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  1. #76
    Veteran cutewizard's Avatar
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    hmmmmm, interesting thread.......

  2. #77
    6elieve. AFMadison's Avatar
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    Yeah. That pathetic eater calls Kawhi re ed because he loves him. You're being so naive....An embarrassment to our Krew.
    The whole krew is an embarrassment tbh

  3. #78
    Veteran gambit1990's Avatar
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    The only hard determinist advocates are hacks like Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne (citing the long debunked Libet experiments) who think that disproving free will somehow puts the final nail in the coffin of religion, never mind the fact that determinism is a feature of most of the world's religions.
    damn mid, didn't know you were that dumb.

  4. #79
    SeaGOAT midnightpulp's Avatar
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    damn mid, didn't know you were that dumb.
    Sam Harris isn't all that respected as a thinker outside of his New Atheist fanboys.

    http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/...rt-sam-harris/

    http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.c...ience-can.html

    Yesterday, I brought on the wrath of the defenders of Slippery Sam. Sam Harris has an amazing talent: he can say the most awful things, and a horde of helpful apologists will rise up in righteous fury and simultaneously insist that he didn’t really say that, and yeah, he said that, but it only makes sense.
    http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngu...-slippery-sam/
    Last edited by midnightpulp; 07-10-2016 at 11:59 AM.

  5. #80
    Out with the old... Obstructed_View's Avatar
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    This is one of the more interesting player threads I've seen. Well done, guys.

  6. #81
    Veteran K...'s Avatar
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    Sigh, mid is creating a bunch of straw man arguments rather than accepting evidence in both sides.

    He's right that Sam Harris is a hack, but not persuasive to say Harris isn't at least 70% right in free will.

    The problem is that in the year 2016 no body defined free will before science decided to look at human decision-making and reporting the findings.


    Here's where the debate impacts you.. Punishment is based on the rejection of hard determinism. Legal scholars debate the effect of punishment all the time. They understand it's a poor tool.

    When mid references leplace understand he created a dumb premise where the machine didn't know it existed. That's kind of big deal. Pretty dishonest here.

    When mid says deliberation is proof of free well he doesn't say why. It feels right though doesn't it? But what deliberation is is your brain trying to eliminate stress to get a calm pattern recognition process. The decision whether to react or think Is but another determined variable.

    When mid suggests fmri machines prove thinking he's saying a specialist machine can detect patterns of nueron behaviors. This is a truism. The machine is built to see that. The fact that something happens in the brain does not suggest that that activity is meaningful. All machines have parts.

  7. #82
    SeaGOAT midnightpulp's Avatar
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    Sigh, mid is creating a bunch of straw man arguments rather than accepting evidence in both sides.

    He's right that Sam Harris is a hack, but not persuasive to say Harris isn't at least 70% right in free will.

    The problem is that in the year 2016 no body defined free will before science decided to look at human decision-making and reporting the findings.


    Here's where the debate impacts you.. Punishment is based on the rejection of hard determinism. Legal scholars debate the effect of punishment all the time. They understand it's a poor tool.

    When mid references leplace understand he created a dumb premise where the machine didn't know it existed. That's kind of big deal. Pretty dishonest here.

    When mid says deliberation is proof of free well he doesn't say why. It feels right though doesn't it? But what deliberation is is your brain trying to eliminate stress to get a calm pattern recognition process. The decision whether to react or think Is but another determined variable.

    When mid suggests fmri machines prove thinking he's saying a specialist machine can detect patterns of nueron behaviors. This is a truism. The machine is built to see that. The fact that something happens in the brain does not suggest that that activity is meaningful. All machines have parts.
    What "straw man" arguments?

    Every experiment that tries prove the "neurons made me do it" concept relies on a similar methodology of asking participants to press a button or choose a color when they feel like it. These experiments are flawed for the simple reason that the kind of actions they are examining are actions a person will do thousands of times, meaning the readyness potential of pressing a button will have already been wired into the subconscious a long time ago. And furthermore, we have experiments proving that a person can veto an action in this case.

    These experiments also don't have a control in pretty much every case.

    Alfred Mele has criticized the interpretation of the Libet results on two grounds. First, the mere appearance of the RP a half-second or more before the action in no way makes the RP the cause of the action. It may simply mark the beginning of forming an intention to act. In the two-stage model, it is the considering of possible options.
    I would've liked to see a control subject that was instructed to sit there for 5 minutes without pressing a button. I bet the brain would be constantly forming readyness potentials, but yet it wouldn't have led to an actual action.

    Also, the Libet experiment would be easy to beat in theory. You would merely have to set up for yourself a sort of random trigger that you act upon. Perhaps in the control room, the moment you hear a bird sing or car pass by, you would press the button. In that case, as I said, the action would be isomorphic to the brain activity. A researcher would not see a 1 second build up of an intention to act.

