Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "Jordan B Peterson"
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I think Tyson is a blowhard who sounds good, but talks over his head (and out of his a**) on subjects in which he is not very well-versed. Astrophysics? Expert. Everything else? Pompous layman. I also watched that interview, and my specialties are math and geology, both of which subjects he butchered, while sounding very cogent.
I feel the same way about world-class linguist Noam Chomsky, who ALSO needs to stay in his lane, but people SWOON because he's smart in one thing and SOUNDS smart on other things, when in actuality, he's an ignorant socialist, with no clue on free-market economics, human liberty, and human progress, in my opinion. But nobody's hanging on MY every word, nor should they.
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Awesome, scran. I do think that there's something biological underlying our apparent need for - and apparent benefits of - religion, else religion would not exist. For instance, I know I wouldn't smoke and I'd probably eat better and on a more regular schedule, with a wife and kids, if I were orthodox American protestant-type (or Muslim, which also places high value on family (recruits)).
As it is, I muddle through, childless, as a skeptic/agnostic. I can definitely see there being some kind of "religion gene," and its being pretty universally expressed, across our species. That hunter who put absolute belief in his god to guide his arm probably throws a better spear. Yanno?
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The reason people think the subatomic world is probabilistic is because it's too small for us to see individual subatomic particles (too small and maybe too fast). We can't see the jellybeans, but we can weigh a bunch of them all at once, and theorize about the individual jellybean, through statistical inference, or simply by dividing by the total number of jellybeans after we observe them acting together.
This is a big hang-up I have with the Bohr-Einstein debate. Bohr's quantum mechanics enabled us to make predictions, sure, but just because you can't see something doesn't mean that it is not behaving deterministically, or as Einstein would say "God does not play dice."
I'm probably out in left field, but there are some artifacts of these probabilistic models, such as the bell curve, that according to the model, predict a very small - but positive - probability of ants that are 100 feet tall or elephants that are 1 inch tall. They're just out in the tail of the distribution. Now, take the fact that you're only ever dealing with billions or trillions of these objects. Small probability of it ever happening to any one particle becomes near-certainty, simply due to the large number of trials/particles involved. Maybe there's only a 0.00001 probability of an event, but run the experiment 1,000,000,000,000 times and the probability of that 0.00001 probability event becomes near certain. The infinite # of monkeys typing at random sort of deal.
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Yes. I believe that all parents should know about hosts.deny and hosts.allow concept.
For your kids, you should basically deny all domain names. Then, allow a list of domains that you know are OK for them, because you checked them out, either with your child or not, but probably better to do with your child. Add to the hosts.allow file as your children ask and you can check. You can of course allow a lot of DNS's your child never heard of, because you think they're broadening in the right way(s).
They probably won't like it, but hey, I didn't like having to be home by dark when I was a kid, and it's the same kind of reasonable restriction to place on a child.
But for ADULTS, I think these social media platforms should not be making censorship decisions, the same way the telephone company isn't responsible for what you say on the phone.
I think lies and misinformation get exposed and shot down a LOT quicker in an open and unrestricted (by 3rd parties) forum.
"Hate speech" is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. Big censorship engine there, that's ripe for the taking and has already been used, extensively. No such thing as a hate crime. But there are crimes already on the books, where your open hatred becomes a factor in the penalty phase (after being found guilty), and rightly so, because motives do make a difference.
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Liberals took over the establishment, making them essentially conservative in outlook. Different world view than the previous conservatives, but by definition, preserving and consolidating their political gains MADE them conservative! I first conceived this idea as a visiting professor in an insular mountain town that had a small college attached to it. Everyone at the college was pretty far left, and that created a weird, twisted orthodoxy from which no one dared depart for fear of losing social status in the college.
Everybody had the same opinion about everything, and they were unaware of how "conservative" and regressive their behavior was.
Anyway, I've always been a bit of a contrarian/iconoclast. I was just as rebellious and irreverent in the '70s being forced to go to church, as I was in the 2000s, where the ruling religion was leftist ideology at work. I say "leftist ideology" because it's the modern use of the term, but the minute you go from speaking truth to power and being suspicious of concentrated power to celebrating MORE centralized authority (for your own good), you cease being of the left and have become a creature of the regressive right.
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My very basic take on quantum mechanics is that statistics and probability are how we get a handle on things that are too small to see, individually.
Consider the bell curve - the normal distribution. It describes populations quite well, quite often, but that distribution will give you a small, but positive probability of 500-pound mice. We know that there aren't any 500-pound mice, but the bell curve is pretty handy in the vicinity of the mean.
What makes quantum mechanics so toxic (in my opinion) is people really want it to say more than it CAN say. I agree with Einstein: "God does not play dice." Just because we can't measure things doesn't mean there's something magical going on. It just means that we're limited in what we can measure. We can't SEE that atom, so we make measurements on a LOT of atoms, all at once, with no real idea what any one of them is actually doing, so we speculate and come up with probabilities. Then idiots get ahold of those speculations and draw ridiculous conclusions, in my humble opinion.
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The problem with wind power, as conceived by central planners, is they're big, expensive, loud, and they're an eye-sore. How about encouraging small wind generators for individuals? Instead of trying to do it all at once, from on high, we need to think about people being empowered to live less dependent on centralized grids, which, when compromised, bring everybody down at the same time.
EVs is sort of similar. Instead of trying to replace ICEVs by mandates from on high, why not LET electric vehicles that are good for getting around town be produced? Trying to replace conventional, long-distance passenger vehicles (let alone freight vehicles) all at once, by force, is sucking all the capital out of more achievable and practical solutions to the pollution problem.
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