aaronasterling

Internet connectivity is over rated. I bet my wall paper is swanker than yours.

One doesn't have to buy into the system you describe. I basically sleep on the beach on Maui and mostly eat for free. In many ways, it's a good life :)

If one starts with star-R to begin with, then why does one need the transference theorems?

If doing a better job means that you will be negatively evaluated by your employer then find a better job. Catering to mediocrity breeds mediocrity.

> It's a bit presumptuous to squarely pin something like that on evolution. Evolution is likely to favor many things, including individualism and rationality.

To a certain extent we will see individualism and rationality favored by evolution as is evident by the fact that these things exist. Note however that even the most individualistic person still accepts the vast majority of the cultural assumptions with which they are brought up. Too much crititcal thought would interfere with the transmission of culture and without culture (i.e. those things which we've learned without having to figure out for ourselves) humans are a fairly weak animal.

> Although I'm not a follower of Thoreau, I think he made a fair argument that it is not at all unhealthy to live outside of society.

Yet Thoreau still had social contact. He spent a lot of time by himself (as most thinkers seem to) but he was still part of society as is evidenced by the fact that we know him. Imagine yourself existing in a jungle with no clothes, tools or language as a naked animal. That's leaving society and that's what accepting cultural assumptions helps to prevent. Challenging cultural assumptions leads to debate and most people can't handle that in my experience.

You'd have to ask its designer. Sloppy programmers do like globals and JS was targeted for them.

The defacto standard is to put nothing in an enclosing namespace unless it's needed there. The purpose of functions (especially in a language like JS) is to wrap up everything that's needed to accomplish a given task and leave no mess behind.

But when writing code, how do you know that it's always going to be "single page bound"? YAGNI is frequently useful poison and nothing more. When it's so easy to do it right the first time, why not?

"I mean, if you're making these decisions collectively how could you justify the division of effort?" For the sake of argument, it could be arrived at by deciding that Python was good for some things and Ruby was good for others. Or rationally understanding that tastes differ and so it would be good to have both options to maximize individual productivity. Or by collectively deciding to have a competition. Or any number of other ways.

Individual humans aren't subordinate by misfortune. Evolution "designed" them to accept cultural assumptions so as to avoid threatening cultural cohesion. I love Ayn Rand (as a writer, not a philosopher. I have never identified with a character so much as with Howard Roark) but an isolated human is weak and vulnerable. We're a social creature and leaving society amounts to suicide. Absorb those stupid cultural assumptions and question them at your own risk.

Much of the psychological benefit of exercise comes from increased testosterone. This happens by stimulating muscles. Try to develop a regular routine for things likes squats and pullups and see if that doesn't make you feel better.

I would recommend some kind of "zen" type of meditation as well. It doesn't have to be the religious type (i.e. the lowercase Z suffices) but learning to stop thinking and accept the present moment for what it is without preconcieved notions can be incredibly useful for spotting assumptions when one is thinking and, consequently, for improving the quality of ones thoughts. It also helps with planning for the future and analyzing the past. Bad assumptions seem to be at the root of most stupidity and zen style meditation is excellent for learning to cope with them.

plus if you think about it, you have to do tokenization before you do 'stemming'. I was really excited about finding this because computational linguistics is supposed to be the sort of thing that lisps are really brilliant for.

I don't understand how you claim that your sense of objective morality is on the same footing as utility of the senses and the fundamental correctness of human reason in terms of accepting them as a foundation for reasonable argument.

humans from different cultures will sense many things the same way. a small black dot will be a small black dot and so forth. likewise, i can believe that ancient japan would have invented a computer if given sufficient time in some alternate reality. once the appropriate questions had been asked and answered of course.

I don't see the same thing for morality though. Or at least not to anywhere near the same degree.

I don't think it even does that though.

if the ability to absorb a system of ethics is an inherited trait, then atheists have presumably inherited the ability as well and would therefore be (from a statistical perspective) as ethical as everyone else.

the basis of his claim (snyde corner of the mouth slander, really) undermines the claim itself. the whole thing cancels out rather nicely.

"everything" might be more then is understandable by pure reason, i have to give you that.

He just messes up and shows his ignorance/stupidity when he tries to say that "man is more complex then an avatar of pure reason" implies "the processes by which man was created are more than is understandable by pure reason". believe what you want but thats a shoddy piece of reasoning.

Am I missing something or does this have nothing to do with "new atheism"?

"It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning."

It seems to me that the position of "new atheists" is that science is the only (known) universal means of answering the questions that it is capable of answering. The contents of the article (though not scientific) have been shaped by scientific insights. Doesn't it sort of back up the idea that we can do morality without god? if anything, wouldn't that give the "new" atheists some backing?

that sounds like that show "the office" gone wrong. i'd hang myself