Interests:Playing music, listening to music, jamming, etc. etc.; Ultimate Frisbee, Running, and Biking. I also enjoy learning anything I can: "Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself — will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth of a gear in my thought machine. [...] Never have I said to myself, 'This fact I can do without.'" Expertise:Electrical Engineering/Computer Science Occupation:Design Engineer/Programmer Industry:Engineering
EDIT: Just thought I'd toss this in as well - if you're going to vote, I'd highly recommend voting for a third-party candidate, for the same reasons listed in the above video for voting period. Sayeth Eliezer:
Consider these two clever-sounding game-theoretical arguments side by
side:
1. You should vote for the less evil of
the top mainstream candidates, because your vote is unlikely to make a critical
difference if you vote for a candidate that most people don't vote
for. 2. You should stay home, because your vote is unlikely to
make a critical difference.
It's hard to see who should accept argument #1 but refuse to accept argument
#2.
-Stop Voting
for Nincompoops (also see the two previous articles in the series, linked to
at the top of that entry)
"You wrote recently of what you call 'the bubble'
- the way religious groups surround themselves with the like-minded. I
think that essay hit closer to home than you realized. We're all far
more sensitive to flaws in others than those same flaws in ourselves,
and this is a perfect example. Don't you have a bubble too? You seek
out rational, skeptical people; you read their writings daily, you
immerse yourself in their thinking, you surround yourself with them.
Understandably so - but that colors your thinking. You look out and see
so many people who think like you, and it makes you think the whole
world works like that. In reality, you and your allies are a vanishing
minority in a sea of obstinate, ignorant faith."
How is my religious family
to comprehend it, working, as they must, from the assumption that
Yehuda was murdered by a benevolent God? The same loving God, I
presume, who arranges for millions of children to grow up
illiterate and starving; the same kindly tribal father-figure who
arranged the Holocaust and the Inquisition's torture of witches. I
would not hesitate to call it evil, if any sentient mind had
committed such an act, permitted such a thing. But I have weighed
the evidence as best I can, and I do not believe the universe to be
evil, a reply which in these days is called atheism.
If the Great Secret of Natural Selection, passed down from Darwin Who
Is Not Forgotten, was only ever imparted to you after you paid $2000
and went through a ceremony involving torches and robes and masks and
sacrificing an ox, then when you were shown the fossils, and shown the optic cable going through the retina under a microscope, and finally told the Truth, you would say "That's the most brilliant thing ever!" and be satisfied.
After that, if some other cult tried to tell you it was actually a
bearded man in the sky 6000 years ago, you'd laugh like hell.
I might do a real post soon.. I came to a realization about my belief in Christianity that I think is pretty interesting, and never occurred to me till I was having a discussion with someone else about my beliefs, so hopefully I can get it down here at some point. Too busy lately though.
True
