Joel Garreau

Joel Garreau posted an update in the group Stronger, Faster Communities 1 year, 5 months ago

I wonder if you can create communities faster by thinking long — several centuries long. This comes up because there are some grass-roots Virginians engaged in a massive program with a 200-year time horizon. It involves visually transforming 180 miles of heavily-traveled landscape through the Civil War’s most “Hallowed Ground,” as it is locally…[Read more]

Joel Garreau posted an update in the group Ethics and Morality 1 year, 5 months ago

Is it a good idea to commingle science and religion? Or does it just go down that unfortunate road where some people try to turn religion into a science, and others try to turn science into a religion. The latest development is the creation of the “Turing…[Read more]

Charles Davis replied 1 year, 5 months ago

I find the religion/science controversy deeply muddled, so deeply muddled that I don’t know where to start so I will dive in:

Religion vs Science

For those who believe in an omnipotent God it seems perfectly open to them to hold that the universe was created 10.000 years ago or 10,000 seconds ago. But whenever they feel the right moment was, it…[Read more]
Charles Davis replied 1 year, 5 months ago

On reflection and with a bit of time on my hands, I’d like to elaborate on two of the topics above.

On Genesis Literalists

Typically Creation Science is portrayed as a rejection of evolution. I think that this misses an important point. Not merely id Darwin to be thrown out, but the universe as we know it too.

When we look at the night sky we…[Read more]
- Charles Davis replied 1 year, 5 months ago
  
  Scientific Reductionism (cont’d)
  
  Similarly, if we mark one corner of the block of marble (any corner will do), and adopt a convention that makes left and right come first, forward and back come second and up and down come third, then by specifying a collection of triples of numbers corresponding to positions measured from the corner, how far…[Read more]
richard m o'meara replied 1 year, 5 months ago

mr rumsfeld is famously quoted regarding the constraints of knowledge; we know what we know, we know what we don’t know, but there are things we don’t know we don’t know. that’s a misquote but close. I wonder if science (as well as religous doctrine) can be considered the height of arrogance by enlightenment thinkers. Clearly the optimism of…[Read more]

Joel Garreau posted an update in the group Migration 1 year, 5 months ago

Legal immigrants are the latest people to strongly oppose “Dream Act” tuition breaks for illegal immigrants. “These people are taking seats in college away from our kids,” Hamid said. “Why should we reward their dishonest…[Read more]

Joel Garreau posted an update in the group Human Enhancement 1 year, 5 months ago