skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would guess most atheists would not say that they are certain a God does not exist. They certainly wouldn't say they can prove it to be the case. The path that leads you to atheism is the lack of evidence in favor of an unfalsifiable claim, that God exists. So the claim "God does not exist" is kind of meaningless, since it relies upon the definition of God, which is something atheists do not have a definition for since they do not have a belief about what that word means.
Yeah, you can see it coming, and then spend so much time trying to convince everyone that it is real that you're too late to fix it...
I understand wanting to avoid labels to avoid associating yourself with the cultures and assumptions that come with them, but you can't avoid them all. If you go to a Christian church and believe in their ideologies, that makes you a Christian. If you're willing to get into a relationship with a person of either gender, that makes you bisexual. If you're open to the idea of an omnipotent deity but don't subscribe to any particular one, that makes you agnostic. If you're reading this, that makes you human. They're just facts of life.
This echoes to a statement in the "A Murder Of Crows" documentary linked in this thread, which goes like "They are smart, but we are the smartest". If there is an intelligence vastly superior than ours, what are the chances that we find out it exists? Can an "inferior" intelligence identify an other one as "superior"? Put in another way: if a superior AI emerges from one of our experiments, will we be able to understand its output?
i grew up in a poor family around a lot of poor people. i'm not rich, but definitely out of the poor category. even as a child, i was amazed at the plethora of bad decisions (or simple refusal to give important things a second thought) of the poor people around me, family included. an example was a couple years ago when i mentioned how wonderful it is that we can take free online classes from institutions like harvard, stanford, wharton, etc, and its absolutely free! how wonderful!! their response 'what do i get out of it'.

its not just anecdotal either, numbers have shown that those that already have educations are the ones that are mostly uses these resources. for a very large amount of the poor, i feel its them, not 'us'. the opportunities are there, and america may have disadvantages for those not well off, but we certainly have more poor people than whats justified by those disadvantages.

we created a system where people who are smart and ambitious can thrive. we also created many opportunities in that system, and those same people are the ones that take advantage of them. I think thats a huge part of this 'gap'.

the 2nd part happens to be with the time that we are in. most of this 'wealth' has been either inflated up by the fed's massive additions to the money supply (which does only help the rich but it is fully implemented and endorsed by democrats) and annother reason for the gap is the internet barons of the present age.

back in the late 1990s, bill gates was worth more than the bottom 50% of the country. if figures like that are still withstanding, how do you think its distorted now that we have brin/page, zuckerberg, bezos, etc etc?
>Clearly someone thinks they're good for grunt work, but not suited to lead.

This.

Who sets policy? Who makes the decisions? What value system do they use to do it?

And most of all - who benefits from their decisions?

The debate isn't really about diversity, it's about values. And you won't get 'diversity' until those values change and become less dysfunctionally self-serving.
While on the other hand, Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus and Michael the Archangel are different names for the same entity, which isn't the same as God. See: http://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/bible-teach/who-is-m... .

Since JW is usually categorized as Christian, I think valine's test should be considered approximate rather than exact.
Atheist is often an umbrella term for people that don't believe any sort of supernatural things, from an Abrahamic god to forest spirits.
I've searched all over their website and I can't find any page where I can see the fees associated with these transactions - that makes me skeptical. Maybe I'm slow but this doesn't build trust for me.
Unitarian
Wow that language is very concise and interesting. Such a beautiful demo too. I am impressed, thanks for sharing.
At first, I was an atheist, and I pitied religious folks for their incredible stupidity.

Then, I learned about agnosticism, and I realized it better describes what I believe, and that my lack of belief in God is possibly incorrect. I still pitied the religious for their blind faith.

Then I realized one day, while pondering the subject, that because it is not possible to experimentally test for the existence of God, nor to derive any conclusion based on logic, then the question itself is in fact "extra-logical." It cannot be resolved with the scientific method, or any other means of rationalization. To even attempt to do so is itself irrational.

The question therefore must be, simply, "Do you believe in God?" This question does not attempt to bring logic, science or rationality into the picture. It is a question purely of faith, of which I acknowledge I have none.

So, in the end, I am still an agnostic, but one who now accepts that there can be quite rational, scientific thinkers who have faith in the existence of God.
Yes it has.

A district court originally ruled that Jewel et al didn't have standing, but the 9th Circuit disagreed[1], ruling that the allegation was a concrete and particular injury that was easily traceable to the NSA's actions. This was also well before Snowden's revelations, which only added (significantly) more evidence to the EFF's case.

