Theo scorns rival system he disagrees with, film at 11?
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| AnonymousCoward Jun 18, 2005 1:53 AM EDT |
It's not as if he hasn't been riding this particular hobby-horse since Day One. Still, it buys a heck of a lot of exposure for OpenBSD at very little cost to Theo. Not so dumb. I seem to remember another bloke, much politer than Theo, much better qualified to make pronouncements, too - by the name of Tannenbaum, who was and remains unimpressed with Linux. And so...? Linux continues to prosper. <shrug>, move along folks, nothing to see here but excited journalists. |
| r_a_trip Jun 18, 2005 7:41 AM EDT |
It is cheap publicity, but also costly publicity. Theo de Raadt comes off as a fringe, abrasive fanatic again. OpenBSD is accumulating a (faint?) smell of open hostility towards "non-believers". Also the old claims of BSD to be a UNIX (Which it is not. No certification by the Open Group, so just another ordinary clone), the Linux users hate Microsoft, BSD users love Unix and the myth that BSD is retarded by the lawsuit is not helping BSD's cause much. With GNU/Linux you can just jump in if you want to. When I interpret the various BSD extremes, it seems you are supposed to become an acolyte first and make laborious studies of "The Handbook". I think it is all sour grapes. BSD's are not retarded in their growth because of an ancient lawsuit that (figuratively speaking) nobody even remembers. It is the air of closedness and eliteness of the respective BSD branches that is hampering the growth of their communities. If any, the outburst from Mr. De Raadt is good publicity for GNU/Linux. The very diplomatic response from Linus Torvalds: "Theo de Raadt is difficult.", is absolutely priceless. |
| TxtEdMacs Jun 18, 2005 10:15 AM EDT |
Quoting: ... accumulating a (faint?) smell of open hostility towards "non-believers". So just the Zeitgeist found so many places around the world, where the theocracies know what's best for everyone! It seems to have seeped into the coding world. |
| richo123 Jun 18, 2005 12:24 PM EDT |
Yeah the zeitgeist of theocracy is right on the money...... Did you know 60% of US residents believe that the theory of evolution has not much supporting evidence and also 30% believe WMDs were found in Iraq. If reality doesn't match your prejudices just dump reality -- after all only "weak" people don't have the courage of their convictions. I am very disappointed to see these moronic tendencies in the OSS world. |
| AnonymousCoward Jun 18, 2005 6:57 PM EDT |
richo123: 60% now? It was 44% last time I looked. One thing I've discovered from carefully reading both sides of the debate (in many different debates) is that most of the participants filter out and discard at least some of the distressing data. This seems to be based on the rather silly idea that the viewpoints themselves have more value than the data. Theo needs a big serving of crow to bring his exalted opinion of his own methods down to earth, and Linux developers in general do need to be more security-aware. Each has something to contribute. Theo is rejecting Linux's contributions because they're not packaged as he thinks they should be, and in turn phrasing his own proposals so narrowly and harshly that anyone he might convert to his way of doing things has to spend considerable time fighting their way past his judgemental generalisations first, so if there's any blame to be laid for antagonism I think he should carry most of it. Nevertheless, he does have some valid points. Likewise, proponents of molecules-to-man evolution need to admit that as a replacement for spontaneous generation the theory is woefully inadequate to explain much of the data, that it has philosophical underpinnings of its own, and that much of what they regard as data is in real life interpretation. Until they can make those admissions, they can't make serious progress in reforming the assorted theories to make them work better - but they're terrified of so doing lest it give the creationists a foot in the door. Er, wake up? Not only do the creationists have their foot in the door, but that very attitude is providing them with ammunition to deploy against you. Creationists in turn need to admit that no matter how gross this inadequacy, it doesn't automatically mean that their own ideas are right. And so it goes. There's a theological war brewing between proponents of Ubuntu and proponents of Debian which looks so much like the politics of the Reformation - and yet there's no technical reason why their respective code-bases should diverge. It seems to be human nature. |
| mvermeer Jun 18, 2005 11:58 PM EDT |
AC, thank you for providing such an apt demo for your own critique ;-) Likewise, proponents of molecules-to-man evolution need to admit that as a replacement for spontaneous generation the theory is woefully inadequate to explain much of the data, that it has philosophical underpinnings of its own, and that much of what they regard as data is in real life interpretation. " that very attitude..." Attitude? Hello? What about: knowing your subject? Molecules-to-man is a reality, AC, grow up and live with it. (That's why you can catch the flu, or HIV, which otherwise would just be one more of the Creator's arbitrary pieces of nastiness.) Unfortunately robustly understanding the validity of the theory (yes: theory; gravity is a theory too, but don't step off of any high buildings, OK?) requires a basic scientific training. Wish it were otherwise; would make lots of things easier. Watching Discovery Channel won't do, just as it won't teach you relativity, or quantum theory, or electromagnetism or whatever, on any level where you can hold well founded opinions on their validity. Knowing what the heck you're talking about is nothing to be ashamed of. I don't intend to be, your little sermon notwithstanding. I am right and you are wrong, and that's all there is to it :-) |
