I'm not about to go chasing religion's tail again, but the claim being made in this video is pretty freaking strong. It sounds remarkably similar to claims made by classical physicists...they didn't have any measurements that didn't fit within their framework, so obviously it was complete. Now, you have physical evidence of the accuracy of quantum mechanics in the computer you're currently using. Transistors could not work under classical physics.

In the next century or two, I'm pretty sure we'll have developed technology that requires fundamental changes in our knowledge of physics, and those technologies will provide physical evidence of the superiority of that new knowledge. Physics students of that time will laugh at claims like this, just as we do at those who made them centuries ago.

Except the CPI provides propaganda, not information--which is what @coffeejerk was trying to point out to you. By your own standards CPI fails anyway... if you read further down the wiki page you cited you'd see this:

The Corruption Perceptions Index has drawn increasing criticism in the decade since its launch, leading to calls for the index to be abandoned. This criticism has been directed at the quality of the index itself, and the lack of actionable insights created from a simple country ranking.

So it's basically a number that doesn't help us predict anything with any greater accuracy. Further on in that section it talks about the dubious methodology used to come up with the number in the first place. Like I said above, it is propaganda, not science.

@coffeejerk

Measurements used in science are generally not flawless and ideal, but are considered useful if they allow us to predict reality with greater accuracy.


For example, if you're a journalist who wishes to avoid being imprisoned for criticizing the government, you should research in which countries that's a common practice.

You might disagree that that counts as corruption, but in the real world, people will make decisions based on the best information available to them, even if you dislike the results.

You know what happens when you break the stick off a bottle-rocket and light it?

Yeah I bet that happens sometimes here too. That's why tank cannon barrels are rifled if they aren't firing fin-stabilized munitions. I'm sure this video is selectively edited to give the impression of accuracy.

Benefits:
1. If a government did decide to crush it's citizens by way of direct physical means, then the citizens would have a marginally increased chance of defending themselves against small task forces.

2. If someone without invitation enters your home lacking any degree of friendly intentions, then having a small remote control sized devise to 'turn them off' could be beneficial to yourself and your loved ones, provided you knew how to use it safely and could analyze a situations quickly and calmly enough while rationally determining when to and when not to act with said device.

As a general statement about the item and not the skill or mentality of using the item, I think guns are a very effective, reliable, strategically advantageous and intelligently engineered tool for destroying a target from range while increasing your level of safety as best one can.

.. and it is for this core reason above while combined with others that I think civilians should not have them for a reason as illegitimately justified as 'I want one'.
Combine the high degree of effectiveness of the tool, while noting what the single effectiveness is (i.e. quick ranged destruction), with mental instabilities and you have a potentially negative and hard to control situation. Arming more people to act as defenders only further pushes the negative potential to higher levels as they are also subject to fluctuations of rational thought.

For those who want to 'shoot down' this above statement as a curable and treatable problem of mental health, you are inherently and naturally wrong. Emotions are not rational thought, they are effective survival mechanisms precisely because they can easily blind us to some logical thought processes that could otherwise get in the way of us doing what seemingly needs to be done, depending on which emotion is in question and any circumstantial details of the specific situation.
Emotions evolved over a long period of time and subsequently are not geared beneficially for all the challenges we face in this modern world, the result is byproduct effects.

In regards to my 1st stated benefit, if someone genuinely thinks that because they have a tool that can spit out 600 rounds of lead a minute with an effective accuracy range of 800 meters, that this is going to give them a realistically decent chance of going head to head and holding their own against an army of people who are just like themselves (i.e. standard human attributes) with the difference of this activity being the life they have dedicated themselves to professionally for years.. then that pro-gun human is grossly delusional.
The previous point doesn't even begin to touch on the sheer difference of resources in terms of quantity let alone quality, in that if you actually managed to hold your own for long enough, you would get bombed into oblivion without ever having a clue it was going to happen until at best a second or 2 before it occurred.

Re my 2nd stated benefit, if the intruder has already gained access to your house before you have your tool in hand and aimed at them, then there is as reasonable a chance they could get to you before you can defend yourself, at which point that tool could then potentially be used against you or you loved ones.

