State some controversial beliefs that you have.

The BBQ Pit
561

I went through this whole topic and found one mention of a controversial belief that I have, although my view on it might be a bit more controversial than the person (Lust4Life) who mentioned it. Please note that this belief does not in any way suggest I’m not all for finding new sources of energy as well as a better committment to coexisting with our environment, because I am, but …

I don’t really buy global warming. We’ve only been tracking the weather for 200 years at best, and our guesses at what the weather was like before then are just that, educated guesses. How do we know for certain what the weather was like at the polar ice caps or in the Americas a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand years ago? The Natives and Eskimos weren’t exactly keeping detailed meteorological records. Variances and even mass fluctuations in temperature for years at a time aren’t unheard of throughout history, either. Who’s to say that global warming isn’t the next phase in a sinusoidal planetary weather pattern common to Earth which has a cycle so long that it takes thousands of years to come full circle? Maybe the fact that there are six billion people generating CO and CO2 gas is an even bigger culprit than all the industrial pollution. Maybe we’re on the cusp of a “hot age” that hasn’t occurred in tens of thousands of years. Maybe the Earth has gotten skewed off its orbit ever so slightly from all the big skyscrapers being built in the booming economies of southeast Asia and we’re a just a little closer to the sun than we were previously as a result.

We’ve been watching weather patterns for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the time that our planet has been developing, so how the hell do we know? Because an ice cap melted, the sea level rose an inch or two, and a polar bear drowned? Fine. Please prove to me it didn’t happen 10,000 years ago too, and I’ll happily buy into global warming.

562

This seems to extend past the “controversial” into the “impossible.”

Full disclosure: I do not have a BA in Mathematics, and I have no interest in ever having children.

563

It’s possible, but it does require human intelligence to have some distribution other than a normal distribution.

For example, if you have a population of 5 people, and 4 of them have an IQ of 100 and one has an IQ of 200, the mean IQ for that group is 120, and 4 out of 5 members of the group are below the mean intelligence. Obviously, intelligence in that group does not follow a normal distribution- instead, it’s a bimodal distribution.

Now, what you can’t have, by definition, is a distribution of intelligence where most people have an intelligence below the median intelligence. The mean and the median are in the same place in a normal distribution, but that’s not true of all distributions. The mean and the median are both used as a way to quantify an average of a distribution, and since normal curves are so common they’re often the same, but they’re not the same thing.

Full disclosure: I do have a BS in mathematics.

564

I have a BA in mathematics, from a liberal arts college that only awards BA’s.

I also have an MS in mathematics, though IIRC they told me I could have my pick of an MA or an MS.

565

Thank you for fighting my ignorance, Anne. I had a vaguely unpleasant feeling that I was confused in my long-past recollection of mean and median, but was too lazy to look it up first.

566

OK, deep breath…

I believe that Andrew Lloyd Webber is a highly talented individual. I’ve seen six or seven of his musicals, and thought they were all very good. He deserves every penny he’s made. His songs are witty, catchy and often have just the perfect amount of dissonance in them.

And my normal musical tastes run to classical, modern classical, minimalist, electronica, and… well… this guy, obviously.

567

I believe unregulated capitalism will always choose short term gain, even as the worlds economy is collapsing.

I believe breeding should be a privilege, not a right

I believe that the population/environmental quality complex is the gravest threat to our survival

I believe I’ve had an experience with science cannot currently explain.

568

I believe;
that all organized religion is inherently evil and must be eliminated utterly, many of the evils that afflict mankind can be traced back to Organized Religion

that the current United States administration needs an Open Firmware reset, repartitioning and a wipe-and-restore

that politics is almost as bad as religion

that the government needs to get the frak out of people’s personal lives, what goes on in the homes of consenting adults is their business, no one elses

the planet is already overpopulated and humanity needs to stop breeding like rabbits or viruses, or virus-laden-rabbits

that monkeys are inherently funny

that the Answer really IS Forty-Two

there will never be peace in the middle east, they’ve gotten far too good at beating each other up to let it go, and the hate is too ingrained and entrenched

there IS intelligent life somewhere out in space (and bugger all down here on Earth)

that said intelligent life will NOT be bilatterally symmetrical, bipedal, it may not even be Carbon-based

that said Intelligent life looks at Humanity in it’s current state, and sees no reason to make their presence known, why should they visit us when we’re beating up each other over the resources of this insignificant little Blue-Green planet

that Douglas Adams was a modern Genius, right up there with Einstein, Dawkins, Hawking and other luminaries

that i’ll have another hard cider…

569

I agree with this, and will add that megachurches are a danger to the development of free thought and diversity within America. I also am really wary of anyone who invites me to attend church at a megachurch type institution, as the intent of the people making money from the megachurch should be viewed with greater scrutiny than CEOs of large for-profit organizations.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with active euthanasia when used properly, and I think it’s more barbaric to let someone live in an active form of suffering or complete non-development than it is to euthanize them in a relatively painless way.