| dinotrac Jun 19, 2005 4:51 AM EDT |
Martin, Martin, Martin, I feel a certain sympathy for AC on this issue. More and more, people are treating science as religion, with no regard for what it means, what it can tell us, and -- more to the point -- what it can not. I recently had a go-round with people who had made some very derisive remarks about Intelligent Design (theory? That's not really the right word). They got one thing right: It's not science. They seemed incapable, however, of appreciating the rather clever job somebody did to create an argument, philosophy, whatever you want to call it, that lay precisely outside the bounds of science. Of course, you have to actually understand what science really is (something American schools seem not to bother teaching) in order to appreciate it. The truth is that science is not capable of making a judgment on the existence or the handiwork of God. Scientists are fully capable of making their own judgments by the application of Occam's Razor, which, in a lovely bit of irony, is a bit mystical in it's own right. |
| mvermeer Jun 19, 2005 5:44 AM EDT |
Dino, Dino, you hit one nail right: science and religion are different, well, domains. It works both ways: the Bible is a poor biology textbook. But... "...appreciating the rather clever job somebody did to create an argument, [...] that lay precisely outside the bounds of science..." Eh, from one lawyer to another? Sure, I can understand your appreciation; I hope you understand my disgust. These ID folks are lawyers in the bad (lawyer-joke) sense, as you will be aware if you studied their own internal writings. Science is not religion, but that doesn"t mean that scientists (also the non-religious ones) wouldn"t passionately believe in some things: the Truth, for instance, which is something of a sacrament. Yes, in that sense there is an implied philosophy in science. Lawyers and politicians -- and lots of ordinary folk -- don't get that. Which is a pity. Religion demands something of you; it is not "spirituality", which is soft and easy and noncommittal and doesn't place demands. In that sense science is very similar. Like Israel"s prophets: saying what must be told, not what wants to be heard. |
| richo123 Jun 19, 2005 5:44 AM EDT |
The point about the scientific process is critical thinking and debate. One assesses a huge mass of evidence and draws conclusions and proposes theories. These are then subjected to usually rigorous (and sometimes vicious) peer review during publication and to open and extensive public debate during conferences. This is an ongoing process and constantly revisited as new evidence comes in. BTW I speak from personal experience here. If one puts forward a particular viewpoint (like for example intelligent design) then one should expect the same treatment as Darwin (and descendents and all serious scientists) were put through by actually looking at the real world. This has happened and as far as I know, no serious biologist takes this "theory" seriously. Only two people with any serious scientific qualifications are behind this and none of their work has stood up to serious peer review. Compare this with 150 years of heavy and ongoing scrutiny of the theory of evolution. Lets be frank and not naive about this: Intelligent design is clever sophistry which is designed as propaganda to support bible based creationists. The point here is that creationists believe literally that the bible is the truth and further believe that evolution is atheistic heresy. They now have extensive financial resources and are using intelligent design as a sophisticated front for their true objective: Theocracy is the USA. I do not think they will succeed since many people on the right of American politics are as horrified by this prospect as I am. As a final note some serious scientists (eg Paul Davies) believe that the very aesthetics of fundamental theories of the universe (eg relativity and quantum mechanics) is a sign of God. This viewpoint is however far removed from the intelligent design charlatans. |
| dinotrac Jun 19, 2005 6:45 AM EDT |
Martin - You are correct that science is not religion. Science is not the problem. People, whether scientists or lay people, are the problem. Scientists are often prone to arrogance. Lay people are often prone to chant scientific things as mantras, relating to science as if it actually were a religion. The lovely thing about science is that it is more powerful than the people who do and the people who receive its fruits. For all the foibles of people, science does tend to wind its way toward the truth. |
| hkwint Jun 19, 2005 1:21 PM EDT |
Funny you guys bring this evolution theory up.
