liberal liberate libertine liberace

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=10008

The reason I say it's not designed to deal with them is because it is entirely based on Inductive Logic (that which happened in case A, B, C, and D will happen in case E). The Scientific Method requires that a certain experiment be repeatable, in order for it to "prove" an hypothesis, but this (again) is induction. Now, Inductive Logic is based on the idea of Causality. If there were no cause-and-effect then there could be no assumption that case A, B, C, and D were in any way related, so as to assume that case E (which occurs under exactly the same circumstances as the previous cases) will have anything like those results.

Now, the reason that the title of the thread is "The difference between 'what cause' and 'what purpose'" is because there are indeed "why" questions that can be answered by Science, but these take on a different form then the kind that I was referring to by previous mention of "'why' questions". You see, "what cause" questions can be phrased as "why" questions (though they can also be phrased otherwise, and so Science never really has to answer a question in the "why" format), but Science is still equipped to answer them. For example, if I ask, "why does the Earth revolve around the Sun", Science can answer "because inertia is keeping the Earth moving, while gravity keeps it from leaving the Sun" (Note: This answer can be re-phrased as "this effect is caused by the combined effects of inertia and gravity").

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/fables-of-wealth.html?src=me&ref=general

Mandeville believed the individual pursuit of self-interest could redound to public benefit, but unlike Adam Smith, he didn’t think it did so on its own. Smith’s “hand” was “invisible” — the automatic operation of the market. Mandeville’s involved “the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician” — in modern terms, legislation, regulation and taxation. Or as he versified it, “Vice is beneficial found, /When it’s by Justice lopt, and bound.”

The success of science gives us every reason to continue to pursue its experimental method in search of further truths. But science itself is incapable of establishing that all truths about the world are discoverable by its methods.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/can-physics-and-philosophy-get-along/

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/fear-and-cycling/?hp

Like many people, I like to set aside a few hours every day, generally between 3 and 6 a.m., to lie quietly thinking about everything that could go horribly wrong with my life and all the ways in which I am negligent and reprehensible. I have spasms of panic over things I shouldn’t have written, or, worse, things I should have; I regret having spent all the money and wonder where more money might ever conceivably come from; I wish I’d kissed girls I didn’t, as long ago as 1985. I’m suddenly convulsed with remorse over mean things I did in middle school (I am sorry, Matthew Reeve); I force myself to choose my least favorite death (drowning).

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/hello-martians-this-is-america.html?pagewanted=2&ref=opinion

“ ‘Moby-Dick’ is about the oil industry,” they said. “And the Ship of American State. The owners of the Pequod are rapacious and stingy religious hypocrites. The ship’s business is to butcher whales and turn them into an industrial energy product. The mates are the middle management. The harpooners, who are from races colonized by America one way or another, are supplying the expert tech labor. Elijah the prophet — from the American artist caste — foretells the Pequod’s doom, which comes about because the chief executive, Ahab, is a megalomaniac who wants to annihilate nature.

“Nature is symbolized by a big white whale, which has interfered with Ahab’s personal freedom by biting off his leg and refusing to be slaughtered and boiled. The narrator, Ishmael, represents journalists; his job is to warn America that it’s controlled by psychotics who will destroy it, because they hate the natural world and don’t grasp the fact that without it they will die. That’s enough literature for now. Can we have popcorn?”

If those numbers seem abstract, consider a blunt new Australian study. In it, researchers determined that watching an hour of television can snip 22 minutes from someone’s life. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/sunday-review/stand-up-for-fitness.html?_r=1&src=rechp

Nah, that's not awkward. Awkward is meeting a black person in your community that shares the surname of one of your ancestors and knowing for a fact that your ancestor owned slaves all the while thinking they must never find out, but they'd probably never find out unless you tell them since you don't have the same surname and surely they don't suspect... I mean, it could've been any white family that enslaved their ancestors, right? But the entire time you're speaking with them all this is on your mind, on the tip of your tongue, even, but you're never going to tell them because that'd be even more awkward and oh, god, should you apologize? Probably not; that would just make them feel self conscious and what if they hold a grudge? Fuck, of course they hold a grudge; you'd hold a grudge if it were you, wouldn't you? Hell, yeah, you would! Just... don't... say... anything. (Hypothetically speaking, of course.) Hence awkward white silences.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/04/more_cancer_care_isnt_always_better.php

 

 

 

My point, however, is not to denigrate the U.S. healthcare system. It does quite well in some areas, not so well in others, and overall it's very good but not spectacular, at least when we look at cancer mortality. The real problem is not that the U.S. system doesn't deliver quality cancer care. Rather, the problem is that delivering that care in the U.S. is spectacularly expensive for the results it gets compared to other countries that spend considerably less.

“If we are to get out of our present paralysis, we need not only strong leadership, but changes in institutional rules,” argues Fukuyama. These would include eliminating senatorial holds and the filibuster for routine legislation and having budgets drawn up by a much smaller supercommittee of legislators — like those that handle military base closings — with “heavy technocratic input from a nonpartisan agency like the Congressional Budget Office,” insulated from interest-group pressures and put before Congress in a single, unamendable, up-or-down vote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/friedman-down-with-everything.html?