[1] http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/12/29/10...
What exactly is the point of saying "unnamed" when everyone knows exactly which company you're talking about? Its scientology connections are not a secret and have been covered in both tech and muggle press many times over the years.
Atheism doesn't necessarily imply that you care about, or are being forced to define yourself against, other people's conceptions of spirituality, or religion, or god(s). It simply means that you don't believe in a god, gods, etc. I'd suspect that for most atheists, the label begins and ends there. Atheism isn't a way of life for most people, and despite what anti-atheist types would proclaim, it's not a "religion," either. At its simplest, atheism is a philosophical stance. Religious people believe the value of god = 1; atheists believe it = 0.

Is atheism often framed within the context of theism? Well, sure, because that's the category of the discussion. Like you, I have a "don't believe; don't care too strongly; not a factor in my life whatsoever" stance toward religion. But if the subject of religion comes up, and I am asked to give my stance on the matter, atheism is a better label than most. "Apathetic atheist," or even "atheist who rejects the premise of this line of inquiry altogether" are acceptable and defensible flavors of atheism.

Atheism isn't specifically defined in opposition to the Abrahamic religions. It so happens that those religions (particularly, Christianity) occupy a majority of this country's religious population, and as such, they're the belief systems most often pitted vis-a-vis atheism, and vice versa. But there were atheists and agnostics long before Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.

Being an atheist doesn't have to mean much more to your life than not being a tennis fan. The state of not being a tennis fan is largely irrelevant until someone asks you if you watch tennis. At that point, you are temporarily and conditionally defined as a non-tennis-fan, within the framing of tennis fandom as a subject. But your non-tennis-fandom doesn't have to define your life, or even be much of a factor outside of that conversation.
"Likewise, if you’re a pharmaceutical executive, one way to create profits is to generate new products. Another is to lobby Congress to bar the government’s Medicare program from bargaining for drug prices. That amounts to a $50 billion annual gift to pharmaceutical companies."

This "fact" always annoys me. Yes, Medicare can't directly negotiate with drug companies. However, there are two mechanisms that provide substantial discounts for drugs that Medicare buys.

1. All drug manufacturers must report the price they sell their drugs for to the government every quarter. That data is used to create the ASP (average selling price). This is the price Medicare pays. If a drug company starts offering discounts on their sales to private insurers, that get added to the ASP.

2. For drugs covered under Medicare Part D (pharmacy benefits), there is something called the "donut hole" where a patient has to pay the full costs of the drug. That is being phased out by 2020. Drug companies will have to pay for the donut hole themselves. The discount varies with the drug price, but for example, if a drug costs $5000 in a year, drug companies will have to pay $1300 of that back to the government.

So yes, Medicare doesn't directly negotiate with drug companies, rather they legislate big discounts.
A lot of it is pretty dang hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-stick
obviously metaphorical

Revelation anyone?
I've turned agnostic recently from being a sole christian. The more time I spend with computing and learn about machine learning/AI, I think that we can and will create self-aware AIs. At that point, we'll have to question what reality programmed us?
Though the HN guidelines discourage it, I thought I'd let you know why I downvoted your comment: "stop whining" and "just sayin".
I believe dualism and I know how to do induce out of body exp but I don't know is scientific or not. what its criterion?
I don't see a voting option for "I'd really rather not debate religion on HN at all, please go away"
If that's the definition then it's useless as a distinguishing label since everyone on either side of faith can't know. If anyone could know, faith and belief wouldn't be necessary.
It looks like this thread is being moderated off the front page, but it's something that I think is interesting too.

I was astonished about the overwhelming response the church software got. Don't get me wrong, it's a great effort, but the sheer amount of votes it received seems somewhat out of proportion for what you'd expect a comparable project to get. So I'm curious if this Show HN maybe released some pressure in that regard.

But I do think the poll's setup is mistaken, as are people who feel their particular faith should be reflected accurately. It would have been better (and less fraught with squabbling over definitions) if we kept it simple and allowed people to self-identify as non-religious, somewhat religious, and very religious.

To me, the intensity of faith would have been more interesting than the precise flavor. I also think there is a community aspect we could have captured as a second variable: "how engaged/motivated are you by being part of your religious community?" - I suspect this is a big factor as well, maybe in some cases even more so than the actual belief in the supernatural. Who knows, but I would have loved to get some data on this.
Well, speaking of muggles it is just a name that shall not be named (by me).

I didn't mean to imply nobody would know the name, I specifically made sure there was enough information in the post (city/time frame/specific tech business type) so that it would be pretty obvious what company I was talking about (at least to anyone who was on the net back then).
What point are you trying to make? Those two statements are the same.
I think most of us agnostics are simply identifying as such to avoid being associated with the pompous breed of atheists that the Internet's pseudo-anonymity has brought out of the woodwork.
I've been having some good discussions about this exact topic lately. I'm glad you brought it up.