    And there's nothing wrong with my Laplace example. I don't understand why you believe the machine not knowing that it exists changes anything? I know it exists as its inventor. I'm the demon here. And if hard determinism is true, there would be NOTHING you could do to change your future, despite any information about your future you receive.

    The fact you can easily just choose not to get in the car if Laplace's demon informs you that you will die when you drive to work on Tuesday definitively proves the idea of hard determinism as incoherent.

    "Well, the fact you don't know what's coming means your future is probably still determined."

    That's why you have to use what I call a "weaK" form of the Laplace demon to govern some future decision. We can't perfectly predict the future obviously, but we can make informed decisions using probability about the future. You know driving to work is a relatively safe event a great majority of the time, so the odds are in your favor to not die that day. If you get information that a Tornado is headed inbound to the road you take, you'll make the necessary change.
    Last edited by midnightpulp; 07-10-2016 at 02:08 PM.

  8. #83
    Veteran cutewizard's Avatar
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    http://www.poundingtherock.com/2016/...adow-pau-gasol

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Pau Gasol's tenure with the Spurs begins in Tim Duncan's shadow

    Tim Duncan has rewired the way we think as fans.
    Through his longevity, financial sacrifices and enduring dedication to a city and its fanbase, he didn't just preclude the need for a rebuild in San Antonio; he ripped the word out of the Spurs fan dictionary.

    Thanks in large part to him, the franchise isn't hitting the reset button as many do when faced with the end of an era. Its front office is still harvesting the overseas prospects it was able to stash away while Tim and Co. chased rings. Its core is still good enough to push for a top-two seed, even after a total rejig of their frontcourt and the biggest roster turnover of recent memory. The revered culture remains, drawing and facilitating the arrival of new talent.
    There are few things more sacred to the city of San Antonio than number 21. Watching him over the past two decades has been about more than reveling in wins, accolades and championships, and more than basketball itself: it's been to bask in the banality of greatness. In the wake of Duncan's impending decision, excellence should continue to be the organization's perennial benchmark.
    Those expectations will carry into next season---not only because we Spurs fans are spoiled, but because next year's Spurs should still be really good. Forgetting Golden State for a second (try it, it's nice), there are at least 28 teams in the league that should dread playing San Antonio, and Pau Gasol plays a big role in that.
    Gasol won't fully take over Duncan's role in the defense, but he will inherit some lofty analogues to last year's historically-great team. When he's late on rotations or botches a pick and roll, people will notice. If his rebounding is notably lacking, people will scrutinize. And if he's unable to negate those shortcomings with his offense, his $30 million contract will be a target of criticism from every egg with an internet connection.
    Timmy was on a very team-friendly deal, one that was always going to skew how the Spurs replaced him (and affect how that value would be appraised). When he re-signed for $10.8 million for two years last year, it was rightfully seen as a hometown discount. But as Jeff McDonald has pointed out, it was also an understanding between the two sides that ensured that, if Duncan decided to retire, he'd have a little extra with him on the way out just by opting in to year two. Either way, $6 million in cap space was never going to replace Duncan, especially in this wild and crazy NBA summer.


    That Pau's signing came with the added cost of bidding adieu to Boris Diaw -- and seemed to seal the departures of David West and Boban Marjanovic -- won't go overlooked. But their losses may also be overstated: West proved unreliable against the Thunder's big men; Diaw's exit, one that seemed all the more likely following his benching during the playoffs, could signal more minutes for Kyle Anderson as a Boris Light, and there's still time for the team to shore up the rest of its depth chart.
    If Duncan retires, he will leave an indelible void, but the center position should be no phantom limb. Even at 36, Gasol brings a handful of elite talents to the offensive side of the ball, elevating an attack that may have improved anyway with Kawhi Leonard andLaMarcus Aldridge jelling in year two. If Dewayne Dedmon can learn to keep his fouling down and the front office finds one more serviceable big (Bourosis?!), the frontcourt rotation should be fine -- and potentially more versatile than last year.
    Tim Duncan raised the bar for Spurs basketball in ways that can't be duplicated. In his waning years, his presence became so intangibly venerated that his value seemed to exist in the aether, as a specter of greatness. As such it's understandable for fans to lament the arrival of a familiar face that comes with some well-defined downside. Next season's team may take a step back and it may not, but part of Duncan's legacy is that such a possibility endures, even after he steps away from the game.

  9. #84
    Veteran Chillen's Avatar
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    Is Pau officially signed? I wonder if he knew that Tim was going to retire which is one of the reasons he signed, he will have a bigger role on the team now.

  10. #85
    GIVE IT TO GINOBILI beirmeistr's Avatar
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    Is Pau shopping for a house?

