Fav quotes

[AdeptusHereticus]

"Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I don't agree with that quote. It all depends on the religious claims and the overall theology.

[MrBogosity]

I don't agree with that quote. It all depends on the religious claims and the overall theology.

As long as he's talking about personal beliefs, I agree. It's organized religion where you start to get major problems.

[AdeptusHereticus]

As long as he's talking about personal beliefs, I agree. It's organized religion where you start to get major problems.

I don't get this. Personal beliefs can possibly conflict with science. There is nothing in the concept of personal belief that could prevent that and, as we know, religions can take many forms, and their claims are diverse and of varied importances to the core theology. Like anything in life, it's about being able to back it up if necessary. To me, this quote is over simplifying the issue so much that it is of no significance. Particularly the first part : If you don't have a proper approach of interpretation, one that you can justify (Which is an important pillar of the scientific method), then you are merely making shit up, and the concept of personal preferences, which is in turn relevant when it comes to values, have nothing to do with that. To me it looks like Luther King Jr is guilty of post hoc rationalization, via the over simplification.

[MrBogosity]

I don't get this. Personal beliefs can possibly conflict with science.

Nothing about that is particular to religion, though. Look at anti-vaccers.

Like anything in life, it's about being able to back it up if necessary.

By "personal," I mean things you don't HAVE to back up, like how you prefer to live your life. I don't have to back up the fact that I like classical music better than rap, for example. Someone wouldn't have to back up their vegan diet unless they're also trying to convince others to become vegans.

[AdeptusHereticus]

Then I guess it means I wouldn't have used the term personal beliefs here because the quote uses the word religion and there is no context to tell us that what he meant was something other than the usual definition of religion. Either the quote does not accurately represent Luther king's belief and needs clarification, or Luther king's belief that religion and science cannot be rivals is wrong. In any case, I would think that quotes are supposed to be self explanatory and on its own, this one sounds wrong.

Indeed, the fact that personal beliefs can always possibly conflict with science is not particular to religion, which is one of the reasons why I think we can take this quote at face value. Another word could have been used instead of religion if the intent was the same as yours but Luther king's chose the general concept of religion. Doesn't it suggest the intent of not talking about all personal beliefs but rather to focus on a more specific instance ?

I would also add that if the purpose was to talk about all personal beliefs, he wouldn't have said that, because it's obvious to anyone, and nobody would quote him for that reason (At least, it would be very unlikely).

To me the quote is all wrong. If Luther King's intention was to suggest what you are suggesting, I am then on board with you too, obviously. But nothing really shows that in the choices he made when formulating the idea

[MrBogosity]

To me the quote is all wrong. If Luther King's intention was to suggest what you are suggesting, I am then on board with you too, obviously. But nothing really shows that in the choices he made when formulating the idea

Wouldn't his separation of science as dealing with facts and religion as dealing with values do that?

[AdeptusHereticus]

Wouldn't his separation of science as dealing with facts and religion as dealing with values do that?

Well ... I don't know. The thing is, if I was so inclined I would criticize the whole sentence.

Values are too vague of a concept to even use it in this discussion in my opinion ... I mean, basically, a value is any idea that is of great importance right ? You never learn anything useful about those ideas when they are described as "values". You only learn something useful about the person who hold them. The word "values" has  essentially the same usefulness that the superlative degree has. If someone describes a movie to you by saying that's it's "awesome", you didn't learn anything about the movie, you only learnt that this person really liked it.

Science has ideas of great importance as a foundation. Those ideas require justification and nobody would accept them at face value. It would be unthinkable that they would be personal beliefs. But if I'm not mistaken, those ideas fit the description of values. Now, I know what a devil's advocate would say here, because the scientific method lies on basic assumptions about the universe, I am in fact talking about values that are about values, which is to say that if I value the scientific method, I will of course subject other values to that foundational value ... But, you get the idea ...

