I haven't watched the video yet, but GeeSussFreek's comment prompted me to reply. I don't want to sound mean, but most of GSF's comment is gobbledygook. Words like "experience" and "consciousness" need to be thrown out of the discussion unless you not only rigorously define them but also prove that they apply to humans. If you define them simply as "what human minds do" (which is what you have done in your talk of experiencing the color blue) then all you have is a tautology.

The problem with the man in the box thought experiment is as gwiz665 pointed out. First, you can't just assume such a translation book would be possible. If such a book did exist, if the book allowed for fluent conversation on arbitrary topics, then the man-plus-book system would indeed possess understanding of the language. Saying the man doesn't have understanding of the language is like dividing a brain into the amygdala, hypothalamus, etc and saying of any piece that it doesn't possess understanding of language--it's true but doesn't prove anything other than that intelligence isn't infinitely divisible into smaller pieces of the same. Just like water isn't infinitely divisible into smaller pieces of water, eventually you find the individual pieces are made out of some other kind of stuff.

A simple thought experiment shows that AI is not only possible, but with computers that process information the same as today's. The brain is made out of matter, which obeys the laws of quantum mechanics, which we can simulate on today's hardware. A computer that is sufficiently fast could simulate the fertilization of a human egg and its development into a full grown adult. Running the simulation in real time and providing it with the appropriate input signals(a pair of video cameras for vision, etc), the adult would be just as intelligent or self-aware as you or me. In fact, any words like "experience" or "consciousness" you use to talk about you or me would apply equally to our simulated person. By starting the simulation at the fertilization of the egg, it doesn't even require any knowledge about how the brain works. But, since it is unlikely that the brain directly relies on quantum phenomena, with sufficient knowledge of the cellular and chemical structure of the brain you could simulate it at that level instead and get the same results on hardware that is many orders of magnitude slower. The only way to refute this line of reasoning is to relegate the mind to some supernatural phenomenon, but at that point you're believing in magic and all bets on meaningful conversation are off.

I would like to add to and refine IAmTheBlurr's comments.

I haven't thought about this specific point much, but it does seem reasonable to say that atheism is not a belief system. This would mean that, in addition to the possible atheistic comments Blurr listed above, we could add "Huh? A god? What's that?". That is, a person who had never been exposed to any supernatural idea would also be an atheist. This is the point that Sam Harris is trying to make--that atheism is the default state of a mind. I suppose this means that agnosticism is a subset of atheism, although agnosticism has the additional connotation of "and I don't care".

Incidentally, it is not the case that nothing can be said about god's existence. When it comes to considering the veracity of claims, the notion that we can only say "true", "false", or "I don't know" is an oversimplification. Instead, every claim exists on scale from 0% to 100% probability of being true. The only things that exist at 0% are those that are logically impossible, and the only things that exist at 100% are those which are a logical necessity; any claim which depends on "facts" is somewhere between, but not including, 0% and 100%. A 0% claim would be "I am standing 15 feet to my right"--a self contradiction; a 100% claim would be "I am right here". "I am on Pluto having tea with green Martians" depends on facts--observations, measurements, etc--so it can not be 0% or 100%, but we can easily imagine it's so close to 0% that in a casual conversation we would say it's impossible.

There are various definitions for "god". People learn the meanings of words not by some Matrix-like scenario where a perfect copy of the information is transferred into their brains, but by how they see the words used and not used in their everyday experiences. Every individual has a unique set of experiences, so everybody has unique definitions for every word they know. This, by the way, means it is important to define relevant words when having a serious conversation; this is done in both science and law. Any definition that is self contradictory has a 0% probability of being true. We all have contradictory beliefs; it's impossible to review every idea you've ever had every time you form a new idea. A difference between a rational person and an irrational one is that the rational person is willing to reevaluate his ideas when the contradictions are brought to his conscious attention. Any god whose entire definition is "all loving, all knowing, all powerful" is arguably self contradictory if you accept disease/war/etc as true facts.

Any god definition which contradicts facts that are sufficiently close to 100%, and which has no other facts in its favor(I happen to know of no supernatural god definition with facts in its favor) will be comparatively close to 0%. So, a god that depends on creationism is so close to 0% that in casual conversation we would say such a god is "batshit lunacy". This is the case for the god defined by the Bible, as a whole, as well as those of the Torah, Koran, and most other religions.

Even if you have a god definition that is not self contradictory, and has no facts for or against it, its probability of being true will be closer to 0% than 100%. One line of reasoning works like the following. The number of possible propositions a person could make, alternatively the sea of ideas that are either true or false, is infinite. But the number of things that are true is finite(if you don't want to buy that, then "there are an infinite number of false variations of each true statement" works as well). Thus, a proposition with no facts for or against it is essentially just a random item on this list of all possible propositions, which contains more falsehoods than truths, and so the proposition is most likely false. People have intuited this on their own and it shows up in all sorts of contexts, such as the legal system's presumption of innocence.

Based on all the above, most people's idea of god is so close to 0% it's as false as the idea that the moon is made of cheese.

