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The Difference Between Science and Religion
@ethang5
"If a scientist claims to understand a concept that turns out to be false, he could not have possibly understood it if the concept is supposed to explain a phenomena in reality."
I do not think you understand what science is. The way you come up with an "idea" in science is this:
1- You guess how the universe might be working and make a model. 2- You try to reason out what would happen and what wouldn't happen if said model was true. 3- You make experiments.
If the results of the experiment are the same as the idea predicted, then we say that this scientific idea is "true". And the model which this idea presents is "correct". What scientists do, is understand these models. Something does not need to be completely real for you to understand it. The rules of tetris for example, is entirely fictional. But we can understand those rules perfectly.
Scientists do not understand reality directly. Human perception does not allow direct observation. A scientist can only understand the universe partially. But, the thing is, science is never completely wrong.
The best way to realize this concept is to just look at the development of the atomic theory: 1- They are little, indivisable balls. 2- They are little + charged balls. 3- They are little balls with + and - charges randomly spread all around them. (Raisin pudding) 4- They are little balls with a + at the center and have -es around them. 5- The -es must be spinning around the nucleus. 6- The -es actually exist as possibility clouds. 7- There also needs to be a chargeless particle...
I think this much is enough to explain my case. Realize how on each step the idea of an atom is not entirely "wrong" but rather incomplete? None of the ideas there might be representing our reality perfectly but they are all partially true. And that "partial truth" is slowly increasing.
It is impossible for Newton's laws to be completely wrong. Because they are based upon proper observations. For example, his second law F = ma might not be true in the technical sense but that does not mean it doesn't hold any reality to it. The law states a relationship between force, mass and acceleration. And when we observe reality, we DO see this relationship. A law never turns out to be completely false. A) It turns out that it is incomplete B.) The law becomes generalized into something else(meaning it wasn't actually a "law"). But in both situations, the relationship that the law states exists.
If there ever comes a time in which some well-constructed scientific idea turns out to be entirely false, then it is not only science that is doomed; our hope of being able to understand reality, even in the slightest, is gone as well. We understand the universe because it is consistent. If this consistency is destroyed, none of our understandings will function. But it seems that, at least for now, the universe is pretty damn consistent. And as long as this consistency exists, it would be idiotic to think that we will not gain anything by studying it.
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Should Youtube silence the right?
@piloteer
The concept of "social responsibility" is something I strongly oppose, and obviously Google does not have it either. For that matter, from Google's perspective, Google is right to do whatever it can to promote its own interests, however crony the methods are - as long as it can get away with them.
At the same time, certain actions can have strong negative consequences on the society. Censorship culture is one of them, even if it does not originate in the government. As such, while I acknowledge Google's right to censor whatever it wants, I believe that people would do well to oppose such practices by voting with their wallets and giving Google negative publicity. It is the same situation as the infamous baker's cake story: the baker should have the full right to refuse to bake a cake with a special pro-LGBT message for a gay couple, but we should give that baker negative publicity to discourage such behaviors in the future.
I am going to use Youtube no matter what censorship practices it employs. I dislike it, for example, that it prohibits uploading of materials containing explicit violence or sexual content, but I am not going to abstain from using such an amazing service just because of that. At the same time, I will speak my mind about this issue, and should Youtube have a serious competitor in the future, I very well may consider switching to that.
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Should Youtube silence the right?
@WinstonC
In all fairness, I just gave this debate a purposely infuriating title as a shameless clickbait tactic, YouTube is not actually banning users based on their political affiliation. They're just targeting hate speech, violent content or rhetoric, holocaust denial, toxic conspiracy theorists (claiming school shootings are staged), and medical misinformation. Not for nothing, I think a lot of people on the right might be a little ruffled that people are arguing that those are the kind of things that the right stands for. I actually believe that the VAST majority of the right do not stand for those ideals. I also believe that those who are actually "not OK" with YouTube's policy are a very small minority of the right. I also believe that there is a small minority on the left who are not OK with YouTube's policy. It's not a policy that is actually targeting the right though. Those who are arguing that youtube is targeting the right are arguing that the right stands for hate speech, violent rhetoric, holocaust denial, toxic conspiracy theories, and medical misinformation, and perhaps they should stop and think about what they're arguing, because it may backfire and irck a lot of conservatives who don't want to be associated with those things.
I watched several videos last night with William F Buckley in them. Those videos are still there. He was the leading figure in the neo-conservative movement and even Ronald Reagan himself said it was Buckleys work that paved the way to his presidency. I'm sure you can find any Bill O'Reilly video you would like. Pat Buchanan videos can be found there, and he describes himself as a paleoconservative just like Alex Jones does. Videos of him haven't been removed from YouTube. Earlier I pointed out that stormfront actually discourages racial slurs and outright bans violent or illegal rhetoric on their site and its become more popular since they've done so. It's obviously in YouTube's best interest to take down offensive videos that may cause them to lose users. As far as YouTube getting special privileges that publishers don't get is simply because YouTube is not a publishing company. YouTube does have a lot of competition like vimeo and dailymotion for instance, so they aren't what can be considered a proper monopoly. A proper monopoly is a company that's so large that they are able to sell their products so cheap that they actually lose money, but they have the wealth to be able to absorb those losses longer than any smaller competitors (the most effective antitrust law is the law that makes it illegal to sell a product for cheaper than what it costs to make the product. There's where the bulk of the antitrust act is). YouTube doesn't sell a product, it's free to use, and other sites are not barred from using a similar, or even the same format that youtube uses.
