h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Click on Reply for the message you're actually replying to, Andrew. It makes the board easier to navigate if we know what you're talking about.

TRiG.

..trying to remember who said: "When people say they are thinking they are often merely rearranging their prejudices".
Perhaps with the advent of quantum computing we shall discover more types of thinking than it's possible to imagine at the moment?

Well, I did post-graduate research on human thinking, and there are areas in which we are found wanting. In fact, the nature of errors is a valuable indicator of what is going on when we get it right.

We are particularly poor at deductive (logical) and statistical (Bayesian etc) reasoning. Computers are extremely useful here and are underused - due, presumably, to an error in thinking about this topic!

An early example was a medical diagnosis program called MYCIN. It was more accurate than doctors and popular with patients. But instead of being developed, it was dropped! I'm afraid that the Luddite attitude exemplified in your above remark is a thinking error.

toxx

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
— William James

(Google.)


TRiG.

I think that the point is that humans and machines have different strengths. What's the point of creating artificial humans when there are so many real ones about?! We should look to computers to compliment, not supplant, us. They can be strong where we are weak. Let us capitalize on our differences!

TRiG.

I'm totally in favour of that, TRiG.

Ta, TRiG

Elf

"As an Engineering student I'd like to know what you mean by that. Is there something about this industry that I should know before I get into it?"

It's all down to Risk Assessment, which is all that actuaries do. Risk Assessment is simply : how likely is it that this accident/danger occurs versus what will be the fallout if it does occur?
The next evaluation is : what is the cost?

So any engineering scheme tries to balance reducing risk to vanishing point versus the cost of doing so. The bigger the risk (which covers both the likely incidence rate and the likely damage) the higher the cost that should be borne.

Examples of getting it wrong: not setting up an earthquake EWS in the Indian Ocean; Hatfield (and most railway disasters); Chernobyl.

I said "Can we really be sure about the language of other species, or their spiritual lives"
and Moke said: "Maybe not, but humans are the only species which attempt to consistently upgrade their environment."

I have to say that I do not find the majority of examples of the latter as any evidence for any moral superiority of human beings. Nor of any intelligence (in terms of future planning), nor of any ability to act co-operatively for the common weal.

It's a very scorer of points for the ability of humans to express self interest, ingenuity and the achievement of short terms gains at the cost of long term gains. Rather like most of the people who find themselves forcibly placed in prisons.

"hating is a Christian tradition"

Can we rephrase this to 'hating is a tradition of many who call themselves Christians'? Jesus taught us to love our enemies.

Just bookmarking my read-to place again.

Some Christians (or nominal Christians), certainly, but hardly only Christians. Fionn Mac Cumhail, the (semi-)mythological Irish hero, was renouned for his ability to hate. It's a Celtic tradition.

Some Christians (or nominal Christians), certainly, but hardly only Christians. Fionn Mac Cumhail, the (semi-)mythological Irish hero, was renouned for his ability to hate. It's a Celtic tradition.

As to fleas/gnats:

"After whom is the king of Israel come out? after whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea."
1 Samuel 24:14


"Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel."
Matthew 23:24

Those are both from the King James' Version. It's list of the ten plagues agrees with what you said: no fleas or gnats:

Blood, frogs, lice, flies, death of livestock (it used the word murrain, which I didn't recognise, so I did some research that I have included below for your perusal), boils, hail, locusts, darkness, firstborn.


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from www.dictionary.com


The list of plauges in the New World Translation goes as follows:

Blood, frogs, gnats, gadflies, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, fistborn.
A footnote on the word 'gnats' (I think in Exodus 8:17) reads as follows:

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I'd take that to mean that we can't be sure, but they think it more likely to be gnats (obviously, since they put it in the main text).
I don't know why I am continuingt this pointless discussion which sprung from an equally pointless throw-away remark, but such is human nature.



As to gods:

"And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet."
Exodus 7:1


"I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High."
Psalms 82:6

Again both from the Authorised Version.

You see, HS, I managed to do some of my own researh!

Thankyou Trig for the Bible links.

"If you want examples of Christian-led genocide look no further than the Catholic domination of Central and South America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."

What about the crusades? A prime example of 'we will crush the infidel coz he don't agree with us' sorta spirit.

Thanks, Math, for the education on pagans' problems. that does sound like Salem. I had no idea something like that on such a scale had happenned so recently.

But please don't say "Hellbound and proud." (Unless it is something you particularly aspire to yourself.)The concept of Hell has grown over the Centuries from an (I'm not sure but I think Grecian) idea which has nothing to do with Christianity. As I was arguing earlier, it has no basis in scripture. So I, for one Christian, don't believe you are 'Hellbound'.

"Bush yes, the Pope no"

Have you read the Book 'The Dark Side of The Papacy"?, by p. de Rossa, a former Catholic priest. Trig will give more details when he pops by. Much good stuff (or bad, if you're a catholic).

(I have nothing against catholics, but a bit against Catholicism. I hope I don't sound too much like G. W. Bush there 'I have no fight with the people of Iraq..."!)

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I must have been lucky in the Catholics I have met - 100% of them have been good people. But there you are... "

Yes you must. I live in Ireland, which I would guess to have an 80% Catholic population, in my area at least. They can't all be good! They are pretty normal people, I would guess. (Don't try to define normal, please!)

Will he indeed?

"The assumption is one of the silliest ideas I've ever heard!
How did she get there?
How long did it take?
Where is heaven?
If her physical body is in heaven, does this mean it's a physical place?"

Paul wrote that flesh and blood cannot inherrit the kindom of God, so the assumption is contradicted by scripture.
The Immaculate Conception strikes me as having about the same amount of back up.