Full disclosure: I consider myself an atheist. I think that religion is untrue, inherently dangerous, actively harmful to individuals and society, is child abuse, and needs to be eradicated.

I like Voyager the least of the various Treks. It has a number of characters I dislike: Janeway and Chakotay often seem like asses, Neelix is annoying, Vilana(sp?) is an angsty teenager. The doctor's character is excellent though. I also strongly disliked the large amount of pro-religion gobble-de-gook throughout the show. I think just about every character had an entire episode devoted to him/her having a religious experience. /vomit

His explanation could be a bit better. The key to the answer to the viewer's question is that the universe doesn't recognize macro objects like stars, planets, etc; as far as gravity is concerned it's all just particles. He comes close to this when he talks about getting closer to the black hole because it's smaller, but he should have taken it a step further. If you were standing on the surface of a star, only some of the particles that make up that star would be close to you, most of them hundreds of thousands to millions of miles away from you. Since gravity's strength is dependent on distance, those far away particles would have relatively little effect on you. If you were standing on the surface of a black hole, those particles would all be only a couple miles at most away from you. That's ignoring the issue of what a black hole is really made of, which isn't relavent here; to be more accurate we could just replace of the concept of "x number of particles" with "x amount of mass".

That said, Phil Plait is good stuff. I check his blog daily.

Here's the link to download the source video instead of playing it in the browser. The video is 195 megs, and the browser tries to load the whole thing into memory. I use VLC to play flv files, I'm not sure what else works. And as a bonus, the second link is to the cinematic trailer.

http://us.media.blizzard.com/1901200114/_video/gameplay/diablo3-gameplay-en-US.flv
http://us.media.blizzard.com/1901200114/_video/teaser/diablo3-teaser-en-US.flv

Sigh, I had typed up a half a page worth of comment and realized I needed another half page more so decided to just give up. Now I see SDGundamX's comment and wish I had posted mine.

So here's the short version. This video is misleading; in at least one spot it is misleading to the point of spouting hogwash. It mixes together separate phenomena from cosmology, quantum mechanics, and plain probability without clearly labeling them or distinguishing between them. Their "parallel universe theory" is not a theory, but an interpretation, of which there are multiple, of quantum mechanics; it's not even the most widely accepted interpretation. If you're interested in the phenomena they fumble over in this video then google, or just wikipeida, these terms: Copenhagen interpretation, many-worlds intepretation, quantum entanglement, wave-particle duality.

For being a pro-rational thought site, that fluoride article on skeptoid.com that deathbychimps linked is awful. It uses language that smacks of conspiracy theory talk. For example: "Measure W was essentially a devious, deceitful trick intended to further the anti-fluoridation lobby's agenda at the expense of the dental health of Arcata's children". That sentence paints opponents of fluoridation as a monolithic entity with some ulterior motive, as opposed to random concerned individuals. The article is also incorrect in its premise; fluoride IS dangerous.

The city water where I live contains high levels of fluoride. When I was growing up we were not aware it was an issue; now, my teeth are discolored and pitted similar to those in the video.

This should be in the dark and terrible channels. This is extremely awful.
Those people are contributing to the kid's problem. Individuals crave freedom and respect for their ability to make their own choices, and to be part of a group; these people are trivializing the kid's choices and desires, and are ganging up on him thus making him an outsider. His own brother has completely emasculated and humiliated him, in front of (to the kid, I assume) strangers even. That's probably why he feels that way about Myspace; he can find plenty of people there that treat him as an equal.
This definitely looks far worse than the xbox360 kid situation. If this is typical of the kid's life he will possibly suffer impaired social skills later in life.

The caller didn't get around to stating his point until the very end, but I think I followed his (flawed) logic and he seemed to be saying this:
<caller's view>
Evolution must be false since its proponents say humans evolved from apes(1.) yet apes are still around now. Since evolution started in some specific geographic location(2.), and creationism says Adam and Eve were created in some specific geographic location, then evolution and creationism are in agreement on the idea that life originated in a specific geographic location. Since they are in agreement on that fact then that fact must be true(3.), and since as per the first sentence evolution is false that leaves creationism as having to be true(4.) as it is the remaining alternative agreeing with said fact. Further, since evolution agrees with creationism on that fact which must true, then evolution is in fact creationism(5.) that has been modified and had god taken out all because some people just don't like god(6.).
</caller's view>

There are many problems with that train of thought:

1. Humans did not evolve from apes; humans and apes evolved from the same ancestor which was some third thing. People say humans evolved from apes in casual conversation because "ape" can be broadly defined to mean anything with an opposable thumb other than a human. Don't put too much stock in how words seem to be used in casual conversation; to have a serious discussion on a topic the first thing you do is define the words you're going to use.

2. Evolution did not start in a specific geographic location. The caller is confusion evolution(change in life, which would occur where ever life is) with abiogenesis(the origin of life, from chemical reactions). Abiogenesis also did not necessarily start in a specific geographic location. The necessary chemicals would have covered the entire planet, as those chemicals formed from the same large cloud of material the planet itself formed from. (Search the sift for "The Origin of Life made easy".)