I believe that most of the people having children that I’ve seen shouldn’t be having them, and that they’re horribly selfish for wanting a child without actually making any sort of goals or plan beforehand.

570

I don’t think it really makes sense to describe human intelligence with a single number. Someone who is better at learning and understanding subject A than someone else isn’t necessarily going to have the same sort of advantage when it comes to subject B.

I think the modern system at most companies, where companies feel no loyalty to their workers and vice versa, sucks, and is much worse than the pattern of most people staying with the same company all their working lives.

571

I always meant to post in this thread.

  1. I believe that classism, the vanishing middle class and the resulting class divide and socioeconomic stratification is a far greater problem than racism. By extension, I believe that class divides us far more than race - that I have more in common and am more closely related to a black guy in my same socioeconomic class than he is to a black CEO or than I am to a white CEO.

  2. I believe that a mutual distrust and dislike of Mexican immigrants is going to do a lot to bring white and black Americans together over the next several decades. I’m not happy about this, but I already see it happening on the “street level” - the “common enemy” of culturally different, other-language-speaking Mexicans has a weird effect on black and white co-workers in low-wage jobs.

  3. I believe that unions are inherently evil and thuggish, and exist solely to extort higher wages and better benefits for people who, based on their lack of education, have not earned them and refuse to do the legwork required to achieve higher incomes, preferring to extort it like petty mafioso.

  4. I think that all police officers are power-tripping, abusive thugs at heart, and that this is what attracts them to the job in the first place.

  5. I believe that irony is killing my generation and completely eradicating any and all authenticity among its members.

572

Oh, and one more, since this one always elicits a really hostile reaction from people (I think because everyone likes to think that they earned whatever success they have) -

I think that success in life (in a job or pursuit) is 100% pure, unabashed, “right place at the right time” luck, and nothing more. Sure, you can do things to put yourself in the right place - like getting a degree or particular experience if you want a particular job - but at the end of the day, actually getting that job or achievement comes down to nothing, and I mean nothing, but pure luck - your resume being the one that ends up getting read at the right time, your boss being the one that decides to leave for a new job when you’re in position to move into his, your temp job putting you instead of someone else in the position to make friends with the woman that’s leaving the comany to start her own in a week and wants to bring you aboard as her assistant, etc.

I guess that’s more philosophical than anything, but still…

573

You forgot the most important one- being yanked out of the right crotch by the doctor.

574

This contradicts your previous point.

Either the education and legwork are required, or they are not. Either success is luck, or it isn’t.

575

I may have heard this idea here, so I am by no means claiming it, but I think it sounds like a damn good idea:

People should have to be licensed to have kids. I mean like take tests- written, oral psychological. Do a “test drive” with some “test kids” (foster kids? like maybe some foster kids with “issues” to give 'em a taste of what it’s like when things go wrong?) Be thoroughly evaluated. And taught some basics about what it means to have a kid, how it changes your life, how it might affect your relationship with your SO, the pitfalls of having kids, the cost, etc, and of course some good stuff too, ya know- for balance.

I think population growth would drop like a mofo- and only for the better!

576

“Chance favors the prepared mind.”
–Louis Pasteur

577

applause

I’m a parent, AND I feel exactly the same way you do about children. Yes, my kids are special to me and a few members of my immediate family, but I do not expect them to be special to anyone else. When asked, “How are your kids?” by an acquaintance, I don’t bore them with the details of how “special” my kids are; I just say “they’re great” because I recognize that that acquaintance is just being nice. It’s like asking someone “how are you?” just to have something to say when you run into them at the grocery store.

When in public, I do my best to “strictly control” them because I believe that’s the best possible way to teach them to live. I also know that it can be extremely unfulfilling to try and enjoy dinner in a restaurant when you’re seated close to either a non-stop screaming baby or a kid whose parents think it’s precious when he runs around the room. If I can’t control my kids, I take them outside or to the bathroom.

It is my firm belief, though, that it’s not “other people’s children” that I can’t stand…it’s “other children’s parents” who I want to knock out.

578

I think that analog wristwatches are an obsolete technology and have no value other than as jewelry. When it comes to letting me know the time, digital watches are inherently better. I’d much rather wear a $50 Casio than a $5000 Rolex.

579

The funny thing is that, around here, the only people I’ve seen with digital watches either have ludicrously expensive ones they bought in the mid-late '80s when Digital Watches were, well, trendy (for want of a better term), or they’re incredibly cheap crap that you’d get from either a Bargain Basement type place or a Kinder Surprise.

Cellphones are becoming the new watch, IMO- I don’t know that many people who still wear a wristwatch, but whenever I’m out shopping I see heaps of people fishing a cellphone out of their pocket to check the time.

580

Yeah, I’ve been resisting that trend. Pulling your cell out of your pocket can be cumbesome and time-consuming, especially when you’re sitting down. It’s much easier to simply bend a wrist.