PS: crap, that was meant to be a short post.

The Taliban kill school children. The Taliban declare that they specifically targeted and meant to kill those children. I call this an act of terrorism.

American drones target the Taliban leaders making those declarations. They spend many hours gathering intelligence trying to verify the accuracy of their targets. If the American's kill any innocents nearby by accident, they don't claim that as a bonus. They don't publicly declare, as the Taliban do, that those dead children should serve as a warning to everyone else of what happens to those that oppose them. The American's declare such casualties as regrettable, but insist on the necessity of stopping the Taliban leaders.

Both are acts of violence, but it is naive in the extreme to fail to see that there is a substantial and objective difference between the two.

If you must have your good guy bad guy terms to be able to understand things: The bad guys kill children, on purpose, and insist that they will continue killing more children until they get their way. The good guys kill the bad guys, and occasionally some children get killed by accident. The good guys apologize and say they wished they could stop the bad guys in a better way.

@messenger Thank you for your reply. I go into more depth about this issue in my reply to Bicycle repairman, so instead of repeating myself, I'll direct you to that.

I will elaborate a bit. Here is the key sentence from that link:

When a geologist collects a rock sample for radiometric age dating, or collects a fossil, there are independent constraints on the relative and numerical age of the resulting data. Stratigraphic position is an obvious one, but there are many others.

Notice it says there are constraints on the age placed by such things as stratigraphic position, but then they deny circularity. It's actually using the stratigraphic position which entails circularity! They did say there are "many other" methods, but you'll notice that they didn't discuss any of them. That is because stratigraphy is the primary way they "check" the accuracy of the data. Well, then you have to ask, how do they determine what the stratigraphic position is? Well, since they are mostly dealing with sedimentary rocks, the way they tell the differing layers apart is by their index fossils. They are often sitting in the wrong order, and one part of a layer can differ from another in how it was formed, so they use the index fossils to tell them what layer they're actually dealing with. So if the stratigraphic position is determining the relative age, then the fossils are actually dating the rocks and the circularity is not overcome.

This is a bit wanky.

I mean, the stuff is cool, I just dislike the intro saying that we were 'lied' to in early school to the extent of flat earth vs round.

No, we're taught a far easier to understand approximation that is accurate enough to carry us through our ENTIRE lives if we aren't going to get into astrophysics or other fields where this sort of minuscule level of accuracy is required.

You try to teach kids this high level stuff and you end up them not taking ANY of it in.

This sort of pedantry is what would make for a NOT good teacher, spending entire lessons on the minutia of things rather than what matters will turn off kids in droves.

Well, to be strictly correct, one must say "some god" is an ever receding pocket. Not every person of faith rejects science.

And we care about accuracy, right?

Not a study involving experts. Totally believable that on average people can't tell the difference. But I wonder if there were outliers. Were any of the subjects able to do it with surprising accuracy? Were some wines consistently rated high/low priced?

Not saying I can discriminate price--and price is not a good discriminator on whether it tastes good--but wines definitely taste differently from one another.

I don't think it's a toss up, I said that I don't know how close it is and that the polls I've seen had them neck and neck - and you quoted me saying that it looks like Obama is going to win.

>> ^bmacs27:

Of course. What isn't. However it has the advantage of being aggregated across all of the data, and thus increasing sample size. It's true, if there is a consistent bias in the sampling techniques of all polling agencies that happens to consistently favor Obama, it might be off a little. However, it would have to be wildly off (and extremely anomalous given that the historical accuracy of polling is also factored in) for that to happen. But yes, it could happen. However, I'd be happy to bet that it won't, especially that most odds makers have him as about a 3-1 favorite. The narrowest moneyline I ever saw was right after the first debate when Obama commanded a -165. That's still better than a 3-2 favoring. Since you seem to think it's a tossup, you must be happy to give me even odds. Whaddya say... $10,000 bet?
>> ^Quboid:
Interesting @bmacs27, but only as reliable as its data. @moodonia, that's the bookie I was referring to, I guess that was nonsense, although I see their odds are very short on Obama. Bookies aren't fools, they'll have looked at the swing states so that's good to see.