After mulling it over with some friends, I think it would be awesome to have a community gathering where the principles of its "teachings" are based on respect for the earth, each other, and critical thinking.

Instead of typical weekly worship, it could be replaced by something like "Science Sundays" - where folks can bring their kids for a lecture and experiment that the family can do. If one can find enough local individuals who could serve as advocates then I think something like this is possible. Although, I don't what spark it would need for it to reach critical mass.

The closest thing that we've identified as such a group is the Maker community. One problem that we've had in these discussions is that any time we try to add structure to the idea (ie, a common reference book, hierarchy) we immediately realize that it sounds like it would be mistaken for a cult. :( http://abstrusegoose.com/31
It is doable with some analysis of the sound signal. Honda's ASIMO does that, somehow. But I think it would be a current scientific research topic.
"By contrast, a modern Tesla Model S supercar has a battery pack which powers a single water-melon sized motor linked directly to its wheels. Engineering wise, its brilliant. Mechanical Engineering wise, its a huge loss of accumulated knowledge and craftsmanship."

Electric cars are not just a motor and wheels. Other than the engine and drive train, they have all of the same mechanical systems a conventional car has: suspension, steering, brakes, air conditioning, air bags, crumple zones, aerodynamically designed exteriors, etc.
On Linux, you would use io_submit + O_DIRECT on a small number of large files allocated in large chunks. In short, you become the I/O scheduler and buffer manager instead of the operating system, while removing most of the implicit context switches. It does require much more code than mmap()-ing and fairly sophisticated code at that.

If you are doing it well, 3-5x throughput improvement seems to be average upside in my experience, which is huge. The scheduler behind mmap() simply does not have enough context about the workload to make good paging decisions leading to a lot of suboptimal or wasted I/O, and this is magnified when the storage I/O is under pressure. In principle, if you write your own I/O scheduler you can always make sure that the optimal I/O operation is executed at the optimal time.
If you believe god's takes part in the world in obvious ways (like miracles as written in many texts) why don't such things seem to happen around people documenting things ? Why allow large amounts of people to live lives of pure suffering? Etc.

If you say that god's more of a force from afar, why is that worth worshipping any more than another natural phenomenon?
Software engineering is the only trade I'm familiar with that lacks a skill-based career progression. In most companies, it's generally expected that you will eventually become a manager and cross over into the business side of the house. You don't see this in other trades: doctors remain doctors, lawyers continue to practice law, accountants continue to deal with tax returns, etc... etc...

Even at famous Silicon Valley companies with a tech track, becoming a Staff Engineer is a generally inferior career path compared to the title inflation seen on the business side. Ben Horrowitz endorses this in The Hard Thing About Hard Things when advocating that title inflation is "free" in respect to competing companies.[1] Fortunately, it's juxtaposed with Zuckerberg's / Facebook's title normalization, which ensure engineering titles remain comparable with non-engineering titles.

Software engineering needs stronger leadership and career tracks that encourage craftsmanship and mastery. Why continue in an inferior career track, when you can start your own company and leap frog all of middle management altogether? The value proposition simply isn't there. We need a new management structure, one that resolves the multiple and independent types of leadership and encourages engineers to become better engineers, and not to become managers who don't code.

[Edit]
What's really interesting is the way in which this power dynamic plays out in most tech companies. Engineers clearly possess the upper hand, but aren't interested in power and so are heavily placated with a pile of perks to the resentment of others because of their lack of corresponding responsibilities. In SV, engineers are the "talent" and everyone else implicitly fills support roles, even PMs. This also of course creates cultural disparities where you can make $250k/yr (including bonuses and RSUs) and work < 40hr/wk.

[1] http://blog.skillbridge.co/teams/unless-its-king-james-be-wa...
My view on the divine intervention issue is, essentially, "God helps those who help themselves". Do as much as you can to accomplish your goals according to secular understanding, and after that it can't hurt to pray and faith, too. If I'm wrong about my faith, it might not help, but it certainly won't hurt.

In the vast majority of cases, conflicts between my arational religious beliefs and rational scientific beliefs are essentially consequenceless; acting according to rational belief does not result in Sinning, so I can make practical use of scientific knowledge in my life while still gaining emotional satisfaction and sense of purpose from the belief in things that cannot be definitively proven one way or the other.
If you have no experience of good education, how are you supposed to know what good education can do for you?

America used to have first-rate public schools. So did many other Western countries. A lot of the early computer pioneers from the late 40s to the late 60s came up through that system, and it's a fair bet that technology would have developed more slowly without it.

But for some reason teaching the proles to think and improve themselves doesn't meet with universal approval, and public education now is much less generous than it used to be.