Since I read a scientific book about it, I'm not sure about it any more. You see, from a scientific point of view, some American bloke, named R Thompson (used to be mathematician) has some critic from scientific point of view.
It goes something like this:
-Evolution cannot explain conscience,
-Evolution cannot explain inspiration,
-Unified physic laws cannot explain / lead to the current amount of useful information
-Evolution uses hypothesis which cannot be falsified, which isn't scientific at all,
-Evolution can explain how an ape turns into a human, and some useful organs can turn into a human / beast, but it cannot explain how molecules turn into a useful organ.
-From propability-calculations, it can be shown it's almost impossible these molecules can turn into useful organs only by laws of physics. Also, Richo can say some other ideas haven't stand up against peer review, and Darwin's theory lives for more than 150 years, but then I reply: So what? Remember the time when the Indians ruled America, millions of people died from the plague and Twix was still called Raiders? Well neither do I, but believe me: back then, evolution theory didn't stand up against peer-review from other priests, and creation-theory was older than 150 years back then. We shouldn't make the same mistake by believing we are already there and know how we are evolved, that's what I like to point out. And evolution really has some problems. Now, you see, science isn't everything. You might know those scientific studies paid by drug-makers, where they ask a professor to put his name above, making it 'scientific', but the professor doesn't agree to, and never ever read the study, just wanting to score an article in Nature or Science? That's the problem: These scientists want to publish, that's all they care about. If someone finds things which cannot fit into current scientific models, they get ignored, like Erich von Daniker (field of Archeology) for example. Maybe because it might look like the inventors of current models are stupid. They're afraid for things that dont' fit in their current models, just like Christian priests used to be (remember scholastic movement for example). That doesn't mean people like von Daniker tell nonsense; that they offer the wrong solution, doesn't mean they show us the wrong problems with the current models. Saying current models are the truth and we don't need to discuss them is sooo 1500 (ad). Don't make the mistake of believing what these scientists tell you without thinking for yourself, the time I discussed (middle-ages) teach us you can't always trust the people who 'studied'. We just need to be critical, that's what I'm really trying to say, that these people did a study doesn't mean they don't use their existentialism religion to guide their studies; believing in some scientific models is a religion too, since some of them cannot be falsified. Two examples: If you look to conscience from a quantum-mechanic point of view, you have a number of probable worlds, but you cannot observe these worlds, the model says. You just have to believe they exist because the theory says so. The other one from the field of evolution: When animal A turns into animal B via evolution, Darwin tells is we must find all the animals 'in between A and B', in fossiles. Then scientists weren't able to find this 'in between forms'. Then came neo-Darwinism, telling you cannot find these forms because 'A to B happened in a very short time, and it happened in the highlands, so there are no fossiles (couldn't find correct plural of fossil) left as proof'. So it can't be proven, but it is so, since the theory says so. Then why not believe in God? It cannot be proven, but it is so, since the (christian theory) says so. That has the same scientific value. But this thread really was about T.deRaadt. Well, I didn't believe he said this harsh things, so I asked a member of the Dutch ICT-news-site tweakers.net to mail him and ask if he really said this stuff. In another LXer thread, people believed he was trolled. I heard, T.deRaadt replied: "I was not mis-quoted. Linux systems are pieced together by distributors using wire found out in the shed." Just in case you wondered. |
| dinotrac Jun 19, 2005 3:26 PM EDT |
hkwint - I have no doubt that Theo says the things that he is reported to say. Just remember, nothing he says can detract from the quality of **BSD OS's as software platforms. Self-important J*ck-*ss*s can do excellent work and be friends of Free software, even if they are not big fans of our little neck of the woods. Remember -- No matter what he says, he is doing some good work, and he is doing it on the right side of the fence. |
| mvermeer Jun 19, 2005 10:10 PM EDT |