Of course. What isn't. However it has the advantage of being aggregated across all of the data, and thus increasing sample size. It's true, if there is a consistent bias in the sampling techniques of all polling agencies that happens to consistently favor Obama, it might be off a little. However, it would have to be wildly off (and extremely anomalous given that the historical accuracy of polling is also factored in) for that to happen. But yes, it could happen. However, I'd be happy to bet that it won't, especially that most odds makers have him as about a 3-1 favorite. The narrowest moneyline I ever saw was right after the first debate when Obama commanded a -165. That's still better than a 3-2 favoring. Since you seem to think it's a tossup, you must be happy to give me even odds. Whaddya say... $10,000 bet?

>> ^Quboid:

Interesting @bmacs27, but only as reliable as its data. @moodonia, that's the bookie I was referring to, I guess that was nonsense, although I see their odds are very short on Obama. Bookies aren't fools, they'll have looked at the swing states so that's good to see.

I'm with @silvercord, suit him up and see what happens.

His distance field goal accuracy didn't seem spectacular compared to clips I've seen of NFL kickers in similar practice situations (ie. no angry linemen trying to rush you, block the kick, or rip your leg off and stuff it up your ass), but still very very good.

However, his punt accuracy would allow for some very interesting set special teams plays. Not just reliable coffin-corner punts, but onside kicks, punting to a specific target and trying to force a fumble, etc. etc.

Don't try and pawn this off on me. It's not my "excuse". I'm closed only to one idea: of my being absolutely certain about anything. I'm not closed to any other idea, period. You have failed to convince me. That's why I don't accept your story. And after all this, you revealed yourself to be absolutely certain of your own judgement that your numinous experiences are coming from God.

Let me get this straight..you're completely closed to the idea of being absolutely certain of something. Think about that for a minute and see if you can spot the inherent contradiction contained within this idea.

If I say there is absolute truth, and someone says no there isn't, and I say are you absolutely sure about that?, this isn't a trivial question. That's what I used to think, that it was some kind of cheap trick, and ultimately meaningless. Don't be like I was and just dismiss this without giving it a great deal of thought. The fact is, you can't deny the idea of absolute truth without confirming it. It's not a cheap parlor cheap of logic, it is a revelation of the framework of reality, of how things really work. That there really is a certain truth, and everything you ultimately believe, flawed logic and all, ultimately points to it. It actually could be no other way. There is a ground for everything we know and understand. The atheist says though that's he is standing on air. The issue is that subjective beings can't know anything about objective reality so they grope around in the dark trying to understand what truth is. An atheism has no route to get beyond his subjective understanding. The only way you can understand truth then is by the light of revelation. IE, someone without objective understanding (an omniscient being) would have to enlighten you. If you've never seen light then you won't understand what darkness is. Jesus said if the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

What I believe is that you were not systematic in trying to understand your experience. When you woke up from it and figured out that you were being led down a path to insanity, you just wrote the whole thing off as being entirely in your mind. I would liken this to coming home one day and finding a group of thieves moving furniture out of your house and loading it into a truck. You ask them what they're doing and they say that they are a moving company and that you called them and set up an appointment 2 weeks ago to move you out, and don't you remember? Oh wow, you say, it must have skipped my mind! It looks like it was just a rash idea of mine, really sorry for this inconvenience! You then proceed to help them move your furniture back into your house.

As you're moving everything back in, you notice the door has been busted open and the house has been ransacked. You ask them about this and they say that just earlier you were here trying to let them into house but you couldn't find your key so you kicked the door in because you didn't want to keep them waiting. You then tore the house apart looking for your keys, and when you found them you left to go get something to eat and that's where you've been this whole time. Pondering this you decide that if you could forget about calling them in the first place then you could most certainly forget about doing all of those other things too.

So you finally get everything back in the house and you again apologize profusely for wasting their time, but as they are leaving, they say don't worry about it because we were never here. We're just part of a dream you're having. Goodbye! You think to yourself, considering the memory problems I've been having, this seems very reasonable. The next day a friend stops by and asks you what happened to your house. Oh, it was all a bad dream, you say. I apparently did all of this in my sleep, but it's over now, not to worry!