At the same time there's been a constant propaganda onslaught from low-information media that shapes perceptions about what's interesting and important, and that media menu doesn't include learning cool stuff for fun or for profit.

So people end up educationally damaged and demotivated for a reason. Pigeon-holing them as 'lazy and unmotivated' is a very lazy way to misunderstand what's happened to them.
> Similarly one can be a Buddhist atheist as well.

This makes me think of my time in Japan. On polls (or when asked), the majority of the Japanese will say or mark down "Buddhism". However, for all intents and purposes, they're atheist/agnostic. They don't believe in God or gods/deities, they view it kinda the same way we view Santa Claus. They only follow a few Buddhist rituals out of cultural pressure/habit (funeral services, news years celebrations, etc). It's extremely similar to how agnostics or even atheists will celebrate Christmas even though they don't believe in God. It's fun, everyone else is doing it so why not?
> > Language is the serialization format for abstract concepts.

> For you maybe, but some people work with images only and most people use a mix of language and images.

There must be some variation across the population in this regard (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5256057). Though I can think in images, concepts, words, sounds, smells, and tastes, I've said before on HN that my thoughts don't seem "official" until they've been serialized as a stream of words (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5256126).
Show HN: I know how to induce out of body exprience in simplest way!
but does it imply that obe is scientific or not? if so what should i do to prove its true?
I will post my methodology soon on my site I promise
They are not. The bottom 50% of people owns a fraction much smaller than 1/2 of all available wealth.

What Oxfam is saying is: if you rank people by wealth on the x axis then plot their wealth of the y axis, the integral (sum, or area under the curve) of the function on the first half of the graph is equal to the integral on the last 85 points. Try actually drawing it, it might help you understand.
I'd argue that the NSA needs to retain limited spying capabilities, but with very very strict control of how the data is used and stored. Dragnet surveillance is not acceptable or necessary.

It's the sharing of this information that should be dramatically limited. Other government agencies (at federal, state, and local levels) need to be prevented from actively spying on citizens. Corporations also need to be prevented from spying on citizens, they are just as bad and just as careless with data.

I'd love some discussion on this topic, please convince me I'm wrong.

Of course there needs to be more regulation on the long-term storage of this data (1-2 years max seems sufficient) and the sharing of this data (absolutely no sharing with other agencies unless it's a major threat to national security) and absolutely no sharing any access of these databases with foreign governments.

The NSA plays a critical role in keeping the country safe. It's becoming easier and easier for crazy, misguided, and foreign enemies to harm the nation and it's citizens, somebody has to protect us.

Other countries are not going to give up their NSA equivalents and eliminating the NSA would cripple US intelligence. Knowledge is power is especially true when dealing with the scale that governments deal with. The fact is that the US is one of the prime targets for terrorism, both independent and foreign nation sponsored.
No they are not. If the bottom half owns the same as the top 85, and the top 85 own 30%....
This is a twisting of what Krauss says. Krauss merely shows that the current known laws of physics are not inconsistent with this scenario. He does not claim there is evidence that proves this is what happened. It's not much different than seeing that some solutions of General Relatively permit warp travel. It doesn't prove it can work, merely that the current known theories allow it.

Also, the comments he makes on determinism are nonsense, and resemble the claims of creationists. A computer can't arise from the laws of physics because it had a designer? By transitivity, this implies human beings could not have been the result of bottom up physical processes either. Is what way is this claim scientific or testable?

"there is a group of people out there writing papers based on the idea that physics is a computational process. But a physical law is not an algorithm. So who chooses the computational strategy and the algorithms that realise a specific physical law? (Finite elements perhaps?) What language is it written in? (Does Nature use Java or C++? What machine code is used?) Where is the CPU? What is used for memory, and in what way are read and write commands executed? Additionally if it’s a computation, how does Nature avoid the halting problem? It’s all a very bad analogy that does not work."

This just seems really poorly reasoned out. What does the halting problem have to do with it? Total non-sequitur. Why can't the physical laws merely be a kind of cellular automata? No need to solve any halting problems. Things interact iteratively, new states arise, some of those states lead to more complex forms, etc.

Since cellular automata have been proven to be universal, that means in principle, any thing that is computable can be carried out, and therefore, all of classical computer science fits perfectly in this view without having to invoke some kind of Penrose-like "the universe solves non-computable functions" magic.

If you asked Ellis how planets or galaxies formed, he would not say "What algorithm caused star/galaxy/solar system formation", or "how does the computer solve N-body problems of trillions of elements". There's no need to posit a designed algorithm for these things, merely that the system interacts with itself in ways that evolve towards these structures, that human beings produce higher level mathematical models to predict and manipulate more easily.

I don't think any scientist working today works under the delusion that our theories are anything but models.