Dean: right, right, problematic, right. "Arrogance". I don't think I, or any other scientist, am particularly arrogant. Most scientists are actually rather shy -- they just know better (No, not those that tell you tobacco smoke is good for you :). How do you bring that across without appearing arrogant? I suspect it has to do with most people never having had the experience of some intellectual endeavor actually succeeding, and succeeding splendidly. Predicting a planet to be in a certain spot in the sky, and finding it there; telling that light grazing the edge of the Sum will be deflected 1".75 (rather than half of that) and being shown right; or even something as prozaic as compiling from theory a list of spectral lines of some substance and finding it to be precisely right. Doesn't that entitle one to a little self-satisfaction? You see, we created much of the culture you live in, including all the material goodies you take for granted. Sub-50% infant mortality, for starters, if you don't want to hear about computers and jetliners and such. That's a success story if ever there was one. And you want us to be humble? Have you ever been before a hostile, scientifically naive audience, trying to prove in sound bite format a scientific truth that they don't want to hear about? I suppose you have to be a little arrogant to even try ;-) As to hkwint's contribution -- should I really respond to that? It would be like playing football against a team ignorant of the rules... am I being arrogant again? |
| dinotrac Jun 20, 2005 3:48 AM EDT |
Martin -- Science has a great success rate because it is a sound methodology with a substantial and constantly culled knowledge base. And scientists mostly mean well. But that old arrogance. Sigh. Scientists have not created much of the culture I live in, although I'm sure they had something to do with Britney Spears, and should be held accountable. Most of the work that scientists like to take credit for has actually been done by engineers and other practitioners. Somebody's got to do the dirty work while you guys are busy patting yourselves on the back and bemoaning our failure to let you rule the world between drinks at the University Club. Oh well, maybe I can catch a news story interviewing some scientist about the Mars rovers. Also built by engineers.... |
| mvermeer Jun 20, 2005 4:25 AM EDT |
Dean, Dean, Dean... I'm an engineer too, you know. A DI from Delft, the closest thing to MIT found in the Netherlands. And currently at a University of Technology in Helsinki. That's how I know to what extent engineering builds on science. Engineers could spend ten times the amount of sweat; without knowing their science they wouldn't get anywhere. Pat, pat. ...and I fiercely deny responsibility for Britney Spears. Scientists may not have created in any way recognizable to you, the cultural environment you find yourself in -- if you suffer from any serious chronic ailment like diabetes or hypertension, they may actually be responsible for the circumstance of you living, rather than being dead ;-) |
| richo123 Jun 20, 2005 4:47 AM EDT |
Dino- Trying to seperate scientists and engineers and claiming scientists have made little contribution to your world is just not right. Engineers build on the back of scientific innovation. Efficient computers would not have been built (by engineers in the late 40s) without the ground breaking advances of quantum mechanics in the 1920s. There are many other examples. We (engineers and scientists) are a team and there is much mutual respect. My father and brother are engineers and I am a scientist and we all get along fine and I don't look down my nose at them while at the University Club or anywhere else. |
| dinotrac Jun 20, 2005 6:26 AM EDT |
m&v: The real problem, my scientific friends, is that we don't teach science well enough, we don't dispel suspicion well enough, and we don't understand the "other" side well enough. Having devoured science since I could read, I, for example, had a difficult time understanding how anybody could seriously question the operation of evolution in our world. However, I also attend an evangelical church -- and regularly share space with bunches of those folks. For that matter, my own wife has trouble. Sigh. Once upon a time, I would have thought these people backward and stupid, but that's not the case. They don't have a good comprehension of the scientific case for evolution -- but, I might add, neither do most lay-people who accept it. I guess that's not surprising. Darwin himself held onto his work until he had laid out a massive multi-disciplinary case. Some people will never listen, but others will simply never listen so long as you talk to them like they're idiots. That latter group can be reached, but it takes patience and understanding. No condescension allowed. After all, the good scientists who gave us particle physics also gave us Hiroshima, and I'm still not convinced about Britney Spears. |
| richo123 Jun 20, 2005 6:49 AM EDT |
Dino, I agree that better communication would be good and it sounds to me like you are ideally placed to do this if you attend an evangelical church and are into science. Seems to me (sincerely) however you folks should be a bit careful about those who would seek to manipulate your genuine religious faith for their own ends. BTW I agree there are a lot of arrogant scientists and that is not a good thing (It annoys me no end). Those folks would not be seen dead in a forum like this. Hiroshima is a fair cop although strictly speaking the US military had a lot to do with that as well. Brittney Spears WTF???? |
