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I was going to post this to a particular story, but thought this might generate more attention and discussion as a general submission.
Seriously, what is going on with all these troll mods? Just because you disagree with someone, thus earning a "disagree" mod, does not mean that person is a "troll." To steal a definition from Urban Dictionary:
An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.
Just because you disagree with someone, does not mean they are trying to do the above. Be faster on the "disagree" and slower on the "troll." Under such abuse, it is hard to have a good discussion and, in itself, is trollish behavior by "generally disrupt[ing] normal on-topic discussion." Other than people disciplining themselves, a concerted effort to police such abuses, or making moderation logs public on the bottom of a comment where the score is shown now, I'm unsure of what to do about. As it stands, it is getting increasingly ridiculous to read what discussion is here on any topic remotely controversial, and is expanding outside of even those. It is starting to drive me away from the site, and I'm somewhat confident it is doing the same for others. I'd be interested to see what others think about the depth of the problem, if they even believe it even exists at all, and what solutions you all have for it.
[Ed note. This story is published exactly as received. First off, it bears repeating that complaining about moderations in the comments often leads (rightly) to an off-topic moderation. That is a contributing factor to my decision to run this story. Secondly, moderation is something that I on occasion have found I've fat-fingered and given a different moderation than expected. Thirdly, in the grand scheme of things, a comment's moderation is — relatively speaking — small potatoes. It is NOT a measure of your IQ or value as a human being. or standing in the community. Just accept that stuff happens and that as likely as not, someone will be along to moderate it the other way. Which is a good opportunity to say: PLEASE USE YOUR MOD POINTS! Lastly, if you think a comment was moderated in error, then send the CID (Comment ID) link e.g. "(#876543)" in an email to admin (at) soylentnews (dot) org. Keep in mind however that we are all volunteers here and there most likely will be a delay between when you send out an email and when we can get around to it. --martyb]
[Updated: 20190823_111312 UTC See comment from JR who far more precisely and eloquently expressed the idea I was attempting to. I concur with his assessment. If I want people to upmod a comment of mine that I believe was unfairly downmodded, then I need to be willing to upmod other's mis-modded comments. For perspective, so far this month, anywhere from ~150-~350 mod points were used in any given day. It bears repeating: use your mod points!]
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday August 26 2019, @05:52PM (6 children)
If this helps at all, I'm first and foremost a scientist and a skeptic and reject just about all claims made for observational evidence for any supernatural phenomena. But if I had to take a label on this stuff, it would be much closer to agnostic than atheist.
You see this is where the dogmatic atheists get a little sloppy. There quite clearly are lots of differences in different entities that we can postulate the existence of. Roughly speaking, the more specific we are in our description of our hypothetical entity, the less probable it is that we are exactly correct concerning its existence. So, the existence of a unicorn is considerably more probable than the existence of a unicorn riding leprechauns, which in turn is much more probable than the existence of leprechaun-riding unicorns that shit rainbows. The existence of a space-teapot anywhere is slightly more probable than that of one orbiting the Earth (although since teapots appear a lot on Earth, it's somewhat plausible that someone could have put one into orbit).
Consequently, the probability of the existence of a deity will vary massively depending on how that deity is defined. If I go for one of the loosest definitions I can think of: let's just say an intelligence greater than our own that exists outside of any physical universe, then you're intellectually on very dodgy ground if you want to insist that that's so improbable as to be almost impossible. We just don't have enough information either way to properly calculate the probability--but that's what agnosticism is--admitting that you can't tell one way or the other, rather than wrongly claiming that you know it's (just about) impossible.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday August 26 2019, @09:39PM (5 children)
Your current sloppy definition isn't currently unambiguous enough to discuss, it bifurcates into two possibilities - one such thing that is capable of interacting with our universe, and one such thing that is incapable of interacting with our universe. The former falls into the field of being scientifically evaluable, and particle physicists and cosmologists can give a very clear answer that the probability of there being such interactions is vanishingly small, and they will be vanishingly small in effect such that they won't cause any effect significantly distinguishable from how one would expect things to behave in the absense of such interactions. The latter falls outside the domain of science, and is in no way interesting to discuss, as it matters not in any way whether the thing exists or not. So you may as well include the shitting of rainbows to that definition, it makes no difference.
Oh, if you want as sloppy as possible, to increase your probabilities, you can even drop the intelligence clause. If you can persuade an igtheist that there's possibility of existence in the absense of that clause, then you can start to debate how much intelligence such a thing might be capable of posessing and expressing. However, that's a big if, I can warn you now that the success rate is 0%. (Yes, that's a NTS fallacy, deal with it!)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:21PM (4 children)
As stated previously, if I add too many specifics, the probability of existence may decrease. Which is exactly the objection I have against dogmatic atheism--many of those people assert a very specific prediction as definitely true without evidence to support it.
I tend to agree there's currently no credible evidence available for the interaction of a deity with our universe although even then I'd argue it's tough to accurately estimate a probability. What's the probability for example, that there's some fundamentally different physics that we haven't yet discovered that would permit such interactions in the future or that the physics is different at a different region in space? One in a billion, or one in a thousand? Is one in a thousand vanishingly small in the context of this discussion?