I don't know what your experience was; typically, they try to convince you that you're some kind of Messiah-like figure, or that reality is centered around you in some way. What I do know is that things happened to you which you cannot explain; signs and wonders, strange "coincidences", etc. These were the signposts in your journey that reinforced your paradigm and kept you on that road. You want to believe that it was all in your head rather than a strategic plan to destroy you, so you chalk it up to delusion. It wasn't all delusion, though; you were being herded down a path, probably with the goal of getting you to kill yourself, and it's only because they went too far that you woke up from that spell.

You have failed to convince me. That's why I don't accept your story.

I can't convince you of anything. This isn't an intellectual problem that you're having, it is an issue of your heart. Only God can convince you, but your heart is hardened towards Him and you refuse to come near to Him.

And after all this, you revealed yourself to be absolutely certain of your own judgement that your numinous experiences are coming from God.

That's just what I've been saying all along, that there is a certain truth, and God reveals it to those who seek Him. That truth is Jesus Christ. You've admitted that God could convince me, so it isn't an inherently irrational position.

All you're telling me is that you are convinced of something, and FWIW, I believe that you are. You have no grounds to believe that your human perceived conviction is warranted, especially given that you know of many other humans who are equally convicted about things that contradict what you believe. That alone should give you doubt about your convictions, as it gives me doubt. If it doesn't give you doubt, you're not being rational. What's more likely: that you alone are correct among all the millions of equally convicted people, or that all equally convicted people, including you, are wrong? What makes you so special?

Nothing makes me special; I simply responded to Gods calling. I can explain why people follow false religion in imitation of the true God, which is that Satan blinds the eyes of unbelievers so that they cannot know the truth about God. He backs up their experiences with supernatural signs and wonders so that they believe they are on the right path. Satan is an imitator of God:

2Co 11:13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
2Co 11:14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
2Co 11:15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

I DO doubt my own existence -- at least, I don't take it as fact that I exist. I could be a brain in a vat, etc. I don't accept my own senses either as categorical evidence. I live as if they're accurate because it's instinctive and it serves me to do so. Skepticism is not ignorance. Accepting something absolutely and uncritically is ignorance. You expect me to accept your word on faith. Why should I believe you? You're just some random person on their internet soapbox who claims to have visions of god. See how stupid it would be for me to change my life because of that? You wouldn't.

I don't think you're actually that skeptical, because I haven't really seen you critically examine your own presuppositions. You say that you don't have any preference for the truth, but that is clearly not true. You are very slanted in favor of a liberal/humanistic/naturalistic mindset, and you oppose any ideas which contradict it. You clearly do accept some things, like evolution for instance, as the gospel truth. This is very inconsistent with your statements about uncertainty. You've seen the human capacity to delude itself, so you keep saying, but you don't seem to question the thought process that leads you to any of these conclusions.

The reason I came to be a Christian, and no one ever witnessed to me by the way, is because I wanted to know the truth and God showed me what it is. I had sufficient evidence from God to give my life to Jesus, and then Jesus completely transformed me and made me a new person. I didn't expect any of that to happen. I had no idea what it would mean to become a Christian. But it did happen, supernaturally, and I found out later that it matched up to everything the bible said would happen. It's one thing to use confirmation bias to make a bunch of coincidence and happenstance into some kind of experience of God. It's another to be transformed at the core of your being into an entirely new person, losing all the negatives and gaining an unlimited supply of peace, joy, hope and love. Even more so when it happens within a moment in time. I've seen miracles, and I've seen things like demon possession. I am certain because God made me certain, but there is plenty of evidence to justify my certainty.

You are certain about God's revelation to you because God has given you certainty of it. That's tautology, if you're a rational agent.

Actually, it's circular reasoning. You will find that every inductive argument suffers from this problem. You cannot actually ultimately justify a single one of your beliefs to me. The conversation could go like this:

You: (objection to a stated fact or belief)
Me: Is that a rational statement?
You: Yes, it is logical.
Me: How do you know it is logical?
You: Because I reason it to be so.
Me: How do you know your reasoning is valid?
You: Because I reason it to be so.