| dinotrac Jun 20, 2005 7:12 AM EDT |
richo - I refuse to believe that Britney Spears can possibly be the result of any natural process that tends to prefer survival of the fittest.... |
| hkwint Jun 20, 2005 7:28 AM EDT |
Dino: But God didn't create Britney Spears as well, because if he did, he's not God. So therefore she's useless both to creationists and evolutionists (and many other people as well). |
| dinotrac Jun 20, 2005 7:41 AM EDT |
hk -- Hard to argue with that logic. I guess that makes her both a natural and Supernatural freak... |
| number6x Jun 20, 2005 8:15 AM EDT |
Hiroshima, Nagasaki The apple and the serpent. Human culture has often taught lessons through stories. For christian fundamentalists the stories in the christian bible are retellings of actual events. For other christians and non-christians, the stories may or may not have happened. For all of these people the stories contain lessons to be learned. The story of the garden of eden has one such lesson (among others). In the story of the garden of eden God creates man in his own image. God could have created man like the other creatures, creatures without free will, slaves to their genetic coding. Man could have been like a koala that would eat eucalyptus and never try anything else. All the plants and animals were given the gift of life. The dove, the tree, the scorpion, the paramecium, and the bubonic plague are all alive. But man is different. Self aware and conscious, man is able to choose his own path. Man is given a gift even greater than life, free will. In this story, God gives man dominion over all of eden, and asks that man simply refrain from eating the fruit of one tree. Many people blame the serpent, but it is the humans, Eve and Adam that make the choice. God could have surrounded the tree with uzi toting angels to protect it, but that is not the point. God could have made man like the other creatures and made them not eat the apples by setting up their genetic programming to only eat eucalyptus, but that is not the point. The point is man was shown a path. Man was asked, not forced to walk a path. The choice of the path is up to each and every one of us. Do we follow the path of evil towards others, or of good towards others? Destroying man's free will would be destroying the greatest gift given to man, God does not do this. In the story of the garden God gives man a choice, asks him to follow one path but leaves it up to man to decide which choice to make. Man has no one but themselves to blame for the choices they make. Man made the choice and must live with the consequences of the choice made. That is the lesson. Atomic power and particle physics are not evil. What humans do or do not do with them is evil or good. Many non-religious people ask "How can a god allow the evil things that happen to happen? How can god allow a Pol Pot or a Hitler to exist?" The crimes committed by these people are crimes of choice. Some people have chosen to inflict evil on others. "How about natural disasters like Tsunamis?" Well, for the strictly religious, if our ancestors in the garden had made the correct choice we would all live in eden and not worry about those. As a not very strictly religious person, natural disasters are just acts of nature like rain or sunsets. Sometimes nature is just awesome, sometimes it is powerfully awesome. Mankind can do good things with scientific knowledge, or we can do bad things with it. The choice is ours to make. “The devil made me do it” is not a valid excuse for choosing to do evil. The misuse of scientific knowledge has been used to cause pain suffering and death. So has the misuse of religion. Just ask the victims of the spanish inquisition, or the taliban. I believe that misuse of atomic physics has a long way to go before it can catch up to the body count misuse of religion has attained over the millennia. However, all of these actions are examples of man’s inhumanity towards man. We all have choices to make. We can choose to do good, or do harm. At a minimum we can choose to at least do no harm. If you haven’t read it, I would suggest Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”. Frankl is a survivor of Auschwitz and has experienced first hand the evil the man can choose to inflict upon his fellow man. I read it in a high school religion course and it helped open my eyes to a more moral and informed way to treat others, regardless of religious belief or lack thereof. |
| mvermeer Jun 21, 2005 5:23 AM EDT |
...the good scientists who gave us particle physics also gave us Hiroshima... They provided the means for Hiroshima, or rather, for possibly saving London, as it appeared back then. Wouldn't have wanted to be in their shoes. And the thing worked, didn't it? ;-) |
| dinotrac Jun 21, 2005 6:15 AM EDT |
Martin -- Yes, indeed, the thing worked, and, in the context of the times, was a good thing. Just trying to keep that scientific ego in check... ;0) |
| dave Jun 21, 2005 8:00 AM EDT |