We weren't arguing over whether or not these concepts are interesting to discuss. My objection is against atheists that insist that all non-atheists are objectively and unquestionably wrong, often to the point that they will even ridicule them. It's not just disrespectful, it's hypocritical, because they're asserting a truth that simply cannot be known. They maybe get bogged down in the very detailed specifics of faith based religions and assume that every non-atheist has beliefs that are about as improbable, when clearly that's not the case.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 27 2019, @02:08PM (3 children)
You'd need to define "such interactions" before that could be answered. If the interactions were anything apart from all-but-indistinguishable from them not being there at all, then the probability is vanishingly low. (So if you want a non-vanishing probability, you're looking for a new force that has almost no effect.) Sean Carroll can explain why, using all the correct terminology.
You seem to think that scientists believe in absolute truths, in the same way that theists so often do. They don't. Truth is relative to what we can test, and immediately changes in the face of incontrovertable evidence. We know only that we have the best possible model at the moment, that's all, not that that model is an actual truth in itself. Sometimes, we have contradictory models e.g. the interpretation of quantum interactions, but we know that at the moment we have no way of testing which one is right or wrong, so we agree to let them all be considered valid science, as they all explain everything that is presently testable. Some prior interpretations have been discarded, Einstein made sure of that, as quantum theory forced him to up his game and precisely codify the implications he objected to. I think about 8 competing interpretations still coexist.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday August 27 2019, @02:50PM (2 children)
I'm still not entirely convinced that we know that it's "vanishingly low", if that means something like a 1 in 10^12 chance or lower. I agree that we don't need it to exist to explain all our current scientific observations but that still doesn't mean it's practically impossible. Consider as just one example, AIs in a computer game arguing whether a human player exists that is running the game. For their entire recorded history, their world has obeyed the game's physics, yet the probability is not vanishingly low that a human player will load a mod or hack the game's RAM and change the rules in the future. That's just a variant of the simulation argument. Sure, it's vanishingly unlikely that any human will find evidence of such a thing in, say, the next ten thousand years, but that's absolutely not the same thing as the probability of the hypothesis being correct being vanishingly unlikely.
For a less outlandish example, what about free will? I'm not convinced it really exists but plenty of atheists believe in it. If it gives human minds a way to influence events at the quantum level, then initially at a small scale, that's a type of interaction that is "all-but-indistinguisable from [it] not being there at all", but, due to chaos theory, it can have huge effects on the world as events unfold over time. Does known physics make it vanishingly unlikely that a deity could interact with the universe in a similar way?
You misunderstand me. Good scientists do not. The more dogmatic strain of atheists act as if they do.
Good, that's basically my position too. It's the skeptic's position. The bit I have a problem with is that you seem to be making claims of the "vanishingly low" probability of the model changing at a future date in ways that could make atheism less likely to be correct. Look at how often our theories of physics are revised. I'll grant you we seem to understand the events we currently observe at a much finer grain than ever before but we have no idea how much there is that we don't know.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:03AM (1 child)
Not that I don't enjoy some sophistry every once in a while but opening up the definition of deity is just another excuse for magical thinking. Why not argue for skepticism on the matter of the world being flat since we haven't determined the dimensions or "flat"? Why not say gravity isn't the work of infinite angels dancing on the pin of needles? This post-modern Derrida framework resolves nothing and certainly adds nothing to the practice of a moderation system.
Keep the philosophic banter to the comments. It doesn't deserve moderation since you can't logically critique wordplay anyhow. Maybe a "+1 Found Godo" and "-1 Waiting for Godo" should be reserved for the lot of it. Though I'm sure someone will complain it ought to be "-1 Found Godo" and "+1 Waiting for Godo".
compiling...
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:49AM
Flat-Earthers aside, I expect the (meta)physics of the Earth's geometry is a less popular topic than reasoning about deities. Some people are much more concerned with deities because they could have implications for their destiny, perhaps after death (Note: I am not attempting to argue for an afterlife here myself--just discussing what concerns are popular) if not in life. For the Earth's geometry, we seem to have a model that works well enough to satisfy most people in their daily lives. It's probably something to do with our social ape brain, often being more interested in other minds than the minutiae of one particular (apparently) inanimate object.
See my argument earlier about more specific definitions being vastly less probable.
For stuff that goes on within our universe that we can observe and measure, there's very little room left for magical thinking because we've left very few gaps. Outside of space and time, though, we have no, or almost no, information at all, to make claims about the existence or non-existence of anything. Hence an agnostic saying that there's no way to prove or disprove the existence of a deity is being more intellectually honest than a devout atheist that simply insists that deities do not exist.
You could ask, if a deity is somewhat like a conscious mind, then why should such a thing be more likely to exist in such a realm than anything else of lesser complexity, such as a block of cheese. First off I'm not completely convinced that a block of cheese isn't more complex than the fundamentals of a mind (not a brain). Secondly I think people instinctively get the idea that the conscious self that has subjective experience could very well be something distinct from the stuff that we study through objective physics. We experience space and time and matter and forces, but we seem to be a point of view onto them. In that way it's easy for people to suppose that a consciousness could exist outside of the universe, hence the plausibility of one out there that we could call a deity.
I've no idea whether that's a coherent argument, but it's damned hard for any atheist to refute it!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?