3. Just because two views that otherwise are in opposition happen to be in agreement on a particular idea does not make that idea true. It's trivial to think up arguments which demonstrate this. This is a flaw in the caller's logic as opposed to the misunderstanding of facts in points 1 and 2.

4. Even if evolution were false, that would not automatically mean creationism must be true. Just because you've ruled as false all but one of a set of explanations does not mean the remaining one must be true; they could have all been false. This is another logical fallacy, and again it's trivial to think up examples that contradict the caller's idea. The caller also makes another misunderstanding of fact here by claiming creationism and evolution/abiogenesis are the only explanations for life.

5. Just because two views agree on a particular subtopic doesn't mean the two views are the same. It seems that what the caller is trying to do here is say that proponents of evolution aren't merely saying things that are false but they are saying things they know are false and thus they are liars. It's an emotionally motivated attack against the evolution proponents' characters and motivations; he's trying to claim evolution proponents secretly believe in god but support evolution because they dislike god. Involving someone's character or motivations in an assessment of the veracity of their argument is another logical fallacy.

6. There are large numbers of people who claim to believe both in god and evolution. Various Popes have even made the claim or at least come close.

I haven't read exactly what the video is suppose to be, but I'll do some explaining and make a guess.

You can't see electrons, period. Of all the different kinds of particles in the universe, the human eye evolved to detect just one kind: the photon. You see photons by them passing through the optics in the front of your eye, impacting chemicals in the back of the eye and thus setting off chemical reactions that eventually lead to nerve impulses. The eye as a whole extracts information from photons that the brain then processes to create the imagery we see. "Seeing" imagery is just thinking, no different than doing a math problem in your head. We don't think of it as thinking because it is so vivid and automatic(to our consciousness), but thats just due to all the resources evolution put into developing the ability.

Photons interact with electrons, so you could see photons that electrons give off(in fact, this is what happens with basically every thing you see). An electron in motion, giving off photons at a fast enough rate, could then be seen as a featureless line tracing the path of the electron, but that is the limit of the imagery you could see. Individual electrons can not be percieved as objects with size or shape because of how photons interact with them. With an apple, photons leave the apple from different points on its surface, entering the surface of the eye at different points at different angles, thus conveying information about the shape of the apple; the apple has a size, shape, and surface exactly because it's made of multiple particles spread over different locations.

Worse, electrons can't be made to hold still, and it's impossible to tell exactly where they are due to quantum mechanics. To make a guess at what we're seeing in the video: it's a computer generated map of the wave function of the electron, with each speck of that blue fuzziness being a possible location of the electron. The average location of the specks oscillates up and down as the electron "circles" the atom(electrons don't really do that, but I've typed enough already).

This doesn't seem that bad to me. It's like Jerry Springer, but in gameshow format. To any degree the contests suffer, its caused by their own actions. And I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of it is put on for the show.

Also, they are asked a number of questions before the show, while hooked to a lie detector(which are inaccurate, incidentally), they just don't know the results of the lie detector or which questions will be re-asked during the show. So they know what they're getting into and have a chance to back out before the show.

Having said that, the show is completely uninteresting crap. But I feel that way about 99% of what is on television.

Actually, time travel is possible according to relativity. The faster you move through space the slower you move through time, so just move fast enough and you are effectively traveling to the future. To move backwards in time you need a wormhole with one end close to a black hole, the extreme gravity is equivilent to moving fast under general relativity, so that end of the wormhole lags in time behind the other end.

Dividing by 0 is also possible. The limit of k/n, where k is any constant, as n approaches 0 is infinity. Similarly, k/infinity = 0.

Rottenseed strikes out on all three counts.

This is basically nonsense; time travel with the LHC is probably less likely than the other typical LHC related hoopla, such as the fearmongering over it creating Earth destroying black holes. This time travel hype started with the Russian and a dozen clueless media outlets have run with it.

I figured the ending was basically like a flashback. I don't remember exactly how it went now, but I remember my thought at the time was it was simply the director showing the viewer the main characters alive one last time as a sentimental thing. But I didn't put too much effort into that analysis, anime shows frequently have vague endings. Also, I heard the last 4 or so episodes were not originally part of the series, but were added to please fans.

A magnet in motion will appear as charge. Charge can also refer to something that appears to supply energy, from a battery to a sports drink. So Joe's statement works, even if it's not literally true.

His point definitely still stands; a magnet is a just a battery with a fixed supply of energy stored in it. A flashlight battery stores energy chemically and that energy is tapped via a flow of electrons; the more the electrons flow the weaker the battery gets. A magnet stores energy in the orientation of the spins of its electrons and that energy is tapped by moving objects through the magnetic field; the more work performed by the magnetic field the weaker it gets.

So any device where magnets are fundamental to its design can not be a perpetual motion machine. All this perpetual motion nonsense on youtube is apparently from people who haven't even mastered high school physics.