I have to congratulate you all for such a (comparatively speaking) professional discussion. If only everyone... dave |
| AnonymousCoward Jun 21, 2005 6:13 PM EDT |
Er... looks like roicho123 has picked a possibly-too-interesting example. (-: Science should not be religion, but it is. In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, they're different. In this case, the theory is that the scientist is ideologically neutral and the practice is that a typical scientist (by no means all of them) has an extreme ideological bias to the ideology Materialism. Materialims is a definite claim that there is no higher power, there is no such thing as supernature. This is an intrinsicly religious claim. Intelligent Design is an attempt to discard the ideology of Materialism. This can be a very useful postulate, especially where the Materialistic religious presuppositions are leading scientists to distort and discard data in order to avoid heresy. A recently published survey reports that they actually do that, and in large numbers. Unfortunately, ID is "poisoned" by two factors, the most fundamental being that a religious foundation cannot be avoided. Even saying "we don't know whether there is a supernature or not" is a religious position (loosely speaking, agnosticism). The less fundamental and more social factor is that some of the participants in ID (forex, Philip Johnson) are using ID as a "leading edge" for a (relatively weak) form of Creationism, which gives it the same texture of being warped to fit an agenda that Materialistic science. Evolution and its more-or-less entailment Gradualism have had science barking up an endless series of wrong trees. The waste involved has been almost literally incredible. The late Stephen J Gould has done science an immense favour by making it once again possible, to borrow the words of another pundit in the field (and twist them), to be an intellectually fulfilled Catastrophist. Which comes back to dino's comment about "we don't teach science well enough" - if we shout down non-Materialst points of view as scientific heresy instead of seriously investigating the issues with an eye to preparing a truly reasonable defence, we automatically undermine our every claim to strict rationality as we automatically class ourselves as intolerant religious bigots. WRT dino's comment on Britney... it's extremely insightful, but apparently by accident. (-: What is the practical definition of "fitness"? Well, until very recently, it was almost unviersally "the ability to reproduce" but since in the long term that's clearly unsustainable, alternatives are now (hoorah!) being sought. However, within this limited and still-dominant paradigm, Britney is a success because many males regard her as attractive, and with libidinous processes being driven largely by sight (or in the vernacular, "thinking with your old feller") this means that they'd like to mate with her, presumably with at least a subconscious view to passing on their genes. Bad enough as it stands, but when you paint that whole scene evolution-coloured, you run aground of another recent observation, again derived from materialism, which is that evolution has no morals as such. For practical purposes and in the big picture, it doesn't matter whether your genes are passed on by force or by consent. I flinch as I type this, but this makes rape an "acceptable" genetic survival strategy. Since (see above, and still flinching) Britney is evolutionarily successful, that makes raping Britney a priority for any male who wants to be evolutionarily successful. Yeuch! It also invalidates concepts such as honesty except as one survival strategy from a menu of many. Which means (flinch, flinch) that the evolutionarily successful male will be seeking to rape as many attractive women as he can, then lie to and decieve as many people as possible in order to improve his chances of getting to do it again. That's not a planet I want to live on. That's not just an academic point, either. Many rapists have used it as justification for what they do. Sadly, rape is not the worst of problems raised by a society based on such a religious premise. We have many outstanding examples of precisely this social experiment standing up in history to be counted, most of them within the last century. Now, where were we? Oh, yes... Theo's intolerance. Let's hope science's intolerance of heresy never becomes truly fixated at a similarly low levels, for such would spell a quick stagnation in most of the physical sciences. |
| dinotrac Jun 21, 2005 6:47 PM EDT |
AC - You've hit on a built-in conundrum of science and why honest scientists admit the realm of religion not merely outside of science, but outside of the capabilities of science. That is not a knock on science -- it is the design of the beast that has made is so useful and so powerful. It is also why I find Occam's Razor delicious. Though most self-respecting scientists would tell you that it simply represents making a rational choice, it is a mystical tool, a philosophical touchstone that has its basis not in science, but in the limits thereof. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!