derleth

> scientism's self assertion as the one true belief

There is no such thing as 'scientism' and science is a method, not a belief system.

There are people who go through life without dogma. Every idea they have can be challenged. Therefore, if you define 'belief' as 'dogmatic belief', as you seem to, they don't have any beliefs at all.

Then you only look at the posts which are downvoted to oblivion, which is a strange tactic to take.

> It's just a neat informative article, not a challenge to your manhood ffs

Aside from the completely unfounded assumption I must be male, you completely misread my post. I was just pointing out something tangentially related that I feel to be interesting. Nothing else. Any other emotions you feel are entirely your own.

I thought planned parenthood type places gave condoms away.

> Why do you think they know the claims are false?

It's just as bad if they don't know the claims are true. Bullshitting when someone's health is on the line is simply sociopathic.

> It would also render a large fraction of all advertising illegal.

Not all advertising. Just advertising connected to things that are claimed to be healthier, make you healthier, or prevent or treat disease.

> The answer is "love", you robots.

Because "love" totally makes condoms not work.

> A lot of 'rouge' ssh traffic comes from hacked machines.

And they're owned by the Hell's Angles or Red China, I bet.

That just makes me want to feed people poison eels.

> What is a "non-unicode character"?

A character with no representation in the latest Unicode standard.

> What if their name uses non-unicode characters?

Learn to fix the problems you can fix, and only the problems you can fix. Ignore the problems you cannot fix because, as per hypothesis, you cannot do anything about them.

In other words, what if you get hit by a micrometeorite on your way to the bathroom tomorrow?

You could just as easily say there are zero trigonometric functions and do everything in terms of complex exponentiation. Euler's Formula guides the way:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler's_formula

http://www.mathsisfun.com/algebra/eulers-formula.html

My point is that there are multiple ways to express the underlying concepts here and picking the most appropriate way for the current context is a large part of what you learn when you learn more advanced mathematics.

> I don't think a simple claim that can be shown to be false qualifies as fraud.

Then what does? If they're using claims they can't back up, or that they know are false, to sell their product, that's pretty clear-cut fraud to me.

> If evidence was doctored to back up the claim that might qualify, but otherwise it's just be an opinion.

Well, you have a much different standard for fraud than I do. I think my standard is more useful for preventing harm and sending scammers to prison, however, so I'll stick with it.

When raw milk sellers list the potential of disease risk their product carries on their packaging, I'll consider them equivalent.

Oh, and any claims that raw milk is better for you must be backed up with real studies or else it's fraud. Agreed?

And, because game developers know the precise specs of every console they target, they can reduce load times and make texture rendering... sorry, sorry, I can't do this with a straight face.

Because Monster Cables use those emotions to rip people off. Unless you really and truly think there's no moral problem with selling cables at a multi-thousand-percent markup based on claims which are trivially disproven, in which case I doubt we'll be able to have a reasonable conversation.

> Matrices were multidimensional arrays (I know, not quite the same in terms of maths, but hey I was young).

In math, if something has all the properties a kind of object is defined to have, it is that kind of object. Mathematics is based on definitions, so things are what they are defined to be, no more, no less.

In fact, you can implement mathematical structures in terms of other mathematical structures, as Peano did when he defined numbers and basic arithmetic in terms of set theory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms

> "The thing I was missing is that math is just a bunch of symbols that you manipulate to get new symbols out."

This is the Formalist philosophy of mathematics, which isn't the only one (as you might imagine given that it has a name):

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/formalism-mathematics/

Formalism is at odds with Platonism, to pick an obvious antithesis, as Platonism holds that mathematical entities do indeed have a reality beyond us finite, mortal creatures and our symbols:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/

There are, as you might imagine, a lot more philosophies of mathematics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics

That said, at the K-12 level, formalism is what students need most; make mathematics a game and show them how well the game applies to reality. That unreasonable effectiveness is quite astounding the first million times, and it never really quits being astounding:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_...

As long as it isn't hidden in the dead pool, I don't care much where one of my comments' karma is. BTW, it's at 30 now, so no damage done.

My point is that analyzing languages on that basis is silly. I thought the rest of my post was silly enough to demonstrate that.

> every single 'web designer' in the known universe should be forced to make a full HTML site (tools of their choice!) that is compatible back to IE8 (bonus points for IE6)

But they only pass if it's backwards-compatible to Lynx as well.

Prolog's only a waste of time if you let it be. It's a good introduction to declarative programming and the logic implicit in all other programming.

Also, yes, I'll throw Python out there as the best beginning intro language we have now. It's syntax-light compared to the other languages teachers know, familiar to instructors coming from a Java or C++ background, and, best of all, wasn't designed as a teaching language, so it isn't crippled in bizarre ways.

However, I also think that teaching multiple languages is essential, and they should all be from different families or at least have different features, so Haskell, Prolog, Lisp, Forth, and, yes, C++ should all be in the program.

> Yes, C++ will let you make mistakes. It's not your nanny, it's a programming tool for... GASP ...programmers...

Yes, assembly will let you make mistakes. It's not your nanny, it's a programming tool for... GASP ...programmers...

So, therefore, C++ is equal to or less than BaSUCK and yer a silly-nanny like yer old man.

> Have your male coworkers ever been threatened with rape?

Do you actually think they'd report it if they were?

> I'm not really clear on what you mean by "hyper-privileged".

If we're doing this, it's privilege to not be starving on the streets of Calcutta, it's privilege to know how to read, and it is damn sure privilege to be so surrounded by functioning computers that learning how to use them sounds like a real option instead of fairy tales and bullshit.

So, yeah, if you really want to double-down on the privilege concept, we'll go into how privileged the subject of this article actually is.

TERFs go way beyond Tumblr, and the fact you likely don't know what TERF means is a big part of the problem.

On the flip side, the people on your side need to stop thinking privilege is absolute instead of relative to context, and stop imagining that individuals can be judged based on what group they've placed them into. Yes, even if those things are true statistically, that doesn't make them true for every individual.

Also, feminists need to stop being so fucking transphobic. It's a major issue and it is not being addressed.

> I don't agree that it has in the past.

Good for you. The rest of us can look at history with less bias on this subject.

> Poor people not learning to read does not follow from having privatized education.

It has in the past. Which is my point.

> Yes, and that is not going to change unless we privatize education.

Because poor people don't really need to learn how to read!

Yeah, go back to the glory days of the Forties. The Eighteen-Forties.

Bullying is violence, and I wonder how you know there was no rape.