judges (expensive).
2. Use an A.I. to judge debates.
The later is much more fun, but would take a lot of time to develop, multiple person-years. It would be a very interesting project though.
Maybe there should be a part where posts are structured as propositions, with one person taking the pro stance, and one taking con, and points awarded by everyone else for:
1. providing good evidence and reasoning
2. answering the question
3. being civilThis would not work. Assholes will simply award points to their butt buddies and assign penalties to those they hate regardless of the content.
Ha ha ha. Look who's talking.
Richard Dawkins has spent a significant part of his career as an antagonist against Christianity, working hard to make Christians look like fools, uneducated rubes, believers in an ancient dead mythology.
As he has observed Islam beginning to take cultural hegemony over Britain, he has found himself increasingly worried at the results.
Oopsie.
I wonder if he has considered what Islamic Law says about atheists?
That's right — 'misbelievers' — non-Muslim religious people and atheists are lumped together and are at risk of life imprisonment (for women) and death (for men) in some Muslim countries.
Poor Richard.
Dawkins is kinda late to realize that Christianity is our best defense against Islam.
it's fundamentally hostile to women, hostile to gays and, I find that I like to live in a culturally Christian country, although I do not believe a single word of the Christian faith
Our best defense is to get out of the Middle East and to stop escalating.
Little too late for that
The big Internalized Leftism myth is that all trouble in the Middle East is caused by American Intervention.
The Assyrians were replaced by the Guti of the lower slopes and valleys of the Zagros mountains, for example, before the Bronze Age collapse, FFS.
And so in the 1980s, the Iran-Iraq War was War #477 stretching back into the 2000s BC over this area.
Very little is known about the Guti, who appear to have been barbarian raiders from the Zagros [Mountains] who brought to an end the Dynasty of Akkad and destroyed its capital circa 2200 BC. Gutium, a mountainous area in south-west Iran, was a troublesome part of the Akkadian Empire and the year names of the kings of Akkad record campaigns against the region. ...
The Guti were finally expelled by Uthegal, King of Uruk circa 2100 BC.
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