Your argument that social media is powerful enough to alter the course of elections is basically an argument that social attitudes influence social attitudes. I guess I can't refute that, that is the very process of what drives politics, but to be able to express your political views freely, you need to use a public forum. A privately owned social media site is not, and never has been a reliable forum for total freedom of expression. Another point to be made here is, you haven't demonstrated how or why social media websites alter the course of an election, or whether they actually can. Surprisingly, many in the national defense sector will point out that Russian meddling in elections is not at all effective. It's been pointed out that Russian misinformation tactics only have gone the way the Russians had hoped it would half of the time. They've said that with a track record like that, it can easily be argued that it has no effect at all. The same argument can apply to social medias influence on public opinions or its effect on elections. It may not be a factor whatsoever!!! I saw someone on this very thread argue that "You can't simply force yourself to change your beliefs". But curiously that same person is arguing that social media can simply force [people] to change [their] beliefs?!?! And since when did YouTube become an important part of our democratic process?
WinstonC, it's a pleasure having thought provoking and civil discussions with you, I hope you stay for awhile. Welcome to DI
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Do you stand with Planned Parenthood, in protecting Title X?
I do not think the government has any business in this matter. Planned Parenthood is tax-exempt for no reason other than the government officials believing in its cause. I am all for not taxing corporations, but only if it applies to all corporations equally, not only to the ones nitpicked by the government.
I am all for Planned Parenthood; it is a good organisation. I am just against it being coddled by the government. If the government is to coddle anything at all, let it be things like technological innovation that benefit all people, rather than a small minority. After all, the taxes are paid by everyone, so exempting an organisation from taxes should not benefit people preferentially. -
The true definition of Atheism, and burden of proofs
As such, I subscribe to the following set of rules:
3) If you do not know if something exists and have nothing to go on, then assume that it does not.
4) If you do not know if something exists, but have solid arguments in support of its existence, then assume the neutral position: "It may or may not exist".You make a lot of good point in your post. However, the only issue I have is with 3 and 4 but only a little bit of an issue haha. The thing is that I would say if you do not know if something exists or not then just accept that as is for the time being; make no assumptions or inferences about it until evidence comes to light enabling you to make inferences.The thing with 4 is that in order to have solid arguments you need to have a certain degree of solid evidence, and if this is the case then I would say that accept that there is a degree of probability that something does exist while at the same time there exists a degree of possibility that it may not exist.
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Who would you save and why?
Unless I know something about these people not described in the question that could influence my decision strongly, I'm going to go by the numbers and save the 20 people.
If, say, those 5 people were my relatives, while the 20 people contained only people I have never seen in my life, then I would go with the 5.
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Who would you save and why?
you realize that mostly that would depend upon the circumstances, as well as the people, and the type of disaster; however, I would probably save the five people because of the time would be lesser to do so; saving 20 would take far longer and put myself into jeopardy.@ZeusAres42 -
Should Youtube silence the right?
"@WinstonC ;WinstonC said:@Plaffelvohfen I don't understand what you mean? If it's OK to discriminate based on someone's politics then logically surely it's also OK to discriminate based on their religion?
There are establishments that can and do deny service to anybody, for any reason. Stormfront, and several others were specifically made to cater to a specific demographic of our society, and they can ban someone if they feel they don't belong. It would be a strict violation of the constitution to stop them from doing that. But those sites are not nearly as popular as YouTube, so now some people believe YouTube is a public entity, even though it's not. Your only gripe is that youtube does ban users and videos, but it's very popular. Why is nobody calling on stormfront to be more inclusive? Because nobody cares about stormfront, everybody uses YouTube. It's an inconsistent argument from the start.@Plaffelvohfen To be clear, I wasn't asking if it's legally OK. I'm asking why it's OK in this case to discriminate based on political ideology but not other factors.
Your argument for the social ramifications of YouTube's actions don't work either. If youtube were to do something that is not okay with the bulk of society, they would know it, just like stormfront knows it. But it seems YouTube has not done anything that is socially unacceptable, because everybody still uses it. If they banned people because they were black or gay, they would end up with the same amount of users stormfront has. Your only real gripe is how popular YouTube is, but they're still privately owned.
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Abosulte Morality does not work with Theism as well as Atheism
@ZeusAres42 My understanding of Sam Harris' conception of morality is that it's morally good to increase the well-being of consciousness entities. As I independently came to essentially the same conclusion I will explain my rationale of why this idea doesn't require a God.
Consciousness is the only thing with independent significance or meaning. Other things can only be significant or have meaning through interacting with consciousness. If there was no consciousness or the potential for future consciousness then everything may as well not exist because nothing would be of any significance. It would be like a video game without a player, the environments and NPCs might interact but unless a player experiences it (or down the line indirectly experiences the consequences of it) it may as well have not happened.
From this, we know that the only significant effect we can have is via effecting consciousnesses. Further, from our own experience we know that positive experience is preferable to negative experience (relative to the individual's preferences of course). Moreover, the only reason to do anything is because the action will have significant consequences. Therefore we can know (at least in terms of ultimate result) what we should try to achieve and what we should try to avoid. As such, we can come to the conclusion that we should take actions which ultimately reduce suffering and/or increases positive experience. This is because doing so has an effect that is both significant and positive.
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Should Youtube silence the right?
@WinstonCUnder federal anti-discrimination laws, businesses can refuse service to any person for any reason, unless the business is discriminating against a protected class.
At the national level, protected classes include:
- Race or color
- National origin or citizenship status
- Religion or creed
- Sex
- Age
- Disability, pregnancy, or genetic information
- Veteran status