  11. #86
    Veteran cutewizard's Avatar
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  12. #87
    Veteran cutewizard's Avatar
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    i just realized that Pau Gasol...............is the closest I have ever seen to the playing skills and talents of Ramon Fernandez of the Philippines!

    Now that Gasol is with the Spurs, i think he will become my favorite player, hmmmmm.......

  13. #88
    Veteran gambit1990's Avatar
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    Sam Harris isn't all that respected as a thinker outside of his New Atheist fanboys.
    proves this by citing random ass blogs:



    citing a blog that says greenwald takes apart sam harris

    shows how little you know tbh.

  14. #89
    SeaGOAT midnightpulp's Avatar
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    proves this by citing random ass blogs:




    citing a blog that says greenwald takes apart sam harris

    shows how little you know tbh.
    The writers of those blogs are respected scientists and philosophers in their fields, tenured professors with published papers. Sam Harris never got beyond his BA in philosophy and got his PHD in neuroscience basically to study the effect of religion on the human brain. He's done zero work in the neuroscience field and has a non-existent publication record.

    He's a zealot who operates from a singular point-of-view (dislike of religion). He's totally irrelevant as a thinker and scientist in actual academic circles.

    I know he gets his New Atheist fanboys going because he appeals to their warped sense of superiority they have over Bible Belters (just like Hitchens and Dawkins), but you'd do better to read Sagan, or any atheist thinker who doesn't lazily define himself in relation to the "other" (believers).

    He's a hack.

  15. #90
    Veteran gambit1990's Avatar
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    The writers of those blogs are respected scientists and philosophers in their fields, tenured professors with published papers. Sam Harris never got beyond his BA in philosophy and got his PHD in neuroscience basically to study the effect of religion on the human brain.
    trying to discredit him by saying he has PHD in a field he talks/writes about

  16. #91
    Veteran gambit1990's Avatar
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    i'm sure a lot of people on here don't know who sam harris is, what he stands for. how about we hear what he has to say?

    people who call sam harris hacks, people like mid are ben affleck in this clip:


  17. #92
    SeaGOAT midnightpulp's Avatar
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    trying to discredit him by saying he has PHD in a field he talks/writes about
    Just because a person is stamped with a PHD doesn't automatically make them a relevant, accurate, or interesting thinker.

    Plenty of those Creationist hacks that Harris loves targeting have PHDs in astrophysics/theoretical physics from respected universities. Is their thinking suddenly sound because "they have PHDs in the fields they talk about?"

    Harris has published nothing. Has done nothing in the field. He simply writes polemical diatribes for his pulpit (New Atheists) to eat up and pat themselves on the back whilst reading.

  18. #93
    SeaGOAT midnightpulp's Avatar
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    i'm sure a lot of people on here don't know who sam harris is, what he stands for. how about we hear what he has to say?

    people who call sam harris hacks, people like mid are ben affleck in this clip:

    Yeah, he stands for Imperialism, while passing himself off as the torch bearer for "reason."

    Worse, even in its early stages, Harris casually dismissed the US attack on Iraq as a "red herring"; that war, he said, was simply one in which "civilized human beings [westerners] are now attempting, at considerable cost to themselves, to improve life for the Iraqi people."
    Harris's reasoning here was so sound, he didn't see how the power vacuum that would be created by Saddam's removal give rise to even more militant and dangerous radical Islamic groups (ISIS).

    He's a hack.

  19. #94
    Veteran cutewizard's Avatar
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  20. #95
    Veteran ace3g's Avatar
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    Eurohoops.net ‏@Eurohoopsnet

    Lithuania makes it 2/2 against Spain in Pau Gasol's summer debut with the NT: http://www.eurohoops.net/featured/285613/lithuania-makes-it-22-vs-spain …


  21. #96
    Believe. Emperor's Avatar
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    Really wish Manu, Parker and Gasol would have just taken this summer off. Old tired legs gonna be ruin us in April/May.

  22. #97
    Veteran cutewizard's Avatar
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    Really wish Manu, Parker and Gasol would have just taken this summer off. Old tired legs gonna be ruin us in April/May.

    ----------------------------------------------------------

    At least Kawhi, Lamarcus rested............

  23. #98
    Believe. Emperor's Avatar
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    ----------------------------------------------------------

    At least Kawhi, Lamarcus rested............
    Yes, that's definitely a good thing. Only thing Kawhi has to worry about now is his lack of sleep due to his newborn but that is obviously normal and who knows, with his new found fatherly skills he may use some of that with the Spurs this season and we shall hopefully see some newfound leadership skills from him. Would like to see him more vocal if he has it in him.

  24. #99
    Believe.
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    If pau wins FMVP will he be the 2nd best spur of all time?

  25. #100
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    If pau wins FMVP will he be the 2nd best spur of all time?
    That will depend on who he plays against.

    If it's against some stiff, then it will be like Porker vs Boobie all over again.

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