Repeat ad infinitum. You've admitted that you can't trust your senses, and you just assume that you're rational because it's instinctive, which provides you no ultimate justification for anything you believe. That you're telling me it's wrong to use circular reason is absurd since everything you believe is based on it.

Circular reasoning is not necessarily fallacious because you cannot point to an ultimate authority for any claim without using it. Look at the issues this problem of induction causes when it comes to proving scientific theory:

"Joel Feinberg and Russ Shafer-Landau note that “using the scientific method to judge the scientific method is circular reasoning”. Scientists attempt to discover the laws of nature and to predict what will happen in the future, based on those laws. However, per David Hume's problem of induction, science cannot be proven inductively by empirical evidence, and thus science cannot be proven scientifically. An appeal to a principle of the uniformity of nature would be required to deductively necessitate the continued accuracy of predictions based on laws that have only succeeded in generalizing past observations. But as Bertrand Russell observed, “The method of ‘postulating’ what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning

You cannot use empirical evidence to prove empiricism is valid, just as you can't use the scientific method to prove the scientific method is valid. Therefore science cannot be proven scientifically! It needs an ultimate justification which cannot be proven inductively. Therefore, you would have to use a deductive argument by presupposing the uniformity of nature to justify the continued accuracy of the predictions of science. But again, just assuming the uniformity in nature leads you to the same problem. The only evidence you have that the future will be like the past is in the past. Therefore it would be fallacious reasoning to say the future will be like the past because of the past.

This is where the problem comes in for the atheist, because he must use viciously circular reasoning, which is always fallacious. I can point to God to justify logic, truth, the uniformity in nature, and my own rationality. These concepts don't make any sense in an atheistic worldview, because there is no way to justify them. My reasoning isn't viciously circular..I can point to an ultimate authority. Your reason is viciously circular because you must point to yourself as the authority.

You want God to be real so you deny all evidence even to other *possibilities*, let alone facts.

I didn't originally go looking for God. He tapped me on the shoulder. I didn't become a Christian because I wanted God to be real, I became a Christian because the evidence indicated He is real.

I don't want anything in particular to be real. I only want to be as sure as possible of what I do believe.

I don't think you want the Christian God to be real, and would prefer that He wasn't. What you can be sure of is that you cannot ultimately justify any of your beliefs.

Yes, of course a god could convince you, but just because you're convinced, doesn't mean it was God who did it. That would be a faulty syllogism. Minds can play the most amazing tricks on people. That's documented fact.

How is it that when you have evidence that confirms your belief, it's faulty, but when you reject that evidence, it's rational? Just because you can potentially falsify an idea doesn't mean it has been falsified. I have a path to the truth, as you've admitted. God could make me certain, and He could reveal truth, so it isn't irrational to believe it, considering the overwhelming evidence that I have received, and continue to receive, each and every day. When God touches your life, you have a justified true belief in Him. In every case, when God makes someone certain, they are going to justified in saying that they're certain. You would say all these people are delusional, but you have no way to be able to tell the difference. Only the individual could really know that they've been touched by God. The only way you could find out is if you were yourself touched by God. That's what I've been trying to tell you all along. I can't convince you, but God can. He loves you and He is waiting for you to soften your heart and seek His face. That is the only thing which will prove or disprove my claim.


>> ^messenger:

stuff

What does any of this have to do with my comment or this video?

>> ^Mashiki:

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
Bullshit.
AIM is a corporate front group funded by the Oil Industry. Last I checked, the Oil Industry was not super concerned with "Accuracy In Media."
The items this guy (a FOX NEWS analyst) is screaming about are conservative talking points that have been featured extensively on FOX, among other corporate media outlets.
This presentation (and organization) is every bit a part of the machine it pretends to protest.
I agree with the hyperbolic sentiment of the title, but not the hypocrisy within.
Yeah that's funny. Next you'll be telling us that media matters is a fully non-partisan group that isn't funded by george soros, and hasn't been having pow-wows with the white house on how to spin the news. And that fast and furious didn't result in the deaths of 300 mexicians, the death of an american, and the cold blooded gunning down of 16 kids at a party either.
I suggest watching the full 30min speech instead of the four minute clip, it's much better.