[MrBogosity]

Values are too vague of a concept to even use it in this discussion in my opinion ... I mean, basically, a value is any idea that is of great importance right ? You never learn anything useful about those ideas when they are described as "values". You only learn something useful about the person who hold them. The word "values" has  essentially the same usefulness that the superlative degree has. If someone describes a movie to you by saying that's it's "awesome", you didn't learn anything about the movie, you only learnt that this person really liked it.

You learned something about the PERSON, that enables you to better predict his behavior (in this case, whether or not he'll like this next movie).

[AnCap Dave]

[AdeptusHereticus]

You learned something about the PERSON, that enables you to better predict his behavior (in this case, whether or not he'll like this next movie).

Yes, but my point is, going back to what I was saying originally, it doesn't tell you a lot about the actual claim. You don't know if it's just that, a claim about that person personal taste, or something more complicated that relies on a specific argument that requires justification. When the quote talks about science dealing with facts and religion dealing with values, we have the same problem : each value could be any claim of any form and we don't know a priori if it only relates to personal beliefs as you put it, or something else. In other words, no, I don't think it explains anything about Luther king's intentions.
The quote sounds wrong because there's nothing in religion that makes it inherently not rival with science. It all depends on the specific claim. The generalizations he made in this case are inappropriate. The investigation-interpretation bit is wrong because interpreting data is a necessary tool for any intellectual human endeavour, science included, and every interpretation needs to be justified frankly. The facts-values bit is wrong because values can rely on facts and those values require justification because you can have your facts wrong (anecdotal evidence, cherry picking, whatever).

[AdeptusHereticus]

She must have missed the bit about the buildings ...
Although, if I were to tweak her argument, I could say the same thing because bethesda games ar all the same really, with a bonus paint job (and not a very good one usually). This kind of games require a lot more work on AIs and on a universal physics engine to create a really life like virtual environnement that does not need to rely only on triggering scripts. And it's not as if the technology in those area wasn't already better than what they offer ... So in the end, in Bethesda games you can only kill shit and steal shit.

[evensgrey]

She must have missed the bit about the buildings ...
Although, if I were to tweak her argument, I could say the same thing because bethesda games ar all the same really, with a bonus paint job (and not a very good one usually). This kind of games require a lot more work on AIs and on a universal physics engine to create a really life like virtual environnement that does not need to rely only on triggering scripts. And it's not as if the technology in those area wasn't already better than what they offer ... So in the end, in Bethesda games you can only kill shit and steal shit.

Are there any games using general inverse kinematics in their animation systems?  I've looked around a bit, but haven't found anything that makes good use of it.

[Ibrahim90]

Are there any games using general inverse kinematics in their animation systems?  I've looked around a bit, but haven't found anything that makes good use of it.

Rome total war and Medieval II total war sort of use it, but it's very limited (and kind of buggy).

[AdeptusHereticus]

Are there any games using general inverse kinematics in their animation systems?  I've looked around a bit, but haven't found anything that makes good use of it.

I'm not following ... I don't know how complex animation systems are but what about them ?

[evensgrey]

I'm not following ... I don't know how complex animation systems are but what about them ?

The idea in inverse kinematics is that physics modeled in the game directly affects how animations behave.  A simple example would be a character walking up a flight of stairs.  With inverse kinematics, the character's feet actually rest on the steps, while without it, they may not.  (If you've played some of the older Splinter Cell games, for instance, the stairs in those games look like stairs, but function like ramps in terms of where Sam puts his feet when he uses them, which is quite distracting.)  Another example is swinging weapons.  With inverse kinematics, weapons move according to the mass and balance of the individual weapon essentially for free in terms of modeling (you just define the mass distribution of the weapon and the game engine takes care of the rest).  Without inverse kinematics, you have to explicitly model the behavior of each weapon (if you've even got the ability to do that).

The really big problem with inverse kinematics is it takes a lot of computation to do, but that isn't nearly the issue it used to be since you can easily get a physics coprocessor now.